RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/biden-commutes-prison-death-sentences-garland

With their recent commutation of death sentences for federal prisoners, President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland are leaving office not in a blaze of glory but under a cloud of shame.

The clemencies seem like a culmination to a long record of dereliction and misjudgment. Biden and Garland spent the last few years lamenting the death toll of Americans killed by fentanyl, with overdoses and the accompanying violence of drug dealing resulting in more than 100,000 deaths per year, according to the administration’s own threat assessment. Meantime, Biden left the nation’s southern border wide open, allowing drug traffickers easy passage to bring more fentanyl into the United States. For his part, the attorney general issued his infamous Garland Memo, telling federal prosecutors not to impose mandatory minimum sentences on fentanyl traffickers (and other drug dealers) unless the dealers met a byzantine list of requirements for prior violence, leadership roles, and criminal history, conditions virtually impossible to prove for shadowy drug couriers operating outside the United States.

The president had repeatedly stated that he would not pardon his son Hunter Biden, even as the younger Biden was convicted at trial of firearms offenses and then pled guilty to tax offenses. President Biden claimed the moral high ground, allegedly respecting the rule of law. Then Donald Trump won the election. With tallying of the election returns barely completed, Biden did an abrupt about-face, pardoning his son as sentencing proceedings loomed. The president did not merely pardon Hunter for the two federal cases in which he already had been convicted but for any conduct going back to 2014—a postdated, decade-long get-out-of-jail-free card designed to shield Hunter from some unsavory financial transactions that might have implicated the “big guy,” a term that government whistleblowers claim refers to the president himself.

And this was just a prelude. Supported by Garland’s Department of Justice, Biden then commuted the prison sentences of nearly 1,500 convicted federal criminals, the largest such grant ever given by an American president. Biden touted the historical nature of his action, claiming that the criminals affected had demonstrated “a strong commitment to making their communities safer.” But Biden and Garland must not have been paying close attention to whom they were granting their favors, as they managed to include a commutation for corrupt former judge Michael Conahan. Conahan was one of the infamous “kids-for-cash” judges in Pennsylvania who sentenced juveniles to prison in exchange for millions of dollars in kickbacks, a scheme that affected more than 2,500 children and involved the suicide of at least one young man.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/now-the-hard-work-begins/

The Christmas and New Year festivities have been joyous for us Americans who have suffered through the four years of incompetence and malignity inflicted upon us by the previous administration, the most dysfunctional since at least World War II. Both at home and abroad, a Democrat party hijacked by the left-over left defied nature and nature’s God with policies and programs astonishing for their gross violations of reality and morality, not to mention common sense and the laws of science.

But as we rejoice over our deliverance, and look hopefully to January 20, we should gird our loins and steel ourselves for the fight to come, starting with whatever feckless policies that lame-duck Biden’s puppeteers manage to get passed. The damage to our culture and Constitutional order has deep roots, and has poisoned our institutions and culture both openly and so insidiously that even those who know better still tolerate or endorse the same policies that have weakened our Republic.

Most of us can catalogue the examples of Democrat malfeasance. Take the “renewable energy” and “net-zero carbon” grift that has disrupted our economy and fed inflation in a nation blessed with huge reserves of oil and natural gas, enough to make us energy self-sufficient. But no, the Lefty Dems have been addled by the scientifically dicey “global warming” hypothesis tarted up with lurid apocalyptic panic and promiscuous scientism, all greased by corporate subsidies and tax incentives that have befouled the free market, and created a huge moral hazard for the future. At the same time, an already existing, actually “clean and renewable energy”––nuclear power–– has been put on the shelf and starved of funding, while billions are squandered on intermittent solar and wind energy that enriches China.

Another Dem failure to “follow the science” is the transgender fad preying on neurotic children and teens. Science tells us that mammals are either males and females that together procreate, yet doctors presumably trained scientifically are openly poisoning children with puberty blockers and cross-hormone treatments, then move on to irreversible surgeries that leave their victims mutilated for life. Whether through greed or misplaced “compassion,” doctors are blatantly violating their Hippocratic Oath that in the original Greek requires physicians not just to do no harm, but to benefit their patients.

