RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/moral-idiocy-linguistic-segregation-bruce-thornton/

The Race Gestapo pounced on Donald Trump recently for comparing the House’s Constitutionally dicey attempt to impeach him to a “lynching.” Apart from the political motive of damaging Trump, the uproar illustrates once again how illiberal identity politics racializes language, turning words into ideological weapons that serve one faction’s own power and influence rather than the people it supposedly represents.

Much of the criticism of Trump was quickly exposed as hypocritical, morally incoherent, or just plain ignorant. The Associated Press, for example, faulted the president for “stirring up painful memories of America’s racist past.” Seriously? All we’ve been doing for more than half a century is “stirring up” racial grievances in politics, curricula, and popular culture. Historical racial offenses are repeated ad nauseam, even though many of them took place long before the end of legal segregation in 1964. And we know why. The race industry and identity politics are predicated on grievances over racists offenses for which white people must feel guilty.

And if such offenses are lacking, either they will be invented, like the myth that the police target black men for extra-legal assassination; or recycled from history, as in the current outrage over Trump’s use of the word “lynching.” Without grievances and the white guilt they provoke, activists and political factions have no leverage over lawmakers for getting regulations that privilege their interests.

What these ideological ploys actually reveal, though, is not the persistence of racism, but how much black lives have improved since even before the Civil Rights Act, and how discredited and ostracized old-school public expressions of racist attitudes have become. If these views still had widespread political and social power, nobody would have to invent racist hoaxes a la Jussie Smollett, or redefine racism into ever more subtle manifestations, or create psychological fictions like “implicit bias.” As any black man over the age of 60 can tell you, during segregation nobody needed such magnifying glasses to see racism in action. It was brutally obvious.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/will-impeachment-change-opinions-of-trump/

Robert Samuelson’s latest column on impeachment brought to mind Lincoln’s remark during his first debate with Douglas: “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.”

Samuelson notes that, if the House impeaches President Trump, at least 20 Republican Senators would have to vote with every Democrat to remove him from office. “For now,” he writes, “the Democrats have zero.”

That may be an overstatement. GOP senators criticize the impeachment process, while avoiding extended discussions of the president’s underlying behavior. Fifty of 53 Republican senators have joined Lindsey Graham’s call for the House to authorize its impeachment inquiry.

Republican opinion of Trump has to turn squarely against him for impeachment to succeed. What are the chances of this happening? Not great.

Samuelson acknowledges that public opinion is sticky. People don’t like changing their minds. “People define themselves by their beliefs. It’s who they are and want to be.” Their views of Trump are like hardened concrete. “At least for his core supporters, Trump has seemed remarkably adept at controlling the narrative of his presidency.”

Samuelson offers two examples of shifts in public opinion: same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization. The public changed its mind about both. But advocates of impeachment shouldn’t get their hopes up. The comparison between cultural issues and political figures is misguided.

The timeline for cultural change is much longer than the political calendar. It took decades for the public to accept same-sex marriage and pot. The rising generation is responsible for much of the difference in attitude.

House Democrats hope to vote on impeachment by the end of 2019. Absent some technological breakthrough, there is not enough time for a pro-conviction GOP youth movement to be born, come of age, and displace Senate Republicans.

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The Democratic strategy, Samuelson writes, “is premised on the hope that further shocking revelations will alter the political climate. Trump’s image will be so shattered that Republican senators will feel free to join the revolt against him.” This assumes the aim of the Democratic strategy is Trump’s removal, and not simply weakening him ahead of reelection while putting at-risk Republican senators like Susan Collins and Cory Gardner in difficult positions.

The record is clear that not much Donald Trump does shocks conservative Republicans. They are prepared to tolerate a high degree of instability and dysfunction simply to prevent the Democratic left from gaining power. They would have to reject this bargain rapidly, wildly, stunningly, and decisively for the Senate to remove the president from office. As Lincoln said: Public sentiment is everything.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/there-is-no-basis-for-barr-to-recuse-himself-over-ukraine/

“Senator Feinstein’s claim, on behalf of Judiciary Committee Democrats, that Attorney General Barr should recuse himself is nonsense, both factually and legally. He should ignore it.”

Even if he did what the Democrats claim (which he didn’t), it would contain nothing to justify recusal.

Here’s a question: If Dianne Feinstein didn’t recuse herself from the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, why should anyone ever be recused from anything?

Senator Feinstein is in the news, making the characteristically hyperpartisan and frivolous claim (on Twitter) that Attorney General Bill Barr should

recuse himself from matters related to Ukraine because of concerns about his role in President Trump’s efforts to damage a political opponent and undermine the Russia investigation.

Feinstein says she is speaking for Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, all of whom have signed a letter to the AG.

There is no basis for Barr to recuse himself.

First, before we ever get to the law, the Democrats’ claim is factually vacant. The AG has no role in President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Barr did not ask the president to intercede with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for the purpose of seeking assistance with the ongoing Durham probe of the Russia investigation. Despite the president’s reference to Barr in the July 25 Zelensky phone call, Barr did not communicate with Trump about Ukraine before the call. Barr did not follow up with the Ukrainians, nor did he discuss Ukraine with the president or the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Being mentioned on a phone call is not a basis for recusal.

https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/the-future-of-the-federal-judiciary

To understand better the future of the federal judiciary—and why it matters—we should first look to the past. Let’s consider where our judiciary began and how it has gotten to where it is today.

