RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-democrats-want-a-trump-trial-11612828183?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Senate on Tuesday begins the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, now the former President. Democrats say the trial is crucial to punishing Mr. Trump for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, but it seems more likely to do the opposite by acquitting him. It also looks like a needless partisan exercise that will further polarize America’s political factions.

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As we’ve said several times, Mr. Trump’s actions that day and after the November election were disgraceful. He made false claims about a stolen election and later about overturning the Electoral College count. He also misled his supporters about Vice President Mike Pence’s solely ceremonial role in presiding over the vote count.

By rallying his supporters to march on the Capitol in the false hope of overturning the election result, and then refusing for hours to ask them to stand down, Mr. Trump tolerated an assault on a constitutional branch of government. Republicans who think this is impeachable conduct will get no criticism from us.

Yet the House impeachers don’t limit themselves to that charge. In their single and sloppy impeachment article, they accuse Mr. Trump of “incitement of insurrection.” This is a stretch, not least because Mr. Trump called on the marchers to behave “peacefully.” The House managers mention this only in passing in their trial brief. It is doubtful that Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 remarks would qualify as incitement under the criminal code.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-political-logic-of-the-trump-trial-11612827029?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

What do Democrats hope to gain from Donald Trump’s impeachment trial? A conviction could prevent him from holding federal office again, but it isn’t clear they benefit from keeping him off the ballot. They beat him in 2020, and his looming presence could impede a new generation of Republican candidates.

But a trial will galvanize and unify the Democrats. It keeps the hated Mr. Trump in the spotlight and distracts from the central issue dividing Democrats: How progressive will President Biden’s agenda be? Even more important, they expect the trial to split the other party. Divide and conquer—pit pro- and anti-Trump Republicans against each other, not only now but for coming elections.

To recapture Congress next year and the White House in 2024, the GOP needs not only to retain Mr. Trump’s voters but to add to them. Republicans seen as anti-Trump fear losing contested primaries. In the general election, Trump supporters could lose swing voters. For the Democrats, by contrast, trying Mr. Trump seems a low-cost gesture. The only price, they believe, will be a brief delay in approving Mr. Biden’s nominees and momentary distraction from his agenda.

This isn’t to deny the bipartisan outrage over the assault on Capitol Hill, or the Democrats’ genuine belief (shared by many Republicans) that Mr. Trump’s actions after Nov. 3 breached the bounds of constitutional propriety. It is simply to recognize that Democrats and Republicans are political creatures who must make hard-nosed political calculations.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/we-must-protect-womens-sports/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Joe Biden’s recent executive order was framed as a matter of transgender rights. But really, it was an attack on women’s rights.

When I was a teenager, tennis was my life.

I started playing when I was ten. By the time I was 13, it was all I wanted to do. I practiced 24/7. A lot of days, my parents wouldn’t see me — I’d be up and at the courts before dawn, and back after dusk. On weekends, I got up extra early because our small South Carolina town only had a few courts. I wanted to make sure I got one before someone else did.

I wasn’t the best player at my high school. I was never first seed. But I was good enough to make the team. My dream was to be on the U.S. women’s team and meet my sports heroes, Chrissie Evert and Martina Navratilova. Of course, I never would have made it — I clearly didn’t! — but I still had hope. Frankly, I would have been just as happy to be the best at my school.

Will today’s young girls have that hope? Will they have any chance of being the best in their schools, much less in their districts or states? I worry many won’t, and not just in tennis. Across the sporting world, the game is being rigged against women and in favor of biological men.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/rep_andy_levin_blaming_israel_for_antisemitism.html

In a breathtakingly absurd statement, Congressman Andy Levin (D-Mich.) asserted during a February 1 webinar that anti-Semitism cannot truly be defeated until “Palestinian human rights are respected.”

Levin is blaming anti-Semitism on the Jews, the very victims of anti-Semitism.  This is cruel.  Anti-Semitism predates the Israel-Arab conflict and will be with us, unfortunately, in future decades.  The world’s anti-Semitism is not a function of the lack of conclusion to the Israeli-Palestinian Arab situation.  The Jews of Israel have made countless efforts towards peace and have implemented thousands of acts of humanitarianism toward the Arab and Muslim population, which is seldom requited.  Yet anti-Semitism still exists.  Jewish families and Israeli schools are constantly bombarded by groups of Arab Palestinians whose hatred of Jews predated by centuries the establishment of a Jewish state. 

Reading Levin’s other comments, it is obvious that his leftist ideology places blame on those parties continually demonized by today’s left-wing leaders.  Israel is one of those targets.  His statements show that he appears to see anti-Semitism as coming from the political right only.  This willful blindness allows the widespread, dangerous anti-Semitism fomenting in today’s left-wing camp.  It is obvious that Levin, as with many wayward Jews who sadly have lost their way, is focused much more on hurting the political right than actually stopping anti-Semitism.

Levin boasts of his friendship with Ilhan Omar and of his warm cooperation with “his sister” Rashida Tlaib, both widely known for expressing disparaging and pejorative remarks not only about Israel, but also about Jews who support Israel.  This should be proof enough that Mr. Levin is not an honest broker when talking about anti-Semitism. 

