RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2025/05/24/mark-steyns-vindication-a-triumph-for-free-speech-and-personal-fortitude-n4940136

In a previous column, I detailed Michael Mann’s unraveling legal crusade, focusing on his courtroom defeat and the staggering financial penalty levied against him. Readers’ responses were passionate, particularly about the absence of commentary on Mark Steyn.

Let me be direct: the omission was intentional. The Mann saga deserved focus, and Steyn’s fight deserves its own chapter.

This is that chapter.

Author, broadcaster, and unflinching cultural critic Mark Steyn did not merely weather a defamation trial. He survived it physically, financially, and morally when most would have buckled under the strain. What began as a battle over words became a battle over the soul of free speech.

The Lawsuit That Should Have Never Been

In 2012, Michael Mann filed a defamation suit against Steyn, the National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and Rand Simberg. Simberg had published a blog post likening Mann’s professional conduct to Penn State’s handling of Jerry Sandusky. Steyn quoted Simberg’s post and added his commentary, calling Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph fraudulent.

Rather than engage in rebuttal, Mann went for the jugular. He sued.

Steyn endured a legal process that lasted over a decade, dragging him through courtrooms, draining his resources, and exposing him to smears. 

While National Review and CEI were eventually dismissed from the case, Steyn fought alone. There were no corporate backers or legal insulation, just Steyn, his pen, and a mountain of principle.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/lyndon-johnsons-disastrous-war-on-poverty/

It was the age when administrations had slogans: Franklin Delano Roosevelt had the New Deal, Harry S. Truman the Fair Deal, and John F. Kennedy the New Frontier. Lyndon B. Johnson, not to be outdone, proclaimed that his administration would create the Great Society. In pursuit of that, in his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, only six weeks after he had become president upon Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson proclaimed: “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” It was one of the biggest mistakes any American president ever made, and its damaging effects are still with us today.

Johnson proposed a broad range of social programs to accomplish this, including youth employment legislation, food stamps, expanded minimum wage laws, health insurance for the elderly, and housing and urban renewal programs. Much of this ambitious program was enacted and implemented. Federal spending rose to levels that had not been seen since World War II, and continued to rise ever after. Many of Johnson’s programs, although the nation had gotten along without them from 1776 until the mid-1960s, became, in the framing of Democrat propagandists, sacred rights that could never and must never be questioned.

Despite its sacred status in leftist mythology, however, the War on Poverty was a catastrophic failure. It has been a gargantuan exercise in applying the wrong solution to problems and only making them worse rather than solving them, yet the Democratic Party to this day is full of leaders who refuse to admit that it has been a defeat and a disaster and keep pushing to repeat its mistakes on an even larger scale.

The War on Poverty has cost American taxpayers over $22 trillion since 1964, over three times the cost of all the actual wars that the U.S. has ever fought. All that has resulted from it, however, is urban blight, nagging minority unemployment, and above all, more poverty.

General Douglas MacArthur’s Farewell Speech
Given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point
May 12, 1962
General Westmoreland, General Groves, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps.
As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, “Where are you bound for,
General?” and when I replied, “West Point,” he remarked, “Beautiful place, have you ever
been there before?”
No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this, coming from a
profession I have served so long and a people I have loved so well. It fills me with an
emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily for a personality, but to
symbolize a great moral code – the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this
beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the meaning of this medallion. For all
eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should
be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility
which will be with me always.
Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be,
what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when
courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create
hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction,
that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.
The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every
pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am
sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even
to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you
for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong
enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are
afraid.
They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in
success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the
stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have
compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have
a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to
reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too
seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open
mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a
freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over
timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of
wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you
in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.
And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are
they capable of victory?
Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate
of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I
regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world’s noblest figures; not only as
one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.
His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength,
his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or
from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy’s
breast.
But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his
modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He
belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He
belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and
freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.
In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have
witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible
determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people.
From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I
listened to those songs of the glee club, in memory’s eye I could see those staggering
columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from
dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of shell-pocked roads; to
form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind
and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.
I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died
unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we
would go on to victory. Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Always their blood, and
sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light.
And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the
stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of the
relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter
desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and
cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.
Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable
purpose, their complete and decisive victory – always victory, always through the bloody
haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following
your password of Duty, Honor, Country.
The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the
test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its
requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are
wrong. The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious
training – sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine
attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical
courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain
him. However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer
and to give his life for his country, is the noblest development of mankind.
You now face a new world, a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite,
spheres and missiles marked the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind –
the chapter of the space age. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has
taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human
race, there has never been a greater, a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now
not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed
mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak
in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us;
of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard
basics; of purifying sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth
and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling
the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space
ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an
enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united
human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and
fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.
And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed,
determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is
but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purpose, all other public projects, all
other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; but you are
the ones who are trained to fight.
Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no
substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession
of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men’s
minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation’s war guardians, as its lifeguards
from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators in the arena of battle. For a
century and a half you have defended, guarded and protected its hallowed traditions of
liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government. Whether
our strength is being sapped by deficit financing indulged in too long, by federal paternalism
grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by
crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists
grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as firm and complete as they should
be.
These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military
solution. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense.
From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation’s destiny in their hands the
moment the war tocsin sounds.
The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in
brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic
words: Duty, Honor, Country.
This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other
people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers:
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished –
tone and tints. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their
memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the
smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint
bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.
In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful
mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory I come back to West Point.
Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.
Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river,
my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.
I bid you farewell.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/anti-israel-congressman-invited-d-c-shooters-dad-to-trump-address/

