RUTHFULLY YOURS

Over 60 percent of California voters went for Hillary Clinton — a margin of more than 4 million votes over Donald Trump.

Since Clinton’s defeat, the state seems to have become unhinged over Trump’s unexpected election.

“Calexit” supporters brag that they will have enough signatures to qualify for a ballot measure calling for California’s secession from the United States.

Some California officials have talked of the state not remitting its legally obligated tax dollars to the federal government. They talk of expanding its sanctuary cities into an entire sanctuary state that would nullify federal immigration law.

Californians also now talk about the value of the old Confederate idea of “states’ rights.” They whine that their state gives far too much revenue to Washington and gets too little back.

Residents boast about how their cool culture has little in common with the rest of the U.S. Some Californians claim the state could easily go it alone, divorced from the United States.

Sound a bit familiar?

In December 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union in furor over the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln did not receive 50 percent of the popular vote. He espoused values the state insisted did not reflect its own.

In eerie irony, liberal California is now mirror-imaging the arguments of reactionary South Carolina and other Southern states that vowed to go it alone in 1860 and 1861.

Like California, South Carolina insisted it could nullify federal laws within its state borders.

Like California, South Carolina promised to withhold federal revenues.

Like California, South Carolina and other Confederate states bragged that their unique economies did not need the Union.

They boasted that “King Cotton” had created the wealthiest class in the United States. Silicon Valley now often assumes that Google, Facebook, Apple, and others are near-trillion-dollar companies that are a world unto their own.

In early January, Vincent Tolliver, a candidate for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, wrote in an e-mail to The Hill that fellow candidate Keith Ellison, the first known Muslim to sit in Congress, should not be party chairman because of Islamic attitudes toward gays. “Islamic law is clear on the subject,” wrote Tolliver, “and being gay is a direct violation of it. In some Muslim countries, being gay is a crime punishable by death.” Tolliver added that he was “shocked” that the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group with close ties to the Democratic Party, had been “silent on the issue.” (In fact, the HRC has enthusiastically endorsed Ellison, notwithstanding his past links to Louis Farrakhan and his current involvement with CAIR, the Muslim American Society, and the Islamic Society of North America.)

The DNC was quick to act on Tolliver’s complaint: it promptly removed him from consideration for the party chairmanship. “The Democratic Party welcomes all Americans from all backgrounds,” declared interim chairwoman Donna Brazile (famous for passing debate questions to Hillary and then lying about it). “What we do not welcome is people discriminating against others based on who they are or how they worship.” Brazile, an open lesbian, called Tolliver’s remarks about Islam “disgusting” and stated that because of those comments, he was “no longer a candidate for DNC Chair.”

Brazile’s statement was a timely reminder that on the progressive left, where facts and ethical principles take a back seat to identity politics, Muslims are now the top-ranking victim group, and gays – gay men, anyway – are at the very bottom, below blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, women, transsexuals, disabled Americans, weight-challenged Americans, etc. Never mind that what Tolliver said about Islamic attitudes toward gays is entirely correct: on the progressive left, acknowledging such uncomfortable truths is verboten.

Why are gays no longer the darlings of the left? Part of the reason is the mainstreaming of the academic concept known as intersection: if you’re a gay white male, yes, you’re gay, all right, but you’re also the two worst things you can be in the eyes of the left: white and male. Which means that on balance, according to the leftist calculus, you’re more privileged than you are oppressed. That’s especially true, of course, now that same-sex marriage is the law of the land. Indeed, although the left celebrated the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges well into the night, when the sun rose the next day gay people suddenly looked very unsexy. Is it mere coincidence that at almost the exact same moment when the gay-rights movement won its big victory, the transsexual movement appeared as if from out of nowhere to take its place on the progressive agenda? Suddenly we’re being asked to memorize dozens of new pronouns to cover gender categories nobody had ever heard of a year or two ago. Only yesterday, gay marriage felt exotic; now being gay – just plain gay – feels downright square.

