RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/10/splintered-court-ruling-throws-j6-prosecution-into-chaos/

A Massachusetts man on Friday was charged with a felony related to his participation in the protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Mark Sahady already faced misdemeanors for his nonviolent and brief jaunt through the building that afternoon, but the Justice Department decided to add the common “obstruction of an official proceeding” charge to Sahady’s case on April 7.

That same day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw Sahady—and more than 300 January 6 defendants charged with the same obstruction felony—a potential lifeline. In what one judge described as a “splintered decision,” a three-judge panel narrowly reversed a lower court ruling that tossed the obstruction count against three Capitol protesters. D.C. District Court Judge Carl Nichols dismissed the charge last year largely based on the argument that the statute “requires that the defendant have taken some action with respect to a document, record, or other object in order to corruptly obstruct, impede or influence an official proceeding.”

A fair reading of the law proves Nichols is correct. Passed in 2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, section 1512(c)(2) closed a legal loophole related to evidence tampering. The law applies to “whoever corruptly . . . otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” It’s a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

When he signed the bill into law in 2002, President George W. Bush, as I explained here, noted that the word “corruptly” would compel the government to prove a defendant’s “criminal state of mind” and the overall provision must not infringe “on the constitutional right to petition the Government for redress of grievances.”

But that hasn’t prevented Attorney General Merrick Garland from weaponizing the statute in exactly that way for more than two years. Dozens of defendants have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial. Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman,” spent months in solitary confinement and was denied bail before Garland’s prosecutors successfully tormented him into pleading guilty to obstruction. Judge Royce Lamberth, who repeatedly denied his release, sentenced Chansley to 41 months in prison.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2023/04/09/jail-him-or-they-lose-n2621719

They’ve tried literally everything short of ordering a hit on him, and he still stands. They have exhausted every avenue, option, and possibility, and they are left with a bag of nothing.

They tried a fake dossier, a made-up narrative that the media put on repeat. They accused him of a high crime for a transcript of a phone call. They accused him of advocating violence when his words said precisely the opposite. Now they are trying to say he obstructed justice when he, in fact, followed the request of the FBI to the letter. Now they are trying to say that another phone call is evidence of a felony when again, his exact words prove otherwise. Now they have indicted him for something that if a crime is even evident (and clearly it is not), the statute of limitations ran out years ago. They tried to argue he avoided paying taxes, only for the record to show he followed the tax code with precision. They want to argue now that he intends to defraud the government of what he owes in taxes, even though during his four years in public office, he refused his $400k salary and returned it in full to the government coffers.

No elected leader has been more maligned, lied about, and attempted to be neutralized as they have with former President Trump.

I was reflecting on some things over this somber holiday weekend. I am intrinsically interested in relooking at history and seeing what lessons we learn from it. Hence my thoughts scurried to the 2016 cycle, where this imminent fear of Trump created this panic in America’s political left. The ensuing desperation dragged them into the utter gutter of criminal political action. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/11/what-happens-to-a-country-that-loses-its-mind/

To see biological males win “woman of the year” awards and others compete against women in sports, and at least one paid to promote sports bras, it’s obvious the American mind has slipped a few gears. But our current troubles are about more than celebrating what is clearly a mental illness that needs to be treated. We have lost our way almost entirely across the board.

The locus of our insanity, one could argue, is Washington, D.C. The federal government developed a habit long ago of spending beyond its means. But the foolishness has reached new levels.

The federal debt is heading to $31.7 trillion like a freight train at full throttle with no brakes. Spending is outpacing revenue by more than $1.5 trillion. Social Security is headed for collapse sooner than its appointed guardians had expected, but the collective vision among our “leaders” on the Potomac doesn’t go beyond the next election. So nothing is done.

Despite the obvious problems, the Democrats want to tax higher and spend more. The supply of vacuity seems endless.

Washington is also at the axis of weaponized government. Free speech is being crushed, dissent from the left’s political agenda is considered an imprisonable offense, and court rulings are to be ignored if they offend progressive sensibilities (yes, we know, two words that don’t belong together). The Democrats see the IRS not as just a revenue collector but also as a truncheon with which to discipline those who refuse to live under their boots. Parents who grouse at school board meetings? They are of course terrorists who must be watched.