As Front Page Magazine already documented, Elias Rodriguez, the D.C. shooter, was part of a network of radical leftist and anti-Israel groups some of which have publicly come out in support of his crimes.

One of those groups had ties to Rep. Rashida Tlaib. But now it turns out that the shooter’s family also had ties to another radical member of Congress who hates Israel and America almost as much as she does.

The father of the terror suspect accused of gunning down two soon-to-be-engaged Israeli Embassy staffers at the Capital Jewish Museum was honored by a far-left member of Congress with an invitation to President Trump’s joint address this past March, The Post has exclusively learned.

“Eric Rodriguez was our guest during the President’s Joint Speech to Congress, but we don’t know his family,” a spokesperson for Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) told The Post Thursday night.

Rodriguez also appeared in a Service Employees International Union video that same day, and said he was an Iraq War vet and an employee with the Veterans Affairs Department, the New York Times reported.’

SEIU is a radical leftist union. It’s also anti-Israel and had demanded that Israel stop attacking Hamas.

Even stranger…

A worker at a shop near Eric Rodriguez’s Chicago home confirmed he approached the clerk, asking for a translation of an Arabic-language article about his son and the shooting on Thursday.

… that one sends off all sorts of red flags.

But back to Rep. Chuy Garcia who is for BDS, against Israel, for an arms embargo on Israel, accused the Jewish State of atrocities and demanded a ‘Palestinian’ speaker at the DNC. After the murders, Garcia put out a statement condemning the attack, but if a right-wing congressman had invited the father of a white supremacist mass shooter to an event, the media would be asking questions. It’s not going to do that here, but we ought to. Maybe this is a coincidence, but maybe it reflects another network, one that is embedded in a somewhat more ‘mainstream’ Left.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/24/joe-biden-the-mainstream-media-and-the-republic-we-couldnt-keep/

I like Megan McArdle, the conservatarian political columnist for The Washington Post. I really do. I think she’s smart and talented and interesting. Best of all, she’s not someone who is bound by ideology or political allegiances. Ideology and allegiance are good in some cases and in some occupations, but not in hers and not at her paper. McCardle is as close to a “truth teller” as exists in the mainstream media today, and I appreciate that.

All of that said, McArdle’s column this week leaves me nearly despondent, mostly because it’s hopelessly naïve and, as a result, exposes the ridiculousness of the current American predicament. McArdle starts her piece by expressing sympathy for former President Joe Biden with his recent cancer diagnosis, but then jumps right in, openly and aggressively criticizing those who hid Biden’s mental incapacity from the nation for the better part of four years. So far, so good. Biden deserves our sympathy, while his enablers deserve our detestation. Unfortunately, it’s downhill from there, as McArdle uses her platform to call for Democrats and even her colleagues in the media to reflect on their treachery and determine how best to fix things going forward:

I’m convinced that deep institutional soul-searching is due in many quarters and that this conversation is too important to delay, even at the risk of adding to the Biden family’s distress. It is impossible to read “Original Sin” … without reaching a horrifying conclusion: The most powerful nation in the world and its nuclear arsenal were left in the hands of a man who could not reliably recognize people he’d known for years, maintain his train of thought, or speak in coherent sentences.

That’s great. I agree that these are reasonable conclusions, but I still have some questions. How is it that some of us reached those same conclusions in 2020? How did some of us already know this would happen before he won the White House? Why do some people—Democrats and the mainstream media—pretend that they need this book to explain to them now what many of us knew all along? More to the point, does anyone actually believe that the people who need to do soul searching will actually do it? Or, if they do, that they will come to the conclusion that they screwed up and put the nation in great jeopardy?

Here are some predictions, although not particularly bold ones: No one, save maybe Megan McArdle, will do any soul-searching. No one will resolve to do anything differently in the future. No one in the media will suffer any negative career repercussions for hiding Biden’s decline and openly lying to the American people. Indeed, some—like the execrable Jake Tapper—will get rich off it. Most notably, no one in the Democratic Party or Joe Biden’s inner circle will suffer any sort of legal, financial, or professional consequences for their overt and inarguable criminality. If anything, they’ll be lauded by their fellow partisans as heroes and saviors, brave men and women who did what had to be done to save “our democracy” ™ from the bad people. In short, nothing good will come of any of this.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/05/democrats_confederacy_of_dunces.html

Three hundred years ago, the remarkable satirist Jonathan Swift wrote, “When a true Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign; that the Dunces are all in Confederacy against him.”

