RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-turned-to-trump-to-roll-back-the-progressive-tide-1542672973

At lunch the other day, a friend and strong anti-Trumper wondered aloud what brought all those thousands of people out to Donald Trump’s rallies. “After all,” he said “they’re pretty much the same show.” Mr. Trump on stage, in his usual bragging mode, attacking the press, settling scores with people he feels have betrayed him, while the audience in their red hats applaud uproariously, yelling approval for 90 or so minutes. “What’s the attraction? I don’t get it.”

Not a bad question, really. As I thought it over, it occurred to me that what genuinely excites Mr. Trump’s crowds and draws them to him is their shared antiliberalism. By liberalism I do not mean liberalism of the kind that was at the center of our fathers’ Democratic Party—which supported labor unions, civil liberties, racial integration, involvement in international affairs. I refer to the liberalism now metamorphisized into progressivism, at the heart of the thinking of such Democrats as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others.

This is the progressivism that edges into socialism, that is said to attract the young, that promises a newer, kinder America—the progressivism that exalts identity politics and has no argument with political correctness. As one looks upon the people who attend Mr. Trump’s rallies, one sees the faces not of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” but of the proletariat out of which Karl Marx’s dictatorship was supposed to derive. Yet these people, despite the progressives’ promises to them of free Medicare, free college tuition, and the rest, want nothing to do with Sens. Warren, Sanders, Booker & Co. Quite the reverse: They loathe them.

The man who attends a Trump rally turns on his television set and that night’s news leads off with a Black Lives Matter protest in his city. If that city is Chicago, he might recall that this year some 2,619 people have been shot, 475 shot and killed, the preponderance of these being black people shot by black youth gangs. If it is another city, there is a distinct possibility, as fairly often in the past, that the protest will lead to looting of nearby shops. Al Sharpton, nattily turned out, is likely to have flown in for the festivities to remind everyone about the world’s injustice.

Our man changes channels and is greeted by a story of a long and happy lesbian marriage. He reads in the papers that people are fired from jobs for remarks that, under the reign of political correctness, are interpreted as racist, sexist, you name it; that students feel unsafe at Yale; that a year’s tuition, room and board at Dartmouth is $74,000. Doubtless before long he will read a story about an 11-year-old who is suing his parents for not allowing him to transgender himself.

Oh God, he thinks, make America great again, make America straight again, make America anything but what it is becoming. What elected Donald Trump, and what sustains him, is not his rather dubious charisma, his ideas, his obvious jolt to the country’s earlier slow economic growth, and no, not even the wretched campaign run by Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump was chosen as a rebuke to the progressivism that has made life in America seem chaotic, if not a touch mad, and that now threatens to take over the Democratic Party. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/womens-march-founder-calls-on-sarsour-other-leaders-to-step-down-for-indulging-anti-semitism/

Theresa Shook, founder of the Women’s March, called on leaders of the liberal political-protest movement to step down on Monday amid widespread backlash against their refusal to condemn anti-Semitic and homophobic allies.

“As Founder of the Women’s March, my original vision and intent was to show the capacity of human beings to stand in solidarity and love against the hateful rhetoric that had become a part of the political landscape in the U.S. and around the world,” Shook wrote in a Monday Facebook post.

“Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez of Women’s March, Inc. have steered the Movement away from its true course,” she continued. “I have waited, hoping they would right the ship. But they have not. In opposition to our Unity Principles, they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform by their refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist, hateful beliefs. I call for the current Co-Chairs to step down and to let others lead who can restore faith in the Movement and its original intent.”

Mallory and Sarsour have been routinely criticized by public figures from across the political spectrum for praising Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who routinely espouses anti-Semitic and homophobic views to his large following. The co-chairs have also come under fire for partnering with and endorsing anti-Semitic pro-Palestinian groups.

https://www.city-journal.org/price-controls-on-pharmaceuticals

The American pharmaceutical industry is the most innovative in the world and saves more lives than any other institution. So, of course, it is also the national villain.

