RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/05/michael-mukasey-at-the-nri-ideas-summit/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=second

” My job was to do law, and to have enough faith in the law to know that if I did it right, the result would be justice. Law can be a strength if it can be used to keep a society open to the opinions of all, and if, but only if, its administration can be placed in the hands of those for whom the law itself is the only agenda.”

When Abbé Sieyès, the 18th-century French clergyman and political theorist, was asked what he did during the Reign of Terror that accompanied the French Revolution, his answer was brief and to the point: “I survived.” Which is to say, he kept a low profile until the terror blew over, and so he didn’t wind up under the guillotine, as did several of his colleagues.

I don’t think we can afford to follow that passive example today, as we live through our own reign of terror, due in large measure to the advance of what is known as the woke agenda in which people can have their careers decapitated if they compliment a co-worker on her appearance or can be made to vanish from social networks for endorsing the wrong idea. Unlike the 18th-century Reign of Terror, this one seems unlikely to blow over on its own.

The proponents of this agenda are advancing their cause using control of what University of Texas scholar Michael Lind called three separate gateways: college education, professional accreditation, and commercial services, in particular media platforms. He did not mention government as a separate category, but I would suggest that it should be added to the list.

The theme of this conference, of course, is the sources of American strength, and one of those sources undeniably is the rule of law. But that presents us as conservatives with a particularly acute problem because several of those gateways are largely in the control of the private sector, which in turn poses the dilemma of whether the power of government can be brought to bear here in a way consistent with the Constitution’s limits on the reach of government, or not, and consistent with the economic freedom that has helped make this country great, or not. And the solution to that dilemma is by no means clear.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-deep-state-is-all-too-real-congress-chevron-delegation-civics-hunter-biden-985ed65e?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

There are two competing conceptions of American governance: the version students are taught in the classroom, and the one that exists in the real world. Grade-school civics teaches that Washington is designed to operate under a system of checks and balances, constrained by the Constitution and empowered by the consent of the governed. In practice, however, power has become concentrated in the executive branch and largely wielded by unaccountable career bureaucrats. The notion of a “deep state” isn’t a conspiratorial talking point but a manifest political reality.

The separation of powers is an animating principle of our nation’s founding documents. As the Constitution outlines, the U.S. has three distinct and coequal branches of government: a legislature that passes laws, an executive branch that implements them, and a judiciary that interprets them. This built-in division is meant to restrain government overreach and prevent abuses of power. The president and members of Congress regularly stand for election to ensure the government is accountable to the governed, and the judiciary serves in good behavior to ensure that justice is dispensed impartially.

While this sounds nice in theory, the federal government typically doesn’t honor it in practice. Congress has delegated much of its lawmaking authority to the executive branch since the 1930s. Federal agencies now issue regulations that have the force and effect of the law. “Administrative judges”—executive-branch employees—routinely preside over trial-like proceedings without juries, letting agencies act as both prosecutor and judge.

Under the Supreme Court’s Chevron doctrine, courts generally defer to the executive branch’s interpretation of the law—both in regulatory and enforcement proceedings. Many of the Constitution’s checks and balances, from the separation of powers to the right to jury trial, have fallen by the wayside.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/08/j6-jackals-circle-trump/

In 2002, David Frum, chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush, coined the phrase “axis of evil” to describe the despotic regimes of North Korea, Iran, and Iraq during the nascent stages of the global war on terror.

Today, Frum is warning the country about a different axis of evil that he believes similarly threatens the security of America and perhaps even the world: Donald Trump, the Oath Keepers, and the Proud Boys.

“One after another, the foot soldiers of the January 6 attack on Congress are sentenced to prison terms, which for many will mean the lifelong loss of political rights,” Frum tweeted on May 8 in faux concern for the railroaded defendants. “Yet the commanders who plotted and ordered the attack are escaping with impunity—even running for high office.”

Frum, who hasn’t lost his touch as he’s transitioned over the past two decades from a neoconservative to a full-blown Marxist, was referring to the recent convictions of members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Last Thursday, a Washington, D.C., jury found four Proud Boys guilty of seditious conspiracy, a post-Civil War statute nearly synonymous with treason; six Oath Keepers also have been convicted of the same charge for their participation in the events of January 6. Individuals tied to the groups have pleaded guilty to that count or been convicted of other conspiracy and obstruction felonies.

Now, none of these so-called “foot soldiers” possessed nuclear material or starved millions of their countrymen or harbored foreign terror cells bent on the annihilation of the United States. To the contrary, several defendants associated with both groups fought in the very same wars orchestrated by Frum and his former boss. For example, Joseph Biggs, a Proud Boy convicted last week of seditious conspiracy and other offenses, is a Purple Heart recipient who was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s.

But in Frum’s tiny, vindictive mind, men like Biggs—who brought no weapons to the Capitol and did not assault police on January 6—are comparable to, perhaps worse than, al-Qaeda and ISIS. 

After all, Osama bin Laden never expressed loyalty to the Bad Orange Man!

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/john_kerry_finds_his_vietnam_war_medals_pops_them_onto_his_suit_at_the_uk_coronation.html

Lurch makes a fool of himself in the pageantry of Britain.

In today’s ridiculous news, I present this picture:

Kerry is famous for tossing his Vietnam war medals over a fence, or at least, saying he did, before he later said it was just his ribbons, and then later still saying it some other guy’s medals. 

Here’s the New York Post report from 2004:

Presumed Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry said in an interview more than 30 years ago that he threw away some of his Vietnam combat medals – contradicting statements he has made as a candidate, it was reported yesterday.

“I gave back, I can’t remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals,” Kerry said in an interview with WRC-TV, a Washington, D.C., station on Nov. 6, 1971, ABC News reported. Kerry previously had told the network that stories about him tossing medals were a “myth.”

In the 1971 interview, for a program called “Viewpoints,” Kerry – who had not yet been elected to the Senate – said that war veterans who threw away their medals “decided to give them back to their country.”

When asked if he disposed of his Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts received as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam, he replied, “Well, and above that. [I] gave back the others.”

Earlier this year, Kerry was asked by syndicated columnist Robert Novak, if he regretted throwing his medals away, and responded, “There was no regret,” but he added, “I threw away my ribbons, not my medals.”

…and this…

But in 1984, he told the Globe he still had his own medals but had tossed away another soldiers’ medal.