RUTHFULLY YOURS

Federal authorities are investigating whether sensitive data was stolen from congressional offices by several Pakistani-American tech staffers and sold to Pakistani or Russian intelligence, knowledgeable sources say.

What started out 16 months ago as a scandal involving the alleged theft of computer equipment from Congress has turned into a national-security investigation involving FBI surveillance of the suspects.

Investigators now suspect that sensitive US government data — possibly including classified information — could have been compromised and may have been sold to hostile foreign governments that could use it to blackmail members of Congress or even put their lives at risk.

“This is a massive, massive scandal,” a senior US official familiar with the widening probe told The Post.

Alarm bells went off in April 2016 when computer security officials in the House reported “irregularities” in computer equipment purchasing. An internal investigation revealed the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars in government property, and evidence pointed to five IT staffers and the Democratic Congress members’ offices that employed them.

The evidence was turned over to the House inspector general, who found so much “smoke” that she recommended a criminal probe, sources say. The case was turned over to Capitol Police in October.

When the suspected IT workers couldn’t produce the missing invoiced equipment, sources say, they were removed from working on the computer network in early February.

During the probe, investigators found valuable government data that is believed to have been taken from the network and placed on offsite servers, setting off more alarms. Some 80 offices were potentially compromised.

Most lawmakers fired the alleged “ringleader” — longtime IT staffer Imran Awan — in February. But Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chief, kept Awan on her payroll until his arrest last month on seemingly unrelated charges of defrauding the congressional credit union.

For more than a decade, Awan, his wife, two relatives and a friend worked for 30 House Democrats. They included New York City pols Gregory Meeks, Joseph Crowley and Yvette Clarke and members of the sensitive Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees.

The Democrats who hired the five suspects apparently did a poor job vetting them. Awan’s brother Abid had a rap sheet with multiple offenses, including a conviction for DWI a month before he was hired, and filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

Most had relatively little IT experience. Yet they hauled in a combined $4 million-plus over the past decade. One, a former McDonald’s worker, was suddenly making as much as a chief of staff.

“These lawmakers allowed an insider threat to come into the House,” the official charged. “Computer equipment was stolen, taxpayers were robbed of hundreds of thousands of dollars and sensitive data was compromised and possibly sold overseas.”

On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted Imran Awan on four seemingly unrelated felony counts including bank fraud, conspiracy and making false statements. They also indicted his wife, Hina Alvi. FBI agents seized hard drives and other evidence from their Virginia home.

The indictment says the couple wired close to $300,000 in fraudulently obtained funds to Pakistan in January, as the Capitol Police investigation heated up.

FBI agents last month collared Awan, 37, at the Dulles International Airport airport as he tried to board a flight to Pakistan. Alvi, 33, fled to Pakistan in March.

Now that prosecutors have Awan hung up on the fraud charges, they will try to squeeze him harder in the larger cyber-espionage investigation, according to the US official, who expects additional charges and arrests in the case.

Awan’s lawyer, Christopher Gowen, who has worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaigns as well as the Clinton Foundation, maintained that his client was only indicted “for working while Muslim.”

The investigation has touched Democratic leaders including Wasserman Schultz, who has been accused of protecting Awan. She stuck by her close aide, despite being briefed several months ago by House administrators and security officials about his “suspicious activities” on the Hill, sources say.

Wasserman Schultz attempted to downplay his alleged conduct, saying he was “transferring data outside the secure network, which I think amounted to use of apps that the House didn’t find compliant with our security requirements.” Such transfers though, could be a serious, potentially illegal, violation.

The US Attorney’s Office in Washington has taken possession of a laptop issued to Awan from Wasserman Schultz’s office, according to the sources, and she has reportedly retained counsel.

Earlier this year, she badgered the Capitol Police chief to return the laptop to her, even threatening him with “consequences.”

The congresswoman could not be reached for comment, but she recently told a local paper that scrutiny of her Muslim aide was motivated by “racial and ethnic profiling.”

Awan had access to Wasserman Schultz’s e-mails at both Congress and the DNC, where he had been given the password to her iPad. After DNC e-mails and research files were stolen during the presidential election, Wasserman Schultz reportedly refused to turn over the server to the FBI and instead called in a private firm to investigate and ID the hackers. The firm blamed the Russian government, while admitting, “We don’t have hard evidence.” The corrupted DNC server, held in storage, still has not been examined by the FBI.