Nor should we forget the Uniparty’s feckless economic policies that print, borrow, tax, spend, and redistribute trillions of dollars to political clients. Or what Rudyard Kipling called “Robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul,” and Churchill dubbed “Government of the dole-drawers, by the dole-drawers, and for the dole-drawers.” The unscientific mitigation policies and spending sprees during the Covid pandemic damaged millions of people, and flooded the economy with more money chasing fewer goods, the eternal formula for inflation.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/02/obamas-censorship-office-goes-bankrupt/

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

he Global Engagement Center, an office housed within the State Department and aiming to thwart disinformation and misinformation, has been forced by Congress to close up shop. It’s no mystery why; the taxpayer-backed GEC violated its mandate to work only overseas and devolved into a partisan enabler of speech suppression in the United States.

Here’s how.

Founded in 2016 and technically the product of an Obama-era executive order on counterterrorism, the GEC lapsed in December and lost congressional funding. Over the last two years, my investigative reporting in the Washington Examiner as well as that of Racket News journalist Matt Taibbi pulled back the curtain of the GEC’s ties to foreign and domestic NGOs trying to defund news outlets they say peddle disinformation – including RealClearPolitics. My reporting showed that the GEC and the State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy combined granted almost $1 million to the British Global Disinformation Index, which created a blacklist of U.S.-based websites that published content it determined to push “adversarial narratives” and then pressured advertisers to shut them down (think the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis).

The GEC, moreover, was involved with the Election Integrity Partnership, a consortium of left-wing nonprofit groups, universities, and federal agencies that pressured Twitter and Facebook to remove GOP-aligned content in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. The GEC also bankrolled New York-based company NewsGuard, a “misinformation” tracker that, along with the Global Disinformation Index, has found itself at the center of a lawsuit brought by the Federalist, the Daily Wire, and the State of Texas against the GEC for allegedly funding an unconstitutional “censorship scheme” that suppressed voices on the right.

Taibbi, the former Rolling Stone writer, demonstrated that the GEC pressured social media platforms in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to moderate extensive content, testifying to Congress in March 2023, “We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA.”

https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/jimmy-carters-obsession-with-israel?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jimmy-carters-obsession-with-israel

Much of the world is describing Jimmy Carter as a saintly soul who went around the world building housing for the poor, monitoring elections to make sure they were free and fair, and still managing — such a humble man! — to teach Sunday School at the small church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. But those familiar with his obsessive dislike of Israel that descended into outright antisemitism have a different view of the Man From Plains. The historian Michael Oren reminds us of this side of James Earl Carter, Jr. here: “Jimmy Carter: A Jewish tragedy – opinion,” by Michael Oren, Jerusalem Post, December 30, 2024:

Among many other time-tested attributes, the Jewish people have a long memory. Aid us in the manner of the ancient Persian King Cyrus, and we will remember you forever fondly. Cross us as Seleucid King Antiochus IV did, and we will curse you every Hanukkah.

Our talent for remembering is particularly salient today after the death, at age of 100, of former president Jimmy Carter.

While the rest of the world is now hailing him as a statesman who, after his failed one-term presidency, rose to become an unstinting peacemaker, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a paragon of now non-existent virtues, many Jews will have a far more ambivalent reaction.

Not just Jews, but all those who care about Israel, will be reluctant to join in the orgy of posthumous praise for Jimmy Carter.

https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/washington-state-muslim-mother-caught?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=washington-state-muslim-mother-caught

In the Qur’an, a mysterious figure, known as Khidr in Islamic tradition, kills a boy in an apparently random and gratuitous attack. He then explains: “And as for the boy, his parents were believers, and we feared that he would overburden them by transgression and disbelief. So we intended that their Lord should substitute for them one better than him in purity and nearer to mercy.” (18:80-81)

And according to Islamic law, “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” (Reliance of the Traveller o1.1-2).

Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour ‘provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’” And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that “Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.”

“Mother was caught escaping to Canada after ‘trying to strangle daughter, 17, in an honor killing,’” by Nic White, DailyMail.com, December 28, 2024:

A mother was arrested at the border while fleeing to Canada after she allegedly tried to strangle her daughter in an ‘honor killing’.

