RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/how-mcconnell-outplayed-pelosi/

The Republican leader unified his caucus by relying on precedent.

Mitch McConnell was clear when he addressed the Senate on December 18: Any impeachment trial of President Trump would follow the precedent established by the trial of President Clinton 20 years ago.

Clinton’s trial was divided into pieces. The Senate agreed unanimously to begin with a briefing, opening arguments, questions from senators, and a vote to dismiss. Whether to hear witnesses or introduce additional evidence were questions decided later. “That was the unanimous bipartisan precedent from 1999,” McConnell said. “Put first things first, lay the bipartisan groundwork, and leave mid-trial questions to the middle of the trial.”

The arrangement satisfied Chuck Schumer back when he was a recently elected junior senator from New York. Funny how times change. Now Senate minority leader, and looking to damage Republicans in a presidential election year, Schumer demanded that McConnell call witnesses and ask for additional documents at the outset of the proceedings. Pelosi followed his cues. After the House impeached Trump on December 18, she said she wouldn’t transmit the articles of impeachment until McConnell gave in to Schumer’s demands.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/susan_rice_lies_again__obama_and_soleimani.html

Susan Rice was a little less ubiquitous this time around than during her infamous five-talk-show world tour repeating the lie that the Benghazi terrorist attack was the fault of an inflammatory video and not due to the criminal negligence of President Barack Hussein Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. But there she was again on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Comedy Hour” defending her former boss, this time against charges that President Trump cleaned up more of Obama’s Iran mess by terminating the life and reign of terror of Iranian Gen. and Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani:

The Obama administration wasn’t presented with the opportunity to take out Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad early Friday, former national security adviser Susan Rice said Friday night.

“Had we been presented such an opportunity, what we would have done is weigh very carefully and very deliberately the risks versus the potential rewards,” Rice told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow….

Rice questioned whether Trump made the right decision.

“So, if in fact the administration can be believed that there was indeed strong intelligence of an imminent threat against the United States that’s being carried out by Soleimani and related militia then the question becomes [was] there more than one way to address that threat?” she told Maddow. “Was the only way to deal with it to kill Soleimani? Certainly, given his history and track record, he deserves his just rewards but the question is does that serve our interests? Does that make us more secure?”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/09/new-lawsuit-claims-rod-rosenstein-led-task-force-that-spied-on-sharyl-attkissons-computers/

In a federal lawsuit filed this week, Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein has been implicated in yet another improper government spy operation.

In the new complaint, Attkisson v. Rosenstein et.al., investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson names former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein and four other Justice Department officials as the government agents who of illegally survielled her electronic devices.

According to the complaint—filed in United States District Court in Baltimore, Maryland—Rosenstein led “a multi-agency task force in Baltimore that conducted surveillance of the Attkissons’ computer systems” and “used USPS IP addresses on other occasions to conduct operations.”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/09/intelligence-communitys-inspector-general-is-the-link-between-fisagate-and-impeachment/

The American public must know more about Michael Atkinson’s ties to the same agency and same culprits who launched the phony Russian collusion scheme.

As impeachment remains stalled for now, Democrats in the House of Representatives still refuse to release the closed-door testimony of a key witness in the concocted drama: Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community.

Atkinson, you may recall, launched the impeachment saga when he determined that the accusations by the “whistleblower” about Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president last summer were so alarming as to deem the complaint a matter of “urgent concern.” (It wasn’t.)

Atkinson sent two letters to the House Intelligence Committee demanding immediate attention to the bogus complaint.

“I have not been authorized to disclose . . . basic information to you, in addition to the important information provided by the Complainant that is also being kept from the congressional intelligence committees,” Atkinson warned September 17, a week after the U.S. aid had been released to Ukraine.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/tucker_carlson_looks_at_the_horrors_in_pelosis_own_district_of_san_francisco.html

Over the course of this week, on every episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Tucker has looked at one aspect of the insanity that is San Francisco. Once one of America’s greatest and most beautiful cities, it is now simultaneously one of its most expensive and its most decayed and dangerous. As a native San Franciscan, I find it painful to watch my natal city become a crazed and unlivable one.

