RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/neglecting-foreign-policy-in-the-presidential-debates/?utm_source=ntnlreview&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=amconswap

The second night of the first Democratic 2020 presidential debate had even less discussion of foreign policy than the first. Were it not for a few of the candidates themselves choosing to bring up some of these issues, the audience would have heard almost nothing about foreign policy. There was one important moment when Biden was forced to address his 2002 vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, and he gave a remarkably bad answer that was consistent with his overall poor performance. It was striking how the former Vice President still had no answer for why voters should trust his judgment.

Biden’s answer was scattershot, and most of what he said wasn’t related to the Iraq war:

Because once we — once Bush abused that power, what happened was, we got elected after that. I made sure — the president turned to me and said, Joe, get our combat troops out of Iraq. I was responsible for getting 150,000 combat troops out of Iraq, and my son was one of them.

I also think we should not have combat troops in Afghanistan. It’s long overdue. It should end.

And, thirdly, I believe that you’re not going to find anybody who has pulled together more of our alliances to deal with what is the real stateless threat out there. We cannot go it alone in terms of dealing with terrorism.

So I would eliminate the act that allowed us to go into war, and not — the AUMF, and make sure that it could only be used for what its intent was, and that is to go after terrorists, but never do it alone. That’s why we have to repair our alliances. We put together 65 countries to make sure we dealt with ISIS in Iraq and other places. That’s what I would do. That’s what I have done. And I know how to do it.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/28/california-legislature-passes-bill-put-trans-men-womens-prisons-even-rapists/

While it should be obvious that women’s prisons are for convicted criminals who are female, California Senate Bill 132, sponsored by state Sen. Scott Weiner (D–San Francisco), requires men who say they are women to be housed in women’s prisons.

The State Senate passed the bill in May, and it passed the state Assembly with very little opposition on June 25. The bill demands that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ask prisoners their preferred pronouns and gender identity at intake, then house them accordingly. This means that a man need only say at intake that he is a woman to gain access to women’s prison. In passing this bill, California has turned its back on incarcerated women.

In describing the bill, the Legislative Council’s Digest states:

The bill would require staff and contractors to consistently use the gender pronoun and honorific an individual has specified in verbal and written communications with or regarding that individual that involve the use of a pronoun or honorific. The bill would require the department, for a person who has a gender identity that differs from their sex assigned at birth, to only conduct a search of that person by an officer of the gender identity of the person’s preference, and to house the person in a correctional facility designated for men or women consistent with the incarcerated individual’s gender identity, except as specified.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/28/former-president-jimmy-carter-said-trump-not-legitimately-elected/

Former President Jimmy Carter said he believes President Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate and that “he didn’t actually win the election in 2016.”

At a Carter Center event in Virginia with author Jon Meacham, Carter said that Russian interference in the 2016 election invalidated Trump’s presidency, reported USA Today’s Susan Page.

“I think the interference, though not yet quantified, should be fully investigated and would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016, he lost the election,” he said.

“He was put into office because the Russians interfered,” he said. Carter was then asked if that meant he believed Trump was illegitimate.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/06/28/roberts-the-mind-reader-joins-liberal-justices-on-the-census/

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling on Department of Commerce v. New York is being characterized as nothing more serious than a temporary setback regarding President Trump’s wish to reinstate a citizenship question in the 2020 U.S. Census; the administration is expected to whip up a new rationale that the high court won’t consider “contrived” and get the question in.

Unfortunately it is far worse than that, and Chief Justice John Roberts is giving further sign that he is yet another unpleasant surprise in GOP appointments to the highest level of the Judicial Branch, following in the footsteps of David Souter (Bush 41), Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor (Reagan), and John Paul Stevens (Ford).

“The Court’s holding reflects an unprecedented departure from our deferential review of discretionary agency decisions,” Justice Clarence Thomas warns in his dissent, joined by Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. “And, if taken seriously as a rule of decision, this holding would transform administrative law … the Court has opened a Pandora’s box,” Thomas declared.

