RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/legal-scholars-embarrass-themselves-in-pompous-letter-attacking-michael-flynn/

Twenty legal luminaries led by Harvard professor Laurence Tribe have written a brief urging Judge Emmet Sullivan to reject the government’s motion to dismiss the Michael Flynn case.

Twenty legal luminaries calling themselves “Separation of Powers Scholars” and led by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe have written a brief urging Judge Emmet Sullivan to reject the government’s motion to dismiss the Michael Flynn case and to proceed to sentencing.

The brief is a shoddy piece of work. It tells little about the Flynn case, even misleading on that score, but it triggers disturbing ruminations about the sad state of current legal academia.

How We Got Here

Here’s a quick review of the case. For more detail, visit the roster of documents compiled by Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell.

Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor, was charged with lying to the FBI. After great pressure was put on him in threats of extensive jail time, possible indictments of his son, and financial ruin from lawyers’ fees, he, advised by the D.C. establishment firm of Covington and Burling (headed by former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder), agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a government recommendation of no jail time.

$100 billion+ of your taxpayer dollars will be funding this behemoth effort – an army of contact tracers.Malkin (Jewish World Review) asks some poignant questions and makes a few astute observations:

1) What happens when “experts” get diagnoses and assessments wrong? 2) Is this an opt-in or opt-out intrusion into your life? 3) What about built-in privacy considerations?  MTX, the software company with a mega contract to monitor vaccinations, treatment and testing, has already expanded into monitoring jobless claims and childcare facilities.  What’s next?4) Big Pharma and other businesses now have access to your previously protected personal health care information.5) Texas governor, Greg Abbott failed to provide advanced notice to the state legislature of the almost $300 million MTX deal (funded by taxpayer dollars). Janet Levy,

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/27/cashing_in_on_contact_tracing_143298.html

Ca$hing In on Contact Tracing-Michelle Malkin

Look out. An “army of contact tracers” is about to be unleashed on America. Corporations, political lobbyists and government bureaucracies all win. Privacy, freedom and family autonomy all lose. Big time.

You may have already heard of the aptly named House Bill 6666, sponsored by Illinois Dem. Bobby Rush. Known as the Testing, Reaching and Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act, the legislation would allocate $100 billion in public funding to “eligible entities” to “conduct diagnostic testing for COVID-19, and related activities such as contact tracing, through mobile health units and, as necessary, at individuals’ residences, and for other purposes.”

The cash could be used to hunt down infected individuals, quarantine them in their homes for undefined periods under unknown conditions and subsidize a hiring spree of untold thousands of trackers from nonprofits, schools and medical facilities.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/26/smoothing-the-bumpy-road-to-reopening/

It is clearly past time to rein in the baseless, arbitrary restrictions that have been imposed by some politicians, as they can only inspire disrespect and non-compliance.

Every day seems to bring some new, unexpected, unpleasant revelation about the SARS-CoV-2 and the illness it causes, COVID-19. 

The infection has a long, often asymptomatic incubation period, high transmissibility, the ability to infect many human tissues, and, frequently, rapid deterioration of the clinical course. Some curious aspects of the infection, such as long duration of symptoms, multi-organ involvement, blood clots, and patients’ ability to tolerate extremely low blood oxygen levels have put critical care doctors on a steep learning curve, trying to understand how best to keep patients from falling off a cliff.

If the clinical aspects of the disease have been difficult to catalog and manage, the public health considerations have been equally vexing. We know enough now, however, to offer improved guidance for setting public health policy. Rather than using projections of cases and fatalities to guide policy decisions, the focus should be on the granular level of how the virus physically spreads. It is time to relegate the COVID-19 epidemiological models primarily to projecting required hospital and ventilator capacity and supplies of personal protective equipment.  

Based on a survey recently in New York, it appears that a very high percentage of new cases can be traced to individuals’ homes and to care facilities such as nursing homes. The survey found that 83 percent of new cases came from unemployed or retired individuals who are largely sheltered in place, while almost a quarter (22 percent) of these cases originated in long term care facilities. In the nation overall, 11 percent of COVID-19 cases have occurred in long-term care facilities, while deaths from the infection in long-term care facilities account for more than one-third of the country’s pandemic fatalities.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/its_time_to_checkmate_runamok_covid19_states.html

Hopefully, many of the things that lay heavy upon the nation right now will be in our collective rear-view mirror in the near future. These things include constant mention of pandemic and crisis, hourly radio reports and TV news reports of coronavirus infections and deaths, face masks, the pronouncements of “experts” like the little gnome man and the scarf lady, and ubiquitous signs and messages that implore us to stay home and stay safe (OBEY!) 