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/08/americans-are-sick-of-placebo-government/

What people want from politicians is not to put on the same tired show they have been watching for years. They want them to get things done.

The extreme disconnect between the political class and the people they ostensibly serve is by now extremely clear. It was the primary factor behind Donald Trump’s ascendance to the presidency, as the left largely abandoned the working class in favor of woke ideologies and their special interests.

At a certain point, the lip service politicians pay to the working class’s needs and concerns was not enough, and they lost their votes. Naturally, it was at that point Democrats suddenly decided the working class was really racist all along.

That, it seems, is the defining characteristic of our politics today. Politicians do not actually legislate to resolve the things their constituents need them to address. Instead, they leave voters with placebos, a useless sugar pill designed to do nothing but give consumers the illusion that their problem has been addressed.

Democrats don’t have a monopoly on this dynamic, and neither do “establishment” Republicans. Everyone does it.

https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/mon-growing-evidence-capitol-attack-pre-planned-undercuts-trump-impeachment

Days before former President Trump’s impeachment trial begins, newly filed federal charges against anti-government activists offer fresh, compelling evidence that the accused perpetrators of the Capitol riots pre-planned their attack days and weeks in advance and in plain sight of an FBI that vowed to be vigilant to extremist threats.

A dozen FBI affidavits supporting charges against the more than 200 defendants show rioters engaged in advance planning on social media sites. The planning included training, casing sites, identifying commanders on scene, and requests for donations of cash, as well as combat and communication gear.

More than a half dozen of the suspects are now charged with conspiracy to commit violence for actions predating the Jan. 6 riots. The early actions identified in court documents date back to November, with planning and rhetoric accelerating after Christmas, court records show.

That growing body of evidence raises questions about whether the FBI and other security agencies acted proactively enough to thwart the violence. It also undercuts the House Democrats’ impeachment claim — supported by 10 Republicans — that Trump’s speech spontaneously incited the riots, legal experts told Just the News.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/08/big-brother-comes-to-america/

At first I couldn’t believe what I was reading. A writer for the New York Times was enthusiastically supporting a call made by ‘several experts’ around the Biden administration to create a Reality Czar. Apparently, a Reality Czar is needed to counter the campaign of disinformation being pushed by bitter conservatives.

The NYT commentator concedes that giving someone the authority to pronounce on what is and isn’t real ‘sounds a little dystopian’, but suggests it is warranted by the threat of ‘disinformation and domestic extremism’. The experts promoting the enthronement of a Reality Czar are unapologetic advocates of giving the government the power to decide what is true, what is real. They hope that the establishment of a reality task force ‘could become the tip of the spear for the federal government’s response to the reality crisis’.

The NYT is not alone in demanding that the government take an active role in determining what is true. Recently, New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights published an alarmist report about the allegedly distorted perceptions held by millions of conservatives. Apparently, huge numbers of conservatives wrongly believe that their views are suppressed by digital platforms on partisan grounds. To prevent this view from gaining greater influence, the authors of the report call on the government to set up a ‘new Digital Regulatory Agency’. No doubt this agency would become another tip of a spear to be hurled at anyone who accuses the giant social-media companies of showing bias against the political right.

The principal aim of the Stern Center’s report is to restore trust in the moral authority of the mainstream media in the US. It fears that millions of Americans no longer trust the media as a reliable source of information because they have bought into the belief that it is biased. It argues that people’s distrust of the media and their ‘wrong’ belief that social media are biased against conservatives will escalate in coming years, especially as social-media companies increase their ‘fact-checking’ operations.

https://spectator.org/trump-operation-warp-speed-biden/

“I think the [Trump] administration deserves some credit getting this off the ground with Operation Warp Speed,” conceded then-President-elect Joe Biden in late December upon he and his wife Jill getting their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Wilmington, Delaware.

Biden’s notable concession to Trump didn’t get the attention from his media partisans that it should have. That’s no surprise. They revile Donald Trump, they made it their mission to run him out of office, and they shape their “journalism” accordingly.

As for Biden, the concession was gracious, but he should say more. A lot more.

In fact, it would be a great gesture of unity — the very unity that President Biden says he seeks, and a gesture of goodwill and decency that Trump advocates would remember appreciatively — if Biden paused to more deliberately thank and recognize Trump’s efforts. Unfortunately, I don’t think he’s going to do that, and the terribly biased liberal media certainly will not be stepping up with any awards for the dreaded MAGA man.

That’s a shame. It’s yet more rancorous, toxic, bitter partisanship, by a media that claims to be objective. It’s not right. It fails to recognize a truly historic accomplishment by Trump and the biomedical community.

We are now full-throttle into the mass distribution of vaccines for the COVID-19 pandemic. And let there be no doubt: the swiftness of the development and delivery of these vaccines is a remarkable achievement. I want to underscore the point by revisiting what I wrote about in several columns here in The American Spectator last spring, most notably placing President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed into historical context — looking particularly at the polio vaccine that was pioneered by Dr. Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1950s. Considering that comparison really helps us to understand what a big deal Operation Warp Speed has been.