RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“’Let the jury consider the verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day. ‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first – verdict afterwards.’” Alice in Wonderland, 1946 (my copy) Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

While the charges against Donald Trump were more severe than stealing tarts, there is no question that the trial was politicized. And there is a question as to whether he received due process, as explained by David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley[1] in the June 5, 2024 edition of The Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump was convicted by a jury of twelve ordinary people, seven men and five women, a panel of jurors agreed to by both prosecution and defense. Like it or not, their decision is something we should respect. As British Member of Parliament Daniel Hannani wrote recently in The Telegraph: “Laws on their own are not enough. A free society rests also on conventions, precedents, unwritten rules. Losers are expected to accept the result, winners to exercise restraint.”

But jurors are not omniscient and judges have biases, which is why our legal process allows for appeals, and one can certainly expect Mr. Trump’s lawyers to appeal the decision, and we are free to argue as to whether the charges should have been brought in the first place. The law is not perfect, but justice is supposed to be blind; it should not be weaponized for political gain. Regardless, a civilized society must accept a trial’s outcome, just as it must accept the decision of elections, else anarchy reigns and totalitarianism looms. There is a process that should be followed.

The outcome of the trial in “deep blue” Manhattan was predictable; though many of us hoped for a Henry Fonda-like character from 12 Angry Men to appear among the jurors, to at least create a hung jury. That did not happen.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/06/remembering_d_day_s_freedom_fighters.html

It is hard to believe that eighty years have passed since American, British, and Canadian troops landed at Normandy and fought their way across fortified beaches covered in German mines and barbed wire fences.  What a nightmare it must have been to overcome such soggy, uneven terrain while enduring heavy fire from gun emplacements secured upon hills and steep cliffs.  It must have felt like being dropped off in Hell and navigating through a gruesome Jell-O of blood, sand, smoke, explosions, and whirring bullets.  There were no timeouts.  There were no “safe spaces.”  There was nowhere to hide.  You either advanced or died.

Could Allied Forces accomplish such audacious feats today?  It is hard to imagine the “Me-Me-Me Generations” putting their lives on the line for much of anything.  Could you convince a socialist who believes that everything should be free that freedom is never free?  Could you explain to a Millennial that storming a beach is not done for Instagram snapshots, social media approval, or Facebook likes?  Could you persuade all those Westerners who hate Western civilization to pick up a rifle and fight for the West’s survival?  I’m not so sure.

Don’t get me wrong; there are still plenty of patriots among us.  America’s armed services remain home to the kind of self-sacrificing heroes who would have parachuted behind enemy lines or fought tooth-and-nail to establish beachheads eight decades ago.  But the Pentagon has also watered down physical fitness standards, promoted “politically correct” Marxists into crucial command positions, and poisoned the rank and file with “woke” indoctrination.  

https://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/don-feder/

History teaches us that the best way to avoid a war is to prepare for one.

After World War I, another global conflict was unthinkable, the leaders of the democracies declared. Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese imperialists thought otherwise.

In the 1930s, Britain effectively disarmed, and France relied on static defense. The United States embraced isolationism, relying on two oceans for protection, while Germany rearmed and Japan invaded China. The cost of that lack of imagination was another world war and 75 million dead.

When World War II ended, shortsighted politicians rushed to downsize our military, even as communism advanced on four continents.

After Vietnam, the peaceniks who had taken control of the Democratic Party couldn’t wait to put our armed forces in mothballs. Then came Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, 9/11, ISIS, and radical Islam’s war on the West.

The Biden administration’s death march of folly began with the disastrous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, with 13 service members dead, thousands of Americans stranded and $7 billion in military equipment left behind. The weakness we displayed to our enemies set the stage for the next round of aggression.

President Biden is Neville Chamberlain, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter rolled into one.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/democrats-disrespect-d-day/

Over 4000 Allied troops, including over 1500 Americans, died storming the beaches of Normandy on this day in 1944, with thousands more wounded or missing. Today’s Democrat Party chose to honor them with petty political messaging and the hyping of Donald Trump as a threat to democracy comparable to that faced on D-Day.

Failed presidential candidate and Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferer Hillary Clinton, not a person known for empathy or for her concern for American troops, diminished the 80th anniversary of D-Day by tweeting a clichéd comparison of the former President to Hitler: “Eighty years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy. This November, all we have to do is vote,” she wrote.

Needless to say, this tone-deaf, disrespectful politicization of the sacrifices and heroism displayed by so many young warriors against tyranny was not well-received on social media:

“Holy s*** I despise these people,” Army Ranger veteran Sean Parnell posted. “It’s impossible to capture just how loathsome a comment this is. To cheapen what WWII heroes did to BS garbage politics makes me sick. Again, WWII veterans deserve so much better than this.”

“What kind of shameless, broken, lizard person do you have to be to tweet out some nonsense like this?” wrote ComfortablySmug. “‘Yes I know what it was like for those soldiers on Omaha beach ducking machine gun fire, I went to vote. I am braver than the troops.’ She has never recovered from Trump’s win.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/06/07/shades-of-nixon-biden-refuses-to-turn-over-potentially-devastating-tapes/

Almost exactly 50 years ago, the Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over White House tapes that he had refused to release for nearly a year, citing executive privilege. On July 24, 1974, the court unanimously rejected Nixon’s executive privilege claim. Sixteen days later, Nixon resigned.

Fast forward to this year, and President Joe Biden is refusing to release tapes of his interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur about his handling of classified documents, citing, as Nixon did, executive privilege, with an added twist about the risk of “deep fakes.”

Biden is, in fact, so determined to keep the tapes secret that he’s willing to let his attorney general get slapped with contempt of Congress, a charge two House committees advanced on Thursday for Garland’s refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena.

The White House is also being sued by the Heritage Foundation, Judicial Watch, and a dozen news organizations – including CNN and the Associated Press – for access to the tapes after the White House refused to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests.  

The Biden administration argues that there’s no reason to turn over the tapes since the transcripts are already out.

But last Friday, the administration admitted that the transcripts had been altered.

That admission came in response to Heritage’s lawsuit. The White House told a federal court that the transcripts were “accurate … except for minor instances.”

In response to that, Heritage’s Oversight Project posted on X that: “After being forced into federal court by us, the White House admits they altered evidence to make Biden appear less incompetent This case has been blown wide open.”