RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/john-bolton-trashes-democrats-grossly-partisan-impeachment-downplays-impact-of-his-potential-testimony/

On Wednesday, President Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton, made a public appearance alongside Obama’s former national security advisor, Susan Rice, at Vanderbilt University, where he blasted the Democrats’ ”grossly partisan” impeachment against Trump, and downplayed the impact of the testimony he would have had on the outcome of the impeachment vote.

According to Bolton, the House “committed impeachment malpractice.” He added that “the process drove Republicans who might have voted for impeachment away because it was so partisan.”

Bolton also revealed that he was surprised the Senate voted against him testifying, but dowplayed the impact his testimony would have had anyway. “People can argue about what I should have said and what I should have done. I would bet you a dollar right here and now, my testimony would have made no difference to the ultimate outcome.”

Susan Rice was critical of Bolton for his silence. “I can’t imagine withholding my testimony, with or without a subpoena,” she said. “I also can’t imagine, frankly, in the absence of being able to provide that information directly to Congress, not having exercised my First Amendment right to speak publicly at a time when my testimony or my experience would be relevant.”

Bolton still refused to divulge details about his forthcoming book, which perhaps suggests that the information he has is nothing new, and doesn’t contain any evidence of actual wrongdoing by President Trump. We still haven’t seen actual excerpts from the book, and since Bolton believes that his testimony wouldn’t have changed the outcome, it’s probably safe to say when the book does come out, a lot of people who pre-ordered it expecting it to be Trump’s downfall will be very disappointed.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/20/why-richard-grenell-as-director-of-national-intelligence-is-a-loss-for-the-deep-state/

Richard Grenell has doggedly pursued the president’s agenda in the face of unrelenting defiance from the European Union’s most consequential power.

President Donald Trump’s pick of U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell for acting director of national intelligence (DNI) is an inspired one of great symbolic and substantive significance.

In staffing another crucial position in the executive branch with someone who genuinely shares his worldview, instincts, and tenacity, President Trump is signaling to the Trump-haters of the administrative state, and its Deep State apotheosis, that those who reject or actively seek to undermine his America First agenda will no longer be welcome in meaningful positions.

This is no minor statement because the establishmentarian Resistance, knowing that personnel is policy, has sought to stymie the president’s agenda by seeking to undermine if not destroy like-minded individuals the president has considered for top-level posts.

Consider that the effect, if not intent, of the still-going effort to ruin Gen. Michael Flynn. It has gone beyond punishing him for sharing the president’s views, having directly challenged the national security and foreign policy establishment, and threatening its power and privilege. Its aim was to send a message from the very start of the administration that the president’s actual supporters need not apply.

Substantively, after eight years spent during the George W. Bush administration engaging in diplomatic combat with the “jackals” of the United Nations as the longest-serving spokesman and appointee in U.S. history, Grenell has doggedly pursued the president’s agenda in the face of unrelenting defiance from the European Union’s (EU) most consequential power.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/bolton-says-his-impeachment-testimony-would-not-have-changed-outcome-n1139461

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Former national security adviser John Bolton said Wednesday he was surprised that Senate Republicans rejected his offer to testify in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. But he said that even if he had testified, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the trial because of how House Democrats handled their investigation.

“I think the House committed impeachment malpractice,” Bolton said at an event at Vanderbilt University with Susan Rice, who was national security adviser during the administration of former President Barack Obama. “The process drove Republicans who might have voted for impeachment away” because “it was so partisan,” he said.

But, he added, “my testimony would have made no difference to the ultimate outcome.”

All but one Senate Republican voted to acquit Trump of abusing the power of his office by pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political opponent.

https://www.city-journal.org/progressive-elected-officials-abuse-language

A new law in California bans the use, in official documents, of the term “at risk” to describe youth identified by social workers, teachers, or the courts as likely to drop out of school, join a gang, or go to jail. Los Angeles assemblyman Reginald B. Jones-Sawyer, who sponsored the legislation, explained that “words matter.” By designating children as “at risk,” he says, “we automatically put them in the school-to-prison pipeline. Many of them, when labeled that, are not able to exceed above that.”

