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Ruth King

And to the Banana Republic for Which It Stands Mauritania, Myanmar, Botswana, and other Third World nations dragooned former presidents into court in recent years. by Daniel J. Flynn

https://spectator.org/i-pledge-allegiance-to-the-banana-republic/

Show me the man,” Lavrentiy Beria boasted, “and I’ll show you the crime.”

It took nearly a century. But this mindset eventually migrated from Moscow to Manhattan.

The grand jury convened by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, CNN reports, voted to indict former President Donald Trump on more than 30 charges related to business fraud.

Bragg pledged to not prosecute laws against trespassing, prostitution, skipping a subway fare, and resisting arrest. The unstated flipside of selectively ignoring laws involved wielding criminal charges against individuals in violation of laws not passed by any legislature but instead imagined by woke district attorneys.

The former president’s votaries scoff at the idea of this case succeeding. Manhattan voted for Joe Biden over Trump 85 percent to 15 percent. The former president does not face a jury of his peers. He faces a jury of seething partisans. This feels par for the course.

The Obama administration unleashed the surveillance state to spy on Trump’s presidential campaign in a maneuver unprecedented in any place where the rule of law prevails.

Courts opted to reflexively view cases against Trump as those extreme instances in which the violation of attorney-client privilege represents no violation at all.

The same Justice Department that hushed for months any talk of Joe Biden holding onto a cache of classified documents turned the raid on Mar-a-Lago for the same offense into a made-for-TV spectacle.

DeSantis Defeats Trump on Lawsuit Abuse The Florida Governor beats the trial bar and its Mar-a-Lago ally.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ron-desantis-tort-reform-law-donald-trump-trial-bar-attorneys-d4e840?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Donald Trump is grabbing anything to attack Ron DeSantis, and he’s even joining forces with the plaintiff bar in a bizarre alliance. Fortunately for Floridians, their Governor won this exchange.

Mr. DeSantis last Friday signed legislation that will reduce legal costs for businesses, insurers and their customers. Litigation abuse is a tax that every citizen pays into the tort system, costing each Florida household more than $5,000 in 2020, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform.

Enter Mr. DeSantis, who this year proposed a package of tort reforms to curb abuses. Several changes target plaintiff attorneys’ common practice of inflating damages by presenting to juries the charges for medical costs billed by healthcare providers rather than what health insurers would pay out, which is typically much less.

Collusive agreements between physicians and lawyers to inflate charges will no longer be protected by attorney-client privilege. Lawyers could previously ensure that juries saw only the inflated amounts billed by their hand-picked doctors, and juries often based awards on those trumped-up bills.

A Biden Bait-and-Switch on Electric Vehicles As Joe Manchin feared, Treasury is rewriting the Inflation Reduction Act’s green subsidy limits.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-manchin-inflation-reduction-act-green-subsidies-president-biden-5b168948?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

We interrupt the latest Donald Trump melodrama for a word from Biden Administration regulators. While the world isn’t watching, and certainly the press corps isn’t, regulators on Friday announced they are essentially rewriting last year’s Inflation Reduction Act so more electric vehicles will qualify for subsidies.

In return for his vote, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin insisted on numerous conditions for the IRA’s $7,500 EV tax credit. He wanted to encourage more U.S. manufacturing and ensure subsidies don’t go to the affluent. The law imposed an income limit to qualify for subsidies of $150,000 for individual EV buyers, as well as a price cap for vans, SUVs and pickups ($80,000), and sedans ($55,000).

To qualify for $3,750 of the credit, an increasing share of a vehicle’s battery minerals such as lithium and nickel also had be extracted or processed in the U.S. or in a country with which the U.S. has a free-trade agreement. The other half of the credit was supposed to be available only for vehicles in which a majority of its battery components are made in North America, starting at 50% this year and up to 100% by 2029.

Few cars currently on the market were expected to qualify for even half of the credit. Most minerals are mined and processed in countries with which we don’t have trade agreements, such as China, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Key battery components—namely, active anode and cathode materials—are mostly produced in China, Japan and South Korea.

MAGA Right Knows Exactly What’s Up in Israel  There’s something vaguely familiar to the MAGA Right in the current struggles in Israel with the uniparty.  By Bob Maistros

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/30/maga-right-knows-exactly-whats-up-in-israel/

JERUSALEM, Israel—What in the world is going on here? Political intrigue. A splintered conservative coalition. A fired minister. Soldiers disobeying orders to report for duty. “Day of Paralysis” protests with demonstrators shutting down traffic and a threatened general strike on the horizon. All of which is leading to a postponement, for now, of the government’s judicial reform proposal.

