RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/leftist-ny-attorney-general-and-judge-vs-the-rule-of-law/

New York State Attorney General Letitia James and New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur F. Engoron have provided a case study in how the Left conducts war against the integrity and impartiality of law enforcement and the judiciary. Together, they weaponized the justice system to wage their personal vendetta against Donald Trump. Their weapon of choice was a broad and vaguely written New York State fraud statute, Executive Law Section 63(12), which they maliciously twisted for the purpose of ruining Mr. Trump financially.

In 2022, Judge Engoron told Donald Trump’s attorney that Mr. Trump is “just a bad guy” whom Letitia James “should go after as the chief law enforcement officer of the state,” which is precisely what she was doing. Judge Engoron’s highly biased statement alone should have disqualified him from presiding over any case involving Mr. Trump. This judge should also have been disqualified for donating to the Manhattan Democrats in violation of Section 100.5(h) of the New York Courts Rules of Judicial Conduct. But Judge Engoron remained on the case.

Judge Engoron had no reason to doubt that Ms. James would zealously “go after” the man who Judge Engoron smeared as “a bad guy.”  After all, this left-wing fanatic had promised during her attorney general election campaign to target then-President Trump. “I’m running for attorney general because I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president when our fundamental rights are at stake,” this election denier declared. “We need an attorney general who will stand up to Donald Trump.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-pardons-son-and-co-conspirator/

The long investigation of the Biden Crime Family ended when its principal member extended a “full and unconditional” pardon to its front man for any and all crimes that Hunter Biden might have committed or taken part in from January 2014 through Dec 1 2024.

The eleven year pardon by Joe Biden for his son and apparent co-conspirator is unprecedented in both its scope and its brazen shameless criminality. Biden’s pardon begins in the last two years of his vice presidency when the lame duck politician was using Hunter to aggressively monetize his fading political influence by conspiring with oligarchs around the world.

President Biden claimed in a press release that he pardoned his son to protect him from being charged for lying on his gun form and failing to pay taxes. But if Biden had been trying to deal with those two cases, he could have just commuted the sentences or offered a narrower pardon.

The gun form incident took place in 2018 and Hunter stopped paying taxes in 2016. Why start the pardon clock on Jan 2014? And why does it end at the vast last possible moment?

What is Joe Biden really trying to protect against?

2014 was the year that Hunter Biden joined the board of Ukraine’s Burisma, scoring a $1 million payday, and millions more for the Biden Crime Family. It was also the year that Yelena Baturina, the wife of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov sent $3.5 million to a Hunter organization and attended an event with Joe Biden in D.C. It was also the year that a Kazakh oligarch who had just taken over the BTA Bank with whom both Joe was photographed sent six figures.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/opinion/yiddish-hebrew-language-thriving.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eE4.Zue4.U9O4DqrnHWz9&smid=url-share

A Columbia University linguist explores how race and language shape our politics and culture.

If I tell you that there are languages other than English that someone in America could live a whole life in, which would come to mind? Spanish, maybe? Chinese? Both are spoken in (among many other settings) tight-knit communities that are continually refreshed by new immigration. Pondering a little further, you might think of rural Amish communities that speak dialects of German.

I doubt that many people would think of Yiddish.

In mainstream American culture Yiddish — an Eastern European blend of German with a great many Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic words — is these days either a punchline (a “chutzpah” or a “klutz” in a comic’s monologue) or a historic footnote, a vanishing artifact of a long-gone era. Rueful tales of the days when New York supported a dozen Yiddish-language newspapers, or articles about the last of the Yiddish bookstores, always gave the language a twilight air. Even the stated intention of some younger people to revive Yiddish implies that the language requires some kind of resuscitation.

That would be a surprise to people who live in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities such as Kiryas Joel and Monsey, N.Y., where Yiddish is the dominant language. Despite supposedly vanishing into history, it has 250,000 speakers in America alone, the majority of them in settings like these.

