RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-union-scam-could-be-about-to-end-1531778546

One of the worst public-sector union scams is about to end. “Partial public employee” unions represent in-home health aides, paid by states with Medicaid money to care for disabled beneficiaries—often the aides’ own children or elderly parents.

In recent decades, PPEs have typically come into existence when Democratic governors order union-certification elections with loose rules, usually including a participation rate of only 10%. Many workers are unaware that they have become union members. They remain ignorant, as the state deducts union dues and fees before sending payments. Such payments are usually made through direct deposit and often without an itemized pay stub.

The unions have no incentive to inform the workers—who in turn have no idea they need to contact the union to opt out. Thus money keeps flowing to these unions even though the Supreme Court, in Harris v. Quinn (2014), imposed on PPE unions a ban on forced nonmember “agency fees.” This year, in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the court extended that rule to all public-sector unions.

Janus struck a second blow by requiring affirmative consent before collecting money from public workers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-russia-indictments-why-now-1531778599

The indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence agents last week, on charges they hacked into Democratic National Committee and other servers during the 2016 campaign, raises questions about the timing of the announcement and the work of the hackers themselves. The news came on the eve of the Trump-Putin summit. Why then?

The president was told of the indictments before he traveled. Yet the plain effect of the announcement was to raise further doubts about the wisdom of the meeting—and perhaps to shape its agenda. Neither is the business of the special counsel or anyone else at the Justice Department. The department has a longstanding policy, not directly applicable here but at least analogous, that candidates should not be charged close to an election, absent urgent need, lest the charges themselves affect the outcome. The general principle would seem to apply: Prosecutors are supposed to consider the impact of their actions on significant events outside the criminal-justice system, and to act with due diffidence.

From a law-enforcement standpoint, there was nothing urgent about these indictments. All 12 defendants are in Russia; none are likely ever to see the inside of a U.S. courtroom.

Alternative strategies were available. In 2008 Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, known to law enforcement as the “Merchant of Death” and the defendant in a sealed indictment, was lured in a sting by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Thailand, where he was seized. The Thais, to their great credit, resisted heavy Russian pressure to release him. Instead they fulfilled their treaty obligations and granted a U.S. extradition request.

It has been argued that the objective of last week’s indictments was not to prosecute the defendants but to “name and shame” them. They were named, and even their military intelligence units disclosed—but shamed? In 2006 Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian defector to the U.K., was poisoned in London with polonium from a Russian nuclear facility. Litvinenko had charged that Vladimir Putin was directly responsible for bombing a Moscow apartment building in 1999, an event used as a pretext for the invasion of Chechnya. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/muellers-latest-indictments-russians-politicized-pointless/

If the idea was to give Vladimir Putin and his thug regime a new way to sabotage the United States, nice work.

So, is Russia now presumed innocent of hacking the 2016 election?

If not, it is difficult to understand any proper purpose served by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of twelve military officers in the Kremlin’s intelligence services for doing what everybody in America already knew that they did, and has known since before Donald Trump took office — indeed, since before the 2016 election.

Make no mistake: This is nakedly politicized law enforcement. There is absolutely no chance any of the Russian officials charged will ever see the inside of an American courtroom. The indictment is a strictly political document by which the special counsel seeks to justify the existence of his superfluous investigation.

Oh, and by the way, the answer to the question posed above is, “Yes, it is now the official position of the United States that Russia gets our Constitution’s benefit of the doubt.” Here is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announcing the Friday the 13th indictment: “In our justice system, everyone who is charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.”

Of course, the indicted Russians are never going to be proven guilty — not in the courtroom sense Rosenstein was invoking.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/sen-manchin-tells-schumer-to-kiss-my-you-know-what-on-scotus-vote/

Democrats have been threatening Armageddon in order to defeat Brett Kavanaugh, the president’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Their frothing at the mouth base has been issuing blood curdling warnings to any Democratic senator who dares break ranks and vote for him.

But some Democrats, at least, aren’t being intimidated.

The Hill:

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) had strong words for Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) efforts to unify the party against President Trump’s Supreme Court pick.

Manchin suggested to Politico that Schumer does not have any influence over whether or not he supports Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.

“I’ll be 71 years old in August, you’re going to whip me? Kiss my you know what,” Manchin told Politico, referring to whipping votes among the party caucus.

Schumer has spoken out harshly against Kavanaugh and vowed to oppose him “with everything I’ve got.” Democrats will need at least two GOP votes, in addition to all Democrats, to block the nomination.

But Democrats up for reelection in Trump states are not guaranteed votes against the confirmation, and many have signaled that Schumer’s efforts may not be enough to convince them to vote against the nominee.

Manchin is in a tough re-election fight in West Virginia with the state’s GOP attorney general, Patrick Morrissey, and knows that a good way to energize opposition to him is to vote against the nominee of a president who carried the state by 40 points.

