RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/american_history_2022_the_establishment_versus_the_american_people.html

For those wondering about my absence from these pages, I’m on vacation. The theme of this trip is the American Revolution and, by the time I return home in 10 days, I’ll have visited some of the most storied places in Revolutionary America, from historical towns to Founders’ homes to important battlefields. Because the leftist encroachment on Jefferson’s and Madison’s homes (Monticello and Montpelier, respectively) has been in the news lately, I thought I’d share some impressions with you about three places: Colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Mount Vernon. At all those sites, the American spirit is intact.

Colonial Williamsburg is the meticulously restored one-time capital of the Colony of Virginia as it existed in the mid-18th century. Hundreds of employees wear historically accurate dress, speak in 18th-century terms, and provide insights into life in a southern colony on the eve of the Revolution. Visitors can see historically accurate representations of functioning blacksmiths, shoemakers, milliners, wigmakers, silversmiths, apothecaries, and so much more. I highly recommend it.

I was last in Williamsburg in 2015 and, aside from a few newly restored buildings, the biggest change was the obsessive and obsequious references to “enslaved people.” Some of it was historically appropriate; some was transparent white guilt and virtue signaling.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/liz-cheney-self-appointed-moral-center-gop/

I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to write about Liz Cheney again. After she was crushed by the Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman last week in the Wyoming GOP primary, I figured the self-obsessed crusader would retreat to her boudoir to dress up in top hats once worn by Abraham Lincoln while guzzling a brand of whiskey favored by Ulysses S. Grant, both of whom she invoked in her petulent non-concession concession speech.

But Cheney is not quite done making a spectacle of herself. A couple of weeks ago, the Trump-deranged congresswoman sniffed that she would find it “very difficult” to support Ron DeSantis because he had aligned himself with Donald Trump. That remark garnered some portion of the contempt it deserved, but it was nothing to her latest foray on to the public stage.

In an interview with This Week a few days ago, Cheney extended her interdiction. It turns out that it’s not only Ron DeSantis who fails to pass muster with la Cheney. Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley also fail to get the Cheney nihil obstat. All three, she said, have “made themselves unfit for future office” by supporting Trump. Why? In an emergency, break glass and haul out a tautology. “Either you fundamentally believe in and support our constitutional structure, or you don’t,” she said, casting Messrs. DeSantis, Cruz and Hawley into the “don’t” corner.

I think that judgment would come as a surprise to all three men, all of whom just happen to be considered 2024 presidential prospects. But who cares what they think? Cheney has spoken! Indeed, according to her, not only do they not believe in the our constitutional structure,” they “fundamentally threaten” the American constitutional dispensation. Breathtaking, isn’t it?

But why stop with DeSantis, Cruz and Hawley? Donald Trump garnered more that 70 million votes in the 2020 election. In almost every poll, he far outpaces all GOP rivals. If supporting Trump makes one “unfit for office,” then there are not many Republicans whose fitness Liz Cheney could endorse.

There is one candidate who would fill the bill, however. That would be [drum roll please…] Liz Cheney. According to her, she is supremely fit for the office, hence her teasing remarks about launching a presidential bid. Alas, it will likely not be as a Republican that Liz Cheney runs, if she runs. And if she is concerned about keeping the Bad Orange Man out of office, she would be well advised to rethink her plans altogether. According to a YouGov poll, were she to run as an independent, she would take more support from Biden than from Trump.

The whole spectacle of Liz Cheney’s meltdown is, to employ a favorite Trump epithet, “sad!” Like Nancy Pelosi, Cheney keeps talking about “our democracy” (translation: their prerogative) and pretends that she is the arbiter of who is and who is not a reputable upholder of the Constitution.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/08/can-anyone-sue-over-bidens-student-loan-lawlessness/?utm_source=

It’s not clear, and the answer might be no.

The Biden administration is using a flatly absurd legal argument to justify forgiving student debt, something even Democrats thought was only a power of Congress not that long ago.

Even the Department of Education thought it was only a power of Congress not that long ago. On January 12, 2021, the department’s office of general counsel published a legal opinion that cited Congress’s power of the purse under the Constitution and said, “The Secretary does not have statutory authority to provide blanket or mass cancellation, compromise, discharge, or forgiveness of student loan principal balances, and/or materially modify the repayment amounts or terms thereof, whether due to the COVID-19 pandemic or for any other reason.”