Wasserman Schultz denies the DNC turned down the FBI’s assistance or that her congressional or DNC e-mails were compromised by Awan.

“This whole investigation pivots off Debbie Wasserman Schultz,” the official said.

“It’s clear that large bytes of data were moved off the secure network,” said another source close to the investigation, adding that Awan and the other four staffers under investigation had “full and complete access” to lawmakers’ e-mails, calendars, schedules, hearing notes, meeting notes and memos and other sensitive information.

Investigators are trying to determine if any classified information was compromised. Although the network that was breached is an unclassified system, it’s possible that members or staff cleared to handle classified information inadvertently sent such information in e-mails after getting classified briefings, sources believe.

“Logic dictates that sensitive data was compromised,” the senior official speculated. “An accused criminal with close ties to Pakistan had full and complete control over data that went out over the network.”

Paul Sperry is a former Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected calls for him to resign in protest of President Donald Trump’s response to violence at a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend, and defended the president in a statement Saturday evening.

Mr. Mnuchin condemned the “actions of those filled with hate and with the intent to harm others.”

“While I find it hard to believe I should have to defend myself on this, or the president, I feel compelled to let you know that the president in no way, shape or form believes that neo-Nazi and other hate groups who endorse violence are equivalent to groups that demonstrate in peaceful and lawful ways,” Mr. Mnuchin said.

About 300 of Mr. Mnuchin’s classmates from the Yale University undergraduate class of 1985 posted a letter online Friday asking Mr. Mnuchin to resign in protest of Mr. Trump’s comments.

“It is your moral obligation,” they said. “We know you are better than this, and we are counting on you to do the right thing.”

One week ago, Mr. Trump endured a weekend of criticism for saying in his first reaction to violence at a Charlottesville rally of neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups that there were “many sides” to the unrest. On Monday, he more explicitly condemned white supremacists, including the driver who killed a 32-year-old woman when he plowed into a crowd protesting the white nationalists.

‘While I find it hard to believe I should have to defend myself on this, or the president, I feel compelled to let you know that the president in no way, shape or form believes that neo-Nazi and other hate groups who endorse violence are equivalent to groups that demonstrate in peaceful and lawful ways.’
—Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin

But at a combative press conference in New York on Tuesday, Mr. Trump defended his initial response, saying both sides were to blame for the clashes. “You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent,” Mr. Trump said, with Mr. Mnuchin standing next to him. There were “very fine people on both sides,” the president said.

Mr. Trump faced an intense backlash, including criticism from members of his own party for what elected officials and business leaders said was a failure to provide moral leadership. Two CEO councils created by the White House disbanded, and the administration abandoned plans for a third panel on infrastructure.

The White House on Thursday issued a statement to deny rumors that Gary Cohn, Mr. Trump’s economic policy director, would leave the administration over the president’s remarks. Mr. Cohn was also at the Tuesday news conference. Messrs. Cohn and Mnuchin are both Jewish.

Mr. Mnuchin served as Mr. Trump’s campaign finance chairman before being named as Treasury secretary and has a close personal relationship with the president.

In his statement Saturday, Mr. Mnuchin implied that Mr. Trump’s political opponents, including Republican rivals in last year’s primary campaign, were unfairly seizing on the Charlottesville uproar to “distract the administration” from policy issues.

How dare he?

President Donald J. Trump stood before journalists on Tuesday and said the unsayable: “I think there is blame on both sides.”

Rather than denounce only the execrable white supremacists and swastika-wielding neo-Nazis who organized Saturday’s hate-o-rama in Charlottesville, Va., Trump observed that there was violence coming from the KKK side and from extreme leftists who opposed them with force — not with tranquility, as did those at a peaceful vigil Wednesday night.

The reaction to Trump’s comments was vitriolic:

“We can truly say his words have absolutely emboldened white supremacists,” said CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.

The Chicago Sun-Times called Trump “America’s bigot in chief.”

“This is not my president,” declared Senator Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii).

