RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/article/biden-is-playing-with-fire-in-a-bid-for-hispanic-vote

President Biden is following in President Obama’s footsteps, scrambling to curry favor with disgruntled Hispanics before an upcoming election. Under pressure from immigration activists, Mr. Biden has rescinded Title 42, a policy adopted by President Trump that allowed for the swift expulsion of those entering the United States illegally.

As of May 23, Title 42 will be gone. That will open the doors to what will doubtless be another wave of caravans heading north, the participants convinced that the current White House will allow them to stay. They’ll have every reason to think so. Mr. Biden has long blasted his predecessor for his “inhumane” treatment of people trying to gain asylum here.

Mr. Biden has eagerly undone the policies — including the construction of a border wall and the “Remain in Mexico” approach — that helped slow the stream of migrants during the Trump years. Title 42 used the threat of Covid-19 as an excuse to expel undocumented people; now that the pandemic has receded, activists pressed Mr. Biden to change course.

The Biden-friendly New York Times reported late last year that over the prior twelve months, “encounters” of illegal migrants had soared to 1.7 million persons, a level not seen since “at least” 1960, “capping a year of chaos at the southern border.” The Times noted that under Title 42, one million individuals had been deported, which invites the question: what happened to the other 700,000?

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/ron-johnsons-unanswered-2020-questions-joe-biden-loom

Back before the 2020 election, when Democrats and their allies in the corporate media were still claiming the Hunter Biden story was a conspiracy theory or Russian disinformation, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson released an open letter to America posing questions to then-candidate Joe Biden.

Like most Biden scandals at the time, it mostly got ignored or ridiculed. But the questions were rooted in facts and evidence gathered over two years by investigators on Johnson’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Now nearly two years later, a funny thing has happened. The giants of the corporate media – the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN among them – have abruptly reversed course and acknowledged Hunter Biden’s foreign business pursuits raise legal issues and that content on his laptop left behind in a Delaware repair shop in 2019 was authentic all along.

And now Johnson’s unanswered questions posed in August 2020 loom larger than ever as a federal grand jury in Delaware investigates Hunter Biden for his Ukraine and China business deals, taxes, foreign lobbying and other issues, and some Democrats reportedly brace for a possible indictment.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/31/more-scandals-envelop-the-scandalous-fbi/

“You’re in big fucking trouble.”

So said an FBI agent to Julian Khater, one of two men accused of assaulting Capitol police officers with pepper spray on January 6, during a tense interrogation last year. Desperate to sustain the falsehood that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed by Trump supporters during the Capitol protest, the FBI claimed to possess video footage that showed Khater and his friend, George Tanios, attacking Sicknick and other officers with chemical spray. Khater was arrested on an airplane at the Newark airport on March 14, 2021 after he arrived home from a trip to Florida.

For more than two hours—shackled to a metal bar in a freezing room at the New Jersey FBI field office—Khater, who has no criminal record, was interrogated without a lawyer present. FBI Special Agent Riley Palmertree refused to tell Khater why he was under arrest until he agreed to proceed without counsel in the room, which Khater reluctantly did. Recently released video confirms Khater initially told the agents he “would feel more comfortable if I had a lawyer” answering questions on his behalf. An hour later, Khater again said he wanted his lawyer.

But Palmertree pushed back, presenting videos and photos implicating Khater in the alleged assault. Palmertree assured Khater that by admitting he sprayed Sicknick with pepper spray rather than a can of bear spray—an item Palmertree later testified was not used that day—a judge would go easy on him. Khater signed a statement confessing that he attacked officers with pepper spray.

Khater has been in jail ever since, housed in the D.C. gulag specifically used to detain January 6 protesters; his trial is scheduled for June 6.

But Khater’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, is now asking the court to toss the interrogation as evidence, arguing that the FBI used “coercion and deception” to force Khater into waiving his Miranda rights. Further, Tacopina wrote in a February 22 motion that Palmertree lied in his FBI report by claiming he advised Khater about the “nature of the interview” before asking Khater to waive his rights.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/01/the-weakest-presidential-line-of-succession-ever/

As Vladimir Putin floats terrifying hints of Russia’s willingness to use nuclear weapons against countries that assist in Ukraine’s defense against Moscow’s brutal invasion, the United States is saddled with a president teetering on the brink of senility, and a woman one heartbeat away from the presidency who is as dependably incompetent as she is undependable in prepping herself on national and international issues.

