RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-gops-clean-bills-of-health-savings-1532895810

The Senate plans to stay in Washington for August this year, and here’s an idea to keep busy: Pass some House health-care reforms that are modest improvements even Democrats should like.

The House last week passed a set of bills that included changes in Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs, which are tax preferred accounts that allow individuals to save for future medical expenses. More than 20 million people have HSAs, which Congress created in 2003, but arbitrary restrictions cramp enrollment.

For one, a person has to be on a plan with a high deductible. A plan can’t cover certain services below the deductible like telemedicine or diabetic test strips, which can save costs over time. HSA money also can’t buy over-the-counter medicine, which is often cheaper than prescription drugs.

HSAs tend to be concentrated in the employer-sponsored or large group market, where insurance is likely to be available and comprehensive. But in the individual market less than 30% of ObamaCare plans are compatible with a health-savings account, according to an analysis from health consultant Roy Ramthun. The rest have deductibles too low (13.7%) or out-of-pocket maximums too high (56.6%) to comport with restrictions.

https://pjmedia.com/video/nunes-american-people-will-be-shocked-by-whats-in-redacted-portion-of-fisa-application/
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said Sunday that the American people will be “shocked” when they see what’s in the still-redacted portions of the FBI’s applications for surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

“We are quite confident that once the American people see these 20 pages, at least for those that will get real reporting on this issue, they will be shocked by what’s in that FISA application,” Nunes said in an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo.

Nunes and other House Republicans have been urging President Trump to declassify what remains hidden in 20 pages of the FISA application.

“I think his lawyers are looking at this to see if they can declassify it sooner rather than later,” said Nunes (R-Calif.) during an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “But the sooner this comes out, the better off we all are because what I’ve said is what’s left that’s redacted, the American people really need to know what’s underneath it.”

After the Department of Justice released portions of the four FISA applications, Democrats claimed that the most damaging information about Page was found in the redacted parts.

“If you look at what they were saying… ‘oh, but the really juicy stuff that proves collusion and how bad Carter Page really was and how they were colluding with Russians — that’s what’s redacted!'”

He said the liberal media changed their tune when they found out that Republicans on the House Intel Committee were trying to get those portions unredacted.

“You hear crickets. You hear nothing,” Nunes said.

Nunes said about 70 to 75 percent of the FISA material was redacted.

“What’s left that’s redacted, the American people really do need to know what’s underneath there,” the congressman said, adding that the Democrats don’t want the truth out there. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/29/a-tentative-trade

Ever since President Trump launched a so-called trade war back in January, the expert political class has been in a tizzy.

Economists warned that U.S.-imposed tariffs aimed at Canada, China, and the European Union would devastate the economy and destroy millions of jobs. Politicians on the Left and the Right condemned the president; some congressional Republicans are threatening to limit the president’s future authority on trade policy. Pundits claimed (hoped?) the measures would most hurt Trump supporters in red states.

But Trump’s latest sucker punch to the expert political class follows a familiar pattern that Our Betters still haven’t figured out. They are the unwitting sparring partners in the president’s entertaining rope-a-dope. Trump makes a hasty, impetuous comment or policy announcement and various experts howl that it will fail and commiserate about the president’s stupidity. Pundits warn it will yield harsh political consequences. The public catches on to a problem it didn’t know existed. The president’s foes capitulate; public views it as a win. Expert political class loses again. (See “Trump will never get 3 percent economic growth” predictions as the most recent example.)

Europe Comes to the Table
Admittedly, it is too soon to say whether the United States will prevail in Trump’s hardline trade gambit, but he can already claim one victory: After referring to the European Union as a trading “foe”—and unleashing the usual chorus of naysayers—Trump issued a joint statement with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker pledging to resolve long-standing trade disputes.

“This is why we agreed today to work together toward zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods,” the statement reads. “We will also work to reduce barriers and increase trade in services, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical products, as well as soybeans. This will open markets for farmers and workers, increase investment, and lead to greater prosperity in both the United States and the European Union. It will also make trade fairer and more reciprocal.”