Now, you might not be President Trump’s biggest fan.  Perhaps you are glad that he has returned to the White House but look forward to one of his capable lieutenants succeeding him in four years.  But I would argue that never has a larger collection of absolute idiots assembled to oppose an American leader, and for that reason alone, Donald J. Trump is probably a genius.  (And a very stable one at that!)

Right now, Democrats are waging a public relations campaign in support of criminal illegal aliens.  They are trying to make military-aged males with gang tattoos look sympathetic.  Sure, many of them have been accused of engaging in human-trafficking, drug-smuggling, identity theft, and fraud, but Democrats say these “new” Americans are just like us.  Sure, foreign nationals are regularly accused of rape and murder across the United States, but Democrats are quick to point out that “old” Americans commit heinous crimes, too.  Sure, illegal aliens are a huge financial burden to the prison system, welfare programs, health care, public schools, and local communities, but Democrats insist that it’s “racist” to tell the truth out loud.  

While President Trump is rounding up violent criminals who have no right to be in the United States, Democrats are crying in front of cameras and promising to bring them back to a neighborhood near you.  In four months, they’ve shown more love for foreigners who broke into our country than they’ve ever shown for American victims of transnational cartels!

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/05/at_least_for_now_trump_s_dhs_blocks_harvard_s_international_student_money_mill.html

According to Grok, roughly 27% of Harvard’s student body—or around 6,800 students—consists of people from overseas. Given that they pay full fare (no federal student loans, grants, or scholarships for them), that works out to around $400 million in tuition revenue annually (6,800 x $57,000). Grok also estimates that, of those 6,800 foreign students, roughly 15% come from China.

You can see, then, how important those foreign students are to Harvard. And that’s why it was such a devastating blow when, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem wrote to Harvard this afternoon informing it that, because it refused to abide by its Civil Rights obligations, despite two warnings, the United States government was revoking its privilege (not its right, but its privilege) to host foreign students and workers:

Here’s the letter’s text, in case you can’t get the attachment to open:

I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked.

As I explained to you in my April letter, it is a privilege to enroll foreign students, and it is also a privilege to employ aliens on campus. All universities must comply with Department of Homeland Security requirements, including reporting requirements under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program regulations, to maintain this privilege. As a result of your refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies, you have lost this privilege.

The revocation of your Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification means that Harvard is prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status for the 2025-2026 academic school year. This decertification also means that existing aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status must transfer to another university in order to maintain their nonimmigrant status.

This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2025/05/21/joe-biden-cognitive-decline-biggest-scandal-modern-history/

News of former president Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis prompted Americans of all persuasions to offer prayers and sympathy. Human decency like that, transcending political differences, is laudable. Whatever our political differences, Biden and his family deserve our compassion.

What’s unusual is the scepticism – indeed, cynicism – surrounding the announcement, which came just before the release of a major book about Biden’s cognitive decline and its cover-up. There have been questions about whether officials knew about the cancer while he was in office and hid that from the public. Those doubts have been voiced by numerous specialists, including physicians who held high positions in Democratic administrations.

This cynicism is the bitter fruit of four years of the Biden administration’s deceit on countless basic issues, including the former president’s health. Americans were repeatedly told that “the president is mentally sharp and incredibly energetic”. That simply wasn’t true, and everyone knew it.

Still, some Democrats are attempting to downplay everything that happened over the past four years, as if it is old news that can be safely buried now that Donald Trump is in the White House. They won’t get away with it. The scandal surrounding Biden’s cognitive decline is the biggest in modern US political history.

In fact, there are three scandals, each reinforcing the other two. First, and most obviously, there is the blunt fact of the former president’s fading mental capacity. Second, there was the concerted cover-up, both by Democratic politicians and the mainstream media. The third is the still-unanswered question: who was actually making presidential decisions? Who controlled the auto-pen that signed almost every order from the Oval Office? To rephrase Senator Howard Baker’s pointed question during the Nixon-Watergate hearings: “What did the president not know? And when did he not know it?”

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/22/everybody-rejoice-paul-krugman-is-predicting-a-recession/

“We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.” – Paul Krugman, November 2016

“Joe Biden will eventually preside over a soaring, ‘morning in America’-type recovery.” – Paul Krugman, November 2020.

“Slower growth is certain. For 2025, I see little or no GDP growth, rising unemployment, and persistent inflation.” – Paul Krugmann, May 2025

If you want an accurate gauge of future economic conditions, look no further than Paul “Nobel-Prize-Winning-Economist” Krugman. He has a solid record of being exactly wrong, as the above quotations show.

So, the fact that he is now predicting stagflation should give everyone a boost of confidence that we are headed for a second Trump boom.

Krugman’s new prediction comes, in fact, just as signs are looking up.

The stock market is back in positive territory since President Donald Trump took office, and is up 7% compared with a year ago.