But if these and other Trump haters were outraged at Trump’s comments, where was their anger when the reliably liberal ACLU described the situation as it unfolded? “Not sure who provoked first. Both sides were hitting each other at Justice Park before police arrived,” the ACLU of Virginia declared via Twitter on Saturday afternoon. The group identified both factions in a video of an open-air brawl on Charlottesville’s streets. “The guy on the ground is a Unite the Right protester. Those in black and red are #Antifa protesters,” referring to far-left “anti-fascist” thugs. The ACLU labeled another violent snippet, “Clash between protesters and counter protesters.”

There was no angst when Reuters reported that “Many of the rally participants were seen carrying firearms, sticks and shields. Some also wore helmets. Counter-protesters likewise came equipped with sticks, helmets and shields.” Reuters correspondents Amanda Becker and Jeff Mason added, “The two sides clashed in scattered street brawls before a car plowed into the rally opponents, killing one woman and injuring 19 others.”

This AP photo from #CharlottesvilleVA is incredible pic.twitter.com/9YZ8SLHnPj
— don (@donswaynos) August 12, 2017

The fury was absent when NBC Nightly News’ Gabe Gutierrez explained that “witnesses say both sides came prepared for a fight.”

The Trumpophobes left their spleens unvented when the Associated Press published this headline, “View from the street: Police stood by as adversaries fought.”

And there was no venom when Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas said: “We did have mutually combative individuals in the crowd.”

ABC-TV affiliate WRIC reported that police nabbed eight people tied to this melee. While some clearly were white-power extremists, others were anything but. These include Troy Dunigan, 21, of Tennessee. “He was arrested Saturday for throwing objects at ‘Nazi protesters,’ according to court documents.” Beth Foster, director of the Mercy Junction Justice and Peace Center, told

Robert E. Lee was a great American. He was in rebellion against his country for four tortuous, bloody years. At the head of the Army of Northern Virginia, he came darn close to winning Southern independence. Lee was a brilliant field commander, full of audacity. His daring was a gift and a bane. He was a man of integrity. He was a man of his place and time. He deserves our remembrance and respect.

The left – and the mainstream media, the Democratic Party, the race industry, and establishment go-alongs – want to destroy our history. Destroy anything that honors the men who fought for the South in the Civil War. Destroy, as the left does – here and abroad – history that doesn’t comport with its worldview. Destroy it or ignore it and rewrite it, as the Stalinists did. As Orwell warned.

That’s a villainous mindset. It contains an awfully destructive logic if not defeated. The left won’t stop at discarding the soldiers of the South’s rebellion. It will advance to anything and anyone the left deems inconvenient to its narrative – a narrative it fashions to gain power and control over all of us. If successful, the left will turn with a terrible vengeance on our founders. It will eviscerate the nation’s leaders in the generations up to the Civil War, and then beyond. It’s a means to tyranny.

Goes the left’s argument: the South’s secession was to preserve an evil institution, slavery – negro slavery, precisely. In large part, it was. But we live in dumbed down times, when schools fail to teach, or foist revisionist history on our kids; when history is barely remembered, much less understood; when tens of millions of citizens are open to falsehood, misrepresentation, and certainly lack of context about the momentous events and times and people in the past who shaped our nation.

Robert E. Lee was intimately connected to the nation’s beginnings. From Biography:

Lee was cut from Virginia aristocracy. His extended family members included a president, a chief justice of the United States, and signers of the Declaration of Independence. His father, Colonel Henry Lee, also known as “Light-Horse Harry,” had served as a cavalry leader during the Revolutionary War and gone on to become one of the war’s heroes, winning praise from General George Washington.

Lee married Mary Custis, whose great grandparents were George and Martha Washington. He graduated from West Point and distinguished himself in the Mexican-American War. In the small postwar army, Lee rose to the rank of colonel. He served as superintendent of the United States Military Academy.

Lee’s star rose when he was ordered to quell John Brown’s rebellion at Harper’s Ferry. He was then regarded as a possible leader of the Union army should civil war come.

When the war came, Lincoln offered Lee command of Union forces. Lee declined. It’s important to understand why – and it wasn’t because Lee was pro-slavery. Like most every American, he was, first and foremost, a citizen of his state: Virginia. When Virginia seceded, Lee acted from conviction: his duty lay with his state.

