RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-lefts-great-lie-is-a-pervasive-threat-to-our-culture/

“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world,” wrote George Orwell in a 1943 essay, Looking Back on the Spanish War. “Lies will pass into history.” A truer thing was never said about the current omnipresence of the Lie.

Of course, everybody lies. That the vast majority of politicians lie, almost as a matter of principle, is common knowledge. But I had not grasped until relatively late that the Lie—in majuscule—had become so pervasive that it could be said to constitute a public if unofficial institution. Orwell said that truth had ceased to exist in 1936, an exaggeration made for emphasis, but there is little doubt that it has practically ceased to exist in the political and cultural world we now inhabit. It may be a tenuous or metaphysical distinction to make, but I have come to feel not only that lies are everywhere in the political and cultural world we live in, but that the Lie has become that world. We now live inside the Lie; it is the very air we breathe, the food that sustains us, the verbal milieu we communicate in, the dreams that disturb our sleep, the tastes and fashions we affect, the thoughts we think in our solitary moments. We are like fish who never consider the water they swim in; to leave that element requires something like an evolutionary lung and an amphibian yearning, features that pertain to only a few. This is our current condition.

The issue became clear to me some years back when I was researching The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity, a book five years in the writing. Before 9/11, I was solidly in the camp of the left. I read Chomsky with approval, harbored duly anti-American sentiments, commiserated with the Palestinians, marched in thought with Peace Now, subscribed to the appropriate dailies, and agreed with the political slant taken by our major news networks. The sources I relied on were the editorials of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Globe and Mail, the news reports of the BBC, CNN, and the CBC, the pages of The Nation and The New Republic, the popular accounts of American perfidy that crammed the shelves of the major book chains, and, most significantly, the smog of stock conceptions that were “in the air,” pervasive but insubstantial as are all airy things.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/an-impeachment-that-will-last-forever/90976/

Why did the Speaker of the House go before the press to declare that the charges against the president are “an impeachment that will last forever?” Mrs. Pelosi used the phrase just before sending the charges over to the Senate. She was flanked by the two key managers who will prosecute the case, Congressmen Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff, who showed no emotion. Yet the more we rolled her phrasing over in our mind, the more it struck us as peculiar — off — and even an abuse.

For, at least to us, Mrs. Pelosi spoke as if she doubts her impeachment managers can win a conviction. What she was saying was that she comprehends she is likely to lose but is proceeding anyhow for the purpose of marking the President’s reputation and tarnishing his legacy (and damaging his election chances 10 months hence). She mightn’t gain a conviction, she seemed to be saying, but it is enough to make the charge. The charges themselves will last forever.

Even, the Speaker was suggesting, if there is an acquittal. And that is something to think about. It sent us back to our dog-eared copy of Robert Jackson’s famous speech called “The Federal Prosecutor.” The future Supreme Court justice was attorney general when he delivered his remarks to a gathering of United States attorneys. His aim was to mark for them the need for humility, objectivity, fairness, and decency. And warn of the lurking temptation to abuse of power.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-impeachment-trial-framers-andrew-mccarthy

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law.” That is the reasoning of the Government Accounting Office, which has just concluded that President Trump’s budget office violated federal law in freezing U.S. aid to Ukraine.

It certainly would have been nice to hear this from the GAO when President Obama was imposing his own immigration policy priorities by executive edict and as a substitute for contrary priorities Congress had enacted into law.

In any event, the finding is in an eight-page report by which the reputedly non-partisan CBO has plunged itself headlong into the deeply partisan impeachment controversy just hours before the Senate impeachment trial is to commence (at least ceremonially; the substantive commencement of the trial will occur next Tuesday).

