RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/17/double-

So let me get this straight. In his November 8 New York Times op-ed (“Trump’s Appointment of the Acting Attorney General Is Unconstitutional,” co-authored by George Conway), Neal Katyal writes that President Trump’s designation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general is unconstitutional because the office of attorney general is a “principal office,” which can only be filled by someone who has been confirmed by the Senate. That would be the same Neal Katyal who served as acting solicitor general, also a Senate-confirmed position. And the same Neal Katyal whose boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, had served as acting attorney general at the end of the Clinton Administration and in the early days of the George W. Bush Administration. And the same Neal Katyal who served in an administration that closed out with another acting attorney general, Sally Yates, who acted like an embedded enemy within the Trump Administration until she was finally fired by the president for refusing to defend the president’s travel ban executive order—she claimed that there was no plausible defense for it, even though the policy was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court.

The double standard is so palpable as to be laughable.

To be fair, Katyal’s own position as acting solicitor general can be distinguished. The solicitor general’s office is arguably an inferior office, which means that the Constitution only requires Senate confirmation as the default position. Congress can, by law, vest the appointment of inferior officers in the president alone or in the head of the department. But that is not the case with either Eric Holder’s or Sally Yates’s appointments as acting attorney general. Either their appointments were also unconstitutional—and I don’t recall Conway or Katyal ever arguing that—or Whitaker’s temporary designation as acting attorney general until a successor can be named is equally valid. Conway and Katyal’s implicit attempts to distinguish those cases fall far short of persuasive.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/u-s-house-republicans-to-subpoena-james-comey-loretta-lynch/

In the final weeks of their majority, House Republicans plan to interview two key witnesses as part of a joint committee investigation into the FBI’s investigations of the Trump campaign and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.) is preparing to subpoena former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch for closed-door depositions on Nov. 29 and Dec. 5 respectively, according to the AP.

The subpoenas are part of an investigation by two GOP-led committees into decisions made by the department during the 2016 election, when Democrat Hillary Clinton was cleared in a probe into her email use and Justice officials launched an investigation into Trump’s campaign and Russia. Both Comey and Lynch were in power during that time.

Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform panels have argued that Justice officials were conspiring against Trump’s election, and they have interviewed multiple current and former Justice officials behind closed doors in an effort to prove their case.

It’s unclear if Comey and Lynch will appear, but Comey has indicated in the past that he would be willing to testify at an open hearing.

He again conveyed his willingness to appear in a tweet Friday evening:

“House Republicans can ask me anything they want but I want the American people to watch, so let’s have a public hearing,” he said. “Truth is best served by transparency. Let me know when is convenient,” he said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-hope-for-the-truth

Two men will be key in the next Congress to getting to the bottom of the remaining mysteries of the 2016 election. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, likely chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has indicated he’s not going the let the biggest sleeping dog of the 2016 race lie.

“Totally,” he told CNN when asked whether he would probe FBI actions during the campaign. “The oversight function will be very much front and center.”

On the Democratic side, Rep. Adam Schiff told the Los Angeles Times that his first goal is to restore “comity” to his own fractious House Intelligence Committee. (Presumably the Times reporter didn’t mishear the word “comedy.”) Less felicitously, Mr. Schiff added, “We’re going to be defending the independence of the Justice Department,” by which he meant protecting special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Trump.

Except the Mueller investigation is expected to wrap up soon, and it appears to have found nothing particularly exciting. Meanwhile, Mr. Schiff has finally shown some interest in the truly explosive unfinished business of 2016. He told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer that if former FBI chief James Comey’s account of his actions during the 2016 race is accurate, then his intervention likely represents the “most measurable” and “most significant way in which the Russians may have impacted the outcome of the election.”

Mr. Schiff’s acknowledgment is especially interesting because, unlike the rest of us, he would have seen a classified Justice Department report on this episode, which remains withheld from the public.

Mr. Comey, we now know, was acting on dubious, possibly planted Russian intelligence when he intervened in the Hillary Clinton email matter. He was acting from a counterintelligence motive (he was worried about a Russian effort to discredit Mrs. Clinton’s victory), not the criminal investigatory motive he pretended at the time. In adopting this spy vs. spy rationale, he surely would have consulted with his Obama administration colleagues, CIA Director John Brennan and National Intelligence Director James Clapper.

