RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/ben-sasses-tell-it-like-it-is-moment/

The Nebraska senator’s statement may wind up being the most blistering moment of the hearings.

As the hearings to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court generated a partisan circus — complete with protesters in Handmaid’s Tale garb — one man stood above the fray to deliver a splash of cold water to the face of Congress. That man was Ben Sasse.

Senator Sasse (R-Neb.) made one of the most impassioned statements of his career on Tuesday. In ten minutes, he held forth on what is wrong with the politicization of the Supreme Court nomination process.

The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips broke Sasse’s speech down into four bullet points:

1. Congress is set up to be the most po­lit­i­cal branch. “This is sup­posed to be the in­sti­tu­tion dedi­cat­ed to po­lit­i­cal fights,” Sasse said.

2.But in the name of politics, lawmakers have de­cid­ed to keep their jobs rath­er than take tough votes. “Most people here want their jobs more than they re­al­ly want to do legis­la­tive work, and so they punt their legis­la­tive work to the next branch,” Sasse said.

3. Be­cause Congress of­ten lets the ex­ec­u­tive branch write rules, and Americans aren’t sure who in the gov­ern­ment bureauc­ra­cy to talk to, that leaves Americans with no oth­er place than the courts to turn to ex­press their frus­tra­tion with poli­cies. And the Su­preme Court, with its nine vis­i­ble mem­bers, is a con­veni­ent out­let. Sasse: “This trans­fer of pow­er means people yearn for a place where politics can be done, and when we don’t do a lot of big po­lit­i­cal debate here, people trans­fer it to the Su­preme Court. And that’s why the Su­preme Court is in­creas­ing­ly a sub­sti­tute po­lit­i­cal battle­ground for America.”

4. Sasse’s final point is one you can prob­a­bly guess is com­ing by now: That this proc­ess needs to change. If Congress did more legis­lat­ing, these Su­preme Court nom­i­na­tion bat­tles would get less po­lit­i­cal, he ar­gues: “If we see lots and lots of pro­tests in front of the Su­preme Court, that’s a pret­ty good ba­rom­e­ter of the fact that our re­pub­lic isn’t heal­thy. They shouldn’t be pro­test­ing in front of the Su­preme Court, they should be pro­test­ing in front of this body.”

Clearly, in the senator’s eyes, Congress isn’t doing what the public has elected them to do, and this failure of the body to do its job has led directly to the divided, heated hearings we see every time a potential Supreme Court justice is up for confirmation these days. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/capitol-police-arrested-143-protesters-in-the-first-two-days-of-the-kavanaugh-hearings/

From the very first moments of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats and protesters interrupted and shouted down the proceedings. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) likened the situation to “mob rule,” and the Capitol Police reported that in the first two days, they have arrested 143 protesters.

“The United States Capitol Police responded to numerous incidents of unlawful demonstration activities within the Senate Office Buildings that were associated with today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing,” the police said in a statement on Wednesday evening.

“Sixty-six individuals were removed from the Committee room in the Hart Senate Office Building, and were charged with D.C. Code §22–1321 – Disorderly conduct,” the statement reported. “In addition, six individuals were removed from the fourth floor of the Russell Senate Office Building for unlawful demonstration activities and were charged with D.C. Code §22-1307 – Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding.”

Finally, one person “was arrested in the Hart Atrium and was charged with D.C. Code §22-1307 – Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding, and D.C. Code §22-405.01 – Resisting Arrest.”

These 73 protesters joined the 70 arrested on Tuesday. The Capitol Police reported removing 61 people on the first day of the hearings, and charging them with disorderly conduct. They also removed nine more protesters from the second floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building for unlawful demonstration.

The hearings are ongoing, with no sign that the protests will stop.

As Law & Crime’s Ron Blitzer reported, three medical doctors have claimed that the protesters are being paid to stand up in the middle of the hearings and start shouting, only to be escorted out and charged by police.

Adam Schindler, president of Schindler Digital, tweeted two photos: one showing a woman getting paid while in line to enter the hearing, and another showing the same woman escorted out of the hearing.

Schindler presented the photos as “proof the protesters were paid off in line.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/05/the

The New York Times hit a new journalistic low on Wednesday with the publication of an anonymous op-ed, purportedly by a senior member of the Trump Administration, that reveals the existence of a sapper within the president’s circle. No doubt commissioned to coincide with the release of Bob Woodward’s latest exercise in Washington fiction, Fear, as well the orgy of crocodile tears occasioned by the passing of John McCain, it portrays an erratic, amoral president entirely unmoored from previous notions of ideological or party fidelity, whose impulsive behavior his aides are trying, with only some success, to contain and correct.

“This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state,” writes the author. “It’s the work of the steady state.”

