RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/can-a-president-pardon-himself-yes-trump-can/But he shouldn’t be talking about it.

As he often does, President Trump hijacked the news cycle with a Monday-morning tweet, this one observing that “numerous legal scholars” agree that “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself.” The president elaborates that he has done nothing wrong, and thus there is nothing to pardon.

So, one might ask, why bring it up?

It’s a good question, and not for the first time are we asking. Late last July, Trump tweeted that “all agree the U.S. President has the complete power to pardon” — only to add that there was no point discussing pardons because the only crimes arising out of the Russia probe were leaks of classified information to hurt the administration, not misconduct by the administration. On that occasion, the president was obviously reacting to a Washington Post report that he had been asking advisers “about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself.”

In any event, if we must discuss the matter then, yes, the Constitution empowers the president to pardon himself. Like any other power, the pardon power may be abused, and if Congress finds a presidential self-pardon is sufficiently abusive, it may impeach and remove the president. But that would not vitiate the pardon — it would be impossible to prosecute the president on whatever crimes had been pardoned.

I wrote a column for PJ Media last year when the president raised the subject. Here’s the pertinent part:

The pardon question is factually premature in the sense that there is no allegation or indication that [the president] or those close to him have committed a crime. It is not, however, legally premature. There need not be a formal criminal charge before a president issues a pardon. After President Nixon resigned, President Ford pardoned him even though he had not been indicted. President Lincoln mass-pardoned Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, and President Carter mass-pardoned Vietnam draft evaders. Thus, the fact that special counsel Mueller has not, and may never, file criminal charges would not prevent President Trump from issuing pardons.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-obama-and-the-jobs-report-1528137323

The outrage over President Trump’s Friday jobs tweet may be fake, but there’s a real issue here over the way our government should communicate.

Here’s the story: On Friday, more than an hour before the release of the Department of Labor’s monthly jobs report, the President tweeted, “Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning.”

The report turned out to include plenty of good news—more job creation than expected and an encouraging increase in wages, particularly for those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. But the President’s vague early tweet sparked an intense reaction from former aides to his predecessor and from many members of the press corps.

“Trump Touts Jobs Report Before Official Release, Breaking Protocol,” announced a New York Times headline on Friday. It was just one of many reports focusing on the President’s early tweet.

President Trump “has proven he cannot be trusted with the information,” proclaimed former Obama White House aide Aaron Sojourner.

Jason Furman, who served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during President Obama’s second term, addresses the issue with an op-ed in the Journal:

If—69 minutes before the numbers were set to be released—President Obama had signaled via Twitter that they were going to be great, I’d have been shocked.

A president who signals advance news about economic data invites concern that he also is bragging about the good news privately, which could result in the information’s exploitation for enormous private gain by some well-connected investor.

The handling of such data certainly requires great care. But it’s not clear just how shocking such an event would have been during Mr. Obama’s second term. Mr. Furman has raised—without evidence—the possibility that Mr. Trump might privately share non-public jobs data. What about Mr. Obama?

The Journal reported on Friday:

While disclosures of economic data are rare, they aren’t unprecedented. In February 2009, with the U.S. economy in crisis and Congress debating a stimulus package, then-Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) heard from Mr. Obama around midnight that the following morning’s jobs report numbers “would be somewhat scary,” he told the Senate after the report’s release. The Labor Department reported a loss of 598,000 jobs in January. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-04/u-s-supreme-court-throws-out-gay-bias-finding-against-baker-ji0cf2pg

The U.S. Supreme Court left unresolved questions about the competing rights of business owners and gay customers as the justices issued a narrow ruling Monday favoring a Colorado baker who wouldn’t make a cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding.

Voting 7-2, the court tossed out a Colorado Civil Rights Commission finding that the baker had violated a state civil-rights law. The high court said the decision was tainted by anti-religious bias, pointing to one commissioner’s comments that religion had been used to justify slavery and the Holocaust.

“The commission’s hostility was inconsistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court.

But Kennedy also said the court wasn’t deciding whether other business owners have a right to refuse to take part in gay weddings, saying those issues “must await further elaboration in the courts.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/breaking-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-colorado-baker-in-gay-wedding-cake-case/

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who was sanctioned for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.

Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, was told by a Colorado Civil Rights Commission that he cannot refuse to bake cakes for events that violate his conscience, even though he had a long history of selling items in his cakeshop to anyone who walked through the door. Phillips, citing his Christian faith, said his conscience would not allow him to design cakes for events like divorce parties, lewd bachelor parties, or same-sex weddings.

Colorado ordered him to either make cakes for same-sex weddings or stop making cakes at all.

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that “The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.” Citing Obergefell v. Hodges, the justices wrote that the Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case:

…showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection. As the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust. No commissioners objected to the comments. Nor were they mentioned in the later state-court ruling or disavowed in the briefs filed here. The comments thus cast doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures-part-2/

Desperate solutions to genuinely severe public crises and the breakdown of civil order are not unheard of. We in Canada, for example, experienced martial law during the October Crisis of 1970 when the War Measures Act was invoked to deal with the threat of domestic terrorism in Quebec. The FLQ (the Front de libération du Québec), spurred by the political evangelism of a partisan press, resorted to violence to further the cause of Quebec separatism. Many have claimed that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau overreacted; his assessment of the risk is still being bruited. But he did not hesitate to respond in decisive fashion, calling out the troops and suspending the writ of habeas corpus when he believed the future of the Confederation was at stake.

