RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pulitzer-prize-winning-columnist-charles-krauthammer-dies-at-68-

Charles Krauthammer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist whose incisive critiques made him an influential voice in Washington for decades, died Thursday. He was 68.

Mr. Krauthammer had said earlier this month that he was battling an aggressive form of cancer and his doctors told him he had weeks to live.

A Harvard-educated psychiatrist, Mr. Krauthammer was paralyzed below the neck in a freak diving accident in his 20s while in medical school. He used a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

After practicing medicine for a few years, he moved to Washington to direct planning in psychiatric research during the Carter administration and became a speech writer for Walter Mondale.

He then began contributing articles and political commentary to the New Republic, where he would eventually become a full-time writer and editor. In 1984, he won a National Magazine Award and began writing a regular column for the Washington Post. The column later was nationally syndicated.

“This is a hugely sad day for me, and I know in that I’m no different than so many Post readers,” said Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, on Thursday. “For decades Charles has written a column of unparalleled principle and integrity, not to mention humor and intellectual virtuosity. There will be no replacing him.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/a_screaming_rabid_radical_employed_by_the_department_of_justice.html

A far-left mob claimed a public relations victory this week, surrounding and screaming at Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as she dined in a Mexican restaurant, eventually driving her out. The news stories featuring the screamers drew hundreds and hundreds of stories in the press. But what was really notable was who was doing it – the lowlife division of the Deep State: an openly far-left activist actually employed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Daily Caller had the story:

One of the activists who chased Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen out of a Mexican restaurant Tuesday night over the Trump administration’s immigration policies is an employee of the Department of Justice, The Daily Caller News Foundation has confirmed.

Members of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America crashed Nielsen’s meal with a demonstration full of chants and other outbursts.

One of those participants, Allison Hrabar, actually works for the Trump administration — as a paralegal in the DOJ.

“Kirstjen Nielsen, you’re a villain, locking up immigrant children,” activists can be heard saying in a video.

Now, you expect someone working at the Department of Justice to be an even-tempered person, someone concerned about fairness to all, whether on the right or the left, someone who actually believes in the law, and not someone who would politicize government, as Hugo Chavez did. Whoops, forgot – both Hugo Chavez and the activist involved in this protest, Allison Hrabar, are socialists, meaning, party over state, along with the end justifies the means.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/mueller-investigation-obstruction-ig-report-should-end/

The same logic that spared FBI and Justice Department officials harsher treatment in Michael Horowitz’s report should inoculate the president.

While generally cautious about criticizing Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Clinton-emails investigation, Trump supporters have taken aim at its chief logical flaw: Although key investigators harbored anti-Trump and pro-Clinton bias, and even made statements indicating an intention to act on that bias, the IG did not find that this bias was the proximate cause of any particular investigative decision.

This conclusion is easy to rebut; I did so myself in a column last week. Yet, the Trump camp should also be embracing it. Why? Because if this is the Justice Department’s position, then Special Counsel Robert Mueller has no business investigating the president for obstruction.

The IG’s rationale has been vulnerable to attack because of the way it has been distorted by FBI director Christopher Wray and congressional Democrats. They blithely assert that the IG found no bias in the FBI’s decision-making. That claim insults our intelligence.

The report documents a surfeit of political animus. Chapter Twelve, in which the IG marshals text messages and other recorded communications between investigators, is breathtaking. The report does not say that the investigators’ manifest loathing of Trump, their expressed intent to derail his presidential bid, and their desire to bring about his impeachment were irrelevant. It says that (a) because there were legitimate policy considerations that could have informed every one of their investigative decisions, and (b) because, as a matter of law, the FBI and Justice Department have broad discretion to make such judgment calls, (c) it is not the IG’s place to second-guess those decisions.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/21/scandals-sanitized-with-linguistic-

Throughout Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s massive report on the Hillary Clinton email investigation are lots of strange things. One of the weirdest is the extent to which the FBI went to make up words and phrases to disguise reality.