Polling makes clear that the public is fully aware of, and disconcerted by, the alarming shortcomings of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris alike; but at the same time, there is little if any appreciation of the unprecedented vulnerability to the United States due to those further down in the line of succession. Old age, timidity, and lack of qualification abound among those who might be thrust into the job of most powerful individual on earth, charged with leading the free world.

On Saturday in a speech in Warsaw, Biden called for the end to Putin’s “for life” tenure as Kremlin premier, instantly sending the White House into a DEFCON 1 in crisis communications.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” the president exclaimed at the close of his remarks, apparently departing from the prepared text.

What looks weaker on the part of a superpower in the midst of one of the most challenging military crises in decades than to backpeddle a moral pronouncement of illegitimacy against one of its chief adversaries? We are not demanding that Putin go, sundry administration aides assured friend and foe.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-strategic-political-petroleum-release-oil-joe-biden-gas-prices-11648762807?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

President Biden knows inflation and gasoline prices are killing Democrats in the polls, and he’s scrambling to show he’s doing something about it. Except he still won’t do what would really make a difference: Take his foot off the neck of the U.S. oil and gas industry.

His latest gambit on Thursday was to say he’ll release 180 million barrels from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the next six months. This would be the biggest release in history and reduce the reserve to its lowest level since 1984. But the oil will need to be replaced, which will push up future demand.

This is one reason markets responded with a yawn. Crude prices fell a mere 4.9%. Markets don’t respond only to short-term demand and supply fluctuations. They also take into account long-term expectations and policy signals. And the Administration continues to signal that its goal is to bankrupt oil and gas producers. But before shooting them, Mr. Biden wants their political help.

The White House underscored Thursday that it wants to “immediately increase supply” while accelerating the “clean energy” transition. The President also said he wants to make companies pay fees on wells from leases that they haven’t used in years and on acres of public land that “they are hoarding without producing.” But the law already requires companies to produce oil or gas on leases or return their leases to the government.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/the-smearing-of-clarence-thomas/

Those demanding recusal over Ginni Thomas’s activism are engaged in transparently partisan politics, nothing more.

D emocrats should not get away with their shameless political gambit to force Justice Clarence Thomas’s recusal from Supreme Court cases based on the political activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas.

Supreme Court justices are not even subject to disqualification over their own activities that bear directly on cases. This never upsets Democrats when the justices have been appointed by Democratic presidents. Consequently, Justice Elena Kagan did not recuse herself from the Obamacare case, providing the critical vote to uphold it despite having served as President Obama’s solicitor general when the administration was formulating the legal strategy to defend the Affordable Care Act. (See Ed Whelan’s analysis, here.)

Justice Stephen Breyer has been aptly described as the primary architect of the federal sentencing guidelines. He steered them through Congress in 1984 as the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chief counsel before serving, as a federal appeals court judge, on the Sentencing Commission that created the guidelines. Yet, after being appointed to the high court by President Clinton, Breyer declined to recuse himself when the Supreme Court weighed the constitutionality of the guidelines. Indeed, he wrote a 5–4 majority opinion in 2005 that sustained the guidelines scheme, though declaring it advisory rather than mandatory.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/600332-back-in-the-safe-space-of-hollywood-scandal

There’s nothing like a good Hollywood slap in the face to distract us from our looming dystopia. As bombs continue to fall on Ukraine and mothers shepherd their children through mine fields, it took Will Smith slapping Chris Rock to return us to our safe space: the latest Hollywood scandal. Nothing says escapism like two celebrities in a made-for-television brouhaha.

“The slap heard ‘round the world,” as it’s been heralded in the media, smacks of the self-absorption of our popular culture. Heard ‘round the world, really? Heard in Lviv, against the groaning of bulldozers plying through wreckage? Heard in the clatter of refugee camps in Europe? In El Salvador, where 62 people were murdered in gang violence over the weekend?

