RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-espionage-acts-ugly-un-american-history-trump-spies-leakers-law-america-dissent-c9ab63f7?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Donald Trump is charged with violating the Espionage Act, one of the most un-American laws Congress ever enacted. President Woodrow Wilson set the tone in his 1915 State of the Union address: “There are citizens of the United States . . . who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt,” he asserted. “Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out.”

Congress obliged two years later by enacting the Espionage Act with the express purpose of quashing dissent. The law criminalized not only spying for enemies, but also any attempt to encourage “disloyalty” among military ranks. Prosecutors enforced the act aggressively, using it to imprison hundreds of antiwar activists and political dissenters. The Socialist former presidential candidate Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison in part for denouncing the Espionage Act itself. The law was also used to charge religious leaders who preached pacifism, newspaper editors who republished German accounts of the war, and even the producer of “Spirit of ’76,” a film about the Revolutionary War that portrayed Britain, a World War I ally, in an unfavorable light.

Those who support prosecuting Mr. Trump claim the Espionage Act of 1917 bears little resemblance to the law today. The act was “once used to stamp out dissent,” the New York Times claims, but today punishes only “spies and unauthorized leakers.”

The 1917 law criminalized, among other things, willfully attempting to cause “insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty in the military.” The statute has been amended over time. Today it criminalizes sharing, gathering or refusing to return “information relating to the national defense” that “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”

The present law is arguably more expansive than the 1917 act. The original act’s most expansive provisions applied only in times of war. Prosecutors were required to prove that a defendant willfully sought to harm the U.S. military. Neither constraint applies to the current version of the law. Nor is there any requirement that the defendant has acted in bad faith, that the relevant government “information” be classified, that the information ever be shared with anyone, or even that the person charged be a government official.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-biden-fair-tax-share-fraud-irs-special-agent-whistleblower-charges-misdemeanor-scheme-d8813133?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden has campaigned far and wide that America’s rich should pay their “fair” share of taxes, and he’s giving the Internal Revenue Service billions more to enforce it. Does he include his son Hunter among the rich who should pay what they owe?

The question is highly relevant after last week’s under-reported testimony from two IRS whistleblowers about their investigation of Hunter’s taxes. Hunter agreed to plead guilty last week to two misdemeanor charges of “willful failure” to pay some $200,000 in tax for years 2017 and 2018. But the two whistleblowers, testifying under oath before the House Ways and Means Committee, revealed details of Hunter’s tax maneuvering that make a mockery of his father’s tax moralizing.**

The agents reported that an IRS team in January 2022 finalized a document of some 80 pages recommending that Hunter be charged with tax violations for each of his six tax returns from 2014 through 2019.

IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley said Hunter’s 2014 and 2015 returns involved a “scheme to evade his income taxes through a partnership with a convicted felon.” At issue was the $83,000 a month Hunter received to sit on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company. The second (anonymous) whistleblower explained that in 2014 Hunter arranged a series of “sham” transactions so he “didn’t report any of the money he earned from Burisma”—about $400,000 in 2014.

The whistleblowers say Hunter directed Burisma to pay his money to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, or RSB, an entity owned by his business partner Devon Archer, who was convicted of fraud in 2018. They say RSB would send the money to Hunter, who then “booked it as a loan.” One obvious tax problem, explains the second whistleblower, is that “you can’t loan yourself your own money.”

https://pjmedia.com/columns/davidhasanyi/2023/06/23/joe-biden-is-not-ok-n1705750

On June 16, President Joe Biden ended a big gun-control speech in Connecticut with the words, “God save the queen, man.” Why did the president express adoration for the departed Brit monarch? Was he confused about royal succession? Who knows.

When asked about the incident, White House aides offered nonsensical and conflicting answers — because they have absolutely no idea, and neither does the president. It’s likely that the octogenarian spontaneously used a cool-sounding phrase, much like when your elderly neighbor tells you to “keep on truckin’” for no apparent reason. It happens.

Yet, Axios writer Alex Thompson points out that Biden “has an arsenal of wacky phrases.” And the president’s “quirky aphorisms,” he contends, “are sometimes weaponized by Republicans to insinuate the 80-year-old president is in mental decline.”

There is no need for insinuation. Biden’s mental acuity, never impressive, has considerably deteriorated. Sure, he also tends to botch “old-timey” sayings like, “lots of luck in your senior year,” which he says is a gibe from his Corn Pop days. But most reporters who pretend perceptions of Biden’s decline are due to his propensity for homespun maxims or previously unknown stuttering problems almost surely wouldn’t find him fit enough to babysit their kids.

Every week, the president of the United States says something completely bonkers, and everyone goes on with their day. We’re not talking about his propensity to lie about politics or his blustery lifelong fabulism. We’re talking about his inability to articulate simple ideas without notes — and often with notes. There are rarely any fact-checks of these statements. How can there be? They don’t even make sense as lies. There is no handwringing about the role of competency in our democracy. There is no discussion about the 25th Amendment.

Just listen to any one of his speeches. “Put a pistol on a brace, it turns into a gun — makes it more — you can have a higher-caliber weapon, higher-caliber bullet coming out of that gun,” the president explained before wishing Her Majesty his best. This was also complete gibberish. There is so much gibberish.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/liberty-falling/

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently sounded the alarm on the “profound risk” posed by social media platforms to the mental health and well-being of children across the country.  Murthy believes that “immediate action” must be taken to protect children. He’s right. Multiple studies clearly demonstrate the association between heavy social media use and an increased risk for anxiety, depression, loneliness, and even suicidal thoughts.

According to a new paper published in Psychological Reports, heavy social media use is also associated with a reduced preference for freedom. According to the authors of the paper, two psychologists based at Swansea University, a public research university in Wales, habitual social media users may use platforms like TikTok and Instagram to escape from the challenges and unpredictable nature of the real world.

The authors discuss users’—particularly younger users—burning desire for constant social media-driven stimulation, the negative feelings associated with excessive social media engagement, and how these negative feelings affect one’s desire to be truly free. 

Before discussing the link between social media dependency and a reduced preference for freedom, it’s important to realize just how bad the dependency problem is. Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, compulsively check their social network profiles, spending an average of three-and-a-half hours online every day. That works out to one full day every week, four days per month—and 48 days per year. When it comes to compulsive social media use, Millennials are bad. But the generation after them is even worse. Gen Zers spend an average of four hours on social media every day. That’s five days each month—and 60 days per year.

The word addiction often gets thrown around recklessly. But it’s safe to say that millions of Millennials and Gen Zers are addicted to social media. Addiction is strongly associated with a number of mental health issues, including depression and anxiety.