RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/16/looks-like-dissent-is-no-longer-the-highest-form-of-patriotism/

Remember how, when Donald Trump was president, writing bogus attack pieces and talking endlessly about how he stole the 2016 election were all good for the country. Because, you know, dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

Now, reporting undisputed facts that happen to be unflattering to the current president poses a grave threat to the survival of the nation. That’s what journalists are saying.

As President Joe Biden’s approval numbers continue to collapse, and polls – including the latest I&I/TIPP poll – find that Trump is more popular than Biden these days, some of the “truth to power” crowd are using their platforms to attack their fellow scribes for being “too negative” on Biden.

The argument is that hurting Biden increases the chances that Trump, if he runs, could reclaim the White House in 2024, and that will be the end of democracy as we know it.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, for example, makes the (ludicrous and thoroughly debunked) claim that the media coverage of Biden has been more negative than it was in Trump’s last year in office, and then delivers this message:

“My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.”

Yikes! Milbank works for the paper, by the way, that adopted the motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness” in 2017 as a thumb in the eye of Trump.

Milbank’s anti-journalist diatribe didn’t raise a peep of protest from his colleagues. It did, however, warm hearts in the Biden administration. Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, promoted the column on Twitter, with the caption “submitted for your consideration.” Other White House officials also touted the piece.

Dan Kennedy makes the same argument on WGBH.org: “Large swaths of the media simply cannot or will not move beyond both-sides journalism, equating the frustratingly hapless Democrats with a Republican Party that has embraced authoritarianism and voter suppression.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/democrats-whistle-past-crime-wave/

This past weekend, twenty CEOs from big box retailers sent a letter to Congress, asking for help in combatting the rampant theft that is plaguing their stores.

While it’s refreshing to finally see these companies speaking up, it’s hard to ignore the irony of their circumstances. After all, a little over a year ago many of these retailers were sending out emails to their customers that echoed the far-left rallying cries of progressives. No one asked for Best Buy or Ulta to weigh in on social issues, but they were more than happy to virtue-signal anyway.

Plenty of the stores that signed on to this letter have openly supported the Black Lives Matter movement. To understand what that means, you have to understand the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. One of the founders of BLM described the group’s creators as “trained Marxists.” In June 2020, Alicia Garza, one of the three founders, excused the violence and destruction caused by the riots. 

“We don’t have time to finger-wag at protesters about property,” Garza said. “That can be rebuilt. Target will reopen. The stores will reopen.” 

The socially aware CEOs didn’t let the red flags stop them. Instead, they appeased the alligator with empty woke statements. Now that the “undocumented shopping” is affecting these companies’ bottom lines, they are fed up. So they are asking the same people who fanned the flames to help them put out the fire.

Unfortunately for these companies, many Democratic politicians aren’t concerned about crime. Instead, prominent voices on the left are still promoting asinine ideas like defunding the police and bail reform.

In San Francisco, thanks to Proposition 47, thefts under $950 are labeled misdemeanors rather than felonies. In November, after a Louis Vuitton in Union Square was ransacked, Mayor London Breed offered her solution: “We’re going to be making some changes to Union Square and how cars are able to access. There will be limited access in terms of when you come to this area.” Why focus on prosecuting criminals when you can focus on parking? 

While some leaders offer pathetic band-aid solutions, others prefer to deny, deny, deny.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18033/president-privilege

A former spouse, a lawyer’s former client, and a penitent’s former priest can claim privilege — and so could a former member of Congress and a former judge. The relevant issue is whether the communication was privileged at the time it was made. If so, it should be an enduring privilege that encourages confidential communications during their incumbency.

According to The New York Times, this is what [the House’s lawyer] said: “The Constitution does draw a clear line between a president and an ex-president. An ex-president is somebody who rejoins the great unwashed” — by which he apparently means you and me, who never had any executive privilege.