Zahraa Subhi Mohsin Ali, 40, was charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, and assault after the attack on October 18, alongside her husband Ihsan Ali, 44.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/reflections-on-jimmy-carter/

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.
– Matthew 6:5

When word came that Jimmy Carter, age 98, was entering hospice care, the predictable plaudits began to pour in. Calling Carter “an inspiration,” Maria Shriver gushed that he “moves humanity forward every single day.” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) described Carter as having always “walked with God.” Rocker Nils Lofgren called him “[a]s fine a man and soul as I’ve ever seen.” And Steve Martin tweeted: “We’ve seen few humans this devoted and humble….Quietly continuing his mission,which was to do good. If you must leave us go gently . Leave your heart and bravery so we might learn.”

All of which is testimony to the power of hype.

I was nineteen years old during most of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign. You might have expected me to support him. Three years earlier, after all, I’d been every bit as addicted to the Watergate hearings on afternoon TV as my mother was to As the World Turns. I was besotted by the movie All the President’s Men, released a few months before the 1976 election. At the time of the election, I was a student on a college campus dominated by lefties who, purportedly jaded and alienated by politics in those post-Watergate days, embraced Carter as a breath of fresh air, a magnanimous soul uniquely equipped to make America, once again, a City on a Hill, noble in its character and great in its deeds. As Carter put it himself, “I can give you a government that’s honest and that’s filled with love, competence, and compassion.”

I didn’t trust the son of a bitch as far as I could throw him.

Yes, Nixon, aside from being a brilliant statesman, had been a wily character. The Watergate tapes had revealed his salty side. He was no saint, but then again he didn’t sell himself as a saint. What politician is a saint? What mattered was that Nixon was brilliant. He was a terrific president. He knew his stuff cold. He loved America. He hated Communism. Yes, he was often characterized as being awkward in his own body and very uncomfortable about interacting with voters on the campaign trail – which to me meant that, well, at least he wasn’t slick.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/30/why-both-sides-are-right-in-the-h-1b-visas-row/

The current clashes over high-skilled immigration between Donald Trump’s right-wing base and his ‘first buddy’, Elon Musk, reveal a fundamental divide within the US president’s odd coalition. On one side are the populists concerned with jobs being prioritised for American workers. On the other, libertarians fret about how businesses can compete on a global scale.

The row was sparked last week by a tweet by Vivek Ramaswamy, co-chair of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, in which he blamed American culture for celebrating ‘mediocrity over excellence’, causing firms to seek skilled workers from abroad rather than hire home-grown talent. Musk has since chimed in to tell opponents of high-skilled immigration to ‘take a big step back and fuck yourself in the face’. ‘I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend’, he wrote on X.

Never one to sweat the details, Trump’s views on this issue are often ill-defined and seem ideal for sparking just such an internal conflict between his base and his Silicon Valley backers.

As the populists point out, H-1B visas – temporary work permits for skilled workers, first introduced in 1990 – have a record of abuse. Most notably, in 2014, Disney was accused of exploiting the H-1B programme to replace American programmers en masse with cheaper Indian ones. In an era of depressed growth in tech jobs, in part due to AI, the oligarchs’ claim that we face a profound shortage of such workers may be increasingly strained.

The populists also have it right in that H-1B visas have accelerated class divides, particularly in places like Silicon Valley. Valley types used to hire from local schools, like San José State University, rather than from places like the Indian Institutes of Technology. Today, roughly three-quarters of the Valley’s jobs go to non-citizens. Tech oligarchs may like this arrangement, but taking jobs from people who vote can have severe political ramifications, something those galaxy-brained techies seem not to comprehend.

What’s more, the widening social divides in the Bay Area have already created a progressive monoculture, while the GOP has all but ceased to exist there. Back in the 1970s, when the Valley was a place of upward mobility, its politics were decidedly centrist.

On the other hand, the oligarchs are also correct, as Ramaswamy has pointed out, about the stark weaknesses of the US educational system. Only five per cent of American college students major in engineering, compared with 33 per cent in China. In 2016, Chinese universities graduated 4.7million students in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), versus 568,000 in the United States. China also produces six times as many students with engineering and computer-science bachelor’s degrees as the US does.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/30/devin-nunes-reemerges/

2024 proved to be the year of the reemergence of many once and unfairly pilloried public figures.

Elon Musk weathered nonstop attacks on his X social media platform. Furor escalated over his newfound 2024 Trump advocacy—even as he ended 2024 with his iconic Tesla brand still the best-selling car in six states and the most popular electric vehicle in the entire nation.