So … what is the upshot? Are Democrats preparing the ground for another article of impeachment? Obviously, the law that President Trump is said to have violated is not a criminal statute. And it is simply not true that the president never has the authority to countermand a congressional statute prescribing foreign aid; Article II of the Constitution gives the president nigh plenary power over the conduct of foreign relations; and other congressional statutes (such as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act) confer sweeping power on the president to regulate foreign commerce if the nation is under threat or in a state of emergency.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/rashida-tlaib-and-r

Following the founding of Hamas in 1987, the Muslim Brotherhood set up worldwide committees to assist the newly formed terrorist group. In the US, it was called the Palestine Committee, and by the end of 1994, it would consist of four organizations, all falling under the leadership of then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. Of the four, only one remains, CAIR. However, remnants of the others came together in the form of a more recent group, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). Given AMP’s connection to a terrorist organization, why would Democrat officials, including US Representative Rashida Tlaib, go out of their way to aid and abet the group, and why isn’t the Democratic Party doing anything to stop this?

AMP was established, in 2006, with the goal of vilifying and delegitimizing Israel. True to its Hamas roots, AMP’s message is laced with support for violence. The Executive Director of AMP is Osama Abu-Irshaid. Prior to AMP, he served as editor of Al Zaytounah, the official newsletter of the Palestine Committee’s Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP). This month, Abu-Irshaid stated at an AMP event, “Palestinians, if they don’t take what they want willingly, they will take it forcefully. We promise you this, we’re going to liberate our land and we’re going to liberate our people, whether they like it or they don’t like it. Well, they have picked the wrong enemy!”

Last month, AMP celebrated, on its Facebook page, the 32nd anniversary of the First Intifada, the violent uprising against Israel from which Hamas was created. During its January 2018 ‘JERUSALEM IS A RED LINE’ rally, AMP repeatedly led chants of “Long live Intifada.” AMP’s Chairman, Hatem Bazian, who is also the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), at an April 2004 rally held in San Francisco, called for an intifada in America. He stated, “Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq. And the question is what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country?”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosis-impeachment-offenses-11579134502?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

House Democrats have finally vouchsafed to deliver their impeachment articles to the Senate, a month after they claimed their rushed votes were essential to save the republic. The Senate can now do better by the Constitution by holding a trial that judges President Trump without validating the partisan House process and its weak case.

Nancy Pelosi’s delay in appointing House managers further exposes how Democrats have defined impeachment down. The House hearings blocked GOP witnesses and limited cross-examination. Despite selective leaks and a pro-impeachment media, they failed to move public opinion or persuade Republicans that Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses.

And now the Speaker admits she withheld the articles to intimidate Republicans into calling witnesses that the House wouldn’t call. “We think we accomplished in the past few weeks is that we wanted the public to see the need for witnesses, witnesses with firsthand knowledge of what happened, documentation which the president has prevented from coming to the Congress,” Mrs. Pelosi said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “Now the ball is in their court to either do that or pay a price.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/01/15/impeachment_and_the_fight_over_the_deep_state_142152.html

Why is official Washington so determined to rid itself of Donald Trump? The usual answers focus on the country’s ideological divisions, now calcified in the parties, and Trump’s polarizing personality. Democrats of all stripes truly loathe him. All true, but those are only part of the answer. 

There is a deeper reason that helps explain both the origins of the impeachment articles and the larger movement to remove Trump. The key is that Trump not only ran against Washington’s entrenched power, he is actually delivering on that promise. Nothing is more dangerous to the Beltway’s power and profits, to its most powerful actors and the foot soldiers behind them. Those endangered interests are the essential backdrop to the House impeachment and Senate trial. 

Trump not only ran against the capital’s lobbyists, lawyers, and bureaucrats, he has avoided capture by them since taking office. Instead of making his peace with traditional Republican constituencies, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he has shut them out. He pays little attention to familiar Republican think tanks. Instead of deferring to state party leaders, he stepped into the primaries, backed his own candidates (often underdogs), and showed it was fatal for Republicans to oppose him. Back in Washington, the Democrats shut out Trump, deciding from the outset to block as many of his Cabinet and judicial appointments as they could. The result is that Trump firmly controls his own party and is uniformly opposed by Democrats, who are otherwise fractured by ideology and age. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/millionaires_demand_that_california_save_others_from_their_fate.html

In California, America’s limousine liberals are at it again, demanding that the rapacious California legislature step in and manage corporations lest anyone within the corporation become too rich. Leading the charge is Walt Disney’s great niece.

