RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to a federal report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Trump’s administration is experiencing one national security leak a day, far surpassing — by seven times! — those that occurred under Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

The Senate report summarized its findings:

In short, the unauthorized disclosure of certain information can cost American lives, and our laws protecting this information provide for harsh punishments when violated. Since President Trump assumed office, our nation has faced an unprecedented wave of potentially damaging leaks of information protected by these important laws.

Under President Trump’s predecessors, leaks of national security information were relatively rare, even with America’s vibrant free press. Under President Trump, leaks are flowing at the rate of one a day…

The Trump administration faced 125 leaked stories—one leak a day— containing information that is potentially damaging to national security under the standards laid out in a 2009 Executive Order signed by President Barack Obama.

Leaks with the capacity to damage national security flowed about seven times faster under President Trump than during President Obama’s and President George W. Bush’s first 126 days.

The majority of leaks during the Trump administration, 78, concerned the Russia probes, with many revealing closely-held information such as intelligence community intercepts, FBI interviews and intelligence, grand jury subpoenas, and even the workings of a secret surveillance court.

Other leaks disclosed potentially sensitive intelligence on U.S. adversaries or possible military plans against them. One leak, about the investigation of a terrorist attack, caused a diplomatic incident between the United States and a close ally [Israel].

The report also notes that news articles across a “range of national news organizations” beginning on Inauguration Day included the leaked information which could harm national security. A majority ran in The Washington Post and The New York Times:

Leaked stories appeared in 18 news outlets, sourced to virtually every possible permutation of anonymous current and former U.S. officials, some clearly from the intelligence community. One story cited more than two dozen anonymous sources.

Nearly all of the stories leaked in Trump’s first 126 days were about the president or his administration. The report contrasts the previous administration saying, “[O]nly half of the stories leaked during the comparable period of the Obama administration were about President Obama or his administration; the other half concerned President Bush and his anti-terrorism tactics.”

Read the full report here.

In the wee morning hours of July 5, a Bronx police officer, 48 year-old Miosotis Familia, was shot dead as she sat in her patrol car.

Familia was a 12-year veteran of the New York Police Department and the mother of three children. She was murdered by 34-year-old Alexander Bonds, a career criminal with a record for violence, including violence against police officers.

Officer Familia, judging from her name and photograph, is a dark complexioned Hispanic.

The scumbag who robbed her of her life is black.

This last point bears mentioning, for there is no way to divorce this cold-blooded, unprovoked assassination of one of New York’s Finest from the anti-police Zeitgeist to which forces on the left have given rise. It’s true, of course, that there has long existed in America, especially since the emergence of leftist “liberationist” movements in the 1960’s, hostility toward those entrusted with maintaining the thin blue line between civilization and savagery.

Yet it’s equally true that this hostility accelerated considerably during Barack Obama’s second term as President, particularly since the shooting death of Mike Brown and the Black Lives Matter movement that arose in its wake.

Leftists are forever excusing non-white actors for their conduct, however atrocious it may be. It is to “the root causes,” the context of “social conditions” or “institutions,” that we must turn to account for why, say, blacks, though comprising no more than 13% or so of the American populace, are responsible for over half of all murders.

In other words, non-whites are never, ultimately, accountable for those of their behaviors that are undesirable and destructive (it is always and only their bad behavior from which nonwhites are exempted of responsibility). It is “society,” i.e. whites, who bear accountability for the bad deeds of nonwhites.

Never, though, do leftists look upon their own words and deeds as “root causes.” Indeed, while the search for “root causes” and the specific excuses that the left invokes are almost always fundamentally wrongheaded for more than one reason, to understand patterns of conduct larger contexts must be sought.

And the shooting death of a police officer by a black criminal does in fact belong to an all-too extensive—and established—pattern.

The former Soviet Union possessed many imaginative mechanisms to deal with the problem of enemies of the people who obstructed the path to socialist utopia — now known as “social justice.” One of those mechanisms was the practice of confining individuals who were thinking the wrong thoughts to insane asylums. Indeed, if you caused any trouble for the commissars, a good inoculation of neuroleptics (powerful drugs used to “quiet” the symptoms of schizophrenia), forcibly administered through a tube in the nose, could do wonders in bringing your politically incorrect behavior to a halt.

Dissidents such as Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Pyotr Grigorenko, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Esenin-Volpin and Joseph Brodsky were all among the brave freedom-fighters who bore the brunt of the Soviet practice of institutionalizing dissidents in mental hospitals and force-feeding them mind-shattering drugs. Gorbanevskaya was committed to a psychiatric hospital for attending the 1968 Red Square demonstration against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Grigorenko suffered the same fate for criticizing the Khrushchev regime. Bukovsky was confined to a psychiatric hospital for “anti-Soviet agitation.” Brodksy was sent to mental hospitals for not writing the right kind of poetry; his treatments involved “tranquilizing” injections, sleep deprivation and forced freezing baths. Esenin-Volpin was institutionalized in the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital for his anti-Soviet thoughts.