After the incident, social media erupted, memes formed, newspaper headlines blared and actual crises were, well, upstaged. “BEST SMACKTOR,” snarked the front page of the New York Post. Facebook, the most self-centered communications platform since the mirror, exploded with our completely uninformed but no less authoritative positions and diagnoses: Smith needs anger management therapy…Rock provoked Smith…the whole thing was a conspiracy to hoist the Oscar’s anemic ratings.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/03/a-sleepwalker-stumbles-on-the-right-answer/

As I write there are signs that Putin may be prepared to limit his ambitions and settle for some portion of east Ukraine.  President Zelensky may be prepared to accept a compromise of this nature simply in order to ease the suffering of his people.  That will ease the immediate human problem but the issue will not be resolved.  Putin’s long-term ambitions will not be assuaged.  Ukrainian resentment will not abate. 

But, more critically, Putin has undoubtedly committed war crimes.  Arguably he has committed them before, but this time the West in its customary impotence cannot credibly turn a blind eye.  Could it allow a Putin dominated Russia to remain on the UN Security Council or any other UN organisation?  Could it refrain from prosecuting Putin in the International Court of Justice?  Could it allow Russia to compete in sporting events?  Can we continue to indulge Putin continuing to thumb his nose at the world?

Putin cannot be allowed even the semblance of a victory – we cannot think that if we allow him a face-saving compromise that will be an end of the matter.

Of course, yes, we tolerate murderous dictators all the time as long as they confine their atrocities to their own people.  But pragmatic indifference can only be stretched so far.  This time Putin has gone beyond his own borders.  Surely this is a red line we cannot compromise. 

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/28/gop-must-promise-inquisitions-not-meaningless-task-forces/

Using the pretext of the so-called insurrection on January 6, 2021, the long knives are out for Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Post-election text exchanges between Mrs. Thomas and Mark Meadows, President Trump’s chief-of-staff, recently were leaked by the January 6 select committee to none other than the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, who darkly described the communications as proof that “Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election result.”

The small cache of texts—29 total—shows Thomas expressing frustration at the election’s outcome. There is nothing sinister, and certainly nothing criminal, about the messages.

But like everything related to the events of January 6, the truth doesn’t matter. Doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election is considered a thoughtcrime and handled as such by Joe Biden’s Justice Department and Congress; CNN reported Monday afternoon that the January 6 select committee led by U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) now wants to interview Thomas. If she refuses—as she should—it’s highly likely the committee will issue a subpoena to compel her testimony, which it has done in numerous cases.

The poisonous tree of Thompson’s committee is yielding a bumper crop of political fruit for House Democrats and their useful idiots in the Republican Party such as Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). With little else to run on and a White House in freefall, Democrats think they can sustain enough outrage over January 6 to stem major electoral losses in November.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18374/ukraine-us-energy-independence

In late 1944, desperate Poles radioed the Allies pleading for weapons to help them stop the Nazis from massacring the citizens of Warsaw.

The Soviet Army was within easy distance of the Polish capital but, for some reason, decided to pause in their deadly offensive against the Third Reich at the exact same time the Poles had risen up against the Nazis. Some historians suggest that the pause was Stalin’s cold-blooded decision to let the Germans destroy the under-armed Polish resistance, whose leaders would have demanded independence when the war was over.

Now, some eighty years later, beleaguered freedom fighters throughout Ukraine are begging for the West to send them more arms so that they may confront and defeat Hitler’s protégé, Russian President Vladimir Putin. If America and NATO fail this test, history will record a craven retreat of democracy that makes our shameful departure from Afghanistan a mere footnote.

There is no room for any equivocation on the part of the Biden White House or members of Congress. We need to face this Russian threat as a united country with a single focus: providing Ukraine with every weapon and every resource this democracy can offer.

US President Joe Biden also needs to hear from those who engineered his political campaign and who still play closeted roles as kitchen cabinet advisors; they have much to say about both domestic and international policy. They too must insist on all available aid to the people of Ukraine.