For the MAGA Right, it’s not hard at all to figure out what’s really happening. There’s no need at all to navigate the complex web of proposals, counter-proposals, cross-proposals, and compromise proposals on the issue.

We’ve seen it all before.

Start by substituting Israel’s with more familiar examples from our recent past. For example, substitute:

America’s practically self-parodying radical progressives and shrieking, harassing, and often-violent “Resistance” for Israel’s self-hating leftist parties and the protesters plaguing the land and storming police barricades outside the prime minister’s residence.
Card-carrying RINO members of the Washington uniparty for the Likud Members of the Knesset (MKs) deserting their party on its central issue, and White House staffers undermining the previous president for the Jewish State’s just- (and justly-) dismissed defense minister who led that charge.
Uncle Sam’s increasingly woke and limp military brass for the Israeli Defense Force members defying orders to report for duty—creating a “national security threat” cited by the defense minister in his waffle on reform.
An unaccountable U.S. Supreme Court taking on the role of super-legislature for Israel’s High Court of Justice—except that their judiciary has a lead role in appointing its own members, and its standard for overruling legislative enactments is even looser and more subjective, even as its role is more intrusive.
A rogue attorney general and Justice Department pursuing a two-tier justice system, and persecuting President Trump in particular on manufactured charges, for an Israeli counterpart similarly conjuring up crimes against that nation’s prime minister—except that this attorney is not even appointed by the government. Not to mention that rulings on the legitimacy of legislation by the government’s own “legal advisors” have the force of law.
And last but definitely not least, the beleaguered Donald Trump for the equally harassed, hounded, harried, hassled and hectored Benjamin Netanyahu—except that this assault has been prosecuted against the latter for the better part of two decades in and out of leadership.

‘Trans Man’ kills six in Christian school and MSM blames…Christians By Eric Utter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/trans_man_kills_six_in_christian_school_and_msm_blameschristians.html

On March 27, a “trans man” shot and killed six people in a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. “He” took the lives of three children and three adults, mostly females. This was obviously a targeted assault. The slaughter stopped when policemen shot and killed the perpetrator.

The media did not much decry the actions of the deranged mass murderer, preferring to cast her/him as a victim of Christian intolerance. Some Christians don’t believe in self-mutilation, you see. Some have the audacity to believe in the existence of only two—count them—two sexes. Moreover, the perp’s parents apparently were not in favor of their daughter becoming a man. So, he/she had no choice but to slaughter innocent strangers, kids included. Duh!

The mainstream media is berserk. Insane. Rabid. It has eschewed all notion of impartiality, objectivity, truth, balance, and decency…in favor of doing absolutely anything to advance a Marxist, globalist, elitist, anti-freedom agenda. Absolutely anything. Journalists’ crazed virtue-signaling, hypocrisy, and dripping disdain for traditional values and the notion of American exceptionalism is embarrassing—and nauseating—to anyone with a modicum of intelligence, independence, self-awareness, and dignity.

The media reflexively blames guns, Christians, and America itself for mass shootings like this one. It never examines the devastation wrought by the progressive policies it champions that, in addition to causing economic collapse, coerce people into thinking of themselves as victims while simultaneously telling them that there is no God, their country is evil, and the planet is about to spontaneously combust.

Christopher Wray and the Politicization of the FBI By Victoria Toensing

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/christopher_wray_and_the_politicization_of_the_fbi.html

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has shocked many Americans by becoming a politicized law enforcement arm of the Democrat party. As the target of one of the FBI and Department of Justice political attacks — solely because I had been talking to Ukrainian whistleblowers about Biden family corruption in that country — I want to discuss the problem.  It starts with the most political Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray.

How exactly did Wray become Director? The saga of who headed the most prestigious and respected (previous to Wray) law enforcement agency under Donald Trump includes political naiveite as well as sophistication, depending on the actor.

The naiveite begins with the Trump transition team.  My husband (and law partner) Joe diGenova and I sent message after message to the team to have President-elect Trump fire then-Director James Comey immediately. We were well aware of his many instances of harassing conservatives with baseless federal investigations. 

We were informed that “New Yorkers” on Trump’s team thought it would look “unseemly.” They were unaware that cleaning house in a new administration is regular order in D.C.  How did it look months later when Trump fired Comey in the midst of the Russia, Russia, Russia! investigation?