And when Mr. Comey intervened a second time, reopening the investigation days before the election, he did so to protect the credibility of the original operation. This step, even Mr. Comey now concedes, may have tipped the Electoral College to Mr. Trump. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tale-of-two-new-yorks-1542413122

New York’s Democratic kingpins Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio are getting hit from right, left and center for showering Amazon with some $3 billion in subsidies. The corporate welfare is even more outrageous when juxtaposed with New York City’s dilapidated public housing that the Governor and mayor have long neglected.

This summer the Justice Department sued Nycha for sweeping its disrepair under a shabby rug. Nycha agreed to a court-appointed monitor to oversee $1.2 billion in repairs over the next five years. On Wednesday in a 52-page ruling, federal Judge William Pauley III, a Bill Clinton appointee, rejected the settlement as inadequate and perhaps unconstitutional.

According to the New York State Department of Public Health, 83% of Nycha’s inspected units contained a hazardous condition. “Somewhat reminiscent of the biblical plagues of Egypt, these conditions include toxic lead paint, asthma-inducing mold, lack of heat, frequent elevator outages, and vermin infestations,” the judge noted, adding that the authority “whitewashed these deficiencies for years.”

While Mayor de Blasio agreed to spend an additional $1.2 billion to fix Nycha’s 326 complexes that house 400,000 people, conditions are so awful that the authority estimates it needs $32 billion for repairs. “NYCHA’s current capital needs would not be met until the year 2166,” the judge wrote.

Judge Pauley added that a special monitor “would bring about an unwarranted—and as far as this Court is aware, unprecedented—judicial usurpation of responsibilities that Congress has expressly entrusted to” the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and “raises serious concerns implicating the separation of powers and the delegation of equitable judicial power.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-support-changes-to-criminal-justice-system-1542222870?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=4&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

WASHINGTON—President Trump endorsed bipartisan criminal-justice overhaul efforts at a White House ceremony on Wednesday, throwing his support behind changes to U.S. sentencing laws that he said also would give federal inmates a second chance when they are released.

“Did I hear the word bipartisan?” he joked during a speech at the White House. “I’m thrilled to announce my support for this bipartisan bill that will make our communities safer and give former inmates a second chance at life after they have served their time—so important.”

A new bill under discussion in the Senate is expected to give judges more discretion in crafting sentences in some cases and could reduce mandatory minimum sentences for some drug-related offenses.

The bill also would seek to reduce some penalties affected by the disparity in crack and cocaine sentencing, which was narrowed in a 2010 law. And it would clarify that the practice of “stacking,” or creating a longer sentence from accumulated charges, was not intended for some first-time offenders.

Among the aims of an overhaul, according to a White House official, is to save money with fewer prisoners and ultimately redirect those funds to help law-enforcement efforts.

In May, the House passed a bill from Reps. Doug Collins (R., Ga.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) that didn’t overhaul sentencing guidelines. That bipartisan bill would allow some inmates to serve out the final stretch of their sentences in halfway houses or in home confinement, and would add new protections for pregnant and postpartum female prisoners, among other provisions.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) had been reluctant to bring the House bill up in the Senate, but on Wednesday signaled he would be willing to consider the emerging compromise coming from the Senate.

Mr. McConnell said GOP leaders would be assessing how much support the new deal has once it has been finalized and weighed against the Senate’s other must-pass legislation remaining this year.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is among a group of Republicans who have said they would vote against the bill. A White House official said that they “welcome his feedback, but he’s just one vote.”

The latest effort was spearheaded by Mr. Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has been working with lawmakers on the legislation. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/15/obvious-double-standard-recusals-proves-muller-probe-getting-trump/
Don’t bother reading the underlying rules on conflict of interest, because there’s only one test that matters: Would the recusal help get Trump?

The installation of Matthew Whitaker as the acting attorney general has the recusal pundits barking like shelter dogs in the presence of a trespassing squirrel. In case you’re wondering how the recusal rules work, it’s simply a matter of whether it helps or hurts Trump.

Don’t believe me? See if you can detect a pattern. Since Whitaker might reign in the special counsel, he must be recused, they argue. Similarly, when it appeared former attorney general Jeff Sessions might help Trump, he acceded to demands he recuse himself. But Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is a proven thorn in the president’s side with an obvious conflict of interest, so no demands for recusal there.

Judge Rudy Contreras’s friendship with disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page at the same time he was reviewing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant applications from Strzok did not require recusal from considering the application. But the Trump appointee with authority to consider a search warrant of Trump’s lawyer’s private office was recused, leading to the raid to look for evidence that likely could have been obtained by subpoena.