America in 2018 is in far graver peril than was Canada in 1970. “Fixing our nation seems like an impossible task,” writes Gary Demar, Senior Fellow at The American Vision, “when the media, the government, the courts, Hollywood, and the schools have been captured by Leftist elites.” In his book Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World, DeMar argues for parental pushback against the ideological force of government-controlled education as a solution to the problem. Unfortunately, parental revolt, while a good start, is too unorganized and dispersed to be ultimately effective. Something far more comprehensive, potent and systematic is needed to halt the revolutionary momentum of the Left.

This is where, if warranted, the Canadian precedent may come into play. If nothing else works, it follows that a given political instrument that may have a chance of success in combating an insurrectionary movement and in quashing the political and cultural dragonnade threatening the Republic is precisely what no one wants to contemplate: martial law. Dinesh D’Souza concludes his must-read America: Imagine a World without Her treating a possible progressivist triumph with the following words: “[W]e will be living in a totalitarian society … America will truly be an evil empire, and it will be the right and duty of American citizens to organize once again, as in 1776, to overthrow it.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures-part-1/

As many observers have noted, America is now embroiled in a de facto civil war in which the nation is being relentlessly attacked and disassembled from within, not by the conservative Right, as The New Yorker and other progressivist outlets irresponsibly lament, but by the domestic Left.

Reputable commentators like Kevin Williamson at National Review and John Podhoretz for the New York Post believe the nation is descending into chaos — and place the onus squarely on the Left. In a prescient article for PJ Media about the potential result of a political coup orchestrated by the Left under the guise of the faux Mueller investigation, Roger Simon writes: “That word sounds hyperbolic but it isn’t. We could see anything from civil war to social atrophy. Who knows if our country will survive it?” (As one commenter worries, “we are in some very real danger the next time a Democrat gets elected to the highest office” — no paranoiac hypothesis.)

It is a state of affairs that, in its insidious way, is no less critical than the bloody civil war that split the nation in the 1860s. There’s no blood in the streets yet — or maybe just a little — but the nation is split pretty much in half. One half wishes to destroy the other through a series of destabilizing tactics: electoral fraud, fake news, negonomics, industrial dereliction, globalist doctrine, climate change scam, university indoctrination, Blue State model primary and secondary education, the divisive concept of a “living constitution,” trade deficits, pro-Islamic logrolling, radical feminism, gender dysphoria, pro-choice abortion favoring a sub-replacement fertility rate, runaway entitlements, censorship-prone social media monopolies like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google, the abolition of the Second Amendment, open borders, caravan immigration, sanctuary cities, politically correct — and in some places, compelled — speech, judicial overreach, ubiquitous surveillance of American citizens, foreign policy surrender and revolutionary advocacy.

Black Victimhood’s White Victims

“I have a horrible story to bring you about a woman named Sherita Dixon-Cole,” Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King began.

Dixon-Cole claimed that she had been sexually assaulted during a traffic stop by a Texas police officer. The story, like so many black victimhood myths about police officers, turned out to be a lie. Body camera footage conclusively disproved it. But by then the damage was done.

The Root had posted a photo of the officer as part of a post alleging a racist culture of police rape. “Black women have always… found themselves at the intersection of state and sexual violence, because this country teaches men… that black women are disposable,” it insisted.

Behind the pseudo-academic jargon of social justice were the same racial prejudices and tribal fears of victimized women that led to Emmet Till’s death. Only this time the races were reversed.

And the vigilantes organized a cyber-lynching party by sending hate and abuse to a completely different Texas cop who shared the same last name.

And to his mother.

In Timmonsville, South Carolina, Rev. Jerrod Moultrie, who also heads the local NAACP, claimed that a police officer had “racially profiled” him and harassed him “cause I was driving a Mercedes Benz”.

Once again, body cam video proved that it never happened. But the NAACP announced that it was conducting its own investigation and claimed that there might have been another racist cop.

“Racial profiling, in this context, concerns the reasons for stopping a particular vehicle at a particular time, not whether the officer conducting the stop (or any other officer on the scene) is impolite,” it stated. Since it’s impossible to prove that a traffic stop wasn’t racially motivated (the impossibility of proving a negative fuels paranoid fantasies about ubiquitous racism), that’s guilty until proven innocent.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/04/politically-correct

It’s practically a cliché when an old guy or a conservative complains about declining moral standards. But with the news of a professed pedophile now openly seeking a seat in Congress and placing his pedophilia front and center as part of his platform, I feel fairly secure in passing judgment on our society. Something is very wrong here.

