RUTHFULLY YOURS

All 5 Connecticut Representatives to Congress are liberal Democrats as well as the Governor and the two Senators ….rsk

Not satisfied in having two of the worst U.S. senators in Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, Connecticut has twice elected (via the timely appearance of fell-off-a-truck ballots in Bridgeport) the nation’s worst governor, Dannel Malloy, who has taken a small state of considerable wealth, natural beauty and historic inventiveness and bankrupted it. Now, having wrecked a state that, like California, one would have thought was unwreckable, the chief Nut of the Nutmeg State has decided to make it harder for the law-abiding to exercise a constitutional right:

Gun rights supporters and state Republican lawmakers are fighting huge gun permit fee increases proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, saying they would price many people out of being able to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The Democratic governor wants to quadruple the five-year renewal fee for pistol permits from $70 to $300 as part of his plan to offset a budget deficit estimated at $1.7 billion in the next fiscal year. For people getting their first five-year pistol permits, the fees would increase from $140 to $370, which includes a $70 charge collected by cities and towns. The proposed fees would be among the highest in the country.

Fees for background checks needed to obtain pistol permits also would increase, from $50 to $75. Malloy’s pistol permit and background check fee plan would raise nearly $12 million a year in additional revenue. The National Rifle Association called Malloy’s proposal “outrageous.”

Well, of course it is. It’s also very unlikely unconstitutional, as we’ll no doubt learn once Judge Gorsuch becomes Justice Gorsuch. To hinder the free exercise of a constitutional right is to, in effect, deny that right, and by forcing legal gun owners in Connecticut to help pay for Malloy and the Democrats’ binge years of out of control spending on favored constituencies is exactly the kind of politics that convinced the nation to vote for President Trump last fall.

His voting record is standard Dem/liberal on Cuba, Israel, Voter ID,…but this may be encouraging…rsk
Smart Democrats recognize that their party has deep problems that won’t be solved by the Trump-hatred that is the motivating power of its base. They see that the party has lost touch with rural areas, and takes for granted support levels of 90% among blacks, who are expected to turn out and vote at rates that equal or exceed whites.

What is unusual is a smart Democrat having the guts to speak these truths these truths openly and on the record.

Conservatives need to pay attention to Representative Emanuel Cleaver, former Mayor of Kansas City, former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, and in his 12th year representing Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes parts of Kansas City and also some rural areas. A conservative friend who knows Rep. Cleaver tells me that he is someone well worth listening to, a reasonable man who can be dealt with on an honest basis.

You can gauge Rep. Cleaver’s independence and courage by noticing that he openly proclaimed his intent to attend the inauguration of President Trump and suffered hate phone calls for his position that did not stop him.

Interviewed yesterday on MSNBC, he laid out a devastating critique of his party. He states that the black vote cannot be taken for granted.

President Trump needs to recognize Rep. CleAver as a potential ally in his quest to lift up urban America.

Murder rates in four of the nation’s big cities have returned to levels not seen since the 1990s, an alarming surge that police officials are struggling to slow even as crime nationally is near historic lows.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of homicide data since 1985 for the 35 largest cities shows that four—Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee and Memphis, Tenn.—have in the past two years approached or exceeded the records set a quarter-century ago, when cities across the country were plagued by gang wars and a booming crack trade.

Twenty-seven of the country’s 35 largest cities saw per capita homicide rates rise since 2014, though most are still relatively low compared with 1990s levels, the data show. Meantime, New York and Los Angeles, the two biggest cities, are experiencing long-term drops in murders.

Murders in Chicago last year rose to their highest rate since 1996, with 27.8 homicides for every 100,000 residents, based on police and the latest census data. Memphis equaled its highest rate last year in a Federal Bureau of Investigation database that goes back to 1985, at 32 murders per 100,000 residents.

The pace has continued in some of these places in the first seven weeks this year, with 47 people killed in Baltimore, putting the city on track for one of the highest annual rates since at least 1970.

In Chicago, there were 330 shootings so far as of Friday, compared with 324 over the same period last year. And in Milwaukee, 17 people have been killed, compared with nine at this point last year

Three young children in recent days were fatally shot in Chicago. “This violence offends all of our sensibilities,” said Kenneth Johnson, commander of the city’s Englewood police district. “We all have to work together…we all have to have some skin in this fight.”

As early as Tuesday, the Education Department may rescind the Obama Administration’s Title IX “guidance” on transgender restrooms. A federal judge blocked the policy last August, but that won’t mute the outcry among those who want the feds to dictate cultural norms nationwide.

Last May the Obama Administration issued a “Dear Colleague” letter asserting that a “school must treat the student consistent with the student’s gender identity” when it comes to transgender access to restrooms. School districts and colleges that didn’t comply risked being sued and losing federal funds.

Recall that in 2015 the Justice Department joined a lawsuit by Gavin Grimm, a transgender high-school student in Virginia, who wanted to use the boys’ bathroom. This contravened Gloucester County school district policy. While “students with gender identity issues” were allowed to use private bathrooms, the Obama Administration wasn’t satisfied.

A federal judge dismissed Mr. Grimm’s lawsuit but was overruled by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Gloucester County school board appealed but the Obama Administration then issued its “Dear Colleague” letter. Thirteen states sued to block enforcement on grounds that the restroom edict stretched the law and the Administration ducked a formal rule-making. Title IX rules require that schools provide restrooms that are comparable for both sexes, but the law says nothing about gender identity.

In August federal Judge Reed O’Connor issued a nationwide injunction. He said the guidance contradicted “the existing legislative and regulatory texts” and “bypassed the notice and comment process required” by the Administrative Procedure Act.