Motivated by politics and ideology, lawyers would challenge all sorts of Executive Branch decisions “with accusations of pretext, deceit, and illicit motives” leading to “an endless morass of discovery and policy disputes,” Thomas cautions. “Now that the Court has opened up this avenue of attack, opponents of executive actions have strong incentives to craft narratives that would derail them. Moreover, even if the effort to invalidate the action is ultimately unsuccessful, the Court’s decision enables partisans to use the courts to harangue executive officers through depositions, discovery, delay, and distraction.”

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/27/obamas-top-unmasker-bashed-conspired-trump-using-government-email/

President Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, used her government email to bash Donald Trump before and after the 2016 election, according to documents uncovered by the American Center for Law and Justice.

Power infamously abused authority in the unprecedented unmasking of hundreds of Americans working with the Trump campaign, and the latest documents add to the evidence of her acting on her anti-Trump sentiments in an official capacity.

Starting before the GOP primaries, in an email connecting Oskar Eustis, the artistic director at the Public Theater in New York, with scholar Norman Ornstein, Power commented that a Trump win in the New Hampshire primary would make politics no longer rational.

“Oskar, Norm will explain our political system, in a way that will fleetingly make it seem rational, though maybe not after Trump and Sanders win NH,” she wrote.

The Hill reports that several emails provide ample evidence of the diplomat’s Trump-bashing after the election.

In December 2016, for example, when sent a news story about Trump’s effort to communicate a new policy direction for the U.N., Power snarkily replied: ‘This reflects the lack of understanding of history.’

When Trump announced his intent to withdraw the U.S. from a global climate deal, Power emailed a colleague: ‘Lord help us all.’

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/450481-20-questions-for-robert-mueller

The “American Sphinx” will be called to Congress on July 17 to provide answers to our most intriguing questions. Special counsel Robert Mueller spoke only briefly about his Trump-Russia report on May 29 and made clear that he was appointed to ask, not to answer, questions. He said “the report is my testimony” and added: “I hope and expect this will be the only time I speak to you in this manner.”

Sphinxes, of course, are not accustomed to answering questions. And speaking to a sphinx is a precarious practice since, according to mythology, you would be devoured if you got her answers wrong. Of course, Mueller may be aware that, when a sphinx is outsmarted, it is the end of the sphinx. In mythology, the Sphinx threw herself from a great height.

When Mueller ascends Capitol Hill, the question is whether he will take a pass or a header from that great height. If he sticks with his earlier position, he will do little but repeat findings from the report. If, however, Congress truly wants to question this sphinx, here are 20 questions to ask. Most concern the process or the law that should not be subject to any privilege or confidentiality claims as a basis for refusing to answer.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/06/26/top-u-s-non-profit-hospitals-ceos-are-racking-up-huge-profits/#362955119dfb

The rising cost of healthcare is undermining the American Dream. Families who are working hard to get ahead now pay nearly $20,000 per year in insurance premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket costs for healthcare.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com looked at America’s healthcare system and found that so-called “non-profit” hospitals and their CEOs are getting richer while the American people are getting healthcare poorer.

Our new oversight report Investigating The Top 82 U.S. Non-Profit Hospitals, Quantifying Government Payments and Financial Assets specifically looked at large nonprofits organized as charities under IRS Section 501(c)3 with the mission of delivering affordable healthcare to their communities.

We found that these hospitals add billions of dollars annually to their bottom line, lavishly compensate their CEOs, and spend millions of dollars, which are generated by patient fees, lobbying government to defend the status quo.

Last year, patients spent 1 out of every 7 U.S. healthcare dollars within these powerful networks. Many are household names like Mayo Clinic* in Rochester, MN; Cleveland Clinic*, in Cleveland, OH; and Partners HealthCare in Massachusetts.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/josh-hawleys-plan-to-regulate-social-media-giants-draws-muted-response-on-capitol-hill/

Many Senate Republicans, and some Senate Democrats, appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the Missouri freshman’s controversial proposal.

