RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-brennan/

FROM THE ULTRA LEFT MAGAZINE “THE NATION”

The Justice Department’s inquiry into the origins of Russiagate has now expanded into a criminal matter, raising alarm bells among intelligence officials, Democratic leaders, and media pundits who promoted the theory of a Trump-Russia conspiracy.

There is no doubt that Donald Trump would like to exact political revenge on those behind the Russia probe, and it is fair to be skeptical of his Department of Justice. But it would be a mistake to reflexively dismiss the inquiry, which is led by US Attorney John Durham and overseen by Attorney General William Barr. The public deserves an accounting of what occurred. And given the intrusion of the nation’s intelligence’s services into domestic politics, a failure to learn lessons and enact safeguards could leave future candidates, especially on the left, vulnerable to similar investigations.

For more than two years, the FBI investigated a presidential campaign and then sitting president as a conspirator or agent of Russia. The story engulfed US media and political energy and had major consequences on domestic US politics and foreign relations. The probe found not only no Trump-Russia conspiracy, but barely even any contact between the two sides suspected of conspiring. Carrying a Russian passport (as the Russians in the Trump Tower meeting did), or falsely suggesting in an e-mail that you are acting at the Kremlin’s behest (as the British music publicist who arranged that meeting did), does not mean that you are actually working with the Russian government. Mueller, ultimately, showed no evidence that they—or any other suspected Kremlin intermediary—were Kremlin intermediaries. This helps explain why, as the report found, Kremlin officials trying to reach out to the Trump campaign after its election victory “appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect.”

https://jewishjournal.com/analysis/306066/three-jews-two-links-one-lesson/

On Nov. 10, Norman Podhoretz, the legendary editor of Commentary magazine, will receive the Herzl Prize from philanthropic and educational institution Tikvah. It is the latest in a long line of honors for Podhoretz, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom President George W. Bush awarded him in 2004. Now age 89, Podhoretz is the author of a dozen path-breaking books and countless essays on politics, literature, culture and religion.

Bush said: “Podhoretz ranks among the most prominent American editors of the 20th century. … Never a man to tailor his opinions to please others, [he] has always written and spoken with directness and honesty. Sometimes speaking the truth has carried a cost. Yet, over the years, he has only gained in stature among his fellow writers and thinkers. …[We] pay tribute to this fierce intellectual man and his fine writing and his great love for our country.”

Podhoretz takes his place among the Jews who, over the past century, have contributed immeasurably to both Zionism and Americanism, including Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis during World War I and renowned writer Ben Hecht during World War II.

When we examine their three lives together, we see they have two fascinating links, which provide a single, important lesson for our time. 

Brandeis was the first Jewish justice, whom Woodrow Wilson nominated in 1916. It was a controversial nomination because for the first time in its history, the Senate held hearings on a nominee, which lasted four months. Brandeis was confirmed only after a contentious process involving 43 witnesses. He served 23 years. 

He was born in Kentucky in 1856 to Jewish immigrants from Prague, who gave him no Jewish education. He never attended services, never observed Jewish holidays, and never made significant contributions to Jewish organizations before he turned 57. Then, in 1914, he agreed to head the American Zionist movement.

“Brandeis invigorated the American Zionist movement by articulating the connection between Zionism and American ideals.”

It was a time when most American Jews considered Zionism an unrealistic, possibly unpatriotic, European ideology. Out of 1.5 million Jews in the United States at the time, only 15,000 were members of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). As Tikvah senior director Jonathan Silver has written, Americans “saw themselves as having fled oppression, crossed the wilderness, and arrived in a new promised land.” American Jews considered themselves not in exile, but at home in a new place.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/28/baghdadi-

Though not yet manifest, the unexpected, astounding killing of ISIS “commander of the faithful” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the weekend by Delta Force, with Rangers and other Army support, supercedes the 2011 takeout of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in its long-term magnitude.

