RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.us/sovereignty-rules/

At the end of March, about two weeks into the coronavirus emergency, I looked out my window onto the street below and saw something that made me uneasy about the future of the country. There was a commotion down there. Two white teenagers were standing in the street with their hands up. A man — who looked and sounded like an East African immigrant — had stopped his car in the middle of the road and sprung out. I squinted to see what it was he was holding in front of him that made the kids look so alarmed.

It was a pizza. The kids had ordered it. The car was marked with a Domino’s insignia. ‘Whoa, whoa, man!’ said one of the kids. ‘Take it easy!’ He was grotesquely corpulent. Hanging folds of pink belly were swinging wildly out of his clinging T-shirt.

The driver walked the pizza to the back of his car and laid it on the trunk, along with a paper bag. Now it was obvious what was going on. He had suggested to the boys that they take possession of the pizza in such a
way that they not make contact with him. That was the safest thing, given the epidemic — for him, for them and for all the customers he would have to serve during the rest of the day. Smart thinking. I thought, not for the first time that day, of the heroism of delivery drivers like this, who make it possible for people like these kids to stay home and ride out the storm in their rich neighborhoods.

That was not Fatty’s view. He just found the whole routine weird. He jostled past the driver and reached into the paper bag, and now, suddenly, he was angry. ‘Where’s the lava cake?’ he asked. ‘I ordered a lava cake!’ The driver mumbled. ‘Drive back to Tenleytown and get it, can ya?’ the kid threatened. ‘Can you make that a priority? Can you get me an extra one, too?’ The driver mumbled a little more and, looking scared, drove off.

Anyone who has read Defoe, Manzoni or Camus, or who can put two and two together, ought to realize that, wherever plague is, looting, strikes, war, hunger and other unrest are not far away. That evening on my street, you could have been forgiven for thinking there was less to fear from coronavirus than from standing between a fat American and a steaming box of pizza. But a situation where idlers try to boss around hardworking people risking their lives is not likely to hold for long. And where will that leave us?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/steele-dossier-disinformation-update-11586897258?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Russia interfered in America’s 2016 election, as several government reports have established. The latest disturbing news is that Russia may have received an assist from no less than the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

That’s the takeaway of newly released portions of last year’s Department of Justice Inspector General report about the FBI’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion. That report showed how the FBI abused its powers by misleading a secret court into granting surveillance warrants on the Trump campaign. Thanks to Congressional pressure, the Justice Department has now declassified footnotes showing that the FBI’s main source for its collusion allegations—Christopher Steele—may have been targeted as part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The FBI was warned of this threat but ignored it.

Mr. Steele was tasked by contractors for the Hillary Clinton campaign in spring 2016 with assembling a summary of Trump-Russia allegations. This document, which became known as the Steele dossier, was fed to the FBI and became the central evidence in its applications for warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The FBI should have been wary of Mr. Steele’s reporting, having been warned he was connected to the rival campaign.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/492405-ag-barr-just-signaled-that-things-are-about-to-get-ugly-for-the-russia

“Travesty” is not a nice word. It usually is applied to gross perversions of justice, and that apparently is the context Attorney General William Barr desired when he dropped it into an interview answer the other day in the breezy courtyard of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

His composed, understated delivery almost disguised the weighty magnitude of that disturbing word and the loaded adjective that preceded it. “I think what happened to him,” he said, referring to the president and the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into his campaign, “was one of the greatest travesties in American history.”  

Okay, it’s important to pause for a moment and absorb what the AG said. He just called an FBI investigation not just a travesty but one of the “greatest” travesties in the nation’s history. It was an unprecedented statement by an attorney general about his own department’s premier agency.  

The FBI has made plenty of mistakes, but never in its 112-year history has an FBI investigation been characterized as a travesty, let alone one that equates to other hall-of-fame travesties in American history.

Is the AG’s assessment fair? The answer is entwined in his next statement: “Without any basis [the FBI] started this investigation into [Donald Trump’s] campaign … .”

Oops, stop again right there. Mr. Barr is making a definitive statement about that which many of us have speculated all along, namely that the weirdly unprecedented investigative team put together by former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe did not have adequate legal reasons to open a case into the Trump campaign in the first place. The attorney general just confirmed that.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/492548-wholl-decide-when-we-can-reopen-its-not-who-you-might-think

President Trump is not a lawyer. No shame in that — some of our best presidents haven’t been. But he frequently gets out over his skis when he discusses constitutional law. It is a subject he sometimes mangles when speaking or tweeting, though his eventual actions tend to be respectful of the Constitution and congressional authority.

This tension is seen in a pair of tweets (here and here) that the president posted Monday morning. To wit:

“For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect. It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!”

As a matter of constitutional law, this is wrong. The importance of the wrongness can be — and, judging from media coverage, is being — overstated. The thrust of Trump’s remarks is that the president and the governors must collaborate, and they are doing so.

Our Constitution prescribes a federalist system of divided power. Contrary to popular misconception, it is “the People,” not the federal government, that is sovereign. Furthermore, governmental power is split between federal and state officials.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25527

He is ready to gamble that his “pragmatic” solution is the correct one and he furthermore demands that we all gamble along with him — no matter the stakes.

The Wall Street Journal recently featured a remarkable op-ed column by Henry Kissinger about Covid-19. What was conspicuously absent in the piece is any mention of China. Kissinger failed to mention China even once.

