RUTHFULLY YOURS

For decades American conservatives have sought to restore meaning to the 10th Amendment, which recognizes the states’ right to manage their affairs free from Washington’s interference. Passing the Republican Senate’s health-care bill would represent historic progress toward that goal.

In nearly every state, Medicaid is either the largest or second-largest budget line, as well as the fastest-growing category. Every year state lawmakers, trying to carry Medicaid’s heavy burden, are forced to make difficult choices about what else to cut: education, roads, public safety.

Especially frustrating is that state officials have little control over how to manage their Medicaid programs. The 1965 Medicaid law contains dozens of limits on what states can do to avoid waste, fraud and abuse. In the half-century since, Washington has added to that burden with more laws and regulations.

Governors and state legislatures ask Washington every year for the right to receive their Medicaid funds in the form of a block grant, which would give them autonomy to manage the spending as they see fit. The Senate bill, for the first time, would allow that.

States that forgo the block grants would still receive additional flexibility through per capita allotments, an idea first proposed by President Clinton in 1995. The Senate bill would limit the growth of federal spending on each able-bodied enrollee to the rate of medical inflation, and on elderly and disabled enrollees to medical inflation plus 1%. After 2025, per-enrollee spending would be tied to overall inflation. The net effect would be to reduce overall federal spending on the pre-ObamaCare Medicaid program by up to 2% from projected levels over the next 10 years.

In exchange for putting Medicaid on a budget, states would gain substantial latitude to use funds more efficiently. Example: Thanks to ObamaCare, states are permitted to verify a recipient’s eligibility for Medicaid only once a year. As a result, scarce dollars continue going to people who become ineligible. Of the 10% (or more) of Medicaid spending that is improper, the majority goes to ineligible recipients, according to the Foundation for Government Accountability and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The Senate bill would liberate states from many other ObamaCare burdens. It would oblige the Secretary of Health and Human Services to grant all state waiver requests unless they increase federal spending, and to issue a final decision on waiver applications within six months of receiving them. Under current law, waivers are at the secretary’s discretion and there is no deadline.

The new waiver process would let states reduce premiums and health-care costs by bypassing a broad array of ObamaCare provisions, including benefit mandates and requirements that all individual policies be part of a single risk pool. Waivers would last eight years, with the option to renew. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Supreme Court on Monday began the process of rebuking lower courts for usurping the political branches on national security. The entire Court, even the four liberals, agreed to hear the Trump Administration’s appeal of appellate-court rulings blocking its immigration travel ban, and the Justices allowed nearly all of the 90-day ban to proceed in the meantime.

This is a victory for the White House, though it is more important for the Constitution’s separation of powers. President Trump’s ban is neither wise nor necessary, but that is not an invitation for judges to become back-seat Commanders in Chief. Yet that is precisely what liberal majorities on both the Fourth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal did in blocking the travel bans, and the Supreme Court is saying those rulings will not be the last judicial word. The Court’s unsigned per curiam opinion set the case for an early hearing on the legal merits in the next term that begins in October.

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, wrote a concurrence arguing that the Court should have lifted the lower-court injunctions in toto. He also added a cheeky aside that “I agree with the Court’s implicit conclusion that the Government has made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits—that is, that the judgments below will be reversed.”

Some Justices might not agree with that, but it’s notable that Chief Justice John Roberts managed to corral a unanimous Court for lifting nearly all of the injunctions. That means even the liberals understand that injunctions need to be issued with care, especially on national security where judges lack the knowledge and electoral accountability of the executive and Congress.

The High Court’s precedents are clear, especially Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972) that said courts should defer to the executive if there is a “facially legitimate and bona fide” justification on national security. Judges can’t run roughshod over the Constitution merely because an unpopular President issued the travel order.

Democrats and the media will now begin a ferocious lobbying campaign to turn five Justices against these precedents, in particular the Chief Justice and Justice Anthony Kennedy. We doubt this will succeed because this isn’t a close legal call, and it concerns the Presidency more than this particular President.

The Irish have St. Patrick’s Day, Columbus Day holds special meaning for Italians as does the Israel Day for Jews and the Steuben Day for Germans. Why then did the LGBTQ community drop the Gay from their parade? And why is that the only one singled out for all New Yorkers? New York Pride implies that all residents of this city feel a special respect for the gay minority above all other minorities who live here and have their parades without our city’s name attached to them.

