RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-case-double-jeopardy-rules/Double-jeopardy rules almost certainly prohibit settling a federal case and then prosecuting it again in federal court.

A lex Acosta did a bad job on the Jeffrey Epstein case. This column was nearly finished when news broke Friday that he would resign as labor secretary. I was going to argue that his lapses did not justify joining the nakedly political mau-mauing by Democrats who have no interest in exploring the behavior of Democrats who are neck-deep in a monstrous pedophile’s activities. My friend Jennifer Braceras has ably addressed that point in a Washington Examiner column. I was also going to add that I’d shed no tears if President Trump forced Acosta out — easy for me to say, since I think (a) he should never have been nominated in the first place, and (b) his commitment to Trump’s deregulation agenda has never been sufficiently ardent.

Under the circumstances, I’ll spare you a few hundred words of critique on Acosta’s indecorous performance. Instead, to cut to the chase, I do not believe we can yet total up the wages of the sweetheart deal he cut for Epstein while he was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida (SD-Florida). The commentariat is glibly assuming the courts will give the feds a second bite at the apple by allowing the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) to prosecute the charges that Acosta forfeited. I don’t think so.

Double Jeopardy
On Monday, Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that his office has now charged Epstein. While the SDNY indictment may be new, Epstein’s crimes are not. They are the same offenses from which Acosta agreed to spare Epstein from federal prosecution if he pled guilty to state prostitution charges — which Epstein proceeded to do, in reliance on Acosta’s commitment. There is thus a very good chance, based on the Constitution’s guarantee against double jeopardy, that the SDNY case against Epstein will be voided by the SD-Florida non-prosecution agreement (non-pros).

To be sure, the SDNY has a counterargument, and it will be vigorously made. It has two components. First, there is language in the non-pros that appears to limit the agreement to SD-Florida, to wit: “prosecution in this District for these offenses shall be deferred in favor of prosecution by the State of Florida” (emphasis added). Here, “deferred” effectively means forfeited — the same effect for double-jeopardy purposes as a conviction or acquittal — because of Epstein’s compliance with the requirement that he plead guilty in the state case. Second, there is jurisprudence in the Second Circuit (which controls in the SDNY) holding that one federal district’s agreement does not bind another.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14536/epstein-acosta-resignation

Experienced lawyers with whom I have discussed the case — both prosecutors and defense attorneys — worry that the thumb of media and political pressure will be placed on the scales of justice when it comes to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion and the decision to try or settle a case.

Consider the situation of a prosecutor today or tomorrow who has a weak federal case involving sexual allegations. He has two options: the first is he can try to make a deal based on the relative strength of his case and of the defense case. But if he makes that deal, he risks criticism for being too soft on sex offenders. His second option is to take the weak case to trial and risk losing. But even if he loses, the risks to him personally are less great because he can blame the loss on the judge or the jury. A deal, on the other hand, is totally attributed to the prosecutor, as evidenced by the Acosta resignation. So, a simple cost-benefit analysis will incline a prosecutor to litigate rather than settle.

In the post-Acosta world, prosecutors will bring cases to trial even if the likelihood of a conviction is questionable, as it was in the Epstein case. The result of this change will be more trials, more crowded courtroom dockets and fewer convictions. That is not good for defendants, victims or for the rule of law.

The forced resignation of Alex Acosta based on the plea deal that he made with Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers (of which I was one) may have serious unintended effects on our system of criminal justice. The criticism of Acosta — whether warranted or not — for making the deal will cause other prosecutors to go to trial in relatively weak cases in which the chances of losing are considerable.

The deal accepted by Acosta was based on the weakness of the government’s federal case. In order for sex with underage persons to be prosecuted federally, as distinguished from prosecution by a state, there has to be compelling evidence of an interstate nexus. Merely having sex with underage females in a local context does not constitute a federal crime. In the Epstein case, this would have required credible testimony or documentary evidence proving transportation of underage females in interstate commerce, or the use of interstate communications such as telephone calls, emails, or the wiring of funds. There was scant evidence of such an interstate nexus in the Epstein case at the time the deal was made. Perhaps there is more now, but that remains to be seen.

https://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-millennials-religion-zodiac-tarot-crystals-astrology-20190710-story.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I love myself.

