RUTHFULLY YOURS

Conference of Jewish Affairs 

Rabbi Aryeh Spero released the following statement today:

“Today President Trump earned the distinction of being the Religious Freedom President.  In front of the United Nations, he spoke in soaring rhetoric that was profound, bold, and forthright.  He proclaimed the foundational American principle that our religious freedom is a right from God Himself. 

“It was obvious that the President’s remarks were not simply perfunctory, rather deeply felt and deeply important to him personally.  We at the Conference of Jewish Affairs were grateful for him once again spotlighting the scourge of anti-Semitism, something that he has chosen to speak about more than any other president. 

“His humanity shone forth as he spoke about the many prisoners of conscience and those oppressed by terrorists as well as Christians persecuted around the world simply for believing in their heart and, he was generous to those who have been victims of religious persecution and to those who are working to rescue people of faith from the clutches of terrorism.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gop-primary-challenger-bill-weld-accuses-trump-of-treason-over-ukraine-call/

Republican presidential primary challenger Bill Weld said Monday that President Trump committed treason by urging the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden for corruption.

“Obviously canceling primaries undermines Democratic institutions and Democratic elections. But thats far from the deepest crime that the president has committed here,” Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.

“He’s now acknowledged that in a single phone call, right after he suspended 250 million dollars of military aid to Ukraine, he called up the president of Ukraine and pressed him eight times to investigate Joe Biden, who the president thinks is going to be running against him,” Weld continued. “Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a U.S. election. It couldn’t be clearer, and that’s not just undermining democratic institutions. That is treason. It’s treason and pure and simple and the penalty for treason under the U.S. code is death.”

President Trump urged Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter, on eight separate occasions during a July phone call, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Trump reportedly asked Zelensky to probe whether Biden used his influence as vice president to quash an investigation into a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, which had recently hired Biden’s son, Hunter, to serve on its board of directors.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/nancy-pelosis-constitution/90842/

Go ahead, make our day. That’s our reaction to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call for a new law to provide for the indictment of a sitting president. The California Democrat endorses the idea, telling NPR that a president “should be indicted, if he’s committed a wrongdoing — any president.” Adds she: “There is nothing anyplace that says the president should not be indicted.”

Except in the Constitution, where the bar against indicting a sitting president is hiding in plain sight. It lurks in the logic of separated powers. And also in the stinginess with which the Constitution parcels out the power — and obligation — to take care that our laws be faithfully executed. That power is granted to the President alone — and his alone is the obligation.

It certainly doesn’t go to the Congress. Not only does the Constitution fail to grant to Congress the power to take care that our laws are faithfully executed. It also pointedly — with the prohibition on bills of attainder — forbids the Congress condemning individuals. The fact is that the Founders just didn’t trust the Congress to faithfully execute the laws it passed.

Nor is the power to execute faithfully our laws granted to the courts, whose pointedly particular powers are parsimoniously parcelled out in the parchment. The judicial power of the United States, the Supreme Court has marked, is limited to only actual cases and controversies. The courts can’t initiate cases; that is left to prosecutors or civil litigants. The courts can but decide them.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/22/the-madcap-adventures-of-buckaroo-banzai-biden/

Sometime-Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden was at it again, voicing his brand of tough-guy boasts that he can “beat Trump like a drum.”

A 1980s sci-fi cult film about a weirdo, Buckaroo Banzai, who travels through time dimensions in many manifestations battling evil and saving good guys reminds us of the latest incarnation of Joe Biden.

Biden sees himself as something similar, as Americans are reacquainting themselves with the three-time presidential candidate, who for years has been regaling audiences as the swashbuckling hero of an amazing repertoire of his own larger than life stories.

Sometimes the bard Buckaroo Biden entertains crowds as the self-sacrificing tribal white knight who physically stood down punks who threatened his family.

Sometimes Biden becomes Captain America Biden who stands up to his country’s enemy bullies abroad who would corrupt the international order.

And sometimes Biden can’t help but become the hero even in ceremonial duties where he is supposed to be honoring someone else.

The common denominator is that we elected a senator, then a vice president, and he hopes, soon a president—and got a Homeric hero in the bargain.

Sharia-sanctioned Detroit Bohra Muslim FGM barbarity gets (at least temporary) validation: US. 6th Circ Ct of Appeals denies a motion to defend the constitutionality of FGM ban, & grants defendant’s request to dismiss the case.

FROM 2017

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2017/09/detroit-bohra-muslim-md-female-genital-mutilators-were-motivated-by-their-most-authoritative-islamic-law-text/

“FGM as performed by the Bohra Muslim MDs of metropolitan Detroit comports with the Islamic law sanction of FGM worldwide—a practice dominated by Muslim societies, and even Muslim minorities within multi-religious societies, which global UNICEF data, and now data from our own U.S. Centers for Disease Control demonstrate, irrefragably. It is chilling to witness American Muslim MDs—clearly motivated by authoritative, doctrinal Islam—persist in this ugly practice despite U.S. legal prohibition, and the moral depravity of the procedure, vis-à-vis their own professional code of ethics.”