If we are marching in solidarity for the legislative changes that now provide equal rights for gay marriage, adoption, custody, housing and employment, why not call it Gay Rights Parade? To march in celebration of homosexuality seems as shallow as marching for heterosexuality whereas gay rights is a tribute to the effort and achievement of those who organized, campaigned and fought for the legislation that allowed gay people to be mainstreamed into every aspect of our culture.

Part of our culture has indeed elevated the gay movement by giving it preferential attention and acclaim. You can’t read the NYT in any given week without seeing several articles devoted to transgenders or gays. How many similar articles are devoted to Asian New Yorkers – a minority that has made astounding strides in education, business, research and music, to name just a few fields of endeavor. How many about Russian and other east-European minorities in our city? And how many weekly columns protesting the inordinate discrimination in access to bathrooms and transportation for disabled people throughout all our boroughs?

If we have a parade called New York Pride and gays are anxious to drop their special category, why not be properly inclusive and have representatives of all minorities participate equally? We should re-enforce the unique polyglot character of our city, the most cosmopolitan in the world, the only one to welcome people of all colors, creeds and sexual preferences where you can hear more than 800 spoken languages. That is the astounding accomplishment that accurately merits the banner of New York Pride.

What exactly is Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating? The basis in law—regulation, actually—for Mr. Mueller’s appointment is a finding by the deputy attorney general that “criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted.”

According to some reports, the possible crime is obstruction of justice. The relevant criminal statute provides that “whoever corruptly . . . influences, obstructs or impedes or endeavors [to do so], the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had,” is guilty of a crime. The key word is “corruptly.”

President Trump’s critics describe two of his actions as constituting possible obstruction. One is an alleged request to then-FBI Director James Comey that he go easy on former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was under investigation for his dealings with Russia and possible false statements to investigators about them. According to Mr. Comey, Mr. Trump told him, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” because “he is a good guy.”

An obstruction charge based on that act would face two hurdles. One is that the decision whether to charge Mr. Flynn was not Mr. Comey’s. As FBI director, his job was to supervise the investigation. It is up to prosecutors to decide whether charges were justified. The president’s confusion over the limits of Mr. Comey’s authority may be understandable. Mr. Comey’s overstepping of his authority last year, when he announced that no charges were warranted against Hillary Clinton, might have misled Mr. Trump about the actual scope of Mr. Comey’s authority. Nonetheless, the president’s confusion could not have conferred authority on Mr. Comey.

The other is the statutory requirement that a president have acted “corruptly.” In Arthur Andersen LLP v. U.S. (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the following definition: that the act be done “knowingly and dishonestly, with the specific intent to subvert or undermine the integrity” of a proceeding. Taking a prospective defendant’s character into account when deciding whether to charge him—as Mr. Comey says Mr. Trump asked him to do—is a routine exercise of prosecutorial discretion. It is hard to imagine that a properly instructed jury could decide that a single such request constituted acting “corruptly”—particularly when, according to Mr. Comey, Mr. Trump also told him to pursue evidence of criminality against any of the president’s “ ‘satellite’ associates.”

The second act said to carry the seed of obstruction is the firing of Mr. Comey as FBI director. The president certainly had the authority; it is his motive that his critics question. A memorandum to the president, from the deputy attorney general and endorsed by the attorney general, presented sufficient grounds for the firing: Mr. Comey’s usurpation of the prosecutor’s role in the Clinton matter and his improper public disclosure of information unfavorable to Mrs. Clinton. But the president’s detractors have raised questions about the timing—about 3½ months into the president’s term. They have also cited the president’s statement to Russian diplomats days afterward that the firing had eased the pressure on him.

Election 2016: Late in 2016, we created a stir by suggesting that Donald Trump was likely right when he claimed that millions of noncitizens had illegally voted in the U.S. election. Now, a study by a New Jersey think tank provides new evidence that that’s what happened.

Last November, just weeks after his Electoral College win that gave him the presidency, then President-elect Donald Trump tweeted, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

The reaction was angry and swift, with the left accusing him of being an “internet troll” and of hatching a “Twitter-born conspiracy theory.”

At the time, we noted that a group called True The Vote, an online anti-voter-fraud website, had claimed that illegals had cast three million votes last year. The media and left-wing groups immediately portrayed True The Vote as a fringe group with little credibility.