I am beautiful.

It was an unseasonably chilly night for June in Los Angeles. About three dozen people, mostly women in their 20s and 30s, were spending their Friday evening lying on yoga mats on the back patio of a shop a few blocks from Hollywood Forever Cemetery and the Paramount Pictures lot. Attendees had been invited to bring whatever they needed to make the space cozy: Blankets. Pillows. Crystals.

I am powerful.

Ana Lilia was leading them in affirmations, closing out a 90-minute breathwork session celebrating the summer solstice.

I am a bright light.

I am ready to be seen.

Most days, Lilia works with individual clients. In the evenings, she teaches classes or puts on events, such as the solstice gathering. She first got into breathwork four years ago and started taking classes to become a teacher six months later. If you’ve never done it before, it’s a mix of breathing exercises and guided meditations meant to relax you and help connect with your thoughts — a cross between the last 10 minutes of a yoga class and a therapy session that takes place entirely in your head.

A spiritual shift

She’s one of a growing number of young people — largely millennials, though the trend extends to younger Gen Xers, now cresting 40, and down to Gen Z, the oldest of whom are freshly minted college grads — who have turned away from traditional organized religion and are embracing more spiritual beliefs and practices like tarot, astrology, meditation, energy healing and crystals.

And no, they don’t particularly care if you think it’s “woo-woo” or weird. Most millennials claim to not take any of it too seriously themselves. They dabble, they find what they like, they take what works for them and leave the rest. Evoking consternation from buttoned-up outsiders is far from a drawback — it’s a fringe benefit.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/boycotting-home-depot-11562960186

Seems like it’s getting easier every day to enrage a segment of politically active Americans. Witness the current effort to boycott Home Depot because of co-founder Bernie Marcus’ comments about President Donald Trump.

Boycotts are a great way to express customer displeasure and influence corporate decision-making. Such voluntary action by consumers to enforce market discipline is infinitely superior to government regulatory discipline, which is conducted in the name of consumers but inevitably reduces their freedom to make choices.

As for Home Depot, there’s nothing wrong with consumers deciding not to shop there. But in applying their new Marcus standard, such consumers may have trouble finding anywhere in America where they can shop. Here’s how Mr. Marcus triggered the latest political backlash against a U.S. business with a recent interview in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

In the course of describing how he plans to donate nearly all of his multi-billion-dollar fortune to charity—and also reflecting on the roughly $2 billion he’s already given to organizations concerned with the treatment of autism and traumatic brain injuries, among other causes—the Home Depot co-founder also mentioned that he planned to support President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

That was enough to light up social media with calls for shoppers to abandon Home Depot, even though Mr. Marcus hasn’t worked there in more than 15 years. It’s true that he remains a significant shareholder, but a closer look at his comments reveals that he was hardly offering an unqualified endorsement of Mr. Trump.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/democratic-presidental-candidates-big-government-proposals/

‘Free’ health care for all, including illegal aliens, will cost trillions.

When it comes to health care, the Democratic presidential candidates offer the same cure: Big Government. Their chief prescriptions are almost stereotypically statist. Their “remedies” include destruction of private property, huge tax hikes, and “freebies” — even to people who break into this country. This would be underwritten by the Democrats’ go-to source for funding their zany schemes: the beleaguered American taxpayer.

Decrying White House efforts to scuttle Obamacare, Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vt.) said at the June 27 Democratic debate in Miami: “President Trump, you’re not standing up for working families when you try to throw 32 million people off the health care that they have.”

What chutzpah.

As Medicare for All’s chief sponsor, Sanders would terminate, with extreme prejudice, the private health plans of roughly 180 million Americans — nearly six times as many cancellations as Sanders claims Trump wants.