Today’s progressive Democrats are also faithfully journeying on an uplifting odyssey. Horrified by Trump’s opposition to Obama’s “fundamental transformations,” they have found their own neuroleptics in the form of the 25th Amendment and a bill seeking to impeach the president for being mentally unsound. Indeed, Trump has to be mentally deranged and unfit for office, because what other reason could possibly explain his frightening disagreement with the Left’s un-American creed of identity politics — race and gender uber alles? What other factor could possibly be at play in his embrace of individual freedom and responsibility — and in his rejection of group privileges and racial/gender hierarchies that, as David Horowitz has noted, can only be manifested after America’s Constitution is null and void?

Confronted by Trump’s shocking blasphemy against their anointed plan, several Democrats, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), have now signed onto a bill that seeks to remove Trump by invoking 25th Amendment powers. The bill cites section 4 of the amendment, created in 1967 after JFK’s assassination, that allows for an independent body to remove the president based on the determination that he has been mentally or physically incapacitated to carry out his duties. Raskin’s initiative would activate a probe into whether Trump has been too far “incapacitated” to continue as president.

This effort is, actually, even sicker than the Soviet practice, since the amendment does not refer to psychiatric problems, but to actual incapacitation through assassination or stroke.

Raskin claims he is concerned that “something is seriously wrong” with Trump, citing a “sustained pattern of behavior” and several “errant and seemingly deranged tweets,” which he believes are damaging to U.S. interests. But to anyone who hasn’t drunk the progressive Kool-Aid, it is obvious that Trump’s sustained pattern of behavior is not damaging U.S. interests. Instead, it is unhinging his political enemies and damaging the progressive assault on America’s social contract. Trump’s tweets do not warn, for example, that the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam (an Obama meme) or that you can keep your doctor if you like him. They are singing the praises of America and calling out a corrupt media for its brazen lies and political partisanship.

The assassination of NYPD officer Miosotis Familia, who was sitting in her vehicle doing paperwork when she was shot in the head, is the latest instance of the national “War on Cops.” Her murderer, Alexander Bonds—subsequently gunned down by cops—was a career criminal who boasted of having attended “Attica High School,” and had previously beaten up a police officer with a pair of brass knuckles.

Bonds, whose Facebook page displays a picture of him wearing a T-shirt reading “Coming Out Hard,” hated the police and blamed them for his problems. He posted a video of a young man assaulting a female officer, agreeing with a comment that she was a “lil bitch” who had “to prove something.” Bonds also called for the release of leftist hero and convicted cop-killer Judith Clark, a participant in the notorious 1981 Westchester Brinks robbery on behalf of the Black Liberation Army. Depicting himself as a vicious pit bull straining at the leash, wearing a spiked collar, Bonds described “vengeance” as his most “deadly” characteristic: “If someone hurts you, they have to feel the full force of your wrath and your vengeance is swift and merciless.”

Officer Familia, the tragic target of Bonds’ twisted sense of justice for the miserable consequences of his bad choices, was by all accounts a model citizen and heroic public servant. A former Red Cross worker and registered nurse, the mother of three had served on the NYPD for 12 years. At the time of her murder, Officer Familia was guarding a corner that had been the site of a recent shooting, in a demonstration of the NYPD’s commitment to “flooding the zone” to restore order to neighborhoods afflicted by criminality.

The murder of Officer Familia is only the most recent of a deadly series of attacks on law enforcement officers around the country. The murders of NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in December 2014 by a gunman apparently seeking revenge for the death of Eric Garner; the killings of seven police officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas by a radical black separatist in July 2016; and the murder of two Des Moines cops last November by a disgruntled “loner” are three of the most prominent ambush killings of cops in recent years. But these incidents only scratch the surface of what San Antonio police chief William McManus described earlier this week as general “hatred” toward police officers.

That hostility arises largely from a media-fed narrative—promoted cynically by liberal politicians—that black men are unjustly targeted and killed by police. In fact, incarceration rates by race, age, and sex largely track criminality, and research demonstrates that black men are actually less likely than whites to be killed during police confrontations, when adjusting for crime rates.

Anti-police sentiment has led to “de-policing” across America, though not yet—thankfully—in New York. But in Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Detroit, murder rates have shot up as law enforcement has retreated from proactive policing of high-crime neighborhoods. The Black Lives Matter movement and its rhetoric of victimhood have thus helped lead to more black deaths. And now the killing of Officer Familia by Alexander Bonds can be added to that sad and growing list.

Seth Barron is associate editor of City Journal and project director of the NYC Initiative at the Manhattan Institute.

WASHINGTON — House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) underwent another surgery today after an infection dealt a setback to his recovery from a gunshot wound.

