RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-afraid-of-socialism-11549498364

Now that Donald Trump has criticized the “new calls to adopt socialism in this country,” Democrats and the media are already protesting that the socialist label doesn’t apply to them. But what are they afraid of—the label or their own ideas? The biggest political story of 2019 is that Democrats are embracing policies that include government control of ever-larger chunks of the private American economy.

Merriam-Webster defines socialism as “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”

The U.S. may not be Venezuela, but consider the Democratic agenda that is emerging from Congress and the party’s presidential contenders. You decide if the proposals meet the definition of socialism.

• Medicare for All. Bernie Sanders’ plan, which has been endorsed by 16 other Senators, would replace all private health insurance in the U.S. with a federally administered single-payer health-care program. Government would decide what care to deliver, which drugs to pay for, and how much to pay doctors and hospitals. Private insurance would be banned.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/warren-apologizes-for-identifying-as-american-indian-on-texas-bar-application/

Senator Elizabeth Warren apologized Wednesday for identifying herself as an “American Indian” on her application to the State Bar of Texas when confronted about the document by reporters on Capitol Hill.

Warren, who apologized earlier this month to the Cherokee Nation for publicizing the results of a DNA test in an attempt to corroborate her claims of Native American ancestry, explained that “family stories” informed her sense of her identity, but conceded that she failed to respect tribal sovereignty when claiming that identity in her professional life.

“This was about thirty years ago and I am not a tribal citizen. Tribes and only tribes determine citizenship. When I was growing up in Oklahoma, I learned about my family the same way most people do. My brothers and I learned from our moms and dads and brother and sisters, and those were our family stories.” Warren said. “There really is an important distinction of tribal citizenship. I am not a member of the tribe and I have apologized for not being more sensitive to that distinction.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fairfax-accuser-describes-sexual-assault-in-graphic-statement/

Vanessa Tyson released a statement Wednesday describing for the first time in graphic detail the sexual assault she alleges she suffered at the hands of Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax.

Tyson, an associate professor of politics at Scripps College in California, claims Fairfax lured her to his hotel room during the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004 and, once she was there, forced her to perform oral sex on him against her will — a charge Fairfax has vigorously and repeatedly denied:

I stood in the entryway of the room and after he located the documents, he walked over and kissed me. Although surprised by his advance, it was not unwelcome and I kissed him back. He then took my hand and pulled me towards the bed. I was fully clothed in a pantsuit and had no intention of taking my clothes off or engaging in sexual activity. In the back of my mind, I also knew I needed to return to Convention headquarters.

What began as consensual kissing quickly turned into a sexual assault. Mr. Fairfax put his hand behind my neck and forcefully pushed my head towards his crotch. Only then did I realize that he had unbuckled his belt, unzipped his pants, and taken out his penis. He then forced his penis into my mouth. Utterly shocked and terrified, I tried to move my head away, but could not because his hand was holding down my neck and he was much stronger than me. As I cried and gagged, Mr. Fairfax forced me to perform oral sex on him. I cannot believe, given my obvious distress, that Mr. Fairfax thought this forced sexual act was consensual. To be very clear, I did not want to engage in oral sex with Mr. Fairfax and I never gave any form of consent. Quite the opposite. I con

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/05/trump-

It could be the most investigated and costliest 20-minute meeting in political history. I’m talking, of course, about the infamous June 9, 2016 encounter between top Trump campaign associates—including the president’s son and namesake—and Russian surrogates. The prodigious amount of time and energy devoted to analyzing that brief confab, which allegedly represented the vertex of the Kremlin and Team Trump, never will be fully tallied.

The “official” narrative about the Trump Tower meeting goes like this: Don Jr. met with Russians connected to the Kremlin to get dirt on Hillary Clinton a few months before the election. He spoke with his father before and after the meeting; even though the Russians didn’t reveal any scuttlebutt about Clinton, the mere fact Don Jr. arranged the meeting is evidence of criminal collusion with Vladimir Putin’s regime to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

The Trump Tower meeting has been probed by Congress and the special counsel’s office for months while pundits and lawmakers insist that Don Jr.’s participation in the meeting somehow amounts to a crime that will result in his imminent arrest. Mysterious phone calls made by Don Jr. around the time of the meeting were said to have been between father and son, further proof that Putin and Trump were in cahoots before Election Day. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) seems disturbingly fixated on the president’s son, threatening to keep investigating all of Don Jr.’s communications related to the meeting.

But now, to the chagrin of Democrats and the news media, that story line is falling apart. And with it, so is much of the Trump-Russia collusion fable.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mission-impossible-world-bank-11549411445

Condolences to our longtime contributor David Malpass, the Treasury Under Secretary who is President Trump’s choice to be the next president of the World Bank. He can expect bitter resistance from the bank’s bureaucracy and its clients to even mild reforms.

Mr. Malpass is well-qualified to run the institution that is supposed to help developing nations with grants and loans. He has spent much of his career working on development economics, starting as the Treasury official responsible for the World Bank in the Reagan Administration. He worked with Latin American countries at the State Department and most recently on Argentine currency and Chinese trade matters in the Trump Administration.

He is an evangelist for pro-growth policies including low taxes, spending control, stable money for the poor as much as for the rich, and the rule of law. This is controversial in some corners of the World Bank, where they measure success not by growth but by how much money gets shoveled out the door.

Readers may recall how the bureaucracy and European governments ran Paul Wolfowitz out of the bank in 2007 after he tried to use bank lending to fight corruption. The path of least resistance for a World Bank president is to do very little, attend conferences, and enjoy a salary free of paying U.S. income taxes.