Score another one for—as expertise expert Tom Nichols calls them—“Trump and the Know-Nothings who support him.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/devin-nunes-washingtons-public-enemy-no-1-1532729666

Tulare, Calif.

It’s 105 degrees as I stand with Rep. Devin Nunes on his family’s dairy farm. Mr. Nunes has been feeling even more heat in Washington, where as chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence he has labored to unearth the truth about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s activities during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. Thanks in large part to his work, we now know that the FBI used informants against Donald Trump’s campaign, that it obtained surveillance warrants based on opposition research conducted for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and that after the election Obama administration officials “unmasked” and monitored the incoming team.

Mr. Nunes’s efforts have provoked extraordinary partisan and institutional fury in Washington—across the aisle, in the FBI and other law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, in the media. “On any given day there are dozens of attacks, each one wilder in its claims,” he says. Why does he keep at it? “First of all, because it’s my job. This is a basic congressional investigation, and we follow the facts,” he says. The “bigger picture,” he adds, is that in “a lot of the bad and problematic countries” that Intelligence Committee members investigate, “this is what they do there. There is a political party that controls the intelligence agencies, controls the media, all to ensure that party stays in power. If we get to that here, we no longer have a functioning republic. We can’t let that happen.”

Mr. Nunes, 44, was elected to Congress in 2002 from Central California. He joined the Intelligence Committee in 2011 and delved into the statutes, standards and norms that underpin U.S. spying. That taught him to look for “red flags,” information or events that don’t feel right and indicate a deeper problem. He noticed some soon after the 2016 election.

The first: Immediately after joining the Trump transition team, Mr. Nunes faced an onslaught of left-wing claims that he might be in cahoots with Vladimir Putin. It started on social media, though within months outlets such as MSNBC were openly asking if he was a “Russian agent.” “I’ve been a Russia hawk going way back,” he says. “I was the one who only six months earlier had called the Obama administration’s failure to understand Putin’s plans and intentions the largest intelligence failure since 9/11. So these attacks, surreal—big red flag.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/in-the-dark-podcast-reveals-miscarriage-of-justice-in-mississippi/

A new podcast sheds light on the case of a man who’s spent the last 22 years in prison, tried for the same murder over and over and over again.

American Public Media’s In the Dark podcast has done more in its two years than many podcasts will likely do in ten. Last year, it won a Peabody Award for what Rashida Jones called its “tour de force reporting” on the 1989 kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling, which examined the absurd, almost comical ineptness of the law-enforcement officials in charge of the Wetterling case. Nothing exposes the incompetence and corruption of bad government like journalists doing good old-fashioned journalism.

This year, In the Dark performed not so much a tour de force as a magnum opus of investigation. The show, hosted by journalist Madeleine Baran along with a crew of reporters and producers, headed to Winona, Miss., to examine what may be the most bizarre legal spectacle in modern American history: A man who has been tried in court six times for the same crime.

That man, Curtis Flowers, is black. He has been charged repeatedly with a gruesome, execution-style mass murder perpetrated in Winona in 1996, at a downtown furniture store where he had briefly worked and from which he had been fired a few days before the crime.

The local district attorney, Doug Evans, a white man, charged Flowers with the murders, claiming that there was enough evidence to place him at the scene of the murders on the day they took place. The verdicts in five of the six trials that subsequently ensued were overturned on appeal; each time, Evans simply charged and tried Flowers again, using the same evidence to convict him once more.

Piece by piece, In the Dark deals serious blows to the evidence that Evans has used to convict Flowers over and over again. The testimony of a ballistics expert is shown to be pointedly dubious; witnesses cited by the prosecution, some of them obviously unreliable, have recanted or contradicted their testimony; the star witness for the prosecution later explicitly admitted that he had lied under oath about Flowers’ having confessed to the murders.

http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/399205-an-obstruction-case-against-trump-would-be-civil-libertarian-nightmare

The New York Times has reported that, according to three sources, special counsel Robert Mueller is trying to stitch together an obstruction of justice case against President Trump based on his public tweets, TV appearances, conversations with public officials and other entirely lawful acts. If this is true, it suggests that there is no “smoking gun” or fire, not even any kindling. It suggests that all Mueller seems to have is some dry twigs from which he is trying to build a bonfire. The Times’ headline — “Mueller looking for Obstruction in Trump Tweets” — should raise a red flag for all civil libertarians. This is exactly the kind of creative manufacturing of crimes from innocent — indeed, constitutionally protected acts — that endangers the liberties of all Americans.

