RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/vandals-attack-wrong-statue-of-general-lee-deface-world-war-ii-hero-not-confederate/

William C. Lee led black paratroopers in fighting the Nazis.

Earlier this week, vandals targeted the statue of General William C. Lee, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division in World War II — a unit made famous by the show Band of Brothers. Following a spate of vandalism targeting statues of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, this seems a disgusting case of mistaken identity.

“I think it was a big mistake,” Mark Johnson, the curator of the General William C. Lee Airborne Museum in Dunn, N.C., told ABC 7 News. “Why would you do something like this? It really just irritates people.”

Police told the local outlet that a suspect doused the statue in an unidentified flammable liquid and set it on fire.

Johnson said he was familiar with the spate of vandalism directed against Robert E. Lee statues but never suspected a case of mistaken identity would direct people to his museum’s statue.

“Never even thought it would affect us in any way at all,” he said. “This is a hometown grown boy here that turned out to be an international hero of World War II so to come and try to destroy his statue is just an insult to everybody.”

The curator suggested the vandals wanted to make a statement about slavery and racism and were sorely mistaken.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/21/the-epidemic-of-anti-jewish-hate-crimes-in-brooklyn-is-no-hoax/

As much of the country was transfixed by a hoaxed hate crime in Chicago over the past month, a very real wave of hate crimes in Brooklyn has been taking place. In New York City overall there have been 36 hate crimes against Jews so far this year, according to The New York Times, compared to only 21 last year. In the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn alone, ultra-orthodox Jews have been violently attacked at least 15 times since October of last year.

In most of these cases there is no apparent motive beyond anti-Semitism. No robbery occurs, and often the attackers — generally black men — and their victims are complete strangers. State and local government, as well as the New York City Police Department, have stepped up measures to protect the community, but the incidents have continued apace.

The spate of anti-Semitic attacks raises some significant questions. First and foremost, why is this happening and how can it be stopped? But also, why have the news media and the nation’s politicians been so quiet about an epidemic of hate crime in our country’s largest city? Why isn’t this a big story?

To get at an answer to the first question, we have to peer back through some troubling Brooklyn history. In 1991, the Crown Heights riots exploded in the Brooklyn neighborhood shared mainly by black and ultra-orthodox New Yorkers. Tensions between the two groups had existed for years. Then, a Jewish driver killed a black child. The crash was clearly shown to be an accident, not intentional or negligent, but deadly violence was the result nonetheless. In the years since, tensions have calmed, but never truly disappeared.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/02/21/thiessen_the_left_jumps_to_believe_anti-trump_stories_due_to_contempt_for_trump_trump_supporters.html

Conservative columnist Marc Thiessen opined on the pattern of news organizations and the political left rushing to judgment on stories that reflect poorly on President Trump and his supporters. From Wednesday’s edition of ‘Special Report’ on FOX News:

MARC THIESSEN, COLUMNIST: There is a pattern here. First, it was the Covington kids that everyone jumped to believe because they were wearing MAGA hats they were some sort of racists and now they are suing some of the news organizations who falsely reported the story.

Now there is this rush to believe Jussie Smollett because he said he was attacked in Chicago by people yelling this is “This is MAGA country” because we all know that Chicago is MAGA country. You had Cory Booker and Kamala Harris who both said this is a modern day lynching. Pelosi who said it was an attack on humanity.

These people jumped to believe him. And why is that? Because it exposes the fact that the political left in Washington has contempt not just for Donald Trump, but for Donald Trump’s supporters. They assume that Donald Trump’s supporters are racist even though 7 to 8 million Trump voters voted twice for Barack Obama.

What happened in the 2016 election is that millions of Americans who are not being listened to by the establishments of either party asserted themselves through the democratic process and instead of listening to them and taking them seriously, they continue to believe that these people are racists and bigots and have to be shunned. And that’s what we’ve seen in both of these cases.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/jussie_smolletts_hate.html

Conservative pundits have pointed out that Democrat elites and the so-called “mainstream” media were quick to accept actor Jussie Smollett’s story of being assaulted by two Trump-supporters.

It is clear now that he lied. Smollett said his attackers were white and that he would have been believed without question if his assailants had been “Muslim,” “Mexican,” or “black.” They were black.

When asked why he thinks this happened, Smollett answered, “I have gone hard against 45, I have gone hard against this administration.” The mainstream media were all too happy to embrace any story that promotes their belief that President Trump and his supporters are racist and “homophobic.”

However, Smollett and the leftist media have a broader focus for their hatred than this president. They hate America. The alleged Smollett attack was designed not merely to prove that this president and his supporters are bigots, but to demonstrate once again that America is a hateful place where racism and homophobia run rampant.

The president’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is interpreted as code language for “make America white again.” His opposition to illegal immigration is depicted as a racist ploy to keep nonwhite people out of the country. They know that President Trump is not the originator of what they see as America’s sordid legacy of hatred and bigotry, but in their minds, he is its latest and best representative.

How the deck is stacked against citizens who think the government derives its power from us.

As I fight on with my computer intrusion lawsuit against the U.S. government, it seems to intersect more clearly with current events every day. And it points to an even larger story.

How widespread is improper government surveillance of journalists, politicians and other U.S. citizens in the name of the fight against terrorism? A few of us found out we were targeted only because we were lucky enough to be alerted by inside sources or other unique ways. How many others were targeted, monitored and watched by government officials but still have no idea it happened?

