RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.org/the-radicalizing-of-eric-ciaramella/

While the lawyers representing Eric Ciaramella, the alleged “whistleblower” in the Trump impeachment fiasco, describe him as having spent his entire career in “apolitical civil servant positions,” the truth is that Eric Ciaramella has been involved in radical political behavior throughout his life — including his years at Yale.

In fact, long before he was digging up dirt with the DNC’s Alexandra Chalupa about President Trump’s mythical collusion with Russia, Ciaramella was involved in leading a protest over what he believed was the poor treatment of Bassam Frangieh, a radical professor of Arabic studies at Yale. On April 15, 2005, then first-year Yale student Ciaramella dressed in all white to lead a contingent of 10 similarly dressed first-year Yale Arabic students to the offices of the provost and the president of the university to demand that the university provide an incentive to encourage Frangieh to stay at Yale. The students were unhappy because Frangieh had decided earlier in the school year to accept a tenure-track position at the University of Delaware.

Ciaramella helped to organize a campus-wide letter-writing campaign on behalf of Frangieh, which “identified flaws in the administration’s policies regarding language instructors at Yale.” According to the Yale Daily News, Bassam Frangieh was looking for an opportunity to teach more of the classes that he would like to teach. One of the protesters said, “His specialty is Arabic language and literature, and he wanted to teach some classes on style and poetry.” A week after the protest, Yale’s administration announced that they had “upped the ante with an offer competitive enough to keep one of its star language instructors from leaving” Yale.

It is likely that Bassam Frangieh wanted to use literature to be able to shape Yale’s undergraduates’ views on what he called the “heroic Arabic poet-martyrs” battling against the unjust occupation in Palestine. In 2000, Frangieh published a chapter romanticizing terrorism in a book entitled Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Arabic Literature. Ciaramella’s favorite Yale Arabic professor praised the heroism of Abd al Rahim Mahmud, the “first Arab poet-martyr.” Mahmud, who is often used to inspire terrorism and suicide bombings among Arab youth, was described by Frangieh as “carrying his soul in the palm of his hand” as he “threw himself into the cavern of death.” Romanticizing his terrorism, Frangieh recalls Mahmud’s “premature death at age 35, fighting a battle in an attempt to keep Palestine free from foreign occupation, [which] brought dignity to the hearts of his people. Through his death he eliminated the gap between words and action … he shall remain a symbol of heroism and pride for his people.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/schiff-denies-republican-requests-testimony-key-joseph-klein/

Alexander Hamilton warned in Federalist No. 65, dealing with impeachments in the House of Representatives and trials in the Senate, that during the impeachment phase there may often be “animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” He hoped the Senate would be able to determine guilt or innocence and serve impartially “between an INDIVIDUAL accused, and the REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE, HIS ACCUSERS.” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, pressing hard for the House to formally become President Trump’s “accusers” and hand over articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial, is displaying the worst traits that Alexander Hamilton described.

The latest example is Schiff’s refusal to let the American people hear from the whistleblower, whose complaint containing a secondhand account of President Trump’s July 25, 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave rise to the impeachment inquiry against President Trump in the first place. The whistleblower’s testimony is “redundant and unnecessary,” Schiff said in a letter to Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes rejecting House Republicans’ request for the whistleblower to testify during the public phase of the impeachment inquiry hearings. Schiff claimed that the impeachment inquiry already “has gathered an ever-growing body of evidence — from witnesses and documents, including the president’s own words in his July 25 call record — that not only confirms but far exceeds the initial information in the whistleblower’s complaint.”

As usual, Schiff is lying to rationalize the extreme one-sided way he is conducting his sham hearings. Originally, Schiff himself had said the whistleblower would appear before Congress “very soon,” but changed his mind after reports surfaced of the whistleblower’s contacts with members of Schiff’s staff before filing the complaint. The whistleblower’s testimony as to the identity of his or her sources is highly relevant to ensuring a fair proceeding and making a complete record for the Senate to consider as the trier of fact. So are the whistleblower’s biases and motives for coming forward and filing a complaint after having first contacted members of Schiff’s staff. Who did the whistleblower talk to, what did they say to the whistleblower that became the basis for the whistleblower’s complaint, and where did the whistleblower’s sources tell the whistleblower they got their information about the July 25th call?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/will-health-care-federalism-ever-have-a-chance/

A Democrat proposes a mirror image of conservative health-care thinking.

R epresentative Ro Khanna (D-CALIFORNIA DISTRICT 17) just introduced a bill whose premise conveys a sense of déjà vu. It would allow states to take the health-care money they already receive from numerous federal programs and use it to provide health care in the way they think best, rather than the way Washington prescribes.

It’s funny, because Khanna is a Democrat who openly admits he has no chance of passing his bill under a Republican president, and the last time we encountered this notion, it was in a Republican bill with zero Democratic support. Both sides want to give freedom to the states, but they can’t seem to agree on how.

Khanna’s bill is a pretty clean illustration of “federalism for me, but not for thee.” The bill offers states access to an amazing amount of federal funding, including the money that currently flows into their borders via Obamacare, Medicaid, and even Medicare. The government would waive a lot of regulations for these states, too.

But in order to get that leeway, states would have to pursue a very specific, very lefty goal: a single-payer program that provides comprehensive coverage to 95 percent of the population within five years and the rest of the population soon after that. The bill’s drafters seem blissfully unaware that red states might want more freedom to experiment, too — and that there might be Republican votes to be had granting them some.