The idea that the term “at risk” assigns outcomes, rather than describes unfortunate possibilities, grants social workers deterministic authority most would be surprised to learn they possess. Contrary to Jones-Sawyer’s characterization of “at risk” as consigning kids to roles as outcasts or losers, the term originated in the 1980s as a less harsh and stigmatizing substitute for “juvenile delinquent,” to describe vulnerable children who seemed to be on the wrong path. The idea of young people at “risk” of social failure buttressed the idea that government services and support could ameliorate or hedge these risks.

Instead of calling vulnerable kids “at risk,” says Jones-Sawyer, “we’re going to call them ‘at-promise’ because they’re the promise of the future.” The replacement term—the only expression now legally permitted in California education and penal codes—has no independent meaning in English. Usually we call people about whom we’re hopeful “promising.” The language of the statute is contradictory and garbled, too. “For purposes of this article, ‘at-promise pupil’ means a pupil enrolled in high school who is at risk of dropping out of school, as indicated by at least three of the following criteria: Past record of irregular attendance . . . Past record of underachievement . . . Past record of low motivation or a disinterest in the regular school program.” In other words, “at-promise” kids are underachievers with little interest in school, who are “at risk of dropping out.” Without casting these kids as lost causes, in what sense are they “at promise,” and to what extent does designating them as “at risk” make them so?

https://www.thinkers360.com/thought-leader-and-influencer-interview-with-chuck-brooks-president-brooks-consulting-international-and-adjunct-faculty-georgetown-university/

Thought Leader Interview

Thinkers360 interviews profile prominent members of the Thinkers360 community who embody the power of ideas in their work. In this edition, we speak with Chuck Brooks, President, Brooks Consulting International and Adjunct Faculty Georgetown University. Chuck is a globally-recognized cybersecurity thought leader and influencer, a two-time Presidential Appointee, with executive experience in marketing/branding, government relations, management, strategic partnering and digital engagement. He was recently featured in the Thinkers360 Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Cybersecurity.

Thinkers360: Tell us a bit about your background

CB: My background includes service in the public sector, academia, industry, and media.

In government. In government I received two senior Presidential appointments. I was a “plank holder” at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and appointed as the first Legislative Director of The Science & Technology Directorate. Earlier in my career I served as Special Assistant to the Director of Voice of America. For almost a decade on Capitol Hill I was a top Advisor to the late Senator Arlen Specter covering security and technology. In local government I also worked as an Auxiliary Police officer for Arlington, Virginia.

In industry, I served in senior executive roles for Fortune 1000 and smaller corporations including General Dynamics (Principal Market Growth Strategist for Cyber Systems), at Xerox (Vice President & Client Executive for Homeland Security), for Rapiscan and (Vice President of R & D), for SRA as (Vice President of Government Relations), and for Sutherland (Vice President of Marketing and Government Relations). As a globally recognized thought leader and evangelist for Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies, I serve as Brand Ambassador for The Cybersecurity Collaborative, a peer-based CISO organization. I am also Executive Cybersecurity advisor to PCiTec, a woman owned HUBZONE small business, and serve on a variety of boards of companies.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/ag_bill_barr_will_he_or_wont_he_quit_the_narratives_change_by_the_minute.html

In the past week, there’s been non-stop speculation that Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, may be run out of office or quit. On Tuesday alone, a report that Barr was on the verge of quitting was instantly followed with a statement that he had no intention of quitting.

This all stems from the fact that, when word broke that the vindictive Eric Holder holdovers in the Department of Justice sought the most extreme penalty possible for Roger Stone, Trump and Barr acted almost simultaneously, with Barr later insisting that his actions had nothing to do with Trump.

On February 11, Trump tweeted out that the sentence the DOJ was asking for Stone was an injustice:

At roughly the same time, Barr, as head of the Department of Justice, concluded that the sentencing memo was inappropriate and, instead, filed a memo asking only that the court exercise its discretion over sentencing. The left promptly went insane, saying that never before had an Attorney General been so utterly insane and corrupt. Former DOJ attorneys and officials (who are overwhelmingly Democrats) signed a petition that former Obama and Schiff staffers had written demanding he resign.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/democrats-hold-secret-meeting-iranian-foreign-joseph-klein/

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, along with several of his Senate Democrat colleagues, reportedly met secretly with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (pictured above) during the Munich Security Conference last week. The Federalist raised the question whether that “would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration.”

