RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thespectator.com/topic/brush-death-washington-dc-crime/

The last thing I heard before my ears started ringing was my left turn signal clicking.

I was stopped at a red light on a Saturday afternoon, waiting to glide into my parking lot near the Waterfront Metro stop in Washington, DC when a loud crack suddenly deafened me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bullet-sized wound in my windshield. 

It wasn’t a windy day, and no cars had been passing by to kick a loose stone up at my beloved Camry, so it only took me only a half-second to realize what had happened. When the fight or flight kicked in, I briefly (and foolishly) fled the vehicle before diving back in to take a left on red. 

The two Metropolitan Police Department officers my 911 call summoned didn’t show up until a half-hour later, even though the nearest station was only a two-minute walk away. Gesturing toward my broken windshield, I asked them for confirmation of what I already knew had happened. Yes, my car had probably been shot with me in it, they agreed before informing me that all they could do was record the incident. 

If I wanted, they said, I could ask nearby apartment buildings and businesses for security footage and report back to them. And then they were off; my ears were still ringing.

That was only the most notable of my many experiences with the post-Covid crime wave that made DC such an unsettling place to live during my two years in the district. There was also the time a man on a motorcycle swerved onto the sidewalk to stare me down as my fiancée hid behind me; the time her cousin was mugged; and the time my friend from college was killed in a hit-and-run.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/13/malifornia-californians-are-escaping-the-state-in-massive-numbers/

In a stunning report, StorageCafe reveals that California remains the “undisputed leader in outbound migration nationwide, with nearly 683,000 residents leaving the state in a single year, according to the latest available U.S. Census data.” The evacuees’ top destination is Texas, which welcomed approximately 98,000 former Californians in 2023 alone.

Millennials are leading the migration to Texas, making up over 31% of all movers. They are followed by Gen Zers, who account for 20%, and Gen Xers, representing nearly 15% of those relocating. Interestingly, Californians moving to Texas tend to earn more than the national average across most age groups, highlighting the financial advantage of the move.

The news from StorageCafe isn’t unique. U-Haul has released a new report, and for the fifth straight year, California topped its Growth Index—meaning more residents of the Golden State rented one-way U-Haul trucks to leave the state in 2024 than residents of any other state. Texas was the top go-to state.

People are fleeing the formerly Golden State for various reasons—high crime rates, exorbitant taxes and insurance costs, clueless leadership, and a failing education system.

Businesses are also packing up and going elsewhere. Major companies, including Chevron, SpaceX, and Charles Schwab, have departed California. In total, 441 businesses have left the state since 2018 and moved their headquarters elsewhere. High taxes, skyrocketing rent, soaring costs of living for employees, and excessive red tape are some of the reasons cited by the businesses that have exited, with, again, Texas being the primary destination state.

On the education front, per the California Policy Center, 45 out of California’s 58 counties have experienced a decline in traditional public school (TPS) enrollment over the last decade. Over the past ten years, statewide TPS enrollment has decreased by more than 612,000 students.

It’s important to note that California introduced transitional kindergarten during this period, which increased TPS numbers. When considering only grades K-12, enrollment has dropped by more than 762,000 since 2015.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/08/an_existential_threat_to_and_from_the_intelligence_community.html

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard’s declassification of communications and reports that implicate Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, senior officials from the Obama administration, and former heads of the Intelligence Community in a conspiracy to frame President Trump with the Russia Collusion Hoax is nothing less than earth-shattering.  

America has endured many political scandals.  The country has never had to contend with anything of this magnitude — in which a lame-duck president abused and politicized national intelligence-gathering operations in order to blame an adversarial nuclear power for an embarrassing election loss and set in motion a series of fraudulently predicated criminal investigations intended to force President Trump’s resignation from office or impeachment and removal.

As enormous as this scandal already is, it remains an ongoing criminal conspiracy.  Every time former Obama officials — including former DNI James Clapper and former CIA director John Brennan — publicly lie about material facts regarding the Russia Collusion Hoax, they are acting as co-conspirators in a plot to defraud the American people, overthrow a legitimately elected president, and cover up past criminal activity.   

Perhaps the only aspect of this story that could rival in size such treason against the United States is the corporate news media’s continued refusal to report these events accurately without fear or favor.  For many reasons, newsrooms will not do so.  Because indoctrinated and committed leftists control the American press, “journalists” lack the requisite discernment to see beyond partisan political blinders and report facts that are personally troubling.  Even worse, many “journalists” have redefined their professional role away from any responsibility for objective truth-telling and toward a kind of active agency in which they shape “truth” to advance a particular worldview.  “Journalists” love Obama.  They despise Trump.  They are happy to act as assets for former Obama administration officials pushing lies and to hide facts that are politically inconvenient.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-press-conference-dc-home-rule-crime-national-guard

In a Monday morning press conference, President Donald Trump announced new, decisive action to quell crime and violence in the District of Columbia. Flanked by Cabinet officials, the president indicated that he will not only deploy National Guardsmen to the city but also temporarily federalize the D.C. police department (MPD) under an obscure provision of the District’s home rule law.

Trump’s moves follow an assault last week on 19-year-old Edward Coristine, a Department of Government Efficiency software engineer, who was allegedly beaten by a group of 15-year-old assailants during an attempted carjacking. President Trump blamed the attack on soft-on-crime policies and suggested that he is considering reasserting direct federal control over the nation’s capital city. Congressional Republicans, who see the District as a convenient punching bag, eagerly voiced support for more aggressive action, including ending D.C.’s “home rule.”

