RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/russia-collusion-democrats-republicans-foreign-policy-history/

D.C. has been delusional about the Kremlin since the 1990s.When the “collusion” music stopped, was Donald Trump the guy left without a chair?If the latest reporting is accurate, we’ll find out soon enough. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is said to be wrapping up his probe. His final report could be submitted to Attorney General William Barr in a matter of days.

Did Trump and his presidential campaign “collude with Russia” in the sense of conspiring to commit cyberespionage? That is, were they complicit in Russian intelligence’s hacking attacks on Democratic-party email accounts? There has been no indication that Mueller has such evidence. That is significant because Mueller is a prosecutor. Notwithstanding the irregular counterintelligence framework of the special counsel’s appointment, the principal job of a prosecutor is to determine whether crimes were committed. Espionage conspiracy is the collusion crime that launched the investigation.

Of course, as we’ve repeatedly observed, not all “collusion” is criminally conspiratorial — even if some of it involves dirty politics or is otherwise unsavory. It is easy to evaluate crime: A person is either guilty or not guilty of conduct Congress has criminalized; if the proof is there, he should be convicted. But when behavior is not criminal, yet we are being urged to condemn it because it was undertaken with a particular country, shouldn’t we evaluate how our government has regarded that country?When it comes to “collusion with Russia,” there was an awful lot of that going on in the Bipartisan Beltway throughout the quarter century before Trump launched his White House bid.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/21/t

Justice, we are told, is blind. Our top law enforcement officials repeatedly remind us of their integrity and their heroism; the men and women of the FBI are dedicated public servants who take on bad guys around the world at great sacrifice, and do so without bowing to stress or political pressure.

Only evidence and a commitment to the impartial execution of our laws drive them to protect our country each and every day.Undoubtedly this is true for rank-and-file FBI agents who face unimaginable danger and investigate the most despicable lowlifes who walk among us. By and large, people in law enforcement maintain a higher degree of purpose, patriotism, and yes, steeliness, than your average professional.But impartiality and temperance evidently have not been the defining traits of the top brass at the FBI in recent years. Rather than administering blind justice, James Comey and company seemed instead to consider political affiliations, electoral outcomes, and media coverage over a preponderance of fact and evidence.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/schiffting-to-phase-2-of-collusion-11550794762

There’s been no more reliable regurgitator of fantastical Trump-Russia collusion theories than Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff. So when the House Intelligence Committee chairman sits down to describe a “new phase” of the Trump investigation, pay attention. These are the fever swamps into which we will descend after Robert Mueller’s probe.

The collusionists need a “new phase” as signs grow that the special counsel won’t help realize their reveries of a Donald Trump takedown. They had said Mr. Mueller would provide all the answers. Now that it seems they won’t like his answers, Democrats and media insist that any report will likely prove “anticlimactic” and “inconclusive.” “This is merely the end of Chapter 1,” said Renato Mariotti, a CNN legal “analyst.”Mr. Schiff turned this week to a dependable scribe—the Washington Post’s David Ignatius—to lay out the next chapter of the penny dreadful. Mr. Ignatius was the original conduit for the leak about former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s conversations with a Russian ambassador, and the far-fetched claims that Mr. Flynn had violated the Logan Act of 1799.

Mr. Schiff has now dictated to Mr. Ignatius a whole new collusion theory. Forget Carter Page, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos—whoever. The real Trump-Russia canoodling rests in “Trump’s finances.” The future president was “doing business with Russia” and “seeking Kremlin help.”So, no apologies. No acknowledgment that Mr. Schiff & Co. for years have pushed fake stories that accused innocent men and women of being Russian agents. No relieved hope that the country might finally put this behind us. Just a smooth transition—using Russia as a hook—into Mr. Trump’s finances.

Mueller who?What’s mind-boggling is that reporters would continue to take Mr. Schiff seriously, given his extraordinary record of incorrect and misleading pronouncements. This is the man who, on March 22, 2017, helped launch full-blown hysteria when he said on “Meet the Press” that his committee already had the goods on Trump-Russia collusion.CONTINUE AT SITE

She may not push the citizenship issue if she faces prison time here.

I had a column in the New York Post yesterday morning about the so-called “ISIS bride,” Hoda Muthana, who is detained in a Syrian refugee camp and now pleading to come back home to her family in Alabama. I argued that, despite the fact that she has treasonously waged war against our country, she had a right to be readmitted if she tried to enter because she was — according to the facts available at the time — a natural-born American citizen.

Now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that Muthana will not be allowed to reenter the U.S. because she is not an American citizen: While born in America, she was the daughter of a diplomat and thus not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. As the secretary put it in his statement, “Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States. She does not have any legal basis, no valid U.S. passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States.”

This conclusion is disputed by Muthana’s family and allies, and they may have a case. I would strongly urge the Justice Department to file an indictment against Muthana for treason, material support to terrorism, and any other readily provable offenses. She is less likely to press the issues of citizenship and right to enter if she understands that she faces prosecution and, very likely, lengthy imprisonment if she succeeds in coming here.

But it’s worth taking a closer look at the citizenship question itself. To my mind, the concept of citizenship implies not just the benefits of being a full-fledged member of the body politic, but also a duty of fealty to the nation. In a rational world, then, a citizen who made war against the United States would be stripped of citizenship.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/vandals-attack-wrong-statue-of-general-lee-deface-world-war-ii-hero-not-confederate/

William C. Lee led black paratroopers in fighting the Nazis.

