RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/former-ag-barr-hunter-biden-case-shameful-self-dealing-by-biden-family

Some Republicans want a special counsel appointed to investigate presidential son Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere. The calls started in the last months of the Trump administration, when revelations about his activities, and suspicion that his father, President Joe Biden, might have been involved, began to emerge. (Those were, of course, the revelations some big media organizations tried to downplay and that social media giants Twitter and Facebook tried to suppress.)

The attorney general at the time, William Barr, declined to appoint a counsel, explaining that the case was being handled “responsibly and professionally” within the Justice Department by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware. This week, Barr, now a year and a half out of office, said he still believes his decision was the correct one. But in remarks to the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, discussing his memoir One Damn Thing After Another, Barr issued a devastating critique of what the Hunter Biden case represents.

“Whether it is a crime or not,” Barr said of the Biden case, the people can “see what it was, which was shameful self-dealing by that family.”

The question for Barr was what the Justice Department should do about it. First, remember that the department was already investigating Hunter Biden’s taxes and, perhaps, the question of whether he properly registered as a foreign agent. That investigation was being overseen by David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware. We still do not know the extent of that investigation, but there have been reports that Hunter Biden has paid at least $1 million in back taxes in an effort to fend off indictment. That may or may not be successful.

Barr noted that the purpose of a special counsel is to conduct an investigation when the Justice Department has a serious conflict of interest in a matter. The Trump Justice Department had no such conflict, Barr said. Maybe the Biden Justice Department does, but not the Trump Justice Department.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18505/metropolitan-opera-discrimination

The law of New York and many other jurisdictions prohibits employment discrimination based on national origin. Anna Netrebko’s firing would seem on its face illegal. Had she been born in the Donbas region of Ukraine instead of across the border in Russia, she would not have been fired even if she had refused to condemn the war or Putin.

She did condemn the war but refused to condemn Putin personally. If she had, she would be endangering her family, friends and her own ability to ever return safely to her homeland.

Netrebko is an Austrian citizen, but her country of origin is Russia.

“Forcing artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right…. I am not a political person…. I am an artist and my purpose is to unite people across political divides.” — Anna Netrebko, quoted in The New York Times, March 2, 2022.

“She’s damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t.” — Simon Morrison, Princeton Professor of Music, The New York Times, April 1, 2022.

[W]e want artists to speak out — when we agree with what they are saying. But in this age of quickly changing criteria for cancellation….

I had planned to see the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Turandot staring Anna Netrebko. But the Met fired her on the ground that she is Russian and did not sufficiently condemn Vladimir Putin for waging war in Ukraine. She did condemn the war, but refused to condemn Putin personally. If she had, she would be endangering her family, friends and her own ability to ever return safely to her homeland. Netrebko is an Austrian citizen, but her country of origin is Russia.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/05/meet-the-shady-left-wing-group-targeting-scotus-justices-and-their-families/

A shadowy left-wing group operating under the moniker “Ruth Sent Us” is asking activists to target Supreme Court justices who may overturn Roe v. Wade with demonstrations at their private homes.

On Thursday, the group published the alleged home locations of the six conservative justices who heard Mississippi’s request to return the abortion debate to the states by overturning the 1973 decision. A February draft opinion leaked to Politico on Monday revealed five out of the six, Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch, were planning to vote to overturn the Roe decision with Chief Justice John Roberts remaining undecided. Each of their homes is targeted for protests between now and Wednesday.

“Our 6-3 extremist Supreme Court routinely issues rulings that hurt women, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights,” reads the group’s website. “We must rise up to force accountability using a diversity of tactics.”

Stipends are being offered to artists who join the march. Payment and compensation were also offered to protesters who came to Washington to disrupt the constitutional proceedings at the Senate to confirm Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.

The organizing group’s leadership remains concealed on its website, even though it uses a .us URL. Websites with a .us URL are unusual, and according to Wired in 2005, new registrants could not include privacy protection in .us domain name purchases. RuthSent.us, however, redacted information related to its owners’ purchase. Another online domain tool, “WHOIS,” revealed the name Sam Spiegel as its registrant along with a P.O. box.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/05/05/durham-scores-huge-victory-against-hillary-camp-and-fusion-gps-n1595364

The trial of former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann will take place soon, and on Wednesday, special counsel John Durham scored a huge pre-trial victory.

Sussmann’s lawyers fought Durham’s efforts to secure documents from the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign that they claimed were protected by attorney-client privilege. Durham argued that the Clinton campaign couldn’t shield materials based on attorney-client privilege when the materials they were trying to hide were widely distributed to third parties.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. agreed with Durham and has decided to compel the production of the documents in question.

Durham had accused the Democratic National Committee, Hillary for America, and Fusion GPS of withholding and/or redacting documents and communications that incriminate Sussmann.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/05/roe-ruling-making-protest-lawful-again/

On Wednesday, Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, announced criminal charges against another American related to the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Joshua Colgan of Maine entered a set of open doors that afternoon and walked around the building; he exited shortly thereafter. Capitol Police officers standing near the entrance did not attempt to block or arrest Colgan or hundreds of other protesters at the time who were unaware they were committing any crime.

Nonetheless, Graves charged Colgan with four misdemeanors including “parading” in the Capitol building. Graves’ office is in the process of prosecuting at least 800 people and counting for their involvement in the four-hour disturbance that occurred 16 months ago.

After he took over the office last fall, Graves changed the official name of the investigation from “Capitol breach” to “Capitol siege.” His prosecutors routinely request—and receive—prison sentences for those who plead guilty to the “parading” charge, a petty offense never before applied on such a broad scale.

As Graves presumably cheered his success in rounding up yet another Trump supporter, his wife was leading a rally outside the Supreme Court to protest the draft ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Fatima Goss Graves, head of the far-left National Women’s Law Center based in D.C., told a group of pro-abortion demonstrators on Wedneday afternoon that “abortion care is a matter of equality, dignity, and freedom in this country and that will never change.”

The night before, Graves, who has a history of making anti-Trump, anti-Republican remarks, participated in an emergency conference call with other activist groups and warned they must “engage in ways that we may not have thought we would have had to in our lives.” In a tweet that same evening, Graves called the draft ruling a “shameful and insidious attack on those who face discrimination” and insisted she would “not let up.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/biden-so-many-muslims-are-targeted-violence-and-raymond-ibrahim/

Day by day, it seems that the ruling class and their media mouthpiece are dedicated to one principle: find problems where none exist and ignore real problems that are in desperate need of attention.

Consider the words of U.S. President Joe Biden, spoken during Eid al-Fitr with Muslims at the White House on May 2. He said:

[T]oday, around the world, we’re seeing so many Muslims being targeted with violence. No one, no one should discriminate against oppressed or be oppressed for their religious beliefs…. Muslims make our nation stronger every single day, even as they still face real challenges and threats in our society, including targeted violence and Islamophobia that exists.

Now, let’s briefly parse these surreal claims:

[T]oday, around the world, we’re seeing so many Muslims being targeted with violence.

Where are the statistics for this claim? Rather, what we’re used to seeing is Muslims targeting non-Muslims with violence. According to one tally, for example, during just this last Ramadan, or basically the month of April 2022, Muslims launched 177 terror attacks “in the name of Islam” that murdered 1,086 people. Again, that’s just during one month—Islam’s “holiest” month. The same tally finds that there were zero attacks and zero deaths by non-Muslims operating under the name of their religions.

No one, no one should discriminate against oppressed or be oppressed for their religious beliefs.

Of course, everyone agrees with this—except, apparently, the one group that Biden was speaking to and presenting as “oppressed,” namely, Muslims: systematic discrimination and oppression are endemic to the Muslim world, and that’s because systematic discrimination and oppression are integral parts of the religion of Islam and codified in sharia.