Some gays still think the left has their back. When Obama left office, gays flooded You Tube and Twitter with messages thanking him for gay marriage – which he’d had absolutely nothing to do with (and which he, like Hillary, had in fact opposed for most of his administration). On November 8, gay Americans, buying into the entirely baseless premise that Hillary gives a damn about them, voted overwhelmingly for her – a woman whose family foundation has banked millions from Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates, all of which imprison gays, and Saudi Arabia, which executes them. Meanwhile the same gay voters jeered at Trump, who in 2005 publicly congratulated Elton John and David Furnish on their marriage; who, according to one local, “changed…Palm Beach” by admitting gay couples as members of Mar-a-Lago; who actually waved a rainbow flag at one of his campaign rallies; who’s been praised eloquently by one of the smartest gays in the country, billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel; who reacted with an un-Obama-like rage and candor to the jihadist massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando; and who, upon accepting the Republican nomination, promised to “do everything in my power” to protect gay Americans “from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.”

Few people have heard of Congressman Ted Lieu. He spends most of his time ranting about President Trump like some sort of insane stalker.

The last time he made national news was when he insanely threatened legislative action against a home improvement store for pulling ads from a show he liked. After Lowe’s stopped advertising on All-American Muslim, he sent a letter which hung precariously between Stalin and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

He sent a letter to Lowe’s CEO Robert A. Niblock warning that if he didn’t get those ads running again there would be hell to pay. “If Lowe’s continues its religious bigotry, I will encourage boycotts of Lowe’s and look into legislative remedies.”

When asked by Fox 11 News last night why he wasn’t focusing on the state’s major problems… Lieu answered that people could always shop at Home Depot.

Now Lieu is on board with moving from obstructionism to just trolling with bills.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) reportedly plans to file a bill that would require the White House to have an in-house psychiatrist.

“I’m looking at it from the perspective of, if there are questions about the mental health of the president of the United States, what may be the best way to get the president treatment?” Lieu told the Huffington Post.

But Ted is the one who actually sounds nuts.

Lieu said he thinks a republic cannot tolerate a president who lies pathologically, claiming such circumstances are dangerous and can lead to authoritarian regimes. He also urged residents to write letters to editors of publications to help publicize their dissent with Trump’s recent actions.

Lieu said he, like many of his constituents, struggles to explain Trump’s presidency to his children. He said he thinks Trump is especially dangerous since he makes the public believe fake news is everywhere and causes them to doubt reality. He urged listeners to tell their children reputable news sources such as the Los Angeles Times and ABC News do their best to report the facts, and that Trump’s disapproval of such agencies does not invalidate their legitimacy.

Can we get an in-house psychiatrist here.

Despite childish Democrat obstructionism, including a needless all night talkfest to delay the inevitable outcome, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions as this nation’s next attorney general by a vote of 52-47. As with his other cabinet nominations, President Trump needs only a majority of senators to confirm, thanks to former Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to change the filibuster rules. Only one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, showed courage in bucking the herd mentality of his “resistance” party and voted in favor of Sessions.

Contrast the Democrats’ irresponsible behavior with how Republicans treated Barack Obama’s nomination of Eric Holder as attorney general in 2009. Back then, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, urged quick action by the Senate:

“I would hope that we would have a prompt confirmation so he can restore morale and purpose throughout the Justice Department, it is important that the Justice Department have its senior leadership in place without delay. The attorney general is the top law enforcement officer in the country; he is a key member of the national security team.”

The Republicans obliged, despite serious questions regarding Holder’s role in President Clinton’s controversial pardons of Marc Rich and the Puerto Rican FALN terrorists while Holder was serving as deputy attorney general in the Clinton Department of Justice. Republicans did not put up procedural roadblocks. The Judiciary Committee voted 17-2 to confirm Holder. The Senate as a whole then confirmed Holder by a lopsided bipartisan vote of 75 to 21.

Ironically, Senator Sessions voted in favor of Holder, saying he was sure that Holder would be “a responsible legal officer and not a politician.” His decision to vote to confirm Holder, despite serious policy differences, demonstrated Sessions’ own bipartisanship and willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to the president’s cabinet nominees. Yet when it became Sessions’ turn to be considered for the same position as Holder’s, his fellow Democratic senators turned viciously partisan. They threw every slur at him they could think of, and used every procedural trick in the book to slow down the confirmation of a fellow senator to whom they should have shown deference.

