RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/russian-war-crimes-are-condemnable-but-not-by-the-international-criminal-court/

The ICC is an enterprise antithetical to the Constitution and national defense, and our government should never facilitate its mission and operations.

In an editorial published Monday evening, the Wall Street Journal’s editors appear to echo President Biden’s call for war-crimes prosecutions over Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine. Tellingly, though, the Journal omits the little detail of who, exactly, should do the prosecuting.

Presumably, that’s because the Journal well knows it shouldn’t be the International Criminal Court — not if the United States has anything to say about it.

The scenes of mass graves in Bucha and other Ukrainian towns are sickening, as are the well-documented reports of brutal Russian attacks targeting civilians, rape as a weapon of war, the kidnapping and murder of elected officials and their families, and Moscow’s troops conducting themselves as marauders rather than as armed forces beholden to the laws and customs of civilized warfare. Against this gory background, the Journal points out that an investigation “is already underway at the U.S. State Department and the International Criminal Court at the Hague.” In context, this observation appears to endorse an ICC probe of Russia, supported by the U.S. government. But the Journal stops short of proposing that, and for good reasons.

The U.S. State Department is a diplomatic arm of the United States government. It has no authority to prosecute anyone. Prosecution is the Justice Department’s job. DOJ, however, has been confined to enforcing statutorily based sanctions imposed against Russian oligarchs, officials, and entities. That is because the United States is not a combatant in the Ukraine war. Provocative rhetoric and military aid notwithstanding, the president’s top priority since Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion has been to prevent the United States from becoming a combatant.

America’s lawyer-Left has mobilized for the better part of two decades against military tribunals against combatants who mass-murdered Americans and against whom the United States has actually been at war. There are not going to be American prosecutions against Russia for war crimes against Ukraine. That is not to say the Justice Department may not apply Magnitsky Act provisions that enable our government to sanction Russian human-rights offenders: Seize any assets of theirs within our jurisdiction, bar them from entering our country — the sorts of things already being done under existing sanctions. But U.S.-initiated war-crimes tribunals? No.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/white-house-alters-transcript-clean-after-yet-robert-spencer/

On Saturday in Wilmington, Del., Old Joe Biden’s dementia came full circle: he has previously mistaken the vice president for the first lady, and now, at the Commissioning Commemoration Ceremony of the USS Delaware, he recalled the days when the First Lady was vice president. But as always, White House.gov was ready to do everything necessary to make it appear as if we have a competent and coherent chief executive: in the official transcript of Biden’s rambling remarks, his misidentification of his wife as the vice president is quietly corrected without explanation. But the correction actually creates more problems than it solves.

Biden said of First Lady Jill Biden: “And I’m deeply proud of the work she’s doing as first lady with Joining Forces initiative she started with Michelle Obama when she was vice president, and now carries on.” In the WhiteHouse.gov version, we get “And I’m deeply proud of the work she is doing as First Lady with Joining Forces initiative she started with Michelle Obama when she [I] was Vice President and now carries on.”

That’s helpful in case anyone actually thought that Jill Biden was once vice president of the United States, but it’s not what Joe Biden said, and the correction blandly obscures a fact that ought to be of keen interest to contemporary observers as well as to future historians: Joe Biden is not entirely in control of what he says. His misstatement here is not just some innocuous slip of the tongue to be matter-of-factly corrected as if it were an insignificant typographical error; it is just the latest in a long string of weird statements that should arouse genuine concern about the mental state of the president of the United States, if such concern weren’t immediately dismissed as tendentious partisan mudslinging.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/04/04/how-justin-trudeau-and-canada-differ-from-joe-biden-and-the-u-s-n1586861

Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau has been much in the news of late, vying for attention with the American president. Although both have earned widespread disrespect, Biden for his costly gaffes and Trudeau for his native hypocrisy, a blunderer like Biden is obviously a far more significant figure on the world stage than a dandiprat like Trudeau. But there are disproportionate differences in their national effectiveness that favor Trudeau.

Biden is a loose cannon; Trudeau is a Black Ops sniper. Biden is doddering and obviously cognitively impaired; Trudeau is relatively young and fit and knows what he is doing. Biden’s tenure as president is increasingly shaky as the specter of the 25th Amendment hovers over his political longevity. After signing a concordat with the NDP’s conniving Jagmeet Singh to create a coalition government, Trudeau has guaranteed his ascendancy until at least 2025.

Biden’s legislative initiatives are vigorously contested by Republican states and innumerable court filings. Trudeau’s forays into totalitarian territory are regularly approved in the Commons and meet with only sporadic resistance by patriot organizations and individuals. Biden is addicted to the incontinent deployment of Executive Privilege, which cannot feasibly go on forever without serious pushback. Trudeau can with impunity invoke the Emergencies Act (aka the War Measures Act), arrest people at will, suspend professional licenses, and exert centralized control over people’s lives by freezing personal assets and bank accounts.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/04/05/for-midterms-biden-races-to-the-center-and-trips-over-his-own-feet-n1587094

The last two Democratic presidents — Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — began their presidencies with grandiose plans to make America into a social-democratic paradise. Both presidents came crashing back to reality when their polling numbers went south very quickly. They began to emphasize decidedly conservative issues like the deficit, defense spending, and law and order.

Joe Biden now finds himself in exactly the same position as Obama and Clinton were in coming up to their first midterm election — dismal approval numbers and Republicans surging. He too will now look to emphasize less radical, more moderate issues.

But the difference for Biden is the party he leads compared to the party Obama and Clinton led.

The party Biden leads is the most radical, left-wing political party in American history. It can fairly be said that the kind of “transformation” desired by Democrats would leave the country unrecognizable to all but the most committed leftists.

Does anyone believe Biden’s lurch to the center is anything but an electoral two-step?