RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/77_years_ago_a_date_that_still_lives_in_infamy.html

On this day 77 years ago, Japan launched a surprise attack against a U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor in the then-American territory of Hawaii. Over 2,400 Americans were killed, over 1,000 wounded on that day. The countries were not at war at the time. The next day, the U.S. Congress declared war against Japan. Speaking to a joint session of Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) called the day of the attack “a date which will live in infamy.” Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the U.S.; the U.S. then declared war against Germany and Italy. Thus did the U.S. enter into what was later called World War ll, which had been raging in Europe and elsewhere for over two years.

The shock of the attack, with not even a trigger warning, to use a modern term, did not send young people then to scurry to safe spaces, as many do today at the first sign of distress, such as, oh, say, their preferred candidate not winning the presidency or hearing ideas that upset them. Enduring hard times during the Depression years preceding that attack, people of all ages rushed to sign up for the military.

One of them was George H.W. Bush. Six months after Pearl Harbor, in June 1942, he celebrated graduating high school and his 18th birthday by enlisting in the U.S. Navy. A year later, three days before his 19th birthday, he became an ensign and one of the youngest Naval aviators. Surviving the horrors of years of war – no safe spaces for him – he married, completed college, and went on to live a life of service to his country, love for his family.

It is hauntingly symbolic that Bush passed away just a few days before another Pearl Harbor anniversary was buried the day prior. Another veteran of that terrible war, former senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole (R), now 95, who was severely injured during that same brutal war but also later led a productive life, struggled to stand in respect at Bush’s casket.

They, and millions like them, rushed to danger to protect us all. Most are gone now; their valor endures.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-becomes-net-exporter-of-oil-fuels-for-first-time-in-decades-1544128404?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=1&cx_tag=pop&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

The U.S. became a net exporter of oil and refined fuels last week for the first time in decades, a symbolic milestone that would have seemed unthinkable just 10 years ago.

The shift to net exporter from importer, detailed in weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, may be short lived. Still, it demonstrates that America is moving closer to achieving “energy independence” as the shale revolution makes the country one of the world’s top oil producers and reshapes global markets.

Reducing American dependency on oil imports has been an intense focus of executives and presidents from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush, none of whom anticipated a renaissance in U.S. drilling.

Since the Arab oil embargo 45 years ago, which sent crude prices up and created painful supply shortages, the problem of scarcity had defined U.S. thinking and strategy around oil, the world’s economic lifeblood. But the fracking boom, which has spurred massive increases in drilling from Texas to Appalachia, has sharply lessened reliance on foreign energy sources.

America is now the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas. This week in Vienna, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is once again weighing whether to curtail production, a decision driven in part by surging American oil output, which has topped 11 million barrels a day.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/feds-discover-largest-oil-natural-gas-reserve-in-history/

The federal government has discovered a massive new reserve of oil and natural gas in Texas and New Mexico that it says has the “largest continuous oil and gas resource potential ever assessed.”

“Christmas came a few weeks early this year,” Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said of the new reserve, which is believed to have enough energy to fuel the U.S. for nearly seven years.

In all, the new reserve is said to contain 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 46.3 billion barrels of oil, and 20 billion barrels of natural-gas liquids, the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey said.

Almost a third of the U.S.’s total crude-oil production comes from the Permian Basin where the reserve was found, making it the biggest shale-oil-producing region in the U.S.

“American strength flows from American energy, and as it turns out, we have a lot of American energy,” said Zinke. “Before this assessment came down, I was bullish on oil and gas production in the United States. Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation.”

https://spectator.us/special-counsel-robert-s-mueller-iii/

Will wonders never cease? Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III is recommending that General Mike Flynn serve no jail time. Isn’t that nice of him? Of course, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III first destroyed Mike Flynn’s career and essentially pauperized him through legal fees (‘the process,’ as they say, ‘is the punishment’).

In making his recommendation, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III cited Gen. Flynn’s ‘substantial assistance’ in the long-running soap opera that is his campaign against the president of the United States. The centerpiece of that ‘special assistance’ are the 19 interviews with the Office of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III for which Gen. Flynn sat.