And it’s not like Kissinger has forgotten about China. The very last time Kissinger made headlines, at a November 14, 2019 speech before the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, he was warning about the danger that a permanent state of conflict between the U.S. and China would pose and he now ignored China’s role in the spread of Coronavirus. The question is why.

Is the article an illustration of Kissinger’s willingness to ignore the vital security needs of America and her allies? 

Kissinger still clings to his lifelong belief that dictatorships should be accepted by the West whether the dictatorships are Communist or Arab ones.

And Kissinger is most remembered by historians for two episodes.

The first was the success of his secret 1971 diplomatic mission to China, which led to the U.S. recognizing China –  and betraying Taiwan.

The second was his 1973 “Shuttle Diplomacy” aimed at forcing Israel to retreat from land it won in defensive wars. Kissinger must have realized he was forcing Israel to surrender lands to dangerous despots and risking its very survival by wanting it to go back to indefensible borders.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/civil-liberties-group-pushes-hud-to-stop-confiscation-of-bibles-in-public-housing_3310264.html

Attorneys with the Americans for Civil Liberty and Justice (ACLJ) filed comments with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Monday urging officials there to support a proposed rule to stop public housing managers from confiscating Bibles and other religious literature from their facilities.

“We believe the rule should be implemented fully as the department has proposed,” ACLJ Executive Director Jordan Sekulow said in an April 13 letter to HUD made available to The Epoch Times.

The proposed rule is entitled the “Equal Participation of Faith-Based Organizations in HUD Programs and Activities: Implementation of Executive Order 13831.”

Otherwise, “religious organizations that currently, or in the future may, participate in department programs would continue to be targeted and burdened unequally merely because of their faith-based nature,” Sekulow wrote.

“The rule would serve to bring the department’s implementation of its programs in-line with the requirements of federal law, including the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” he said.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/13/new-info-doj-fbi-knew-trump-surveillance-was-based-on-russian-disinformation/

These facts establish the FBI used Russia’s meddling with the 2016 election as a pretext to investigate Donald Trump and the special counsel’s office was complicit in this ploy.

On Friday, the Department of Justice released newly declassified information from an inspector general report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse, revealing for the first time that the FBI had received information indicating the Christopher Steele dossier contained Russian disinformation. The newly unredacted portions of the IG’s report also confirmed there was no “network of sources” backing up Steele’s reporting.

While both revelations provide further fodder for attacking the Carter Page surveillance proceedings, the significance is much greater: These facts establish the FBI used Russia’s meddling with the 2016 election as a pretext to investigate Donald Trump and the special counsel’s office was complicit in this ploy.

More than two months ago, Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson dispatched a letter to William Barr requesting the attorney general declassify information and unredact information contained in four footnotes in Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 478-page report on FISA abuse. In their letter, the senators noted that they “[were] deeply concerned about certain information that remains classified.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-york-working-on-reopening-plan-with-5-other-states_3309934.html?utm_source=pushengage&utm_medium=pushnotification&utm_campaign=pushengage

New York officials are working on a reopening plan with five other states, including New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

The governors of those four states have already made lockdown announcements, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is hoping to draw them into a plan for reopening the economy as the hardest hit state in the nation starts to see declining hospitalizations and new cases.

Additionally, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and Delaware Gov. John Carney will be on a call with Cuomo later April 13, along with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf.

“We’ll be having an announcement this afternoon about reopening,” Cuomo told reporters in Albany.

The plan will start with easing the isolation imposed through harsh measures that have largely restricted people across all six states at home unless they’re designated an essential worker. The next phase will be increasing economic activity, in part by adding new groups to the list of essential workers.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/12/the-thin-facade-of-authority/

As we continue to debate about numerators and denominators in determining the real impact of this virus, one common denominator remains certain about the elites advising, crafting, and developing our response: they aren’t touched by the impact of their decisions.

The virus will teach us many things, but one lesson has already been relearned by the American people: there are two, quite different, types of wisdom.

One, and the most renowned, is a specialization in education that results in titled degrees and presumed authority. That ensuing prestige, in turn, dictates the decisions of most politicians, the media, and public officials—who for the most part share the values and confidence of the credentialed elite.

The other wisdom is not, as commonly caricatured, know-nothingism. Indeed, Americans have always believed in self-improvement and the advantages of higher education, a trust that explained broad public 19th-century support for mandatory elementary and secondary schooling and, during the postwar era, the G.I. Bill.

But the other wisdom also puts a much higher premium on pragmatism and experience, values instilled by fighting nature daily and mixing it up with those who must master the physical world.

The result is the sort of humility that arises when daily drivers test their skills and cunning in a semi-truck barreling along the freeway to make a delivery deadline with a cylinder misfiring up on the high pass, while plagued by worries whether there will be enough deliveries this month to pay the mortgage.

An appreciation of practical knowledge accrues from watching central-heating mechanics come out in the evening to troubleshoot the unit on the roof, battling the roof grade, the ice, and the dark while pitting their own acquired knowledge in a war with the latest computerized wiring board of the new heating exchange unit that proves far more unreliable than the 20-year-old model it replaced.

Humility is key to learning, but it is found more easily from a wealth of diverse existential experiences on the margins. It is less a dividend of the struggle for great success versus greater success still, but one of survival versus utter failure.