RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/supreme-court-judicial-philosophy-constitutional-system/

Defining the proper role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system

Editor’s Note: The following is the first in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips will lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track.

The end of the sordid ordeal that led to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation provides conservatives the opportunity to think deeply about what they want from the Supreme Court. Conservatives, of course, would have fought for Kavanaugh whether he was a stalwart Clarence Thomas or a wandering Anthony Kennedy. At stake were the principles of fairness and due process that should guide all of our institutions, even when they intersect with the #MeToo movement’s claims. The courts, Congress, federal agencies, state governments, and even the most delusional of our great societal institutions — the media and our colleges and universities — must not banish facts, proof, and the right to be heard.

But now that Justice Kavanaugh has assumed his seat on the Court, conservatives can take a step back and consider their agenda for the future. Democrats launched their scorched-earth war against Kavanaugh, an outstanding judge and distinguished public servant, precisely because his appointment promised a reliable fifth vote for a conservative majority. There’s a good argument to be made that conservatives have not had such a working majority on the Court since 1936. Even though Republican presidents have appointed the majority of justices since 1968, when Richard Nixon won on a law-and-order platform, their appointments have often “grown in office” and drifted leftwards. But the outrageousness of Democratic attacks on Justice Kavanaugh should guarantee that he will not follow in the path of Republican-appointed Justices such as Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, and David Souter, who became lions of the Left.

The Supreme Court now has the opportunity to reconsider doctrines at odds with the Constitution’s original meaning. Before they devolved into an ugly political and personal brawl, Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings revealed, among other things, the fault lines in American constitutional politics.

Democratic senators, as well as their expert witnesses called in opposition, advanced a view of a judge as simply the enabler of a political party’s policy preferences. They cross-examined Judge Kavanaugh on the specific outcomes he had reached in cases relating to certain groups of interest: minorities, women, environmental organizations, and the like. In their view, the only difference between a judge and a congressman is the former wears a robe.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/justice-department-charges-russian-interference-midterm-election/

The Justice Department charged a Russian national on Friday with conspiring to interfere in America’s midterm elections.

Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States in the first criminal case to confront Russian efforts to interfere in the upcoming elections. Khusyaynova, who is not in American custody, is alleged to have spent almost two and a half years in charge of a Russian influence operation’s $35 million budget, part of which was used to conduct what the group called “information warfare against the United States,” including “promoting news postings on social networks.”

According to prosecutors’ indictment, the group, Project Lakhta, pretended to be American political activists during both the 2016 and 2018 election seasons in order to sow divisions by highlighting controversial issues, including immigration, gun control, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL national anthem controversy.

“Through supporting radical groups” the conspirators aimed to “aggravate the conflict between minorities and the rest of the population,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

“The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions,” U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger said.

“The Conspirators’ activities did not exclusively adopt one ideological viewpoint; they wrote on topics from varied and sometimes opposing perspectives,” FBI Special Agent David Holt wrote in the criminal complaint.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/new-york-man-arrested-for-threatening-kavanaugh-supporting-senators/

Another day, another unhinged Democrat is arrested for threatening to kill Republicans.

Ronald DeRisi, 74, of Smithtown, Long Island, was arrested Friday morning after allegedly leaving more than ten “threatening voice messages” at the offices of two senators because of their support for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

DeRisi allegedly called the home state offices of the senators and left “expletive-laced” threats, according to the federal complaint.

The senators are not named in the complaint, but the New York Post has identified them as Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Susan Collins (R-Maine).

In a Sept. 27 message, DeRisi allegedly left a voice message claiming he had a “present” for “Senator-1” (Grassley), saying, “It’s a 9 millimeter. Side of your f***ing skull you scumbag motherf*cker.”

The 85-year-old senator got another call that same day, saying: “We’re tired of this guy sucking taxpayers’ money! Getting a free f***ing ride! How many more years you gonna do it? None! He’s a dead man! 9 millimeter, side of the f***ing head! If f***ing Kavanaugh gets in, he’s dead f***ing meat! Actually even if Kavanaugh doesn’t get in he’s dead f***ing meat. 9 millimeter, side of the head, you f***ing old bastard.”

President Trump appeared at a Thursday night campaign rally in Missoula, Montana on behalf of Republican Matt Rosendale’s bid to unseat Democratic Senator Jon Tester in the upcoming midterm election. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) and Rep. Greg Gianforte (R–Bozeman) also attended the event in support of the president and Rosendale.

Trump summed up his 2018 campaign message in one sentence: “Democrats produce mobs, Republicans produce jobs.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271687/72-la-hate-crimes-hit-jews-only-12-muslims-daniel-greenfield

The media yammers compulsively about Islamophobia. And yet, in reality, the majority of religion-based hate crimes target Jews.

