RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/anarchy-in-new-york

After Attorney General William Barr designated New York, along with Portland and Seattle, as “anarchistic” cities, Gotham mayor Bill de Blasio expressed outrage. He characterized it as a political attack on “black and brown cities”—though Portland and Seattle are two of the whitest cities in the nation—and denied that New York is remotely lawless or otherwise anarchic. Now the mayors of the three jurisdictions, facing the loss of federal funding, have sued the administration, calling the designation false and illegal.

It’s true that New York City wouldn’t be confused for Tegucigalpa or Mogadishu. And its violent crime rate, while soaring, is still much lower than that of Baltimore or St. Louis, for instance. But comparing New York today with the New York of even a few years ago makes clear that the city is undergoing a serious fracturing of civic order—one trending toward further disintegration.

One late summer Sunday morning, Demetrius Harvard, a 30-year old Bronx man, stood on a subway platform in Greenwich Village and methodically threw construction material onto the tracks. Bystanders tried to stop him, and someone even went into the train well to remove the debris, but Harvard persisted in his sabotage. Eventually, he succeeded in derailing an uptown A train, injuring several passengers.

You had to read to the end of tabloid news reports to get the real story. Two weeks earlier, in the same neighborhood, Harvard had tossed a steel bench through a bus window. He was arrested, charged with criminal mischief, and immediately “ROR’d”—released on his recognizance—with no bail.

This cycle is now all too common in New York, where public order and safety have been buffeted by chaotic forces. Criminal-justice reform at the state level removed bail as an option for all but the most heinous charges. Locally, the NYPD has stopped enforcing many quality-of-life laws. The city council passed a law forbidding cops from applying pressure to the chest or back of an arrestee while trying to handcuff him, on the premise that this tactic is tantamount to asphyxiation; officers dealing with a resisting suspect would thus potentially face assault charges if they attempt to restrain him with vigor.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/democrats-barrett-demagoguery/

The high stakes of this Supreme Court confirmation brought out the worst in Senate Democrats.

A fter their floating of the Court-packing notion proved unpopular, and after their redefining of the meaning of “packing” proved unpersuasive, congressional Democrats and the Biden campaign have settled on a new stratagem to confront the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. They now warn that they will visit future “consequences” on the country but do not specify what those consequences will be.

This is mainly saber-rattling out of frustration over being unable to stop Barrett’s appointment. To repeat what I pointed out two weeks ago, Democrats do not appear to have the votes they would need to eliminate the filibuster, which is what it would take to expand the Court and pack it with progressive activist justices. Yet, with Election Day just a week away and control of both the executive and legislative branches hanging in the balance, Democrats cannot afford to depress the turn-out of hard-Left voters (particularly the young, who are notoriously unreliable in terms of converting their Democratic Party sympathies into actual votes).

In addition, Democrats can see that their demagoguery has a paralyzing effect on Chief Justice John Roberts. Last week, Roberts joined the Court’s three remaining liberals to block the Court’s review of the Democrat-controlled Pennsylvania supreme court’s rewriting of state election law. The state judges ordered that Pennsylvania’s election board must continue counting mail-in and absentee ballots for three days after Election Day. Worse, it must presume that any late-arriving ballots should count unless there is ironclad postmark proof that they were mailed after the deadline — which will necessarily result in the counting of votes that were not submitted until after the election was supposed to be over (i.e., ballots submitted after the national media have reported voting results).

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-amy-coney-barrett-vote

The Senate voted 52-48 on Monday night to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in a move that makes the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge and Notre Dame law professor the third appointment to the high court by President Trump, solidifying his administration’s legacy even further just a week before Election Day as he seeks a second term. 

The last president to nominate three new justices to the Supreme Court was Ronald Reagan. 

“Justice Barrett made clear she will issue rulings based solely upon a faithful reading of the law and the Constitution as written not legislate from the bench,” Trump said during a swearing in ceremony at the White House on Monday. ““The American people put their trust in you and their faith in you as you take up the task of defending our laws, our Constitution and this country we all love.”

Monday’s vote marked the end of a confirmation process that lasted less than 40 days from when late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died to when her successor, Barrett, was confirmed. During that time Democrats objected loudly to the speed and timing of the confirmation just before an election. Meanwhile, Republicans have touted Barrett’s record as an academic and a judge as impeccable — and her “Well Qualified” rating from the American Bar Association (ABA) whose representatives relayed descriptions of her as “brilliant” and an “intellectual giant.”

