RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-and-disorder-11590959305?mod=hp_opin_pos_2

The violence that broke out in American cities this weekend goes far beyond justified anger at the killing of George Floyd on Monday. The rioters are looting shops and attacking police with impunity, and they threaten a larger breakdown of public order. Protecting the innocent and restoring order is the first duty of government.

The violent scenes in more than 30 cities were the worst in decades. Minneapolis police were overrun on Friday as neighborhoods and a police precinct burned. Los Angeles police were assaulted and their vehicles vandalized and burned. In Milwaukee a 38-year-old police officer was shot and 16 buildings were looted. In Dallas a shopowner trying to defend his property with a machete was stoned, beaten and left bleeding in the street.

Americans watching on TV saw reporters grabbed and pushed by protesters who flashed obscene gestures for the cameras. Police were pelted with rocks and bottles amid “Defund the Police” signs. Mayors across the country set curfews, and in Minneapolis and elsewhere the National Guard was called in.***

This was more than spontaneous anger at the grotesque video of a white cop, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on the neck of the African-American Floyd for nearly nine minutes as he pleaded to breathe. Many protests were peaceful. But the riots in many places had the earmarks of planned chaos by those using Floyd as an excuse for criminality.

https://www.city-journal.org/terrifying-collapse-of-the-rule-of-law

Savagery is spreading with lightning speed across the United States, with murderous assaults on police officers and civilians and the ecstatic annihilation of businesses and symbols of the state. Welcome to a real civilization-destroying pandemic, one that makes the recent saccharine exhortations to “stay safe” and the deployment of police officers to enforce outdoor mask-wearing seem like decadent bagatelles.

This particular form of viral chaos was inevitable, given the failure of Minneapolis’s leaders to quell the city’s growing mayhem. The violence began on Tuesday, May 26, the day after the horrifying arrest and subsequent death of George Floyd. On the night of Thursday, May 28, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey ordered the city’s Third Police Precinct evacuated as the forces of hatred, distinct from legitimate forms of protest, descended upon it for a third day in a row. The building was promptly torched, sending a powerful sign that society would not defend its most fundamental institutions of law and order.

On Friday, May 29, Minnesota governor Tim Walz explained his reluctance to mobilize the National Guard as an unwillingness to seem “oppressive.” Naturally, he apologized for his white privilege—“I will not patronize you as a white man without living [your] lived experiences”—and explained the feral violence as an understandable response to racial injustice: “The ashes are symbolic of decades and generations of pain, of anguish, unheard.” Few arrests were made after five days of rampant crime.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/the_trace_act_and_the_rule_of_law.html

The TRACE Act will not keep Americans healthy or safe. Instead, it will erode what remains of our constitutional freedoms — freedoms which have been all but washed away during the pandemic’s hysteria

On May 1, 2020, Democratic congressman Bobby Rush introduced bill H.R. 6666, otherwise known as the “Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone Act” (“TRACE Act”).

Ostensibly, the TRACE Act will limit the spread of COVID-19 by creating “mobile health units” that will “conduct diagnostic testing… trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals” and then “support the quarantine of such contacts.” The TRACE Act allocates $100 billion in federal funds to facilitate this project.

Rush says “increased testing and contact tracing is the only way we will get back normal and safely reopen our economy.” Basically, Rush’s position is that America should remained locked down until everyone is tested.

The TRACE Act will not keep Americans healthy or safe. Instead, it will erode what remains of our constitutional freedoms — freedoms which have been all but washed away during the pandemic’s hysteria.

Although the TRACE ACT has been sponsored by over 50 congressmen it received very little media coverage. Briefly: how does bill H.R. 6666 work?

Section 2(a) of the TRACE Act provides that the government may award grants to “eligible entities” to conduct “diagnostic testing for COVID-19”, to “trace and monitor the contacts” of any infected people, and to “support the quarantine of such contacts.” This will be administered by (1) “mobile health units,” which will provide services relating to “testing and quarantine” at people’s residences. The TRACE Act appropriates $100 billion in 2020 to carry out the above mission.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/31/blaming-white-supremacists-for-the-riots-is-nonsensical-gaslighting/

I can’t believe they even tried it. On Saturday morning Minnesota officials came out with an audacious and absurd explanation for the looting and arson that struck Minneapolis this week. Apparently it was white supremacists from out of state who pretended to be actual protestors in an attempt to discredit the protest. The evidence? A vague claim and a lie. It turns out that most of those arrested were actually Minnesota residents.

The hypocritical mental gymnastics from the liberal media in the past 72 hours were amazing enough to earn a perfect 10 from the stingiest East German judge. First, we watched tens of thousands of people hold mass gatherings across the country, which just last week we were told would kill everyone, and the media suddenly didn’t care. It’s like the Chinese virus just went away by magic.

