RUTHFULLY YOURS

Using funerals for political purposes has a long, but not distinguished, tradition. In 44 B.C. eulogist Mark Antony claimed to Roman mourners that he came to bury Caesar. But his speech created a frenzy and ended up ensuring a death warrant for the once “honorable” Brutus.

In contrast, aside from the commemoration of the deceased, Americans mostly have seen funerals as solemn reminders of how frail and transitory life is for all of us, and how our shared fates should unite even the bitterest of enemies.

Sixteen years ago, on the eve of the 2002 midterm election, and at a time when the United States was beginning to divide over the Afghanistan intervention and a looming Iraq war, Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) tragically died in a plane crash.

Wellstone’s Minnesota funeral was meant to be a commemoration of a life of public servant well lived. But the funeral service was soon hijacked by partisan speakers and ended up a loud and often grating political pep rally.

The message to mourners of all beliefs and persuasions was to translate their grief into votes for progressive candidates like Wellstone. Popular discontent over news of the politicalized funeral may well have explained why, two weeks later, the in-power Republicans actually picked up seats in George W. Bush’s first midterm election.

At the recent eight-hour, televised funeral of iconic singer Aretha Franklin, many of the speakers such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson turned the event into a political wake—calling for everything from increased voter registration to tighter standards on drinking water.

Activist and professor Michael Eric Dyson embarrassed himself with adolescent hits against President Donald Trump: “You lugubrious leach, you dopey doppelganger of deceit and deviance, you lethal liar, you dimwitted dictator, you foolish fascist.”

On the next day, the televised state funeral for Sen. John McCain likewise soon became just as political.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/kamala-harris-harasses-kavanaugh-on-robert-mueller-charlottesville-white-supremacist-terms/

On Tuesday, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of speaking with President Trump’s lawyer’s law firm about the Robert Mueller investigation. She did so without evidence, and while refusing to provide a list of lawyers at the firm. After this, the senator jumped down Kavanaugh’s throat with a question about the white nationalist riots in Charlottesville last year.

“Judge, have you ever discussed Special Counsel Mueller or his investigation with anyone?” Harris asked. After the nominee responded that he had, the senator asked, “Have you discussed it with anyone at Kasowitz, Benson, and Torres, the law firm founded by Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal lawyer? Be sure about your answer, sir.”

Kavanaugh, perplexed, could not remember if he knew anyone at that law firm. “Is there a person you’re talking about?” The senator responded, “I’m asking you a very direct question, yes or no.”

“I’m not sure, I need to know anyone who works at that law firm,” the nominee explained. As the senator continued to push him, he said, “I’m just trying to think, do I know anyone at that firm.” Kamala Harris cut him off, saying, “That’s not my question.”

“I would like to know the person you’re thinking of,” Kavanaugh said. “I think you’re thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us,” Harris countered. Can she read his mind?!

“Who did you have a conversation with?” Kamala Harris asked, acting as though the nominee’s perplexed face revealed his complicity.

At this point, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) chimed in with a point of order, explaining that Washington, D.C. is full of law firms, that law firms are full of people, and it is not reasonable for Harris to assume Kavanaugh automatically knows everyone who works at this one specific law firm. He joked, “They’re like rabbits, they form new firms.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/atlanta-mayor-announces-city-jails-no-longer-hold-ice-detainees/

Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms signed an executive order Thursday requiring that all Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees be transferred out of city custody immediately.

“Atlanta will no longer be complicit in a policy that intentionally inflicts misery on a vulnerable population without giving any thought to the horrific fallout,” Bottoms said at a City Hall news conference, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “As the birthplace of the civil-rights movement we are called to be better than this.”

The announcement comes roughly two months after a previous executive order, issued in the wake of the Trump administration’s adoption of a “zero tolerance” immigration-enforcement policy, declared that city jails would not accept any new ICE detainees.

The number of ICE detainees in Atlanta jails has fallen from 205 in June, when the initial executive order was issued, to just five as of Wednesday. Of the 200 detainees removed from Atlanta jails in the interim, some have been released, some have been deported, and some have been transferred to various nearby detention centers.

Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp, the state’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, issued a harshly critical statement in response to the order.

“The City of Atlanta should focus on cleaning up corruption and stopping crime — not creating more of it,” Kemp said.

A number of other localities, including Sacramento County, Calif. and Springfield, Ore. previously discontinued, or chose not to renew, federal contracts that required they imprison ICE detainees.

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/405242-the-mueller-probes-troubling-reliance-on-journalists-as-sources

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has sent a subpoena to veteran writer Jerome Corsi — the first publicly known effort to compel a journalist’s testimony in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.

Corsi, whose work has been showcased for years in conservative outlets such as Human Events, World Net Daily and the InfoWars conspiracy site, says he will not fight the subpoena and plans to appear before the grand jury on Friday.

The subpoena is a not-so-subtle reminder of just how much prosecutors, FBI agents, and the government’s confidential sources who launched and sustained the Russia probe all targeted, courted and leveraged the news media.

Mueller’s team reportedly wants to question Corsi about his contacts with longtime Trump friend Roger Stone and whether Stone ever asked Corsi to try to get WikiLeaks to release damaging emails on Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election ended. It’s expected that Corsi will tell prosecutors he did not bite on Stone’s overtures, in part because he suspected Julian Assange and WikiLeaks were monitored by U.S. intelligence after their past publications of classified U.S. secrets.

An anonymous op-ed published in The New York Times, penned by “a senior Trump administration official,” contends that a cabal of senior staffers have secretly schemed to undermine Donald Trump in an effort to protect the American people. “I work for the president,” claims the purported senior official, “but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”

The problem with the much-discussed op-ed isn’t only that it fails to offer a single example of officials actually “thwarting” the Trump agenda or saving the republic from his capriciousness. It’s that it celebrates the idea of nullifying an election.

While I’m sure much of the op-ed is thematically accurate, it’s difficult to believe the author is a selfless public servant letting us know that our democratic institutions are safe in their nameless hands. Any member of the administration legitimately concerned about reigning in the president’s outbursts—and doubtlessly there are a number of them—would never have sent an article guaranteed to generate more White House chaos and paranoia.

It would make no sense. Trump, after all, is already dealing with interminable leaks. The piece will only further confirm his suspicions that a Fifth Column is undercutting the presidency, which will make him less likely to listen to advisors.

To be fair, if you were informed that a faction of “senior” staffers was actively subverting your “agenda”—not merely your tweeting or hyperbole about the media, but the policy items that you promised the electorate you would pursue—you might have some valid reasons to be suspicious, as well.