RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://tomklingenstein.com/the-legal-arsenal-of-the-group-quota-regime/

Editor’s Note: Lawfare, the weaponization of law against political opponents—both public figures and ordinary citizens—is now a mainstay of the Left’s political strategy. T.J. Harker, an attorney and former federal prosecutor, explains how the law itself has become the power mechanism of the present revolutionary threat, and illuminates how fully this new order has already supplanted the old American Constitution. From woke prosecutors to political disbarments to judicial activism, the group quota regime and the legal apparatus are now indistinguishable in large swathes of the country.

This essay was originally published in The American Mind under the title “The Regime v. America.” In the weeks since its release, at the end of a lengthy and expensive trial, a California Bar Court officially recommended that John Eastman be disbarred.

The American legal system was a thing of beauty. Refined across centuries and emerging from the precedence of millions of common law cases, by the end of the last millennium it had become the envy of the world. Serving both a dispute resolution and truth-seeking function, it channeled the violent passions of human nature into a controlled medium. It then subjected those passions to standardized procedures (the rules of evidence and civil or criminal procedure) to yield judgments that commanded the respect of the parties and the public. 

The American rule of law sustained our capacity for self-governance. The legal system midwifed the most sophisticated property rights regime in the world, improved our collective reasoning faculties, balanced the imperative of change with the demands of tradition, and settled disputes of trivial insignificance as well as controversies of monumental importance. The system functioned so well that most Americans never even thought about it. And it commanded such astonishing respect that virtually everyone obeyed its commands in even the most partisan contests. 

But today, sophisticated regime mandarins in Big Law, government, and non-profit activist organizations seek to pervert our legal system by hacking it. They warp its dispute resolution and truth-seeking function to one that advances and sustains their grip on power, delegitimizing that grip in the process. This is known as lawfare. Its variants include access denial, weaponized defamation law, weaponized criminal law, misuse of federal and state agencies, subversive professional licensing requirements, and “adversarial inversion.” 

https://nypost.com/2024/04/17/us-news/bill-maher-says-the-us-has-passed-the-rubicon-slams-dearborn-michigan-death-to-america-rally/

“Real Time” host Bill Maher said it’s time to draw the line when it comes to chants of “Death to America” on American soil.

On Friday’s “Overtime” segment on YouTube, Maher addressed the protesters in Dearborn, Michigan, who shouted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” during an International Al-Quds Day rally earlier this month.

“Can I talk about American propaganda? Because there was a rally in Dearborn, Michigan, it’s a large Muslim population, [there were] chants of ‘Death to America.’ I feel like we’ve passed something here,” Maher said.

“The left has gotten mad at me for many years for talking about Islam. I try not to do it too much because I know it makes them go crazy, and I’ve made my point. But it needs to be talked about now. When you start chanting ‘Death to America’ in America.”

In a conversation with guests Piers Morgan and British journalist Gillian Tett, Maher pointed to quotes from anti-Israel activist Takek Bazzi, who headlined the hour-long rally in front of the Henry Ford Centennial Library in Dearborn.

In video shared by the Middle East Media Research Institute, Bazzi tells the crowd at the event that the “Death to America” chants were in honor of former Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/throw-the-anti-american-left-under-the-bus/

You’re likely to hear a lot about the polls showing that Americans are growing impatient with Israel. Democrats and their media allies seem to have concluded that this sentiment will grow along a straight-line trajectory until a majority have become intractably hostile toward Israel’s defensive war against Hamas. But straight-line trajectories are inherently fallacious. They take no account of exogenous events, such as, for example, Iran’s brazen, multilayered missile and drone attack on Israeli population centers. Indeed, even before that attack, Democratic and media elites had already internalized a misreading of this war and voters’ perceptions of it.

For example, a Pew Research Center poll from late March showed that, while the public is growing weary of watching Israel zealously prosecute its right to self-defense, those same voters also understand that Israel’s casus belli is just while Hamas’s is not. That survey found that only 15 percent of respondents believe that Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas are “not at all” or “not too” valid. By contrast, 49 percent of respondents don’t believe that Hamas’s aims or cause are valid. Although 34 percent said Israel’s conduct on the ground in Gaza is “completely” or “somewhat” unacceptable, the October 7 massacre that begat this war was seen as an “acceptable” response to Israel’s actions by precisely 4 percent of American adults. Nearly three-quarters of the Americans surveyed rejected the notion that the barbarity unleashed on 10/7 was a legitimate response to the conditions that prevailed in the Gaza Strip.