In Los Angeles, it’s 72%.

The latest report from the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations shows that 72 percent of hate crimes against religion in the county were against Jews in 2017.

Following Jews on the list were Muslims, Catholics and Protestants:

Muslims were at 12%. Catholics at 11%.

A recent brutal videotaped attack by a Muslim against an Orthodox Jew in New York, pictured above, should serve as an important reminder that Muslim anti-Semitism is a much more serious problem than any supposed Islamophobia.

And it’s a problem that no one is allowed to talk about.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/smiling-at-corruption-1539903902

Democrats have failed all year to find a cogent midterm campaign theme, but one appears to be attaching to them all the same: Listen to what we say; ignore what we do.

Nowhere is this truer than in blue, blue New Jersey, where Sen. Bob Menendez is suddenly struggling. Businessman and Republican nominee Bob Hugin has spent months educating Garden State voters on Mr. Menendez’s adventures with a now-convicted criminal. The more the voters learn, the tighter the race becomes. Recent public polls have awarded Mr. Menendez a 6- or 7-point lead, though a new internal Hugin poll claims the gap is now less than 2.

Democrats are alarmed enough that the Senate Majority PAC this week decided to reroute a precious $3 million to bolster Mr. Menendez with television advertising. The decision is extraordinary, given the number of Senate seats Democrats are already struggling to defend, many in states President Trump carried. But it is even more extraordinary for the statement—campaign theme, if you will—Democrats are rolling out with this ad buy. Namely, don’t believe us.

This is the party that claims to be running against a Republican “culture of corruption.” Democrats have highlighted the conviction of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and introduced anticorruption bills in Congress. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in August even provided her members a “toolkit” for talking about supposed GOP misdeeds. They present the Trump White House as some mix of the yakuza and a drug cartel.

Yet here Democrats are intervening on behalf of the one federal lawmaker to have been definitively judged by his peers as corrupt in recent years—to have abused his office, to have scorned ethics rules, to have brought “discredit” on the Senate. A bipartisan letter from the Senate Ethics Committee in April “severely admonished” Mr. Menendez, finding that for six years he had “knowingly and repeatedly accepted gifts of significant value” from his close friend and Democratic Party donor, Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen. The gifts included luxury private-plane flights, soirees in Paris hotels, and free accommodation at a Dominican Republican villa—where Mr. Menendez stayed not once or twice but 19 times. CONTINUE AT SITE

It takes some kind of convoluted thinking to turn Glenn Simpson into a victim.

After all, the Fusion GPS chief is one of a handful of people primarily responsible for concocting and peddling the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax for the past three years. There is not an investigation or a news article or a human target related to the Trump-Russia scheme that doesn’t have Simpson’s fingerprints on it. When the complete story of the biggest political scandal in U.S. history finally is written, Glenn Simpson will be the prologue.

But his pals in the elite media see Simpson as a martyr, a victim of congressional investigators hounding an innocent guy just trying to make a buck. News coverage about Simpson’s refusal to answer questions on Capitol Hill bordered on laughable—if not satirical—and willfully overlooked big parts of Simpson’s tale of self-inflicted woe.

Members of both the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees called Simpson back this week to testify amid new information that disputes his previous statements to Congress. After defying their request, he was served with a subpoena to appear; for nearly an hour on Tuesday morning, Simpson invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Now before I get too deep into the headlines from the elite media, let’s think back just six months ago when Michael Cohen took the Fifth in connection with the Stormy Daniels lawsuit. Reporters and pundits exploded with glee, insisting Cohen’s move was a “huge development” that could lead to more trouble for the president.

But Simpson’s constitutional tactic, on the other hand, was met either with sympathy or silence. The Washington Post downplayed Simpson’s appearance simply as part of the “probe into how FBI and Justice Department officials conducted themselves during investigations of Trump’s Russia ties and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.” (Nah, Washington Post, Congress actually is trying to figure out who lied, who misled a FISA court, who illegally leaked classified information and who was part of an unprecedented, politically-motivated FBI investigation into a presidential campaign. These are, like, real crimes, not trivial matters like whether or not they returned emails on time. But whatevs.)

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271675/fed-judge-hillarys-top-crony-committed-perjury-daniel-greenfield

The FBI didn’t investigate Hillary Clinton’s email crimes. It covered them up by helping destroy the evidence while handing out immunity agreements like candy. It was one of the worst abuses of power in an administration already swimming in abuses of power.

At the heart of it all were Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.

