RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/26/mueller-investigation

After 19 months, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has charged a number of targets with almost every conceivable sin—except collusion with Russia to throw an election. Yet suspicion of collusion was the reason that Mueller was appointed in the first place.

President Trump’s former consigliere, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. But as part of his plea deal, Cohen also confessed to a superfluous charge of a campaign finance violation.

Cohen allegedly negotiated a nondisclosure agreement concerning a supposed past Trump liaison with porn star Stormy Daniels. Yet no one alleges that Trump used cash from his 2016 campaign account to buy Daniels’ silence.

Instead, the accusation is that Cohen and Trump used Trump’s own money, but they did not report the payout as a “contribution” to his campaign. But Trump likely would have paid off Daniels anyway to protect his marriage, family, and reputation, regardless of whether he was running for office.

If you take media-sensationalized sex out of the equation, Trump, like any other American, has the right to pay anyone whatever he wishes to keep quiet about past embarrassing behavior, whether that be secretly gulping down too many Big Macs or cheating on the golf course.

Apparently, Cohen was leveraged by Mueller’s team to plead guilty to a crime that was likely not a crime. And in circular fashion, his confession was used as proof that the non-crime was actually a crime after all — and thus could serve as yet another way to find something on Trump.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosi-admires-mattisnow-she-tells-us-11545868973

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was full of praise last week for departing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. “I’m shaken by the news because of the patriot that Secretary Mattis is,” the once and future speaker said at a Dec. 20 press conference, “for what it means to our country, for the message it sends to our troops, and for the indication of what his view is of the commander in chief.”

On Twitter , Mrs. Pelosi added: “General Mattis was a comfort to many who were concerned about the path the Trump Admin would choose to take. His resignation letter is defined by statements of principle—principles that drove him to leave the Administration.”

But if Mr. Mattis’s resignation leaves Mrs. Pelosi shaken, his career doesn’t seem to have stirred her much in the first place. I searched through Google, government documents and her political website for the period 2010-18—which includes then-Gen. Mattis’s tenure as head of U.S. Central Command before his removal by President Obama in 2013. Mrs. Pelosi seems to have had nary a kind word to say about him before last week.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-stocks-poised-for-gains-11545827647

The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged more than 1,000 points for the first time in a single session Wednesday, rebounding after a bruising four-session selloff put the blue-chip index and the S&P 500 on the brink of a bear market.

All 30 stocks in the Dow industrials notched gains, as did each of the 11 sectors in the broader S&P. Shares of Amazon.com , Facebook and Netflix climbed more than 8%, while retailers rallied as early data on the crucial holiday shopping season appeared robust. And a nearly 9% rise in oil prices offered a respite for shares of beaten-down energy companies.

Worries about the Federal Reserve’s path of interest-rate increases, trade tensions with China and slumping oil prices have spooked investors for much of the fourth quarter, putting all three major U.S. indexes on track for annual declines for the first time since 2008. The blue chips lost more than 1,800 points, or nearly 8%, in the four trading sessions entering Wednesday.

U.S. stocks plunged on Monday, with most of the major indices booking their worst Christmas Eve declines ever. Photo: Wang Ying/Xinhua/Zuma Press

“Hopefully the relief in the markets holds this week,” said Eric Wiegand, portfolio manager at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management, referring to brief relief rallies in stocks over the past month that faded. “A lot of Washington-centric worries are still present.”

The blue-chip index climbed 1,086 points, or 5%, to 22878, its largest one-day percentage gain since March 2009. The S&P 500 added 5%, led by the consumer-discretionary and technology groups that powered the index higher for much of the year. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 5.8%.

The Trump administration on Wednesday continued its bid to try to stem the recent volatility. Kevin Hassett, chairman of President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is “100%” secure in his position, despite Mr. Trump’s repeated criticism of the Fed and Mr. Powell.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trumps-in-iraq-11545861134

Making their first visit to a war zone since entering the White House, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump secretly left Washington on Christmas night to visit U.S. combat troops in Iraq today.

White House pool reporter Brian Bennett of Time magazine reports from Al Asad Air Base, a joint U.S.-Iraqi facility west of Baghdad:

Trump: “I want to come and pay my respects most importantly to the great soldiers, great troopers we have here.” While in Iraq, President Trump met with U.S. military leaders and spoke to troops.

Nancy Youssef notes in the Journal:

Surprise visits by commanders in chief have been a hallmark of the holiday season since President George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq in 2003 for Thanksgiving. President Bush and President Obama, who each made multiple trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, always received warm receptions from the forces as they dished out holiday meals, shook hands and rallied troops away from their families.