Democrats resorted to their usual tactic of rolling out the race card. Senator Leahy, for example, stated last month that “Sen. Sessions has repeatedly stood in the way of efforts to promote and protect Americans’ civil rights.” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts took to the Senate floor Tuesday evening to quote from a decades-old letter attacking Sessions, in blatant violation of a Senate rule against impugning the character of a fellow senator on the floor of the Senate. Following rebuke of her for violating the Senate floor rule, she tweeted, “I will not be silent about a nominee for AG who has made derogatory & racist comments that have no place in our justice system.”

Mr. Sessions in fact filed multiple desegregation lawsuits as U.S. attorney and filed charges against a state leader of the Ku Klux Klan in a capital case, which he followed through on when he became the state attorney general. As mentioned above, he voted for Eric Holder, the nation’s first African-American attorney general. Back in 2009, during Holder’s confirmation hearing, Senator Leahy had nothing but high praise for the man he has now turned against. “Sen. Sessions is here: of course, Sen. Sessions is also a former U.S. attorney and knows what one goes through in that regard,” Senator Leahy said back then, “and we’ve relied on him for that experience. And, Sen. Sessions, it’s over to you.” Senator Sessions responded, “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, congratulations, Mr. Holder, on the nomination.”

According to our late PJ Media colleague Barry Rubin, the CIA paid for the research and travel expenses for then-Nixon Center researcher Robert Leiken and his younger colleague Stephen Brooke to travel around the Middle East and Europe meeting with Muslim Brotherhood leaders. They reportedly met with Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Tunisia, the UK, Spain, and elsewhere.

This resulted in a still-classified paper commissioned by the National Intelligence Council and, according to Barry Rubin, paid for through a CIA contract. Barry Rubin was hired to write the rebuttal to the Leiken/Brooke paper.

This became the basis for an article by Leiken and Brooke in the March/April 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs entitled, “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.” This one article became the basis for virtually every single talking point in support of the Muslim Brotherhood parroted by the “smart set” and the media.

At the time, I wrote a three-part criticism of the Leiken/Brooke Foreign Affairs article. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

There is proof of Barry’s claim about the U.S. intelligence community’s role in hyping the “moderate Muslim Brotherhood” narrative, namely the admission by Leiken himself.

With their Foreign Affairs article in hand, Leiken and Brooke were tasked to push compliance with this narrative throughout the Bush administration agencies.

A June 2007 New York Sun report by Eli Lake tells of an event Leiken hosted by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research that reveals:

Earlier this year, the National Intelligence Council received a paper it had commissioned on the history of the Muslim Brotherhood by a scholar at the Nixon Center, Robert Leiken, who is invited to the State Department meeting today to present the case for engagement.

[…]

Mr. Leiken’s Foreign Affairs paper and classified study for the National Intelligence Council has gotten the attention of senior National Security Council officials and Secretary of State Rice, according to two administration officials.

“The NIC asked me to provide an analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood and I was happy to oblige,” Mr. Leiken said.

The intelligence community has not always been so sold on the Muslim Brotherhood’s so-called moderation.

After 9/11, a joint U.S.-European intelligence analysis on the Muslim Brotherhood that raised concerns about the organization’s global goals was obtained by reporters Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, then at Newsweek :

As the spread of Islamic radicalism began to accelerate a few years ago, a team of U.S. and European intelligence agency officials collaborated on a secret study of a sensitive subject: the global operations of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Their classified report highlighted what its authors saw as disturbing trends. Founded by fundamentalists in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood has grown rapidly in recent years and established beachheads in over 70 countries, including virtually every major nation in Europe and the Middle East, as well as many parts of Africa. According to the report, a copy of which was obtained by NEWSWEEK, the group’s members “frequently communicate and meet in secret” and appeared to have access to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. Hensarling, a Texas Republican, (District 5)is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

The Obama presidency placed no greater burden on America’s growth potential than the avalanche of regulations that smother the U.S. economic system. The most destructive and dangerous of the new regulatory bureaucracies created by the Democrat-dominated 111th Congress is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The CFPB stands with ObamaCare as a crowning “achievement” of Mr. Obama’s transformation of America. With unprecedented automatic funding provided directly by the Federal Reserve, the agency is unanswerable to anyone. Democrats chose to insulate it from Congress, the president, voters and the democratic process. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia noted as much in its recent PHH v. CFPB decision, which ruled the bureau’s governing structure unconstitutional. The court said the unelected CFPB director “enjoys more unilateral authority than any other officer in any of the three branches of government of the U.S. Government, other than the President.”

