RUTHFULLY YOURS

The activists bearing freezing temperatures to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline seem to have won a victory in North Dakota last week after the Obama administration rejected a crucial permit needed to complete the controversial project.

But while members of the Standing Rock Sioux and their supporters have protested the construction of the pipeline slated to run just a half-mile beyond their border, other tribes have peacefully courted deals for pipelines that run through the middle of their reservations. This stark contrast illustrates the importance of tribal jurisdiction and the detrimental effects of federal policies that limit development opportunities on many tribal lands.

In most cases, federal policies discourage developers from doing business on Native American reservations in the first place, in effect denying tribes the opportunity to benefit from energy projects such as the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). In some cases, however, tribes have succeeded in developing their own energy resources for the benefit of tribal members and their communities.

The& Three Affiliated Tribes (the Mandan, the Hidatsa, and the Sahnish) of the Fort Berthold Reservation, for example, which sits just 150 miles north of the Standing Rock Sioux, have more than 4,000 miles of pipelines crossing their reservation, contributing to the hundreds of million dollars the tribes earn from energy-development activities each year. In Colorado, the Southern Ute tribe controls 1,600 oil and natural-gas wells, including several pipelines, in addition to operating their own energy company that develops oil and gas throughout the western U.S. The tribe’s success in the energy sector has allowed it to maintain “a higher long-term credit rating than Wells Fargo & Co.,” according to a Bloomberg Markets story published in October.

Where pipelines cross tribal lands, tribes have some say in weighing the benefits and costs of energy development, and they reap direct benefits if they choose to say yes to the projects. Revenues from oil and gas development and related infrastructure provide much-needed income for tribal members and their communities. Energy-development activities on tribal lands generated more than $850 million for Native Americans last year, according to the Department of the Interior; the funds are often used to develop infrastructure, provide health care and education, and support community programs on tribal lands.

The socialist essayist and novelist George Orwell by 1944 grew depressed that as a cost for the defeat of the Axis Powers the Allies had empowered an equally nightmarish monster in the Soviet Union.

Since his days fighting for the loyalists during the Spanish Civil War, the left-wing Orwell had become an increasingly outspoken enemy of Communism. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, when Stalin renounced all his wartime assurances and steamrolled Eastern Europe, Orwell came to see state socialism under authoritarian auspices as the greatest threat to human freedom. It was not as if right-wing dictators were not equally lethal, but the inclusion of the words “socialist” and “republic” in a left-wing tyrant’s official lexicon tended to fool millions.

Indeed, it was precisely the leftist totalitarians’ habit of embroidering their murderous pursuit of power with professions of “equality,” “fairness,” and “egalitarianism” that so often allowed them to employ any means necessary to achieve their supposedly exalted ends. In sum, in Orwell’s eyes, the radical Left’s erasure of historical memory and its distortion of reality through the manipulation of language were the chief threat of the 20th century.

His 1945 novella Animal Farm — initially difficult for Orwell to publish and deeply hated by Western leftists — was an allegorical warning to liberals of the dangers of left-wing propaganda. Words and phrases changed their meanings — again and again — to serve a tyrannical agenda. The assorted creatures of Orwell’s fictional barnyard frequently wake up to new commandments posted on the barn wall by their Stalinesque pig leaders, with yesterday’s edicts crossed out or modified — and soon to be forgotten.

Given the political sympathies and self-interest of the present mainstream media and cultural elite, when the Obama administration came into power in 2009, we crossed out prior, out-of-power edicts and wrote new establishment versions in their place — as if no one would ever quite know the difference, or would soon forget if he did. Many of us at the time wrote about the nearly Orwellian change in liberal mentality required to accommodate Obama’s many contradictions.

Rich people were suddenly not all bad blue-stocking Republicans, but also hip, valuable Silicon Valley progressives in flip-flops who, with some reluctance, outsourced and off-shored.

In our past eight years of historical revisionism, huge political contributions — like the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies given by multi-billionaire financial speculator George Soros — were now helpful for democracy if only they were given to left-wing causes.

Once-liberal public campaign-financing laws and limits on fund-raising applied to all candidates except Barack Obama, who became the largest recipient of campaign cash in election history.

Since election day, Democrats have engaged in a panicked attempt to leverage their last couple of weeks in control of the executive branch to delegitimize the Trump presidency. Obama has even gone so far as to order a “full report” on Russian tampering in the 2016 election cycle to be completed before he leaves office (see “A “Soft Coup” Attempt: Furious Trump Slams “Secret” CIA Report Russia Helped Him Win”). Of course, we should simply ignore the fact that a true investigation of such allegations would take much longer than the one month that Obama has left in office because any delay could run the risk of a bipartisan/independent review and that’s just not how the Obama administration plays the game.http://usdefensewatch.com/2016/12/fbi-disputes-cias-fuzzy-and-ambiguous-claims-that-russia-sought-to-influence-presidential-election/

But at least one investigative agency, the FBI, isn’t buying the “fuzzy and ambiguous” assertions from the CIA that Russia “quite” clearly meddled in the U.S. elections on behalf of the Trump campaign. Meanwhile, the FBI’s unwillingness to play along is infuriating Democrats.