Modern Americans often travel across state lines. They relocate for work or lifestyle. They fail to appreciate mid-19th-century life. Though change was coming, Americans were still overwhelmingly rural, rarely venturing more than a dozen miles from their villages or farms. The nation was only loosely knitted together through the Revolution, rudimentary media, religion, and culture. The Civil War commenced just 72 years after Washington was sworn in as president.

Slavery had been contentious from the time the Constitution was debated and drafted. It remained contentious, in ebbs and flows, throughout the early decades of the republic. The 1850s saw an escalation in tensions and conflict about the issue. Lincoln’s election in 1860 proved the deal-breaker for 11 lower Southern states.

Atlanta’s Peace Monument was damaged by protesters Sunday night, though it was erected in 1911 to urge reconciliation after the Civil War, not to celebrate the Confederacy.

The sculpture features an angel standing above a Confederate soldier, guiding him to lay down his weapon. Protesters traveled in Atlanta from Woodruff Park to Piedmont Park, where the Peace Monument is located, and some desecrated it, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The scene was only protected by one police officer, who was surrounded by black-clad Antifa protesters shouting “pig.”

“I completely understand what happened,” Thornton Kennedy, a sixth generation Atlantan who has taken his children to visit the monument many times to explain Atlanta’s history, told the Journal-Constitution. “It’s a statue that, to the observer, looks like a Confederate memorial.”

Atlanta author Goldie Taylor tweeted, “The Peace Monument is NOT a Confederate memorial. It was erected to honor those who worked to reunify the country after Reconstruction.”

The Journal-Constitution also reported that Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields expressed regret about how her officers dealt with protesters Sunday who defaced the statue.

“I feel like that we should have identified, removed, and arrested a couple of people earlier in the march, absolutely,” Shields said in an interview with Channel 2 Action News.

Shields said that by the time it was clear arrests were necessary, “We couldn’t identify them. And that’s not acceptable. We have the intelligence, we have the probable cause, we need to take action.”

My response to Diane Feinstein’s call to deny a permit to “Patriot Prayer,” a group she labels as a “hate group:” (See her letter below).

On April 4, 2017, the US Senate passed Senate Resolution 118, “Condemning hate crime and any other form of racism, religious or ethnic bias, discrimination, incitement to violence, or animus targeting a minority in the United States”. The resolution was drafted by a Muslim organization, EmgageUSA (formerly EmergeUSA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). On April 6, 2017, EmgageUSA wrote the following on their Facebook page:

“Thanks to the hard work of Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Susan Collins and Senator Kamala Harris we have achieved the approval of Senate Resolution 118, an anti-hate crimes bill drafted by Emerge-USA. It is days like this that Americans are reminded of this country’s founding principles: equal opportunity, freedom, justice. We are proud to help support the protection of these rights #amoreperfectunion #theamericandream”.

Senate Resolution 118 calls on

“…Federal law enforcement officials, working with State and local officials… to expeditiously investigate all credible reports of hate crimes and incidents and threats against minorities in the United States and to hold the perpetrators of those crimes, incidents, or threats accountable and bring the perpetrators to justice; encourages the Department of Justice and other Federal agencies to work to improve the reporting of hate crimes; and… encourages the development of an interagency task force led by the Attorney General to collaborate on the development of effective strategies and efforts to detect and deter hate crime in order to protect minority communities…”

The resolution refers to hate crimes against Muslims, Jews, African-Americans, Hindus, and Sikhs and was sponsored by Senator Kamala Harris and co-sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Senator Susan Collins.

On April 6, almost the exact same text was introduced as House Resolution H.Res. 257, “Condemning hate crime and any other form of racism, religious or ethnic bias, discrimination, incitement to violence, or animus targeting a minority in the United States”. A House Resolution can be reintroduced as legislation.

H.Res. 257 urges

“…the development of an interagency task force led by the Attorney General and bringing together the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Education, the Department of State, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to collaborate on the development of effective strategies and efforts to detect and deter hate crime in order to protect minority communities”. The House Resolution was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary on April 6 and from there it was referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations on April 21.

The stature of statues is determined by the emotional reaction of observers to what the statues represent. Religious statues, political statues, historical statues commemorating events and achievements all symbolically represent people places or things that observers react to. The power of statues like the power of flags is determined by the reaction they arouse in the observer.