Thursday’s episode was especially poignant, because it interviewed an old friend of mine going back to our high school days, Nyna Armstrong. Nyna is a brilliant woman, a hard worker, and a committed conservative. She’s also raised two wonderful daughters, both of whom serve this country. She is the kind of person that helps make America and American cities great.

Because of her job, Nyna is forced to live in the Bay Area. And because of the cost of living in the Bay Area, she’s chosen to live on a boat. It’s a nice boat, but it’s still not a house. Living there, however, is affordable and it keeps Nyna far from the city’s increasingly crazy, violent, and drug-addled residents.

If you’re interested in seeing what Leftist governance does to a city, I highly recommend Tucker’s other videos, which are all quite short:

American Dystopia: San Francisco in Decline

San Francisco small business owner struggles to run a store where customers can steal with virtual impunity

San Francisco residents turn to private police to keep neighborhoods from imploding

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-war-powers-act-11578615012?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Fans of the movie “Animal House” will recall the scene when the brothers of Delta House declare that it’s time for a “really futile and stupid gesture.” House Democrats chose to do something similar with their vote Thursday to block President Trump from using military force against Iran.

“Last week, the Trump Administration conducted a provocative and disproportionate military airstrike targeting high-level Iranian military officials,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday in announcing the floor vote. “Today, to honor our duty to keep the American people safe, the House will move forward with a War Powers Resolution to limit the President’s military actions regarding Iran.”

The five-page resolution declares that Mr. Trump must first get the permission of Congress if he wants to take up arms against Iran. But get this: The resolution is nonbinding, which means it won’t even go to the President’s desk. “This is a statement of the Congress of the United States. I will not have that statement be diminished by whether the President will veto it or not,” Mrs. Pelosi explained.

Mrs. Pelosi prefers to diminish the House statement by making it irrelevant by her own design. Democrats don’t even have the courage to vote on a binding resolution under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which says Congress must authorize the use of force within 60 days after hostilities begin. Democrats want to go on record against war with Iran as long as their vote doesn’t mean anything. They’re conscientious objectors to their own conscientious objections.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/pelosis-impeachment-blunder/

Her leverage play turns out to have been an embarrassing mistake.

We are in the midst of an imaginary impeachment standoff between House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. “Both have drawn firm lines in the sand. Someone’s got to give,” one reporter recently declared.

There is, of course, nothing to “give.” Pelosi has no standing to dictate the terms of a Senate trial; no constitutional right or political leverage. Why she has put herself in a position that will ultimately end, one way or another, with her surrendering to McConnell is perplexing.

A new piece in Time magazine does shed some light on the thought process behind Pelosi’s decision to refuse to hand over articles of impeachment to a Senate whose majority doesn’t want them. One of the most interesting nuggets in the piece isn’t that Pelosi — portrayed as courageous risk-taker — had gotten the bright idea from CNN; it’s that she specifically got it from noted felon John Dean, Nixon’s former White House lawyer. Now, Dean is often portrayed as a patriotic, whistleblowing impeachment expert — which is true insofar as he planned the Watergate coverup, and then informed on everyone whom he conspired with after they were caught. His real expertise is cashing in on criminality for the past 50 years (I wrote about Dean’s slimy past here).

Surely Pelosi, blessed with preternatural political instincts, wouldn’t rely on Dean’s advice? Surely Pelosi wasn’t browbeaten into doing this by podcast bros and talking heads on America’s least popular major cable-news network?

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/tom-cotton-on-anti-semitism/?utm_medium=push_notificaions&utm_source=onesignal&utm_campaign=automated

On January 9, Tom Cotton of Arkansas made a speech on the floor of the United States Senate about the shocking rise of anti-Semitic crimes in and around New York City. Everyone should read it. Here it is:

This holiday season, the ancient hatred of anti-Semitism cast a shadow over New York City during Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. The New York Police Department recorded at least nine separate attacks against Jews—more than one attack for each day of Hanukkah. New attacks are reported seemingly on a daily basis.