This dichotomy is something on which America’s center-left elites should reflect amid their ongoing efforts to coddle and mollify what can only be described as a pro-terrorism constituency.

bit.ly/445DATx
1. Passover (April 22-30, 2024) is a Jewish national liberation holiday, highlighting the Exodus, the Parting of the Sea, the Ten Commandments, the 40-year-wandering in the desert, and the reentry to the Land of Israel 3,600 years ago.

2. The Abolitionist and human rights movements were spurred by the Passover Exodus. For example,  in 1850, Harriet Tubman, who was one of the leaders of the “Underground Railroad” – an Exodus of Afro-American slaves to freedom – was known as “Mama Moses.” Moreover, on December 11, 1964, upon accepting the Nobel Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court centuries ago and cried, ‘Let my people go!’” Furthermore, Paul Robeson and Louis Armstrong leveraged the liberty theme of Passover through the lyrics: “When Israel was in Egypt’s land, let my people go! Oppressed so hard they could not stand, let my people go! Go down Moses, way down in Egypt’s land; tell old Pharaoh to let my people go….!” 

3. The US Founding Fathers were inspired by the Exodus, in particular, and the Mosaic legacy, in general, shaping the Federalist system, including the concepts of (anti-monarchy) limited government, separation of powers among three co-equal branches of government, featuring Congress, as the most powerful legislature in the world. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense – “the cement of the 1776 Revolution” – referred to King George III as “the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England.” And, the Early Pilgrims considered their 10-week-sail in the Atlantic ocean as “the modern day Parting of the Sea,” and their destination as “the modern day Promised Land” and “the New Israel.”  

4. The US Founding Fathers deemed it appropriate to engrave the essence of the Biblical role model of liberty (the Passover-related Jubilee) on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof (Leviticus, 25:10).”    The Jubilee is commemorated every 50 years, and the Liberty Bell was installed in 1751 upon the 50th anniversary of William Penn’s Charter of Privileges.  

Moreover, there are 50 States in the United States, whose Hebrew name is “The States of the Covenant” (Artzot Habreet -ארצות הברית ). Also, the Exodus is mentioned 50 times in the Five Books of Moses; Moses received (on Mount Sinai) the Torah – which includes 50 gates of wisdom – 50 days following the Exodus, as celebrated by the Shavou’ot/Pentecost Holiday, 50 days following Passover.

5. According to Heinrich Heine, the 19th century German poet, “Since the Exodus, freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent.”  

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/04/18/joe-bidens-economic-dunkirk/

Just after Ronald Reagan won the presidential election in November 1980, economic adviser David Stockman wrote a memo warning the president-elect that he faced an “economic Dunkirk” thanks to the disastrous economy he was inheriting.

Among Stockman’s warnings was that the Carter administration had set a “ticking regulatory time bomb” that would blow up the economy.

“They have spent the past four years ‘tooling up’ for implementation through a mind-boggling outpouring of rulemakings, interpretative guidelines, and major litigation – all heavily biased toward maximization of regulatory scope and burden,” Stockman wrote.

Stockman – who would later serve as head of the Office of Management and Budget and ended up losing Reagan’s trust – had that part wrong. While Carter was a disaster as president, at least he showed an ability to learn on the job. And so late in his term, Carter embarked on a deregulatory campaign to fight inflation. Among other things, he freed the trucking and airline industries from onerous government mandates.

“Carter gave Reagan the phenomenal gift of deregulation. Combined with the (Reagan) tax cuts that largely took effect in 1983, the economy went on a growth tear,” wrote Brian Domitrovic, a scholar at the Laffer Center, in Forbes. “All the capital that Reagan freed up via his tax cuts found room to roam in the deregulated world which Carter had set up.”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/marjorie-taylor-green-idiot-wreck-gop

It’s high time someone in the Republican Party told Marjorie Taylor Greene to turn all that bombastic self-serving showmanship and drama queen energy on Democrats, and stop trying to defeat her own party. 

The Georgia Republican, who famously displayed sexually explicit photos of Hunter Biden  during a committee hearing and called fellow representative Lauren Boebert a bitch on the House floor, is known for wild antics and equally harebrained conspiracy theories.   

Currently, she is threatening to oust Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. The Louisiana Representative, with a five-vote majority in the House, is attempting to keep his caucus intact as he navigates treacherous issues including funding Ukraine, which has become unpopular with some conservatives, and reauthorizing the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He also struggled to pass a funding bill, which required relying on Democrats to get another big spending package over the threshold. 

