RUTHFULLY YOURS

Would a mainstream politician have dared raise the affiliations, sympathies, ethnic heritage and political patrons of the judge hearing his case? Never, not in a million years. But the outsider candidate detested by his own party’s establishment is no normal politician. Nor is he a racist

Donald Trump gets into trouble to often for his own good and America’s. He has to get with the PC program, give away his throwaways and stick to major national issues and policies. His policy objectives are all vote winners. Look at this partial list and find fault if you can. Putting myself in patriotic American shoes, I can’t.

Securing the border, building the military, taking better care of vets, destroying ISIS, putting America first by insisting that allies pull their military weight
Controlling immigration, particularly Muslim immigration
Replacing Obamacare
Creating jobs by lowering taxes and regulations, liberating the exploitation of fossil fuel energy and negotiating better trade deals.

If he concentrates on his policies and reserves his criticisms for Clinton he will likely win. It’s the diversions that get him into trouble. This time Trump criticised the judge hearing the class-action civil suit against Trump University, which, as I understand it, purported to teach people how to profit from real estate. That would have been OK. His mistake was in suggesting that the judge’s Mexican heritage (his parents were Mexican migrants) may have played a part in swaying his conduct of the proceedings.

He said this because the judge, Gonzalo Curiel, appointed by President Obama, is a member of a Latino lawyers association (La Raza Lawyers Association) whose members have a record of acting for illegal migrants. Moreover, the class action was brought by a legal firm which has given large sums of money to the Clintons. Trump’s thinking is that the case has taken on a political dimension and that his own strong stand on illegal Mexican immigration may have affected the judge’s ability to act objectively.

Trump argues that his side is being treated unfairly. As an example he notes that a leading plaintiff was found to be on record praising the University. As a result, the legal firm representing her asked that she be removed from the case; as you would. At question, in Trump’s view, is why the judge allowed this without summarily dismissing the case.

I have no idea of the precise accuracy of this account or of the legal rights and wrongs of what occurred. But that doesn’t matter. The question I would like to pose is this: was Trump’s statement racist, as Paul Ryan and other Republicans have said; and as numbers of conservative commentators like, for example, Charles Krauthammer, have said?

I will cut to the chase. It isn’t racist. Asserting that some white jurymen and white judges in the Deep South in, say, the 1960s were influenced by their ethnicity in evaluating the testimony of black witnesses is not racist. As we know, in those cases, the racists were on the bench and on the juries.

Of course, if Trump had said what his critics claim it would be racist. Time and time again, I heard them say that Trump had said that Curiel’s Mexican heritage disqualified him from hearing the case. The problem is that he didn’t say that. The segment of the stump address that sparked the escalating brouhaha can be viewed below. Watch it if you have 11 minutes to spare and see if the press is reporting an actual comment or an imaginary one.

To hear many commentators tell it, Donald Trump claims that an American-born judge, by dint of nothing other than his Mexican ancestry, should be deemed so biased against him that the judge should be recused from a civil fraud case in which Trump is a defendant. Indeed, Trump is said to have dug himself an even deeper hole last weekend, adding Muslim-American judges to the class of jurists before whom we are to believe he cannot get a fair trial.

For present purposes, I am putting the Muslim judge issue aside because it is hypothetical – i.e., while Trump’s meanderings about the judge of Mexican descent involve a concrete case, I know of no actual case involving the litigious Trump and a judge who happens to be Muslim.

Moreover, to avoid further elongating this column, I will not address whether, in analyzing an actual legal claim of judicial bias, a judge’s race, ethnic ancestry or religious affiliation might become relevant due to that judge’s political activism. Trump surrogates insist that, to the extent the candidate has invoked a judge’s Mexican descent or (hypothetically) Islam, he was not relying solely on ethnic or religious status, but on such status in conjunction with political activism on behalf of Mexican illegal aliens or political Islam’s sharia law agenda. There is a lot to be said for this argument, which reminds us why judges – who are obliged to maintain the objectivity and public integrity of judicial proceedings – should resist political activism. In any event, this is a complex legal issue and it deserves separate consideration.