The only problem is, a study in 2014 in the online Electoral Studies Journal made a quite similar claim: In the 2008 and 2010 elections, they said, as many as 2.8 million illegal noncitizen votes were cast, “enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes and congressional elections,” said the study, authored by Jesse T. Richman and Gushan A. Chattha, both of Old Dominion University, and David C. Earnest of George Mason University.

The bombshell was this: “Noncitizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.”

It got little coverage in the mainstream media, and what coverage it did get was almost entirely dismissive.

Now comes a new study by Just Facts, a libertarian/conservative think tank, that used data from a large Harvard/You.Gov study that every two years samples tens of thousands of voters, including some who admit they are noncitizens and thus can’t vote legally.

The findings are eye-opening. In 2008, as many as 5.7 million noncitizens voted in the election. In 2012, as many as 3.6 million voted, the study said.

In 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there were 21.0 million adult noncitizens in the U.S., up from 19.4 million in 2008. It is therefore highly likely that millions of noncitizens cast votes in 2016. CONTINUE AT SITE

The “collusion” narrative was a fraud, plain and simple. We know that now. Hopefully, it won’t take another six months to grasp a second plain and simple truth: Collusion’s successor, the “obstruction” narrative, is a perversion.

The Left loves narrative. The ever-expanding story manipulates time, space, and detail to fit a thematic framework. Political narrative has some surface appeal, but it is deeply flawed. It obscures plain and simple truth.

So let’s stick with the plain and simple: The essence of obstruction is to frustrate the search for truth. Its antithesis is to demand the exposure of fraud.

Donald Trump’s political enemies are trying to build an obstruction case on the antithesis of obstruction: the president’s insistence that the collusion fraud be exposed.

Over a period of weeks, Trump came to understand what was being done to him. His exasperation was evident in his every bull-in-a-china-shop turn. An ardently pro-law-enforcement candidate, he came to office believing the FBI was in the fraud-exposure business. He thus could not comprehend why then–FBI director James Comey would not assure the public of what Comey was privately assuring both the president and the public’s representatives in Congress, namely: The notion that the president was a suspect was false. Implicitly, the narrative that Trump had colluded with Putin to steal the election was false.

To be clear, the Russia investigation is not a fraud. The Trump collusion narrative is. Russia did try to interfere in our election, as it always does. And there were associates of Trump’s who had business with Russian interests. Nothing unusual about that either. No one had shadier business with Kremlin cronies than Bill and Hillary Clinton. The difference is that the Clintons did collude in the Russian regime’s acquisition of American uranium assets. There is no evidence that Trump colluded in Russia’s election meddling. To stoke suspicions to the contrary was fraudulent.

The president justifiably believed this cloud of suspicion was grievously harming his fledgling administration. Despite both the dearth of collusion evidence and Comey’s acknowledgment — in non-public Capitol Hill briefings — that Trump was not a suspect, congressional Democrats continued to peddle the collusion narrative. The narrative became the rationale for “The Resistance.”

After the flame-out of the “Electoral College has destroyed democracy” storyline, the Left moved on to “collusion” as the Original Sin that rendered Trump illegitimate. Thus, Democrats rationalized, it was imperative to deny cooperation with Trump on any matter of governance — the approval of executive officials needed to run the government, the confirmation of judges, the Obamacare collapse, tax reform, Syria, debt ceiling, Afghanistan, jihadist attacks in the U.S. and Europe. Anything. The point of the collusion narrative was to delegitimize Trump in the public mind; cooperating with him, treating him as the legitimate president of the United States, was out of the question.

From Trump’s perspective, it was inconceivable that someone as sophisticated as Jim Comey could not see what was happening, how the cloud of suspicion enveloping Trump was damaging his administration. Over time, Comey’s explanations for why he needed to remain silent publicly made less and less sense to the president.

The rationale that it would ultimately serve Trump well if the FBI went about its business and cleared him in the normal course was a presumptuous elevation of the bureau’s work over the rest of the government’s. What, after all, is the normal course? The FBI had been investigating for months and months. Not only had it found no collusion; it had signed on (with the CIA and NSA) to an Obama-engineered report that not-so-subtly suggested a cui bono theory of Trump collusion in Putin’s machinations.

It wasn’t just the failure to dispel suspicions about Trump; the bureau appeared to be fueling them.