Having limited knowledge of both Washington politics (one must know who the alligators are to drain the swamp) and federal law enforcement, Trump turned to a person who should have such knowledge to propose a Comey replacement: former U.S. Attorney (Eastern District of New Jersey) and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.  Christie had been a political opponent, then avid supporter of Trump.  What better background for a person asked to suggest a new FBI Director.  Christie’s choice: Chris Wray.

The Persistent Horror of Congo’s Exploitation By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/the_persistent_horror_of_congos_exploitation.html

“The horror! The horror!” The enormities the colonials inflicted on the Congolese are condensed in those dying words of Kurtz, the depraved, power-mad ivory-procurer of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It was ivory then; it is cobalt now. But exploitation and slavery continue to this day in the benighted Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), long after most former colonies have prospered in freedom.

The DRC is the world’s biggest producer of cobalt, essential to the lithium-ion batteries that power cellphones, computers, EVs, and a host of devices. The silvery metal is stained with the blood of Congolese slaves, many of them children. Siddharth Kara, an expert on human trafficking and slavery, hopes to wake up the world to this 21st century horror with Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, his latest book, published in January.

Kara travelled extensively through militia-controlled mining areas to research his book. Enduring threats, environmental hazards, and multiple attempts to halt his investigation, he has brought unwelcome sunlight to the deplorable disregard for human suffering in this country of 60 million, ranked among the five poorest in the world. His research and fieldwork make for heart-breaking reading: instead of prosperity, the vast resources of the central African nation have only brought it untold exploitation for over five centuries.

Slave trade began in Congo, as across Africa, in the mid-15th century. By the 16th century, during the reign of King Alfonso of Portugal, slave raids and networks were systematized, and these operated well into the 19th century. At the 1884 Berlin Conference to discuss the carving up of Africa, European colonials authorized King Leopold II of Belgium’s personal ownership of, and sovereignty over, the Congo Free State. In a few years, the explorer Henry Morgan Stanley perpetrated a massive land grab for the king by securing several hundred treaties from unsuspecting, illiterate native tribes.

Leadership Crisis in America by Pete Hoekstra

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19540/leadership-crisis-in-america

These numbers should frighten everyone. It is hard to imagine how a country functions effectively if only 21% of its citizens believe they can trust their government to do the right thing most of the time. What does this mean and why are the numbers so low?

Many of the people present on January 6th did not accept the results of the 2020 presidential election and were protesting the outcome. They simply could not be convinced that Joe Biden won fair and square. Believing in free and fair elections is a bedrock principle of representative government; without it, the critical support needed to underpin our entire system is gone.

As I noted, however, in 2006 based on an intelligence report I demanded be declassified, there were WMDs found in Iraq. They were in varying states and conditions, and led to the injury of some members of our Armed Forces, but they did not point to the ongoing program Americans had been led to believe existed. The New York Times more recently validated this WMD finding, which had largely been swept under the rug for political expediency.

Among SVB’s customers are many Chinese companies that are being fully covered while citizens impacted by the East Palestine train derailment have found out they do not qualify for traditional FEMA disaster assistance. It is hard to build trust in citizens when the government seemingly treats one group better than it treats others.

Americans have seen so many examples of outright government deceit. FBI and intelligence leaders fostered the notion that President-elect Trump was compromised by Russia. The “Russia hoax” persisted for more than two years as a cloud over the head of President Trump and incapacitated the country. Congressional leaders such as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff promised the American people that he had direct evidence about Trump that warranted the president’s impeachment. Later, it became clear that he did not, but that has not stopped him from continuing to push his fabrication as he mounts a Senate bid in California. Fifty-one intelligence professionals and leaders signed a letter implying that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation and not real. They were all wrong.

Investigations into the origins of the COVID pandemic, continuing attempts to set up some version of a Department of Misinformation and Disinformation – read: the government deciding for you what “truth” is, then punishing citizens who might disagree — and the weaponization of the government against citizens ongoing in the House of Representatives may expose even more examples of the federal government bureaucracy being deceitful in its interactions with the American people.

On key policies [the federal government] has failed miserably, from 9/11 to the latest crisis rocking the banking industry. That is 20 years of epic, systemic government failures. Throw in deception by some of the highest-ranking government officials and bailouts of foreign interests while U.S. citizens are left hanging, and you get why barely a fifth of Americans have faith in their leaders.

America is in crisis. More and more Americans are increasingly distrustful of America’s leadership across the board. In one of the latest surveys, Pew Research found only 21% of respondents said they “just about always” or “most of the time” – 2% and 19% respectively — trusted the government to do the right thing. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, that number was 49%. These numbers should frighten everyone. It is hard to imagine how a country functions effectively if only 21% of its citizens believe they can trust their government to do the right thing most of the time. What does this mean and why are the numbers so low?