The judge also scored the Administration for not allowing a “safe harbor in providing transgender students individual-user facilities as an alternative accommodation.” Further, the Obama DOJ has not “offered evidence that Plaintiffs are not accommodating students who request an alternative arrangement.”

Transgender students deserve respect, but restroom policy should be determined by localities, not federal diktat. Public mores are changing, and many universities provide accommodations similar to those required in the “Dear Colleague.” The guidance has been enjoined for six months, so rescinding it will do no harm and would let the Education Department focus on higher priorities than serving as national bathroom monitors. It’s worth keeping in mind that public distaste for this kind of cultural imperialism helped Donald Trump win.

President Donald Trump chose an active-duty Army general as his new national security adviser on Monday, bringing one of the U.S. military’s best-known strategists into the White House and adding to his team another warrior-scholar in the mold of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, whom Mr. Trump called “a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience,” accepted the post, making him the first active-duty U.S. military officer to take the job since Colin Powell and John Poindexter held it under President Ronald Reagan.

“He is highly respected by everyone in the military, and we’re very honored to have him,” Mr. Trump said, with Gen. McMaster and acting National Security Adviser Keith Kellogg by his side.

Mr. Trump said Mr. Kellogg, a retired three-star Army general who was under consideration for the top job, would resume his role as chief of staff to the National Security Council. He made the announcement from his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, where he interviewed at least four candidates for the job over the weekend, including Gen. McMaster and Mr. Kellogg.

The decision fills a top White House position one week after Mr. Trump asked his first national security adviser, Mike Flynn, to resign for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Mr. Trump said Mr. Pence had a hand in choosing Gen. McMaster. Mr. Flynn hasn’t commented on his departure since his Feb. 13 resignation letter, in which he said he inadvertently gave colleagues “incomplete” information.
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster

Age: 54
Most recent post: Director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, Fort Eustis, Va.
Education: U.S. Military Academy, 1984
Experience: Commanded a tank troop in the 1991 Gulf War; in the second Iraq war served as a counterinsurgency expert and senior adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, then-commander of U.S. forces in Iraq

Gen. McMaster steps in to lead a National Security Council that has largely been in disarray, with many career staffers uncertain about their roles and concerned about a lack of input into the policy-making process on a host of issues, according to administration officials.

The anxiety was stoked in recent days after an NSC staffer who was brought in by the Trump administration was dismissed after he criticized Mr. Trump in a private discussion at a Washington, D.C., think tank. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Sunday anyone who doesn’t support Mr. Trump’s agenda “shouldn’t be part of the administration.”

The promiscuous release of classified information that preceded and accompanied the resignation of Mike Flynn as national security adviser makes it almost quaint to recall a time when the World War II slogan “loose lips sink ships” was taken seriously.

Much has happened to erode standards regarding national secrets. Oddly, those standards seem to have remained intact when it comes to giving sensitive information secretly to an adversary of the United States. The list runs from Benedict Arnold, whose frustrated ambition led him to offer defense plans to the British during the Revolution; to Julius Rosenberg, whose ideology drove him to provide details of atomic-bomb design to the Soviet Union; to Robert Hanssen,Aldrich Ames and John Walker, who betrayed their country for money and disclosed information that cost the lives of American spies. Whether or not their actions met the legal definition of treason (and only Arnold’s did), they generally are regarded as traitors.

Yet when secrets are released to the public under some claim of principle, outrage is muted to say the least. Sometimes, as with the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, the potential damage might have been overstated and the secrecy unwarranted. But in other cases the damage was comparable to the injury inflicted by outright espionage.

Take the New York Times’s disclosure in 2006 that after 9/11 the U.S. government had been monitoring international funds transfers through the Swift system, used by banks world-wide. By tracking cash flows to terrorists, the program had helped frustrate numerous plots and catch their organizers. Its disclosure by the Times was a serious blow to counterterrorism efforts. Although this monitoring program was entirely lawful, the newspaper and its reporters justified the exposure with two assertions: that the public had a right to know about it, and the account was “above all else an interesting yarn,” as one of the reporters put it.

“The right to know” is a trope so often repeated, it may come as a surprise that the Constitution mentions no such right. That omission is hardly surprising given the circumstances in which the Constitution was drafted in 1787—with doors and windows closed even in the stifling summer heat to prevent deliberations from being overheard, and with the delegates sworn to secrecy. Although the Constitution directs the chambers of Congress to keep and publish a journal of their proceedings, it excepts from the publication requirement “such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy.”

The choice to disclose matters that public officials have determined should remain secret is often a singularly antidemocratic act. Public officials are elected—or appointed by those elected—to pursue policies for which they answer to the voters at large. Those who disclose national secrets assert a right to override these democratic outcomes.

There are also criminal statutes that bear on such disclosures. Debate over high-profile missteps—David Petraeus and Hillary Clinton come to mind—has made those laws familiar. They range from the misdemeanor of putting classified information in a nonsecure location, to felony statutes carrying penalties up to 10 years for disclosing classified information about communications activities of the United States, such as surveillance of foreign diplomats.

Some violations of the law are hard to deter, given the asserted motive. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and Edward Snowden claim their systematic disclosures served a higher interest by promoting a necessary debate about the propriety of government conduct and secrecy.

The most recent leaks of confidential information, however, seem to come from decidedly different motives. Consider Mr. Flynn’s situation. It has been disclosed that U.S. intelligence agencies taped conversations last year between Mr. Flynn and the Russian ambassador. After Mr. Flynn falsely denied to the vice president and the FBI that he had discussed sanctions with the ambassador, Sally Yates, then acting attorney general, warned the White House that Mr. Flynn was opening himself up to Russian blackmail. Making all of this public seems designed principally to damage Mr. Flynn. CONTINUE AT SITE