RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/428178-is-the-collusion-theory-dead

“Whom did Donald Trump Jr. speak to on his phone in between calls setting up the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians?” That is the question the New York Times asked about “one of the more tantalizing mysteries of the whole Russia affair” in a glossy report on the campaign.

Hundreds of stories referenced the “blocked numbers” and speculated that those belonged to President Trump, who wanted an update on collusion efforts from his son. Last year, when asked by Wolf Blitzer of CNN if he was confirming that Trump Jr. phoned his father, House Intelligence Committee member Andre Carson simply said, “Stay tuned.” So we did, until this week, when it was revealed that Trump Jr. apparently phoned two business associates. The mystery over the blocked calls follows a series of overhyped collusion points that failed to pan out.

With the approaching final report from special counsel Robert Mueller, it may be useful to consider the current state of the collusion case. After dozens of indictments and filings, there is much that has been disclosed by the special counsel on Russian linkages and contacts. Congress and the media also have disclosed a fair degree of evidence from witnesses called before the federal grand jury and committees on Capitol Hill.

However, the publicly known case for collusion remains strikingly incomplete, if not incoherent. What is uniformly missing from the cottage industry of collusion theories is an acknowledgment of the threshold requirements of an actual crime. There is no crime in “colluding” with Russians without some cognizable criminal act or conspiracy to commit such an act. While some have dangerously stretched the criminal code to incriminate Trump, the most obvious and viable crime remains hacking into the email systems of the Democrats.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/03/how-to-make

I drove back from San Francisco not long ago to the rural San Joaquin Valley. It is only 200 miles. But in fact, it can feel like Odysseus trying to get back home to Ithaca from Troy.

Walking to the car in San Francisco was an early morning obstacle course dotted with the occasional human feces and lots of trash. The streets looked like Troy after its sacking. Verbal and physical altercations among the homeless offered background. The sidewalks were sort of like the flotsam and jetsam in the caves of the Cyclopes, with who knows what the ingredients really were. Outbreaks of hepatitis and typhus are now common among the refuse of California’s major cities.

The rules of the road in downtown San Francisco can seem pre-civilizational: the more law-abiding driver is considered timid and someone to be taken advantage of—while the more reckless earns respect and right of way. Pedestrians have achieved the weird deterrent effect of so pouring out onto the street in such numbers that drivers not walkers seemed the more terrified.

The 101 freeway southbound was entirely blocked by traffic—sort of like the ancient doldrums where ships don’t move. About 20 percent of the cars in the carpool lane seemed to be cheating—and were determined not to let in any more of like kind. The problem with talking on the phone and texting while driving is not just cars, but also semi-trucks, whose drivers go over the white line and weave as they please on the theory that no one argues with 20 tons of freight.

The trip can take over three hours in theory and often longer than six hours in practice. The rub is not just traffic. Road repair and expansion shuts down lanes (ironically replete with large signs bragging that the construction is proof of your tax dollars at work), often without little warning or guidance. Service stations along the way are usually overcrowded. Some of their restrooms also are premodern. I once stopped in one that had no toilet seat, one handle remaining on the water fixtures, no toilet paper, but plenty of unmentionables on the floor. In California, you sometimes request a key to enjoy the privilege of using such hospitality.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/planned-parenthood-on-ralph-northam-fine-with-infanticide-racist-photo-too-much/

In a matter of days, Planned Parenthood went from vociferously defending Gov. Ralph Northam (D-Va.) to demanding his resignation. Earlier this week, Northam defended infanticide — the killing of an infant who survives a late-term abortion. Planned Parenthood rushed to his defense. Yet mere hours after news of a racist photo broke, the abortion giant turned on one of its stalwart defenders.

“As the nation’s largest provider of reproductive health care, we have a responsibility to advocate for all patients, and to provide compassionate health care to all people who walk through our doors,” Dr. Leana Wen, Planned Parenthood’s president, wrote in a statement. “There is no place for Gov. Ralph Northam’s racist actions or language. He must step down as Governor.”

She concluded with a rousing statement that seems even better fitted to the news of Northam’s endorsement of infanticide. “The people of Virginia need to be able to trust that their leaders will fight for them, and support policies that protect their health, safety and value their communities. Gov. Northam’s actions have put that in doubt.”

On Wednesday, Northam described the process of a third-trimester abortion. “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered,” the governor said. “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and mother.”

In other words, babies who survive an attempted abortion are not considered alive. They would be “resuscitated” if the mother and family say so, and the doctor and the mother would decide whether or not to let the baby live. Under this logic, abortion doctors should give a baby born alive “palliative care” to keep the baby “comfortable” while he or she dies, withholding the life-saving care normally afforded a newborn. CONTINUE AT SITE