To be sure, not all Republicans approve of spending billions more to arm Ukraine, especially since our own border remains wide open; many in the GOP wanted Johnson to demand border enforcement in exchange for support of Kyiv. Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world (which is perhaps why Hunter Biden was so richly employed there) and it not clear that America’s billions sent to fight Vladimir Putin have all been spent towards that end. There is almost certainly inadequate oversight, as I wrote early in the war. 

Nonetheless, countering Russia’s power-mad dictator is the right thing to do

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/04/16/americas_broken_pendulum_150796.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The American constitutional structure was designed to promote moderation, compromise, and incremental change.  Throughout most of our history, it has worked as intended. The pendulum of public policy has swung from left to right to left to right, but rarely too far in either direction. 

American versions of socialism and corporatism, faith and secularism, traditionalism and progressivism, have all been far milder than those that swallowed other societies. For that, we can thank the multiple divisions of power, checks and balances, and freedom of debate that have always characterized our national spirit.

A bit more than a decade ago, the pendulum began to swing far outside its historic range. As recently as 2010, Obamacare’s passage represented a recognizable victory for the left. The immediate, natural, and expected corrective rightward swing produced the Tea Party and the midterm “shellacking” of Obama’s Democrats.

That’s when things began to go awry. The weaponization of the IRS against right-leaning activist groups heading into the 2012 election arrested the rightward correction. Instead, the pendulum swung dangerously leftward, much faster and farther from center than at any prior point in American history.

President Obama conceded that he lacked the constitutional authority to alter immigration laws, then imposed his preferred DACA policy anyway – earning great acclaim for his problem-solving acumen. 

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/3405944401654-disturbing-moment-anti-israel-protesters-swarm-nyc-subway-chanting-iran-you-make-us-proud?noAds=1&_f=app_share&s=i3

Alarming video shows anti-Israel protesters taking over a New York City subway car and horrifying Jewish riders with sick antisemitic chants — even saying they were “proud” of Iran for attacking Israel.

“Iran, you make us proud!” the group yell in a call-and-response chant as a young woman stares wide-eyed in horror during the vile scenes said to have been filmed Monday, the day American flags were burned in widespread protests.

“Yemen, you make us proud … Rafah, you make us proud. West Bank, you make us proud,” they also chant as scared Jewish riders sit nearby.

“From the river to the sea, all our people will be free,” they also chant, a phrase widely taken as an antisemitic call for the eradication of the Jewish state.

The footage was shared Tuesday by the Jews of NY Instagram page, which said it was sent by one of the horrified Jewish New Yorkers on the ride.

“It sure does feels like we are living in a horrifying science fiction movie,” Jews of NY wrote in a caption.

As well as chanting, the anti-Israeli mob – some seen wearing keffiyeh scarves — held signs including “Land you have to kill for is not yours — Free Gaza.”

The anonymous rider who took the footage said they were “completely surrounded on all sides and everywhere in the train car by these young Americans who were so filled with rage.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-woke-rackets/

The “longshoreman philosopher”  Eric Hoffer once observed, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” This course of corruption has been ubiquitous in U.S. history, but especially characterized the postwar period. In contemporary times, the post-Cold War period, it is accelerating and now reaching terminal velocity.

One of the great causes in our history was the Civil Rights Movement begun in 1954. The people who comprised it made a dignified moral and historical argument against segregation, onederived from Christian ethics and the Prologue to the Declaration of Independence, and eschewing the parochial identarianism and violence of leftist activists. The results were the epochal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It didn’t take long, however, for that noble cause to become a business, then degenerate into a racket that exploited discriminatory government polices like affirmative action, all predicated on a made-up “compelling state interest” called “diversity”––an Orwellian term that relied on crude racialist, superficial group characteristics, while ignoring the true diversity of individual hearts and minds.

The Civil Rights Movement then became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party and government agencies backed by federal law and enforced by hordes of bureaucrats. Consultants, trial lawyers, administrators, educrats, and diversity “trainers” waxed fat on political power and redistributed taxpayer loot.

Today’s diversity 2.0 DEI cartel has expanded the reach and power of Diversity INC to corporate C-Suites and Boards of Directors, magnifying the corruption. As Victor Davis Hanson wrote recently, “Grifters and opportunists mask their selfish agendas under the cloak of neo-Marxist care for the underprivileged or victimized minorities. Meanwhile, they seek to profit illegally as if they were old-fashioned crony capitalists.” 

This corruption of our constitutional order and foundational principles–– the assaults on the integrity of the First Amendment rights to free speech and religion, or the 14th amendment’s guarantee of “due process,” the “equal protection of the laws,”and the accountability of power to the people ––is a dire threat to our ordered freedom and political equality, for such debasement relentlessly subjects our republic to regulatory tyranny.