But now, as if by magic, even though the laws are all the same, the office of general counsel has found legal authority for the secretary of education to go it alone. The legal opinion this time around cites the HEROES Act, which was passed after 9/11, and claims that the emergency powers given to the secretary under that law “could be used to effectuate a program of targeted loan cancellation directed at addressing the financial harms of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Never mind that the 2021 opinion specifically considered the HEROES Act and found its provisions too narrow for blanket cancellation. Never mind that student-loan recipients have already benefited tremendously from a repayment pause of over two years due to the pandemic. Never mind that the unemployment rate is currently at 2 percent for college graduates, and financial harms from the pandemic are mostly a thing of the past.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-unmaking-of-american-history-american-historical-association-james-sweet-presentism-activism-1619-project-academics-professors-11661532876?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Academic historians are losing their sense of the past. In his August column for the American Historical Association’s journal, Perspectives on History, James H. Sweet warned that academic history has become so “presentist” that it is losing touch with its subject, the world before yesterday. Mr. Sweet, who is the association’s president and teaches at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, observed that the “allure of political relevance” is drawing students away from pre-1800 history and toward “contemporary social justice issues” such as “race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism.” When historians become activists, he wrote, the past becomes “an evidentiary grab bag to articulate their political positions.”

Mr. Sweet knows his audience, so he did his best to appease the crocodile of political correctness. He denounced Justice Clarence Thomas for a gun-rights decision that “cherry-picks historical data” and criticized Justice Samuel Alito for taking the word “history” in vain 67 times in his Dobbs abortion opinion. But Mr. Sweet also pointed out that Nikole Hannah-Jones’s “1619 Project” isn’t accurate history, and that “bad history,” however good it makes us feel, yields bad politics. “If history is only those stories from the past that confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can claim historical expertise.”

History’s armies of nonacademic readers will find this obvious and undeniable. Mr. Sweet’s academic peers, however, tore him to pieces on Twitter, accusing him of sexism, racism, gratuitous maleness and excessive whiteness.

“Gaslight. Gatekeep. Goatee,” said Laura Miller of Brandeis University, detecting patriarchal privilege written on Mr. Sweet’s chin. Benjamin Siegel of Boston University, who thinks his politically correct profession is “leveraged towards racist ideologies,” called the essay “malpractice.” Dan Royles of Florida International University accused Mr. Sweet of “logical incoherence,” which is academic-speak for “idiot.” Kathryn Wilson of Georgia State detected an even more heinous error, “misrepresentation of how contemporary social justice concerns inform theory and methodology.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mar-a-lago-affidavit-is-that-all-there-is-donald-trump-fbi-justice-department-merrick-garland-11661547313?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

A federal judge on Friday released a heavily redacted version of the FBI affidavit used to justify the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and we can’t help but wonder is that it? This is why agents descended on a former President’s residence like they would a mob boss?

It’s possible the redactions in the 38-page document release contain some undisclosed bombshell. But given the contours of what the affidavit and attachments reveal, this really does seem to boil down to a fight over the handling of classified documents. The affidavit’s long introduction and other unredacted paragraphs all point to concern by the FBI and the National Archives with the documents Mr. Trump retained at Mar-a-Lago and his lack of cooperation in not returning all that the feds wanted.

A separate filing making the case for the redactions, also released Friday, focused on the need for witness and agent protection from being publicly identified. That filing also contains no suggestion of any greater charges or a larger investigation than the dispute over his handling of the documents.

As always with Mr. Trump, he seems to have been his own worst enemy in this dispute. He and his staff appear to have been sloppy, even cavalier, in storing the documents. Classified records found in boxes were mixed in with “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes,” and presidential correspondence, the affidavit says. This fanned suspicion that important documents were still floating around the house, where bad actors hanging around the Mar-a-Lago resort might pilfer them.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/biden-robs-peter-to-get-pauls-vote/

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can count on Paul’s vote. That political axiom is the crux of Joe Biden’s decision to forgive vast quantities of student loan debt. He needs Peter’s and Patricia’s votes, and he is bribing them with taxpayer money. Taxpayers know it is not a costless gesture. Their backlash is likely to overwhelm any potential gains.

The problems begin with the program’s cost and inflationary impact. Spending another $300 to $900 billion, the estimated cost, raises consumer demand without increasing supply. Since the program is not funded by tax increases, it will be paid for by printing money. The inflationary consequences are predictable.

Democrats wave away these costs by noting, correctly, that loan forgiveness doesn’t start until next year and won’t happen all at once. Still, the program underscores the most consistent element of the Democrats’ domestic agenda. They are determined to spend, spend, spend. Voters correctly link that spending to inflation and to their own declining standard of living. They see inflation as a tax on everyone, and they know wages have not risen enough to offset that tax. Reminding everyone that inflation is linked to excessive federal spending is not smart politics. But that’s exactly what Biden’s loan forgiveness does.