RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/impeachment-hearings-day-one-voters-uninterested/

The American public is simmering with apathy.

As a boy, I used to watch a television show with a weekly gag titled “MasterJoke Theatre.” A pompous egghead smoked a pipe in a leather-bound chair in a richly appointed library, told a joke, and got a pie in the face for his trouble.

What the Democrats launched on the Hill this week is their own variant, with Adam Schiff sitting in the big chair as the designated pompous E. Call it MasterTroll Theatre. The Democrats know they’re engaged in a futile exercise that exists only to draw attention. They don’t have the muscle to take out the president. They read the David Brooks column that explained that nobody between the coasts is paying attention to this drama. As for what their witnesses will say, the Democrats have already leaked the pertinent facts to the press, which eagerly provided them to the public.

And the president’s approval rating? It’s 44.1 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics average. The day before the Ukraine transcript was released, it was 45.0 percent. After six weeks of set-your-hair-on-fire-and-do-the-funky-chicken impeachment hoo-ha, the Democrats have succeeded in reducing the president’s support by not quite one full percentage point. Minus red-hot public demand, the Republican senators won’t be escorting the president out the door.

Brooks noted in his column that an Ohio professor discovered that, of 80 students in his class, 78 had not heard about the impeachment saga and all 80 said they were uninterested anyway. Hence the Democrats’ hopecasting that getting the TV networks to sign on as their promotional partners Wednesday might turn their sad charade into a national obsession. “The first hour of a hearing and the first hearing has got to be a blockbuster,” a senior Democrat told CNN beforehand.

So . . . how’d that go? “Impeachment hearings play big on TV, less so with viewers,” ran a headline on, gulp, NBC News? NBC News is a television news outfit. For it to admit its own programming fizzled is not its usual habit. Does McDonald’s post a giant sign outside saying, “Yelp Reviewers Dislike the Quarter Pounder”? NBC’s story quoted Dallas businessman Travis Smallwood as saying, on behalf of the Republic, “I’m sort of paying attention, but not really.” Smallwood went so far as to say he thought Trump had broken the law (which one?) but added, “It’s not like they’re going to be able to remove him from office.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/cairs-victimhood-rally-in-harrisburg-falls-flat/

Billed as a “clarion call to reform the draconian and racist American criminal justice system, CAIR-Philadelphia and Emgage held their Fourth Annual Muslim Capitol Day in Harrisburg Pennsylvania on Wednesday, October 30th. But the event suffered from low attendance, a disjointed message, and confused political demands.

CAIR’s plan for the advocacy day called for bringing over 100 participants from both Muslim and non-Muslim communities (including Jews and Christians), to visit offices of elected state senators and legislators.

Considerably less than 100 participants were visible at the capitol’s rotunda to hear the speeches by State Senators Sharif Street and Anthony Williams, Reps. Joanna McClinton and Movita Johnson Harrell, PA Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, and Mohan Seshadri, Executive Director of Gov. Tom Wolf’s Advisory Commission on Asian Pacific-American Affairs. And there were no speakers representing the Jewish or Christian communities despite what the promotions claimed.

Most Pennsylvania lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, were seemingly unaware of CAIR’s presence in Harrisburg that day, and few scheduled meetings with the group. Several legislators said they were already aware of CAIR’s background, in part thanks to a boycott campaign organized by the Middle East Forum’s Islamists In Politics Project, which arranged over 130 Pennsylvania constituents to write letters to their legislators urging them to avoid meeting with the group. CAIR is known for its extensive ties to Islamist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates.

The first speaker at the rotunda rally, CAIR representative Salima Suswell, used the opportunity to highlight an alleged case of Islamophobia involving a high school athlete disqualified from a track meet while wearing a hijab.  Suswell spoke in support of the young athlete. Noor Alexandra Abukaram claims that not allowing her to wear her hijab was an affront against all Muslims.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/federal-judge-rules-alabama-born-isis-bride-not-an-american-citizen-u-s-not-required-to-repatriate-her/

A federal judge ruled Thursday that 25-year-old Hoda Muthana, who lived in Alabama but left the U.S. in 2014 to join ISIS, is not an American citizen and therefore the country is not required to repatriate her.

Muthana is the daughter of Yemen’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Ahmed Ali Muthana. Judge Reggie Walton ruled that because Hoda was born while Ahmed Ali still had diplomatic status, Hoda could not be considered a U.S. citizen. Ahmed Ali has since become a naturalized citizen.

In addition, Walton ruled that Ahmed Ali cannot provide financial aid to his daughter, who escaped from ISIS to a Kurdish refugee camp in 2018. Hoda Muthana has a son, Adam, who was born in ISIS territory.

U.S. law prevents the children of foreign diplomats from receiving American citizenship by birthright. Lawyers for Muthana’s family had claimed Ahmed Ali’s diplomatic status expired two months before Hoda’s birth in New Jersey, a claim apparently rejected by Judge Walton.

Muthana had previously said in an interview that she wished to return to the U.S.

“I want my son to be around my family, I want to go to school, I want to have a job and I want to have my own car,” she said in an interview with NBC.

The woman had previously called on jihadists in the U.S. to “go on drivebys, and spill all of their blood.”

“Anyone that believes in God believes that everyone deserves a second chance, no matter how harmful their sins were,” Muthana told NBC.

President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have previously expressed opposition to authorizing Muthana’s return.

“I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!” Trump wrote on Twitter in February of this year.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/elise-stefanik-stood-out-on-day-one-of-the-impeachment-hearings/

“This was the first case that the U.S., U.K., and Ukraine investigators worked on was against the owner of Burisma?” Stefanik asked.

“That’s correct,” Kent responded.