Federal prosecutors have indicted six Detroit area members of the Ismaili Shiite Muslim minority Bohra community—including two MDs—for subjecting young girls to female genital mutilation (FGM) procedures. The six are charged with 9 counts of conspiring, committing, and concealing acts of FGM, which is illegal in the U.S. (per 18 U.S. Code § 116). Preliminary physical findings made public from genital examinations of two of the child victims revealed,

[#1] “labia minora altered, or removed; clitoral hood abnormal in appearance; scar tissue and small lacerations”

[#2] “clitoral hood has a small incision; small tear to labia minora”

amgreatness.com/2019/09/21/another-week-another-pseudo-scandal/

Spin the magic wheel: click, click, click, click, click—click—click: Ukraine! We’re all going to Ukraine!

Another week, another pseudo-scandal fomented by anonymous anti-Trump actors in the “intelligence community” and fanned into attention-grabbing headlines by an impatient, irresponsible press.

Can anyone keep them all straight? They rise like noxious bubbles from the cauldron of deep-state anti-Trump sentiment, only to pass away almost immediately, carried off by their own insubstantiality and the contrasting bright-light series of real achievements on the part of the Trump Administration.

Just this last week, we saw the New York chapter of the left-over Left make a last-ditch effort to smear Justice Brett Kavanaugh by fabricating yet another spurious complaint that an 18-year-old Kavanaugh had been over-served and acted rudely to a fellow female student at Yale. Only the student in question had no memory of the incident.

Like every other complaint against the teenaged Kavanaugh, it was a matter of “my cousin Ernie’s brother’s girlfriend heard from her college roommate that three people whose names she cannot remember told her best friend that someone who might have been Brett Kavanaugh was rumored to have exposed himself at a drunken white-privilege party at Yale 35 or maybe 36 years ago.” That was enough for the wretched New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly to take to the bank.

In fact, it was worse, for the fount of the rumor they published, without mentioning that the woman in question had no memory of the incident, wasn’t even your cousin Ernie; it was a Democratic Party activist named Max Stier. The dynamic duo did not mention the ideological coloration of their source, nor did they mention that Stier was part of Bill Clinton’s defense team when the priapic former president was endeavoring to extricate himself from l’affair Lewinsky without damaging any more cigars.

Spin the magic wheel: click, click, click, click, click—click—click: Ukraine! We’re all going to Ukraine!

Another week, another pseudo-scandal fomented by anonymous anti-Trump actors in the “intelligence community” and fanned into attention-grabbing headlines by an impatient, irresponsible press.

Can anyone keep them all straight? They rise like noxious bubbles from the cauldron of deep-state anti-Trump sentiment, only to pass away almost immediately, carried off by their own insubstantiality and the contrasting bright-light series of real achievements on the part of the Trump Administration.

Just this last week, we saw the New York chapter of the left-over Left make a last-ditch effort to smear Justice Brett Kavanaugh by fabricating yet another spurious complaint that an 18-year-old Kavanaugh had been over-served and acted rudely to a fellow female student at Yale. Only the student in question had no memory of the incident.

Like every other complaint against the teenaged Kavanaugh, it was a matter of “my cousin Ernie’s brother’s girlfriend heard from her college roommate that three people whose names she cannot remember told her best friend that someone who might have been Brett Kavanaugh was rumored to have exposed himself at a drunken white-privilege party at Yale 35 or maybe 36 years ago.” That was enough for the wretched New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly to take to the bank.

In fact, it was worse, for the fount of the rumor they published, without mentioning that the woman in question had no memory of the incident, wasn’t even your cousin Ernie; it was a Democratic Party activist named Max Stier. The dynamic duo did not mention the ideological coloration of their source, nor did they mention that Stier was part of Bill Clinton’s defense team when the priapic former president was endeavoring to extricate himself from l’affair Lewinsky without damaging any more cigars.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/trump-whistleblower-claim-congress-should-investigate/

T he Democrats’ media narrative of impeachment portrays President Trump and his administration as serial law-breakers who, true to form, obstruct all congressional investigations of wrongdoing. This then becomes the analytical framework for every new controversy. There are at least two fundamental problems with this.

First, our constitutional system is based on friction between competing branches vested with separate but closely related powers. The Framers understood that the two political branches would periodically try to usurp each other’s authorities. Congress often does this by enactments that seek to subject executive power to congressional (or judicial) supervision. Presidential pushback on such laws is not criminal obstruction; it is the Constitution in action.

Second, we’ve become so law-obsessed that we miss the forest for the trees. Often, the least important aspect of a controversy — viz., whether a law has been violated — becomes the dominant consideration. Short shrift is given to the more consequential aspects, such as whether we are being competently governed or whether power is being abused.

These problems are now playing out in the Trump controversy du jour (or should I say de l’heure?): the intelligence community whistleblower.

