RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last Saturday hundreds of thousands of high schoolers gathered across the country in a “March for Our Lives” rally. Organized and financed by anti-gun nuts and other left-wing outfits, and ornamented with Hollywood celebrities like George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey, the spectacle was filled with the emotional exhibitionism and juvenile policy recommendations one would expect from the most pampered and worst-educated cohort of young people in American history––the perfect shock troops for progressive propaganda.

Progressivism, like its totalitarian cousins, is an ideology of melodrama and moral exhibitionism. The complexity and mystery of a flawed human nature and its actions are reduced to Lenin’s simple analysis: “Who, whom.” In the fight between righteousness and evil, who will win, the oppressor or his victim? The revolutionary is strengthened by his perceived own moral superiority, his certainty that he on the side of history’s angels. After all, he is struggling for the brave new world: heaven on earth, the utopia of radical equality and social justice, and the final banishment of misery and oppression. In such a cosmic battle, who has time for critical thought or empirical evidence?

This leftist melodrama has always been attractive for the callow young, as the hinge-year 1968 showed. Teenagers are prone to grandiose self-regard, impulsive behavior, and a preference for feeling rather than thinking. They are attracted to sentimentalism and melodrama, the emotion that validates their inflated egos rather than the thought that challenges their exaggerated self-importance.

Thinking about the $1.3 trillion—that’s “trillion” with a “t” for “terrifying”—omnibus spending bill that President Trump signed on Friday, I wonder who is most unhappy about that incontinent, 2,232-page monument to congressional irresponsibility. (A small token of its irresponsibility—and its contempt for the public—was that the bill had to be signed a mere 17 hours after being passed by the Senate. “Otherwise”—cue the scary voice and Halloween music—“the government will shut down!” Is that a threat or a promise?)

There have been all sorts of lists of winners and losers. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that “We Democrats are really happy” with the bill, which will stuff enough cash into the bloated congressional gizzard to keep the government wheezing along through September. Many, nay most, on the other side of the D.C. gastrointestinal tract are not happy. “With Omnibus Signing,” as one representative headline put it, “Trump Formally Surrenders To The Swamp.”

I had myself, like other fiscally responsible Americans, hoped that President Trump would veto that bill, as he suggested he might as late as Friday morning. Still, it is well to keep in mind a fundamental truth that some canny tweeter put with pithy conciseness: “Regardless of how you feel about the #omnibus, it’s still a good day when you wake up and realize Hillary Clinton is not our president.”

The competition is fierce for the worst law in America, but our pick goes to New York State’s notorious Martin Act. Now an effort is building in Congress that could curb its worst excesses and help the innocent.

Passed in 1921 to stop “boiler-room” stock-sale operations, the Martin Act lets prosecutors call almost anything fraud, and there’s no requirement to prove evil intent in civil cases. Yet proving scienter, or the intent or knowledge of wrongdoing, has been a staple requirement of British and American law for centuries lest innocent mistakes be prosecuted as intentional frauds. The Martin Act thus gives prosecutors a huge legal advantage against defendants, though for decades it was used sparingly.

That changed in the early 2000s when then New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer wielded the Martin Act to bludgeon settlements out of big Wall Street firms without going to court. The law does particular damage because New York is America’s financial capital and nearly every company sooner or later does business there. Note how Mr. Spitzer’s equally unconstrained successor, Eric Schneiderman, is leveraging the Martin Act to investigate Exxon for purportedly misleading the public about climate change.

Prosecutors don’t want to give up this immense power, and legislators in New York have been loath to challenge them. But Congress has the power to act under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Legislation introduced last month by Rep. Tom MacArthur (R., N.J.) would address the problem by pre-empting state enforcement of civil securities fraud.

The Trump administration plans this summer to scrap a controversial Obama-era discipline rule forced on schools to close racial gaps in suspensions and arrests but that critics say pressures educators to turn a blind eye to escalating bad behavior.

The federal directive, issued jointly in 2014 by the US departments of Education and Justice, warned public school districts receiving federal funding — including New York City — that they could face investigation and funding cuts if they fail to reduce statistical “disparities” in discipline by race. On average, the administration noted, black students are suspended at three times the rate of their white peers.

The directive also discourages student arrests and holds districts liable for the actions of “school resource officers … or other law enforcement personnel.”

The one-size-fits-all federal policy, which recommends group counseling sessions and other alternatives to traditional discipline, has been foisted on several hundred school districts serving millions of students through investigations and threats of investigation that have continued into the Trump administration. More than 300 school districts remain under federal scrutiny, including NYC schools.

“The scope of it is breathtaking,” said Max Eden, an education policy expert and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

He says surveys show schools serving predominantly minority students have been hit hardest by the resulting breakdown in discipline, with violence and chaos mushrooming out of control in urban districts.

THESE WERE ALL POSTED ON RUTHFULLY

The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First Does the necessity of self-defense leave ‘no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation’?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-legal-case-for-striking-north-korea-first-1519862374

Beyond the Iran Nuclear Deal U.S. policy should be to end the Islamic Republic before its 40th anniversary.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beyond-the-iran-nuclear-deal-1516044178

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beyond-the-iran-nuclear-deal-1516044178

How to Defund the U.N. A few of its agencies do useful work. American taxpayers shouldn’t pay for

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-defund-the-u-n-1514233054

The Hague Aims for U.S. Soldiers A ‘war crimes’ inquiry in Afghanistan shows the danger of the International Criminal Court.By John Bolton

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hague-tiptoes-toward-u-s-soldiers-1511217136

The Iran Deal Isn’t Worth Saving The idea of ‘decertifying’ the agreement but staying in it is too cute by half. Trump should cut cleanly. John Bolton

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iran-deal-isnt-worth-saving-1506637940

This is a story that will not die easily, because there are actual dots that connect and lead – or give the appearance to leading – to the Clinton Global Initiative and Hillary Clinton’s secretary of state office.

