RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/house-impeachment-inquiry-resolution-observations/

Some observations

On Tuesday, House Democrats published the resolution that, once passed, will approve and govern the impeachment inquiry on the question whether President Trump should be impeached. The vote is likely to take place on Thursday.

Some observations about the eight-page resolution.

1) The resolution is flawed, for reasons we’ll get to (the flaws could be major or minor, depending on how the resolution is implemented). By any measure, though, it is a significant improvement over the status quo ante. Once it’s passed, the House as an institution will have endorsed the impeachment inquiry. As we have pointed out, the Constitution commits the impeachment power to the House, not to the Speaker or the majority party in the House. The House acts as institution only by voting. It will finally have done so once this resolution is approved. The president and Republicans will no longer have a valid argument that the inquiry is constitutionally infirm. That has been the White House’s main justification for refusing to cooperate. (This refusal is overstated since a number of executive officials have submitted to closed-door interviews and otherwise participated. This has largely been done, though, despite the discouragement of the White House, which has otherwise declined to cooperate.)

2) Not surprisingly, Democrats are posturing that the passage of the resolution means the president must produce any information directed by the House. This is an overstatement. What the resolution means is that the White House’s position of blanket, indiscriminate non-cooperation will no longer be justifiable. Nevertheless, the president maintains all the legal privileges he enjoyed — including executive privilege and attorney-client privilege — regardless of whether there was a resolution.

3) It is not clear how extensive executive privilege is. In United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court recognized that the president’s communications with key advisers in carrying out his official duties were presumptively privileged; but it further held that the privilege was not absolute and would have to give way to the needs of a criminal investigation — particularly if the evidence at issue was critical and there was no alternative source for obtaining it. A House impeachment inquiry is not a criminal investigation. It is, however, a core constitutional function, and I believe the courts would find that its needs for information are at least as compelling as those of a criminal investigation.

swtotd.blogspot.com

“Have we lost our minds?” Andrew Cuomo (1957-)Governor, New York

While Governor Cuomo’s exclamation was in response to the increasing number of assaults by the mentally deranged in New York City, it is one that has applicability across our political landscape, not just for the unhinged way Leftist politicians treat truants and criminals in our cities, but in most all ways political. Have we all gone bonkers? I wince at President Trump’s coarseness and grimace as he Tweets as fast as a Shetland Pony sheds its winter coat. Then I listen to anti-Trumpers and their lemming-like hatred that betrays an emotional response rather than a reasoned reaction. Seen as a threat to the comfortably established elite, the majority of Democrats wanted to impeach Mr. Trump on November 9, 2016. And I wonder: What ever happened to e Pluribus Unum?

Phrases and words: Identity politics; victimization; equality; wokeness. Identity politics is segregation by a different and more politically correct name. Real victims are ignored, while perpetrators are mollycoddled as deserving of special care for having been “victims” of society governed by old, white men. Equality has morphed into homogenization, deflating the individual to an inflated collective. The cream in our public schools can no longer find its way to the top. Wokeness is a Tesla-like vehicle for social justice warriors.

Politicians, abetted by a media that has foregone any semblance of investigative independence, to become a propaganda arm of the Party they prefer. They have given new meanings to those phrases and words mentioned above. The consequence has been a shock to the Judeo-Christian culture in which most of us were raised, when Albert Einstein once wrote, and we all believed, that “only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”

Here we are now, three years after the fact, yet a refusal to accept the outcome of the 2016 election persists. Civil discourse is a thing of the past. We have intelligence agencies that colluded against a Presidential candidate. Public schools, especially those in inner cities who keep a watchful (and jaundiced) eye on equality, teach to the lowest common denominator, which means that those who have been identified as “gifted and talented” cannot be separated, so taught differently and thus given a chance to disengage from the claws of mediocrity that entrap them. In many of these same cities, the homeless – some mentally sick, others addicted to drugs and/or alcohol and a few simply down on their luck – ply our parks and streets. Instead of offering the dignity of a job and asking proper behavior in return for food and shelter, we provide them free needles and let them soil streets, sidewalks and parks. In our desire to explain away criminal acts and civil misbehavior as a consequence of victimization, we ignore the plight of real victims. Men and women are tried in the press, without benefit of due process. The “broken windows” policy of policing, first described in 1982 by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling and based on the theory that if man lives in a neighborhood where property and people are respected crime rates will decline. It worked in New York City in the ‘90s and early 2000s but has been abandoned because of accusations that minorities were unfairly targeted. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss: “How did we get so stupid so soon?”