Mills was Hillary’s right-hand woman who had been accused of playing a role in various cover-ups. Including this one.

In a combative exchange at a hearing Friday in Washington, D.C., a federal judge unabashedly accused career State Department officials of lying and signing “clearly false” affidavits to derail a series of lawsuits seeking information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server and her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said he was “shocked” and “dumbfounded” when he learned that FBI had granted immunity to former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills during its investigation into the use of Clinton’s server, according to a court transcript of his remarks.

“I had myself found that Cheryl Mills had committed perjury and lied under oath in a published opinion I had issued in a Judicial Watch case where I found her unworthy of belief, and I was quite shocked to find out she had been given immunity in — by the Justice Department in the Hillary Clinton email case,” Lamberth said during Friday’s hearing.

The Department of Justice’s Inspector General (IG), Michael Horowitz, noted in a bombshell reportin June that it was “inconsistent with typical investigative strategy” for the FBI to allow Mills to sit in during the agency’s interview of Clinton during the email probe, given that classified information traveled through Mills’ personal email account. “[T]here are serious potential ramifications when one witness attends another witness’ interview,” the IG wrote.

Mills was wrongly allowed to act as if she were Hillary Clinton’s lawyer.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/10/russell-kirk-american-cicero/

It behooves us to honour the codifiers of conservative core values. Among that pantheon of great thinkers, Kirk’s prodigious output warrants both reflection and genuflection — not least right now in Australia, where what passes for conservativism could use a refresher course in fundamental principles.

Tomorrow, October 19, marks the centenary of the birth of Russell Amos Augustine Kirk (left), who died in 1994. Kirk’s name may not be familiar to many Australians, even to Australian conservatives, but he is uniformly regarded as being the father of modern philosophical American conservatism, revived almost miraculously after World War II at a time of liberal ascendancy.

Kirk stands as a public intellectual (a term often misapplied these days) alongside those two modern British giants of conservative thought, Sir Roger Scruton and Michael Oakeshott. And he stands beside William F. Buckley Jr as the American most influential in steering conservatism towards modern America and modern America towards conservatism.

Kirk was an historian, a cultural critic, a literary critic, a classics scholar, a Burke scholar, a novelist, an academic, an essayist extraordinaire, a commentator, a fellow traveller with the Southern agrarians. A small town American rural town dweller. A self described (as noted by Kirk’s biographer Bradley Birzer) “gothic romantic” and “Bohemian Tory”. In Scruton’s words, a mind “turned away from the world.” Wishing for an “aristocracy of scholars.” Sounds promising.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/progressive-agony-democrats-brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court/

In the wake of Obama, the Democratic party was a shipwreck, to be saved only by Hillary and the Supreme Court . . .

What has transformed the Democratic party into an anguished progressive movement that incorporates the tactics of the street, embraces maenadism, reverts to Sixties carnival barking, and is radicalized by a new young socialist movement? Even party chairman Tom Perez concedes that there are “no moderate Democrats left,” and lately the rantings of Cory Booker, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez confirm that diagnosis.

Obama, the Fallen God

Paradoxically, Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 and 2012 and yet helped to erode the old Democratic party in the process. He ended up in opulent retirement while ceding state legislatures, governorships, the House, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court to conservative Republicans.

Obama had promised leftists — in his prior brief tenure in the Senate he had compiled the most partisan record of his 99 colleagues — that his social-justice methods and agendas would lead to a proverbial “permanent Democratic majority.” Do we remember the February 2009 Newsweek obsequious cover story “We Are All Socialists Now”?

Supposedly, changing demography, massive illegal immigration, and identity politics had preordained a permanent 51 percent “Other” whose minority statuses, as defined by gender and race, had now become a majority, given the destined demise of the white working classes. If Obama had not existed, someone like Corey Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, or Kirsten Gillibrand was supposedly foreordained to be president anyway.

But while Obama sermonized about our predestined “arc of history” and how its moral curve bent this way and that, he managed to lose both his supermajority in the Senate and the House itself by 2011. By 2015, the Senate lost its Democratic majority.

Ruling by pen-and-phone executive order only took the country more leftward. And it came at the price of stagnating the economy, acerbating social, cultural, and racial differences, raising taxes, and recalibrating foreign policy.

Obama bequeathed to his successors neither a popular progressive record nor a robust economy nor a stellar foreign-policy success. If he did ensure massive minority voting registration and bloc voting, that served largely himself — and came at the cost of alienating independents and the working classes. In other words, Obama most certainly did pass on to his successors the downside of his polarizing sermonizing and divisiveness, but not the upside of record minority turnout and uniform voting.