In essence, ISIS is a sensationalist, media-savvy metastasis of Bin Laden’s al-Qaida, which conducted the 2001 attacks, but ISIS’ anti-American terrorism is of a different brand. Brookings Institution Mideast analyst Daniel Byman testified to Congress that “the primary target of the Islamic State has [unlike al-Qaida] not been the United States, but rather ‘apostate’ regimes in the Arab world” – but try telling the families of beheaded Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Kassig that America, and its values and position in the world, are not squarely in ISIS’ sights.

As Radio France Internationale journalist David Thomson described it in 2017, “For ISIS supporters, Baghdadi is doing something concrete, controls territory, defies the entire world, unlike the old scholars of al-Qaida who appear behind the times.” As the trove of materials accompanying Baghdadi, retrieved by U.S. forces, are perused in the weeks ahead, the public will know in detail the importance of his leadership of the dislodged terrorist caliphate, and will learn of planned ISIS plots.

The carrying out of President Donald Trump’s order to eliminate Baghdadi will be paired with another big net minus for Democrats: U.S. attorney for Connecticut John Durham’s Russian election influence probe shifting into a criminal investigation. While some speculate that the criminal dimension may be in regard to peripheral matters, the speed with which Durham has come to this point, having only begun his work less than six months ago, strongly suggests otherwise. As does Democrats immediately – and groundlessly – accusing Attorney General William Barr of meddling in Durham’s probe. Highly unlikely since Durham has a Boy Scout-like reputation of integrity and thoroughness.

If I had to distill American strategic defeat and loss of purpose in the Middle East into a single image, it would be the Iraqi-Jordanian border post in June 2014. As I wrote in The [Un]documented Mark Steyn:

Eleven years ago, a few weeks after the fall of Saddam, on little more than a whim, I rented a beat-up Nissan and, without telling the car-hire bloke, drove from Amman through the eastern Jordanian desert, across the Iraqi border, and into the Sunni Triangle. I could not easily make the same journey today, but for a brief period in the spring of 2003 we were ‘the strong horse’ and even a dainty little media gelding such as myself was accorded a measure of respect by the natives. The frontier is a line in the sand drawn by a British colonial civil servant and on either side it’s empty country. From the Trebil border post, you have to drive through ninety miles of nothing to get to Iraq’s westernmost town, Rutba – in saner times an old refueling stop for Imperial Airways flights from Britain to India. Fewer of Her Majesty’s subjects swing by these days. I had a bite to eat at a café whose patron had a trilby pushed back on his head Sinatra-style and was very pleased to see me. (Rutba was the first stop on a motoring tour that took me through Ramadi and Fallujah and up to Tikrit and various other towns.)

In those days, the Iraqi side of the Trebil border was manned by US troops. So an ‘immigration official’ from the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment glanced at my Canadian passport, and said, ‘Welcome to Free Iraq.” We exchanged a few pleasantries, and he waved me through. A lot less cumbersome than landing at JFK. I remember there was a banner with a big oval hole in it, where I assumed Saddam’s face had once been. And as I drove away I remember wondering what that hole would be filled with.

Well, now we know. That same border post today is manned by head-hacking jihadists from the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’.

https://quadrant.org.au/

It was June  17, 2017, and the cream of Canberra journalism was clotted at the National Press Club to have preconceptions and prejudices about the Trump administration burnished by James Clapper (above), who was in town to pick up some quick pocket change for a FIFO gig at ANU. With the Russiagate hoax in full swing, the hacks  were keen to absorb the alleged insights of the man who served as Barack Obama’s national security adviser and, as he put it, spoke with the authority of an operative with “fifty-plus years in the intel business”.

Things were crook in Washington, Clapper told his audience, what with this Trump creature upsetting apple carts and doing the Russians’ bidding. That was when Mark Kenny of what was then the Fairfax press wondered what would become of America and Australian-US relations with such a rogue in the White House. Clapper replied:

…Watergate pales really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting now.

I will add at least this American isn’t walking away, put it that way. I will just speak for myself.

Two years on, the Mueller probe having found nothing and with US federal investigators now looking into the origins and perpetrators of the Russiagate hoax which inspired it, Clapper is still speaking for himself, albeit in a somewhat shaken and lost-for-words manner.