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/is-california-becoming-premodern/

More than 2 million Californians were recently left without power after the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric — which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year — preemptively shut down transmission lines in fear that they might spark fires during periods of high autumn winds.

Consumers blame the state for not cleaning up dead trees and brush, along with the utility companies for not updating their ossified equipment. The power companies in turn fault the state for so over-regulating utilities that they had no resources to modernize their grids.

Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents and infectious diseases. Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals.

Taxpayers in California, whose basket of sales, gasoline and income taxes is the highest in the nation, quietly seethe while immobile on antiquated freeways that are crowded, dangerous and under nonstop makeshift repair.

Gas prices of $4 to $5 a gallon — the result of high taxes, hyper-regulation and green mandates — add insult to the injury of stalled commuters. Gas tax increases ostensibly intended to fund freeway expansion and repair continue to be diverted to the state’s failing high-speed rail project.

https://trendingpolitics.com/breaking-identity-of-ukraine-whistleblower-has-been-

On Wednesday afternoon, the identity of the infamous whistleblower who is responsible for the beginning of the impeachment inquiry against President Trump was revealed to be registered Democrat Eric Ciaramella who has close ties to former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and corrupt former CIA Chief John Brennan.

Not only does Ciaramella have an extreme political bias against President Trump but he also helped start the Russian collusion investigation into President Trump back in 2016.

The White House “whistleblower” is Eric Ciaramella.
– Registered Democrat
– Worked for Obama
– Worked with Joe Biden
– Worked for CIA Director John Brennan
– Vocal critic of Trump
– Helped initiate the Russia “collusion” investigation hoax

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/former-time-editor-wants-hate-speech-laws-thinks-trump-might-violate-them-and-misses-the-irony/

It’s ironic, but it’s not new.

A former Time editor claimed that the United States needs a law banning hate speech, and that President Donald Trump “might be in violation of it” if there were one — because, apparently, he doesn’t notice the irony of holding both of these views at once.

In a Tuesday tweet promoting his Washington Post piece, titled “Why America needs a hate speech law,” Richard Stengel stated:

Richard StengelVerified account @stengel

My @WashingtonPost piece on why the very broadness of the First Amendment suggests we should have a hate speech law. And if we did, why the President might be in violation of it.

In the piece, Stengel writes that “many nations have passed laws to curb the incitement of racial and religious hatred” in the wake of World War II:

These laws started out as protections against the kinds of anti-Semitic bigotry that gave rise to the Holocaust. We call them hate speech laws, but there’s no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is. In general, hate speech is speech that attacks and insults people on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin and sexual orientation.

“I’m all for protecting ‘thought that we hate,’ but not speech that incites hate,” he continues. “It undermines the very values of a fair marketplace of ideas that the First Amendment is designed to protect.”

It’s interesting how Stengel actually does acknowledge the fact that “there’s no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is,” and yet he still wants laws banning it. This makes absolutely no sense. After all, when he calls for laws to ban “hate speech,” he is, inherently, giving the government the power to decide what would and would not qualify — the exact same government that is led by Donald Trump, and that is full of people who support him.

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

Before getting off my current Bidens kick, I want to take just a one more moment to consider Joe Biden’s most recent response when he was asked by a radio interviewer in New Hampshire whether he had discussed with his son Hunter the son’s service on the board of Ukrainian gas producer Burisma. The interview aired on October 10 on a program called New Hampshire Today, with interviewer Jack Heath. Go here to listen to the full interview; or there is a summary here at the Washington Examiner.

Asked by Heath whether he had discussed the service on the Burisma board with Hunter, Joe initially uttered his previous oft-repeated talking point on the subject, namely that he “never” discusses the business endeavors of his family members because he wouldn’t want to make political or policy decisions that appear nepotistic. But then Joe remembered the one time that the subject came up:

“At one point that it came out that [Hunter] was on the board [of Burisma]. I said, ‘I sure hope to hell you know what you’re doing.’ Period. I said that.”

While I am letting that sink in with you, let me lay out again some of the relevant background.

