RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/displaying-not-establishing

In June, Louisiana passed a law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, as part of an educational framework about certain fundamental historical texts, including the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance. A group of parents, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit to block the law’s implementation, contending that it violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause forbidding the government establishment of religion. A federal judge has since ruled that this law is “unconstitutional on its face.” The state is appealing the decision, with arguments scheduled before the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in January; in the meantime, state officials have been ordered not to enforce the display requirement.

Such displays were not uncommon in schools until the Supreme Court invalidated them in 1980—the apex of the Court’s hostility to religion in public spaces. More recently, the Court has returned to a narrower approach to Establishment Clause issues, closer to the Founders’ intentions. The Ten Commandments case provides a welcome opportunity for the courts to clarify that children have no more right to a public square scrubbed of religious content than adults do—and that being upset by such a display is not sufficient to warrant courts’ protection against it.

In 2005, the Supreme Court held in Van Orden v. Perry that government buildings may display the Ten Commandments because “religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause.” The Ten Commandments, in fact, feature among other historic iconography in the premises of the Court itself. “Religious acknowledgment” does not amount to prohibited “Establishment,” the Court said. Put differently, the Constitution’s specific ban on providing government support to particular denominations should not be confused with France’s policy of laïcité, a compulsory public secularism that often bars religious symbols and messages from public spaces. One can understand the litigation campaigns against religious displays in the U.S. that began in the 1960s as an effort to project the radical French Revolutionary understanding of religion in the public square onto the more temperate American one.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/elon-musk-doge-brac-commission

Elon Musk is the greatest entrepreneur of our era. He delights in accomplishing what is said to be impossible: mass-producing electric cars, sending private rockets into space, and restoring free speech on the world’s most influential social media platform. He is also a ruthlessly efficient manager, having slashed production costs at his hardware companies, Telsa and SpaceX, and cut 80 percent of the workforce at Twitter, while simultaneously improving the product.

His next challenge may prove even more formidable. As part of the Trump administration’s plan to slash the bureaucracy, Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy hope to cut government spending by up to $2 trillion per year through the newly established DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency.

On the surface, this seems impossible. While conservatives have promised to reduce the size of government for more than a century, federal outlays have grown with each passing decade. Some congressional insiders, meantime, have already signaled skepticism of DOGE, arguing that Musk and Ramaswamy “know nothing about how the government works” and are destined to fail.

I would like to see Elon’s initiative succeed. America’s budget is unsustainable, and it too often directs resources to captured ideological bureaucracies rather than to the public good. But without proper design, DOGE could become another of Washington’s failed promises. To avoid that fate, the incoming Republican Congress must tailor DOGE’s structure to ensure its success.

One potential model is the BRAC Commission. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan formalized a procedure that, with later amendments and support from a bipartisan group of presidents and lawmakers, closed inefficient military bases and redirected spending to more fruitful ends. The so-called Base Realignment and Closure process, or BRAC, had several rounds, and concluded in 2011. All told, it resulted in the closure of 121 major military bases and saved taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/magazine-features/3258958/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-doge-spending-cuts/

It’s not often that champions of a smaller federal government cheer the creation of a new department. But the Department of Government Efficiency isn’t like the Department of Motor Vehicles. It will be run by two businessmen who have made billions of dollars in the private sector, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. It is not really a new federal agency but a task force that has been ordered to wring waste out of old ones. 

Put another way, Musk and Ramaswamy are not tasked with spending taxpayer money. They have been charged with saving it. Their goal is to recommend $2 trillion in spending cuts, or nearly 30% of the federal budget. That’s more ambitious than some of DOGE’s predecessors, such as the Grace Commission under Ronald Reagan or the Al Gore-led Reinventing Government initiative under Bill Clinton (though the Simpson-Bowles commission under Barack Obama dabbled in entitlement spending cuts).

“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” President-elect Donald Trump said in a statement. The announcement also quoted Musk as saying, “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/17/postal-service-biden-cant-deliver-on-evs/

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s bizarre and frankly childish behavior during testimony before Congress wasn’t the U.S. Postal Service’s worst moment last week. That came two days later.

DeJoy, appearing before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, was told by Republican Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia that he is “responsible for the fall of the Postal Service and the lack of accountability.” DeJoy retorted that “this Congress is responsible for it falling apart” and insisted he was “trying to fix” the post office.

He then told McCormick that “you’re talking to yourself” and covered his ears with his hands like the “hear no evil” monkey. (See it for yourself here.)

Appalling as that was, DeJoy’s antics were overshadowed when the Washington Post reported that even after the Biden administration committed $3 billion to buy electric delivery trucks for the post office, the contractor it hired, Oshkosh, has delivered only 93 of what was supposed to be 3,000 EV trucks by now.