But Manchin isn’t the only red state Democratic senator who is telling Schumer to butt out:

“My decision won’t have anything to do with Chuck Schumer,” Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) told Politico. Donnelly, in addition to Manchin and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) all voted in support of Neil Gorsuch.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told Politico that Schumer “knows better” than to try to pressure her to vote a certain way.

“He doesn’t come to me and say: ‘You’ve got to vote with us on this.’ He knows I’ll tell him to take a flyin’ leap,” she said. “I’m going to do what I think is right. It has nothing to do with the party.”

You can add North Dakota Democrat Heidi Heitkamp to that list as well. All four are locked in tight races in states carried by Trump in 2016. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270730/strzok-strikes-out-lloyd-billingsley

“I have the utmost respect for Congress’s oversight role, but I truly believe that today’s hearing is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear America apart. As someone who loves this country and cherishes its ideals, it is profoundly painful to watch and even worse to play a part in.”

That was FBI counterintelligence boss Peter Strzok, the key player in the investigation of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, in his opening statement Thursday to a joint session of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. This was the same man who said in texts to his FBI girlfriend Lisa Page: “Fuck Trump,” “Trump is a disaster,” “I could SMELL the Trump support,” and that Trump supporters were “ignorant hillbillies.”

For Peter Strzok, Hillary Clinton would win “100 million to zero” and when Page raised the possibility of a Trump win, Strzok responded, “No, no he’s not. We’ll stop it.” The FBI man also alluded to an “insurance policy,” in the event that candidate Trump did prevail. The man who said all that, and much more, told the committee Thursday:

“Let me be clear, unequivocally and under oath, not once in my 26 years of defending my nation did my personal opinions impact any official action I took.” And agent Strzok was dead certain it was Russian election interference was “sowing discord in our nation and shaking faith in our institutions.” Democrats loved it, and Rep. Steve Cohen, Tennessee Democrat, wanted to recommend Strzok for a Purple Heart. For their part, Republicans weren’t buying it.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, a former prosecutor, said Strzok showed “textbook bias,” that got him booted off the Mueller probe. Strzok said that was only a “perception,” and did not “appreciate” Gowdy’s questioning. “I don’t give a damn what you appreciate,” said Gowdy, “I don’t appreciate having an FBI agent with an unprecedented level of animus working on two major investigations in 2016.”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/13/julian-assange-crowdstrike-and-the

Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 presidential election is predicated on Russian intelligence having hacked the Democratic National Committee’s computers. Russia’s guilt is such an article of faith among our political class, that a Republican-controlled Congress imposed sanctions and President Trump signed on, substantially worsening relations with an important and potentially dangerous nation.

Outside the Acela Corridor, however, one finds more skepticism.

A lot of ordinary folks wonder why the DNC wouldn’t let any outside parties examine their server. Instead, the FBI accepted the word of CrowdStrike, a private contractor hired by the DNC, without any independent confirmation.

And a bunch of not so ordinary folks who know a thing or two about computers thinks there may be a simple explanation for the DNC’s unwillingness to let outsiders have a peek at the evidence: There isn’t any. The Russian hacking that’s caused so much division and turmoil at home and abroad never really happened. It was all a ruse concocted by CrowdStrike.

One such skeptic is an anonymous journalist and computer aficionado who goes by the pseudonym “Adam Carter.” Carter has spent the last couple of years cataloging evidence, unearthed by himself and others, that CrowdStrike engaged in a disinformation campaign, inventing not just a fake Russian hack but also a fake hacker called “Guccifer 2.0.” Much, but by no means all, of Carter’s evidence is technical. And he’s unquestionably found an inconsistency in the Russia narrative that ought to raise doubts in even the most computer illiterate congressman’s mind.

Julian Assange’s Threat
But first, why on earth would a private contractor hired by the DNC engage in such tactics? For motive, we need to go back to June 12, 2016, when Wikileaks founder Julian Assange made an announcement that was sure to worry Hillary Clinton and her closest advisers:

We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton . . . We have emails pending publication.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/the_old_versus_the_new_left.html

When it comes to being anti-American, the left’s current incarnation is certainly no slouch compared to its older Marxist namesake

Politics often evolves in strange, unpredictable ways. For example, what white Southern Democrat in 1960 would have foreseen that within forty years, the South would be solidly Republican? And that black voters would help elect a black Democrat as president?

An even more extreme transformation has been the American left. In a nutshell, if a leftist from the 1930s were transported to the present via a time machine, he would not only fail to recognize today’s left, but would denounce it as a fraud, the antithesis of its historic mission and a traitor to the working class. If this time-traveler were to return to the 1930s and recount what he had observed, nobody would believe him. Surely, he would be told, the left could not have evolved into such a perversion of its historic mission, and this ludicrous time machine tale is just a cover-up for a week of binge-drinking.

