RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theepochtimes.com/civil-liberties-group-pushes-hud-to-stop-confiscation-of-bibles-in-public-housing_3310264.html

Attorneys with the Americans for Civil Liberty and Justice (ACLJ) filed comments with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Monday urging officials there to support a proposed rule to stop public housing managers from confiscating Bibles and other religious literature from their facilities.

“We believe the rule should be implemented fully as the department has proposed,” ACLJ Executive Director Jordan Sekulow said in an April 13 letter to HUD made available to The Epoch Times.

The proposed rule is entitled the “Equal Participation of Faith-Based Organizations in HUD Programs and Activities: Implementation of Executive Order 13831.”

Otherwise, “religious organizations that currently, or in the future may, participate in department programs would continue to be targeted and burdened unequally merely because of their faith-based nature,” Sekulow wrote.

“The rule would serve to bring the department’s implementation of its programs in-line with the requirements of federal law, including the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” he said.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/13/new-info-doj-fbi-knew-trump-surveillance-was-based-on-russian-disinformation/

These facts establish the FBI used Russia’s meddling with the 2016 election as a pretext to investigate Donald Trump and the special counsel’s office was complicit in this ploy.

On Friday, the Department of Justice released newly declassified information from an inspector general report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse, revealing for the first time that the FBI had received information indicating the Christopher Steele dossier contained Russian disinformation. The newly unredacted portions of the IG’s report also confirmed there was no “network of sources” backing up Steele’s reporting.

While both revelations provide further fodder for attacking the Carter Page surveillance proceedings, the significance is much greater: These facts establish the FBI used Russia’s meddling with the 2016 election as a pretext to investigate Donald Trump and the special counsel’s office was complicit in this ploy.

More than two months ago, Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson dispatched a letter to William Barr requesting the attorney general declassify information and unredact information contained in four footnotes in Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 478-page report on FISA abuse. In their letter, the senators noted that they “[were] deeply concerned about certain information that remains classified.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-york-working-on-reopening-plan-with-5-other-states_3309934.html?utm_source=pushengage&utm_medium=pushnotification&utm_campaign=pushengage

New York officials are working on a reopening plan with five other states, including New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

The governors of those four states have already made lockdown announcements, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is hoping to draw them into a plan for reopening the economy as the hardest hit state in the nation starts to see declining hospitalizations and new cases.

Additionally, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and Delaware Gov. John Carney will be on a call with Cuomo later April 13, along with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf.

“We’ll be having an announcement this afternoon about reopening,” Cuomo told reporters in Albany.

The plan will start with easing the isolation imposed through harsh measures that have largely restricted people across all six states at home unless they’re designated an essential worker. The next phase will be increasing economic activity, in part by adding new groups to the list of essential workers.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/12/the-thin-facade-of-authority/

As we continue to debate about numerators and denominators in determining the real impact of this virus, one common denominator remains certain about the elites advising, crafting, and developing our response: they aren’t touched by the impact of their decisions.

The virus will teach us many things, but one lesson has already been relearned by the American people: there are two, quite different, types of wisdom.

One, and the most renowned, is a specialization in education that results in titled degrees and presumed authority. That ensuing prestige, in turn, dictates the decisions of most politicians, the media, and public officials—who for the most part share the values and confidence of the credentialed elite.

The other wisdom is not, as commonly caricatured, know-nothingism. Indeed, Americans have always believed in self-improvement and the advantages of higher education, a trust that explained broad public 19th-century support for mandatory elementary and secondary schooling and, during the postwar era, the G.I. Bill.

But the other wisdom also puts a much higher premium on pragmatism and experience, values instilled by fighting nature daily and mixing it up with those who must master the physical world.

The result is the sort of humility that arises when daily drivers test their skills and cunning in a semi-truck barreling along the freeway to make a delivery deadline with a cylinder misfiring up on the high pass, while plagued by worries whether there will be enough deliveries this month to pay the mortgage.

An appreciation of practical knowledge accrues from watching central-heating mechanics come out in the evening to troubleshoot the unit on the roof, battling the roof grade, the ice, and the dark while pitting their own acquired knowledge in a war with the latest computerized wiring board of the new heating exchange unit that proves far more unreliable than the 20-year-old model it replaced.

Humility is key to learning, but it is found more easily from a wealth of diverse existential experiences on the margins. It is less a dividend of the struggle for great success versus greater success still, but one of survival versus utter failure.