RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-c-mccarthy-would-mueller-indict-trump-for-attempting-to-fire-mueller

With indications that special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report is imminent, talk of “no collusion” is dominating chatter by the president, his fans, and his critics. That is, a finding of no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia is widely anticipated. Yet, my sense is that, more than on collusion, Mueller may focus on the obstruction aspect of his investigation.

I want to examine an element of that, involving the status of Mueller himself.

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt have highlighted Trump’s purported “attempts” to fire Mueller, which mainly involved “trying to get” then-White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire him. What does this reporting tell us? Well, we know prosecutors are investigating whether the president obstructed the Russia investigation. How could bombast about firing Mueller bear on that issue when, of course, Trump never actually fired him?

The answer may be found in that word: attempt.

The Times reporting presages that Mueller has homed in on the parts of federal obstruction laws that address not only interference with a proceeding but also “attempts” to do so. Could the special counsel be poised to argue that Trump committed obstruction by attempting to fire the special counsel?

If that is the theory, it is meritless. In the context of the chief executive’s dismissal of subordinates, the concept of attempt is inapposite. A president either fires someone or he doesn’t.

Actually, there are at least three problems with trying to inflate Trump’s spasms of anger over Mueller into an obstruction felony.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/deep-state-nothing-new-american-politics/

The so-called deep state is often weaponized to reflect current orthodoxies.

All great empires of the past created deep states.

The permanent bureaucracies and elite hangers-on adapted as imperial conditions dictated. Imperial Spain’s El Escorial outside Madrid, the courts of Renaissance Venice, and Byzantium’s Constantinople, or the thousands who lived at 18th-century Versailles, were all thronged with court functionaries. They were the embryos of nonstop dramas of intrigue and coups, and often immune to periodic changes even in autocratic heads of state.

The Byzantine emperor Justinian savagely curbed the influence of his bureaucratic opponents only through the infamous slaughter of the Nika riots of AD 532. The key for the deep-state careerist was always survival, even more than public service. The ubiquitous fifth-century B.C. Athenian Alcibiades was variously an Athenian democratic imperialist, a suspected oligarchic sympathizer, a wanted outlaw of the Athenian state, a turncoat working for Sparta, a returning Athenian democrat, and an aristocratic exile under the protection of Persia — the common denominator being a manipulative skilled survivor of the politics of the Greek city-state.

Similar was the much later example of the “versatile” French minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Talleyrand for more than 40 years was a fixture of the permanent Paris court and thus in succession an advocate and betrayer of the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, Napoleon, and the restored monarchy. His loyalty was to the career of Monsieur Talleyrand rather than to France, much less to monarchy, the revolution, republican government, or dictatorship.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/anti-semitism-louis-farrakhan-democratic-party/

The ‘It’s anti-Zionism, not anti-Semitism’ dodge doesn’t wash.

The Democrats have a couple of problems: One is that they have spent many years complaining about being labeled “socialists” only to see their party come to be dominated by self-proclaimed socialists such as Senator Bernie Sanders (the gentleman from Vermont is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination but is not a member of the party) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, in spite of her pricey education, does not give the impression that she could be relied upon to spell bourgeoisie.

“Don’t call us socialists!” they used to say.

Now?

“Don’t call us anti-Semites!”

Well.

If the Democrats have a minor socialist problem, they have a major problem in the form of Jew-hating weirdos, preeminent among them the Reverend Louis Farrakhan of the so-called Nation of Islam. Farrakhan has been an out-and-proud Jew-hating weirdo for many decades now, but Democrats still feel the need to make gestures of obeisance before him: Anti-Trump leaders such as Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour of the Women’s March have embraced Farrakhan and courted his favor. Barack Obama came a-calling in 2005 when he was ramping up his political career. The Congressional Black Caucus has consulted him. Bill Clinton stood alongside him at Aretha Franklin’s funeral, implicitly elevating the cult leader. California Democrats Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters attend Farrakhan’s public events, and Obama-administration veteran Eric Holder recently posed for a picture with him.