RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/01/walls-closing-in-on-the-democrats/

On Friday, as I and about 456,874 other people predicted, the Senate voted against calling yet more witnesses in the make-believe, 100 percent certified partisan impeachment fiasco run by the Democrats and their media cheerleaders.

That vote brought this lucrative entertainment to an end, de facto if not de jure. The official, signed-sealed-and-delivered end will come Wednesday, we’re told, when the Senate will vote on whether to acquit the president of the two charges on which he was impeached by the House. Spoiler alert: They will.

A quick refresher. Those two charges were “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress.”

Let’s take them in order. The alleged abuse of power charge stemmed from President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Zelinsky. Trump was keen to have Zelinsky look into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He was also keen to have him look into allegations that Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, who is campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, was knee-deep in corrupt activities.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son,” President Trump said, “that [Joe] Biden stopped the prosecution [of Burisma, the corrupt company on whose Board Hunter sat and from which he collected more than $50,000 a month] and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/google-is-cloaking-monopoly-power-in-the-guise-of-virtue-to-gain-more-control-over-users-data/

The tech world was rocked by Google’s recent announcement regarding its internet browser, Chrome. Over the next few years, the search engine company will begin banning third-party cookies from its platform. The change will prohibit companies unaffiliated with Google from tracking the data of Chrome users.

Google heralded the move as a victory for internet privacy, declaring, “Users are demanding greater privacy… and it’s clear the web ecosystem needs to evolve to meet those demands.”

Unfortunately for Google’s public relations team, reality doesn’t quite conform to their slick messaging strategy. The tech giant may claim that their rationale for eliminating third-party cookies is an altruistic pursuit of security and privacy, but the truth is something different entirely. Google is merely looking to strengthen its monopoly power over the tech industry. And it is using the guise of virtue to cloak its ambitions.

The troubling reality lying behind Google’s claims of virtue is hiding in plain sight. Google is banning solely third-party cookies. In other words, Google is banning its competition.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/01/31/san-franciscos-mr-clean

This week, Mohammed Nuru, the Director of Public Works in San Francisco, was arrested and charged by the FBI on allegations of bribery, wire fraud, violations of honest service, and… porta potty contract corruption.

Nuru calls himself @MrCleanSF on Twitter and is the official best known for failed efforts to keep feces and hypodermic needles out of the public way. He oversees a $500 million budget, and, according to our data displayed at OpentheBooks.com, Nuru earned a $250,548 annual salary in 2017. Apparently, that wasn’t enough in light of an arrest that included allegations of bribery.

The indictment has yet to be proven in court. However, the feds, in part, referenceda porta potty scandal – a breach of honest services in the procurement of mobile potties and tiny container-type portable housing for the homeless.

Nuru’s tactics were always questionable. For example, fancy portable toilettes were designed in the architectural style of “Painted Lady” residences. These porta-potties cost $200,000 each to operate. Five employees were staffed on a “poop patrol” with pay, perquisites, and pension benefits costing $184,000 each per year.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/meet-the-socialist-world-series-winning-pitcher-who-snubbed-president-trump_3190952.html

After the Washington Nationals baseball team won the prestigious World Series on Oct. 31, 2019, the victorious team paid the traditional visit to the White House to be congratulated by President Donald Trump—except for one team member.

Pitcher Sean Doolittle declined to meet with the president. And he got political about it—which is not surprising because Doolittle is a bona fide socialist.

Doolittle told the Washington Post:

“There’s a lot of things, policies that I disagree with, but at the end of the day, it has more to do with the divisive rhetoric and the enabling of conspiracy theories and widening the divide in this country. … At the end of the day, as much as I wanted to be there with my teammates and share that experience with my teammates, I can’t do it … I just can’t do it.”

I can’t condemn Doolittle for standing by his principles—as much as I disagree with them—but I can fault the many media outlets who gleefully reported the snub—without giving the public the full background.

No major media outlet, as far as I know, was willing to reveal that Doolittle is a card-carrying socialist. He is a member of the United States’ largest Marxist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/01/as-impeachment-ends-its-time-to-correct-these-nine-injustices/

The president should take action to exploit this very short window in which his exhausted opponents cast about for their next fake “bombshell.” They’re going to complain about Trump anyway. He might as well give them something to complain about.

How will Donald Trump spend the windfall of political space resulting from the busted impeachment effort? It now appears that the Senate is ready to put an end to Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) vanity project. The “resistance” will require approximately six weeks to lick its wounds and re-manufacture outrage over yet another Trump “scandal.”

In the meanwhile, an exhausted Congress and media cannot easily pivot to another offensive. The president should use this critical breathing space immediately to correct some of the many outrages perpetrated by his opponents. Yes, as a matter of fact, I do have a wish list.

