RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-d-c-statehood-gambit-11619045039?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

A week after the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee introduced legislation to pack the Supreme Court by adding four new Justices, the House is set to vote on a bill to pack the U.S. Senate by adding two new Senators. Unlike court-packing, the bill granting statehood to Washington, D.C., has majority support among elected Democrats and the official backing of the White House. But the impetus behind both measures is the same—to tilt the constitutional playing field and consolidate liberal power.

Fashioning an independent seat of government in a federal system while affording representation to its residents is a dilemma dating to the founding. The Framers provided in the Constitution’s Article I that Congress could, “by cession of particular states,” control a small area in which the federal government would operate. In 1790 part of the territories of Virginia and Maryland, two of the 13 states that ratified the Constitution, were delineated for federal control.

Advocates of statehood brush aside the constitutional concerns and frame their cause as a simple question of democracy. It’s true that the roughly 700,000 residents of the District don’t have the ability to elect voting Members of Congress. Many hold influence over the federal government as employees and contractors or in other positions, and in the Founding era proximity to the seat of power was itself considered a form of representation.

Yet the natural remedy for the imperfect status quo, if representation is the real concern, would be for Congress to do something it has done before—return part of the District to the state that ceded it in the first place. That’s what happened in 1846 when Congress reinstated Virginia’s control over the D.C. suburbs of Arlington and Alexandria.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-indicts-the-minneapolis-police-11619045332?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Derek Chauvin awaits his murder sentence at a Minnesota Correctional Facility, yet the federal government spared hardly a moment before shifting its scrutiny toward his former colleagues. A new Justice Department probe of the Minneapolis Police Department is targeting the city’s officers in an effort to prove the Democratic narrative of “systemic” police racism.

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday announced a pattern-or-practice investigation of Minneapolis police. Federal investigators in coming months will examine the department’s record and policing methods. If they find behavior they dislike, they have the power to force reform of the department through a consent decree. Mr. Garland referred to the process as a matter of straightforward oversight, saying “good officers welcome accountability.”

Yet Minneapolis police are right to suspect that Washington is probing them with a foregone conclusion. In his address after Mr. Chauvin’s conviction Tuesday, President Biden said his Administration’s next step would be “confronting head-on systemic racism and the racial disparities that exist in policing.” The man who drafted the 1994 crime bill that led to the arrest of countless black drug users is now claiming racism is endemic among American police.

Last May then-Attorney General William Barr launched a federal civil-rights probe into the death of George Floyd in police custody, and that investigation continues. But Democrats are now expanding the charge of wrongdoing to the entire department, seeking proof that Mr. Chauvin’s actions represent the culture of policing today. No matter that the Minneapolis police chief since 2017, Medaria Arradondo, testified for the prosecution in the Chauvin trial and has pushed to reform certain police practices like choke holds.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/21/how-much-ruin-do-we-have-left/

As Americans know from their own illustrious history, any nation’s well-being hinges on only a few factors. Its prosperity, freedom and overall stability depend on its constitutional and political stability. A secure currency and financial order are also essential, as is a strong military.

Perhaps most important is a first-rate inductive educational system. Of course, nothing is possible without general social calm (often dependent on a reverence for the past) and secure borders.

The ability to produce or easily acquire food, fuel and key natural resources ensures a nation’s independence and autonomy.

Unfortunately, in the last few months, all of those centuries-old reasons to be confident in American strength and resiliency have been put into doubt.

The challenge is not just enemies abroad such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. The greater problem lies within us, as we erode the inherited and acquired strengths that made us singular, both materially and spiritually.

We are now witnessing a concentrated effort to alter the constitutional order and centuries of custom and tradition. The left believes that’s the only way it can retain its transient power, given the unpopularity of most of its current agenda.

A nation’s institutions are its bedrock. Yet, the Electoral College and the Constitution’s emphasis on individual states establishing voting laws are under assault.