But what was the original sin here? Why was Gen. Flynn targeted in the first place?

The real answer is twofold. First, former President Obama and his national security team had a special dislike for Mike Flynn. He put America first. He was not one of them. Second, Gen. Flynn, as Donald Trump’s national security adviser, was a convenient proxy for the President. Damaging Flynn would damage the President. Damaging Flynn would also send a message to other people thinking about joining the President’s team. Flynn was forced from his office just weeks after Donald Trump was inaugurated. The atmosphere in Washington was acrid with shock bordering on panic. The impossible had just happened. Donald Trump had been elected. But would anyone who was anyone actually work for the administration? Destroying so emblematic a figure as Gen. Flynn, a conspicuous patriot, would also send a message to others contemplating joining the administration: Here Be Monsters, though as it turned out the monsters were not in the President’s entourage but rather in the office of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the media industrial complex.

Those are the real reasons Gen. Flynn was targeted. The supposed answer, however, was that he lied to the FBI about a phone call he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Trump’s inauguration. Problem: the two FBI agents who interviewed him did not think he was lying. But Flynn pleaded guilty to just that. Why? Again, it’s the process-being-the-punishment issue. The heavy hand of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III had essentially bankrupted Flynn with legal fees and here was the DOJ dangling the possibility of prosecuting him for violating the Logan Act, a never-enforced 18th-century law that criminalizes negotiations between unauthorized persons and a foreign government. As Byron York noted earlier this year, to many observers, ‘it appears the Justice Department used a never-enforced law and a convoluted theory as a pretext to question Flynn — and then, when FBI questioners came away believing Flynn had not lied to them, forged ahead with a false-statements prosecution anyway.’ That’s about the size of it. Which is why, as York concluded, ‘the Flynn matter is at the very heart of the Trump-Russia affair, and there is still a lot to learn about it.’

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/obama-takes-credit-for-trump-economy/

Obama believes that all of Trump’s successes are due to Obama, and all of Trump’s setbacks are his own.

Former president Barack Obama recently continued his series of public broadsides against his successor, President Donald Trump.

Obama’s charges are paradoxical. On one hand, Obama seems to believe that he, rather than Trump, should be credited with the current economic boom and the emergence of the United States as the world’s largest energy producer. But Obama also has charged that Trump’s policies are pernicious and failing.

Apparently, Obama believes that all of Trump’s successes are due to Obama, and all of Trump’s setbacks are his own.

Obama certainly forgets the old rule: Presidents, fairly or not, get both credit and blame for everything that happens on their watch, from Day One to the last hour of their tenures — even when wars abroad, technological breakthroughs, natural disasters, and market collapses have nothing to do with their governance.

Trump ran on the promise of a “Make America Great Again” economic renaissance. He pledged massive deregulation, fair rather than free trade, and tax reform and reduction.

NOW WATCH: ‘Trump Wants Mexico To Send Migrants Home After Clash At Border’

Watch: 0:42
Trump Wants Mexico To Send Migrants Home After Clash At Border

Trump jawboned against outsourcing and offshoring, and praised rather than lectured private enterprise. He sought to reindustrialize the Midwest and promised to open new federal land to fossil-fuel production, complete proposed pipelines, and lift burdensome restrictions on fracking and horizontal drilling.

In contrast, Obama had argued that the U.S. could never drill itself out of oil shortages. He advocated making the use of coal so expensive that it would disappear as an American energy resource. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar were Obama’s vision of an America energy future.

As late as last year, Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council for two years during the Obama administration, ridiculed Trump’s boasts that he could achieve annualized GDP growth of 3 percent as the stuff of “tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics.”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jason-chaffetz-why-is-michael-cohen-prosecuted-when-hillary-clinton-eric-holder-and-lois-lerner-were-not

With a Republican president in place and soon-to-be Democrat-run House, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has conveniently remembered that they have the ability to prosecute people who lie to Congress. This was a power they had inexplicably forgotten about during the 10 years that Democrats were benefiting from witnesses who lied.