On this year’s visit to thank the troops, President Trump also received a briefing from military commanders and then took questions from reporters. In response to a media query on his decision to withdraw troops from Syria Mr. Trump said that he had given “the generals” multiple six month “extensions” to get out of Syria. Mr. Bennett adds in his pool report:

Trump said: “They said again, recently, can we have more time? I said, ‘Nope.’ You can’t have any more time. You’ve had enough time. We’ve knocked them out. We’ve knocked them silly. I will tell you that I’ve had some very good talks with [Turkey’s] President Erdogan who wants to knock them out also and he’ll do it. And others will do it to. Because we are in their region. They should be sharing the burden of costs and they’re not.

“The United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world.”

“It’s not fair when the burden is all on us, the United States.”

“… In Syria, Erdogan said he wants to knock out ISIS, whatever’s left, the remnants of ISIS. And Saudi Arabia just came out and said they are going to pay for some economic development. Which is great, that means we don’t have to pay.”

“We are spread out all over the world. We are in countries most people haven’t even heard about. Frankly, it’s ridiculous.”

When asked why he chose to make the trip during the partial shutdown of the federal government, Mr. Trump replied:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-holidayshopping/u-s-holiday-shopping-season-best-in-six-years-report-idUSKCN1OP0U3

– Sales in the 2018 U.S. holiday shopping season rose 5.1 percent to over $850 billion, the strongest in six years, according to a Mastercard report on Wednesday, as shoppers were encouraged by a robust economy and early discounts.

The data follows Amazon.com Inc’s announcement of a “record-breaking” selling season, with the online retail giant shipping a billion items for free through its Prime membership in the United States.

Amazon’s shares jumped as much as 5 percent, while those of Kohl’s Corp rose 4.2 percent. Macy’s Inc gained 3.6 percent, Nordstrom Inc 3 percent, and Target Corp and Walmart Inc rising over 1 percent.

The strong sales numbers indicated that rising market volatility due to concerns over slowing global growth and political deadlock in Washington has not impacted consumer confidence so far.

“I don’t see that (volatility in the markets and Government shutdown) as having any impact … but I am cautiously optimistic for the consumer going into 2019,” said Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272360/phony-crises-progressives-bruce-thornton

In November 2008, President-elect Obama’s chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel signaled the new administration’s progressive sensibility when he said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” For an ideology impatient with the rules of political change and democratic persuasion, the urgency of alleged crises creates powerful opportunities for politicians to suspend those rules and bypass the process of deliberation in which citizens exercise their autonomy and sovereignty.

Emanuel’s progressive intent becomes clearer if we see its relationship to progressive psychologist William James’ famous metaphor, “the moral equivalent of war.” There are serious social-political battles to fight, the implication goes, and it’s the moral duty of everyone to fight for the right side. In the case of progressives, the right side is the “arc of history” progressively bending toward greater “social justice” and equality, but impeded by the superstitious, the greedy, the unenlightened, and the evil.

Delve deeper into James’ metaphor and you see its sinister dimensions. Heraclitus said, “War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.” War is the original creative destruction, in which fortune can turn in mere minutes. As such war often demands that the machinery of consensual government be compromised. The demands of war––the need for rapid mobilization, provision of matériel, and decisions and actions whose success relies on decisiveness and speed–– has led even constitutional states to provide for an office or executive that can be temporarily allowed expanded power.

The powers of the ancient Roman office of dictator, or the extra-constitutional scope given to our commanders-in-chief during wartime, speaks to the unique circumstances that war creates. But the example of Julius Caesar illustrates as well the dangers of giving one man too much power. Appointed dictator for a year, Caesar had his term eventually extended to life. During his tenure Caesar encroached on and abused the constitutional powers of other Republican institutions. And at the time of his assassination, he was rumored to be planning on becoming a king.

The American Founders were obsessed with excessive power creating a tyrant. Caesar was their model of what to avoid, and his assassins like Cato and Brutus, the models to emulate. They designated the president the “commander-in-chief” in recognition of the necessity of concentrating power in times of conflict. But they gave the power of declaring war to the Senate. And fearing a successful, charismatic general like Caesar, who commanded the military means to achieve his ambitions, they subordinated military power to civilian authority.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/12/31/how-impeachment-works/
Lessons from the failed Republican effort to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency

Impeachment chatter is suddenly in vogue. It was strictly déclassé during the Obama years. To hear congressional Republicans tell it, the Clinton fiasco of the late Nineties proved both that the Constitution’s procedure for removing corrupt presidents is futile and that invoking it guarantees political carnage for the accusers.

