RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/ag_bill_barr_will_he_or_wont_he_quit_the_narratives_change_by_the_minute.html

In the past week, there’s been non-stop speculation that Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, may be run out of office or quit. On Tuesday alone, a report that Barr was on the verge of quitting was instantly followed with a statement that he had no intention of quitting.

This all stems from the fact that, when word broke that the vindictive Eric Holder holdovers in the Department of Justice sought the most extreme penalty possible for Roger Stone, Trump and Barr acted almost simultaneously, with Barr later insisting that his actions had nothing to do with Trump.

On February 11, Trump tweeted out that the sentence the DOJ was asking for Stone was an injustice:

At roughly the same time, Barr, as head of the Department of Justice, concluded that the sentencing memo was inappropriate and, instead, filed a memo asking only that the court exercise its discretion over sentencing. The left promptly went insane, saying that never before had an Attorney General been so utterly insane and corrupt. Former DOJ attorneys and officials (who are overwhelmingly Democrats) signed a petition that former Obama and Schiff staffers had written demanding he resign.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/democrats-hold-secret-meeting-iranian-foreign-joseph-klein/

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, along with several of his Senate Democrat colleagues, reportedly met secretly with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (pictured above) during the Munich Security Conference last week. The Federalist raised the question whether that “would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration.”

Senator Murphy tweeted that he was simply engaging in a dialogue with Zarif, which he claimed was within Congress’s authority as “a co-equal branch to the executive.” While acknowledging for the record that “no one in Congress can negotiate with Zarif or carry official U.S. government messages,” Murphy declared that “there is value in having a dialogue.”  He added, “It’s dangerous not to talk to adversaries, esp amidst a cycle of escalation.” That all depends on what Murphy and his cohorts had to say to the Iranian foreign minister behind closed doors.

According to Senator Murphy’s own telling, he used his meeting with Zarif to urge Iranian action to control Iran’s proxies in Iraq, release American citizens being unlawfully detained in Iran, and end the Houthi blockage of humanitarian aid in Yemen. That sounds innocent enough, if Murphy was telling the truth about everything that was said during his tête-à-tête with Zarif. But there is no reason to take Murphy’s self-serving account as representing anywhere near a complete record of the meeting.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-takes-a-stand-for-the-mentally-ill-11582071818?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Hundreds of thousands of Americans with serious mental illness sleep in jails, shelters and prisons on any given night. Fewer than 40,000 are in state psychiatric hospitals. This is largely due to a federal policy, the Institutions for Mental Disease Exclusion, which created a financial incentive for states to kick the mentally ill out of hospitals. The White House’s new budget proposes easing the exclusion. It’s the most important thing federal government could do to improve care for the seriously mentally ill.

The IMD Exclusion, part of the 1965 law that established Medicaid, prevents the program from funding care for mentally ill adults while they live in hospitals or even adult homes with more than 16 beds. It was intended to prevent the federal government from taking on care of the mentally ill, which had historically been a state responsibility. Many mistakenly believed that newly developed antipsychotic drugs and community mental-health centers would obviate the need for institutions.

It’s been a disaster. Before Medicaid was enacted, states paid for psychiatric hospitalization, and it was readily available. But states soon realized that if they kicked patients out of hospitals, Medicaid would kick in and pay half the cost of care. This “deinstitutionalization” continues. The country has lost more than 450,000 mental-hospital beds since the 1950s, 12,000 of them since 2005.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-acknowledges-barrs-complaint-about-his-tweets-i-do-make-his-job-harder/

President Trump agreed Tuesday with Attorney General William Barr’s claim that his incessant tweeting, particularly as it relates to ongoing DOJ cases, makes the job of the attorney general more difficult.

“I do make his job harder. I do agree with that. I think that’s true,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

“Everybody has the right to speak their mind. I use social media. I guess I use it well because here I am,” Trump said. “I probably would not have gotten here without social media, because I certainly don’t get fair press.”

The attorney general expressed frustration last week after Trump complained on Twitter that the prosecutors’ seven-to-nine-year sentencing recommendation for his longtime adviser Roger Stone was a “horrible and very unfair situation.”

Afterwards, the Justice Department submitted a revised filing stating that the prosecutors’ recommended lengthy sentence “could be considered excessive and unwarranted,” sparking allegations that Trump was influencing Barr.

“I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” Barr said, but added that he is not being “bullied or influenced” by anyone regarding any DOJ cases.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chris-murphy-is-a-massive-hypocrite-on-iran/

The Federalist reported yesterday that Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut and other Democratic senators secretly met with foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference last month. Today, Murphy acknowledged that the meeting took place, arguing that “Congress is a co-equal branch to the executive” and, well, Donald Trump is bad.

It’s quite a volte-face for Murphy. In March of 2015, when President Obama was involved in negotiations with the mullahs, Senator Tom Cotton and 46 of his colleagues released an open letter to the Islamic Republic of Iran, offering some basic lessons on the American constitutional system — namely, an explainer on binding treaties.

At the time, Murphy called the letter “unprecedented” and claimed it was “undermining the authority of the president.” Then-Secretary of State John Kerry claimed to be in “utter disbelief” when asked about the letter. Kerry, no stranger to negotiating with America’s enemies, would a few years later meet Zarif a number of times to try and ‘salvage’ Obama’s Iran deal, in direct conflict with the position of the American government in Trump’s administration.

When Dianne Feinstein, then the Democrats’ ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, heard about Cotton’s letter, she was “appalled” at the “highly inappropriate and unprecedented incursion into the president’s prerogative to conduct foreign affairs.” Only a few years later, Feinstein would host the Iranian Foreign Minister for dinner.