RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/can-we-keep-our-republic-bruce-thornton/

When asked the type of government the Constitutional Convention had created, Benjamin Franklin famously replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin and the Founders understood that given a flawed human nature and its passion for power, no form of political order can survive if it is not continually maintained and defended against attempts to dismantle it in order to empower one faction at the expense of others, thus diminishing their freedom.

Since the election of Donald Trump, we have been watching one of the most serious assaults on the Constitutional Republic in our history. With the current efforts of the Democrat-controlled House to engineer public support for impeachment, this three-year attack is intensifying. The climactic battle will be fought on November 3, 2020 when America goes to the polls to select the president. On that day will be decided not just which party will take the White House, but which vision of government will rule us: The Constitutional order of popular sovereignty, federalism, and divided powers; or a technocratic oligarchy of centralized and concentrated power.

Or to put it more starkly: Can we keep our nation of free citizens, or will we become one of managed clients?

This competition of political philosophies is not about Donald Trump’s alleged violations of mythic “democratic norms” or “presidential decorum.” In fact, the bipartisan evocation of such codes of political manners reflects the preference for the technocratic oligarchy that has ruled and misruled the country since the Second World War. Its roots go back even farther than that. The first progressives of the late 19th century were frankly technocratic, disdainful of separated and balanced powers, and advocates of the new “human sciences” that they claimed had made obsolete the wisdom of the Founders, the guidance of tradition, and the lessons of history.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/so_whos_the_democratic_candidate_the_whistleblower_had_a_professional_relationship_with.html

The Democrats’ impeachment show just keeps getting less and less credible, and more and more disgusting.

The latest is from Byron York at the Washington Examiner, who reports that the so-called “whistleblower” had a “professional relationship” with an unnamed Democratic Party presidential candidate:

Under questioning from Republicans during last Friday’s impeachment inquiry interview with [Michael] Atkinson, the [intelligence community’s] inspector general revealed that the whistleblower’s possible bias was not that he was simply a registered Democrat. It was that he had a significant tie to one of the Democratic presidential candidates currently vying to challenge President Trump in next year’s election.

“The IG said [the whistleblower] worked or had some type of professional relationship with one of the Democratic candidates,” said one person with knowledge of what was said.

“The IG said the whistleblower had a professional relationship with one of the 2020 candidates,” said another person with knowledge of what was said.

“What [Atkinson] said was that the whistleblower self-disclosed that he was a registered Democrat and that he had a prior working relationship with a current 2020 Democratic presidential candidate,” said a third person with knowledge of what was said.

All three sources said Atkinson did not identify the Democratic candidate with whom the whistleblower had a connection. It is unclear what the working or professional relationship between the two was.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/back-to-you-nancy-11570663218

The White House letter late Tuesday telling Speaker Nancy Pelosi that President Trump won’t cooperate with her impeachment inquiry is causing heartburn among all the usual suspects. Readers should ignore the fainting spells over “a constitutional crisis” and keep in mind that this is largely a political response to a political attack by House Democrats.

“Your inquiry is constitutionally invalid and a violation of due process,” wrote White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who lists the due-process protections that the House is denying Mr. Trump as it pursues impeachment. He’s right about due process but wrong to dress this up in constitutional clothes.

No doubt Mr. Cipollone is doing this for political effect, since he knows that under the Constitution the House can organize impeachment more or less as it wants. The House is under no constitutional obligation to allow Mr. Trump’s lawyers to cross-examine witnesses, as if impeachment were a criminal proceeding. Like the President’s pardon power, the House’s impeachment power is among the least fettered in America’s founding charter.

Mr. Cipollone is trying to make a political point about the unprecedented secret and unfair way the House is proceeding on impeachment, and on that he’s entirely correct. As we’ve been writing, Mrs. Pelosi has refused to let the House vote on a resolution authorizing an official impeachment inquiry with rules that define the scope and procedures.

This contrasts with how the House worked in both the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachments. Mr. Cipollone is now using the lack of a House vote to justify the White House refusal to cooperate with witnesses and documents “under these circumstances.” Mr. Cipollone holds out the prospect of cooperating if Mrs. Pelosi holds such a vote.

Think of this as a “back to you, Nancy” memo. She now faces a political choice of her own. She could treat Mr. Trump’s lack of cooperation as one more impeachable offense, add it to whatever the House decides to do about Mr. Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president, and impeach Mr. Trump on those grounds. Joe Biden endorsed impeachment on this basis Wednesday. But this rush to impeach might not persuade anyone who hasn’t wanted to oust Mr. Trump since January 2017.

On the other hand, Mrs. Pelosi could let the House vote to authorize an inquiry with regular order and rules that give the minority subpoena power and have everything done in public. This was the House standard for Nixon-Clinton. The risk for Mrs. Pelosi is that she might lose some House Democrats on such a vote without gaining many Republicans—which would make the partisan nature of the exercise clear and undermine its public credibility.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/extortion-liberal-mayor-tries-to-shut-down-trump-rally-with-outrageous-security-fee/

Minneapolis’s liberal mayor, Jacob Frey, has demanded $530,000 in security costs for a Trump campaign rally this Thursday — 26 times the cost of security for a 2009 Obama rally. In violation of its contract, the Target Center threatened to cancel the rally unless the campaign forks over the cash.

“This is an outrageous abuse of power by a liberal mayor trying to deny the rights of his own city’s residents just because he hates the President,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “People want to hear from their President, and no mayor looking to beef up his resume for a run for higher office should stand in the way.”

College campuses have imposed outrageous security costs as a pretext to shut down controversial speakers, often conservatives. In 2018, the University of Wisconsin tried to charge its College Republicans club $17,000 in security fees for a rally. The College Republicans sued, claiming a violation of their First Amendment free speech rights, and the college settled, paying the club $122,500 in legal fees.

The Trump campaign alleged that Frey “is abusing the power of his office and attempting to extort President Trump’s re-election campaign by conjuring a phony and outlandish bill for security in an effort to block a scheduled Keep America Great rally. Democrat Mayor Frey is using the bogus security charges to pressure the Target Center, site of the contracted October 10, 2019 rally, into preventing Minnesota residents from exercising their First Amendment rights in support of President Trump.”