RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/the-left-doesnt-fear-amy-coney-barrett-it-fears-the-constitution/

The rest is noise.

Nothing threatens the progressive project more than the existence of a Supreme Court that adheres to the Constitution. It’s really that simple.

That’s what the tantrum over Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation is all about. The notion that the same Democrats who shelved the judicial filibuster and now threaten to destroy the separation of powers with a Court-packing revenge scheme — the same people, incidentally, so fond of smear-drenched confirmation hearings — are sticklers for process or decorum is simply ludicrous.For one thing, no norms have been undone by the confirmation of Barrett. If Democrats won a Senate majority in 2016, Merrick Garland would already be ensconced in the Supreme Court, election or no election. Many of the same Democrats now feigning outrage over Barrett’s confirmation, including Joe Biden, argued back then that it was the constitutional duty of the Senate to take up a vote. Our living constitution apparently offers contradicting directions from one election to the next.

If Trump had nominated Garland to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Democrats wouldn’t have any problem placing him on the Court — not even on November 2. Liberals act as if they are imbued with a theological right to dictate not only the terms, but also the nominees, of confirmation hearings whether they win or lose elections.

And when you’re under the impression that the system exists solely to facilitate your partisan agenda, something will seem “broken” every time you lose. When Barack Obama was unable to pass his agenda after 2010, the system suffered from “dysfunction.” How many times did we hear that term? But now that Democrats are in the Senate minority, employing the very same tools to slow the president, we must “fix” the Electoral College, the Senate, and, most recently, the Supreme Court. If Democrats win back the presidency in 2020, the opposition will no longer be “resisting,” it will be “obstructing.” The filibuster will need fixing again. The media will again obsess over the problem of “gridlock.” History’s trajectory arcs left, and everything else is just an impediment.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-american-experiment-is-on-life-support-11603728139

‘Death to America!” is a common refrain from antifa rioters from Portland, Ore., to Kenosha, Wis. Children are in the streets calling for the country’s destruction while mobs of college kids trash public spaces, filming themselves as though part of a performance-art spectacle. Neither political party has been willing or able to end this anarchy. Extremism becomes more entrenched in American politics with each passing day.

These acts of violence encapsulate five decades of neo-Marxist indoctrination in American schools, colleges and universities. The left’s “long march” through the institutions is all but complete. Extreme intolerance has now replaced the liberal notion of negotiated compromise that is the sine qua non of democracy. America’s young, especially those raised in middle-class or affluent homes, have been so brainwashed that they no longer notice how absurd it is to call for the eradication of their own nation-state, and to do so in the lingo of Iran’s mullahs.

Their ignorance of history is the hallmark of the current crisis. Few seem able to grasp the complex, often painful, but on balance grand story of America—one that is an example of what a people committed to individual freedom can achieve. Instead, they have been indoctrinated to reduce American life to a racial binary of whites vs. “people of color.” It’s much like the communist binary of the bourgeoisie vs. the proletariat that the Bolsheviks used to seize power in 1917, with millions perishing in the totalitarian Soviet experiment that followed.

The violence suggests that tribalism based on group identity is poised to succeed the larger national community that for more than two centuries has protected and expanded freedom around the world. The American nation-state is a unique experiment, unparalleled in history: a political project that grew from an established Anglo colonial settler culture, and that forged a distinct national identity strong enough to acculturate the many ethnic groups that have immigrated, while preserving a strong sense of its unitary creed.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/jeff-reynolds/2020/10/26/whos-really-to-blame-for-the-riots-in-american-cities-pt-2-with-michael-yon-n1084277

Leaders in American cities have spent most of 2020 deflecting blame for the violent riots that have dominated them. Much of the finger-pointing has focused on Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, and other right wing groups. These groups have formed over the past half decade as a response to the chaos caused in Portland, along with many other large American cities, by radical leftist groups like Black Lives Matter protests, riots led by antifa and By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), and other militant marxist groups utilizing black bloc tactics to disrupt American free society.

But what are these right wing groups? Are they fascists, white supremacists, and defenders of the systems of racism endemic to America’s core, as alleged by the Left? Are they the dreaded militias hell bent on domestic terrorism? How do they compare to antifa, BLM, or BAMN?

Michael Yon, a war correspondent who has covered insurrections all over the globe, came to Portland in September to gather intelligence on the civil unrest in the streets. This is part two of his conversation with PJ Media, in which he describes his investigation into the right wing groups that have sprung up to oppose antifa and BLM and their black bloc tactics to create chaos and destruction across the Pacific Northwest.

Part One: How Close Is the U.S. to Civil War? A War Correspondent Is in Portland to Find Out

“Groups like Proud Boys,” Yon said, “form in these vacuums when you feel like the government is not doing their job, and you fear for the lives of your family, yourself, you fear for your community being burned down. That’s when militias form everywhere. That’s what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it’s happened in America. Our whole country was formed on militias.”

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.