Instead, the purpose of this column is to focus on two rudimentary questions that I do not believe have been adequately addressed:

First, did Trump do it? That is, has he posited an actual legal claim – a noxious and dangerous one – that mere ethnic heritage can disqualify a judge from presiding over a legal controversy? Or is Trump, as I conclude, making an unsavory political argument?

Second, is Trump’s argument really about the purported bias of the judge in question, Gonzalo P. Curiel of the federal district court in Southern California? Or is Trump, as I conclude, attempting – however cynically – to draw the sting of disclosures regarding the civil fraud case involving “Trump University”?

To cut to the chase: Is Trump trying to discredit the judge, not out of racism or an honest belief that Judge Curiel is violating his due process rights, but in hopes of discrediting the underlying Trump U shenanigans by persuading people that it is a biased judge, rather than damaging evidence, that is making him look bad? Does Trump fear that his critics will otherwise use the Trump U disclosures against him the same way Hillary Clinton’s detractors have exploited disclosures about her email improprieties to damage her presidential bid?

“A lifetime member of an organization that very recently made public calls for a general boycott of the defendant’s businesses.”

The most important argument in favor of forcing U.S. district judge Gonzalo Curiel to recuse himself from the Trump University lawsuits was published today by the Conservative Treehouse.

The Treehouse linked to a copy of Judge Curiel’s “United States Senate: Committee on the Judiciary – Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees” in which, on page four of his response, Judge Curiel states that he is a “Life-time Member” of the “Hispanic National Bar Association [HNBA].”

The HNBA made public a press release in July 2015 that called for the following actions against Donald Trump and his enterprises:

The HNBA calls for a boycott of all of Trump business ventures, including golf courses, hotels, and restaurants. We salute NBC/Universal, Univision and Macy’s for ending their association with Trump, and we join them in standing up against bigotry and racist rhetoric. Other businesses and corporations should follow the lead of NBC/Universal, Univision and Macy’s and take similar actions against Donald Trump’s business interests.

A case can be made that no sitting judge should be aligned with any such activist organization in general, but for a judge to preside over a case involving a defendant’s business whereby said judge is also a lifetime member of an organization that very recently made public calls for a general boycott of the defendant’s businesses is an undeniable stain on the purported impartiality of the judiciary.

That was an impressive performance by Hillary Clinton Tuesday, announcing her presumptive presidential nomination as an historic first for womankind and something new and wonderful for American democracy. Watching her arms outstretched like Moses, you could almost forget that she first came to national prominence 25 years ago and is the very soul of the Washington status quo.

The Republican tumult this year has masked that Mrs. Clinton represents the triumph of the Democratic establishment. The party’s interest groups coalesced around her, and her most prominent opponents declined to run, leaving only a 74-year-old socialist to contest the nomination. Democratic elites are getting what they want: Another identity-politics candidacy wrapped around a relentless will to power.
***

Yet this attempt to restore the Clinton dynasty is no mere replay of the 1990s. This time America is being offered the familiar Clinton ethics, but without Bill Clinton’s bow to center-right policy. This time we are getting the grasping and corner-cutting of the Clinton entourage with economic policies somewhere to the left of President Obama’s.

This carries no small political risk. Democrats have had to accept the uncertainty of an FBI investigation into her private emails, about which she has lied repeatedly, and Bill Clinton’s fundraising from foreign donors with business before the State Department when she was Secretary. Cheryl Mills, her close aide, said 38 times under oath that she could not “recall” answers to email questions, much as Harold Ickes could remember little about his Teamsters mediation in the 1990s.

All of this has produced unfavorable ratings second only to Donald Trump’s in modern presidential polling, and even a sizable plurality of Democrats think Mrs. Clinton can’t be trusted. Mr. Trump can get away with calling her “Crooked Hillary” because voters know the insult captures a fundamental truth.

Even her claim as a political pioneer is half phony because she rose to power as a spouse. Many other women— Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel—have succeeded on their own account. A woman will become U.S. President, sooner rather than later, which may be why younger women are less motivated by the “first woman” narrative. The question they ask, more wisely than the Baby Boomers, is whether this woman should be President. CONTINUE AT SITE

Vowing “the struggle continues,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told a roaring crowd in Santa Monica, Calif., that he’s not dropping out of the Democratic primary and is taking the fight to the Democratic National Convention at the end of July.