The FBI did not corroborate the CIA’s claim that Russia had a hand in the election of President-elect Donald Trump in a meeting with lawmakers last week.

A senior FBI counterintelligence official met with Republican and Democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in order to give the bureau’s view of a recent CIA report. The official did not concur with the CIA, frustrating Democrats.

The CIA believes Russia “quite” clearly intended to send Trump to the White House. The claim is a bold one and concerned Democrats and some Republicans who are worried about Trump’s desire to mend relations with an increasingly aggressive Russia. The CIA report was “direct, bold and unqualified,” one of the officials at the meeting told The Washington Post Saturday.

PRESUMED TO BE A CRETIN…HE PROVES IT IN HIS OUTGOING RANT….RSK

Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid lambasted FBI Director James Comey in a Monday interview with CNN, claiming that Comey “single-handedly” cost Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton the election.

Comey had released a letter to congressional leaders less than two weeks ahead of the election announcing that authorities had discovered additional emails related to the investigation into her use of a private server. The agency then announced days before the election that the additional emails would not alter its initial decision to not bring forth charges against the former secretary of state.

“Had he not written that letter a week or so before the election, she would’ve won,” Reid said. “We would’ve picked up at least two more Senate seats.”

The Nevada Democrat also criticized Comey for not taking a stronger stance against reported Russian meddling in the US election, of which the Washington Post and New York Times reported Friday that an assessment by the CIAconcluded that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump’s presidential bid.

Guess it depends on what you mean by “authoritarian.”

During the election, Donald Trump was routinely likened to Hitler. The headlines suggest not much has changed.

From the New Republic: “Donald Trump Is Already Acting Like an Authoritarian.” National Public Radio: “Donald Trump: Strong Leader or Dangerous Authoritarian?” The New York Times: “Beyond Lying: Donald Trump’s Authoritarian Reality.” The New Yorker: “Trump’s Challenge to American Democracy.”

What’s striking here is that the same folks who see in Mr. Trump a Mussolini in waiting are blind to the soft despotism that has already taken root in our government. This is the unelected and increasingly assertive class that populates our federal bureaucracies and substitutes rule by regulation for the rule of law. The result? Over the Obama years, the Competitive Enterprise Institute reckons, Washington has averaged 35 regulations for every law.

In the introduction to its just-released report on how to address this federal overreach, CEI President Kent Lassman puts it this way: “It is time for a reckoning.”

Philip Hamburger is a law professor at Columbia and author of “Is the Administrative State Unlawful?” He believes the president-elect’s cabinet selections thus far—Scott Pruitt for the Environmental Protection Agency, Betsy DeVos for Education, Ben Carson for Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Puzder for Labor—may give Mr. Trump a unique opening not only to reverse bad Obama rules but to reform the whole way these agencies impose them. If Mr. Trump really hopes to drain the swamp, says Mr. Hamburger, cutting these agencies back to constitutional size would be a terrific start.

For one thing, almost all these departments are legacies of some progressive expansion of government. While an uneasy William Howard Taft, for example, made Labor its own cabinet office on the last day of his presidency, Woodrow Wilson named its first secretary.

Meanwhile, HUD is a child of LBJ’s Great Society. The EPA was Nixon’s attempt to buy liberal approval for his administration. As for the Education Department, it was a reward from Jimmy Carter for the endorsement the National Education Association gave him in 1976. At the time this cabinet seat was established, even the New York Times called it “unwise” and editorialized against it.
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There’s a good case that Americans would be better off without most of these departments meddling in our lives and livelihoods, however politically unfeasible this might be. The next best news, however, is that Mr. Pruitt, Dr. Carson, Mr. Puzder and Mrs. DeVos are not beholden to the orthodoxies that drive the rules and mandates these bureaucracies impose.

Mrs. DeVos, for example, has spent her life promoting school choice, and her husband founded a charter school. It is difficult to imagine an Education Department under Secretary DeVos ever sending out a “Dear Colleague” letter to bully universities into expanding the definition of sexual harassment and then encouraging them to handle allegations in a way that has turned many campus tribunals into Star Chambers. Not to mention making a federal case about bathrooms. CONTINUE AT SITE

THIS IS A WAIT AND SEE NOMINATION….HOW WILL HE RESTRUCTURE THE STATE DEPARTMENT….RSK

WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump will name Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state, a transition official said Monday, picking a veteran chief executive who has had extensive overseas business dealings but whose relationships with foreign leaders could complicate his confirmation prospects.

Mr. Tillerson was a comparatively late entry in the secretary of state competition, but he impressed the president-elect as a successful deal-maker in what one transition aide called the “Trumpian” mold.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Mr. Tillerson will be the public face of a diplomatic approach that envisions more cooperation with Russia and concessions from China on trade and security matters.

Mr. Trump injected a bit of theater into what is normally a staid and behind-the-scenes process, offering personal impressions of the candidates and tweeting out his timetable for a decision.

On Sunday, he tweeted that Mr. Tillerson is a “world class player and dealmaker.”

“Stay tuned!” he wrote.

Word of Mr. Trump’s selection began leaking out Monday night.