Just imagine a prosecutor going through all of your tweets, all of your conversations, all of your actions and all of your emails in search of a plausible theory of criminality based on an accordion-like statute such as obstruction of justice. If Mueller manages to cobble together an obstruction of justice case from innocent communications, then this dangerous precedent will lie around like a loaded gun ready to be used by any vindictive prosecutors against any plausible target. That target could be you or someone you love. It could be a Democrat or a Republican. It could be a liberal or a conservative.

In Harvey Silverglate’s brilliant and increasingly relevant book, “Three Felonies a Day,” the experienced attorney and author describes a “game” prosecutors play: One of them names a well-known target, and the others scour the criminal code to find three felonies he or she may have committed. If the New York Times report is accurate, Mueller’s team may be playing this game with a real, live target — namely, President Trump.

I recall a case when the Equal Rights Amendment was pending and the votes of Illinois legislators were essential to secure ratification by that state. A naive young woman approached a legislator and offered a contribution to his campaign in exchange for a commitment that he would do the right thing and vote for equal rights for women. The woman was arrested and charged with attempted bribery under a vague, open-ended statute. Civil libertarians were properly outraged.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/07/27/follow-the-money
Our team of auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found nearly 35,000 state and local government employees in Florida brought home six and seven-figure salaries, costing taxpayers $5.5 billion annually.
Since last year, the headcount of these high-compensated Florida government workers jumped by nearly 4,000 employees.
Here are a few examples of what we uncovered:

717 small-town, city, and village employees – including 26 local administrators out-earning every U.S. governor at $180,000.
2,484 State of Florida employees – including $276,000 for Commissioner of Education Pamela Stewart; $218,925 each for Department of Children and Families Medical Executive Directors Josefina Baluga and Steve Brasington.
3,195 teachers and school administrators – including chief academic officer Daniel Gohl ($196,001) in Broward County School District; minority achievement officer James Lawson ($181,120) in Orange County School District; and English and Journalism teacher James Johnson ($121,493) in St. Johns County School District.
13,305 college and university employees – including Vice President of Health Affairs David Guzick ($1.2 million) and Director of the Graduate Tax Program Martin McMahon ($780,392) at the University of Florida.

Not even resignations and retirements can stop some public employees from receiving huge payouts. Bruce Pelly, Palm Beach County’s airport director, pulled in $236,768 in 2017 on top of the $70,968 in annual retirement checks. Pelly worked for more than 20 years before “retiring” in 2010 to collect a $304,000 lump sum payout. Just 30 days later, he was rehired in the exact same position.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/andrew-mccarthy-collusion-comments-fox-news-clarification/

In response to Paging Andy McCarthy

It’s bad enough that I botched what I intended to say on Laura Ingraham’s show last night (and what I think I was pretty clear about if you actually watched the interview). But mea maxima culpaif I’ve confused Jonah by the rest of what I said. And if there’s a three-strikes-and-you’re-out law, I’m going down in flames on that, too: This morning, when I found out to my surprise and annoyance that I’d misspoken, I considered posting another tweet to make it crystal clear that I have never changed my position on the Trump Tower meeting. Specifically, I was going to tweet out this column again . . . but I got distracted by a phone call and never got around to it.

Too bad, because maybe I could have saved Jonah some time.

I won’t belabor what I’ve already corrected on Twitter (a correction I am grateful to Jonah for including). I have a bad habit of interrupting myself, particularly at the start of a sentence when I change my mind about how best to say something. When I did that last night, the garble resulted in what appears (if a dash is not inserted where I interrupted myself) to be a sentence that stands for the opposite of what I was arguing. Enough said.

Now, on to my confusion of collusion.