The recusal pundits called for the recusal of newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh because he might side with the president in future cases. Yet when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg calls Trump a “faker” and openly expresses dismay at the prospect of his presidency, she need not recuse. Don’t bother reading the underlying rules on conflict of interest, because there’s only one test that matters: Would the recusal help get Trump?

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/sen-mike-lee-a-conservative-case-for-criminal-justice-reform

“Government’s first duty,” President Reagan said in 1981 and President Trump recently tweeted, “is to protect the people, not run their lives.” The safety of law-abiding citizens has always been a core principle of conservatism. And it is why we need to take this opportunity to pass real criminal-justice reform now.

Although violent crime rose during the final two years of President Obama’s time in office, it decreased during the first year of Trump’s presidency. We need to keep that momentum going. And criminal justice reform can help us do that in two ways.

First, commonsense sentencing reform can increase trust in the criminal-justice system, thus making it easier for law enforcement personnel to police communities. Right now, federal mandatory-minimum sentences for many drug offenses can lead to outcomes that strike many people as unfair, and thus undermine the public’s faith in our justice system.

For example, when I served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Salt Lake City, Weldon Angelos — a young father of two with no criminal record — was convicted of selling three dime bags of marijuana to a paid informant over a short period of time.

These were not violent crimes. No one was hurt. But because Angelos had been in possession of a gun at the time he sold the drugs (a gun which was neither brandished nor discharged in connection with the offense), the judge was forced by federal law to give him a 55-year prison sentence. The average federal sentence for assault is just two years. The average murderer only gets 15 years. While acknowledging the obvious excessiveness of the sentence, the judge explained that the applicable federal statutes gave him no authority to impose a less-severe prison term, noting that “only Congress can fix this problem.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271956/creepy-porn-lawyer-arrested-domestic-violence-matthew-vadum

Sleazy leftist ambulance chaser Michael Avenatti who coordinated a campaign of false sexual assault accusers in a failed bid to keep Justice Brett Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court has been arrested in West Los Angeles on suspicious of felony-level domestic violence.

Avenatti is not only an indefatigable, high-powered trial lawyer – he’s a major political operator in Democratic Party circles. He worked for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, for five years at a political consulting firm and reportedly “worked on nearly 150 campaigns in 42 states, all while attending night law school at George Washington University, where he graduated first in his class.”

Avenatti has threatened to sue journalists at the Daily Caller for defamation for daring to report on the attorney’s highly questionable ethics and business dealings.

The Daily Caller previously reported:

Avenatti’s past is littered with lawsuits, jilted business partners and bankruptcy filings. People who have worked with the lawyer described him to TheDCNF as ruthless, greedy and unbothered by ethical questions. […]

Those who have worked with Avenatti describe an individual obsessed with fame and willing to use unethical methods to win a case.

So far, in response to the allegations the Vermont Democratic Party reportedly canceled events planned for Friday and Saturday at which Avenatti was scheduled to speak. Ticket sales were refunded.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/social-media-elitists-mobs-killed-dream-of-digitial-egalitarianism/

How the dream of digital equality became a nightmare

As has become increasingly evident in recent years, the utopian hope of early Internet proponents has, like that of starry-eyed enthusiasts of similar projects, sometimes led to surprising reversals in reality. One of the claims of early Internet culture is that the World Wide Web would help connect diverse communities and lead to a more democratic culture. Social media have in some ways fulfilled that promise. Everyone can have a platform now, accessible to people across the world. The user-friendly format of modern social networks is a lot more accessible than HTML coding. Varieties of online simulacra of communities have proliferated.

However, the growth of social-media platforms has also led to the creation of a few centralized nodes. A relatively small number of players (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.) have gained immense power in determining which voices can be heard through community standards and ever-shifting (and opaque) algorithms. Social-media companies have built attractive “walled gardens” and pretend that such manicured zones can be the public square as a whole.

In recent months, that pretension to universality has become less and less plausible. In part in response to the ongoing populist disruption, social-media companies have taken a much more aggressive approach in de-platforming users. That such community standards are not equally enforced across the ideological spectrum only increases the quasi-editorial power of these platforms. The power of these community standards can be seen in the fact that a fair amount of political energy is expended on battles over who can even have a voice on the platforms in the first place. The flamewars that used to happen on discussion boards and blogs across the Internet have now been funneled to a few places, which gives the moderators of such locations increasing power. Now the purported digital public square increasingly resembles a first-grade classroom, echoing with shrill volleys of “I’m telling!” (That some media corporations have led various efforts to de-platform rogue media outlets is another sign of how the currently entrenched power elite can use the digital landscape to protect its own power.)