For all their many flaws, Republicans weren’t so selfish when they floated their own most recent attempt at federalism, the Graham-Cassidy proposal that went down in flames about two years ago. A major feature of this plan was that it replaced Obamacare’s funding with block grants to states that they could use to meet their own health-care needs — even if that meant single-payer.

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

Is it an impeachable offense?

That is the question of the hour. On “Fox News Sunday,” Chris Wallace pressed it on Republican Congressman Will Hurd of Texas. It is a question every Republican supporter of President Trump should be prepared to answer. Democrats, by contrast, determined that the president was impeachable before he ever darkened the Oval Office door; it’s not worth asking them since their answer preexisted any real or imagined occasion for posing the question.

It is, of course, the question that must be asked. That does not make it a fair question. It is unfair because it assumes a fact that is not in evidence, namely: that we have a working definition of an impeachable offense on which there is agreement – or at least something close to consensus. We don’t.

In fact, even that explanation of the problem is misleading. To have a “working definition” in this context implies that we are dealing with a legal reality – as if the question were, Is it a contract?  Or, Is it a homicide? A contract or a homicide is a legal designation with a settled definition applicable in all circumstances.

President Donald Trump kicked off New York City’s Veterans Day Tribute on Monday by saying the nation’s veterans “risked everything for us. Now it is our duty to serve and protect them every single day of our lives.”

Trump spoke at the opening of the 100th annual parade organized by the United War Veterans Council in Madison Square Park. He is the first sitting president to accept the group’s invitation to speak at the event.

As Trump spoke, more than 100 protesters gathered and could be heard with whistles and booing. Some chanted “lock him up” and “shame, shame, shame.”

Trump told the crowd that the nation’s veterans often came face to face with evil and did not back down.

“You returned from war and you never forgot your friends who didn’t return,” Trump said. “But your greatest tribute of all is the way you lived your lives in the years since.”

Trump also used the event to tout the strength of the U.S. military and the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, saying “al-Baghdadi is dead. His second in charge is dead. We have our eyes on number 3.”

Trump has been a longtime supporter of the parade. The New York Times reported that during the 1990s he pledged $200,000 and offered to raise money from friends in exchange for being named the parade’s grand marshal.

Trump is a lifelong New Yorker but recently changed his official residence to Florida , complaining about his treatment by the heavily Democratic city’s elected officials.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nonwitnesses-for-impeachment-11573417743?cx_testId=30&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=0#cxrecs_s

House Democrats open the public phase of their impeachment hearings this week, but the process isn’t gaining credibility with their decision to limit witnesses.

On Saturday Republicans offered their list of preferred witnesses to Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, who was given veto power in a partisan resolution vote last month. The GOP list includes the still-unidentified whistleblower; Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden ; Nellie Ohr, who worked for opposition research outfit Fusion GPS; and Trump Administration officials who dealt with Ukraine on foreign aid.

Mr. Schiff said he’d consider the list though he all but ruled out calling anyone who might shed light on corruption in Ukraine or Ukraine’s involvement in the 2016 election. Yet it’s impossible to understand Mr. Trump’s concern about Joe and Hunter Biden and corruption in Ukraine without that context.

Meanwhile, Democrats seem to have given up their desire to interview former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton and his former deputy Charles Kupperman. Democrats subpoenaed Mr. Kupperman to much media fanfare last month but then abandoned the subpoena last week, and they said they wouldn’t call Mr. Bolton though the lawyer for both men says they’d gladly testify.

The White House has barred both from testifying on grounds of national-security and presidential-adviser immunity, which Democrats claim is illegitimate. But suddenly Democrats don’t want to fight in court to prove their case, perhaps because they think they might lose but also because they want to rush to an impeachment vote within weeks. As Charles Cooper, the lawyer for Messrs. Kupperman and Bolton, put it in a Nov. 8 letter to the House general counsel: “If the House chooses not to pursue through subpoena the testimony of Dr. Kupperman and Ambassador Bolton, let the record be clear: that is the House’s decision.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cold-welcome-for-veterans-on-campus-11573411754

‘But don’t you ever feel like a sucker for serving?”

A fellow military veteran asked me this question a couple of years ago, when I was a senior at Yale. Like me, he had recently completed his service and was studying at a top university.

He said he was mystified, observing that the predominantly working- and middle-class people in the military swear an oath to defend with their lives the U.S. Constitution, including the First and Second amendments. Meanwhile, affluent college students regularly trash the First and seek to dismantle the Second. Are veterans being duped, he questioned, into believing they are upholding American values while the richest kids in the world—the ones being groomed for success and power—try to undermine them?

He’s not the only one who feels that way. Many veterans I know who enter college are bewildered by what they see: students from the top income decile expressing derision for the values that service members signed up to defend. Perhaps they could be forgiven for feeling like suckers.

Seeing our peers question the Constitution isn’t the only jarring experience for veterans. For many, the treatment of race on campus is a major culture shock. The military is perhaps the most meritocratic institution in the U.S. Women and men of all backgrounds come together, united in their purpose to defend this great country. The best research we have shows that women and nonwhite service members report greater job satisfaction and quality of life than do white male members. Arbitrary physical features like race and sex were treated as inconsequential because we were evaluated primarily on rank and performance. In college, however, there are clear social incentives to disparage people for their race.