RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/03/generalists_wanted.html

Of all the pernicious concepts infecting minds today, perhaps none is more harmful than the belief that only “specialists” can tackle complex problems.  Strange as it might seem, “specialization” is a very recent human phenomenon.  Smart and capable people in the past did not limit their studies to particular subjects or avoid novel ideas emerging in unfamiliar fields.  Thinkers acquired and applied knowledge wherever they could.

Mathematician and Catholic cleric Nicolaus Copernicus not only developed the heliocentric model of the universe, but also formulated the “quantity theory of money” linking inflation directly to the amount of money in circulation.  The plays and poetry of William Shakespeare not only establish him as arguably the greatest writer to have ever lived, but also reveal his philosophical sophistication and proficiency in the modern fields of psychology and sociology.  Leonardo da Vinci was not only a master painter, but also an engineer, biologist, physicist, inventor, and military tactician.  We call these geniuses “polymaths” and “Renaissance men” today because they contributed so much to so many different subject areas.  As a critique against the twenty-first century’s obsession with subject-matter “specialists,” perhaps Copernicus, Shakespeare, and da Vinci should also be remembered as accomplished “generalists.”

Can you imagine one of today’s tenured “experts” from the mathematics or economics department of a modern university admonishing Copernicus for having published theoretical ideas well outside his canon law studies in the Catholic Church?  Or a political science or philosophy professor dismissing Shakespeare as a clever rhymer who was nonetheless out of his depth with regard to international relations and theories of the human mind?  Or an engineer or architect spurning da Vinci for being a mere portraitist?  Of course not.  All of these academic “specialties” and every other discipline with a department on a college campus stand on the broad shoulders of the great “generalists” of the past.  

https://thespectator.com/topic/trump-working-overtime-rule-law-judges/

EXCERPT

Restore it from what? Essentially from two things: first, Trump is acting to restore the law from the depredations of lawless, indeed un-constitutional, arrangements whereby the core powers of the presidency and of Congress are undermined by unaccountable bureaucrats. 

Second, he is acting to rescue the executive powers of the presidency from the un-Constitutional interference of district court judges. It is the latter that has focused everyone’s attention these last weeks as various judges have issued orders to say that the President of the United States may not fire people who work for him, that he must spend money controlled by agencies of the executive branch, and that he may not deport certain illegal aliens. Here I remind my readers of the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” 

At least, that’s how it reads in my copy of the Constitution. Some of the nearly 700 District Court judges throughout the fruited plain seem to have a different text. Theirs reads, “The executive Power shall be vested, sort of, in a President of the United States of America along with an indeterminate number of district court judges whenever they disagree with said President’s actions.”  

It’s been a breathtaking performance by these local judges. I think that Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, was right when he remarked that: “The US is facing a judicial coup.” What will be done about it?  “Oh,” you say,  “the Supreme Court will weight in to put a stop to this untoward arrogation of executive power by the judiciary.”  

Will they? Many think so. I hope they will. I think they will.  

https://www.frontpagemag.com/tesla-terror/

The Democrats may have been rocked on their heels temporarily by their election loss to Donald Trump, and sent into a tailspin of internal bickering about why they lost American voters, but now they are revving up The Resistance – and it includes waging domestic terrorism against the MAGA movement they falsely equate with Nazi fascism.

The primary target around which the Democrats are uniting in violent protest is Trump appointee and mega-billionaire Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has rooted out a reported $115 billion and counting in federal waste and fraud. Musk is therefore an existential threat to the Big Government Left, which depends on bureaucratic bloat and hidden slush funds to maintain their grip on power and to fuel their agenda of permanent one-party hegemony.

Violent Marxists at heart, the Left has launched a coordinated campaign of terror this month against Musk’s American auto company Tesla and even the owners of Tesla vehicles. Tesla dealerships are being firebombed, both here and abroad (a dozen Teslas were torched at a dealership in France; some in Berlin as well). Democrat terrorists are vandalizing Teslas in parking lots and confronting Tesla drivers with angry profanities and threats.

Several Tesla vehicles were set afire in Las Vegas early Tuesday morning, for example. Police said the attacker used Molotov cocktails, shot rounds into vehicles, and scrawled the word “resist” on the front doors of the Tesla Collision Center. Kansas City, Missouri, police are investigating a similar attack at a local dealership. Other such incidents have taken place in Oregon and Washington state.

Last week, a Tesla dealership in Colorado was targeted by terrorists using Molotov cocktails and spray-painting “Nazi cars” on the building’s facade. In Colorado, a man was arrested for hurling five Molotov cocktails at a Tesla charging station, damaging three EV chargers. He also scrawled anti-Trump and pro-Ukraine messages next to the damaged chargers before confronting a female Tesla driver, who managed to drive away.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/21/the-terrorists-among-us/

Whenever the far left in the U.S. loses an argument — called an election — it suddenly decides it’s time to take to the streets and get violent. Now is just such a time, as America experiences a new spasm of home-grown anti-Trump, anti-Musk terrorism. It shouldn’t be tolerated.