Senator Murphy tweeted that he was simply engaging in a dialogue with Zarif, which he claimed was within Congress’s authority as “a co-equal branch to the executive.” While acknowledging for the record that “no one in Congress can negotiate with Zarif or carry official U.S. government messages,” Murphy declared that “there is value in having a dialogue.”  He added, “It’s dangerous not to talk to adversaries, esp amidst a cycle of escalation.” That all depends on what Murphy and his cohorts had to say to the Iranian foreign minister behind closed doors.

According to Senator Murphy’s own telling, he used his meeting with Zarif to urge Iranian action to control Iran’s proxies in Iraq, release American citizens being unlawfully detained in Iran, and end the Houthi blockage of humanitarian aid in Yemen. That sounds innocent enough, if Murphy was telling the truth about everything that was said during his tête-à-tête with Zarif. But there is no reason to take Murphy’s self-serving account as representing anywhere near a complete record of the meeting.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-takes-a-stand-for-the-mentally-ill-11582071818?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Hundreds of thousands of Americans with serious mental illness sleep in jails, shelters and prisons on any given night. Fewer than 40,000 are in state psychiatric hospitals. This is largely due to a federal policy, the Institutions for Mental Disease Exclusion, which created a financial incentive for states to kick the mentally ill out of hospitals. The White House’s new budget proposes easing the exclusion. It’s the most important thing federal government could do to improve care for the seriously mentally ill.

The IMD Exclusion, part of the 1965 law that established Medicaid, prevents the program from funding care for mentally ill adults while they live in hospitals or even adult homes with more than 16 beds. It was intended to prevent the federal government from taking on care of the mentally ill, which had historically been a state responsibility. Many mistakenly believed that newly developed antipsychotic drugs and community mental-health centers would obviate the need for institutions.

It’s been a disaster. Before Medicaid was enacted, states paid for psychiatric hospitalization, and it was readily available. But states soon realized that if they kicked patients out of hospitals, Medicaid would kick in and pay half the cost of care. This “deinstitutionalization” continues. The country has lost more than 450,000 mental-hospital beds since the 1950s, 12,000 of them since 2005.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-acknowledges-barrs-complaint-about-his-tweets-i-do-make-his-job-harder/

President Trump agreed Tuesday with Attorney General William Barr’s claim that his incessant tweeting, particularly as it relates to ongoing DOJ cases, makes the job of the attorney general more difficult.

“I do make his job harder. I do agree with that. I think that’s true,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

“Everybody has the right to speak their mind. I use social media. I guess I use it well because here I am,” Trump said. “I probably would not have gotten here without social media, because I certainly don’t get fair press.”

The attorney general expressed frustration last week after Trump complained on Twitter that the prosecutors’ seven-to-nine-year sentencing recommendation for his longtime adviser Roger Stone was a “horrible and very unfair situation.”

Afterwards, the Justice Department submitted a revised filing stating that the prosecutors’ recommended lengthy sentence “could be considered excessive and unwarranted,” sparking allegations that Trump was influencing Barr.

“I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” Barr said, but added that he is not being “bullied or influenced” by anyone regarding any DOJ cases.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chris-murphy-is-a-massive-hypocrite-on-iran/

The Federalist reported yesterday that Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut and other Democratic senators secretly met with foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference last month. Today, Murphy acknowledged that the meeting took place, arguing that “Congress is a co-equal branch to the executive” and, well, Donald Trump is bad.

It’s quite a volte-face for Murphy. In March of 2015, when President Obama was involved in negotiations with the mullahs, Senator Tom Cotton and 46 of his colleagues released an open letter to the Islamic Republic of Iran, offering some basic lessons on the American constitutional system — namely, an explainer on binding treaties.

At the time, Murphy called the letter “unprecedented” and claimed it was “undermining the authority of the president.” Then-Secretary of State John Kerry claimed to be in “utter disbelief” when asked about the letter. Kerry, no stranger to negotiating with America’s enemies, would a few years later meet Zarif a number of times to try and ‘salvage’ Obama’s Iran deal, in direct conflict with the position of the American government in Trump’s administration.

When Dianne Feinstein, then the Democrats’ ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, heard about Cotton’s letter, she was “appalled” at the “highly inappropriate and unprecedented incursion into the president’s prerogative to conduct foreign affairs.” Only a few years later, Feinstein would host the Iranian Foreign Minister for dinner.