It’s no coincidence that we’re living in riotous times. The damage seems to build with every news cycle. But to listen to the Democrats and their communications department, also known as the mainstream media, the only riot in U.S. history was on Jan. 6, 2021. In their twisted minds, rampaging, killing, burning and looting in the name of George Floyd, or some imagined resistance to fascism, are just benign elements of mostly peaceful protests. Democrats have even contributed money to bail out the “protesters.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/classified-document-leak-russia-ukraine-war-offensive-u-s-intelligence-dfda36c9?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The leak of classified U.S. documents related to the Ukraine war looks like a debacle at many levels—undermining the confidence of allies in the U.S., revealing how much the U.S. knows about Russia’s military deliberations, and above all betraying the weakness of Ukrainian air defenses.

The source of the leak isn’t known, which is disconcerting on its own. The documents first appeared on social media, and the press hasn’t been able to verify their authenticity. But the obvious alarm among U.S. officials suggests that much of the leaked intelligence is accurate. The Justice Department and Pentagon began a criminal investigation last week, for what that is worth.

The leaks are especially damaging because they disclose secret U.S. judgments about the progress of the war. It’s not the same as betraying the location of troop movements, but it’s close. The disclosure of how much the U.S. knows about Russian military plans could be a death sentence for sources in Russia.

The most troubling leak is that Ukraine’s air defenses could be defeated by May, which would give Russia air superiority and a huge tactical advantage. The Kremlin hoped air dominance would help it achieve an early victory, but Ukrainian air defenses held up well against the initial assaults.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/apr/10/federal-probe-classified-docs-leak-heats-us-allies/

The Pentagon, Justice Department and agencies across the federal government scrambled Monday to track down the source of a major classified documents leak and to limit the widening fallout in allied capitals from Jerusalem to Seoul, South Korea, where the revelations threatened to stoke domestic turmoil and friction with Washington.

The collateral damage from the leak, one of the most serious disclosures of sensitive information in years, has quickly spread far beyond American shores. Biden administration officials said they are in contact with allies because of signs that the individuals behind the leak are trying to sow discord between the U.S. and its closest partners.

At the Pentagon, officials called the leak a “very serious” risk to national security. They were careful to avoid confirming specific revelations in any of the materials, including apparent assessments of the Russia-Ukraine war and what appear to be internal political conversations in South Korea. The Defense Department has started an internal review, and the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation.

“This team is really working to get our arms around everything that has to do with this distribution,” Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher told reporters. “It’s a comprehensive effort. The department is trying to wrap its arms around what may have happened and the way ahead in terms of our response.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said President Biden has been getting regular briefings about the leak.

He said the administration isn’t sure whether more disclosures are on the horizon.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/when-democrats-attack-democracy

The United States Constitution and all the state constitutions establish legislatures and give those legislatures the authority to set their own rules. The constitutions also give lawmakers the authority to punish members for violating those rules.

Rules make a legislature run, which is why party leaders always stack their rules committees with lawmakers sure to side with their party on any heated dispute. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), for example, was widely regarded as a master of using the rules to further her party’s ends. To see how she did it, look to January 2021, at the beginning of her last term as speaker, when Pelosi introduced a series of rules “reforms” that severely limited the rights of the minority, Republicans, to offer amendments to bills. “The rules all but eliminate what is called the motion to recommit,” the Wall Street Journal editorial page noted at the time. “This legislative tool has existed since the first Congress, and for nearly 90 years it has allowed the minority party to offer the last amendment to legislation. The motions typically fail, but they are a way for the minority to highlight and provoke a debate on controversial questions.”

Pelosi, working with a very small Democratic majority, shut down the minority’s ability to focus on issues important to them. Her basic guideline was very simple: The majority rules. For this, Pelosi received lavish praise in the media as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, speakers in history.

So Pelosi showed that rules matter. But she also showed that rules did not matter when they stood in the way of something she wanted to do. In June 2016, Democrats, then in the minority in the House, wanted to force votes on gun control measures in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting. Majority Republicans did not. The problem was Democrats had only 188 members, while Republicans had 247. On their own, Democrats couldn’t force the House to do much of anything. The majority rules.