RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/garland-vs-parents-11652388388?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

“Even beyond the question of Mr. Garland’s candor in his testimony to Congress, is there any way to look at this re-engineering of Justice priorities as anything other than partisan, ideological and threatening to liberty?This column may have to make it an annual habit to express gratitude to the man who kept Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court.”

How far has the U.S. Department of Justice gone to investigate parents who were angry with local school boards and administrators? A new report from two Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee suggests that federal powers are being misused just as First Amendment defenders feared.

Readers may recall the revelations that came to light last fall. A Journal editorial noted in October:

It took a few weeks, but the National School Boards Association has apologized for sending a letter to President Biden suggesting that “threats and acts of violence” at school board meetings might be “domestic terrorism.” The NSBA now admits there was “no justification for some of the language included in the letter,” which could have parents investigated under the Patriot Act for trying to influence what their children are taught.
The retraction comes after tremendous blowback. First came parents at school board meetings with T-shirts saying “Parents are not domestic terrorists.” Then 21 state school board associations distanced themselves from the letter. The Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania state associations cut ties altogether.
It turns out that when Chip Slaven, the NSBA interim executive director and CEO, and president Viola Garcia sent the letter, they did so without consulting their own board. But according to one of Mr. Slaven’s emails, they did work with White House staff.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/13/the-democrats-war-on-children/

Democrats often like to preface policy debates with phrases like “it’s about the children,” as if such patronizing mantras could sanctify even the worst ideas. The sad truth, however, is that one look at what the Dems have done since 2020 shows their real concerns are anything but the children.

From abortion to school shutdowns to runaway inflation to baby-food shortages, seemingly everything the Dems do these days has an adverse effect on children. After all, they control Congress and the White House.

To take the most egregious example, look at the just-defeated deceptively titled Women’s Health Protection Act, which had unanimous support from Democrats, with one brave exception: West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who voted against it.

For public consumption, Democrats claimed the bill was a self-defense against the expected overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark that made abortion an American right, even though there’s no mention of that in the Constitution.

It wasn’t. The Democrats’ bill went much further, in essence making abortion legal all the way up to delivery. It was infant-murder-on-demand legislation, having nothing to do with so-called “therapeutic” abortions for medical purposes or women’s health.

It was also the most anti-child law imaginable. The truth is, 29 states already allow full-term abortions for nearly any reason at all. The congressional bill simply would have forced the other 21 states to do the same.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.co

Apart from the final seventeen months of the Woodrow Wilson Administration, when the President suffered a stroke, we have never had a President appear unable to carry out his responsibilities – until now. To be honest, that assessment of Mr. Biden, while I believe it to be true, is based on observation rather than empirical evidence. In the case of President Wilson, the cover-up of his infirmities was due to his doctor, Cary Grayson and his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. Dr. Grayson did brief Wilson’s cabinet and the question of succession arose, but the doctor refused to sign any official notice of inability, so Vice President Thomas Marshall remains a footnote, and the Presidency was allegedly managed by Mrs. Wilson.

At 78, Mr. Biden became the oldest person to be inaugurated President, eight years older than Donald Trump and nine years older than Ronald Reagan. In both cases, political opponents called into question their mental acuity; so, it is unsurprising that concerns for Mr. Biden have been raised. Four years and ten months after leaving office, Mr. Reagan sent a letter to the American people telling them he was afflicted with Alzheimer’s. In the summer of 2018, eighteen months after taking office, Mr. Trump took (and passed) the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test. Thus far, Mr. Biden has refused to take a similar test.

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/faucis-royalties-and-the-350-million?utm_source=/profile/24758236-adam-andrzejewski&utm_medium=reader2&s=w

Last year, the National Institutes of Health – Anthony Fauci’s employer – doled out $30 billion in government grants to roughly 56,000 recipients. That largess of taxpayer money buys a lot of favor and clout within the scientific, research, and healthcare industries.

However, in our breaking investigation, we found hundreds of millions of dollars in payments also flow the other way. These are royalty payments from third-party payers (think pharmaceutical companies) back to the NIH and individual NIH scientists.

We estimate that between fiscal years 2010 and 2020, more than $350 million in royalties were paid by third-parties to the agency and NIH scientists – who are credited as co-inventors.

Because those payments enrich the agency and its scientists, each and every royalty payment could be a potential conflict of interest and needs disclosure.

Recently, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com forced NIH to disclose over 22,100 royalty payments totaling nearly $134 million paid to the agency and nearly 1,700 NIH scientists. These payments occurred during the most recently available period (September 2009 – September 2014).