When Obama replaced the statue of Winston Churchill with the statue of Martin Luther King Jr. in his office it was a symbolic gesture. Churchill was perceived as a right-wing extremist until Germany declared war on England and it was clear that Neville Chamberlain’s policies of appeasement (leading from behind) emboldened Hitler. In May of 1940 Parliament voted no confidence in Prime Minister Chamberlain and King George VI appointed Churchill prime minister and minister of defense. Churchill was a powerful leader who rallied the English people during WWII and led his country out of a crippling defeat to victory.

Martin Luther King Jr., the Baptist minister who lead the non-violent movement civil rights movement in America, was a powerful leader whose efforts ultimately secured the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Martin Luther King Jr. remained committed to non-violence and civil disobedience as the methods for social reform – his vision was as successful in his time as Churchill’s was in his.

Here is the problem. Neither Churchill nor Martin Luther King Jr. reflected Obama’s vision for America. After eight years in office it is evident that busts of Saul Alinsky, Frank Marshall Davis, and Edward Said would have been the appropriate busts in Obama’s office. But statues are symbolic and the stature of those statues would have exposed Obama’s actual hope for change in America.

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008 the entire country was hopeful that race relations in America would improve. Americans hoped the country would realize Martin Luther King’s dream and the country would be one United States of America where children would be judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin. We hoped that being an American would be the common denominator that bound us all together in common cause to strengthen and realize the American dream.

Americans ignored the company that Obama kept and substituted their own hopes for change when they voted. Americans ignored Obama’s twenty year affiliation with anti-American anti-white black supremacist Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Americans ignored Obama’s affiliation with anti-white anti-American Black Power Frank Marshall Davis. Americans ignored Obama’s relationship with anti-American pro-Muslim professor Edward Said. Americans ignored Obama’s relationship with anti-white law school professor Derrick Bell. Americans ignored Obama’s relationship to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Americans ignored Obama’s mentor radical socialist Saul Alinsky and Obama’s friendship with black supremacist Louis Farrakhan.

Barack Obama’s hope for change was not what most Americans hoped for. Obama’s radical left-wing liberal hope was to weaken America and change our political structure from democracy to socialism. In eight years Obama deliberately fomented racial divisiveness because divisiveness creates the social chaos required for seismic social change.

Obama followed Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” with the commitment of a religious zealot. He cut his hair, stopped smoking crack, put on a suit, honed his skills as a community organizer and began his career of selling snake oil to America. He was groomed to be the presidential candidate to bring socialism to America.

In Obama’s memoir “Dreams from My Father” Obama actually described Alinsky’s trick/tactic. “It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied as long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved—such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.” p. 94-95

There are times when I wonder if we’re coming to the harsh, bitter end of the American experiment. The weekend of August 12 was one of them.

My wife and I have lived in Charlottesville for the past 14 years, and on Saturday we got to see the sick political culture that’s infected this country for the past couple of decades sweep over our fair city, leaving three dead and many more seriously injured.

Beth and I like to run in the mornings, and that Saturday morning we headed over to the big four-story parking garage at John Paul Jones Arena, which we sometimes use as our running track when it’s raining or it’s very hot and sunny. Usually the garage is completely empty; that Saturday every bay was filled with a Virginia State Police car, with dozens of other police cars and vans parked along the side. Seeing them gave us both an eerie feeling filled with foreboding; I’d felt the same eeriness that Friday night, when white supremacists held their torchlight vigil at the University of Virginia, in a scene reminiscent of Nazi-party rallies in the 1930s.

Yet even with all these policemen in riot gear, no one could control the violence when extremists from the left and extremists from the right battled each other in the streets in Charlottesville — or the national political firestorm it set off. And all this happened because our city council decided in June it could score some liberal points by having the statue of Robert E. Lee removed from a park downtown, and by changing the name from Lee Park to Emancipation Park.

They’re not alone, of course; they’re part of a trend that’s sweeping — or, I prefer to say infecting — the country right now, and not just in the South.