The Suffering of Iran’s Ethnic Groups The Islamic Republic’s cruelty knows no bounds. Rachel Avraham

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-suffering-of-irans-ethnic-groups/

As we speak, Iranians are protesting against the ayatollah’s regime with renewed intensity, after it was discovered that up to 7,000 girls across the Islamic Republic were poisoned between November 2022 and March 2023. According to the United States Institute of Peace, hundreds were hospitalized with symptoms that included respiratory distress, numbness in limbs, heart palpitations, headaches, nausea and vomiting. Although the poisonings originated in the Shia Holy City of Qom and then spread throughout the rest of the country, South Azerbaijanis, Baloch, Kurds and Ahwaz are among the groups to suffer the most from these poisonings, as these regions have less developed medical services than the central regions of Iran.

This is merely one of many examples highlighting how South Azerbaijanis and other ethnic minorities in Iran are discriminated against. Other examples include prohibiting parents from giving Azerbaijani names to their babies; draining Lake Uria, the main water source in South Azerbaijan; limiting the use of the Azerbaijani language in the media, literature, art and in the educational system; and imprisoning Alireza Farshi, a prominent South Azerbaijani activist, for 10 years for encouraging the use of the Azerbaijani language on International Mother Language Day and distributing books in the Azerbaijani language to children.

However, not just the South Azerbaijanis got these grievances. All of Iran’s ethnic minorities including but not limited to Ahwaz, Baloch, Lors, Turkmen, Kurds, etc. got similar grievances. For this reason, Iran’s ethnic groups are presently up in arms. Over the weekend, 500 South Azerbaijanis and their supporters protested in front of the European Parliament in an attempt to raise awareness about this issue. The demonstration, known as the Freedom and Justice Gathering for Iran, was organized by Salah Kamerani, who serves as the demonstration’s spokesman, together with Mrs. Charifa Jafari alongside members of the non-Persian nations living in Iran, the Ukrainian diaspora, European journalists and the European Association for the Defense of Minorities.

According to a recent press release, “It was a peaceful demonstration organized by South Azerbaijanis to expose the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran who excludes non-Persian nations from all spheres of decision-making and spreads misinformation and disinformation about them.” The press release added: “The voice of each non-Persian nation has been suppressed in different ways and their basic human rights have been denied. South Azerbaijanis for 40 years have been struggling non-violently against racism. The source of the recent protests were women, youth and minority nations. South Azerbaijanis are determined to implement change, expose the racism in Iran and to bring their untold story to the attention of the world.”

Was Moshe Landau a Fascist? Why opposition to Court reform in Israel is the real threat to the nation’s democracy. by Kenneth Levin

https://www.frontpagemag.com/was-moshe-landau-a-fascist/

“[I]f the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made…the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers…”

Abraham Lincoln

Moshe Landau was President of Israel’s Supreme Court from 1980 to 1982. In 2000, he wrote of subsequent Supreme Court President Aharon Barak’s record of arrogating more and more power to the Court: “I think that… Barak has not, and does not, accept the rightful place that the court should have among the various authorities in our regime.… [Instead, he is seeking] to interject [into all areas of Israeli life] certain moral values as he deems appropriate. And this amounts to a kind of judicial dictatorship that I find completely inappropriate.”

Was Israel not a democracy during the four and a half decades before Barak’s ascent to the Supreme Court’s presidency and his choreographing what in short order became the court’s unlimited supremacy within Israel’s governmental system? Was Landau’s assessment completely wrong and his criticism of Barak an attempt to perpetuate prior anti-democratic governance? Was it only Barak’s establishing of judicial supremacy that rendered Israel finally a democracy?

This seems to be the conviction of the large numbers of Israelis who oppose judicial reform to rein in the power of the Supreme Court and who not only argue that reform will destroy Israel’s democracy (and not infrequently accuse its supporters of fascism), but who have demonstrated multiple times a week in the hundreds of thousands, closed down highways, blocked access to Ben-Gurion airport, vowed to refuse IDF reserve duty, sought to close the port of Haifa, picketed politicians’ homes and promoted mayhem in other ways, all in the service of blocking reform.

But, in fact, there is little in the Israeli Supreme Court’s present powers and prerogatives that resonates with the concept of democracy.

There is no precedent in Western democracies for a court to assert whatever authority it chooses over any aspect of a nation’s political life without any checks or balances.