The CFPB is arguably the most powerful, least accountable agency in U.S. history. CFPB zealots have the power to determine the “fairness” of virtually every financial transaction in America. The agency defines its own powers and can launch investigations without cause, imposing virtually any fine or remedy, devoid of due process. It requires lenders essentially to read their clients’ minds, know and weigh their clients’ comprehension levels, and forecast future risk. It can compel the production of reams of data and employ methodologies that “infer” harm without finding any specific instance of harm or knowing violation.

The regulatory web spun by the CFPB can make every provider of financial services guilty until proven innocent, inviting selective enforcement and financial shakedowns. The CFPB is the embodiment of James Madison’s warning in Federalist No. 47 that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

This tyranny has harmed the very consumers it purports to help. Since the CFPB’s advent, the number of banks offering free checking has drastically declined, while many bank fees have increased. Mortgage originations and auto loans have become more expensive for many Americans.

No corner of American finance is beyond the CFPB’s grasp, even auto dealers—which are specifically excluded from its jurisdiction by the Dodd-Frank Act. To dodge this legal constraint, the CFPB regulates auto dealers through enforcement “bulletins” on auto lenders, employing statistical analysis rather than specific acts to charge lenders with discriminatory lending. The race of borrowers is inferred based on the borrowers’ names and home addresses. Through this ruse they smear and shake down lenders.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-non-silence-of-elizabeth-warren-1486598042

The activist base of the Democratic Party is demanding rage and resistance to Donald Trump and all his works, and Senate Democrats are listening. Jeff Sessions was confirmed as Attorney General Wednesday on a party-line vote, though not without more pointless melodrama and the informal launch of Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign.

The Massachusetts progressive’s latest diatribe against her fellow Senator Sessions was interrupted after she repeatedly violated Senate Rule XIX, which prohibits members from besmirching the character and motives of their colleagues. After warnings that she ignored and a Republican motion, the Senate rebuked Ms. Warren 49-43. As a result, she lost her privileges to participate in the rest of the AG debate.

Ms. Warren is now claiming she was “silenced,” which is true if she means the Senate floor for an interval lasting fewer than 24 hours. It is not true if she’s talking about the Facebook Live video she taped outside the Senate chamber on Tuesday night, her live call-in to Rachel Maddow’s prime-time television show, her sundry media appearances on Wednesday or her fundraising emails off the incident.

“This is not what America is about—silencing speech,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday, shortly after Ms. Warren announced an April publication date for her new book, “This Fight Is Our Fight.” For a martyr to censorship, she’s remarkably prolific.

Social media are overflowing with memes featuring the likes of Rosa Parks,Harriet Tubman and various suffragettes along with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s comment about the Senate sanction: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” Likening one of the most powerful people in the world to an underground-railroad conductor may be a tad histrionic, but you be the judge.

HRH Warren isn’t a victim, even if she enjoys feeling she is, and Republicans aren’t trying to get her to “shut up,” as if that’s possible. She knowingly broke protocol and said Mr. Sessions was “racist” and prosecuting “a campaign of bigotry,” among other gross, false and personal insults that Democrats now feel entitled to hurl. Our guess is that Ms. Warren wanted to be punished so she could play out this political theater.

A question for Republicans is whether Mr. McConnell enhanced the Warren brand by responding to her provocations in this way. She already has a formidable platform but the story dominated Wednesday’s news. Then again, sooner or later Mr. McConnell had to send a signal that Senate rules can’t be violated with impunity.

The larger context is that Democrats have slowed Senate confirmation of President Trump’s cabinet to the slowest pace since Eisenhower, and by some measures since the 19th century. Though they lack the votes to defeat anyone, they’ve boycotted hearings, maxed out debate time, denied routine courtesies and delayed procedural votes.

New Jersey’s Cory Booker even testified against Mr. Sessions, which no Senator had felt to do against a colleague since Congress was formed in 1789—a period that includes the Civil War and two world wars.