Whether it’s taking pot shots at the president, violently demonstrating in support of murderous terrorists, “swatting” people they don’t like, or destroying cars made by a person they now despise, our country once again finds extremists threatening us and our liberty.

And, no surprise, it’s nearly all from the far left side of the political spectrum, organized by supposedly “nonviolent” groups, quietly supported by the Democratic Party, and excused by the ultra-biased Big Media.

President Donald Trump’s reelection seems to have brought out even more extremist violence, which had already surged. A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently found “domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs in the past five years is nearly triple the number of such incidents in the previous 25 years combined.”

So, yes, it’s very real.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/20/the-left-knew-they-were-lying-to-us-all-along/

For years, the left has advanced utter untruths for cheap partisan purposes that it knew at the time were all false. And now when caught, they just shrug and say they were lying all along.

Once it was known that the first COVID-19 case originated in or near a Chinese communist virology lab engineering gain-in-function deadly viruses—with help from Western agencies—the left went into full persecution mode.

They damned as incompetent, racist, and conspiratorial any who dared follow logic and evidence to point out that the Chinese government and its military were both culpable for the virus and lying.

A million Americans died of COVID. Millions more suffered long-term injuries. Still, the left-wing media and Biden administration demonized any who dared speak the truth about a lab origin of the deadly virus.

The lies were designed to protect the guilty who had helped fund the virus’s origins, such as Doctors Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.

The Biden government also tried to use the lab theory to ridicule a supposedly pro-Trump “conspiracy.”

Western corporate interests deeply invested in China did not want their partner held responsible for veritably killing and maiming hundreds of millions worldwide.

Almost as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, the left knew that he was physically and mentally unable to serve as president.

Indeed, that was the point.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-campus-protest-hamas

Mahmoud Khalil—the green-card holder and Columbia-based Hamas sympathizer whom ICE detained last week—has overnight become a martyr for free speech. Advocates for his release, from Rep. Gerry Nadler and Sen. Chris Murphy to academic nonprofits, have framed Khalil’s detention as a violation of his speech rights. In this version of the story, he is an innocent campus protester caught up in the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent.

These arguments don’t stand on firm First Amendment footing. As even the most Khalil-sympathetic legal scholars have acknowledged, the relevance of free-speech law in the case is at best unclear. Rather, as litigator Erielle Azerrad has explained, the case for Khalil’s deportation rests squarely on black-letter federal immigration law, and on the plausible threat that he posed to America’s foreign policy interests.

But Khalil’s defenders are not interested in the particulars of either his actions or the law. Many appear to be following a straightforward syllogism: Khalil protested on campus; thus, he is participating in the grand tradition of campus protests and deserves not only protection, but celebration.

The notion that campus protests are intrinsically noble has been advanced by baby boomers since their college days. That assumption has provided cover for many heinous acts since the 1960s. While students do enjoy First Amendment protections, the uncritical veneration of campus protest often serves to protect dangerous radicals like Khalil. We can’t—and shouldn’t—change the Constitution to regulate campus protests, but we should regard them with far more suspicion than we do.

The campus protest paints a powerful picture in our collective imagination. Since the 1960s, marching, carrying signs, and sitting in have been perceived as a college kid’s rite of passage. We dismiss their excesses as the excesses of youth.

In Khalil’s case, the actual content of Columbia’s protests is wildly at odds with this benign picture. Students called routinely for “intifada, revolution,” invoking the violence in Israel that left more than 4,000 dead. Columbia University Apartheid Divest—the group that Khalil helped lead—identified with militants from the global South and called itself part of an insurgency. And multiple student radicals occupied the school’s Hamilton Hall.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-hamas-speech-ramzi-kassem

As it unfurls, the saga of Mahmoud Khalil—the Columbia agitator picked up by immigration enforcement last week—looks less like a complicated immigration-law dispute and more like something out of a John le Carré novel.

But inspect the details, and Khalil’s case gives us a glimpse a well-established network linking American universities, international progressive NGOs, and government agencies. This network places ideologues like Khalil in positions of power and influence and promoting radical policies that challenge both the will of American voters and our national-security interests.

As always in such shady tales, the simplest questions are the hardest to answer. To start: Who, exactly, is Mahmoud Khalil? According to the Guardian, he was born in Syria in 1995 to Palestinian refugees, then fled at 18 to settle in Lebanon. After his detention, however, the U.S. government reported that he was a citizen of Algeria. How did he end up there?

His professional history is equally convoluted. The Guardian claims he worked for various international NGOs, then landed a job with Britain’s Foreign Office, where he helped administer the prestigious Chevening Scholarship program. (The Telegraph, to make an intricate story even more complicated, reported that Khalil worked for the embassy, not the Foreign Office per se). Then it was on to the UN, where Khalil interned for UNRWA—the organization’s agency for Arab Palestinian refugees that, as a recent lawsuit claims, is a major source of staffing and funding for Hamas. How did a Syrian refugee end up in these positions?