In this autumn’s election, once again, voters say that one of the top issues—the top issue, in some polls—is lowering the price of prescription drugs. Politicians of both parties ritually denounce Big Pharma for profiteering. In his first press conference as president, Donald Trump accused drug companies of “getting away with murder,” and Bernie Sanders has called the industry’s greed a “public-health hazard to the American people.” A central plank in the “Better Deal” that Democrats are promising in the midterm elections is for the federal government to “negotiate” drug prices, and some progressives don’t even make that semantical pretense. They call for outright price controls, if not the “deprivatization” of the industry, on the grounds that Big Pharma is too powerful to be constrained by market forces.

At one level, this is just political opportunism. Big Pharma is easy to resent because its products are so essential, and it’s easy to attack because it’s actually not so big. Of every dollar that Americans spend on health, only a dime goes for prescription drugs. The lion’s share of health spending goes to hospitals and people in the health-care professions, whose relatively high fees and salaries are largely responsible for Americans bearing the world’s highest health-care costs. But how many politicians want to go after doctors and nurses? What Democrat would dare arouse the ire of the health-care unions? Much easier to scapegoat the greedy drug companies.

The critics do get one thing right: the pharmaceutical industry is no paragon of free-market capitalism. Companies spend much of their time appeasing regulators instead of satisfying customers. The bureaucratic delays and complexities discourage innovation and competition, allowing some firms to profit by gaming the rules rather than developing new drugs. The system is so opaque and convoluted that both parties agree that it needs to be reformed.

For Democrats, the answer is a system modeled on Canada and European countries with nationalized health systems that use their monopoly power to dictate which drugs are available at what price. On average, Americans spend more money on prescription drugs than people do in those other countries, a favorite talking point for Democrats advocating price controls and “Medicare for All.” As a candidate, Trump endorsed the big-government approach to controlling prices, and, as president, he has personally bullied pharmaceutical executives into rolling back some prices. But so far, thanks to some smart appointments, his administration is pursuing more sensible reforms. Instead of joining the march toward nationalized health care, it is focused on reviving market competition.

These reforms are moving forward at a remarkably brisk pace (for Washington), but there’s always the danger that Trump’s populist instincts and a resurgent Democratic Party could prevail. Politicians of both parties know how popular Democratic ideas on drugs are—and how unpopular Big Pharma is. Public-opinion polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation show that most Republicans as well as Democrats support tighter regulation of prescription-drug prices. Three-quarters of Americans favor outright price controls on some drugs, and more than 90 percent want the federal government to “negotiate” lower prices across the board.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/17/double-

So let me get this straight. In his November 8 New York Times op-ed (“Trump’s Appointment of the Acting Attorney General Is Unconstitutional,” co-authored by George Conway), Neal Katyal writes that President Trump’s designation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general is unconstitutional because the office of attorney general is a “principal office,” which can only be filled by someone who has been confirmed by the Senate. That would be the same Neal Katyal who served as acting solicitor general, also a Senate-confirmed position. And the same Neal Katyal whose boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, had served as acting attorney general at the end of the Clinton Administration and in the early days of the George W. Bush Administration. And the same Neal Katyal who served in an administration that closed out with another acting attorney general, Sally Yates, who acted like an embedded enemy within the Trump Administration until she was finally fired by the president for refusing to defend the president’s travel ban executive order—she claimed that there was no plausible defense for it, even though the policy was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court.

The double standard is so palpable as to be laughable.