Stefanik further noted that in 2016, Kent was “so concerned about corruption questions related to Burisma,” he asked USAID not to cosponsor an essay contest with the gas company, and that he was also concerned about the “appearance of conflict of interest” created by Hunter Biden’s serving on the board of Burisma. Both points were, again, correct.

Stefanik wisely used her time to make the case that general concern about corruption at Burisma could be a legitimate issue that was in the national interest. But her line of questioning was not by any means an airtight defense against the charge that President Trump was acting in his personal political interest when he asked Ukraine’s president to “look into” Hunter Biden and Burisma and when he ordered military aid withheld in an alleged effort to pressure Ukraine to publicly announce such an investigation. Trump did not broadly focus on fighting corruption in Ukraine: He singled out only the company connected to Joe Biden’s son, and he involved his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to pressure Ukraine to investigate it.

Kent himself testified Wednesday that Giuliani was not promoting U.S. interests in Ukraine. “I believe he was looking to dig up political dirt against a potential rival in an upcoming election cycle,” Kent said, pointing out that anti-corruption efforts could have been pursued through proper diplomatic channels, and that Giuliani was not working for the government. Kent also debunked the notion that Joe Biden might have helped Burisma when he was involved in pushing for the firing of Ukraine’s prosecutor general as vice president. Biden had requested the removal of “a corrupt prosecutor general . . . who had undermined a system of criminal investigation that we built with American money to build corruption cases,” Kent said. “I did not witness any efforts by any U.S. official to shield Burisma from scrutiny. In fact, I and other U.S. officials consistently advocated reinstituting a scuttled investigation of [Mykola] Zlochevsky, Burisma’s founder, as well as holding the corrupt prosecutors who closed the case to account.”

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/14/trump-administration-vows-to-fight-eu-decision-to-put-warning-labels-on-jewish-products/

As Israel faces repeated rocket fire from Islamic jihadists, the EU engages in its own battle to delegitimize the Jewish state in its latest ruling condoning discriminatory labeling practices for Jewish goods produced in contested areas of Israel.

Yesterday, the EU’s Court of Justice (ECJ), the highest court in the EU, ruled that Jewish products made in contested areas of Israel must bear consumer warning labels. Prior to the ruling, U.S. lawmakers in Congress fired warning shots, cautioning the EU that such a move would prompt the enforcement of American anti-boycott laws, thus endangering the EU’s trade with the United States.

Now, according to reporting by Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon, the Trump administration is ready to go to battle over the ruling. Currently, the United States is the EU’s largest trading partner.

The origins of the legal dispute stretch back several years to when the EU issued a mandate in 2015 declaring that products produced in the West Bank and Golan Heights be labeled as coming from an Israeli settlement, facially for the purpose of promoting “consumer protection,” although it’s unclear if that is actually achieved here. In late 2016, France became the first EU member state to attempt to enforce the mandate, resulting in the Israeli winery Psagot filing a lawsuit claiming that such a mandate violated the EU’s anti-discrimination laws.

https://spectator.us/day-one-impeachment-hearings/

The first day of public impeachment hearings was good for Republicans and mediocre, at best, for Democrats. That’s far short of what Democrats need — and they know it. To remove a president, they need clear evidence of serious malfeasance, enough to convince average voters and put pressure on Republicans on Capitol Hill. They did not make a strong start.

Hearsay testimony about diplomatic process is not enough, and that’s all they heard on Day One. Trump’s use of irregular back channels may be irritating to career diplomats; it may be a confusing, incoherent way to run foreign policy; but it is perfectly legal. It’s also too deep in the minutiae of public policy to engage the general public. Persuading them is essential if Democrats are to overturn a popular election and remove a president the voters freely chose.

That does not mean President Trump’s call to Ukraine’s President Zelensky was ‘perfect’ as Trump calls it. It was wrong to mention Joe Biden or Hunter Biden and wrong to have delayed the lethal aid Congress voted to give Ukraine.

But ‘wrong’ does not mean impeachable. The Trump phone call falls short of impeachment for three reasons:

The aid was never explicitly tied to a clear-cut demand in the Trump-Zelensky call;
Zelensky never did what Trump hoped for; indeed President Zelensky probably did not know about the delay in aid disbursements until several weeks after the phone call; and
Ukraine actually received all the aid after a brief delay, even though they did not act on Trump’s request.

These limitations are crucial problems for the Democrats’ case. Unless Chairman Adam Schiff and his allies of the House Intelligence Committee can shake that story, they will find it impossible to sell the episode as a ‘high crime and misdemeanor,’ bribery or treason. They need a lot more hard evidence that implicates the president directly in serious crimes. Without it, they cannot convince the public or wavering Republican office holders. It doesn’t help that the public already worries that the House process is fundamentally unfair and determined to reach a preordained outcome. Impeachment may be a political process, not a legal one, but the public demands fairness.

Trump supporters say he simply wanted an investigation of corruption in a country where it is pandemic. If that were all he sought, there would be no problem. The US has a long-standing goal of stopping corruption, and it has a specific interest in good governance where it provides aid money. The problem is that Trump wanted more. He mentioned the Biden family ties to an (allegedly) corrupt company, Burisma, in a pervasively corrupt sector, energy. He wanted those ties investigated. Since Joe Biden is a 2020 candidate, the President’s request asks a foreign government to involve itself, at least indirectly, in US politics.

That request is inappropriate, even if Hunter Biden was involved with a corrupt company and gave them political cover. It’s inappropriate, even if Vice President Biden demanded the Ukrainians fire a prosecutor who was closing in on Burisma and possibly on Hunter Biden himself. The Ukrainians should investigate that alleged corruption, but not because the US president requests it in connection with a political opponent.