“I’m with Bernie on Medicare for All,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts chirped in her debate. Bill de Blasio, New York City’s breathtakingly inept mayor, gleefully concurred. California senator Kamala Harris raised her hand when NBC’s Lester Holt asked, “Who here would abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan?” She later reversed herself and said that she misheard the question. Regardless, she is a Senate co-sponsor of Sanders’s bill, as are New Jersey’s Cory Booker and New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, also White House wannabes.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/10/street-smarts-in-the-white-house/

President Trump went to an Ivy League school, but he came out still talking like a New Yorker, with his street smarts intact. What does it mean to have street smarts? It’s knowledge of how to spot trouble coming, how to cope with mean bastards, and thrive. It is knowledge gained from gritty life, which gives you “a bank of courage to depend on when you are tested.” Your knowledge is based in your life experience, not conventional wisdom or academic notions, so it is actually real.

Street smarts combines common sense, self-preservation, and assertiveness. Think President Trump.

The person with street smarts has a great bullshit detector. You know how to deal with bullies and cheats, whether they be elite media or political opponents. As Willie Dixon put it, “You can’t mess with the messer, the messer’s gonna mess with you.”

Trump’s success dominating his dirty-dealing opponents has amazed and dumbfounded Democrats and the old GOP alike. They don’t understand his strengths. Like a martial arts master, Trump doesn’t absorb his enemies’ attacks. He transforms their assaults into his own energy to win.

President Trump’s street smarts go way beyond dealing with enemies. It is the key to how he carved his own successful path in life, and in the White House. The key to street smarts is noticing life as it is and dealing with it. In high falutin’ psychology terms, it is reality testing, the highest order of brain functioning.

Reality testing is essential to good judgment and effectiveness in life. It means dealing with the world as it is, not as you want it to be, nor as you fear it to be. No socialism, no global warming, no free lunch.

Good judgment requires facing things as they are. Democrats lack it almost entirely. President Trump has it in excess. Reality testing is a rare gift. It is called common sense, but it is not common.

This is why President Trump has managed to accomplish so much that was deemed impossible in the two difficult areas of the economy and foreign affairs. He pays no attention to the received truths of other people. He looks simply and without equivocation at what’s in front of him. Like any builder, President Trump has his two feet solidly on the ground at all times.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274269/democrat-who-let-jeffrey-epstein-get-away-daniel-greenfield

The Florida prosecutor who allowed Jeffrey Epstein to get away with the abuse of children is a very popular guy in Palm Beach.

The YWCA of Palm Beach County (“eliminating racism, empowering women”) offers the Barry Krischer Humanitarian Award and the Domestic Violence Council has a Barry Krischer scholarship.

Last year, the ADL honored Krischer with its Jurisprudence Award.

The Florida Bar had honored Kirscher with a lifetime achievement award and he’s still listed as a member in good standing. Even Jeb Bush had bestowed a Peace at Home award on the prosecutor.

Krischer sits on the Criminal Justice Commission and offers training to law enforcement, court personnel and child welfare providers on dealing with crimes of sexual violence. His bio states that he remains active in “child welfare issues” through his work with the Department of Children and Families.

The former Palm Beach County State Attorney had made national news three times during his career. Once when he went after Rush Limbaugh, then after Ann Coulter, two Republicans, and when, after being handed the case of Epstein, a co-founder of the Clinton Global Initiative, he gave him a pass.

Barry Krischer is a Democrat. Jeffrey Epstein is a billionaire donor to Democrats.

As Chief Prosecutor, Krischer had made his reputation with a zero-tolerance policy of prosecuting juveniles as adults. But after Epstein had abused underage girls, Krischer, according to the detective on the case, ignored police efforts to charge him with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and instead the billionaire abuser was indicted only on a minor charge of solicitation of prostitution.

http://politicalmavens.com/

Stimulated by the reports of federal prosecutors probing the nefarious activities of Jeffrey Epstein, I googled “online sites with nude girls” and was surprised to see that 874 million such sites are available to us. When I added “teenage” to the request, the number jumped to 1, 470,000,000 – it’s hard to say that number and much worse to believe. “Sexy pictures of children” fetches a mere 185 million sites, all of which are perfectly legal to look at. The only thing that’s against the law in our state is printing, downloading or stashing them. One would hope that faced with the enormity of underage sex trafficking online, our legislators would be hounding NY State for new legislation that would stop this public epidemic at its source. Yet the legislation currently being considered in Albany has to do with decriminalizing prostitution so that sex workers get more respectability as well as better compensation for their work.

