RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/what_trump_is_guilty_of.html

Donald Trump, the President of the United States, behaved like any innocent man would behave having been framed by fabricated propaganda prepared by foreign intelligence agents, and paid for by his political enemies.

He behaved like any innocent man might when prosecutors hounding him were enabled and appointed by his political enemies. He behaved like any innocent man might when he realized that his prosecutors included the chief counsel of the Clinton Family Foundation and Barack Obama’s deputy assistant attorney general and that the chief witness against him was represented by Hillary Clinton’s longstanding lawyer whom the Washington Post called “The Ultimate Clinton Loyalist.”

He acted like any innocent man might who realized that his home, phone lines, offices, and associates were being spied on, wiretapped, surveilled, followed, photographed, and even infiltrated by paid spies and foreign agents sent by his domestic political enemies who deliberately set him and his family up in a sting operation. Meanwhile, the self-same people vehemently denied that the spying took place.

In other words, he acted against the blatant injustice by pushing back against criminal operatives conspiring to frame him.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/mueller-report-special-counsel-investigations/

So much for collusion. The media conversation has now officially moved on from the obsession of the last two years to obstruction of justice.

That’s because the first volume of the voluminous Mueller report, the half devoted to what was supposed to be the underlying crime of a Trump conspiracy with Russia, came up completely empty. It tells us very little that’s new. There’s no particularly sinister information about Carter Page, the bit player the FBI repeatedly told the FISA court was probably a Russian agent. The operators who portrayed themselves as closest to WikiLeaks or Russia were usually braggarts and liars exaggerating their importance. Nothing came of the infamous Trump Tower meeting. Paul Manafort wasn’t at the center of conspiracy between the campaign and Russia, but operating in his greedy self-interest.

The Trump campaign was amateurish and without scruple in exploiting the WikiLeaks disclosures, but we all could have agreed on that long ago, without a years-long special-counsel investigation. Indeed, given how unlikely collusion always was and how far the evidence gathered by Mueller is from showing it, one wonders why the special counsel couldn’t have issued an interim report long ago, dispelling the persistent — and poisonous — idea that Trump was about to be proven a traitor.

The business end of the Mueller report is the second volume, on obstruction. The investigation ended up following the typical pattern of special-counsel probes on a much larger scale — fixating on process crimes even when there is no underlying offense. Only in this case, the target was the president of the United States.

The report implicitly picks an argument with Attorney General William Barr over the question whether a president can obstruct justice in the course of exercising his lawful powers. We are inclined to Barr’s view that he can’t. Regardless, the case against Trump is ambiguous, as even Mueller acknowledges.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/inquisitio-requiescat-in-pace/

The variously dubbed dream team/all stars/hunter-killer/army of Mueller’s lawyers, after 22 months, $30 million, and 400 pages plus of legalese did not find “Russian collusion,” the original reason to be of their investigation. At what early point the team realized that fundamental truth is of importance, but will never be fully disclosed.

Nor did team Mueller find actionable “obstruction” efforts (promiscuous use of executive privilege, firings of Mueller team members, refusal to let high Trump staffers be questioned, etc.) to impede its investigation of a non-crime as lawyers went into every rumored Carter Page, Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump, Jr. etc. cul de sac. In exasperation Mueller leveraged almost anyone peripherally related to the Trump campaign either to indict him on mostly process crimes, or to air their incriminating “Trump said this” versions of private conversations.

And because Mueller felt it necessary to include in his report suggestions of Trump’s mercurial talk, obfuscations, and shenanigans that did not constitute actual crimes as opposed to thought crimes (those falsely accused of a felony have a tendency to become furious and sound off), the question arises that, if Mueller felt it so necessary to include in his report any material he swept up as he vacuumed around, why not at least suggest that the FBI Director and members of DOJ did not honestly inform a FISA court of the true nature of the evidence for their writ — given the centrality of surveilled conversations within the Mueller report?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/targeting-bill-barr-11555714643

Pivoting from their failed Russia-Trump collusion narrative, Democrats and the press corps have discovered a new political villain: William Barr. They claim the Attorney General is misleading the public, but their real goal is to warn Mr. Barr from following through on his promise to investigate abuses by the FBI and Obama Administration officials.

The rap is that Mr. Barr didn’t tell the truth about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report when he summarized its conclusions in late March. “It’s a disgrace to see an Attorney General acting as if he’s the personal attorney and publicist for the President of United States,” tweeted presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, in a typical broadside.

Mr. Barr was trying to satisfy the Democratic demand to see the report as soon as possible while he vetted the details for material that had to be redacted for sound legal and intelligence reasons. His four-page summary fairly characterized its conclusions on collusion and obstruction of justice while promising the full report soon. He even quoted Mr. Mueller’s line that the report “does not exonerate” Mr. Trump. A summary couldn’t contain the details that Mr. Mueller took 488 pages to describe, and now those details are public warts and all.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Backlash is defined as a strong and adverse reaction or protest by a large number of people, especially to social or political developments. What we saw in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in late 2010 and going into the spring of 2011 and what we see today in Sudan and Algiers are backlashes against authoritarian governments. History does not proceed in straight lines. It is replete with consequential setbacks. Sometimes they are for the better – the English Civil War of 1642, the American Revolution in 1775, the world-wide women’s suffrage movement that began in the 19th Century, and the U.S. Civil Rights movement that ran through the 1950s and ‘60s. Sometimes they are for the worse, like the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, following the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. And sometimes the verdict is unclear, like Brexit. In 2016, it was a backlash against elitism and the establishment that catapulted Mr. Trump into the White House.