Who is behind the move to use government surveillance tools against innocent Americans? Do some of these officials still work inside the government? Were some of them the very same officials now implicated in alleged surveillance abuses during Campaign 2016?

The Case

In late January, an appeals court heard oral arguments in my federal lawsuit, now entering its fourth year. A panel of three judges will determine what happens next. Here are several possible outcomes:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272867/what-taxing-rich-did-elizabeth-warren-and-daniel-greenfield

Tax time is usually an unhappy time for taxpayers, but a joyous time for government employees and the welfare class that gets more in “refunds” than it ever pays in taxes.

But this year, tax time is a depressing time for the taxmasters in the big blue states.

Blue states use high taxes to finance their frivolous spending. But this year, the money just isn’t there even as House and Senate lefties from big blue states tout new plans to soak the rich.

Senator Elizabeth Warren made headlines by building her 2020 campaign around a “wealth tax”.

Warren called it, “the ‘Ultra-Millionaire Tax” and claimed that it only “applies to that tippy top 0.1% – those with a net worth of over $50 million”. That’s convenient because the millionaire class warrior’s own estimated net worth tops out at around $10 million. When millionaires like Elizabeth Warren talk about taxing wealth, they mean the wealth of the millionaires who are wealthier than they are.

But over in Warren’s Taxachusetts, soaking the rich isn’t keeping the blue state model afloat.

Massachusetts experienced a January tax revenue shortfall of $195 million. That’s down 6% from 2018. And January is the cold, snowy month that is meant to account for 10% of the revenues for the year.

December was none too cheerful either.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/430737-life-saving-gene-therapies-are-here-we-need-to-get-them-to-patients

For decades, scientists around the world have dreamed of medical interventions to repair or replace defective genes in a targeted way. Today, that vision is becoming reality for an ever-growing number of debilitating and deadly diseases thanks to breakthroughs in gene therapy technology. But if millions of Americans are to benefit from these advances, our health care system needs to adapt.

Up to 4,000 diseases (including certain types of cancer, cystic fibrosis, and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s) are rooted in genetic mutations that prevent cells from working properly. About 25-30 million Americans live with a rare medical condition, the majority of which are thought to be related to a genetic defect. By fixing the underlying causes of genetic disorders, gene therapies have the potential to deliver cures for these patients.

Progress has been swift. In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first three gene therapies for use in the U.S., and dozens more are completing the review process. Last month, FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb predicted that by 2025, “the FDA will be approving 10 to 20 cell and gene therapy products a year based on an assessment of the current pipeline and the clinical success rates of these products.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pompeo-denies-isis-bride-request-to-return-to-u-s/

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that an Alabama woman who fled to Syria to join ISIS in 2014 is not a U.S. citizen and, as a result, is not entitled to return to the U.S. with her 18-month-old son, as she had hoped to do.

“Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States,” Pompeo said in a statement. “She does not have any legal basis, no valid U.S. passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States. We continue to strongly advise all U.S. citizens not to travel to Syria.”

Muthana, 24, was taken to a refugee camp in northeast Syria by Kurdish forces after escaping ISIS territory.

An attorney representing Muthana’s parents claims she is a U.S. citizen despite the fact that her father was serving as a Yemeni diplomat when she was born in New Jersey, which, according to the State Department, means she is not entitled to birthright citizenship.

Muthana’s son was fathered by one of the three ISIS fighters she was married to during her time in the caliphate. In a 2015 tweet, she urged Americans to carry out domestic terror attacks.

https://nypost.com/2019/02/19/reihan-salam-poised-to-bring-manhattan-institute-to-

Our favorite think tank, the Manhattan Institute, just got a new president: the brilliant, heterodox writer Reihan Salam.

Born and bred in Brooklyn and a graduate of the city’s public schools, he’s an excellent choice to lead the nation’s top institution for right-of-center urban policy.

And, as a writer who for more than a decade has been leading the push to refocus the Republican Party on the needs of less-affluent Americans, he’s also a perfect pick for the challenges of the Trump era.

Executive editor at National Review and a contributing editor at The Atlantic and National Affairs, he’s eager to engage not just conservatives but the whole range of US society — exactly the proper attitude for a righty in this town.

An advocate for families and the working class, the son of Bangladeshi immigrants, he’s guaranteed to bring an independent cast of mind to tired debates, while maintaining MI’s support for free markets and intellectual excellence.

Salam, 39, will succeed Larry Mone, who led the Manhattan Institute through 24 years of enormous growth, solidifying its role as a national leader in public policy and positioning it as the premier home of “quality-of-life conservativism.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/crazy_andy_mccabe_thinks_its_possible_trump_could_be_a_russian_spy.html

Just how far off the deep end has anti-Trump hysteria taken former and current FBI and Justice Department officials? The former acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, who opened a federal investigation on the president of the United States to discover if he fired former FBI Director James Comey at the request of Vladimir Putin, still says “it’s possible” Donald Trump is a Russian spy.

The Hill:

“I think it’s possible. I think that’s why we started our investigation, and I’m really anxious to see where [special counsel Robert] Mueller concludes that,” McCabe said when asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper if Trump could be a Russian asset.

The comment comes after McCabe admitted he opened an investigation into whether Trump was acting at Moscow’s behest after the president fired former FBI Director James Comey, adding that none of the top eight congressional leaders objected when he briefed them in 2017.

He also revealed last week that senior officials discussed the possibility of removing Trump under the 25th Amendment and that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteinoffered numerous times to secretly record his conversations with the president.