RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/ethics-proposal-would-undermine-the-supreme-court

Wielding “ethics” violations against one’s political foes is a Washington tradition. When it comes to ethics and the Supreme Court, observers should not be deceived. Current attacks on the justices’ ethics are bad-faith political barbs intended to undermine the Court—not expressions of genuine concern over actual transgressions. And the policy reforms being suggested to solve this nonexistent problem would do enormous damage to our most important legal institution while producing few, if any, countervailing benefits.

The latest proposal, which Justice Elena Kagan herself has championed, is to create an “enforceable” code for the justices. Details are sparse, but the basic idea is to empower lower court judges—whose work the Supreme Court reviews—to police the justices’ alleged ethical violations. Apparently, the chief justice would decide which lower court judges to endow with this extraordinary authority. Precisely what investigatory and enforcement tools those judges would wield remains unstated.

This proposal has several fundamental problems. For starters, it would give a future chief justice extraordinary power over his or her colleagues—power that some future, malevolent chief justice could easily abuse. By selecting the lower court judges who stand in judgment of the justices, the chief justice could put a thumb on the scale of those determinations. Gaining an upper hand on an intractable colleague would be as easy as stacking the ethics panel with that colleague’s antagonists. We can certainly hope no judge would abuse such authority. But to borrow from the old adage—if judges were angels, no ethics panel would be necessary.

And consider this dynamic in the context of a problem facing the Court right now: leaks of confidential information. Last weekend, the New York Times printed an exposé on the most recent Supreme Court term, replete with details of internal memos, the justices’ deliberations, and more. We have no idea who leaked this sensitive information to the Times—and particularly whether any justice was involved—but the leaks appear designed to undermine Chief Justice John Roberts and cast an unflattering light on the Court’s majority in certain important decisions. The judiciary’s ethical canons flatly prohibit politically motivated leaks of confidential judicial deliberations. Canon 4(D)(5) states: “A judge should not disclose or use nonpublic information acquired in a judicial capacity for any purpose unrelated to the judge’s official duties.” Presumably, a campaign to influence the chief justice and his colleagues by leaking “nonpublic information” to the New York Times would meet that description.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/this-is-not-the-america-we-were-promised/

The events of the last few years have confirmed that we are no longer a democracy in the sense that we once thought we were – and I know we’re a republic, but follow along with me. The premise of a democracy is that individual citizens can participate in the political process by making their positions known and voting for representatives who they understand will support their views. But those components are under attack here and throughout the West. They are under attack because our garbage elite considers our participation in our own governance to be both morally illegitimate and a practical nuisance. As a result, the elite is doing everything it can to prevent us from participating in our own governance. It’s intent to make us into serfs, disarmed, disenfranchised serfs who obey in silence.

After all, when citizens participate in their own governance, they may choose policies that the elite dislikes. And the elite doesn’t like the policies normal people prefer. Part of it is profit and power, and part of it is the elite’s moral grandstanding – don’t underestimate the power of politics to make spiritually empty people such as our trash ruling class feel good about themselves. The elite don’t like competition from the peasants. It cuts into their action and is generally inconvenient.

What does the elite want? Power. It wants unquestioned power over us that is not subject to any limitations by dissent or appeals to the law. Why do you think they hate the Supreme Court so much? SCOTUS gets in their way when it enforces our rights. Why do you think they hate the Electoral College so much? Because it makes it harder for them to leverage their kept constituencies to take the presidency.

The elite wants what we’re now getting: an administrative state where experts who just happen to share all the priorities and prejudices of the elite make all the decisions. Do you wonder why the left is so concerned about controlling academia? Because that’s where experts are made, and you don’t get expert certification unless you embrace the elite’s ideology. Do you think it’s a coincidence that they’re demanding DEI loyalty oaths from graduate students and professors? You must listen to experts, they tell us, and by the way, we get to decide who the experts are. Check out conservative stalwart Ned Ryun’s new book, “American Leviathan: The Birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism,” which I read and gave him notes on in an early draft. Ned details exactly what’s going on here – the creation of an extra-constitutional fourth branch of government that effectively disintermediates citizens from any decision-making and controls every aspect of their lives without being subjected to any sort of accountability. That is the exact opposite of democracy, but it is part and parcel of Our Democracy that the ironically named Democrats embrace. Remember that when they say “Our Democracy,” they mean “ours,” as in “theirs.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/state-dept-officials-colluded-to-protect-iran-envoy-under-fbi-investigation/

Classified information is a very serious matter. Except 99% of the time when it’s not. About the only time that classified information is really a serious issue is when it can be used to raid a certain Florida venue.