Scalise’s office said Wednesday night that he had been “readmitted to the Intensive Care Unit at MedStar Washington Hospital Center due to new concerns for infection,” with his condition downgraded to “serious.”

The congressman was gravely wounded in the June 14 attack on a Republican congressional baseball game practice, and had been moved out of the ICU on June 23.

In an update this evening, Scalise’s office said he “underwent surgery for the management of infection” earlier. “He tolerated the procedure well. He remains in serious condition. We will provide updates as appropriate.”

Tyson Foods lobbyist Matt Mike, who was shot multiple times in the chest, was released from the hospital on June 23. Capitol Police Special Agent Crystal Griner is recovering from a gunshot to the ankle.

Today’s Washington is overrun by two kinds of crimes.

The first is the still-speculative kind, which the Washington press corps obsesses over— Trump -Russia collusion, obstruction of justice—despite no evidence of its existence. By all accounts, special counsel Robert Mueller’s growing team of Democratic lawyers intends to devote itself to this fiction.

Yet if Mr. Mueller were serious about bringing down a threat to the nation, or even carving himself a place in history, he’d be tackling the second kind of crime, the real kind. These are the crimes that occur constantly and actually harm national security, even if they’re routinely ignored by a self-interested media. We are talking of course about the serial leaking of sensitive information, the daily profession of a new government elite akin to an organized crime network.

Lucky for Mr. Mueller, he doesn’t even need his army of legal investigators to get an immediate handle on this mafia. He can instead stroll down to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. That’s the purview of Sen. Ron Johnson, who keeps dogged oversight of government among his many self-set tasks.

That mission resulted this week in a shocking staff analysis of the recent deluge of secret-spilling, and the manner in which these unauthorized disclosures are harming national security. It’s the first congressional scrutiny of the leaks—and notable for its straight-up nature. This is no partisan document. It’s a bloodless accounting of a national-security failure, perpetrated by dozens of government employees willfully breaking the law.

The first 126 days of the Trump administration featured 125 stories that leaked harmful information. Just under one a day. The committee staff judged the stories against a 2009 Barack Obama executive order that laid out what counted as information likely to damage national security. And as it chose to not include borderline leaks or “palace intrigue” stories, that number is an understatement.

For reference, the first 126 days of the Obama term featured 18 stories that met the criteria. Ten of those were actually leaks about George W. Bush’s “torture memo,” which Mr. Obama released.

The Trump leaks show the sweeping nature of this enterprise, coming as they have from “U.S. officials,” “former U.S. officials,” “senior U.S. officials,” “intelligence officials,” “national security officials,” “Justice Department officials,” “defense officials” and “law-enforcement officials.” One story cited more than two dozen anonymous sources. Alarmingly, the titles, and the nature of the information disclosed, indicate that many leaks are coming directly from the U.S. intelligence community.

What’s been disclosed? The contents of wiretapped information. The names of individuals the U.S. monitors, and where they are located. The communications channels used to monitor targets. Which agencies are monitoring. Intelligence intercepts. FBI interviews. Grand jury subpoenas. Secret surveillance-court details. Internal discussions. Military operations intelligence. The contents of the president’s calls with foreign leaders. CONTINUE AT SITE

Do you know what federal prosecutors do when a thief brings the FBI incriminating documents that he has swiped from his victim’s home?

They use the documents to convict the victim.https://amgreatness.com/2017/07/06/collusion-farce-hunt-hillarys-hackers/
And they would use such stolen evidence to convict the victim even if the thief were a hacker. Even if the thief were a hacker from Russia!

If you find such government behavior unseemly, the New York Times will really give you the heebie-jeebies. The Paper of Record, as we shall see, would not only use stolen information; it would encourage the theft—arguably, a felony violation of federal law.

Once you grasp this, you get a sense of what drivel is the Hunt for Hillary’s Hackers, the latest Russia molehill that the Trump-deranged have fantasized into Mount Elbrus. Served up by the Wall Street Journal, it is the tale of a now-deceased Republican activist’s quest for the 33,000 emails former Secretary of State Clinton hoarded on a private server and attempted to destroy, in violation of various federal laws.

The heavy breathing belies a principle that should come as no surprise to journalists, as it is their bread and butter. As long as one is not complicit in a theft and has no fiduciary obligation to the victim, he is permitted to exploit stolen information that he chances upon.

Under the Fourth Amendment, for example, you are protected from the prosecutor’s use against you of evidence the government’s own agents have unlawfully seized from you; you have no protection, though, from a prosecutor’s using against you evidence stolen from you by some non-government actor—as long as the government was not a participant in the theft.

To be sure, federal and state laws exist that bar trafficking in stolen property. They are tough to enforce, however, due to difficulties in proving the receiver’s knowledge that the property was stolen (and, in most jurisdictions, assessing the property’s value). These laws, moreover, are geared toward fencers of stolen goods for profit. They are largely irrelevant in the realms of law-enforcement, media, and politics, where what matters is the information value, not the acquisition and sale of stolen items.