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I begin where any judge should: with the text, of course. Article III of the United States Constitution established the federal courts and vested in them “the judicial Power of the United States.”[1] But, in contrast to the detail it provides for the powers vested in the other branches, the Constitution’s description of the judicial power effectively stops there. The Constitution identifies those categories of “Cases” and “Controversies” that will be subject to the judicial power of the United States.[2] But it says little about what such power is or how it ought to be exercised.

The concept was not novel to the framers of the Constitution, however. Rather, the general nature of the “judicial power” should have been well known to the founding generation from centuries of experience in England. This included, in the words of Professor Philip Hamburger, the central duty of English judges to “decide [cases] in accord with the law of the land.”[3] That the “judicial Power” was left largely undefined in the new Constitution may simply reflect the fact that its general meaning was already understood.[4]

The traditional conception of the judicial power embodied two related ideals. First, because judges would be deciding cases according to the law, they would not be deciding cases according to their personal values. The law alone was to supply the basis for decision. Legal historians have debated the degree to which this was true in England, disagreeing, for example, over the extent to which English judges would stray beyond the text of a law in the service of more ambiguous principles like equity.[5] But in Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton defended the proposed Constitution on the very ground that an independent judiciary would help ensure that “nothing would be consulted [in the courts] but the constitution and the laws.”[6]

This critical facet of the judiciary is derived from the unique structure of our government.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=e18d8e30b7

On October 6, I put up two posts calling the Bidens, Joe and Hunter, “stone cold crooked.” The basis for the label was a series of factual assertions listed in the first of the posts, none of which had received any meaningful refutation in any source I could find. The short version is that it was essentially conceded by all that Hunter Biden had taken a position as director of a large Ukrainian gas company (Burisma) within days of his dad Vice President Joe getting appointed “point man” for U.S. diplomacy in that country; that Hunter did not have relevant business experience, and yet was paid $50,000 per month for the gig; that Joe had bragged (on a widely available video) of then using the leverage of threatening to withhold $1 billion of U.S. aid to get a prosecutor fired; and that the fired prosecutor had stated publicly that he was investigating Burisma. These are facts from which most reasonable people would easily conclude that something here stinks to high heaven. To reach that conclusion, the readily available facts are plenty of “evidence”; there is no need for any actual individual to step forward and admit that “yes, we paid Hunter to buy influence with his dad.” Of course that’s why they paid Hunter that kind of money.

Since the October 6 posts, facts keep coming out that, as far as I can see, only make the Bidens’ position more and more indefensible. Simultaneously, organs of the progressive press keep doubling down on the narrative that there is “no evidence” of wrongdoing of the Bidens in Ukraine, and any assertion to the contrary is a “conspiracy theory.”

Suppose that you are one of those hard-to-sway skeptics who think that there is not yet enough evidence to demonstrate the crookedness of the Bidens. The funny thing is that there is a place you could go to really nail this down: Ukraine! Shouldn’t somebody be doing that?

Let me list some facts that have at least come to my attention since those prior posts:

It looks like the amounts paid by Burisma to Hunter Biden and his business colleague Devon Archer were not $50,000 per month each, but rather $83,333 per month each. Reuters has that figure in an October 18 piece here, confirming Peter Schweizer’s assertion in this Fox News piece from September. $83,333 per month would come to a nice round $1 million per year.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/27/our-bankrupt-nomenklatura/

Take all the signature brand names that the Baby Boomers inherited from prior generations—Harvard, Yale, the New York Times, NPR, CNN, the Oscars, the NFL, the NBA, the FBI, the CIA, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, and a host of others. And then ask whether they enhanced our diminished such inheritances?

Donald Trump is now in the midst of another coup frenzy that has the Left accusing him of being crazy. But he already took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test. It was a simple cognitive exam and he aced it, as would most people. The Left, remember, had called in a Yale psychiatrist to testify that Trump was demented, during the lulls between the first impeachment, the serial “Russian collusion” hoaxes, the emoluments clause psychodrama and Robert Mueller’s “walls-are-closing-in,” “turning-point,” and “bombshell” investigation.

Perhaps the wrong public figures took the test.

At times, former Vice President Joe Biden is unaware of which town, indeed which state, he is in. He slurs his words often. Biden strings together unconnected thoughts that result in utter incoherence—not alleviated by his near shouting emphatics or fits of pique at reporters.

Sometimes, Biden forgets names, and referents, and appears befuddled generally. His biography is mythical. He cannot address Ukraine and the role of his son, Hunter Biden, because, after all, what would a truthful person say? That the vice president of the United States allowed his wastrel son to become a multimillionaire by leveraging his father’s office with foreign corrupt governments? And was Biden’s moral lapse atypical, or rather reflective of prior ethical laxities that destroyed his two earlier presidential bids when he variously lied about his bio, plagiarized, and used a variety of racially insensitive remarks of the sort that would have characterized most others as racists.