I’ve heard many arguments as to why statues commemorating Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and other Confederate war heroes should come down in Charlottesville; and not many why they should stay, except from white supremacists who have no honest or rational views on the matter. So maybe it’s time for someone who is a scholar, a historian — a Pulitzer Prize finalist historian, and the New York Times–bestselling author of nine books — and a lifelong Civil War buff to rehearse the reasons why they should remain, and why, if they come down now under violent pressure from the Left, we may be losing a lot more than statues of dead Confederate heroes.

First of all, these are not “Confederate monuments.” They are monuments to the dead, soldiers who fought and often died for the Confederate cause. They were erected years after the Civil War. For example, the bronze Lee statue in Lee Park dates to 1924. It was begun by a French sculptor, completed by an Italian-immigrant artist, and then cast by a company in the Bronx. These monuments were dedicated to memorialize the courage and sacrifice that these Southern men and, in some cases, women (one of the sculptures in Baltimore pulled down earlier this week was dedicated “to the Confederate women of Maryland”) brought to a cause that they believed at the time deserved the same “last full measure of devotion” that their Northern counterparts brought to theirs. Of course, some of those who paid for and erected these statues also believed that cause had been right, not wrong. (I’ll say more about that in a minute.) But in the final analysis, they are monuments to timeless virtues, not to individuals.

Susan Rosenberg was a terrorist in the early 1980s. Like her Weathermen comrades, she would have killed many people had she been a more competent terrorist. She was a fugitive plotting more bombings when she and a co-conspirator were captured in New Jersey, armed to the gills and toting over 700 pounds of dynamite. At her sentencing, she proclaimed, “Long live the armed struggle” against “U.S. imperialism.” Her only regret was that she hadn’t shot it out with the police who arrested her. A federal judge sentenced her to 58 years’ imprisonment.

I know her story well because, when she claimed she was being denied parole unlawfully, I spent over a year as the prosecutor arguing that the court should keep her in the slammer. Finally, the court ruled against her.

So . . . Bill Clinton sprang her.

Her commutation may have outraged most Americans, but it was celebrated by the nation’s “progressive” opinion elites, the same ones who were cool with President Clinton’s release of the FALN terrorists. Granted, Rosenberg didn’t get the hero’s welcome at New York City’s Puerto Rican Day parade received by Oscar Lopez Rivera — the FALN terrorist released by President Obama. The teaching gig the Left arranged for her wasn’t quite as prestigious and long-lived as the ones her fellow Weathermen — and Obama pals — Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn fell into. She’ll never be a t-shirt icon, like Che Guevara or Tupac Shakur. The campaign to pretend she was innocent won’t rival the Alger Hiss fairy tale. There will probably be no statue of her, much less a performing-arts center like the one in Princeton named for Paul Robeson.

But she hates America, so she’ll be remembered fondly in the places where the cultural tune is called. Her books — such as An American Radical: A Political Prisoner in My Own Country — will continue to be taken oh so seriously. Her Wikipedia entry does not describe her as a terrorist; it says Susan Rosenberg is a “radical political activist, author and advocate for social justice.”

That’s why you got Trump.

It has nothing to do with statues of the dead. It is about the status of the living.

You’re upset over President Trump’s idiotic remarks this week? Oh, right, I need to specify. Not the crackpot bit about General Pershing mass-murdering Muslim prisoners in the Philippines (well explained by David French, here). I mean the one about the “very fine people” in Charlottesville — the supposed “many” who joined neo-Nazis, KKK die-hards, and other white supremacists in a demonstration that could not have been more overtly racist and despicable.

Yeah, I’m upset about that, too.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t notice the anti-fa thugs were out there. It doesn’t mean I don’t see the hard Left’s seditionist shock troops, at war with the country, much like the Weathermen, the Panthers, and the Black Liberation Army back in the day. As we’ve seen many times now (and will, alas, see many times more), the radical Left doesn’t need tiki-torch twits to spur them to arson and mayhem.

This time, though, in Charlottesville, the white supremacists were the instigators. They caused it. They orchestrated this disgusting event, they came ready for the violence they knew they were provoking, and one of them committed a murder.

If the roles were reversed, we wouldn’t want to hear a bunch of imbecilic “there’s blame on both sides” moral equivalence. We’d want the most culpable bunch called out and condemned, by name — and without any irrational hedging about phantom “very fine people” who confederate with sociopaths on the latter’s terms.