It is worth noting, then, that there was a time, not so long ago, when one might have thought the Wall Street Journal would be more interested in finding Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails than in identifying others who were looking for them.

The Journal’s story is yet another moving of the collusion goalpost. Remember (though doing so gets more and more difficult): the original allegation was that the Trump campaign conspired with the Putin regime to steal the 2016 election. There is no evidence of this—Russia did not steal the election, and Trump did not conspire with the Kremlin. So, the story shifted to the studiously vaporous claim that 1) Russia tried to “influence” the election—basically, by putting out information that was true but embarrassing to Democrats; and 2) Trump must have “colluded” in this effort because . . . well . . . because.

The problem for “collusion” is twofold. The embarrassing information in question (emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta), while interesting to political wonks, had no impact on the public, the vast majority of whom have no idea what a John Podesta is. More importantly, there is neither evidence nor commonsense reason to believe that Putin involved Trump in his shenanigans.

Thus, the narrative is morphing from “collusion” into “obstruction”—a half-baked accusation based on actions that were within Trump’s lawful discretion and defensible on the merits (viz., recommending against the prosecution of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and dismissing FBI Director James Comey). The obstruction narrative reportedly has its own rabbit holes: suppositions about bribery, money laundering, and who knows what else wishful thinking will conjure up.

As the saga lumbers toward its final Mueller ex machina, the trick for the anti-Trump camp is to keep the Russia theme alive with new disclosures that are sensational (or at least sensationalized)—all the while hoping no one notices that each new disclosure makes the original “steal the election” allegation increasingly implausible.

Less than ten years ago, America’s energy future looked bleak.

World oil prices in 2008 had spiked to more than $100 per barrel of crude.

“Peak oil” — the theory that the world had already extracted more crude oil than was still left in the ground — was America’s supposed bleak fate. Ten years ago, rising gas prices, spiraling trade deficits, and ongoing war in the oil-rich Middle East only underscored America’s precarious dependence on foreign sources of oil.

Despite news of a radically improved but relatively old technology called “fracking” — drilling into shale rock and injecting water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure to hydraulically “fracture” the rock and create seams from which petroleum and natural gas are released — few saw much hope.

In 2012, when gas prices were hitting $4 a gallon in some areas, President Obama admonished the country that we “can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.” That was a putdown of former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s refrain “Drill, baby, drill.”

Obama barred new oil and gas permits on federal lands. Steven Chu, who would become secretary of energy in the Obama administration, had earlier mused that gas prices might ideally rise to European levels (about $10 a gallon), thereby forcing Americans to turn to expensive subsidized alternative green fuels.

But over the last five years, frackers have refined their craft on private properties, finding ever cheaper and more efficient ways to extract huge amounts of crude oil and natural gas from shale rock.

In 2017, despite millions of square miles being off limits to drillers, America is close to reaching 10 million barrels of crude-oil production per day, the highest level in the nation’s history. The U.S. may soon surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest petroleum producer.

When American natural gas (about 20 percent of the world total) and coal (the largest reserves in the world) are factored into the fossil-fuel equation, the U.S. is already the largest producer of energy in the world.

While environmentalists worry about polluting the water table and heightening seismic activity through hydraulic fracturing, fracking seems to become more environmentally sensitive each year.

When OPEC and other overseas producers tried to bankrupt frackers by flooding the world with their supposedly more cheaply produced oil, the effort backfired. American entrepreneurs learned to frack oil and natural gas even more cheaply and undercut the foreign gambit. The result is a windfall for all sectors of the American economy.

From 2014 to 2016, fracking helped cut the price of gasoline by $1.50 a gallon, saving American drivers an average of more than $1,000 per year.

Due to the fracking of natural gas, the United States has reduced its carbon emissions by about 12 percent over the last decade (according to the Energy Information Administration) — at a far greater rate than the environmentally conscious European Union.

Fracking and cheaper gas are allowing a critical breathing space for strapped American consumers, as alternative energy production and transportation slowly become more efficient and competitive.

Fracking has created a national savings of about 5 million barrels of imported oil per day over the last decade. That translates to roughly $100 billion in annual savings by avoiding foreign oil.

Fracking has allowed the U.S. to enjoy some of the lowest electricity rates and gas prices in the industrial world. The result is that cheap energy costs are luring all sorts of energy-intensive industries — from aluminum to plastics to fertilizers — back to the United States, with the potential of creating millions of new, high-paying jobs.

Fracking has given America virtual energy independence, freeing it from the leverage of unstable and often hostile Middle East regimes. The result is less need to interfere in the chronic squabbling in the oil-rich but unstable Persian Gulf.