RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/23/supreme-court-denial-of-2020-election-cases-invites-erosion-of-voter-confidence/

On Feb. 22, the Supreme Court refused to hear two 2020 election-related appeals, falling one vote short of the four needed for the high court to agree to hear the case. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the denial of certiorari, as did Justice Samuel Alito in a separate dissent, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

With Joe Biden now a month into his office as president of the United States, Americans may shrug at the court’s decision, but we shouldn’t: The Supreme Court’s abdication of its authority to answer important constitutional questions only encourages further lawlessness by state election officials and courts, undermines voter confidence, and threatens even more chaotic federal elections.

The two cases the Supreme Court rejected on Monday both involved the 2020 election in Pennsylvania and the constitutionality of a state court decision overriding an unambiguous deadline the Pennsylvania legislature established for the receipt of mail-in ballots of 8 p.m. on election night. As Justice Thomas explained in his dissent, “Dissatisfied, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline by three days. The court also ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a post mark—that the ballots were mailed by election day.”

The Republican Party of Pennsylvania and several members of the Pennsylvania House and Senate attempted to challenge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision in the U.S. Supreme Court before the election, but, at the time, the justices refused to expedite the case, leaving the petitions for review to proceed under the normal briefing schedule. But following briefing, the court denied the petition on Feb. 22.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-2-22-big-tech-deplatforming-beco

In case your memory doesn’t go back that far, the “deplatforming” thing did not just start in the past couple of months. It was way back in 2016 that Twitter first banned right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos; Facebook followed in 2019. Others getting the same or similar treatment from Twitter, Facebook, and/or Google two or more years ago include Alex Jones of InfoWars and Congressional candidate Laura Loomer.

Then, few on the serious right pushed back. After all, these people are not really our type. Often, they say outrageous things just to provoke a reaction.

But there is a reason why the ACLU, at least in its heyday, thought it was important to defend the rights of avowed neo-Nazis to march in heavily-Jewish Skokie, Illinois. Once the speech-suppression thing gets even a little toe-hold, it can quickly go from seeming insignificance to bold audacity. And thus we had Twitter, in the run-up to the election in October, banning none other than the New York Post — one of the largest-circulation newspapers in the country, and also the oldest — for having broken a story about a laptop of Hunter Biden, a story that happened to be completely true but also embarrassing to the Democratic candidate for President. And then on January 8 Twitter banned Donald Trump, who was not only the then-sitting President of the United States but also Twitter’s singe biggest generator of traffic. That ban appears since to have become permanent. On or about January 10, all of Amazon, Apple and Google took action to deplatform Parler, a web commentary site and alternative to Twitter to which many conservatives had been fleeing.

So, have we come to the end of this wave, or are we just at the beginning? For readers who aren’t following this all that closely, I thought it might be interesting to do a small round-up of some other recent “deplatformings.” The summary is, if you think that there isn’t a concerted effort going on to silence important dissenting speech coming from the right, you are just kidding yourself. A few recent examples:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/02/22/is-there-waste-or-bloate

Over the weekend, the U.S. House posted a first draft version of the “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021” – a $1.9 trillion emergency aid package to help America recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Previous legislation has already provided at least $4 trillion in funds for testing, paid family leave, small business relief, direct payments to individuals and families, the Kennedy Center, and a plethora of non-related COVID “relief.”

Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team essentially wrote the bill, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found what House Democrats consider coronavirus-recovery “essential” spending:

$1.5 million earmarked for the Seaway International Bridge, which connects New York to Canada. Senate Leader Chuck Schumer hails from New York.
$50 million for “family planning” – going to non-profits, i.e. Planned Parenthood, or public entities, including for “services for adolescents[.]”
$852 million for AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps Vista, and the National Senior Service Corps – the Corporation for National and Community Service – civic volunteer agencies. This includes $9 million for the AmeriCorp inspector general to conduct oversight and audits of the largess. AmeriCorps received a $1.1 billion FY2020 appropriation.

People of goodwill can debate each of these goals, but is it truly emergency spending or funding related to COVID?

For example, what is the public purpose for a hike in the minimum wage to $15 per hour – which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says will cost the economy 1.4 million jobs?

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/539971-bidens-unity-effort-falters

This month’s impeachment trial in which seven Republicans joined 50 Democrats in voting to convict former President Trump of inciting an insurrection may be the high-water mark of bipartisanship under President Biden, according to grumbling GOP senators.

Republicans acknowledge that Biden has improved the tone of civility in Washington, but they complain that he and his party haven’t made much of an effort to work with them.

Democrats don’t appear interested in having a real bipartisan negotiation on a COVID-19 relief bill or an upcoming infrastructure and jobs package, the senators complain.

They argue that other than one meeting at the White House earlier this month, Biden has done less to engage with Republican lawmakers on legislative priorities than then-President Obama did in 2009, when Democrats negotiated extensively with the GOP on an economic rescue package and a health care overhaul bill that became the Affordable Care Act, at a time when the party held nearly 60 seats.

Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio), who was one of 10 GOP senators to meet with Biden at the White House earlier this month, said Republican lawmakers are waiting to hear back from the White House on a proposal to scale down the size of Biden’s COVID-19 proposal.

Asked if there’s still a possibility of a bipartisan deal, Portman said: “You’d have to ask them.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/22/garland-will-make-january-6-investigation-his-priority/

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck filled with two tons of explosives parked outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people, including 15 children under the age of six at the site’s child care center.

It was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil between Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Everyone old enough still remembers when they first heard the news and saw the first horrific images of firefighters gently carrying out the broken bodies of dead toddlers.

The Oklahoma City bombing bears no comparison to what happened at the Capitol building on January 6. To suggest so not only is an historical false equivalence but a heartless diminution of the suffering and loss McVeigh and his co-conspirators, Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, inflicted that day—a painful affront to the families left behind.

But during his confirmation hearing Monday, Merrick Garland, Joe Biden’s nominee for attorney general, insisted the current political climate is worse than the divisive climate leading up to McVeigh’s mass murder nearly 26 years ago. 

“We are facing a more dangerous period than we faced in Oklahoma City,” Garland told Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). “From what I have seen . . . it looks like an extremely aggressive and perfectly appropriate beginning to an investigation all across the country in the same way our regional investigation was but many, many times more.”

He continued. “I can assure you this will be my first priority and my first briefing.”

The Democrats’ Consigliere

Garland, of course, is referring to the ongoing and partisan Justice Department inquisition into the so-called “insurrection” at the Capitol building on January 6. Top officials warn the probe will be one that is “unprecedented in size and scope.” More than 200 people already have been arrested, mostly for misdemeanors, and dozens remain behind bars denied bail; federal prosecutors argue defendants with no criminal record nonetheless pose a risk to the community for the thoughtcrime of doubting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.