Mr. Malpass did some good in his current position when he negotiated a $13 billion capital replenishment for the World Bank in 2017. The U.S. share was $1.2 billion. The terms include an annual cap on bank lending of $25 billion, which should force the organization to prioritize lending and keep it from demanding more cash anytime soon.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/05/riveting-stories-black-american-history-backwoods-alabama/
You might not have heard of these less celebrated Black History Month heroes, but their lives of faith and service are worthy of recognition.

It’s Black History Month and time for the annual student essays and programs on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Jessie Owens. Who better a hero, for example, than a runaway slave who freed others and later was nurse, scout, and spy for the Union Army, like Tubman? Yet there are so many other stories to tell, so why not look at some other heroes worthy of recognition?

With a little digging––a treat for this Yankee transplant––I found some African-Americans who believed in a dream bigger than the narrowness of life in the Jim Crow South, and worked hard, despite the trying times they lived in, to create better lives for fellow African-Americans. I’d like to introduce you to three of my new heroes, who grew up in the backwoods of rural Alabama and became teachers, healers, and builders worthy of a Black History Month essay.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/the-kavanaughing-of-neomi-rao/

Rao is an outstanding nominee who, like many other conservatives, is not being attacked for her faults, but for her virtues.

If you were to design a perfect judge for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a laboratory, that judge would look like Neomi Rao. The D.C. Circuit, the nation’s second most important court, is the leading court in which administrative-law decisions are made and one that has exclusive jurisdiction over many federal regulatory agencies. As it happens, Rao currently serves as an extraordinarily effective head of the U.S. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), from which she spearheads the Trump administration’s approach to regulatory policy.

Rao came to OIRA with deep expertise in regulatory policy, having founded the Center for the Study for the Administrative State at George Mason. A graduate of Yale and the University of Chicago Law School, she clerked for Justice Thomas and the highly respected appeals-court judge J. Harvie Wilkinson.

Rao can view legal issues not just from the perspective of her current perch, but also as a former counsel to Senator Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) on the Senate Judiciary committee and as a counselor to former president George W. Bush. Furthermore, she has valuable experience in private practice both domestically and internationally.

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2019/02/05/senate_confirm_neomi_rao_for_dc_circuit_court_of_appeals_111028.html

Among the many victories President Trump has given conservatives, his success in reforming the federal judiciary through judicial appointments will be among the most meaningful and lasting elements of his legacy. One of the President’s top judicial picks, former law professor Neomi Rao, is now awaiting confirmation to replace Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. She should be quickly confirmed.

Ms. Rao was born in Detroit, a child of Indian immigrants. She completed her undergraduate education at Yale, graduating cum laude. After a brief stint as a reporter with the Weekly Standard, Ms. Rao attended University of Chicago Law School, where she was an Editor of the Law Review and graduated in 1999 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif, a legal honor society.

Following law school, Ms. Rao was awarded prestigious clerkships at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit with prominent Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, III and at the United States Supreme Court with Justice Clarence Thomas. She later served as Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and from 2005 to 2006 as Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to President George W. Bush.

In 2006 Ms. Rao joined the faculty at the George Mason University Law School, where she distinguished herself as a legal scholar with a focus on administrative law. She founded and was the first director of the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State and was a driving force behind George Mason’s 2016 decision to name its law school after the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., praised British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn after she spoke with him over the weekend.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

✔ @AOC It was an honor to share such a lovely and wide-reaching conversation with you, @jeremycorbyn! Also honored to share a great hope in the peace, prosperity, + justice that everyday people can create when we uplift one another across class, race, + identity both at home & abroad.

Jeremy Corbyn

✔ @jeremycorbyn Great to speak to @AOC on the phone this evening and hear first hand how she’s challenging the status quo. Let’s build a movement across borders to take on the billionaires, polluters and migrant baiters, and support a happier, freer and cleaner planet.

https://pjmedia.com/video/alveda-king-calls-on-ralph-northam-to-reverse-ku-klux-klanish-abortion-laws/
“You are a pediatrician. You know those are human beings.”
On Monday morning, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece Alveda King stopped short of calling for Gov. Ralph Northam (D-Va.) to resign in the wake of the blackface scandal. Instead, she urged him to “stop doing Ku Klux Klanish things” and rescind his support for abortion laws. The blackface controversy emerged with a yearbook photo seeming to show Northam either in blackface or a Ku Klux Klan robe, but that followed a week of controversy over a radical abortion bill the governor supports.

“When the story initially broke, I said, ‘Well, wow! Thirty-five years ago — we need to forgive him.’ However, forgiveness is one thing but how do we move forward is another thing,” King told “Fox and Friends.”

“And rather than to ask the governor to resign, I would ask him to rescind all of the legislation that he has approved that supports the crime against humanity which is abortion,” she declared.

King said she would deliver this message to Northam: “I would say, ‘Stay there, reverse all those actions, stop agreeing to kill little human beings in the womb. You are a pediatrician. You know those are human beings right there in the womb!'”

Alveda King addressed the ugly racial history of abortion — which arguably continues in the present (billboards in Dallas and Cleveland targeted black women with pro-abortion messages last year, and black women have disproportionately high abortion rates). “Stop working with Planned Parenthood — who Margaret Sanger really did speak to the Ku Klux Klan, she did. And so, [I would tell him to] stop doing Ku Klux Klanish things and reverse and rescind all of those ugly laws that he is still supporting today,” she said.