Next we were informed that the looting and arson we witnessed from the protesters was simply the language of the oppressed and how could we even comment about it when another black man was killed by the police. Celebrities posted bail for the heroes of Minneapolis. And yes, the brutal killing of George Floyd is an occasion for outrage.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2020/05/30/big-tech-big-money-the-face-of-the-new-left-n468678

Big Tech in league with Big Money has been asserting itself for some time as the face of the New Left, establishing a digital panopticon to control public opinion, keep tabs on users, and possibly to sway the result of national elections. The result is a species of high-tech totalitarianism practiced by a raft of billionaires, unrepentant capitalists who paradoxically manifest as techno-Marxists. Their activities are generating a radical transmutation in our way of life, gradually depriving us of agency and independence.

Co-founder of Amazon and owner of Pravda-like The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos’ net worth is in the order of $147 billion. His fortune, as Franklin Foer writes in an article titled It’s Jeff Bezos’s Planet Now, is not mitigated by the tax collector or constrained by antitrust laws. The Jeff Bezos Earth fund will disburse $10 billion in the name of fighting climate change, perhaps the greatest government fraud of the current age.

“Bezos has begun to subsume the powers of the state,” Foer continues, funding the exploration of space and spending $700 million “to retrain workers in the shadow of automation and displacement.”

“When Amazon locates its second headquarters on the Potomac,” Foer speculates, “it will provide a perfect geographic encapsulation of the new balance of power.” Meanwhile, Bezos is using his WaPo bully pulpit to promote far left, anti-Trump and feminist screeds filled with doctrinaire misinformation.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/the-president-has-the-constitutional-power-to-restore-order-he-must-act/

What has happened over the last few nights in major cities of the United States is unacceptable. It has gotten worse because of federal and state passivity.

Law enforcement is a vital response to any riotous uprising. Indeed, I believe the failure to enforce the laws without apology from the start of the upheaval last week has fueled its ferocity. It would be naïve to claim that much of the violence, which is being incited and coordinated by radical groups, might not have happened anyway — these groups are always on a hair-trigger, pouncing on any opportunity to make mayhem. But how badly things get out of control has a lot to do with the resolve of state and federal law enforcement. The laws do not enforce themselves.

Progressive dogma notwithstanding, rioting spearheaded by radicals and anarchists does not exhaust itself if governments just give them time and space to get their yah-yahs out. Passivity, conveying the message that the laws will not be enforced, is provocative. It increases the appetite for rioting, which is only sated once the sociopaths have run out of things to burn and loot.

That said, law enforcement on its own is inadequate to restore order once order has been lost. Police and prosecutorial offices simply do not have the resources to quell widespread seditionist violence. Consequently, other provisions of law must be considered.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jim-hanson-trump-is-right-antifa-has-hijacked-protests-of-george-floyds-death-and-turned-them-into-riots

President Trump was right when he placed blame Saturday for the riots tearing apart cities around the country on Antifa and other radical left-wing groups. He should now go one step further and declare Antifa a domestic terrorist organization.

The rioting this past week was ostensibly sparked by the death of George Floyd – a 46-year-old black man who was arrested by Minneapolis police Monday for allegedly trying to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. There is no question that Floyd’s death was horrific and should never have happened. But in fact, many of the rioters affiliated with Antifa simply and cynically have used Floyd’s tragic death as an excuse to spread mayhem and destruction.

The officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck – Derek Chauvin – was charged Friday with third-degree murder and manslaughter. Chauvin and any other officers who go on trial for Floyd’s death should be punished to the full extent the law allows if convicted. But Floyd’s killing should not be used as an excuse by anyone to justify rioting and domestic terrorism that in many cases has victimized African-American small-business owners and others in many cities.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-laws-against-rioting-and-terroris

Attorney General William Barr issued a statement Saturday decrying the rioters who have violently hijacked peaceful protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The attorney general made explicit reference to “groups of outside radicals and agitators” who are pursuing a “separate and violent agenda.”

Barr added: “In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized and driven by anarchist and far left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics, many of whom travel from out of state to promote the violence.”

The mention of Antifa is significant. It is a loosely-knit, interstate movement whose objective is to wage a terrorist war against the United States, using violence against the government and our civilian infrastructure.

Equally salient is the attorney general’s assertion that the radical groups involved in the rioting are pursuing a specific, violent agenda. That obviously refers to the ongoing campaign to coerce acceptance by the country of these groups’ counter-constitutional totalitarianism. Barr vowed that the Justice Department will take enforcement action across the nation.