Nathan Larson, 37, who has gone on record to proclaim that he is a pedophile and rapist is running for a congressional seat in Virginia. Larson’s political platform includes the legalization of child pornography, marital rape, incest, abolition of child protective services, and a repeal of the 19th Amendment.

When asked by Huffington Post reporters whether he merely writes about pedophilia or engages in it, he proudly proclaimed, “It’s a mix of both.” He also admitted to running and posting in chat rooms dedicated to promoting rape and pedophilia. In one of these, using the administrator pseudonym “Lysander,” Larson noted:

I just want to bang my daughter, actually, but even if it were legal, I’m not sure it would happen, since i don’t have custody. After sex with kids is legalized, parents (or other guardians) will still be gatekeepers to some extent, and a lot of them will want to bang their own kids and not share with others.

Charming. Thankfully, he lost custody of his child. But his first wife committed suicide after he reportedly abused and raped her repeatedly.

The Huffington Post could barely contain itself as Trump’s name came up. The article concluded with a quote in which Larson compares himself to President Trump: “A lot of people who disagreed with someone like Trump . . . might vote for them anyway just because the establishment doesn’t like them.” (I’d love to see what was left out of those ellipses). The article seems to attempt to smear Trump supporters with the brush of this one reprobate.

Larson calls his platform “quasi-neoreactionary libertarian.” I have no clue what that means, but I’m fairly sure that Ron Paul and Gary Johnson would want nothing to do with this guy. Regardless where and to whom Larson lends his “support” or compares himself, or with what party he claims to affiliate, reasonable people—regardless of politics or party—would agree he is beyond the pale.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/04/the-scandal-on

Consider the following alternate reality.

Imagine that it is now summer 2024. A 78-year-old lame-duck President Trump is winding down his second term, basking in positive polls. His dutiful vice president in waiting, Mike Pence, is at last getting his chance to run for president. Imagine also that Pence is a shoo-in, facing long-shot, hard-leftist, and octogenarian Senator Bernie Sanders. Polls show an impending Pence landslide.

Team Trump is nevertheless horrified about the slight chance that the nation could conceivably elect an ossified, self-proclaimed socialist. It accuses Sanders of wanting to turn upside down free-market capitalism, and to nullify the entire eight-year Trump agenda.

Allies abroad in 2024 are especially worried about the neutralist Sanders, who has promised to recalibrate all of America’s alliances.

Worrisome to lame-duck President Trump are also the supposed machinations of the Iranian theocracy. Furious over Trump’s prior cancellation of the Iran deal in 2018, eager to have crippling sanctions at last lifted, and hoping that a Sanders presidency might restore Obama-era détente, Iranian operatives are reportedly not shy about their preference for a Sanders presidency.

The Iranians are rumored to have hired operatives to hack into various Republican email accounts in efforts to embarrass the Pence candidacy—and to have facilitated third parties to release the embarrassing email exchanges.

The 2024 Pence campaign in response is furious that throughout the campaign cycle, such leaks have disseminated information that Pence aides had rigged the rules of the Republican Party’s nominating process to eliminate Republican primary rivals. They are worried that the hacked emails will reveal that debate questions were given to Pence in advance by a sympathetic Fox news analyst and later Republican National Committee head. And the leaked emails reveal that conservative journalists were sending their stories in advance to be checked by Pence officials. The Iranians insist that they have not hacked any Republican-related email accounts.

As a reaction to such unproven rumors of Iranian collusion, a sympathetic Trump administration decides to intervene to thwart a supposed clear and present danger to U.S. national security.

Kim Kardashian is taking heat for her stances on prison reform after she spoke out in support of Alice Marie Johnson, a woman who was convicted of drug trafficking.

She met with President Trump on Wednesday to discuss sentencing and reforms, particularly for non-violent first time offenders. Also at the meeting was Shawn Holley, Johnson’s lawyer, who is being funded by Kardashian. Trump has called for harsher sentencing for drug dealers in the face of growing national concern over the opioid epidemic.

Johnson’s story first was brought to light by a video by Mic.

After the loss of her job, Johnson says that she was unable to find something quick enough to make money, so she made a choice she admits was horrible and turned to dealing drugs. She was caught, and sentenced to life in prison despite it being her first time drug offense. Since her crime was a federal offense, she is not eligible for parole. She’s one of 3,278 people serving a life sentence without parole despite their offense being nonviolent. While in prison she’s missed the births of her grandchildren, and the deaths of her parents. She’s now 62 years old.

While in prison, Johnson has spent her time writing plays for her fellow inmates to act in. She enjoys encouraging them, and inspiring them to be better, and discovering positive directions for their futures. She’s also worked as a mentor to help other women cope with their sentences.

For the more than 20 years that Johnson has been in prison, she has had no disciplinary infractions. Prison staff have written letters of support of Johnson and her hopes for a presidential pardon. She was not one of the 231 people that Barack Obama pardoned, and has shifted to calling for prison reform. She admits that she has made a mistake, but that that mistake shouldn’t be the only thing that matters in her life.

Kardashian’s interest in Johnson’s case began with the Mic video, and she tweeted her feelings about how unfair Johnson’s sentence was back in 2017.