No doubt there should be consequences and accountability if you testify to Congress under oath and blatantly lie or violate the law. But the DOJ seems to have different standards based on which party’s political fortunes will be impacted. It is this unequal application of justice that is dividing the country and threatens peace.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney, struck a plea deal with the DOJ for lying to Congress. But what about all the other egregious cases of misconduct interacting with Congress? Why weren’t those pursued or prosecuted?

Let’s look back at how a very similar case was handled just a few short years ago. After FBI Director James Comey announced there would be no charges against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or any of her associates for a variety of potential unlawful acts, Comey testified before the House Oversight Committee. I was the Chairman of the committee at the time.

When I asked Comey specifically if he had reviewed Secretary Clinton’s testimony before the Benghazi Select Committee, he confirmed the FBI never reviewed nor considered that testimony. As Chair of Oversight, I along with JudiciaryChairman Bob Goodlatte sent a formal request to the DOJ. We never even got a response. Note the contradiction: Cohen is forced into a plea deal and Clinton’s lies to Congress were not even reviewed.

The inconsistency always seems to conveniently favor the Democrats and penalize those connected to Donald Trump.

https://www.city-journal.org/miami-dade-criminal-mental-health-project%E2%80%8B

Barbaric conditions in mental institutions were a common target of journalistic exposés during the asylum era of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These days, though, most accounts of gross maltreatment of the mentally ill concern jails, not hospitals. Deinstitutionalization emptied America’s asylums in the name of providing more humane treatment, but that approach has left many seriously mentally ill people on the streets, where, untreated, they can spiral into disorder and violent behavior—often putting them behind bars. This year, Alisa Roth’s book Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness and a series of articles by the Virginian-Pilot on mental illness in American jails have detailed the many ways in which incarceration tends to worsen serious mental illness.

For starters, jails are full of criminals. Serious offenders often harass, harm, and degrade those locked up for more minor offenses, including the mentally ill. Jails are noisy, and the population is highly transient (the standard stay is less than a month), making for “an especially unstable and disorienting social environment,” in Roth’s words. Effective treatment depends on an accurate diagnosis, but that can be a complicated process under ordinary circumstances (there’s no brain scan or blood test for mental illness), and even worse for a newly arrived jail inmate who may never have seen a psychiatrist before. When the mentally ill have trouble following jail rules, their difficulties can come across to corrections officers as insubordination.

Their propensity to break rules and commit additional crimes behind bars helps explain why mentally ill inmates often stay in jail far longer than typical inmates. They behave erratically, so it’s hard for them to mix with the general inmate population; but putting them in solitary confinement is unlikely to improve their condition. Recovery from mental illness requires not only therapy and medication but also meaningful opportunities for recreation and employment tailored to needs and capabilities. These aren’t likely to be abundant in jail, since, among other reasons, the unpredictability of release dates frustrates the development of plans for care. Incarcerated Americans have a constitutional right to mental-health care, thanks to Supreme Court and federal court rulings, but, far too often, those guarantees don’t equate to real-world benefits.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/the_sham_that_is_the_mueller_investigation.html

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has finally provided his team’s sentencing recommendation for three-star general Michael Flynn. He has acknowledged that Flynn has provided 19 separate interviews with the Mueller team. The heavily redacted report provides no information concerning the testimony that Flynn provided. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

Flynn has had to sell his home to pay his legal bills during this process. His 33-year career serving our country seems to have meant little to the prosecutors trying to get him to turn on Trump. Although we have no direct evidence for his sudden decision last year to plead guilty and cooperate, many believe that this was done to protect his son from being prosecuted. This is the type of prosecutorial overreach that borders on ethical violations. It certainly makes us wonder: what is prosecutorial discretion?

Shockingly, the basis for this investigation includes citation of the Logan Act of the 19th century, limiting foreign negotiations by the general public. Most observers believe that the transition team is not subject to this law, which has rarely been used and never successfully when challenged in court. Unfortunately, the FBI investigators reported that they did not believe that Flynn was intentionally lying when questioned about his interaction with then-Russian ambassador Kislyak.

The report includes recognition that he did not register when doing work for the government of Turkey. This is usually corrected by paper changes, not prosecution. Further, all the information that led to the inquiry was collected through government communication-gathering. Though the government is required to minimize the mention of names of U.S. citizens, this information was leaked to damage Flynn and ultimately Trump.