“Postal Service’s electric mail trucks are way behind schedule,” the Post says. “The delays put Biden’s climate goals at risk.” (Concern for the phantom danger of “climate change” outweighs the gross incompetence of the federal government in the eyes of the Post.)

The “historic” White House initiative that was ultimately to deliver 60,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles to the post office has been “plagued by manufacturing mishaps and supplier infighting,” says the Post. Rather than building 80 a day, as was the expectation, the company is cobbling together just one.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/blue-collar-workers-reject-bidenomics

Since the election, commentators have pondered why the Biden administration’s left-wing and pro-union economic policies failed to win over working-class Americans. Many argued that Democrats’ cultural radicalism turned off those who would otherwise have embraced Bidenomics. While these voters were certainly angered by Democrats’ leftward turn on issues ranging from crime to gender ideology, they were at least as dismayed by the party’s economic policies. Even beyond the detrimental impact of inflation, nonprofessional Americans saw that the Left’s programs were not taking their concerns into account. Bidenomics was a big-government program, but it aimed to benefit a well-educated elite, not blue-collar workers and those of modest means. These Americans noticed.

Consider President Biden’s student-loan-forgiveness program. Though the Supreme Court struck down his larger plan, by election time Biden had successfully forgiven more than $175 billion in loans—over a tenth of all outstanding federal student debt. These subsidies for the college-educated were his most important executive effort; Vice President Kamala Harris pledged to continue student loan relief if elected.

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act was another bid to appeal to the well-educated. The law devoted hundreds of billions of dollars to support these voters’ climate obsessions and spending habits—for instance, by subsidizing electric vehicles. Far from being a populist giveaway, more than half the act’s estimated costs came from tax incentives to green corporations. This spending undermined workers in traditional hard-hat industries, such as automotives and fossil fuels.

Biden’s policies benefited industries with workers more likely to hold college degrees. The CHIPS and Science Act, for example, directed tens of billions of dollars in grants and subsidies to the semiconductor industry. With 25 percent of its members holding graduate degrees, the semiconductor workforce is much better educated than the general population. The industry estimated that the act will create jobs for tens of thousands of Ph.D., master’s, and bachelor’s degree holders.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/12/president_trump_s_celebration_of_the_heroism_of_daniel_penny_will_inspire_others.html

It was May 1, 2023, at roughly 2:00 p.m. in New York City. 

Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old United States Marine Corps veteran, had embarked on a train at the Second Avenue station heading to the Broadway-Lafayette Street station.

Just before the train was about to depart, a 30-year-old homeless man, Jordan Neely, burst into the train and began shouting. 

One witness, Juan Alberto Vázquez, a freelance journalist, said Neely started screaming, “I don’t have food, I don’t have a drink, I’m fed up. I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m ready to die.”  

The memory of a 2022 subway shooting was most likely fresh in the passengers’ minds. This was when a masked Black supremacist, 62-year-old Frank James, threw smoke grenades and fired his handgun in the New York City subway. The act of terrorism caused 29 people to be injured, and this included victims who were hit by direct gunfire, while others were affected due to smoke inhalation.

Back to 2023.

The situation inside the train was volatile, and perhaps Neely would have engaged in acts of terrorism like Frank James did.

Journalist Vázquez also revealed that Neely took off his jacket and threw it to the floor, causing other passengers to move away from him fearing their well-being. Other witnesses said that Neely made “half-lunge movements” at other passengers and was within “half a foot of people.” Witnesses said Neely tossed garbage at other passengers and even began approaching people in a threatening manner. A mother with a child testified that Neely charged at passengers, and she shielded herself and her child behind a stroller, believing she might die. Another witness heard Neely say, “Someone is going to die today.”
Moments later, Daniel Penny approached Neely from behind and placed him in a chokehold. Penny restrained the miscreant after the train had reached its next stop, Broadway-Lafayette Street. Other passengers held the doors open to prevent it from moving. Penny released Neely only after the New York City Police (NYPD) officers arrived on the scene by which time Neely was unconscious it was reported that his pulse was still felt. 

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/15/the-mystery-in-the-skies-and-the-shift-on-the-ground/

Maybe the mystery of the drones swarming over New Jersey and elsewhere will be solved by the time you read this. Some timid souls suggest that they are from a “foreign entity,” maybe an “Iranian mothership” bobbing in the Atlantic somewhere off the East Coast of the United States. The Pentagon denied the existence of the fecund Iranian naval vessel. “There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States,” a Pentagon spokesman said, “and there’s no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States.”

That news saddened me, in part because I was looking forward to circulating the word “mothership.” It has a certain sci-fi aura that seems in keeping with these paranoid times. And let’s face it, the combination of “Iranian” and anything martial reinforces the minatory nimbus.