All of this is aimed at creating and reinforcing a state of fear and panic because scared people are easier to manipulate.  
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What will not, and must not, fade from our memory and consciousness is the stench of the actions of state governors and state officials who acted with little regard for the constitutional rights of their citizens. They imposed state-of-emergency edicts that were arbitrary, illogical, capricious, inconsistent and had little, if any, effect in controlling the virus “crisis.” It is hard to fathom why small businesses have had to close while Costco, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s and other giant stores were allowed to stay open. Small businesses, whose owners have invested their lives and fortunes, were ordered closed in a fiat which jeopardized their very existence. These businesses were declared “non-essential,” but they are quite essential to their owners and very often their customers! The effect of thid business shut-down by state officials has been incredibly costly and as effective as medieval blood draining. The social costs haven’t even begun to be known.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/kafkafornia-clamps-down-lloyd-billingsley/

“Gun violence is the last thing our communities and children should have to fear during a public health crisis. Background checks can save lives and DOJ’s firearms operations help make that happen. At the California Department of Justice, we’ll keep doing our part to keep firearms out of the hands of violent and dangerous individuals.”

That was California attorney general Xavier Becerra last week, but his announcement failed to cite any example of actual “gun violence.” The former congressman, once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as a running mate, was hailing raids that confiscated firearms from people who had committed no crime.

According to the Sacramento Bee, the state DOJ mounted “a dozen operations to confiscate firearms and ammunition possessed by owners who failed background checks.” This is the background check California requires for all purchases of ammunition. Failing this particular check is not the same as committing a crime.

From last July 1, when the program kicked in, until December, 2019, the state ran 345,000 background checks and rejected a full 62,000 Californians legally entitled to purchase ammunition. The 62,000 included off-duty sheriff’s deputies purchasing shotgun shells to hunt ducks. Database discrepancies meant the 62,000 had somehow “failed” a background check, implying malfeasance. The law-abiding gun owners then became “prohibited persons,” barred from purchasing ammunition and exercising their Second Amendment rights. 

Attorney Ari Freilich of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told reporters that dangerous people were “committing a serious crime trying to acquire a product designed to take human life,” and that the background check system was working as intended. The outright confiscation of firearms in April, 2020, confirms that this is the case.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cuomo-coronavirus-order-forcing-nursing-homes-to-take-covid-19-patients-scrubbed-from-new-york-state-website/

The New York Department of Health has apparently deleted a March order issued by Governor Andrew Cuomo that forced nursing homes to admit Covid-positive residents.

The order, which was implemented on March 25, stated that “no resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to a nursing home solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19,” and also prohibited nursing homes from requiring testing prior to admission or readmission. But the order is no longer visible on the state’s website.

Other outdated guidelines, including a February order stating “there is no need to cancel school or social events, and there is no need for students or school staff to wear surgical masks at school,” remain active on the site.

The New York Department of Health and Cuomo’s office did not respond to requests for comment as to why the order was deleted.

New York leads the country with over 5,000 nursing home deaths due to coronavirus, and earlier this month admitted to quietly changing its criteria to count only those cases in which the individual died at the nursing home, rather than at the hospital. News of the policy has resulted in calls for an investigation from conservative lawmakers.

Cuomo, who said in April that he was not aware of his state’s own policy, reversed it earlier this month. “We’re just not going to send a person who is positive to a nursing home after hospital visit. Period. If there’s any issue, the resident must be referred to the department of health which will find alternative care,” he announced on May 10.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/26/why-new-york-is-in-trouble–290304-public-employees-with-100000-paychecks-cost-taxpayers-38-billion/#66d7b319fee2

New York’s budget deficit ballooned from $6 billion to $13 billion while the Empire State was the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. But the financial woes aren’t stopping 290,304 government employees from bringing home six-figure salaries and higher.

Across New York, nearly 20,000 highly compensated local, city and state employees out-earned Governor Andrew Cuomo’s $178,500 salary.

Our auditors at OpentheBooks.com found plumbers in New York City making $285,000 per year; police officers at the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey earning $423,467; Long Island school superintendents making up to $547,049; and a 93-year old college professor retired on a $561,754 pension.

So, maybe it’s no surprise that the New York General Assembly hiked their own pay and will be the most highly compensated state legislature in the country by 2021 with salaries of $130,000.

