RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/kamala_harris_the_missing_czar.html

After Kamala got surprised (it seemed) by Joe’s announcement that she was taking over the “crisis” at the southern border, she has made herself almost invisible in the administration — at least in relation to anything that has to do with the mess farther south.

Various pundits have waxed political and psychological in trying to figure out why Kamala has not yet made a trip to the border with Mexico and has said precious little about the emergency she is purportedly overseeing other than indicating that she’s studying the root causes…which, of course, take a very long time to resolve.

Generally, the interpretations go along the line that the border crisis is a lose-lose proposition for anyone in Washington, D.C., who will surely get tainted by an out-of-control mess that nobody can unravel satisfactorily, at least not without returning to Trump-type solutions, which would be far worse for a left-wing Democrat than actually resolving the havoc.

But we have thought of yet another reason that has to be on Kamala’s mind as she makes herself almost invisible.  Our studied interpretation is nothing more than an educated guess, but it has its roots in real history.  And it has much to do with Kamala rejecting the title of czar as she goes missing on the border.

Now, we have noticed that Kamala doesn’t seem to have a broad sense of history, other than a few quotes from famous women in the past and her own declaration that, along with Biden, “we have a chance to change the course of history.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2021/04/21/blm-protesters-harass-nyc-dinners-after-chauvins-guilty-verdicts-n2588317

BLM protesters harassed diners in New York City during a march that started after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on Tuesday of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. 

The march began in Brooklyn with protesters chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!”

Coming upon diners eating outside, some in the BLM crowd began shouting at the patrons. They also targeted the white business owners who make ethnic food.

“We don’t want you here! We don’t want your f**king money!” they chanted.

https://www.city-journal.org/chauvin-verdict-and-americas-troubled-rule-of-law

America’s cities did not burn last night. But the terrified preparations in Minneapolis and elsewhere in anticipation of the George Floyd verdict—the razor wire and barricades around government buildings, the activation of the National Guard, the declaration in Minnesota of a “peacetime emergency,” the fortified police presence, the curfews, the cancellation of school, the boarded up businesses—raise serious questions about the rule of law in the United States. Had the jury failed to convict Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin on all three counts of murder and manslaughter, the ensuing riots would likely have made the conflagrations of 2020 look like a Girl Scout campfire.

This likely outcome was evident long before Congresswoman Maxine Waters encouraged such violence over the weekend. Last year’s precedent, the ensuing 12 months of wildly inaccurate rhetoric about white supremacy, and the recent looting in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, over a fatal police shooting made such rioting a virtual certainty. That inflammatory rhetoric poured forth from every institution in the country—from the presidency, Congress, corporations, law firms, banks, tech companies, academia, and the public school system. The mainstream media pounded home the narrative about unchanging black oppression. And even after the verdict, the White House (perhaps that name will be gone in another year) and the press have doubled down on the systemic racism conceit, despite the coordinated effort to convict among Minnesota’s public officials and the state’s most prestigious members of the private bar.

Going forward, it is an open question whether any police officer can receive a trial free from mob pressure, should he be prosecuted for use of lethal force.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/doj-indicts-illinois-professor-secretly-working-china-while-getting-us-government-grants

The Justice Department indicted a Chinese-born Illinois college professor on two counts of wire fraud and a false statements charge for secretly working for a Chinese government-affiliated university and concealing those ties when applying for and receiving a $151,099 grant from the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation.

Mingqing Xiao, 59, was accused on Wednesday of “fraudulently” obtaining the federal grant money “by concealing support he was receiving from the Chinese government and a Chinese university” while he worked as a mathematics professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he has been employed since 2000. Prosecutors said Xiao “applied for and received NSF grant funds … without informing NSF about another, overlapping grant he had already received from the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China” and “failed to inform NSF that he was on the payroll” of Shenzhen University.

“Again, an American professor stands accused of enabling the Chinese government’s efforts to corruptly benefit from U.S. research funding by lying about his obligations to, and support from, an arm of the Chinese government and a Chinese public university,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said Wednesday.

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.