To understand the left’s bizarre transformation, begin with Marxism’s central principle: the centrality of class – namely, the idea that the division between those owning the means of production (the capitalists) and all others explains everything from politics to art and science. Moreover, it is the responsibility of the left (i.e., the Communist Party) to keep class central and thus advance interests of workers (sometimes called the proletariat). To be sure, political necessity periodically counsels promoting a non-class agenda (recall the U.S. Communist Party’s foray into the 1931 racially charged Scottsboro Boys case), but these are temporary tactics and are always ultimately subordinated to advancing class interests. Promoting policies based on religion, ethnicity, sex, geography, race, and all else thus makes for counterproductive distractions.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/strzok-well-stop-it-text-was-response-to-trump-going-after-khizr-khan/

WASHINGTON — FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok told a joint hearing of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees today that a text to his then-lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, about stopping candidate Donald Trump was anger expressed in response to Trump verbally going after Gold Star parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan.

The Khans spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention to challenge Trump on comments he made on the campaign trail about restricting the entrance of Muslims into the country. Their son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, was killed in Baqubah, Iraq, on June 8, 2004, as he stopped a suicide bomber from driving into a compound.

In August 2016, Page texted Strzok, “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok responded, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” The Justice Department’s inspector general determined that while texts between the two were inappropriate, investigators “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed.”

“I think it’s important when you look at those texts that you understand the context in which they were made and the things that were going on across America,” Strzok told the committee. “In terms of the text ‘we will stop it,’ you need to understand that was written late at night, off the cuff and it was in response to a series of events that included then-candidate Trump insulting the immigrant family of a fallen war hero, and my presumption based on that horrible, disgusting behavior that the American population would not elect someone demonstrating that behavior to be president of the United States.”

“It was in no way, unequivocally, any suggestion that me, the FBI, would take any action whatsoever to improperly impact the electoral process, for any candidate.”

Strzok said he took “great offense” at suggestions to the contrary.

The agent also called Trump an “idiot” in an August 2015 message and texted “God Hillary should win 100,000,000 – 0” after a March 2016 GOP debate. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-smears-begin-on-kavanaugh-1531438269

The political left is going to do whatever it can to defeat Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and the smears have begun even earlier than usual. This week’s mud on the wall includes a claim of guilt by association when Mr. Kavanaugh was a law clerk 27 years ago.

In 1990-1991 Mr. Kavanaugh clerked for federal Judge Alex Kozinski on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Kozinski retired in December after he was accused by several women, including a former federal judge, of harassing behavior such as groping and showing them pornography.

The McClatchy news service reported Wednesday that a left-wing outfit called Ultraviolet is circulating a six-page memo demanding that Senate Democrats investigate whether Mr. Kavanaugh knew about Mr. Kozinski’s behavior a quarter-century ago. Think of this as the claims in the Christopher Steele Russia dossier without the evidence.

The Ultraviolet sleaze-slingers have no evidence that Mr. Kavanaugh knew about Judge Kozinski’s behavior and no witnesses to anything of the sort. They merely have insinuations that in the age of social media can spread around the world before the truth can even get a hearing. We’re told that journalists from several news organizations are also trolling former Kozinski clerks to see if they can find someone who will say that Judge Kavanaugh knew something, or should have known, about Judge Kozinski’s behavior.

All of which caused the White House to issue a statement Thursday addressing the smears by ancient association that are by now circulating widely on the internet and in the press corps. “Prior to the public reports late last year [about Judge Kozinski], Judge Kavanaugh had never heard any allegations of sexual misconduct or sexual harassment by Judge Kozinski,” White House spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement.

The White House also released a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee signed by 18 of Judge Kavanaugh’s former female clerks attesting to “our uniformly positive experiences with the Judge as a boss on issues of gender and equality in the workplace.” Amy Chua of Yale writes nearby of her rewarding experience placing law clerks with Judge Kavanaugh.

It used to be that the press required at least some evidence to report a story, but now a politically motivated group can write a memo without incriminating facts and get it reported as news. Fair-minded Americans should treat it as the drive-by innuendo it is.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/facing-intense-gop-criticism-fbi-s-strzok-says-personal-views-n890876

Deepening tension between congressional Republicans and the Justice Department erupted in full public view Thursday, as a senior FBI agent sparred with lawmakers who suggested his bias against President Trump tainted the department’s Russia investigation.

Peter Strzok, the senior FBI official who oversaw the Hillary Clinton email investigation and helped lead the initial probe of ties between Russia and the Trump campaign strongly rejected claims that personal political views he shared with a colleague affected his official actions, while accusing Republicans of furthering Vladimir Putin’s goal of sowing discord in the U.S.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., noted that in August of 2016, within one week of the Justice Department’s decision to open the Russia probe, Page and Strzok exchanged messages that included “F Trump,” and Strzok saying: “I can protect our country at so many levels.”

“We’re not even a week into an investigation that you originated, approved, were the contact for, you hadn’t interviewed a single solitary soul until August the 11th, and you’re already promising to protect the country from that menace Donald Trump,” Gowdy said.