It is a challenge in a time-crunched television interview, with people occasionally talking over one another, to explain complex issues and distinctions adequately. I offer this in mitigation, not as an excuse. I’ve been harping on the distinction between “collusion” and “conspiracy” from the beginning. Since I criticize others for conflating the two, I have an added obligation to avoid that error myself, even when pressed for time. I didn’t do that well enough last night. When I said that turning to a foreign government for campaign dirt was not “collusion,” I meant it was not the collusion that is the rationale for the Trump-Russia investigation — specifically, the cyber-espionage conspiracy to influence the 2016 campaign.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/opinion/sunday/motherhood-in-

Teachers and parents who subject their children to gender confusion including hormone treatments, or those who subject infant girls to barbaric genital mutilation are not arrested….rsk

CHICAGO — I was on my way home from dropping my kids off at preschool when a police officer called to ask if I was aware there was an outstanding warrant for my arrest.

“No, no,” I told him. “I didn’t know that.”

I needed to call my husband, but my fingers were shaking. I don’t remember if I was crying when he answered, only that he was saying he couldn’t understand me, that I needed to calm down, to tell him what had happened.

What happened began over a year before on a cool March day in 2011, at the end of a visit with my parents in Virginia. I needed to run an errand before our flight home to Chicago, and my son, then 4, didn’t want to get out of the car.

“Come on,” I said.

“No, no, no! I wait here.”

I took a deep breath. I knew what I was supposed to do. But I was tired. I was late. I didn’t want, at that moment, to deal with a meltdown. And there was something else: a small, quiet voice I’d been hearing more and more lately. “Why?” the voice asked.

Why did I have to fight this battle? He wasn’t asking to Rollerblade in traffic. He just wanted to sit in the car. Why couldn’t I leave him, just this once?

If it had been warm out, I would have said no. I knew about how quickly a closed car can overheat, even on a 60-degree day. But it was cool and cloudy. I’d grown up in that same town in the 1980s and had spent hours waiting in the back seat of my parents’ station wagon, windows open, reading or daydreaming, while they ran errands. Had so much really changed since then?

So I told him I’d be right back. I cracked the windows and child-locked the doors and set the alarm. When I got back five minutes later, he was still playing his game, smiling. We picked up his sister and our suitcases back at my parents’ house and caught our flight home.

It took me a while to figure out what had taken place in the parking lot — that a stranger had watched me go into the store, recorded my son, recorded the license plate on my mother’s car and called 911. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/27/how-far-will-the-left-go

My colleague Victor Davis Hanson raised the question in these pages the other day: “Just how far will the Left go?” in its attempt to overthrow the government of Donald J. Trump? With his customary precision, Hanson laid out the catalog of enormities committed by the Left in its pursuit of Trump and of conservatives in general, among them the fatuous investigation led by Mr. Straight Arrow himself, the demonization of Trump-as-Hitler, their frustration over losing the 2016 election (which they thought would cement their hostile takeover of the American Republic) and their inability to mask their true anti-American natures any longer.

So let me provide an answer: As far as they can, for as long as it takes.

The Poison Behind “Youthful Idealism”
I first became aware of the deadly hostility of the American Left back in the early 1970s, during the height of the student protests against the Vietnam War (largely motivated by a fervent desire to avoid the draft), when they hitched their “youthful idealism” to two causes: anti-imperialism—you don’t hear much about that these days, but that was how the Vietnam War was mischaracterized—and anti-racism, a byproduct of the American civil rights movement. Since then, almost every cause the Left has espoused has combined some elements of America-as-predator (whether international or domestic) and America-as-racist-bastion.

Vietnam was ideal for both tropes. We were waging (in their eyes) and aggressive war against brown people, because we could. In their telling, the domino theory—a holdover from the aftermath of World War II—was merely a fictive fig leaf to conceal our country’s rapaciousness, belligerence, and innate hegemonistic tendencies. We had run out of Indians to kill, so now we had to venture abroad to find fresh victims. And we did it because they were brown. What happened to South Vietnam and Cambodia after the Communist victory was of no interest to them.