All is not lost, however. For although there is no Iranian familial ship disgorging drones, I am in a position to report, from the very highest authorities, that the drones are in fact the advance scouts of an alien invasion. I cannot promise that Joe Biden, current President of the United States, will behave as did Bill Pullman in Independence Day, but I have managed to retain my serenity in the face of this existential threat.

I am a little less serene about the news that Joe Biden has pardoned or commuted the sentences of 15,000,000 people.

You see how rumors get started. It was the largest single orgy of presidential commutations and pardons in history, but it encompassed only about 1,500 people. Or, if you count Hunter Biden, 1501.

Anyway, there is a certain giddiness wafting across the fruited plain these days. People who say that it is because of the election of Donald Trump are not wrong, exactly, but I do suspect that they mistake the catalyst for the ensuing transformation.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/16/are-the-years-of-madness-ending/

Never in U.S. history has a president-elect been welcomed as the real president before his January 20 inauguration. And never has the incumbent president so willingly surrendered his last two months in office and all but abdicated—to the relief of his nation and the rest of the world.

One reason so many are welcoming Trump’s return is the universally desperate hope that his election spelled an end to a collective madness at home and its ripples abroad during the last four years. And why not?

Nations overseas had never quite witnessed anything like the lethal August 2021 American flight from Afghanistan. That utter humiliation and impotence of the U.S. military likely signaled to Russia there would be no consequences if it invaded Ukraine—and it did; to Iran that it could now unleash Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel—and it did; and to China that it could daily threaten Taiwan and send a spy balloon across the United States with impunity—and it did.

The result was the current global chaos perhaps not seen since the late 1930s when a confused United States was similarly a bystander to the rise of bellicose regimes and wars. The Biden administration shrugged that the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the South China Sea, the Straits of Hormuz, and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea all became dangerous to the U.S. Navy and unsafe to world shipping.

A disparate group of nuclear and near-nuclear powers—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—are either at war with Western allies or threatening war with them. Their confidence was predicated on the assumption that the U.S. after 2020 was engaged in a Maoist-like cultural revolution that warred on its own security, energy, military, universities, and social unity—and would continue with a second Biden term.

The Biden-era cultural revolution has done great damage to the United States. The U.S. border was systematically and deliberately destroyed to allow some 10-12 million illegal entrants to pour into the U.S. without legality or background checks. Never has an outgoing administration spitefully sold taxpayer-purchased border wall material for pennies on the dollar—rather than see it used for the purposes for which it was purchased.

https://www.thepostemail.com/2024/12/15/yep-still-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room/

How did President-elect Trump become a billionaire?

How did Donald J. Trump, billionaire businessman, bestselling author, mega-successful TV star, become President of the United States in 2016?

How did President-elect Trump defy, confront, and prevail over a malevolent Deep State cabal, an American government steeped in collusion, a craven leftwing media, and a mountain of lawfare attacks to win––overwhelmingly––his second bid for POTUS?

I always called him the smartest guy in the room. And I suspect that most people would answer those questions––either proudly or grudgingly––by agreeing that his intelligence and also his drive, instincts, charisma, and sheer bravado are the magic ingredients of his blazing success.

BUT…UH-OH!

So, why are some sophisticated, knowledgeable and longtime devoted Trump supporters, including seasoned conservative journalists, now suspecting that Mr. Trump is either:

A closet Democrat.
Controlled Opposition, essentially playing on the same team as his globalist opponents.
A guy who values loyalty to a fault… overlooking clear conflicts-of-interest and potential moles and saboteurs in his midst.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5039827-democratic-party-trump-resistance/

Democrats are not planning an all-hands resistance to President-elect Trump.

At least not in 2016 style, when lawmakers, activists, volunteers and millions of angry voters mounted a party-wide effort to curb his newfound influence in Washington.

Where so much was once unprecedented, Trump is now familiar. Ahead of January 2025, the lack of a unified Democratic rebuttal to his second term is the latest sign that the party’s just beginning to soul search, trying to figure out what went wrong before banding together to bash the GOP.

“The one thing we seem to know is the strategy of being an anti-Trump party didn’t work any better than when we became a primarily anti-Bush party,” said Max Burns, a Democratic commentator. “In that transformation, we seem to have become unclear about what our actual pro-Democrat message is.”

“It’s more like Republicans post-1960 than anything,” he said, “where the loss led to a real round of questioning about what our values are and what our strategy is.”

On the one hand, the month-and-a-half postelection period can seem like decades, as D.C.’s political class awaits the unpredictable transition of power. On the other, it’s just a blip in what many expect to be a long undertaking to redefine the Democratic Party beyond Trump’s shadow.