I have had the pleasure and privilege of getting to know one such family during my summer stays at an old Jewish bungalow colony. That family — a husband and wife, along with two of their grown daughters and a grandchild — have taught me a great deal about the language and what it means to them.

https://www.jns.org/trump-white-house-affords-chance-to-confront-lebanese-terror-bank/

President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory offers a golden opportunity to shut down a Lebanese bank, one critical to Iran and Hezbollah, that has so far escaped sanctions even as it serves as one of the main conduits of terror financing, observers tell JNS.

While numerous Lebanese banks and individuals have been slapped with sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Middle East & Africa Bank (MEAB), the 15th largest by deposits in Lebanon, has fallen through the cracks.

In 2019, MEAB bank was named as a defendant in a case, still ongoing, in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York, brought by American citizens and the families of American citizens who were killed or injured in Iraq between 2004 and 2011 in attacks orchestrated by Hezbollah in coordination with other terrorist groups.

In 2006, MEAB Bank’s offices were targeted by Israeli fighter jets after a fundraising appeal aired on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station asking that donations for the terrorist group be sent to a specific account at the bank.

Haig Melkessetian, a former intelligence operative for the U.S. Defense and State departments, has investigated MEAB extensively. He told JNS that the reason MEAB has evaded sanctions is that it has friends in high places.

In January 2015, during the Iran nuclear talks, Mohammad Zarif, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister at the time, asked then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “to go easy on MEAB,” in other words, that it be kept off the OFAC sanctions list, Melkessetian said.

David Wurmser, a senior analyst at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, who has researched the bank and the Shi’ite clan behind it, told JNS, “It’s very clear that the Iranians were out to preserve their core structures, and this bank really lies at the center of the global reach of Hezbollah, and through Hezbollah, the global reach of Iran.”

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2024/11/30/breaking-its-official-trump-names-deep-state-foe-kash-patel-fbi-director-n4934745

The appointment has been rumored ever since Donald Trump was reelected president of the United States, and on Saturday evening, he made it official: “I am proud to announce,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “that Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” This is an extraordinary and highly significant appointment, as Patel has been a harsh critic of the far-left, highly politicized and deeply corrupt FBI. A thoroughgoing housecleaning appears to be in the offing — unless the deep state that Patel will be targeting manages to defeat him in a head-on confrontation.

Trump added in his announcement:

Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and “America First” fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People. He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution. Kash did an incredible job during my First Term, where he served as Chief of Staff at the Department of Defense, Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council. Kash has also tried over 60 jury trials. This FBI will end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the Border. Kash will work under our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI.

Patel may very well do just that. Certainly it is something he has made no secret about wanting very much to do. Back in August, Patel was asked what he would do if he did become the director of the FBI, and his answer was pure gold.

“One of my biggest personal recommendations,” Patel said, “is you shut down the FBI headquarters building and open it up the next day as the Museum of the Deep State, and you send those 7000 agents in the headquarters building down range to chase down rapists, to chase down murderers, to chase down drug traffickers and let the cops be cops on the streets across America. You keep a small contingent in Washington, DC. That’s step one.” 

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/01/what-is-the-administrative-state/

Last week in this virtual space, I wrote that Donald Trump would make a renewed effort during his second term to dismantle “the administrative state.” As in his first term, he would employ various strategies to blunt the effects of the administrative apparatus that governs us. He would, for example, disperse some parts of the government outside the overwhelmingly left-progressive swamp of Washington, D.C.

As an aside, I should note that I regard the persistence of Washington as the seat of our government as a serious impediment to the goal of “deconstructing” the administrative state. “It has,” I wrote back in 2022, “long been obvious to candid observers that there is something deeply dysfunctional about that overwhelmingly Democratic, welfare-addicted city.”

It is a partisan sinkhole. Jefferson wanted the capital moved from New York to Washington in part to bring it closer to the South, but also to place it in a locality that was officially neutral. There is nothing neutral about Washington today. The city has some impressive architecture and urban vistas. They should be preserved and staffed as tourist attractions. But the reins of power should be relocated.

I doubt that will happen. Which means that the eternal vigilance that MAGA must maintain around its enemies will have to be redoubled. Trump attempting to govern from Washington will be like Ike trying to undertake the Normandy invasion with half his planners on loan from the German general staff.