But the internet is not the only purveyor of sexual activity – it’s all over the cable tv. channels, even those without warnings concerning appropriateness for certain viewers. We seem to be swimming through a flood of interest and concern with all types of sex – LGBTQ, gender fluidity, drag queens, women who join cults such as Nexium where other women turn them into sex slaves and they are forcibly tied to a table nude to be branded by their owner’s initials in their pubic areas. All of this is reported in great detail in our newspaper of record – not in some salacious magazine for aficionados of perversion.

According to a study funded by the Justice Department in 2016, 21,000 underage children are part of the national sex trade, over 21 % of all people trafficked for sex. An astounding fact is that human trafficking is the fastest growing organized crime activity in the U.S. earning circa 32 billion dollars a year. 70 % of these transactions take place online and most of them involve women. When was the last time you read an article in the New York Times about attempts by #MeToo to call attention to this growing tragedy. When did you last read about efforts by the FBI, the Justice Department, Congress or the Media to give this their full attention instead of pursuing solitary billionaire targets who represent less than 1% of this scourge.

https://spectator.us/jeffrey-epstein-lolita-express-unequal-justice/

Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest on federal charges of sex trafficking minors has all the features of a tabloid extravaganza: money, sex, power, and serious crimes. No one deserves the notoriety more. The billionaire financier was already convicted of similar crimes in 2008 and received a very light sentence. Epstein’s plea bargain ended the earlier investigation before any of his friends were implicated. That won’t happen again. The floodlights are on this one.

In 2008, the prosecution negotiated the plea deal while it kept victims in the dark. The underage girls Epstein exploited were not notified in advance about the agreement or allowed to object. A federal judge recently ruled the case was mishandled and the victims should have been heard.

The old case resonates today, not only because the new charges echo the old ones but because the US attorney in charge then, Alex Acosta, is now secretary of labor. The unusual deal had to be approved in Washington, though it is still unclear which Department of Justice officials gave it the green light or why. We’ll undoubtedly learn more about the old case as the new one unfolds.

One thing is certain about the new charges. They will not proceed quietly through the courts, away from inquiring eyes. This time, they are front-page news. The DoJ has already devoted serious attention to them, and they won’t be interested in a backroom deal. The press will be interested, too. The more big names and juicy details, the better.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/08/the-white-supremacist-bogeyman/

They are everywhere.

I am talking, of course, about white supremacists. The news media, Democrats, and NeverTrump Republicans would have us believe the country is under siege by a sinister cabal of Americans who want to return to the days of Jim Crow, or better yet, the era of slavery. Since the election of Donald Trump, white supremacists, we are warned, occupy the White House and control the Republican Party.

The signs are everywhere.

A MAGA hat is the new white hood. A common hand signal for “OK” actually is a way to send a message of solidarity to other white supremacists. So is drinking a glass of milk. Or owning a dog. Or selling an athletic shoe embossed with an American flag designed by Betsy Ross.

Public schools can now access a “toolkit” with lots of advice about how to combat the “rise” in white nationalism. (It is important to note that the terms “alt-right,” “white nationalist,” and “Nazi” are interchangeable with white supremacist.) Last March, Facebook announced “a ban on praise, support and representation of white nationalism and white separatism” and will offer its own kind of virtual intervention by “connecting people who search for terms associated with white supremacy to resources focused on helping people leave behind hate groups.”

White supremacists have an entire cable channel—Fox News—populated by white supremacists such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham who use coded language and dog whistles and whatnot to provoke their fellow klansmen. Don’t believe me? Well, certainly you will believe Representative Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), brother of Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro, who flatly called Ingraham a “white supremacist” on Twitter last week after she compared the conditions at a migrant detention center to U.S. military facilities.

You can’t escape them. 

These fanatics have been spotted at the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and within the friendly confines of Wrigley Field. Restaurant owners are urged to banish them from their eateries while other Americans bravely confront these wannabe George Wallaces at barbecue joints in the nation’s capital. Trump-supporting knitters are censored on a popular website because, according to Ravelry, any “support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.”