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful. It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

Not for the first time, what’s going on in Washington brings to mind not the late Roman Empire, but the early one—the Julian line that began with Caesar, passed through Augustus and Tiberius, and then degenerated into the reigns of Caligula, Claudius, and ended with Nero. As the Republic morphed into the Empire, the Senate receded in importance, as did the twin consuls, annually elected. Powerful women—the mothers, wives, and mistresses of the emperors—wielded great power. And yet, in the end, nearly all died unnatural deaths, assassinated (all but Augustus, in fact), murdered, executed, or forced to suicide. To spare you reading Gibbon in his magnificent entirety: the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was written in the stars, right from the start, just as Shakespeare said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271240/nike-social-justice-slave-labor-shoe-hates-america-daniel-greenfield

It’s a bad time for bad sneakers.

Nike sales have seen their slowest growth in seven years. It was the worst performing Dow stock of 2016. Americans don’t seem to want badly made overpriced shoes put together by slave labor.

The failing company tried to turn around its poor sales by doubling down on its abrasive lefty politics. Nike’s Consumer Direct Offense was supposed to stand for reclaiming American market share, instead of directly offending consumers. But if Nike can’t sell its shoddy athletic wear, it can offend Americans.

Last winter, Nike unveiled the “Pro Hijab”. Now it decided to make Colin Kaepernick, the racist black nationalist who began the trend of protesting the national anthem, into the face of its Just Do It campaign. Nike’s new contract with its America-hating racist will rush out Kaepernick shoes and jerseys. No word on whether Kaepernick’s socks showing police officers as pigs will also be part of the package.

Nike will pay Kaepernick millions every year with a deal that looks like those of “top-end” NFL players. Actually being a top-end player or having the talent to be one is surplus to social justice requirements.

The huge payday for Kaepernick clashes with Just Do It’s new tagline, “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” Making millions of dollars for hating America without having to ever get out there and play is the opposite of “sacrificing everything.” It’s getting paid for doing nothing.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/05/the-kitchen

Accurately, the Washington Post summed up the climax of the extravaganza that the ruling class staged on the occasion of Senator John McCain’s death: “the generals, senators, former presidents and other world leaders who filled the pews burst into applause.” Daughter Meghan, sleek, privileged, plus-sized alumna of ABC’s celebrity talk show “The View,” had just delivered the exordium: “We mourn the passing of American greatness. The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.”

For an audience headlined by Barack Obama and George W. Bush, for the countless who had felt the sting of the American people’s rejection in the previous decade’s elections, this was no subtle dog-whistle. They rose to a trumpet sounding “charge!” against the class enemy, and Donald Trump only incidentally. Essentially, the enemy is whomever might think that our rulers are anything other than the very definition of greatness and goodness.

In short, the McCain funeral had nothing to do with the deceased. If it had, the organizers would not have made a point of excluding Sarah Palin, who had given the inept McCain his only chance of winning the presidency in 2008, and had remained personally loyal to him despite political differences. But the whole point of the exercise was to stand together, throwing dirt on such as Sarah Palin, extra ecclesia, nulla salus. Those who respectability must stand with us against them. By the same token, the week-long commentary praised McCain chiefly by imputing all manner of evil to Donald Trump and inferring that McCain represented the opposite.

This had the additional convenience of sidestepping John McCain’s seamy reality.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-kavanaugh-histrionics-1536103645

Expectations were low for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, and Senate Democrats on Tuesday wasted no time meeting them. We can’t tell if they’re going through the histrionic motions or if they might actually try to block a confirmation vote.

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley couldn’t finish his first sentence before California Democrat Kamala Harris interrupted to demand a hearing delay. Democrats continued to speak over the Chairman even after they were ruled out of order to the jeers of protestors who had to be removed from the hearing room. Democrats interrupted 44 times in the first hour, part of what NBC reported as a “plotted, coordinated strategy” organized by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer over the weekend.

The main charge is that Mr. Grassley is “denying” crucial documents to “hide” Judge Kavanaugh’s record. The Senators are ignoring the 307 opinions he has written, and the 17,000 pages of material he provided in response to the committee’s questionnaire—the most extensive ever demanded of a nominee. The Senators have already received more than half a million pages about his time as a lawyer and judge—more documents than were provided for the past five Supreme Court nominees combined.

Democrats haven’t found a killer issue in all of this, so they are demanding documents from Judge Kavanaugh’s time as a staff secretary in the Bush White House. The documents would reveal little about Judge Kavanaugh’s legal thinking, since as staff secretary his job was to vet and monitor what President Bush saw each day.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271235/isna-linda-sarsour-warns-muslims-about-humanizing-daniel-greenfield

Anti-Semitic Islamist activist, Linda Sarsour, was in fine form at ISNA, warning Muslims that if they weren’t fighting Israel, they were complicit. She warned them against even daring to “humanize” Israelis, as Steve Emerson reports at The Algemeiner.