Shouldn’t Hillary Clinton also take the MoCa Test? At times she seems completely delusional—or is she a bit unhinged?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/framing-flynn-lloyd-billingsley/

“Lawyers for former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn reportedly filed a motion on Thursday in which they allege that the Department of Justice manipulated a document to frame their client and is withholding exculpatory evidence,” reports Joel Pollack at Breitbart.

Flynn’s legal team, headed by Sidney Powell, alleges that Peter Strzok’s FBI partner Lisa Page substantially altered the notes of Flynn’s interview. The Flynn team also flags former FBI general counsel James Baker as the source of leaks to David Ignatius of the Washington Post. The filing also alleges that former National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the reporter to “take the kill shot on Flynn.” Clapper’s team denied it, but the kill shot was hardly the only concern.

Attorney General William Barr tasked U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate those 2016-17 events, and last week it emerged that Durham’s probe is now a full-blown criminal inquiry. As Fox News reports this means “Durham can subpoena witnesses, file charges, and impanel fact-finding grand juries.” Some of the potential witnesses boast a high profile.

Former CIA boss John Brennan, who voted for the Stalinist Gus Hall in 1976, is reportedly one of those Durham would like to interview. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who thought that ISIS was a secular organization, is another. This pair, along with others in the “intelligence community,” are reportedly seeking counsel.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/balanced_trade_advocate_raymond_richman_dies_at_age_101.html

EE THE VOLUMES WRITTEN BY THIS DISTINGUISHED MAN- SOME WITH HIS SON AND GRANDSON:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=HOWARD+RICHMAN&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

One of the first advocates of balanced trade, Dr. Raymond L. Richman, died on October 23 at age 101. A commentary that he wrote in 2003 (The Great Trade Debate) recommended the very policy that President Trump is carrying out today — the negotiation of bilateral agreements that balance trade.  He concluded that commentary:

Is there any way to balance our trade? Let’s take a clue from the fact that barter is always beneficial to both parties. Instead of “Free Trade” as the slogan, how about the slogan, “Free and Balanced Trade”? We could announce to countries with whom we have large chronic deficits that their exports to us in the future will be limited to, say, 110 percent of what we bought from them last year. If you want to trade with us, you’ll have to buy from us. Let’s barter!

I’m sure the countries given this ultimatum will protest to the World Trade Organization (WTO) but there is precedent for bilateral agreements. We have a bilateral agreement with Japan now that limits the number of autos it can export to us.

The rules of international trade discriminate against the U.S. but the discrimination is not the cause of the deficit. The average level of U.S. tariffs is lower than that of any other large industrial nation. We have some barriers in the form of quotas but they affect a small proportion of our trade. The definition of dumping under WTO rules allows countries to rebate value-added taxes. Since we have no value-added tax and income taxes cannot be rebated, goods from many countries sell for less in the U.S. than in the countries in which they are produced. We could replace the corporate income tax with a value-added tax and subsidize exports by rebating the tax. Or we could change the rules to deny countries the right to rebate the value-added tax.

While such actions would do some good, the principal cause of chronic trade deficits was and continues to be capital flows from abroad. The U.S. went from being the world’s leading creditor nation in 1970 to become the world’s biggest debtor.

The situation calls for dramatic action. Stop the bleeding! Blue-collar workers have been bearing the burden of so-called “free trade” long enough. Let’s have balanced trade.

He was a well-respected economist who received a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1957 with Milton Friedman his dissertation advisor. Then he worked as a consultant for the OEEC, the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Asian Development Bank. When he retired from the University of Pittsburgh in 1982, he became Professor Emeritus of Public and International Affairs.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/the-presidents-best-ukraine-defense-not-an-impeachable-offense/

Stop insisting there was no quid pro quo and cut to the chase.

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-column series this weekend, dealing with recent developments in the impeachment inquiry House Democrats are conducting in connection with President Trump’s dealings with the government of Ukraine.

Yesterday, in part one of this two-part series, I reiterated my argument that it has been a strategic error for President Trump and his supporters to claim that there was no quid pro quo in his administration’s dealings with the government of Ukraine. That is not just because quid pro quo terms are a staple of negotiations between sovereigns; nor is it just because the evidence is strong that President Trump did pressure Ukraine by seeking investigative assistance in exchange for what Ukraine’s president sought — the release of $400 million in foreign aid and an Oval Office visit.

The “no quid pro quo” claim is misguided because it is largely irrelevant to an impeachment inquiry. As explained in part one, we are not here talking about a criminal court prosecution in which a prosecutor must prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. If a majority of the Democratic-controlled House was satisfied (or at least said they were satisfied) that an egregious abuse of power occurred, they could vote an article of impeachment even if a corrupt quid pro quo could not be proved to criminal-law specifications.

More important, the president’s camp should stick with and relentlessly argue his best point: The president’s actions in conducting Ukrainian relations do not establish an impeachable offense under the circumstances. Let’s consider the relevant issues.

1/ No harm, no foul. The president’s hold on defense aid was temporary, and Ukraine got all of it. The Zelensky government did not have to commence or assist any investigations to get it. The delay caused no material harm.