Tesla’s rising stock prices ensured by year’s end that Musk was by far the richest man in the world with a net worth of well over $400 billion. His recyclable SpaceX Super Heavy starship rocket booster mesmerized the nation as it returned to the launch pad to be caught by a huge mechanical arm.

After January 6, 2021, the media swore that Donald Trump was supposedly washed up. He left office with a 34 percent approval rating. Over nearly the next four years, Trump would face 91 felony indictments and be liable for over $400 million in assorted fines.

Now he is a reelected president. Former oppositional world leaders traipse to Mar-a-Lago to seek his approval even before his tenure begins. His erstwhile critics at home are scurrying about in disarray.

The Trump-hating media who swore Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack” and “fit as a fiddle” are mostly discredited and are, for now, still bleeding audiences. And Trump’s chief political adversaries, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Obamas are increasingly either unpopular or irrelevant—or both.

Yet one unremarked-upon return is that of former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who, after 20 years of representing Central California in Congress, retired on January 1, 2022, from the House to become CEO of the newly formed Trump Media & Technology Group, tasked to oversee its social media platform, TruthSocial.

Nunes has regained public attention over the last two weeks after Trump appointed him to become chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which oversees the conduct and performance of America’s intelligence agencies.

And once more he too is the target of tired residual left-wing venom, as a “pugnacious Trump loyalist” in the words of the New York Times.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/21-house-dems-demand-biden-aid-black-klansman/

18 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib and two other non-black members, signed a letter asking Biden to exonerate America’s first black Klansman.

The letter does not mention that Marcus Garvey had allied with the KKK, admired Hitler, told his followers to read Mein Kampf and declared, “what the Negro needs is a Hitler.”

It also does not mention that Garvey had himself in mind for the job, that the self-proclaimed “Provisional President of Africa” wore imaginary military uniforms and sent his thugs to beat up black civil rights leaders before being expelled in disgrace after defrauding his followers.

Or that the charges of mail fraud that 21 House Democrats want to exonerate Garvey from were brought at the urging of black civil rights leaders of the day who demanded federal intervention.

House Democrats are not the first to argue that Garvey was railroaded.

After the trial, Garvey claimed that he had been convicted because of his allegiance to the KKK. In buffoonery worthy of Candace Owens, he argued that the judge (who was actually a Christian, but who Garvey falsely claimed was Jewish) believed that “I hated and was opposed to the Jews, because of my alleged membership in or connection with the Klu Klux Klan.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/another-biden-parting-outrage/

Just recently, the White House announced that President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners, all murderers and some multiple murderers, on federal death row. (Yes, while most death penalty cases are handled by the states, the federal government has a death row for violators of federal crimes.) Biden commuted the federal prisoners’ sentences from death to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In a statement, Biden claimed to be acting out of principle and conscience. He plainly said he did not want the federal government to execute anyone, and he specifically did not want the next president of the United States to allow the federal government to execute anyone. He never mentioned who that president might be, but he was referring, of course, to President-elect Donald Trump.

“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

It is hard to believe, but even in such grave matters of law and conscience, Biden’s decision was all about Trump.

Biden is planning his last trip as president next month. It will be to Italy, where he will meet Pope Francis at the Vatican. The pope recently prayed that the sentences of death row prisoners in the United States “be commuted or changed.” Vatican News also reported, “Anti-death penalty activists and associations have been imploring President Biden to use his clemency powers before he leaves office to spare the lives of about 40 federal death row inmates who are at peril of imminent execution when the next president takes office.”

The pope, of course, speaks from a religious perspective. His position is consistent; he wants all death penalty prisoners to be spared. But Biden was not so consistent, because while he commuted the sentences of 37 prisoners, he left death sentences in place for three: Dylann Roof, who murdered nine people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015; Robert Bowers, who murdered 11 at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who killed three and injured more than 200 in 2013.

Biden decided that Kaboni Savage, convicted of murdering 12 people, including a family of six in a firebombing, deserved mercy, while Roof, Bowers and Tsarnaev did not. Biden decided that Ricardo Sanchez and Daniel Troya, convicted of murdering a young mother, father and their 4- and 3-year-old boys, deserved mercy, but Roof, Bowers and Tsarnaev did not. Biden decided that Jorge Avila-Torrez, convicted or raping and murdering two girls, age 8 and 9, and later murdering a 20-year-old woman, deserved mercy, but Roof, Bowers and Tsarnaev did not.