To be fair, Katyal’s own position as acting solicitor general can be distinguished. The solicitor general’s office is arguably an inferior office, which means that the Constitution only requires Senate confirmation as the default position. Congress can, by law, vest the appointment of inferior officers in the president alone or in the head of the department. But that is not the case with either Eric Holder’s or Sally Yates’s appointments as acting attorney general. Either their appointments were also unconstitutional—and I don’t recall Conway or Katyal ever arguing that—or Whitaker’s temporary designation as acting attorney general until a successor can be named is equally valid. Conway and Katyal’s implicit attempts to distinguish those cases fall far short of persuasive.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/u-s-house-republicans-to-subpoena-james-comey-loretta-lynch/

In the final weeks of their majority, House Republicans plan to interview two key witnesses as part of a joint committee investigation into the FBI’s investigations of the Trump campaign and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.) is preparing to subpoena former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch for closed-door depositions on Nov. 29 and Dec. 5 respectively, according to the AP.

The subpoenas are part of an investigation by two GOP-led committees into decisions made by the department during the 2016 election, when Democrat Hillary Clinton was cleared in a probe into her email use and Justice officials launched an investigation into Trump’s campaign and Russia. Both Comey and Lynch were in power during that time.

Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform panels have argued that Justice officials were conspiring against Trump’s election, and they have interviewed multiple current and former Justice officials behind closed doors in an effort to prove their case.

It’s unclear if Comey and Lynch will appear, but Comey has indicated in the past that he would be willing to testify at an open hearing.

He again conveyed his willingness to appear in a tweet Friday evening:

“House Republicans can ask me anything they want but I want the American people to watch, so let’s have a public hearing,” he said. “Truth is best served by transparency. Let me know when is convenient,” he said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-hope-for-the-truth

Two men will be key in the next Congress to getting to the bottom of the remaining mysteries of the 2016 election. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, likely chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has indicated he’s not going the let the biggest sleeping dog of the 2016 race lie.

“Totally,” he told CNN when asked whether he would probe FBI actions during the campaign. “The oversight function will be very much front and center.”

On the Democratic side, Rep. Adam Schiff told the Los Angeles Times that his first goal is to restore “comity” to his own fractious House Intelligence Committee. (Presumably the Times reporter didn’t mishear the word “comedy.”) Less felicitously, Mr. Schiff added, “We’re going to be defending the independence of the Justice Department,” by which he meant protecting special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Trump.

Except the Mueller investigation is expected to wrap up soon, and it appears to have found nothing particularly exciting. Meanwhile, Mr. Schiff has finally shown some interest in the truly explosive unfinished business of 2016. He told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer that if former FBI chief James Comey’s account of his actions during the 2016 race is accurate, then his intervention likely represents the “most measurable” and “most significant way in which the Russians may have impacted the outcome of the election.”

Mr. Schiff’s acknowledgment is especially interesting because, unlike the rest of us, he would have seen a classified Justice Department report on this episode, which remains withheld from the public.

Mr. Comey, we now know, was acting on dubious, possibly planted Russian intelligence when he intervened in the Hillary Clinton email matter. He was acting from a counterintelligence motive (he was worried about a Russian effort to discredit Mrs. Clinton’s victory), not the criminal investigatory motive he pretended at the time. In adopting this spy vs. spy rationale, he surely would have consulted with his Obama administration colleagues, CIA Director John Brennan and National Intelligence Director James Clapper.

And when Mr. Comey intervened a second time, reopening the investigation days before the election, he did so to protect the credibility of the original operation. This step, even Mr. Comey now concedes, may have tipped the Electoral College to Mr. Trump. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tale-of-two-new-yorks-1542413122

New York’s Democratic kingpins Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio are getting hit from right, left and center for showering Amazon with some $3 billion in subsidies. The corporate welfare is even more outrageous when juxtaposed with New York City’s dilapidated public housing that the Governor and mayor have long neglected.

This summer the Justice Department sued Nycha for sweeping its disrepair under a shabby rug. Nycha agreed to a court-appointed monitor to oversee $1.2 billion in repairs over the next five years. On Wednesday in a 52-page ruling, federal Judge William Pauley III, a Bill Clinton appointee, rejected the settlement as inadequate and perhaps unconstitutional.