Using our new interactive mapping tool, quickly review (by ZIP code) the 290,304 New York public employees and retirees who earned more than $100,000 and cost taxpayers $38 billion (FY2018-9). Just click a pin and scroll down to see the results rendered in the chart beneath the map.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/obama-administration-scandals-coming-to-light-legacy-in-tatters/

Obama’s policies are in tatters, and the worst scandals of his White House are coming to light.

“One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.”
— Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

Each day that the Obama administration fades into the past, its wrongdoings manage to wander back into the present.

After years of suppression, all sorts of strange events keep popping up to remind us of what little is left of the Obama years — the Susan Rice memo, Christopher Steele deleting his computer records, FBI-doctored and lost 302s, text messages wiped clean, the bizarre Obama January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting, the ambush interview of Michael Flynn, the unmasking and leaking of redacted names swept up in reverse-targeting surveillance operations, the administration fraud perpetrated on the FISA courts. The list is so overwhelming and bizarre that it ensures that anything at any time can now appear. And the result keeps reminding Americans of how corrupt were the years between 2009 and 2017 and how untruthful was the coverage of such institutionalized wrongdoing.

Emeritus Barack Obama now and then ventures out to go through the motions of an enfeebled defense for what is becoming an increasingly discredited administration. But his heart is not in it. His mind is elsewhere. His cause is no longer social activism and community organizing, if it ever was, but lucre and the perceived well-earned good life. The arc of his moralizing universe is long, but for the anointed like him, it apparently bends toward the just deserts of riches and material bounty.

First lady forever and bestselling memoirist Michelle Obama sometimes takes a hiatus from making millions to offer a half-hearted progressive warning about the sudden heartlessness of the country — reminiscent of her transitory 2008 warnings about a downright mean country and one of which she had previously not been especially proud.

The remains of the Obama team (Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Comey, Samantha Power) are not offering much of a defense for the Obama years — they are now too busy scrambling to hide their own legal culpability and exposure. The bending arc of the 2009 dream team finally ends in the platitudes of “I can’t remember” and “Not to my knowledge” that will eventually find their way from CNN and MSNBC into the court room.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/26/its-not-the-trump-administration-politicizing-flynns-case-its-judge-sullivan/
Those condemning the DOJ’s decision to drop the charges against Michael Flynn ignore the growing evidence of misconduct by both the FBI and the federal prosecutors.

Not quite two weeks ago, Judge Emmet Sullivan threw open the doors of his federal courtroom to the swamp when he invited third parties to pontificate on the propriety of the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Michael Flynn. The next day Sullivan went further: He appointed a former federal judge, John Gleeson, as an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, to argue that the government’s motion to dismiss should be denied.

Judge Sullivan’s selection of Gleeson as amicus curiae gave away the game. The same day Sullivan named Gleeson as amicus curiae, an op-ed by Gleeson and two cohorts ran in the Washington Post declaring the government’s decision to dismiss the charge against Flynn “reeks of improper political influence.”

The Washington Post cloaked Gleeson and his co-authors, David O’Neil and Marshall Miller, with an aura of impartiality and authority by highlighting their past service in the Department of Justice: “John Gleeson served as a U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of New York and chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in that district. David O’Neil served as the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. Marshall Miller served as the highest-ranking career official in the Criminal Division and as chief of the Criminal Division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District.”

Spritz a Swamp Creature, and There’s Still a Stench

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/fbi-documents-put-barack-obama-obamagate-narrative

Just 17 days before President Trump took office in January 2017, then-FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted bureau lawyer Lisa Page, his mistress, to express concern about sharing sensitive Russia probe evidence with the departing Obama White House.

Strzok had just engaged in a conversation with his boss, then-FBI Assistant Director William Priestap, about evidence from the investigation of incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, codenamed Crossfire Razor, or “CR” for short.

The evidence in question were so-called “tech cuts” from intercepted conversations between Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to the texts and interviews with officials familiar with the conversations.

Strzok related Priestap’s concerns about the potential the evidence would be politically weaponized if outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper shared the intercept cuts with the White House and President Obama, a well-known Flynn critic.

“He, like us, is concerned with over sharing,” Strzok texted Page on Jan. 3, 2017, relating his conversation with Priestap. “Doesn’t want Clapper giving CR cuts to WH. All political, just shows our hand and potentially makes enemies.”

Page seemed less concerned, knowing that the FBI was set in three days to release its initial assessment of Russian interference in the U.S. election.