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-devil-is-in-the-details-so-lets-avoid-the-details/

The pro-abortion party tries to defend the practice by not talking about it.

The reported leak of a Supreme Court decision returning the question of abortion laws to the states drove the leftist media into a state of outrage and indignation. But after so many years of fundraising and voter mobilization based on the threat of Roe being overturned, it seems the Left has forgotten its arguments in favor of the unrestricted right to abortion. Instead, it is struggling to find an argument that is consonant with their present focus on race-based injustice as the through line for all social and political debate.

Amid the predictable race-and-gender based invective against the three white men among the five-justice majority indicated by the leaked draft, there is a discernible effort to steer the discussion away from the issue at hand. We are told that this decision will be quickly followed by reversals of the right to contraception access, state-sanctioned homosexual marriage, or interracial marriage. While there is no clear connection amongst these issues beyond a reliance on “substantive due process,” implication is that the Left would prefer to deflect from talking about abortion itself toward more comfortable subjects.

But abortion, even for its proponents, involves very specific ideas about when a human fetus becomes worthy of protection by the state, and the dubious notion of “viability.” It involves distasteful realities that cannot be elided via euphemism. Today’s abortion rights absolutists insist on a right to terminate a developing fetus well past the point of “viability,” and become incensed by any mention of what would be involved in terminating a fetus at 40 weeks.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/inflation-a-long-way-to-go/

The news that the headline rate of inflation (CPI) had eased slightly (to 8.3 percent) was, of course, better than news that it had increased, but, like one of those days when the Entente reported having seized an extra hundred feet of mud on the Western Front in 1916, it was no real cause for celebration.

As AP’s Christopher Rugaber noted:

Wednesday’s report contained some cautionary signs that inflation may be becoming more entrenched. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, so-called core prices jumped twice as much from March to April as they did the previous month. The increases were fueled by spiking prices for airline tickets, hotel rooms and new cars. Apartment rental costs also kept rising.

I can see how the surge in the cost of airline tickets might ease after a while but, given how rising home prices take a while to percolate through to “shelter” costs for the purposes of the CPI, that’s one area (I reckon) that will not be showing slower increases any time soon.

Rugaber:

In April, a fallback in gas prices helped slow overall inflation. Nationally, average prices for a gallon of gas fell to as low as $4.10 in April, according to AAA, after having spiked to $4.32 in March. But since then, gas prices have surged to a record $4.40 a gallon.

Grocery prices, too, are still soaring, in part because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has heightened the cost of wheat and other grains. Food prices rose 1% from March to April and nearly 11% from a year ago. That year-over-year increase is the biggest since 1980.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fbi-whistleblowers-claim-agents-investigated-parents-accused-of-threatening-school-boards-over-mask-policies/

House Judiciary Committee Republicans claimed in a letter on Wednesday that the FBI conducted investigations into Americans based on allegations that they threatened local school boards, citing whistleblowers from the agency.

The FBI’s counterterrorism bureau reportedly created an internal “threat tag” in fall 2021 to track alleged threats against school boards following an October 4 directive from Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland released his directive after the National School Boards Association called on the Biden administration on September 29 to investigate parents who allegedly threatened boards over policies on school masks and critical race theory, and to determine whether the parents had violated the Patriot Act or hate crimes laws. (The NSBA subsequently apologized for releasing the letter.)

The FBI labeled “dozens” of investigations with the threat tag “EDUOFFICIALS,” Representatives Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) and Mike Johnson (R., La.) claimed in their new letter on Wednesday, citing FBI whistleblowers. Jordan and Johnson wrote that the new revelations contradicted Garland’s congressional testimony denying that parents were intentionally targeted under counterterrorism procedures.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18528/patriotism-music

It should come as no surprise that some of the most heartfelt music about our nation was penned by an immigrant, Irving Berlin. His biography reports that he was born Israel Baline in a Siberian Jewish village. After it was attacked by an anti-Semitic mob, his family realized America was their only hope, settling in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in search of opportunity but — more important — freedom.

Few know America’s exceptionalism better than those who have borne witness to the deprivations of other lands.

When one considers Berlin’s lyrics the reader can appreciate why many call it America’s unofficial anthem.

God bless America, land that I love
Stand beside her and guide her
Through the night with the light from above
From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America, my home sweet home
God bless America, my home sweet home

Berlin knew why he was writing lyrics from his American soul. He is quoted as stating, “My ambition is to reach the heart of the average American……..the real soul of the country….”