The rest of the time it just doesn’t matter. Just ask Rob Malley and an entire administration that covered for him.

The Harris-Biden administration’s suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley may have taken part in a “classified White House-organized” call after his top secret security clearance was frozen over allegations of misconduct, according to the State Department’s internal watchdog.

The watchdog report politely describes this as deviating from normal standards. Much like Al Capone was deviating from normal negotiating procedures.

An official at the heart of the Iran outreach program had multiple State Department officials cover for him, lie on his behalf to Congress and to foreign governments to cover up the fact that he was under FBI investigation.

And it got worse from there.

On April 22, 2023, the State Department notified Malley of his clearance suspension and barred him from accessing the department’s “Sensitive But Unclassified [SBU] information system.”

However, days later, under pressure from senior officials, Malley’s access to sensitive information was restored, as was his access to his State Department email account.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/16/we-need-to-talk-about-the-violent-hatred-for-donald-trump/

The BBC says the latest suspected attempt on the life of Donald Trump is proof that ‘political violence’ is the ‘new norm’ in America. It’s half right. There does seem to be a ‘new normal’ over there, but it’s not some abstract thing called ‘political violence’. It’s not some broad-strokes brutish contempt for all rulers of society. It’s more targeted than that. It has one politician in particular in its crosshairs. If there’s a new normal in America, it would appear to be a new normal of an increasingly militant culture of grievance against the 45th President of the United States, now aspiring to be the 47th: Donald Trump.

There’s a palpable reluctance in the MSM today to discuss the Trump-specific nature of recent acts of political terror. Many would rather wring their hands over ‘gun culture’. ‘The secret service didn’t fail Trump on Sunday’, says MSNBC of the latest suspected assassination attempt: ‘America’s gun culture did.’ Commentators agonise over the fact that the alleged would-be assassin involved in yesterday’s fracas was in possession of an AK-47. That’s the crazy thing, they say. Others focus on the poison of ‘polarisation’. The Beeb says it’s a mix of a ‘coarsened’ national discourse and an ‘epidemic of gun violence’ that has made attacks like yesterday’s ‘inevitable’.

Of course, questions can be asked about the easy availability of lethal weapons in the US. Even supporters of the Second Amendment feel iffy that fruitloops can purchase Soviet-invented assault rifles and rock up to a Florida golf course with one in the car. And public life is increasingly frazzled at the moment. Politics feels like a screaming match between opposing poles stone deaf to one another’s concerns. And yet, today’s focus on ‘gun culture’ and ‘polarisation’ feels like a displacement activity: a focus on the method of the violence (guns) and the backdrop to the violence (polarisation) in an effort to avoid looking into the eye of the violence: the strange, swirling contempt for Trump.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-violence-is-not-symmetrical/

Political media are constantly on the lookout for right-wing violence, to the exclusion of the menace on the left.

The city of Springfield, Ohio, is besieged. Bomb threats and shooting scares have disrupted municipal events and closed schools for days on end. The disorder has been attributed to the addled Americans who pay overly close attention to the Trump campaign’s rhetoric, which has recently been focused on promoting the claim that Haitian migrants are absconding with local pets and eating them.

This outbreak of menace fits within a rubric the mainstream press can intuitively process. Donald Trump’s supporters are forever “inspired to violence.” They are uniquely susceptible to suggestion, both from the Republican presidential nominee and his acolytes. The MAGA faithful are quick to threaten, harass, and intimidate Trump’s critics and pursuers. As a Reuters analysis published last year asserts, America is “embroiled in the most sustained spate of political violence” since the 1960s. But while some primarily nonviolent criminality can be attributed to left-wing activists, the “attacks on people — from beatings to killings — were perpetrated mostly by suspects acting in service of right-wing political beliefs and ideology.”

The second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, which took place on Sunday afternoon, is just the latest event to call this ponderous assumption into question. The alleged would-be assassin appears to be in some important ways similar to the gunman who shot off a portion of Trump’s ear and killed Corey Comperatore in Butler, Pa., in July. His efforts to advocate on behalf of Ukraine’s cause — going so far as to try to join the fight against Russia’s invaders (he failed) — suggest a desire to make himself a part of a mission grander than himself. While the July 13 shooter’s motives have not yet been firmly established, reports indicating that he considered any target of opportunity, including Joe Biden, suggest that he, too, sought out notoriety. Unlike Trump’s assailant in Pennsylvania, however, the would-be assailant in Florida left a paper trail suggesting that he was a highly impressionable figure radicalized in the support of progressive causes.