In Crown Heights, site of the deadly anti-Semitic riots incited by Al Sharpton in 1991, a group of men beat up an Orthodox Jew and attacked another with a chair.

In Williamsburg, another group terrorized an elderly Jewish man on the street. “Jew, Hitler burned you,” one of the criminals reportedly said. “I’ll shoot you.”

And just outside the city, in Rockland County, a man with a machete stormed a Hanukkah celebration in a rabbi’s home and injured five worshippers, leaving two in critical condition. The family of one victim, Josef Neumann, says he may never wake up from his coma.

These heinous attacks are part of a growing storm of anti-Semitism that has made Jewish Americans fearful to worship and walk the streets in their own communities. They come in the wake of the deadly rampage at a kosher market in Jersey City that left four innocent people dead, including a police detective. And of course, they come in the wake of the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in our nation’s history: the massacre of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh by a white supremacist.

According to the FBI, our country suffered a 37 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes between 2014 and 2018. According to the New York Police Department, the city suffered a 26 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes in the past year alone. That increase is alarming enough. So is the fact that most hate crimes reported in New York are crimes against Jews. And while some of the increase is due to better reporting, much of it is not. Jewish Americans bear witness to this harsh reality.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/ilhan_omars_antics_now_include_claiming_she_cant_hear_war_talk_because_of_ptsd.html

President Trump’s decision to kill the terrorist Qassem Soleimani reveals how alienated Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is from America.  Normally, a young woman who was welcomed into this country as a refugee and then ascended to one of the highest offices in the land might show some gratitude for its stand against the same kind of fanaticism that drove her out of her homeland.  Not Omar, though.  She has nothing but disdain.

Omar’s latest anti-American behavior occurred during a press conference on Wednesday, when Omar and Rashida Tlaib were seen laughing and joking as Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) somberly discussed American casualties in the Iraq War.  It was disconcerting to watch Lee state, “We left four thousand plus, maybe even forty four hundred dead, and over sixty thousand who came back injured in some form, and the war never ended” while Omar giggled, then turned to Tlaib, and shared a joke with her:

When it was Omar’s turn at the microphone during the same press conference, she asserted that her responses to President Trump’s strike against Soleimani had triggered her PTSD:

I feel ill a little bit because of everything that is taking place. And I think every time I about … I hear of conversations around war, I find myself being stricken with PTSD. And I find peace knowing that I serve with great activists for peace and people who have shown courage against war.

https://spectator.us/elimination-qasem-soleimani-farewell-letter/

In July 55 BC, in the midst of his campaigns to civilize Gaul, Julius Caesar was troubled by the Germans. They would cross the Rhine, wreak havoc, and then disappear back across the mighty river, whose depth and swift currents made the Germans regard it as an impregnable barrier.

To teach them that it wasn’t, Caesar had his engineers construct a bridge across the Rhine. As Caesar recounts in Book IV of his commentaries on the Gallic War, they did this in an astonishing 10 days. Caesar and his troops crossed over, stayed for a few days in German territory, ‘burned all their villages and other buildings, and cut down the grain in their fields’. They then crossed back over and destroyed the bridge.

The point, which was not lost on the Germans, was that the Romans could go anywhere they wanted, whenever they wanted, and there was nothing the Germans could do about it.

Last week, Donald Trump demonstrated something similar to the Iranian mullahs when he introduced Qasem Soleimani to the payload of a couple of MQ-9 Reaper drones. The Americans, they now know, can go anywhere, anytime, and can pick off anyone they like with pinpoint precision. At 1:00 a.m. Baghdad time on January 3, Soleimani is sharing a latte with his pal Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, presumably dreaming about the American diplomats they are going to kill. 1:01 a.m., poof! No more bad guys.