Earlier this week, vandals targeted the statue of General William C. Lee, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division in World War II — a unit made famous by the show Band of Brothers. Following a spate of vandalism targeting statues of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, this seems a disgusting case of mistaken identity.

“I think it was a big mistake,” Mark Johnson, the curator of the General William C. Lee Airborne Museum in Dunn, N.C., told ABC 7 News. “Why would you do something like this? It really just irritates people.”

Police told the local outlet that a suspect doused the statue in an unidentified flammable liquid and set it on fire.

Johnson said he was familiar with the spate of vandalism directed against Robert E. Lee statues but never suspected a case of mistaken identity would direct people to his museum’s statue.

“Never even thought it would affect us in any way at all,” he said. “This is a hometown grown boy here that turned out to be an international hero of World War II so to come and try to destroy his statue is just an insult to everybody.”

The curator suggested the vandals wanted to make a statement about slavery and racism and were sorely mistaken.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/21/the-epidemic-of-anti-jewish-hate-crimes-in-brooklyn-is-no-hoax/

As much of the country was transfixed by a hoaxed hate crime in Chicago over the past month, a very real wave of hate crimes in Brooklyn has been taking place. In New York City overall there have been 36 hate crimes against Jews so far this year, according to The New York Times, compared to only 21 last year. In the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn alone, ultra-orthodox Jews have been violently attacked at least 15 times since October of last year.

In most of these cases there is no apparent motive beyond anti-Semitism. No robbery occurs, and often the attackers — generally black men — and their victims are complete strangers. State and local government, as well as the New York City Police Department, have stepped up measures to protect the community, but the incidents have continued apace.

The spate of anti-Semitic attacks raises some significant questions. First and foremost, why is this happening and how can it be stopped? But also, why have the news media and the nation’s politicians been so quiet about an epidemic of hate crime in our country’s largest city? Why isn’t this a big story?

To get at an answer to the first question, we have to peer back through some troubling Brooklyn history. In 1991, the Crown Heights riots exploded in the Brooklyn neighborhood shared mainly by black and ultra-orthodox New Yorkers. Tensions between the two groups had existed for years. Then, a Jewish driver killed a black child. The crash was clearly shown to be an accident, not intentional or negligent, but deadly violence was the result nonetheless. In the years since, tensions have calmed, but never truly disappeared.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/02/21/thiessen_the_left_jumps_to_believe_anti-trump_stories_due_to_contempt_for_trump_trump_supporters.html

Conservative columnist Marc Thiessen opined on the pattern of news organizations and the political left rushing to judgment on stories that reflect poorly on President Trump and his supporters. From Wednesday’s edition of ‘Special Report’ on FOX News:

MARC THIESSEN, COLUMNIST: There is a pattern here. First, it was the Covington kids that everyone jumped to believe because they were wearing MAGA hats they were some sort of racists and now they are suing some of the news organizations who falsely reported the story.

Now there is this rush to believe Jussie Smollett because he said he was attacked in Chicago by people yelling this is “This is MAGA country” because we all know that Chicago is MAGA country. You had Cory Booker and Kamala Harris who both said this is a modern day lynching. Pelosi who said it was an attack on humanity.

These people jumped to believe him. And why is that? Because it exposes the fact that the political left in Washington has contempt not just for Donald Trump, but for Donald Trump’s supporters. They assume that Donald Trump’s supporters are racist even though 7 to 8 million Trump voters voted twice for Barack Obama.

What happened in the 2016 election is that millions of Americans who are not being listened to by the establishments of either party asserted themselves through the democratic process and instead of listening to them and taking them seriously, they continue to believe that these people are racists and bigots and have to be shunned. And that’s what we’ve seen in both of these cases.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/jussie_smolletts_hate.html

Conservative pundits have pointed out that Democrat elites and the so-called “mainstream” media were quick to accept actor Jussie Smollett’s story of being assaulted by two Trump-supporters.

It is clear now that he lied. Smollett said his attackers were white and that he would have been believed without question if his assailants had been “Muslim,” “Mexican,” or “black.” They were black.

When asked why he thinks this happened, Smollett answered, “I have gone hard against 45, I have gone hard against this administration.” The mainstream media were all too happy to embrace any story that promotes their belief that President Trump and his supporters are racist and “homophobic.”

However, Smollett and the leftist media have a broader focus for their hatred than this president. They hate America. The alleged Smollett attack was designed not merely to prove that this president and his supporters are bigots, but to demonstrate once again that America is a hateful place where racism and homophobia run rampant.

The president’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is interpreted as code language for “make America white again.” His opposition to illegal immigration is depicted as a racist ploy to keep nonwhite people out of the country. They know that President Trump is not the originator of what they see as America’s sordid legacy of hatred and bigotry, but in their minds, he is its latest and best representative.

How the deck is stacked against citizens who think the government derives its power from us.

As I fight on with my computer intrusion lawsuit against the U.S. government, it seems to intersect more clearly with current events every day. And it points to an even larger story.

How widespread is improper government surveillance of journalists, politicians and other U.S. citizens in the name of the fight against terrorism? A few of us found out we were targeted only because we were lucky enough to be alerted by inside sources or other unique ways. How many others were targeted, monitored and watched by government officials but still have no idea it happened?

Who is behind the move to use government surveillance tools against innocent Americans? Do some of these officials still work inside the government? Were some of them the very same officials now implicated in alleged surveillance abuses during Campaign 2016?

The Case

In late January, an appeals court heard oral arguments in my federal lawsuit, now entering its fourth year. A panel of three judges will determine what happens next. Here are several possible outcomes: