RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/09/25/5-things-to-know-about-amy-coney-barrett-n966406

Barrett has an impressive resume and an inspiring story. She has articulated a powerful defense of originalism, the method of interpreting the Constitution according to its original public meaning.

1. Barrett’s background

Amy Coney Barrett graduated from Notre Dame Law School first in her class. She has taught there for decades — and continues to teach there while serving as a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. After graduation, she clerked at the Supreme Court for Justice Antonin Scalia. As Princeton professor Robert P. George noted, even fellow clerks who disagreed with Barrett admired her intellect. Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman described her as “a brilliant lawyer.”

As a Notre Dame graduate and professor, Barrett would break the Supreme Court law degree duopoly. All eight current justices hold degrees from one of two — and only two — law schools, Harvard and Yale.

Barrett and her husband have seven children, ranging in age from 5 to 16. They adopted two of them from Haiti. One of her sons also has “special needs.” As George wrote, “As someone who excelled as a legal scholar and reached the pinnacle of her profession as a Supreme Court Justice, Barrett would be an example to women hoping to combine a flourishing family life with a professional vocation.”

While Barrett has only served on the 7th Circuit for three years, that represents more experience than Barack Obama’s appointee, Justice Elena Kagan, who had never served as a judge prior to her nomination to the Supreme Court.

Is Amy Coney Barrett an Originalist?

https://wjla.com/news/local/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburgs-trainer-does-pushups-in-fro

WASHINGTON (ABC7) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the first woman to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol Friday. She may also be the only person to lie in state who has had a mourner do calisthenics in front of their casket.

Bryant Johnson, Ginsburg’s longtime trainer, dropped and gave the Justice a quick trio of push-ups when it was his turn to approach the flag-draped coffin shortly after 10:30 a.m.

https://www.redstate.com/michael_thau/2020/09/24/watch-trumps-new-covid-explain-covid-science-to-room-of-people-who-majored-in-journalism-at-breifing/

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to watch a physicist try to explain quantum mechanics to a room full of delinquent kindergartners, we finally have a pretty good idea.

Most of our readers probably already know that Trump appointed Dr. Scott Atlas of Stanford University’s prestigious Hoover Institution to his COVID-19 task force last month.

As I noted when the good news broke:

Dr. Atlas is one of the thousands of medical experts the Democrats and their media enablers don’t want you to know about who’ve been trying to put the breaks on the suicidal, anti-science response to COVID-19 they’ve conned us into following.

Way back in April, Dr. Atlas tried to save America from the deadly quack medicine we were convinced to guzzle down like a junkie who’s stumbled on a gallon jug of cough syrup in an op-ed titled:

The Data Is in — Stop the Panic and End the Total Isolation.

He explained five facts that were already apparent a month after lockdowns started and some of which should have prevented anyone from ever even suggesting the heretofore unheard-of lunacy.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/09/24/secret_report_how_cias_brennan_overruled_dissenting_analysts_who_thought_russia_favored_hillary_125315.html

Former CIA Director John Brennan personally edited a crucial section of the intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and assigned a political ally to take a lead role in writing it after career analysts disputed Brennan’s take that Russian leader Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump clinch the White House, according to two senior U.S. intelligence officials who have seen classified materials detailing Brennan’s role in drafting the document.

The explosive conclusion Brennan inserted into the report was used to help justify continuing the Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation, which had been launched by the FBI in 2016. It was picked up after the election by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in the end found no proof that Trump or his campaign conspired with Moscow.

The Obama administration publicly released a declassified version of the report — known as the “Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent Elections (ICA)” — just two weeks before Trump took office, casting a cloud of suspicion over his presidency. Democrats and national media have cited the report to suggest Russia influenced the 2016 outcome and warn that Putin is likely meddling again to reelect Trump.

The ICA is a key focus of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s ongoing investigation into the origins of the “collusion” probe. He wants to know if the intelligence findings were juiced for political purposes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/09/24/why-new-york-city-is-i

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wants a $12 billion coronavirus bailout from the American taxpayer. So, our auditors dug into how the city spent their budget in 2019. 

We found 114,000 highly compensated city employees who made more than $100,000 last year. 

For comparison, all Texas local and state governments employ 78,000 six-figure earners. All Florida governments employ 50,000 six-figure earners.

Today, our investigation is an Editors’ Pick at Forbes. Here are just a few of our findings:

Skyrocketing payroll — in 2016, there were 76,000 six-figure earners. Today, there are 114,000. 
The fire department fired a whistleblower and then settled for $800,000 last year. 
The mayor’s wife, who serves as a “volunteer,” has a staff of 14 employees costing taxpayers $2 million per year. 
50,000 six-figure educators — whose students underperform in national math and reading tests.
The NYC Human Rights Commission — dedicated to stopping discrimination — doesn’t pay their student interns! 

New York City is a mess. Literally. 

Despite a $32 million war-on-rats campaign. The rats are winning. Our auditors found that complaints of rats spotted on city street spiked 38-percent last year! 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/breonna-taylor-case-just-decision-not-to-file-homicide-charges/

One former cop charged with endangerment, as the mob touts brutality narrative in lieu of looking at the evidence.

The criminal law is not designed to address every human tragedy. That is the lesson of the tragic death of Breonna Taylor. It was also the theme repeatedly struck by Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron on Wednesday, in announcing the indictment of one of the three officers involved in the raid that lead to her death.

The charge will not satisfy the mob. Neither the peaceful protesters nor the radical rioters, who have taken to the streets since shortly after Ms. Taylor was killed on March 13, are interested in the facts of the case. They could not care less how the law applies to the evidence a Lexington grand jury pored over this week. Their interest is only to set in stone a distorted narrative: Police officers on the hunt for a young black man, callously gunned down an innocent young black woman after supposedly crashing into an apartment without warning.

In light of that, the indictment will just fuel the mob’s outrage. The two officers who actually shot Ms. Taylor a total of six times were not charged. The indictment, instead, lodges three counts of wanton endangerment — not homicide — against Brett Hankison, then a detective (since fired), whose wild firing put neighbors in harm’s way but did not kill the young woman.

Police will be relieved that no charges were brought against Sergeant Jon Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, whose shots in the dark chaos struck Ms. Taylor only after the officers were fired upon by her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker — who himself may have been justified, in the confusion, in shooting at what he says he believed was an intruder. The cops were doing their job in executing a lawful search warrant at a location that was quite justifiably tied to a notorious criminal — Ms. Taylor’s former boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16540/supreme-court-religion

When Judge Amy Coney Barrett came before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her nomination to the court of appeals, Senator Diane Feinstein generated considerable controversy when she said to Barrett: “The dogma lives loudly in you.” … Under our Constitution, Senator Feinstein’s statement crossed the line. Ours was the first Constitution in history to provide that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Although Feinstein did not explicitly impose a religious test, she suggested that personal religious views — which she called dogma — might disqualify a nominee from being confirmed. That would clearly be unconstitutional.

Religious tests have no place in America. But what does have a place in the confirmation process are questions about whether a nominee will put faith before the Constitution and refuse to apply the Constitution if it conflicts with his or her faith. That issue would be true of any nominee regardless of their faith or faithlessness. President John F. Kennedy assured us that his Catholicism would not determine the nation’s policy. Justice Antonin Scalia said the same about his Catholicism and his jurisprudence.

One’s religion is a private matter, but one’s judicial philosophy is highly relevant in the confirmation process… Let us hope the Senate handles this nomination better than they have handled other recent nominations.

When Judge Amy Coney Barrett came before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for her nomination to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Senator Diane Feinstein generated considerable controversy when she said to Barrett: “The dogma lives loudly in you.” This was a reference to Barrett’s deep Catholic faith. Under our Constitution, Senator Feinstein’s statement crossed the line. Ours was the first Constitution in history to provide that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Although Feinstein did not explicitly impose a religious test, she suggested that personal religious views — which she called dogma — might disqualify a nominee from being confirmed. That would clearly be unconstitutional.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16525/mueller-investigation-corruption

Are we truly supposed to believe that all of these phones just happened to erase themselves?

You will remember that these very same attorneys and investigators sought to imprison George Papadopoulos for 20 years simply for switching cell phones and deactivating his Facebook account. The government argued that Papadopoulos knowingly committed obstruction per 18 US Code section 1519, with the intent of impeding or otherwise influencing a federal investigation.

The flagrant, outrageous abuse of record-keeping and phone communications requirements by the Mueller team is a prime avenue for further criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Attorney General Barr recently said there will be more indictments. Let’s hope so…. The only remedy is the rigorous prosecution of the offenders.

We now know the Mueller Special Counsel Investigation of the Trump-Russia “collusion” claims was a politically motivated hoax. The investigation dragged on for months. Despite increasingly hysterical Leftist speculation of criminal conspiracies and treason — not a single claim was ever made against the President. In the end, Robert Mueller appeared before Congress and seemed befuddled throughout his testimony — “Not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

Consequently, it appears necessary that Mueller and his team need to be the subjects of a criminal investigation. Last week, responding to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, the Justice Department released heavily redacted documents showing that several dozen phones belonging to members of Mueller’s team were “wiped” or disabled before they could be examined by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz during his office’s review of the special counsel’s investigation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/faltering-service-sector-weighs-on-global-recovery-as-infections-rise-11600853490

The U.S. economy in September continued its steady recovery from the sharp declines in the second quarter as demand and output strengthened, according to new business surveys. But the pace faltered in Europe and Asia, where new infections have led to new restrictions on activity.

U.S. service-sector and manufacturing companies reported solid growth in September, a positive signal for overall economic growth in the third quarter.

Data firm IHS Markit said Wednesday its composite Purchasing Managers Index for the U.S.—a measure of activity in the private sector—was 54.4 in September, down slightly from 54.6 in August. A reading above 50.0 indicates that activity is increasing, while a reading below points to a decline in activity.

Growth in the services sector slowed slightly to 54.6 in September from 55 in August, while in the manufacturing sector it accelerated to 53.5 from 53.1.

The numbers suggest the U.S. economy continues its slow and steady climb from the deep declines seen in the spring due to lockdowns and other restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.