Ending home rule is both unlikely and probably imprudent. But Congress and the president have many options to consider short of its revocation. From hiring more police officers to appointing a “control board” to run the criminal justice system, history and law present several levers that the Trump administration should consider pulling to improve residents’ lives.

For most of American history, Congress exercised its constitutional prerogative to govern D.C. through standing committees dedicated to overseeing its affairs. In 1871, Congress inaugurated an experiment in home rule but repealed it three years later amid financial mismanagement. Congress then established a three-member commission government, all of whom were appointed by the president. President Lyndon B. Johnson later replaced that commission with a nine-member council and a single commissioner, all appointed by the White House. Finally, in 1973, Congress passed the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, delegating its authority to today’s local government.

This home-rule arrangement grants Congress and the president significant federal oversight powers that, until now, have gone largely unused. Some of these reflect Congress’s final lawmaking authority over the District—such as Congress’s right to review and veto laws passed by the D.C. Council and to approve the budget through annual appropriations legislation.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/12/just-how-bad-is-the-bls-at-its-job-the-answer-will-shock-you/

Yesterday, President Donald Trump nominated a high-profile critic of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, EJ Antoni, to be its new commissioner, promising on Truth Social that under his leadership “the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE.”

If confirmed, Antoni, currently chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, has his work cut out for him.

Last week, we pointed out glaring mistakes the Bureau of Labor Statistics had made in recent years and asked whether its foul-ups were driven by politics or ineptitude.

The issue came to a head after President Donald Trump fired the head of the BLS in the wake of its massive revisions to the two previous months jobs reports, in which it admitted to overcounting the number of jobs created by more than 250,000. Trump responded by saying the numbers were rigged.

The press, naturally, rushed to defend the bureaucrats, saying that revisions are normal and there’s nothing to get worked up about. The BLS routinely revises its initial monthly jobs estimate – based on a survey of 100,000 employers – over the next two months as more data come in. No biggie.

Is that true? We decided to find out and reviewed the BLS’s monthly jobs data going back to 2009. What we found was deeply troubling.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/11/whistleblower-ties-clinton-campaign-to-fake-russia-hack/

A whistleblower report declassified last week suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign efforts to manufacture evidence tying Donald Trump to alleged Russian hacking in 2016 were deeper than previously known – as were Obama administration efforts to conceal them.

According to the report, a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst who investigated alleged Russian attempts to breach state voting systems during the 2016 election suspected the breaches may have been “related to activities” of the computer contractors involved in the Alfa Bank hoax, who were accused of manipulating Internet traffic data.

In that well-publicized case, a Clinton campaign lawyer worked with federal computer contractors and the FBI to create suspicions that Russia was communicating with Donald Trump through a secret server shared by Alfa Bank of Russia and Trump Tower in Manhattan.

The anonymous whistleblower – who served as the deputy national intelligence officer for cyber issues in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2015 to 2020 – told Special Counsel John Durham he stumbled onto “enigmatic” data while leading the investigation of alleged Russian cyber activity for the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He said that his discovery took place in December 2016 when President Obama ordered the ICA.

After examining state-reported breaches of election networks, the whistleblower said, “It seemed only brief interaction was occurring – in some cases, no unauthorized access, or even attempted access, was detected on ‘victim’ systems.” Though the suspicious activity initially was attributed to Russian actors, further analysis raised doubts.

But when he brought his findings to his boss, ODNI’s national intelligence officer for cyber issues, he was ordered to stop investigating and not include his findings in the final ICA draft.

“After being directed to conduct analysis of Russian-attributed cyber activity for the ICA, I had been abruptly directed to abandon further investigation,” the whistleblower analyst said.

He added that his boss, whose name was blacked out in the whistleblower statement, “directed me to abandon analysis of these events, stating reports of Russia-attributed cyber activity were ‘something else.’”

While the names of the whistleblower and his boss are blacked out in the report, a RealClearInvestigations search of federal records shows Vinh Nguyen was the national intelligence officer for cyber issues at the time. The whistleblower would have been Nguyen’s deputy.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/11/voters-back-investigation-of-obama-white-house-role-in-russiagate-scandal-ii-tipp-poll/

Amid new revelations, spurious Russia collusion charges against President Trump have become both a major scandal and a grand jury investigation. Do voters want top spies in former President Obama’s administration investigated? Yes, the I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

The national online poll was conducted from July 30-Aug. 1, with 1,362 adults taking part. The poll’s margin of error is +/-2.7 percentage points. I&I/TIPP asked a total of five questions about what has been called “the dirtiest political trick in history,” and worse.

The first question asked: “Do you believe the Obama administration deliberately fabricated the Trump–Russia collusion narrative to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency?”

Among all who answered, 38% said “yes,” while 40% said “no,” a statistical toss-up given the margin of error. Meanwhile another 22% said “not sure,” which means they harbor some suspicions that the statement is true, just not enough yet to believe it.

The political affiliation breakdown is enlightening. Among Democrats, 16% answered yes, and an even-larger portion responded “not sure” to the question. So a third of all Democrats believe there’s at least something to the charges. That leaves only 65% of Dems answering no, they didn’t believe the Obama White House made the scandal.

Not a big vote of confidence from Obama’s own party.

Republicans, perhaps predictably, answered 66% yes, to 16% no, and 16% not sure, while independent voters were 27% yes, 40% no, but a sizable 33% not sure.

Among independents, just 27% said yes while 40% said no and a sizable 33% were not sure.\