Abigail Disney is a child of incredible privilege because she is the granddaughter of Roy O. Disney and great niece of Walt Disney, the two men whose genius combined to create The Walt Disney Company. Abigail, a degree jockey, went to all the right schools, by which we really mean all the leftist schools: Yale, Stanford, and Columbia.

As an adult, Abigail has taught English, written about the celebration of violence in American fiction, and produced and directed a handful of documentary films. She is purely leftist in her politics and is, of course, hostile to Israel.

Although Abigail claims to have given away $70 million since she gained control of her inheritance in 1981, she is still estimated to be worth $120 million. In other words, she still has a lot left to give away.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/san_francisco_continues_to_shine_a_light_on_what_leftism_does_to_civilization.html

In the 1970s, San Francisco, as was true for most major American cities, had gotten very shabby. While tourists still flocked to the neighborhood directly north of Market Street, where they could find Union Square, fancy stores, and upscale hotels, those who crossed Market Street and headed south found themselves in a four-block-square area of unpleasant squalor. There were always a handful of drunken men sleeping it off in the doorways of decrepit buildings and the sidewalks stank of urine.

By the end of the 1970s, San Francisco began a massive plan to revitalize that area. It tore down the decayed buildings and, in their place, built the Moscone Conference Center, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Yerba Buena Gardens, and the Metreon theater and shopping center. It was all beautiful and inviting. People loved coming to trade shows and conferences in San Francisco, and families happily took their children to the museum, the garden, the skating rink, and the movie theaters.

Things aren’t like that anymore. While it was once just the South of Market region that was icky because of a few sleeping (or rambunctious) drunks, some stinky pee, and some shabby buildings, tourists are discovering that San Francisco’s entire downtown is inundated with hundreds of scary homeless people, mounds of fecal matter, thousands of discarded needles, and clusters of tents and shopping carts.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/the_democrats_weird_response_to_sending_the_impeachment_articles_to_the_senate.html

The past few years have disabused us of any notion that the American Congress is a solemn place, filled with statesmanlike, or at least decent, people working for the betterment of America and Americans. To those few who still clung to that outdated idea, the House Democrats’ behavior when sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate shows that Congress is no longer a serious institution.

People of a certain age remember a time when drunkenness was played for laughs. In the family-friendly show Bewitched, a running gag had a chronically drunk man invariably see Samantha practice magic — and, of course, no one believed him. Foster Brooks’ imitation of a drunk was also a perennial favorite in the 1960s and early 1970s:

Lately, it’s easy to suspect that the Democrat party has its own version of Foster Brooks. Don’t pay too much attention to what Nancy Pelosi is saying in this short video; just focus on her delivery:

This is not a well woman, and that’s true whether what bedevils her is a biological ailment or something else.

And then there was her word soup:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/trump-impeachment-postpone-senate-trial-until-house-finishes-investigation/

Letting House Democrats string the process along is not fair to Trump, the Senate, or the people.

Two things happened simultaneously on Wednesday: (a) The House of Representatives transmitted to the Senate two articles of impeachment approved on straight partisan lines a month ago, and (b) the House’s impeachment inquiry — yes, it’s still very much alive — highlighted new, relevant evidence it has turned up about the activities in Ukraine of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Giuliani’s associates.

The Democrats’ strategy is coming clear.

The House provided the Senate with two half-baked impeachment articles. House Democrats rushed through the investigation, forgoing salient witnesses and evidence, because of the political calendar. The charges are weak and the inquiry was needlessly short-circuited, so Democrats have continued investigating the premature allegations. Now they are publicly disclosing newly acquired evidence, with the promise of more to come. Transparently, their goal is to pressure the Senate not merely to conduct a trial but to complete the investigation that the House failed to complete — calling witnesses and gathering evidence, as if a trial were nothing more than an extension of an open-ended grand-jury probe.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans should not let them get away with it. No trial court would allow itself to be whipsawed this way. A federal judge would tell prosecutors to go back to the grand jury, finish the investigation, and come back to the trial court when they have a case ready to be tried, not investigated.