The Senate on Friday night narrowly rejected a motion to call new witnesses in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, paving the way for a final vote to acquit the president by next week.

In a 51-49 vote, the Senate defeated a push by Democrats to depose former national security adviser John Bolton and other witnesses on their knowledge of the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump’s impeachment.

Two Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah — joined all 47 Senate Democrats in voting for the motion. Two potential GOP swing votes, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, stuck with their party, ensuring Democrats were defeated.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-in-trump-impeachment-trial-senate-right-to-block-new-witness-testimony

The Senate was right to vote Friday against hearing new witness testimony at President Trump’s impeachment trial. The Democrats’ demand for new witnesses at the trial was a red herring – a talking point that had some surface appeal but, upon scrutiny, was nonsense.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the other impeachment managers claim that there have been no witnesses in the trial. They said before the Senate voted 51-49 Friday to block more witnesses that if Republicans did note vote to approve subpoenas for former National Security Adviser John Bolton, among other top current and former administration officials, that the trial will be a “sham” – an exercise in “cover-up.” You can’t have a real trial, was their refrain, unless witnesses are called.

It is nonsense. There have been plenty of witnesses. Schiff’s problem is that the additional witnesses he wanted to call would not change what has already been proved in any meaningful way.

Obviously, what’s happening in the Senate is not a trial in any familiar sense. We are used to judicial trials. Impeachment presents something completely different, a Senate trial. The Senate is a political body, not a law court.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-bolton-book-allegations-drop-hours-ahead-of-vote-on-witnesses/

New reports of the contents of former White House adviser John Bolton’s book have surfaced hours before the Senate is scheduled to vote on whether to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Trump.

According to the New York Times, Bolton writes in his forthcoming book that Trump directed him to assist in the pressure campaign to coerce Ukrainian officials to conduct investigations against Joe and Hunter Biden during a May meeting at which the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and White House counsel Pat Cipillone were present.

During the meeting, Trump directed Bolton to set up a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Giuliani, who was then planning a trip to Ukraine to discuss the opening of the Biden investigation with government officials. Giuliani on Friday denied he was present at such a meeting, while Trump said Bolton’s alleged account was wrong.

The Times’ Sunday report on Bolton’s book, The Room Where it Happened, disrupted Republicans’ blanket opposition to calling witnesses in the impeachment trial. After unanimously resisting Democrats’ calls for Bolton to testify, moderate Republicans began to waver on Monday.

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/democrats-forgot-to-begin-with-the-end-in-mind/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

On the menu today: With Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander declaring, “there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense,” the Senate’s impeachment trial might be wrapping up as soon as today. If impeachment is indeed coming to a close, it’s time to focus on a strangely unasked question in much of this: Whom were the House impeachment managers trying to persuade? And did they seem like a group that was primarily focused on changing the minds of Republican senators?

Were the House Impeachment Managers Even Trying to Persuade GOP Senators?

In Steven Covey’s bestselling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, his second habit is to “begin with the end in mind,” which means to “begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination.”

In all likelihood, reaching 67 votes in the Senate to support the removal of the president was probably impossible. House impeachment managers had to try to convince, at minimum, 20 Republican senators to vote to remove. This means that targeting their message to persuade a rebellious senator such as Lisa Murkowski wasn’t enough. The message would have to be designed to persuade senators right in the middle of the GOP caucus who usually vote with the president and who have no inherent desire to see him removed from office. House impeachment managers were asking Republican senators to sign off on something that had never happened in 230 years. (George Washington took the oath of office to be president in 1789.)

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/there-is-no-strict-legal-test-of-impeachment/

It’s an eye test, a political determination, and even great lawyers trip up when they frame it as a legal question.

When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when you’re a lawyer, particularly a constitutional scholar and criminal-defense practitioner of Alan Dershowitz’s caliber, everything looks like a legal problem.

Not everything is. Impeachment is not. Not principally.

Professor Dershowitz, for whom I have great respect, got a bit carried away in what was otherwise a bravura performance in the well of the Senate on Wednesday night, when he offered a constitutional defense against President Trump’s impeachment. As will be clear momentarily, I have never agreed with Dershowitz’s impeachment theory. Yet the excerpt of his argument at the Senate trial that has critics up in arms was a case of misspeaking; it was not an outrage that would effectively turn the president into a dictator.

I believe Dershowitz was trying to make the uncontroversial point that executive acts a president subjectively believes are in the national interest do not become impeachable just because the president simultaneously believes such acts will help him politically. But Dersh garbled the point — which also occasionally happens, even to those of us who are not 81 and lack the professor’s vigor. Taken out of the context of his broader argument, he could be misunderstood as having asserted that, if a president believed his own reelection was in the national interest, no executive act he took in furtherance of being reelected could be impeachable.