RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/william-barr-attorney-general-nominee-excellent-choice/

In nominating William Barr for AG, the president could not have done better

In 2007, the Justice Department was in disarray. Though it was largely exaggerated, a controversy over the firing of some United States attorneys, the intrusion of politics into Justice Department hiring decisions, and White House contacts with Main Justice forced the resignation of an overmatched attorney general, Alberto Gonzales.

The Justice Department is not just any arm of government. It is a bulwark of the rule of law on which our domestic tranquility and prosperity depend. It is a watchman against terrorists and hostile foreign powers, ensuring our domestic security. When it is reeling, the nation is reeling. In 2007, it was reeling.

Then, in a masterstroke, President Bush named Michael B. Mukasey as the new attorney general. A distinguished former Justice Department prosecutor, Judge Mukasey had been as accomplished and exemplary a jurist as the nation could produce. His nomination was exactly the shot in the arm the Justice Department needed. Order was restored, thanks to the respect he’d earned from all quarters, including both sides of the congressional aisle, for his legal acumen and scrupulousness.

In a time of similar tumult, President Trump has hit a similar home run, nominating William P. Barr to be the next attorney general. Bill Barr will restore order.

Barr brings much-needed experience and instant credibility to the task. After all, he has already been the nation’s chief federal law-enforcement officer, serving as attorney general in the last years of President George H. W. Bush’s term. He is a lawyer’s lawyer, having led the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel before being elevated by Bush 41 to deputy AG and, ultimately, the top job. He has rightly been adamant that, while an attorney general is a consequential administration official, the AG’s first allegiance is to the Constitution and the laws.

Importantly, when Barr was attorney general, the chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division was a fellow by the name of Robert Mueller — now the special counsel running the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, including any Trump-campaign “collusion” therein.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/womens-rights-activist-linda-sarsour-is-empowering-radical-islamic-torture-terror-rape/

Women’s March co-founder Linda Sarsour is “empowering” the radical Islam that oppresses women across the world, inspiring sex slavery, child marriage, and female genital mutilation, a best-selling author and women’s rights activist told PJ Media on Friday.

“Linda Sarsour is promoting Sharia law and misleading Americans,” Rabia Kazan, a best-selling author and president of the Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition, told PJ Media on Friday. “She never mentions child marriage, genital mutilation, or honor killings.”

“She’s empowering their side, not us,” Kazan said. “She’s encouraging these barbaric people. She’s encouraging them and contributing to them, to women being sold and girls being raped everyday.”

The Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition will endorse President Donald Trump for 2020 on Tuesday.

Kazan described the dire state of women in the Middle East. “Women and children are suffering under Sharia law and in the Middle East. Our girls are being sold into sexual slavery every single day,” she added. “Four-year-old babies are being sold to ISIS. Little girls aged seven to fourteen are being sold as child brides. This is pedophilia and rape by marriage.”

Under the influence of people warning about “Islamophobia,” the “whole world is thinking they are volunteers,” and Linda Sarsour is leading this effort.

“How many of us have to die?” she asked. “How many of us have to be raped before you take an action? Silence is killing us and President Trump is speaking.”

“Women like Linda Sarsour are misleading Americans to think that all women in the Middle East are happy to wear headscarves and to be slaves,” Kazan said. “She’s the one who is helping the people who are doing this to us.”

“She is encouraging those barbaric people in their torture, terror, rape,” the women’s rights advocate argued. “She’s helping them. She’s not defending our rights at all.”

“Shame on her. All the child brides and all honor killing victims, genital mutilation victims shame Linda Sarsour,” the Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition president declared. “She has done nothing for us.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/06/george-h-w-bush-and-the

Amidst the lavish praise for the late president, George H.W. Bush, allow me to offer a contrarian view.

As we learned from the funeral of the non-president, John McCain, the leftist media has rarely met an ineffective Republican politician they didn’t want to celebrate when he passed, no matter what they’d said about him during his time here on Earth. In the interests of “bipartisanship,” “comity,” and “civility,” the years the dearly departed moved among us are seen retrospectively as a kind of Golden Age, when Republicans lost graciously to the designated Democrat, whether as a first-time candidate or (even better) a defeated one-termer sent packing so the Democrat Restoration could be implemented, and the natural order of American politics restored.

In the case of Bush the Elder, however, Poppy’s defeat at the hands (sorry) of Bill Clinton was not only fully deserved—the man was a natural non-politician up against the best campaigner of his generation—but actually welcome. Not only did he—read my lips—betray the legacy of Ronald Reagan in his electorally fatal decision to welsh on his “no new taxes” pledge, not only did he cut the legs out from under the Reagan Revolution by calling for a “kinder, gentler America,” but he also egregiously mishandled the Gipper’s most important legacy: the defeat of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Don’t argue with me: I was there. I was in Dresden in February of 1985 when Erich Honecker denounced the “Star Wars” missile defense program at the behest of his Soviet masters; I was in the USSR (Leningrad) when Chernobyl blew up in April 1986; I was in Berlin, sledgehammer in hand, when the Wall toppled in November 1989; and I wrapped up my sojourn in the East Bloc during the summer of 1991 in Moscow, just a week or so before the attempted coup against Gorbachev.

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.