Appearing on CNN mere minutes after the news broke that probers are poised to drag him and others into a criminal investigation, with the distinct possibility of grand jury appearances, perjury risks and charges being laid, the confident Clapper seen in Canberra was not in evidence.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/25/cowardly-republicans-showcase-disloyalty-to-voters/

Forget Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) jetted off this week to the Middle East to address yet another new theory she says justifies President Trump’s ouster: he dared to withdraw American forces from our undeclared war in Syria. Clearly, this is an impeachable offense! Cowardly Republicans and NeverTrumpers cautiously stuck their wet fingers into the political winds to determine whether it’s time, yet again, to swell up like windsocks full of righteous hot air.

The anti-withdrawal winds blow fiercely within the putrid D.C. swamp. But in the rest of the country that pays for our foreign wars in blood and treasure, Americans want fewer (not more) of these Middle East crusades. “Even Republicans have joined the bipartisan condemnation,” MSNBC, CNN, and now even Fox News hosts cluck as turncoats showcase their disloyalty to the American voter.

House Republicans joined their Democratic counterparts to vote 354-60 to condemn the president. The only surprise is that there are still 60 members of the House willing to represent voters’ skepticism of endless wars. One of those exceptions in the Senate, Rand Paul (R-Ky.), prevented the upper chamber of Congress from adopting the House’s illogical resolution.

The concern isn’t simply the Kurds, who aided the U.S. effort to crush ISIS in Syria. Turkey, which is a NATO ally, currently hosts around 3.6 million Syrian refugees who fled their country’s civil war. “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” the New York Times reports, “is pushing a radical solution—resettling refugees in a swath of Syrian territory controlled by the United States and its Kurdish allies. If that does not happen, he is threatening to send a flood of Syrian migrants to Europe.” Stabilizing the home country of refugees to allow for their safe return? What a diabolical plan! Thank heavens our brave political class put a stop to it. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-impeachment-subverts-the-constitution-11572040762

Mr. Rivkin and Ms. Foley practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington. He served at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations. She is a professor of constitutional law at Florida International University College of Law.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed committees investigating President Trump to “proceed under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry,” but the House has never authorized such an inquiry. Democrats have been seeking to impeach Mr. Trump since the party took control of the House, though it isn’t clear for what offense. Lawmakers and commentators have suggested various possibilities, but none amount to an impeachable offense. The effort is akin to a constitutionally proscribed bill of attainder—a legislative effort to punish a disfavored person. The Senate should treat it accordingly.

The impeachment power is quasi-judicial and differs fundamentally from Congress’s legislative authority. The Constitution assigns “the sole power of impeachment” to the House—the full chamber, which acts by majority vote, not by a press conference called by the Speaker. Once the House begins an impeachment inquiry, it may refer the matter to a committee to gather evidence with the aid of subpoenas. Such a process ensures the House’s political accountability, which is the key check on the use of impeachment power.

The House has followed this process every time it has tried to impeach a president. Andrew Johnson’s 1868 impeachment was predicated on formal House authorization, which passed 126-47. In 1974 the Judiciary Committee determined it needed authorization from the full House to begin an inquiry into Richard Nixon’s impeachment, which came by a 410-4 vote. The House followed the same procedure with Bill Clinton in 1998, approving a resolution 258-176, after receiving independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s report.

Mrs. Pelosi discarded this process in favor of a Trump-specific procedure without precedent in Anglo-American law. Rep. Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee and several other panels are questioning witnesses in secret. Mr. Schiff has defended this process by likening it to a grand jury considering whether to hand up an indictment. But while grand-jury secrecy is mandatory, House Democrats are selectively leaking information to the media, and House Republicans, who are part of the jury, are being denied subpoena authority and full access to transcripts of testimony and even impeachment-related committee documents. No grand jury has a second class of jurors excluded from full participation. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

This essay was inspired by a persistent, evolutionary change in American attitudes toward Socialism and Capitalism. A Roper/Fortune Survey this past May found 43% of Americans believe Socialism would be good for the Country – a frightening conclusion for anyone who understands history. The second inspiration came from a John Steel Gordon op-ed written for the October 19-20, 2019 edition of the Wall Street Journal, “How Steam and Chips Remade the World,” in which he wrote of the world-changing effects of James Watt’s perfection of the steam engine in 1769 and the development of the Microprocessor in 1971 by Ted Hoff, a young scientist at Intel. His essay is testament to the benefits of free-market capitalism.