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/20/newsom-s-answer-to-californias-business-exodus-is-a-free-burner-phone/

Whenever someone gets around to cataloging the most lame-brained political idea, Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to pass out free burner phones to CEOs in the state will forever top the list.

Newsom has so far sent roughly 100 cellphones – with his direct line programmed in – to CEOs with a message that “if you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away.”

“This was the governor’s idea to connect more directly with business leaders in the state,” spokesperson Izzy Gardon said.

More accurately, it’s Newsom’s attempt to keep still more corporations from joining the well over 350 companies who’ve left the state since 2018, and the million-plus Californians who followed them out the door.

Well, we looked into it, and we couldn’t find a single corporate executive – or individual – who said they would have stayed put if only they had a Newsom burner phone.

Instead, they said things like “taxes are too high,” or “regulations are too stringent,” or “the cost-of-living is punishing,” or “the schools suck,” or “I’m tired of being robbed.” The state’s criminal wildfire negligence hasn’t helped either.

When Stanford University’s Hoover Institution looked into why so many companies were leaving the state, they found that “several economic factors that have led to these departures by raising business costs, reducing productivity, and reducing profitability, including tax policies, regulatory policies, labor costs, litigation costs, energy and utility costs, and concerns about a declining quality of life within the state.”

Indeed, by almost any ranking of business friendliness, California is at or near the bottom of the list.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/18/trump-needs-to-cut-the-51st-state-crap/

It started as a joke, or so it seemed. Canada should become the 51st state, said US president Donald Trump to then Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in late November. Trudeau laughed nervously, according to the Fox News report of the meeting. Two weeks later, Trump took to Truth Social to mock Trudeau as the ‘governor’ of the ‘Great State of Canada’.

Trudeau and his fellow Canadians are not laughing any more. And for good reasons. What began as a seemingly offhand quip, an idea so crazy it had to be a joke, has now caused a serious rift between the two countries.

Since Trump initiated his on-again, off-again tariffs in February, he has been constantly repeating his ‘51st state’ jibe, presenting it as a solution to his self-created trade war with Canada. This flared up again last week, when Ontario premier Doug Ford announced a 25 per cent export charge on electricity to the US. Trump responded by doubling his planned tariffs on Canadian exports of steel and aluminium to 50 per cent. Both sides then backed down.

Trump has continued to claim that Canada’s tariff problems would disappear if it became a US state. ‘As a state, it would be one of the great states’, he said. In what he must have thought was a kind gesture, Trump then added that Canada could retain its national anthem if it joined the US.

Imposing tariffs on Canadian goods is bad enough, but Trump’s demeaning ‘51st state’ talk only adds insult to injury. He has angered the Canadian people, united their political parties in patriotic opposition to him and further alienated America’s Western allies. Indeed, last week’s G7 meeting of foreign ministers was overshadowed by the question of how to respond to Trump’s threats to annex the meeting’s host, Canada.

After weeks of repeating his 51st-state ‘solution’, we must call it what it is – imperialistic bullying. Trump is behaving like a mafia boss, making an offer Canada can’t refuse: ‘Nice little country you have there – it would be a shame if someone crushed its economy.’ Trump is offering ‘protection’ to Canada – protection from the threat he created.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/artificial-intelligence-china-deepseek-nvidia-broadcom-openai

How secure is America’s lead in artificial intelligence? It wasn’t long ago that the conventional wisdom put China years behind the curve. This was partly because the United States introduced export controls in 2022 and 2023 that notionally embargoed Chinese companies from the most advanced AI chips.

Today, however, most experts I speak with believe China trails the U.S. on AI by at most six to nine months—if at all. Take the sudden rise of China’s DeepSeek, the impressive AI startup that began as a hedge-fund CEO’s side project. DeepSeek shocked the markets earlier this year by releasing R1, a “reasoning model” that replicated top AI firm OpenAI’s breakthrough o1 model only a month after the latter’s unveiling, and seemingly at a fraction of the cost

OpenAI’s latest models still top the leaderboards, but only because they have access to vastly more computing resources. What DeepSeek nonetheless demonstrated is just how few technical barriers stand in the way of competing at the AI frontier. As DeepSeek’s CEO Liang Wenfeng put it in an interview last year, “money has never been the problem for us; bans on shipments of advanced chips are the problem.”

In practice, though, U.S. chip export controls have been incredibly leaky. Chinese buyers have circumvented the controls on a mass scale by routing chips through third parties in nearby regions, the Wall Street Journal recently reported. In other words, East Asian allies and U.S. firms are enabling the transmission of chips to a geopolitical adversary. America’s economic and military advantage depends on government stepping up to stop the flow.

The evidence for mass export-control evasion was always right under our nose. When the chip controls were first introduced in 2022, Nvidia responded by releasing a new, slightly inferior chip tailor-made for China—the H800—within weeks