According to the New York State Department of Public Health, 83% of Nycha’s inspected units contained a hazardous condition. “Somewhat reminiscent of the biblical plagues of Egypt, these conditions include toxic lead paint, asthma-inducing mold, lack of heat, frequent elevator outages, and vermin infestations,” the judge noted, adding that the authority “whitewashed these deficiencies for years.”

While Mayor de Blasio agreed to spend an additional $1.2 billion to fix Nycha’s 326 complexes that house 400,000 people, conditions are so awful that the authority estimates it needs $32 billion for repairs. “NYCHA’s current capital needs would not be met until the year 2166,” the judge wrote.

Judge Pauley added that a special monitor “would bring about an unwarranted—and as far as this Court is aware, unprecedented—judicial usurpation of responsibilities that Congress has expressly entrusted to” the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and “raises serious concerns implicating the separation of powers and the delegation of equitable judicial power.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-support-changes-to-criminal-justice-system-1542222870?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=4&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

WASHINGTON—President Trump endorsed bipartisan criminal-justice overhaul efforts at a White House ceremony on Wednesday, throwing his support behind changes to U.S. sentencing laws that he said also would give federal inmates a second chance when they are released.

“Did I hear the word bipartisan?” he joked during a speech at the White House. “I’m thrilled to announce my support for this bipartisan bill that will make our communities safer and give former inmates a second chance at life after they have served their time—so important.”

A new bill under discussion in the Senate is expected to give judges more discretion in crafting sentences in some cases and could reduce mandatory minimum sentences for some drug-related offenses.

The bill also would seek to reduce some penalties affected by the disparity in crack and cocaine sentencing, which was narrowed in a 2010 law. And it would clarify that the practice of “stacking,” or creating a longer sentence from accumulated charges, was not intended for some first-time offenders.

Among the aims of an overhaul, according to a White House official, is to save money with fewer prisoners and ultimately redirect those funds to help law-enforcement efforts.

In May, the House passed a bill from Reps. Doug Collins (R., Ga.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) that didn’t overhaul sentencing guidelines. That bipartisan bill would allow some inmates to serve out the final stretch of their sentences in halfway houses or in home confinement, and would add new protections for pregnant and postpartum female prisoners, among other provisions.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) had been reluctant to bring the House bill up in the Senate, but on Wednesday signaled he would be willing to consider the emerging compromise coming from the Senate.

Mr. McConnell said GOP leaders would be assessing how much support the new deal has once it has been finalized and weighed against the Senate’s other must-pass legislation remaining this year.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is among a group of Republicans who have said they would vote against the bill. A White House official said that they “welcome his feedback, but he’s just one vote.”

The latest effort was spearheaded by Mr. Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has been working with lawmakers on the legislation. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/15/obvious-double-standard-recusals-proves-muller-probe-getting-trump/
Don’t bother reading the underlying rules on conflict of interest, because there’s only one test that matters: Would the recusal help get Trump?

The installation of Matthew Whitaker as the acting attorney general has the recusal pundits barking like shelter dogs in the presence of a trespassing squirrel. In case you’re wondering how the recusal rules work, it’s simply a matter of whether it helps or hurts Trump.

Don’t believe me? See if you can detect a pattern. Since Whitaker might reign in the special counsel, he must be recused, they argue. Similarly, when it appeared former attorney general Jeff Sessions might help Trump, he acceded to demands he recuse himself. But Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is a proven thorn in the president’s side with an obvious conflict of interest, so no demands for recusal there.

Judge Rudy Contreras’s friendship with disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page at the same time he was reviewing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant applications from Strzok did not require recusal from considering the application. But the Trump appointee with authority to consider a search warrant of Trump’s lawyer’s private office was recused, leading to the raid to look for evidence that likely could have been obtained by subpoena.

The recusal pundits called for the recusal of newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh because he might side with the president in future cases. Yet when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg calls Trump a “faker” and openly expresses dismay at the prospect of his presidency, she need not recuse. Don’t bother reading the underlying rules on conflict of interest, because there’s only one test that matters: Would the recusal help get Trump?