The Uranium One scandal is a kickback, bribery, and corruption affair that sent several Russian and American officials in the uranium industry to jail. But the connection between the Russians and the Clinton Foundation has always interested investigators because you can draw a line from Russian donations to the foundation and the decision to sell the Uranium One mining company to Russia.

Now the undercover FBI agent who broke the case wide open is saying he has given fresh testimony to the FBI on the Clintons and Uranium One.

The Hill:

Campbell said he was asked specifically about whether donations to the Clintons charitable efforts were used to influence U.S. nuclear policy during the Obama year, and that agents questioned him extensively about claims the Russians made to him that they had routed millions of dollars to an American lobbying firm in 2010 and 2011 with the expectation it would be used to help President Clinton’s charitable global initiative while major uranium decisions were pending before Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

“They were looking into the Clintons, and the information that I provided to them about the Clintons and about what was said and confirmed by Russian leadership seemed to be very important to them,” Campbell said, appearing in shadow during the interview to protect his identity.

Spokesmen for the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton did not return calls Thursday seeking comment. The Clintons have long denied donations influenced any policies.

Campbell worked as an FBI undercover informant from 2008 through 2014 inside Russia’s nuclear industry, helping to uncover a bribery, kickback, money laundering and extortion scheme that sent several Russian and U.S. executives to prison.

The three biggest scoundrels of the swamp – Comey, Clapper, and Brennan – have been fired, which is a good start. And yes, it has to be said that there are good and decent, even patriotic people in the swamp, probably the majority, and that eventually, when the top layers get scraped off, we can look forward to more honest government. But even then, as Jefferson said, we have to keep a careful eye on people who have power without responsibility.

And now the scoundrels are showing their true colors. Now they are openly political again, without the mumbo-jumbo of the D.C. front.

So let’s examine the latest scream of defiance from John Brennan – because that might show who he really is. We know, from his own confession, that he voted for the Communist Party of the USA earlier in life, and no congressman has so far dared to ask him the relevant question: “Are you still a communist?”

If he gave an honest answer (not likely), he might tell us why he, of all people, was picked by Bill and Hillary for the most powerful and confidential post in the world: the director of the CIA.

Well, don’t expect a confession – not yet. This is what we hear from corruptocrat Brennan to POTUS, his former boss and the commander in chief, Donald Trump.

When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America…America will triumph over you.

Just like the climate change cabal, powerful gun control interests hide behind the façade of children to promote their policy agenda.

The gun control lobby is borrowing the playbook from one of the most effective propaganda campaigns in history: anthropogenic global warming.

From engaging celebrity activists to bullying private industry to portraying opponents as murderers, the well-funded and highly-orchestrated gun control lobby is copying the same approach that has been successfully deployed by the international climate change movement to sell the dubious claim that humans are causing global warming.
Indoctrination and Exploitation of Children

Textbooks are filled with bogus scientific “studies” about global warming and dire warnings about its consequences. Schools commemorate environmental holidays like Earth Day, so they can push climate dogma. Teachers are encouraged to tag climate change in every subject area from science to health to history. And whoever disagrees, or even mildly objects, is portrayed as a child-hating monster. After all, who wants to deny a safe future for our kids? Climate crusaders are even using children as litigants in lawsuits to sue the federal government for violating “the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as fail[ing] to protect essential public trust resources.”

“The heart and soul of the Republican Party belongs to Donald Trump,” writes Lloyd Green. If so, the GOP has an odd way of showing affection. Green cites a lack of Republican criticism of Trump, the president’s continued popularity within the party, and Trump’s rescue of incumbent Nevada senator Dean Heller from a primary challenge. All true. But when it comes to the president’s priorities and the nationalist populist style of politics he represents, Trump and the Republican Congress could not be farther apart.

Trump won the nomination and the presidency after distinguishing himself from the party in four ways. Since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have tended to support global economic integration, immigration, democratic internationalism, and entitlement reform. And yet Trump opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, called to renegotiate NAFTA, and wanted tariffs on China. His 2015 immigration plan championed a wall across the southern border, workplace enforcement, an end to birthright citizenship, and a tripling of border and customs agents. He repudiated the Iraq war and questioned the future of NATO. He swore that Social Security and Medicare would be off-limits. His brashness, colorfulness, insults, willingness to transgress norms, humor, novelty, and lack of political experience separated him from the GOP pack.

This program and its avatar won three Great Lakes states that had been missing from the Republican column for a generation. Trump also came within striking distance in Minnesota and New Hampshire. Obviously we do not know the exact relation between Trump’s nationalism and populism and the roughly 78,000 votes in three states that gave him an Electoral College victory. But the unexpected shape of his upset suggests that the trademark Trump issues of immigration, trade, nonintervention, and retirement security played some role both in attracting support for him and depressing turnout for Hillary Clinton.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12080/john-bolton-national-security-advisor

Gatestone Institute is so proud that its chairman, Ambassador John R. Bolton, will be leading the United States’ National Security Council. We warmly congratulate both him and President Donald J. Trump on an appointment that is great for America, great for its allies and great for the free world.