Today’s Democrats, as the saying goes, never got the memo. Or perhaps they have known all along that their counterparts learned precisely the wrong lessons from President Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Now that the impeachment of Presi­dent Donald J. Trump is a realistic contingency, though, getting those lessons right is vital.

The problem with Clinton’s impeachment was not the impeachment process itself. It is difficult by design, as it must be for stability’s sake. But it is hardly obsolete. It did, after all, drive a president from office — Richard M. Nixon, who resigned on the cusp of impeachment — just 25 years before articles of impeachment were filed against Clinton.

No, the problems were twofold. First was the nature of the impeachable offenses. It is not the case, as is commonly assumed, that they were salacious, but that they were remote from the core duties of the presidency. Second was the mulish insistence on pursuing impeachment when the public was clearly opposed to it. An impeachment effort cannot succeed without the tireless building of a political case in favor of removal, a case that achieves a critical mass of public support before impeachment is sought.

Hindsight is always 20/20, of course. I was still a Justice Department prosecutor during most of Bill Clinton’s second term as president, not a journalist doing public commentary. But I favored his impeachment, just as most Republicans and conservatives did. It is easy to see now that the episode has had an enduring, poisonous effect on our politics. Still, 20 years later, with a Republican president in office, it seems a wee bit self-serving to pronounce, finally, that we were wrong.

In truth, I have not waited 20 years. Clinton’s impeachment was a focus of my 2014 book Faithless Execution. At the time, the backstretch of the Obama presidency, the political class and most of the public were not of a mind to ponder the Constitution’s ultimate remedy for presidential misconduct and overreach.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ryan-zinkes-parting-gift-11545689550

Ryan Zinke is resigning as Interior Secretary at the end of the year, though it’s fitting that he is finishing with one last policy bang. The Bureau of Land Management last week took a major step to open up a corner of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.

BLM’s draft environmental impact statement tees up a 45-day public comment period and final rule that should launch lease sales for ANWR as early as 2019. Opponents say the process is rushed, but federal and state agencies have been planning for this since Congress set aside 1.6 million acres of ANWR’s 19.3 million acres for development in 1980. Congress finally authorized drilling as part of last year’s tax reform, and Interior envisions lease sales in 2019 of “not fewer than 400,000 acres”—or less than 3% of ANWR acreage.

That production will have widespread benefits, as the U.S. Geological Survey estimates ANWR’s coastal plain holds 10.4 billion barrels of oil. The region could pump 1.45 million barrels a day at peak production—a quarter of what the U.S. now imports from OPEC countries. The drilling will create thousands of jobs and tens of billions in federal revenue.

Mr. Zinke, a Navy SEAL before entering Congress from Montana, made a notable reform difference in two years. He made progress on a $12 billion infrastructure backlog in national parks, prioritized active forest management to mitigate wildfires, started to move some offices to the West from Washington, and gave front-line managers more authority. He also scaled back Barack Obama’s too-expansive monument designations, streamlined permitting for resource development, and ramped up leases for onshore and offshore oil drilling.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-phony-attack-on-william-barr-11545689892

William Barr is probably the best-qualified nominee for U.S. attorney general since Robert Jackson in 1940. Jackson had been solicitor general and would later serve on the Supreme Court. Mr. Barr has already served as attorney general under George H.W. Bush, as well as assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, the authoritative voice within the Justice Department on issues of law throughout the government.

Yet critics decry his nomination, or at least insist that he recuse himself from supervising special counsel Robert Mueller, because of an unsolicited memo he wrote last June to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who then had supervisory responsibility for the Mueller investigation, and Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel, current head of the Office of Legal Counsel. The memo criticizes one obstruction-of-justice theory that some have speculated Mr. Mueller is pursuing.

The criticisms of Mr. Barr and his memo are meritless. The 19-page document does not fault the Mueller investigation of a possible criminal connection between the Trump campaign and Russia, or even any of its secondary and tertiary prongs such as the prosecutions of Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and George Papadopoulos. It argues forcefully that the president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice based either on his May 2017 firing of James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or his purported earlier request that Mr. Comey go easy on former national security adviser Mike Flynn.

Mr. Barr’s memo acknowledges that he has no inside knowledge on the facts of the case, and that factors unknown to him may be in play, including the possibility that Mr. Mueller has an entirely different—and legitimate—obstruction theory in mind.