Ukraine split off from Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Burisma was founded by Mykola Zlochevsky in 2002, and began producing gas in Ukraine in 2006. Zlochevsky was close to at least several of the Ukrainian Presidents between 2002 and 2014, when he fled Ukraine for Russia along with his then-patron Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

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

Under pressure to make their Soviet-style impeachment to overturn the results of the 2016 election “fairer,” Trump-maddened Democrats have put on an “impeachment resolution” public relations show in a bid to legitimize their secret basement hearings.

According to CNN (transcript of resolution here): 

The resolution provides the procedural details for how the House will move its impeachment inquiry into its next phase, and it also represents the first time that the full chamber will take a vote related to impeaching the President. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has argued that the vote is not being taken to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry, as Republicans have demanded, but will help “to eliminate any doubt as to whether the Trump administration may withhold documents, prevent witness testimony, disregard duly authorized subpoenas, or continue obstructing the House of Representatives.”

Just one problem: They made it even less fair.

Here’s how bad it is:

The resolution now involves shutting some of the sharpest Republicans out of the hearings, such as Rep. Jim Jordan who’s on the House Oversight Committee as well as all the Republicans (and Democrats) on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  We all know that they don’t like Jordan, a kick-ass interrogator, in the impeachment room asking uncomfortable questions of their handpicked Deep-State witnesses and blowing apart their “narratives.”  It’s also worth noting that shutting out the Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees keeps a lot of vulnerable Democrats in swing districts (or being primaried by the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “Justice” Democrats, who are committed to ousting moderate Democrats in blue districts and replacing them with extremists), uninvolved in the kangaroo-court spectacle.  House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Eliot Engels is one of these, so the political convenience is obvious.  

https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/news-opinion/pathologist-says-jeffrey-epsteins-autopsy-more-consistent-with-homicide-than-suicide

A forensic pathologist has claimed evidence from Jeffrey Epstein’s autopsy suggests the disgraced financier may have died by homicide, not suicide, the New York Times reported.

Dr. Michael Baden, the private pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother, announced his findings on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning, saying that Epstein’s autopsy revealed evidence of a number of injuries that “are extremely unusual in suicidal hangings and could occur much more commonly in homicidal strangulation.”

Baden pointed to “three fractures in the hyoid bone, the thyroid cartilage,” which he said were “very unusual for suicide and more indicative of strangulation — homicidal strangulation.”

Baden’s findings dispute the official cause of death declared by New York chief medical examiner, Dr. Barbara Sampson, who ruled Epstein’s August death a suicide.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/markets/us-economy-holds-up-with-19-25-growth-on-consumer-strength/ar-AAJzqQX

A resilient American consumer helped the U.S. economy expand more than forecast in the third quarter, assuaging concerns for now of a more pervasive slowdown tied to weakening business investment and faltering export markets.

Gross domestic product increased at a 1.9% annualized rate, according to Commerce Department data Wednesday that topped forecasts in a Bloomberg survey that called for 1.6% growth. Still, that’s down from 2% in the second quarter and is the lowest since the end of 2018.The gain mainly reflected strength in consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy, which increased at a 2.9% rate and exceeded projections for a 2.6% rise. For businesses, nonresidential fixed investment fell the most since late 2015.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/30/democrats-retreat-from-subpoenas-to-schedule-impeachment-vote/

So Democrats are now abandoning any effort to seek court enforcement of past subpoenas issued under Rep. Adam Schiff’s Ukraine charade?

Almost six weeks into the Ukraine impeachment farce, Democrats find themselves maneuvering into a “strategic repositioning” (translation: “retreat”). One of the “main talking points to rebut impeachment,” as the Washington Post characterized it, is that the “House Democrats’ inquiry isn’t legitimate because the members didn’t vote to start one.” A “talking point” is what corporate media calls an argument for which it has no ready response.

The Post article cited a Democrat House aide who said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has no intention of taking a vote, no matter what demands President Trump makes. This aide called the “full vote” argument “pathetic” and “bogus.”

Pelosi doesn’t need a full house vote, Ramsey Touchberry insisted in in Newsweek. Legal experts assured Touchberry, “President Trump is wrong in saying that it is not a legitimate impeachment inquiry without a floor vote.”

The New York Times “fact checked” the claim that past presidential impeachment inquiries have always started with a House vote, writing, “This is misleading. Though the full chamber voted to start impeachment inquiries against Presidents Bill Clinton and Richard M. Nixon, nothing in the Constitution or House rules requires it.” “Misleading” is code for “true but we don’t want it to be.”