The issue is an open one that will likely be decided by the Supreme Court. I doubt that justices who are now retired or intend someday to retire — and join the “unwashed” — would be thrilled if Congress were to subpoena their former law clerks to disclose their confidential discussions about decisions they wrote while they were still among the washed.

They [the January 6th Committee] should seek to have the courts rule first on the constitutional issue, and if Meadows then refuses to comply with a judicial order, they can seek criminal penalties. This chronology is especially required because Meadows has said that he would comply with court orders.

Seeking a court order first is also required by the constitutionally mandated separation of powers.

Finally, criminal indictments should never be used to determine what the law is. It should only be used against individuals who know that they are violating existing law that is already clear.

The Constitution provides no clear answer to whether a former president can claim executive privilege over communications that occurred while he was president. Both policy and analogy to other privileges would suggest an affirmative answer. A former spouse, a lawyer’s former client, and a penitent’s former priest can claim privilege — and so could a former member of Congress and a former judge. The relevant issue is whether the communication was privileged at the time it was made. If so, it should be an enduring privilege that encourages confidential communications during their incumbency.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/the_show_trial_taking_place_in_dc.html

Tucker Carlson was on fire Tuesday night, for he launched a scathing attack on the grotesque show trial taking place in the House of Representatives, ostensibly to expose the “truth” about the “insurrection” on January 6 but, in reality, to destroy political enemies and preempt Trump’s effort to regain the White House in 2024. To frame the attack, Tucker lit into Liz Cheney, and a more deserving target it’s hard to imagine.

The monologue opens with Tucker pointing out that, for unexplained reasons, Liz Cheney showed up in Manchester, New Hampshire, last month. Well, unexplained only if you don’t know that it’s the place people go when they’re investigating running for president.

To normal people, Liz Cheney’s constituency for a presidential run is a bit of a mystery. Trump supporters despise her and Democrats do too—although they’re perfectly happy to use her to attack Trump.

However, it seems that Cheney is raking in millions of dollars, so someone supports her. Tucker suggests that her supporters are political “dynamos” such as Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham, and Jeb Bush. To Tucker, these are all neocons who live to get Americans involved in wars that kill and maim our sons and daughters without conferring any benefit on America. Looking back on the last 20 years, I must agree.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/the-latest-theories-of-criminally-prosecuting-donald-trump-remain-flimsy/

No, it is still not likely that Donald Trump can be indicted for January 6.

L ike Captain Ahab, the full-time Trump haters have fixated yet again on an idea for criminally prosecuting our 45th president. By “full-time Trump haters” I do not mean those of us who have remained consistently critical of Donald Trump, want him out of our politics, and have called for him to be held properly accountable, but rather the left-leaning Resistance and the former conservatives who have let the Never Trump slogan consume their entire political identity. Neither group can let Trump go, even for a little while, even at the cost of neglecting many of the other serious domestic and foreign issues facing the nation.

The obsessives have yet again been issuing flurries of “the walls are closing in” tweets and cable-news segments eagerly anticipating a criminal indictment of Trump. But tweets are no substitute for reading the law.

In a televised hearing on Monday, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol was reviewing a set of text messages produced by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, mainly detailing his communications on January 6 with people outside the Trump administration. The text messages underline the case for Trump’s political and moral responsibility for the January 6 Capitol riot. But where is the crime?

Liz Cheney, homing in on Trump’s failure during the critical hours to talk down the rioters or take more vigorous action to enforce the law, asked:

These texts leave no doubt: The White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol. Members of Congress, the press, and others wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was under way. . . . Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s proceedings?

If it sounds as if Cheney was quoting or paraphrasing a legal standard, it’s because she was. A number of commentators, including Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, and Daily Beast political-investigations reporter Jose Pagiery, have suggested that Cheney was making a case for prosecuting Trump under 18 U.S.C. § 1505.

If so, that’s a very difficult charge to make stick. There are two problems: It’s unclear whether that charge even applies and, if it did, it’s unclear whether Trump did anything that could violate it.