Still, there are some symbolic gestures that he and his aides might consider. I have long suggested that the inauguration be held somewhere other than Washington, D.C. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires the inauguration be in Washington. LBJ, remember, was sworn in on Air Force One just a couple of hours after Kennedy was assassinated. When Warren Harding died, Calvin Coolidge was visiting the family homestead in Vermont. His father, a justice of the peace, administered the oath of office in the parlor. I think the next inauguration should be well away from the swamp of Washington. Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach is one venue that springs to mind, but I am sure there are other attractive spots. At a minimum, I hope the inauguration committee will consider having some of the parties elsewhere. A ball in Butler, PA, for example, would not only be celebratory but also serve as a useful reminder of how close Trump came to a fatal encounter with an assassin’s bullet.

https://nypost.com/2024/11/28/opinion/we-should-be-thankful-that-the-future-is-in-trumps-hands-and-not-harris/

This Thanksgiving we got a reminder of what might-have-been. And what we have been unburdened by.

We should be truly grateful.

For this was the week in which Kamala Harris broke her post-election silence. And I think anyone who saw it can agree: the vice president is not doing well.

In an almost 10-minute-long word salad, the former presidential candidate told her supporters such things as: “You have the same power that you did before November 5, and you have the same purpose that you did. And you have the same ability to engage and inspire, so don’t ever let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you.”

The only thing that made Harris’ message different from a late-night conversation with a very drunk friend was that at no point did Harris actually say “I love you guys” and then burst out weeping.

But it was a reminder of how close this country came to a decline that other countries are experiencing.

Back in my native Britain this past summer the public elected a Labour government that, like Kamala, doesn’t seem to have any idea of what it is doing. Or what it could do.

They are currently working out how to kill off the citizenry with euthanasia. But as for plans to grow the economy, secure the borders or improve living standards? Nope. Not an idea in sight.

https://nypost.com/2024/11/27/opinion/the-fbi-and-dojs-politically-motivated-persecution-of-a-former-informant-all-to-protect-the-bidens/

One of the most disturbing scandals of the Hunter Biden saga is the imprisonment without trial of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov. 

The Ukrainian-born Israeli-American, who once told his FBI handler about Ukrainian claims of a $10 million bribe to the Bidens, has been languishing in a Los Angeles prison for nine months on charges that he lied to the FBI. 

Last week, federal prosecutors slapped new tax-evasion charges on Smirnov, 43, which suggests they know their original indictment is too weak for a jury to convict him when he faces trial beginning Jan. 8. 

Smirnov was one of the FBI’s most trusted confidential human sources, paid more than $100,000 during what his lawyers call “undivided, years-long loyalty to the United States” before he was thrown to the wolves in the middle of the Biden impeachment inquiry. 

Busted in February 

He was arrested in February on charges that he “provided false derogatory information to the FBI in 2020 about Joseph Biden, who at the time was a candidate for president and had previously been the vice president. 

“The alleged false information concerned Joseph Biden’s and his son Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma Holdings Ltd., a Ukrainian energy business.” 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-do-dems-solve-a-problem-like-kamala/

After inflicting one of the most financial and electoral defeats on the Democrats, Kamala is still around and still barraging supporters with endless texts pleading for money.

The Kamala campaign is still burning through its list, allegedly to pay off a $20 million debt, but it’s hard to believe that it hasn’t covered that already.

The Harris Fight Fund is sending out messages asking for money to “organize against Trump’s radical cabinet appointments” and to “start building the critical resources we need to hold Trump accountable these next four years.”

Now the whole thing might be a scam to suck up more money, but with 41% of Democrats putting Kamala’s name in the box for the 2028 nomination, and with Kamala exploring options that may include running for governor, it’s pretty clear that she’s not going away and she’s building up yet another campaign war chest.

Dems need Kamala to go away, but how do they do that?

Dems couldn’t make Kamala go away in 2024 with devastating consequences. If they can’t make her go away in 2025, things are likely to get worse.