One week ago today, freshman senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) introduced a bill requiring large social-media companies to prove to the Federal Trade Commission that their platforms are not politically biased. Failure to satisfy the FTC in this regard would result in companies such as Facebook and Twitter losing immunity from liability for defamatory content posted by their users, meaning they could be sued out of existence.

Hawley’s proposal drew sharp criticism from several voices on the right, including our own David French, who wrote that the bill is both unconstitutional and unwise. On Capitol Hill, there hasn’t been a groundswell of support for Hawley’s legislation, which currently has zero cosponsors. But neither has there been much pushback from Hawley’s Republican colleagues.

Representative Justin Amash (R., Mich.), a frequent thorn in his caucus’s side, tweeted that the bill is “a sweetheart deal for Big Government. It empowers the one entity that should have no say over our speech to regulate and influence what we say online.” But only one of more than a dozen Republican senators contacted by National Review expressed any criticism of Hawley’s legislation: Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, who “is not a co-sponsor of this government-control approach and has concerns that this could open the door to the left for a new government Fairness Doctrine,” his spokesman, James Wegmann, tells National Review.

“My gut reaction is it’s a pretty blunt instrument. But I’m going to take a look at it,” says John Kennedy of Louisiana.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/26/bias-at-tech-companies-hurts-americans-more-than-you-think/

So regarding this line from Peter Suderman’s piece, critiquing Sen. Josh Hawley and Sohrab Ahmari, titled “The Moral Scolds of the New Illiberal Right Are Coming For Your Internet”: “A private company, like Facebook or Twitter, suspending an account or deleting a post is no more censorship than a bar owner kicking out an unwelcome patron is censorship.”

That’s a particularly libertarian perspective. But is that really how people think about and define censorship? Or is that an uncommon definition at odds with one more commonly held by American citizens?

We have a current example relevant to this question from yesterday in the knitting site crackdown which will permanently ban any accounts posting content in support of Trump or his administration (as representing hate speech and endorsement of white supremacy).

Now, this may not seem like a big deal. But if you’re a mom in Wyoming who’s been making money off of selling your knitted projects for more than a decade – as one of our writers at The Federalist is – does anyone honestly think they don’t view that as censorship? That kids or family don’t view this as grandma getting censored just because of her support of one of the major political parties?

I doubt a narrow definition of censorship which is limited solely to governmental activity sounds that believable to most people. Of course it’s not a First Amendment violation; these are private businesses. But it is pretty obviously a form of market-based censorship: you can’t post on our marketplace if you think X or your product is perceived as supporting X. That view is a lot more common than the narrow “only the government can censor” view.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/so-many-democratic-candidates-so-many-bad-ideas/

So many people want to be president. Unfortunately, many have terrible ideas.

Sen. Kamala Harris wants companies to prove they pay men and women equally. “Penalties if they don’t!” she shouts. But there are lots of reasons, other than sexism, why companies pay some men more than women.

Harris also wants government to “hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms.” But “holding them accountable” means censorship. If politicians get to censor media, they’ll censor anyone who criticizes them.

Sen. Bernie Sanders wants the post office to offer banking services. The post office? It already loses billions of dollars despite its monopoly on delivering mail. Sanders also wants to increase our national debt by forgiving $1.6 trillion in student loan debt.

He wants to ban for-profit charter schools and freeze funding for nonprofit charters. That’s great news for some government-school bureaucrats and teachers unions that don’t want to compete but bad news for kids who flourish in charters when government schools fail.

Sen. Cory Booker once sounded better about charters, saying, “When people tell me they’re against school choice … or charter schools, I say, ‘As soon as you’re willing to send your kid to a failing school in my city … then I’ll be with you.'”