RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/23/trump-should-not

After weeks of threatening to act, President Trump last week finally demanded the declassification of key documents related to the Justice Department’s investigation of his campaign team. The White House wants the DOJ to disclose specific passages contained in the final renewal of the FISA application to wiretap Carter Page; the reports made by former assistant Attorney General Bruce Ohr in connection with the probe; and text messages from several officials, including former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe.

The directive was a welcome—and long overdue—step in the congressional investigation into how the nation’s law enforcement and foreign intelligence apparatus was weaponized against the Trump campaign and his incoming administration.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and several of his colleagues have been pushing to get the documents released to the public. “If the president wants the American people to really understand just how broad and invasive this investigation has been to many Americans, and how unfair it has been, he has no choice but to declassify,” Nunes told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News last Sunday. Trump issued his order the next day; Democrats and the media were outraged, as by now we know is their custom, and made up all kinds of excuses as to why the information should remain under seal, including a supposed potential threat to national security and a way, allegedly, to undermine the special counsel’s farcical investigation into Russian election collusion.

Unfortunately, the president now is backtracking. In two tweets Friday afternoon, Trump said that he has instructed the department’s inspector general to “review these documents on an expedited basis.” The retreat came amid concerns expressed by Justice officials and “key allies,” whose role in the Trump-Russia collusion set-up is getting serious scrutiny. The president did suggest he wants the documents released quickly, but set no deadline. (There is now an interesting sideshow playing out in the media between Camp Rosenstein and Camp McCabe that undoubtedly is related to declassification.)

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/hillary-clinton-2020-presidential-campaign-farce/

She actually believes she still has a shot at the White House.

W hen Homer Simpson looks in the mirror, he sees ripped chest muscles and arms like the trunks of beech trees. When Hillary Clinton looks in the mirror, she sees America’s sweetheart. She thinks: America adores me. She thinks: America already chose me to be president once! She thinks: Everyone is comparing me with Donald Trump and realizing I’m a better choice. She is hoping for a call that will never come: an earnest, sobbing plea from the Democratic party to be their standard bearer in 2020.

How else to explain Clinton’s latest media blitzkrieg? You’d think she’d be in Jimmy Carter mode: quiet, making a display of humility, working hard to rebuild her reputation for posterity by doing good deeds and writing non-political books (like Carter’s disarming series of memoirs). Instead, she is acting like a fired-up political candidate. The poor dear actually thinks she’s still in the game. The woman who, on Election Night 2016, slunk away in ignominy from thousands of supporters in the glass-ceilinged Javits Center without even saying thanks to the many who would have lain down in front of a bus for her, these days is once again singing her fight song. But it’s a pathetic 4 a.m. karaoke act and no one can bear to tell this frail elderly lady to stop screeching so they can mop the floors and turn out the lights. Because she has the personality of a cactus and hates everyone, H-Rod never should have entered politics to begin with, but her inability to leave it behind is an embarrassment. Not to me, mind you. Not to Republicans. We all hope she keeps talking. For us every HRC tweet and MSNBC appearance is a dopamine cookie. It is merely herself she is embarrassing.

The media are, of course, a big part of this auto-humiliation, having constructed around her a fake township of fawning admirers: It Takes a (Potemkin) Village to keep her self-delusion alive. She is the geriatric version of the Batkid, the leukemia-stricken little boy for whom the entire city of San Francisco agreed to dress up in costume and behave as characters from Gotham City to cheer him on for a day. (Batkid is reportedly in remission and recently celebrated his ninth birthday, by the way.) As Hillary tears her way from the pages of The Atlantic to Maddow to Twitter, her acolytes cheer her on. She’s a “rock star,” exclaimed one fan on Twitter this week. Nay, she’s a Power Ranger! said another. Last year Clinton herself invited us to think of her as Wonder Woman. Yeah, remember that time when Wonder Woman collapsed while she was getting into her limo on a balmy September day? Remember when Wonder Woman frumped it up in pastel pantsuits, blamed the “glass ceiling” whenever she failed, and loaded up her staff with sexist men? Remember when Wonder Woman owed her entire career to leveraging the success of her immensely more charismatic husband? Remember when Wonder Woman remained married to a sexual predator for decades and put down her golden lariat of truth to help him smear his female victims? Hillary Clinton is as much like Wonder Woman as Dianne Feinstein is like Beyoncé.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/christine-blasey-ford-friend-contradicts-her-on-party/

A friend of the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault has denied that she was at the party where the alleged assault occurred.

The Senate Judiciary Committee reached out to Leland Ingham Keyser, a friend of Christine Blasey Ford. Ford claims Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed when he was drunk, covered her mouth, and tried to remove her clothing at a party in the early 1980s when they were in high school.

Keyser’s lawyer, Howard Walsh, responded to the committee late Saturday in a written statement.

“Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford,” the attorney wrote.

Keyser — a lifelong friends of Ford’s according to Walsh — is the third individual to deny suggestions that they were at the alleged party. Mark Judge and Patrick J. Smyth have also issued statements rejecting Ford’s recollection.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/poking-a-hole-in-professor-fords-fear-of-flying-excuse/

Last night’s 10:00 pm deadline for Christine Blasey Ford’s team to agree to come to testify came and went, and unfortunately, Senator Chuck Grassley has given her yet another extension—until 2:30 pm ET today—to reach an agreement.

Personally, I don’t think Ford has any intention of testifying, and I don’t believe Democrats actually want her to either. Ford’s demands have been crazy and absurd, and the entire negotiation circus feels more like a stalling tactic than a negotiation in good faith on Ford and her team’s part.

One of her recent excuses was based on the claim that she couldn’t possibly make it to the hearing in time because Ford has a fear of flying (aviophobia) and would have to drive. Now, let’s put aside the fact that Republicans have literally offered to come out to California to accommodate her, and look into this claim. According to a report from ABC News, we get the following nugget of information.

Meantime lawyers for Ford are asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to schedule a hearing for her to be heard on Thursday, allowing time for Ford to make the drive from California to Washington D.C. Ford’s friend, Kate Devarney, told CNN this week that Ford’s fear of flying is directly related to her allegation of assault, and that an airplane is “the ultimate closed space where you cannot get away.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/kavanaugh-hearings-chuck-grassley-senate-judiciary-committee-chairman/He must not let Democrats delay the Judiciary Committee’s hearing or turn it into even more of a farce.

So now it looks like next Thursday.

On Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s manifestly meritorious nomination to the Supreme Court, what was supposed to be the vote out of the Senate Judiciary Committee this past Thursday now appears to be sliding into a hearing to be held next Thursday. Or, who knows, maybe a Thursday or two after that. Or maybe The First of Never — though even that would undoubtedly be postponed to The Twelfth of Never.

Delay, delay, delay. It is what the Democrats want and it is what the Democrats are getting. They took the measure of their opposition and figured the GOP would bring a knife to a gunfight. From the first day of the confirmation hearing, committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) ceded control of the proceedings to the minority — in particular, to its ever-harder-Left, mak show presidential primary contestants.

It’s a kangaroo court.

Understand, this is not about Christine Blasey Ford. She’s a tool — a quite willing tool, but a tool all the same. This is not even about the eminently qualified federal circuit-court judge Brett Kavanaugh — it would be no different regardless of which nominee President Trump selected in consultation with White House counsel Don McGahn, the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the rest of the originalist, conservative legal community come of age. Democrats do not want a model of constitutional fidelity and judicial restraint elevated to the Supreme Court. End of story.

And who can blame them? Republicans did not want the eminently qualified federal circuit-court judge Merrick Garland to be elevated to the Supreme Court.

The only difference is that Republicans had the majority and the rules on their side. Now Democrats are out to prove that if you abuse the process until it becomes a circus, the rules don’t matter. The steroid effect of their media echo chamber can overcome any thin, fraidy-scared GOP majority.

Back in the Garland days of 2016, Republican control of the Senate meant there were civilized limits on opposition. The gentlemen were not willing to slander the gentleman as, say, a would-be rapist. But, in a stunning display of vertebrae, Republicans were willing to block the nomination, which they were legally entitled to do: They had the majority and nothing in the Constitution required them to vote on an outgoing Democratic president’s election-year nomination to fill the seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.