Her tone often was not aimed at inspiring Muslims to be more politically active, as much as it was to shame them for not doing so. If they aren’t sufficiently engaged in advocating for the Palestinian cause, she said, “you as an American Muslim are complicit in the occupation of Palestinians, in the murder of Palestinian protesters. So when we start debating in the Muslim community about Palestine, it tells me a lot about you and about the type of faith that you have in your heart.”

Worse still, “if you’re on the side of the oppressor, or you’re defending the oppressor, or you’re actually trying to humanize the oppressor,” she said, “then that’s a problem sisters and brothers, and we got to be able to say: that is not the position of the Muslim American community.”

That seems like a slap at Muslim activists who have engaged in dialogue with Zionists and Israelis, and even traveled to Israel under a program financed by the Shalom Hartman Institute. Wajahat Ali, for example, was disinvited from speaking at this weekend’s convention for failing to make the Palestinian cause his paramount issue as a Muslim.

If you’re going to kill Jews, you have to dehumanize them.

And “resistance” is all about killing Jews. ISNA is part of a continuum of organizations that support Islamic terror against Israel.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/john-kelly-no-i-did-not-call-the-president-an-idiot-he-and-i-both-know-thats-total-b-s/

The White House pushed back hard Tuesday against the extremely unflattering portrayal of President Trump in legendary journalist Bob Woodward’s scathing new book about the Trump administration. Woodward, who helped break the Watergate scandal over 40 years ago, is still a highly respected Washington journalist.

According to excerpts from the book, published at the Washington Post, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called Trump an “idiot” during discussions with colleagues in the White House.

“He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails,” Kelly was quoted in the book as saying. “We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had,” he reportedly said.

Kelly allegedly would lose his temper often and said he thought Trump was “unhinged,” according to the report.

If the story seems familiar, it’s because the media first reported the allegation that Kelly called Trump an idiot last spring. He denied the charge then, calling it “total B.S.” and he’s denying it now.

“The idea I ever called the president an idiot is not true. As I stated back in May and still firmly stand behind, I spend more time with the president than anyone else, and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship. He always knows where I stand, and he and I both know this story is total B.S. I’m committed to the president, his agenda, and our country. This is another pathetic attempt to smear people close to President Trump and distract from the administration’s many successes,” Kelly said.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/social-justice-indoctrination-saturation-social-media-sports-movies/

The all-seeing social-justice eye penetrates every aspect of our lives: sports, movies, public monuments, social media, funerals . . .

A definition of totalitarianism might be the saturation of every facet of daily life by political agendas and social-justice messaging.

At the present rate, America will soon resemble the dystopias of novels such as 1984 and Brave New World in which all aspects of life are warped by an all-encompassing ideology of coerced sameness. Or rather, the prevailing orthodoxy in America is the omnipresent attempt of an elite — exempt from the consequences of its own ideology thanks to its supposed superior virtue and intelligence — to mandate an equality of result.

We expect their 24/7 political messaging on cable-channel news networks, talk radio, or print and online media. And we concede that long ago an NPR, CNN, MSNBC, or New York Times ceased being journalistic entities as much as obsequious megaphones of the progressive itinerary.

But increasingly we cannot escape anywhere the lidless gaze of our progressive lords, all-seeing, all-knowing from high up in their dark towers.

The Peter Strzok–Lisa Page texts, along with the careers of former FBI director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, reveal a politicized and in some sense rotten FBI hierarchy, beholden far more to its own exalted sense of a progressive self than merely to investigating crimes against the people.

Lois Lerner was a clumsy reflection of how the IRS long ago became weaponized in service to auditing deplorables. Former CIA director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper used their supposedly nonpartisan positions to further political agendas. That each in his own way is clownish does not mitigate their rank efforts to graft intelligence agencies onto political causes.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/04/papadopouloss-court-docs-provide-evidence-russiagate-setup-get-trump/

Late Friday, attorneys for former Donald Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos filed their client’s sentencing memorandum in preparation for his September 7, 2018 sentencing hearing before federal judge Randolph Moss.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making a false statement to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Special Counsel Robert Mueller previously argued that a sentence of up to 6 months imprisonment would be appropriate, but in Friday’s filing Papadopoulos’s attorneys argued for a sentence of probation.

In reporting the latest developments in the case, the mainstream media quickly latched onto two sentences in Papadopoulos’ memo to push the dying Russia narrative. The language the press proffered as supposed evidence of collusion came in a passage in which Papadopoulos’ attorneys sought to portray the Trump advisor as out of his depth.

As his legal team explained to the court, at a March 31, 2016 “National Security Meeting” with Trump and Jeff Sessions, “eager to show his value to the campaign, George announced at the meeting that he had connections that could facilitate a foreign policy meeting between Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. While some in the room rebuffed George’s offer, Mr. Trump nodded with approval and deferred to Mr. Sessions who appeared to like the idea and stated that the campaign should look into it.”

The press predictably played up this exchange as a gotcha moment, while it was nothing of the sort. There is nothing nefarious about this discussion, and it has absolutely no bearing on the question of whether anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the presidential election.