Justice Clarence Thomas administered the Constitutional Oath to Barrett at the White House on Monday night, while Chief Justice will administer the Judicial Oath to her in a private ceremony at the Court on Tuesday.

https://nypost.com/2020/10/25/hospitals-gave-gov-andrew-cuomo-a-campaign-boos

It’s bad enough that Gov. Cuomo presided over the needless COVID-19 deaths of thousands of vulnerable people in New York nursing homes.

It’s bad enough that he wrote a shameful book praising himself for his pandemic response and now is doing a victory lap of self-congratulation in the worst-hit state in the nation.

It’s bad enough that he is mounting a pre-election scare campaign on COVID vaccines to stir up anti-vax sentiment for political purposes.

But now we discover that Cuomo got campaign funds from the hospital organizations that lobbied for his lethal policy for the elderly and which then bought TV ads whitewashing his culpability.

An exclusive audit of campaign donations to Cuomo by OpenTheBooks.com shows disturbing links with industry bodies which demanded the disastrous order forcing nursing homes to admit COVID-infected patients hospitals didn’t want.

Overall, the audit shows a “systematic pay-to-play culture in Albany,” says Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of OpenTheBooks.com, a nonprofit which has compiled a comprehensive database of US public sector expenditures.

The pattern of patronage in New York state amounts to “a legalized money-laundering scheme aimed at monetizing incumbent political power.”

Cuomo has received $6.2 million since 2014 from 347 companies who then made $7 billion from state contracts.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/anti-protesters-attack-jews-trump-vehicle-convoy-new-york

The show of support descended into chaos as scuffles broke out between protesters and Trump supporters

A family of seven ‒ including four kids ‒ were pepper-sprayed by violent rioters on Sunday while participating in a “Jews For Trump” rally in New York City.

A spokesperson for the New York Police Department said 11 people were taken into custody after the rally descended into chaos and violence Sunday afternoon. Six people were charged with disorderly conduct, obstruction of government administration and harassment, while a seventh person was charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, the NYPD said Monday.

A convoy of hundreds of cars draped with American flags and “Trump 2020” banners rolled slowly through Manhattan and Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon. The caravan traveled from Coney Island to the Trump Tower in Manhattan before heading to a rally in a Brooklyn park.

At some point, skirmishes broke out between supporters and opponents of the president.

A member of the family that was pepper-sprayed told Fox News that the unprovoked attack happened while the family was driving down Fifth Avenue with the car windows down and Trump flags displayed.

The man, who wished to remain anonymous fearing his family could be targeted, said a car pulled up next to them and unleashed pepper spray into their vehicle.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/289918

A New York City Health Department was filmed writing a summons to an empty yeshiva building, citing a “list” to justify the procedure.

Video circulating on social media shows two inspectors visiting Yeshivat Shaare Torah on Coney Island Avenue in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, an area decreed to be a “red zone” by NY Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The yeshiva Director asked the inspectors why they were writing a summons if the building was vacant, excepting staff members performing essential tasks. The inspectors were invited inside the building and offered to look anywhere they wanted, and scrutinize any room or floor of the building they suspected of sheltering decree-violators.

When pressed to explain the procedure, the female inspector appeared to become flustered, asked not to be recorded, and concealed her badge from the camera. The only statutory justification for the executive procedure the inspector offered was to state, “we have a list”.

Yeshiva World News claims to be in possession of evidence that multiple yeshivas that were closed received fines in the past two weeks.

YWN contacted Deputy Assistant Attorney General Melinda Rogers to respond to the incident. She did not immediately comment on YWN’s query.

https://quillette.com/2020/10/24/reflections-on-solzhenitsyns-harvard-address/

THIS SPEECH COULD NOT BE DELIVERED IN HARVARD TODAY…AN ACADEMIC OUTPOST OF NEO-MARXISM…..RSK
In his 1978 Harvard commencement address, A World Split Apart, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a fierce enemy of the Soviet system, delivered a forceful and insightful critique of the West, a society which he characterized as spiritually weakened by rampant materialism. The man who, when forced to leave his own country four years earlier, encouraged his countrymen to “live not by lies”, gave us a magnificent lesson in how to not be blinded by our own sense of superiority, and urged us to ask hard questions about who we are and where we are going.

When I first heard this speech in 1978 as a young refugee from communist Romania, I was able to appreciate Solzhenitsyn’s address in terms of the competition raging then between the West and the East, but did not comprehend its larger meaning. Rereading it today, in the fall of the horrible year 2020, I find it truly prophetic. It is now painfully clear that, as Solzhenitsyn was able to discern 42 years ago, the West has been gradually losing the will and intellectual ability to defend itself, not so much against foreign armies as it may have appeared in 1978, but against an army of internal critics determined to demolish everything the West used to stand for.

In the central part of the address Solzhenitsyn said:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?