The basic principle of profits seems to be misunderstood by legions of young people, as well as veterans of the political scene who speak in grandiloquent terms of equality, while trying to secure for themselves positions of personal power. Their motives are selfish, not altruistic. Without profits, no company stakeholder is satisfied – not workers, customers, community, taxing authorities or shareholders, Bankrupt businesses help no one, other than a few bankruptcy lawyers.

Mr. Gordon’s words struck home, in part because with age comes reflection of things as they once were and as they now are, and of what the future holds – of how much better are our lives than those of our ancestors. My grandparents saw changes their parents could not have envisioned – the automobile, elevators, flight, radio, the automated assembly line, the modern flush toilet, television, the atomic bomb, polio vaccine, interstate highways. My parents saw changes their parents could never have envisioned – commercial jet travel, ATMs, personal computers, CT Scans and MRI machines, artificial hearts. And I have seen changes my parents never saw – the internet, self-driving cars, smart phones, robotic surgeries, social media, laser eye surgery. My point is not to list all technological advances, but to show how much and how exciting and how productive change has been in the past two hundred years. I wonder as to what changes my children and grandchildren will see that I shall not – advantages we cannot even envision. All of these improvements to our lives are a consequence of individuals and private businesses seeking profits. Now I worry that this dynamism will be brought to an end by those who advocate for the federalization of company charters and for a greater role of government in our lives, for example the concept of a government mandated emphasis on “stakeholders,” not shareholders. Keep in mind as well, every American worker who has a retirement plan has a stake in the private ownership of public companies. Do we really want to destroy the capital markets?

https://www.dailywire.com/news/1998-remarks-from-biden-surface-after-he-attacks-trumps-lynching-remarks?utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=102319-news&utm_campaign=position3

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden was quick to attack President Donald Trump on Tuesday after Trump referred to impeachment as a “lynching,” which is the same term that Biden used in 1998 to describe the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton.

“So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights,” Trump tweeted. “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!”

Biden responded: “Impeachment is not ‘lynching,’ it is part of our Constitution. Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable.”

In an appearance on CNN in October 1998, however, Biden referred to the Clinton impeachment as a “partisan lynching,” saying:

Even if the President should be impeached, history is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching or whether or not it was something that in fact met the standard, the very high bar, that was set by the founders as to what constituted an impeachable offense.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/opinion/technology-shut-off.html?rref=collecti
24 Hours Without My Phone I recommend a tech shabbat. By David Leonhardt

In 2008, Tiffany Shlain’s father, Leonard, was diagnosed with brain cancer, and she began to change her use of technology when the two of them were together. “Some days he would have only one good hour,” she later wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “and I didn’t want to be distracted when I was with him, so I’d turn off my cellphone.”

Eventually, Shlain, a filmmaker, extended the idea into a full day without screen use. She called it a tech shabbat — after the Jewish day of rest — and she has written several articles and a recent book, called “24/6,” about the idea.

“The digital revolution has blurred the lines between time on and time off, and time off is disappearing,” she wrote in The Boston Globe. “As for our leisure time, we’ve created a culture in which we’re still ‘working’ while we play: needing to photograph every moment, then crafting witty posts of our ‘fun, relaxing activities’ on Instagram, then obsessively checking responses. We can barely catch our breath in the tsunami of personal and work digital input, which results in us not being truly present for any of it.”

This weekend, I gave Shlain’s idea a try — and I highly recommend it. My family and I turned off our cellphones and laptops on Friday night and didn’t turn them back on until Sunday morning. We made an exception for television: The baseball playoffs are going on, and watching a game as a family feels different from staring at an individual phone screen.