As this column is written on Friday afternoon, the story is still evolving, with the president tweeting as ever, and the New York Times producing a report by no fewer than eight of its top journalists, joining the seven (and counting) who are working it for the Washington Post, which broke the story.

It stems from — what else? — anonymous leaks attributed to former intelligence officials. Whether they are among the stable of such retirees now on the payroll at anti-Trump cable outlets is not known. While the media purport to be deeply concerned about Trump-administration law-breaking in classified matters, there is negligible interest in whether the intelligence officials leaking to them are flouting the law.

A Promise to Ukraine?
In any event, we learn that an unidentified “whistleblower” has filed a complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general (IGIC), relating that President Trump had recent interaction with an unidentified foreign leader during which the president made a “promise” which is not further described to us, other than that the whistleblower found it very “troubling.” The inference that President Trump is the subject of the complaint (or at least a subject) derives from the fact that intelligence officials say it involves someone who is “outside the intelligence community,” and that there are issues of “privilege” that justify non-disclosure to Congress. (The president is “outside” the intelligence community in the sense of being over it as chief executive; and, as I discussed in a column earlier this week, presidents have executive privilege, which shields communications with advisers.)

Help us stop the use-it-or-lose-it year-end spending spree.

We’re shining a white-hot spotlight on the largest extravaganza of taxpayer waste in the history of the country. It’s going on right now.

It’s the last week of the fiscal year and federal agencies are spending down their budgets so that Congress will appropriate the same or more money next year.
Last night, on the largest ABC station in the country and their affiliates, our CEO Adam Andrzejewski, alongside U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), showcased some of the wasteful spending — furniture, cars, musical instruments, toys, games, motor scooters, snowmobiles, golf carts, and of course, lobster tail and snow crab.
Senator Ernst is taking the lead in Congress. She’s armed with her legislation (SB 1238), The End of Year Fiscal Responsibility Act.

This bill would slap a cap on blow off year-end spending… and stop it!

Ernst is serious about ending this tax-payer abuse. She is scheduled to deliver a Senate floor speech on the issue, our oversight, and her legislation, on Tuesday, September 24.

Stay tuned for more updates as the story develops.

Remember: It’s your money!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-real-cure-for-inequality-11569020055

The left’s apocalyptic economic predictions for the Trump Presidency haven’t panned out. With jobs plentiful and wages rising at the fastest rate in a decade, liberals are doubling down on alarms about inequality. The inconvenient evidence is that low- and middle-income folks are reaping more economic benefits than during the Obama years.

Democrats flogged last week’s Census report that showed health coverage and Medicaid enrollment declined in 2018. But they ignored the other side of that story: Worker earnings increased by 3.4% while the poverty rate declined 0.5 percentage points to 11.8%, the lowest level since 2001. Benefit rolls are shrinking as low-income workers earn more.

According to the Census Bureau, the number of full-time, year-round workers increased by 2.3 million in 2018, and employment gains were biggest among minority female-led households. The share of workers in female-led households who worked full-time year-round increased by 4.2 percentage points among blacks and 3.6 percentage points among Hispanics.

As a result, real median earnings for female households with no spouse present jumped 7.6% last year. The poverty rate among female households declined 2.7 percentage points for blacks, four percentage points for Hispanics and 7.1 percentage points for their children. Remember this the next time Senator Kamala Harris complains that Mr. Trump’s policies are harming women and minorities.

These findings reinforce Labor Department monthly reports that have shown stronger employment and earnings gains in industries dominated by women such as health care and hospitality. The jobless rate for black women last month fell to a historic low of 4.4% and neared a nadir for Hispanic women at 4.2%.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/09/soros_takes_on_denaturalization.html

The left-leaning Open Society, lavishly funded by moneybags darling of the left, octogenarian George Soros, has just published a 194-page ‘report’ on a process I’ll wager not more than 1% of  readers are aware of: denaturalizing  questionable citizens.

Maybe that should read “citizens,” since the government is not, contrary to the notably omission-laden materials by the ACLU and the Society, pursuing legitimately naturalized persons who became so with no shadowy elements attached to their by-now geriatric citizenship sacrament.

During the past three decades, according to a document put out by the ‘always-scrupulous’ ACLU, denaturalizations were pursued an average of 11 times per year. But under the Trump Administration, this jumped in 2017 to 95 cases referred by the Department of Homeland Security. That was bumped up to some 1600 cases by the U.S. Citizenship and  Immigration Services, as of 2018.  Then comes 2019, and in its budget request, the  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indicated its intention to review the files of an additional — hold onto your MAGA hats — 700,000, for which they requested funding of an additional $200 million.

In this document, as in the panel discussion attended in mid-September with four key researcher-writers — including the Senior Managing Legal Officer of the Open Society Justice Initiative Laura Bingham — this process of re-examining questionable naturalizations, without proper documents, or with unsettled legal issues of provenance and possible prior criminality,  this effort “throws away standards, due process, fairness, and devaluing the sanctity [sanctity, mind you] of American citizenship.”