An early draft of the 2016 FBI report on the email scandal was reportedly subjected to linguistic surgery to exonerate the former secretary of state, who at the time was the Democratic nominee for president. Clinton was originally found to be “grossly negligent” in using an illegal email server. That legalistic phrase is used by prosecutors to indict for violation of laws governing the wrongful transmission of confidential government documents.

Yet the very thought of a likely President Clinton in court so worried the chief investigator, FBI Director James Comey, that he watered down “grossly negligent” to the mere “extremely careless.”

FBI investigators also had concluded that it was “reasonably likely” foreign nations had read Clinton’s unsecured emails. Comey intervened to mask such a likelihood by substituting the more neutral word “possible.”

Former President Barack Obama was found to have improperly communicated with Clinton over her illegal server while she was in a foreign country. Obama had denied that fact by falsely claiming that he never knew of her server until much later, after it was publicized.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-aclu-retreats-from-free-expression-1529533065

The American Civil Liberties Union has explicitly endorsed the view that free speech can harm “marginalized” groups by undermining their civil rights. “Speech that denigrates such groups can inflict serious harms and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality,” the ACLU declares in new guidelines governing case selection and “Conflicts Between Competing Values or Priorities.”

This is presented as an explanation rather than a change of policy, and free-speech advocates know the ACLU has already lost its zeal for vigorously defending the speech it hates. ACLU leaders previously avoided acknowledging that retreat, however, in the apparent hope of preserving its reputation as the nation’s premier champion of the First Amendment.

But traditional free-speech values do not appeal to the ACLU’s increasingly partisan progressive constituency—especially after the 2017 white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville. The Virginia ACLU affiliate rightly represented the rally’s organizers when the city attempted to deny them a permit to assemble. Responding to intense post-Charlottesville criticism, last year the ACLU reconsidered its obligation to represent white-supremacist protesters.

The 2018 guidelines claim that “the ACLU is committed to defending speech rights without regard to whether the views expressed are consistent with or opposed to the ACLU’s core values, priorities and goals.” But directly contradicting that assertion, they also cite as a reason to decline taking a free-speech case “the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/up_to_60_organizations_may_sue_splc_for_defamation.html

According to a report from Tyler O’Neill at PJ Media, up tto 60 mostly conservative organizations may sue the Southern Poverty Law Center for being included in the organization’s list of “hate groups.” The SPLC just settled a defamation suit for more than $3 million with Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz, whom the SPLC branded an “anti-Muslim extremist.”

Dozens of Christian and conservative groups have been similarly unfairly tarred by the SPLC as “hate groups,” and it appears they will exact their own revenge on the organization.

The SPLC published its “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists” in 2016, listing Nawaz for an ever-changing list of reasons. The left-wing group first falsely claimed Nawaz had called for “an outright ban on the niqab,” or veil. This first charge disappeared from the website, and Quilliam accused the SPLC of “reverse engineering their justification to keep Maajid Nawaz on their list.” The SPLC later justified attacking him because he visited a strip club for his bachelor party.

Worse, the Islamist Muslim owner of the strip club who leaked the story to the press said he wanted to punish Nawaz for “being an atheist.” The SPLC, Quilliam argued, was “acting like religious police.”

“I’ve memorized half of the Quran, I am a Muslim, I am born and raised a Muslim, I learned classical Arabic, I’ve spent time in prison,” Nawaz declared last year, shortly after announcing his lawsuit. “You know who else lists heretics? The jihadists. We know what happens when you list heretics among Muslims in this way: They end up dead.”

The SPLC statement of apology was self-serving:

“The Southern Poverty Law Center was wrong to include Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation in our Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists,” Cohen said. “Since we published the Field Guide, we have taken the time to do more research and have consulted with human rights advocates we respect.”

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) on Tuesday outed two previously unidentified anti-Trump, pro-Hillary FBI investigators who were referred for investigation by the inspector general.

Meadows unmasked the pair during a joint House Oversight and Judiciary Committee hearing examining the IG report on the bureau’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Friday referred five current and former FBI employees — including Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — for disciplinary action. In addition to Strzok and Page, the report identifies anti-Trump text messages from FBI employees referred to as FBI Attorney 2, FBI Agent 1, and FBI Agent 5.