So far, most of the Mueller prosecutions have been process crimes and not ones with any connection to Russian collusion. This includes George Papadopoulos and Michael Cohen. This makes one wonder why Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein began this inquiry in the first place. It is hard to dismiss all the unequal justice, including the questionable FISA warrant on Carter Page, begun with a phony Russian dossier.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/supreme-court-racial-preferences-affirmative-action/

The Supreme Court could be ready to rule that racial discrimination is illegal, even if it is purportedly done for a good cause.

Editor’s Note: The following is the sixth in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track. The first entry is available here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, and the fifth here.

America has a race problem. It has always had a race problem. Slavery, as many have observed, is America’s original sin. The challenge that will confront the new Roberts Court is how far it will allow government to make amends for that sin, while preventing a new elite of social engineers from jury-rigging the right racial balances — all in the name of a racial diversity that has suddenly became an end of a just society, rather than merely a means. As with its passages on religion, the Second Amendment, or the role of the courts, the Constitution’s command is relatively clear. It is the Court’s past failures to live up to principle that has kept the issue in doubt, but the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh may finally put it to rest.

More than 150 years after the end of slavery, 60 years after the end of public-school segregation, and two years after America’s first black president left the Oval Office, accusations of racism fill our airwaves and screens. Democrats fresh off a solid midterm victory in Congress still claim that the suppression of minority voting cost them governorships and Senate seats, despite voter turnout that reached heights not seen since 1914. On the other hand, those same Democrats argue that governments should use racial data to draw voter districts and hand out government contracts, and argue that state and local police harbor such racial animus against minorities as to shoot them at high rates.

Meanwhile, Asian students have uncovered evidence that Harvard University has used ridiculous stereotypes to engineer the right racial balances in its admissions process. As a recent lawsuit against the Ivy League school has revealed, Asian Americans consistently make up just 19 percent of the student body, despite an increasing percentage of Asian-American college students nationwide. Asians score higher than any other group on academic criteria and extracurricular activities. If academic merit alone determined admissions, the university admitted that Asians would make up 43 percent of the student body, about the same level reached at the University of California at Berkeley after California ended affirmative action by popular initiative.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/mueller-probe-fisa-warrants-fbi-informants/

Criminals and partisans, accusing others of criminality and partisanship

R obert Mueller’s legal team may write a damning report on Trump’s ethics, based mostly on flipping minor former business associates of Trump’s and transient campaign officials by threatening them with long prison sentences.

So far, we know that the U.S. government decided to intervene in a political campaign to help one candidate and to smear the other — under the pretext of Russian “collusion.” And so it hired or made use of spies and informants including Hank Greenberg, Stefan Halper, Felix Sater, and others to contact Trump campaign officials to catch them in supposed collusion traps. It enlisted the help of foreign intelligence agencies, specifically the British and Australians. It misled FISA courts into granting warrants to spy on Americans and, post factum, threatened long prisons sentences with those surveilled and interviewed. And as a result, it has so far found no collusion but may well find some misleading statements in hundreds of hours of testimonies from the likes of Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and perhaps Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone.

Mueller cannot fulfill the hype of the past 18 months, which forecast that the “all-stars,” the “dream-team,” and the Mueller “army” would make short work of the supposedly buffoonish Trump by proving that he colluded with Russia to swing an election. Collusion, remember, was hyped as doing what the Logan Act, the emoluments clause, the 25th Amendment, impeachment, media frenzy, and assassination-chic rhetoric had not.

By indicting a number of minor characters on charges that so far have nothing to do with collusion — for purported crimes mostly committed after the special-counsel appointment — Mueller has emphasized the quantity rather than the quality of indictments.

Mueller was tasked to find collusion (itself not a crime) committed during 2015 and 2016, not to prompt more purported crimes by setting perjury traps, and purported obstruction-of-justice liabilities. If in May 2017 the frenzied media had known that 18 months later Mueller would end up targeting the provocateur Roger Stone and Inforwars’ Jerome Corsi, it would have been sorely humiliated.