Sanders won Montana and North Dakota on Tuesday night, while Hillary Clinton won New Mexico, New Jersey and South Dakota. Clinton was ahead in California.

The senator reminded followers that he has won 22 primaries and caucuses with more than 10 million votes. “Virtually every single state we have won by big numbers the votes of young people,” the 74-year-old noted. “Young people understand that they are the future of America and they intend to help shape that future. I am enormously optimistic about the future of our country.”

“We will not allow right-wing Republicans to control our government and that is especially true with Donald Trump as the Republican candidate,” Sanders continued. “The American people in my view will never support a candidate whose major theme is bigotry, who insults Mexicans, who insults Muslims and women and African-Americans. We will not allow Donald Trump to become president of the United States, but we understand that our mission is more than just defeating Trump — it is transforming our country.”

In an announcement greeted with huge cheers, Sanders said next Tuesday he would “continue the fight in the last primary in Washington, D.C.”

“We are going to fight hard to win the primary in Washington, D.C., and then we take our fight for social, economic, racial and environmental justice to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” he declared.

Sanders added that he’s “pretty good at arithmetic” and knows he faces a “steep fight… for every vote and every delegate we can get.” CONTINUE AT SITE

The first and most important thing to grasp about the expression of political views and sympathies is that they must not aggravate or annoy anyone on the left. Break that rule, as do Donald Trump supporters by attending his rallies, and you will only have yourself to blame for the bruising consequences.
Things are pretty calm Stateside. Donald Trump hasn’t said or done anything particularly interesting since stitching up the Republican nomination. The Democrats continue their drawn-out bloodbath, ensuring Hillary Clinton will limp into the general election looking like a pre-op Darth Vader. Good news for Trump and anyone else running for president, excluding David French.

Speaking of pre-ops, the head of the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union – a group of left-wing, censoriously PC lawyers roughly comparable to the Human Rights Commission, and sporting an equally Orwellian name – resigned after three drag queens followed her girl-children into the toilet. For those who haven’t been following the transgender bathroom row, the Obama Administration is fighting for sex-changers to have access to all public restroom facilities, with “transgender” defined as … well, it’s not defined per se. Basically, anyone who says they’re a woman can use the women’s lavatory, and ditto with men. This, by the by, includes public school locker rooms. Which has unnerved some parents who aren’t too keen on pubescent ragamuffins being given a warm welcome to the showers where their daughters are washing up after gym class.

This, apparently, includes Maya Dillard Smith, who had to console her daughters after a trio of six-foot-tall men with bulging Adam’s apples and other things took loud, stand-up pees in the stalls next to them, trading cosmetology tips in crooning baritones. Following her resignation, Smith founded a new website (just what we needed!) called Finding the Middle Ground, which promises – couched in the language of political correctness – a “safe space to talk about civil rights for all.” Ho ho! Not likely, Ms. Smith. Having risen through the ranks of the PC Gestapo, you should know there’s not going to be a “safe space” for those who contradict Big Brother’s latest definition of “civil rights”. There’s something quaintly pathetic about the name “Middle Ground”, as though the elites have ever accepted any compromise in their ideological war against decency and common sense.

That’s not to say the rules of political correctness are fixed. They’re not. Take the riots that have erupted outside Donald Trump’s rallies in California. Supporters are being intimidated, egged, and beaten up by vicious young men of Latino extraction who burn the American flag and assert Mexico’s right to reclaim its former territories in the Southwestern United States. Yes, it’s a travesty against free speech, free assembly, human decency, etc. And yes, it’s beneath contempt that anyone would think to condemn the good people of Arizona to Mexican citizenship.

trumpette eggedBut the worst part may be the smug, unironic victim-blaming directed against Trump and his cadre. “At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” Sam Liccardo, the mayor of San Jose and a Clinton supporter, told the Associated Press afterwards. “It is regrettable that this has become a pattern for cities hosting Mr. Trump across the nation.” One of those who “must take responsibility” is pictured at left — a Trump supporter who was cornered by the mob against a locked door, pelted and assaulted.