According to the IG, one of the unidentified pro-Clinton FBI investigators interviewed Hillary Clinton on July 2, 2016, along with Strzok.

Rep Ted Poe (R-Texas) asked the IG if he could reveal the identities of the unnamed FBI officials who were mentioned in the report. But Horowitz said the FBI was withholding the names from the public “because they work on counterintelligence.”

“So the FBI does not want their names released?” Poe asked Horowitz.

“Correct,” Horowitz replied.

FBI Attorney 2 reportedly worked as the top lawyer on the Russia probe and also worked on the special counsel’s investigation until this February.

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes referred to this individual in a tweet Monday:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/06/berkeley-jury-finds-antifa-not-guilty-of-violent-beating-of-trump-supporter-despite-multiple-witnesses Remember the Antifa riots in Berkeley back in 2017?At one of the rallies, several firefighters and police officers personally witnessed at close range a mob of Antifa rioters violently attack a guy who was just sitting on a wall; the attackers would have killed the man if the cops had not interrupted the attack […]

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/06/18/jury-deliberates-over-alleged-berkeley-protest-attack-of-trump

The jury has found all five defendants not guilty of misdemeanor assault, and not guilty of assault causing great bodily injury, also a misdemeanor. About 30 supporters of the defendants were in the courtroom for the reading of the verdicts, which began at about 3:40 p.m. Some cried quietly as the clerk read the decisions for each person. After the reading, there was a brief round of applause before the judge released the jury.

One of the defendants, Scott Hedrick, said it was a relief for the case to be over.

“It’s been over a year of this,” he said. “It was intense. We’re all just ready to move on with our lives.”

The men, who met through the underground punk scene, said they now plan to hold benefit concerts to help raise money for their attorneys.

Several jurors told Berkeleyside the group found itself in agreement relatively early on regarding the not guilty verdicts. But they wanted to make sure they worked through the process carefully. They deliberated for nearly a day. Ultimately, they said, they were not convinced a crime had occurred. There were other viable explanations for what took place, they said.

Original story: March 4, 2017, brought a day of violent political clashes to downtown Berkeley’s Civic Center Park. The event, dubbed the “March on Berkeley” by its pro-Trump organizers, was the first of several large protests in the city in 2017 that would pit pro- and anti-Trump activists against each other. There were verbal altercations and street brawls. And despite efforts by some to keep events peaceful, nearly every rally resulted in violence and arrests. Both sides have blamed the other for provoking the fights.

Wednesday, a trial began in Alameda County Superior Court where jurors have been asked to decide if five self-described “anti-fascist” defendants are guilty of attacking Trump supporter Moshe Daniel Quillinan during his evaluation by Berkeley firefighters for a large cut on his head that ultimately required 10 staples to close, according to testimony last week.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/20/a-feeble-pushback-against

For even the most cynical among us, there is a Baghdad Bob aura of unreality about the Justice Department Inspector General’s report absolving the FBI of partisan wrongdoing in the Clinton email investigation. The IG report follows in Comey’s footsteps: enumerating appalling and illegal behavior, and then concluding there is nothing to prosecute.

There’s no such thing as being too cynical when it comes to our government. Yet once again, Americans have had to suffer through the cycle: assurances that while the FBI investigation of Clinton was crooked, the honest Inspector General Michael Horowitz would bring us justice. This from the same press that assured us Robert Mueller is an honorable man.

The contrast with the treatment meted out to President Trump, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and camp Carter Page, is turning people’s stomachs.

Alan Dershowitz, who has emerged as the only Democrat on the national stage with any principles, explained what should be plain to see, in an interview with Maria Bartiromo:

“We’ll stop him.” That is not an expression of bias . . . It’s a message to the American people that the FBI is going to interfere in an election . . . . How can Strzok remain an FBI agent? The red line was crossed . . . you’re not allowed to try to use your office to try and stop somebody from being elected president of the United States.

Horowitz’s report supports Dershowitz’s view that a red line was crossed:

The inspector general concluded that Strzok’s text, along with others disparaging Trump, “is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.

But the report exonerates Strzok anyway.