In any society there will always be groups that rise up to make a point, highlight a grievance, or correct a wrong. Generally, they are without (or with limited) violence. They manifest a dynamic society and, while temporarily disruptive, they often change things for the better. We think of women’s liberation in the 1960s and the more recent gay-rights movement, positive developments that reflected changing mores. Other backlashes are political, like Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, with the intent to garner power rather than righting a social or cultural wrong. It is how we move forward. They are not unlike creative destruction in economics, a term used by Joseph Schumpeter to describe innovations in manufacturing.

Now, it is the continued enmity toward Mr. Trump that is causing Democrats to push beyond the boundaries of decency and common sense, even disrespecting those non-Trumpians whose conservative ideas and opinions differ from their own. Consider a few non-issue issues that are claimed vital to leftist elites, but are of little concern to middle class voters:

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/trump-and-the-crisis-of-separated-powers/90653/

The denouement of the Special Counsel investigation — unfolding on the Imax of the Internet — illuminates nothing so much as the fact that our republic is in a crisis of separated powers. It shows that a special counsel can come close to destroying a presidency even in cases where, as now seems clear in respect of President Trump, there was neither collusion with a foreign power nor obstruction of justice.

This is what happens when our press, politicians, and prosecutors ignore the constitutional principle of separated powers and press for or set up either an independent or special prosecutor. Such a blunder destroyed Richard Nixon’s presidency, damaged President Reagan’s, nearly kneecapped President George H.W. Bush’s, and almost destroyed Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Yet rarely has the crisis of separated powers been thrown into such sharp relief as in the case of Mr. Trump. Feature the press conference at which Attorney General Barr presented Robert Mueller’s report. The moment came as Mr. Barr was being questioned in respect of Mr. Mueller’s decision neither to prosecute nor to exonerate the President in respect of obstruction of justice. Mr. Mueller left it to Mr. Barr.

https://quadrant.org.au/

When Judge Salvatore Vasta  ruled on Peter Ridd’s case against James Cook University, he introduced his 76-page decision with a few thoughts on the key element in any “quest for truth”:

… Intellectual freedom is also known as academic freedom. It is a concept that underpins universities and institutions devoted to higher learning. Obviously such institutions must have administrators that care for the governance and proper direction of the institution. However, the mission of these institutions must undoubtedly be the search for knowledge which leads to a quest for truth. In reality, intellectual freedom is the cornerstone of this core mission of all institutions of higher learning.

This is so because it allows ideas to conflict with each other; to battle and test each other. It is within this “battle” that the strengths and weaknesses of ideas are found out. In this process, there comes “learning”. And with learning comes discovery.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/victor_davis_hanson_weighs_in_on_the_notre_dame_cathedral_fire_brilliantly.html

Victor Davis Hanson is a well known conservative historian, academic, and author. He contributes commentaries prolifically on the current political scene to a variety of publications. He is a frequent guest commentator on the Fox News Channel. When Dr. Hanson speaks, I listen.

On Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle on Tuesday, April 16, Hanson appeared live from his home in California for a three-minute Q and A on the burning of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral. When a transcript of the program appeared online on Wednesday, I read his comments, which were as impressive as when I first heard them.

His comments totaled 362 words. I can’t think of anyone who can fit more substance and meaning into so few words.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Hundreds marched through the streets of Paris today to ask for the intercession of Notre Dame, Our Lady. The cathedral named in her honor was heavily damaged by fire yesterday, but it is structurally sound. French President Macron vows it will be rebuilt as donations pour in from around the world. And amid the tragedy at Notre Dame, there is a lesson to be learned.

Joining me now is Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Victor, you say there’s an irony in the history here in the aftermath of this architectural tragedy, tragedy in terms of what we’ve lost in church history. What is the irony?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, HOOVER INSTITUTION: After 800 years, we were the steward of this iconic representation of western civilization, Catholicism, Christendom. And of all the years, 2019, at the height of our sophistication and technology, I’m not blaming the French or anybody, but we were found wanting and we didn’t protect this icon. And we don’t build them anymore.

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/things-that-cant-go-on-forever-simply-dont/

Economist Herbert Stein’s old adage — “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop” — still holds.

Take illegal immigration.

There are currently somewhere from 11 million to 15 million immigrants living in the United States without legal authorization. Last month, nearly 100,000 people were apprehended or turned away while trying to illegally cross the southern border. Some experts suggest that at least that number made it across without arrest. At that rate, the United States would be gaining a fairly large city of undocumented arrivals each month.

Most of the people who enter the United States illegally arrive without fluency in English, a high-school diploma, competitive job skills or money. The majority will require support subsidies, and collectively they will require increased legal and law-enforcement investments.

At some point, American social services will be so taxed that the system will be rendered dysfunctional — as is already occurring in areas of the American Southwest. Or, some regions of America will so resemble the countries undocumented immigrants abandoned that there will be little point in heading north.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273445/reparations-and-weaponization-slavery-bruce-thornton

The Democrats who have announced their candidacy for the presidential primary have all declared their support for paying reparations to the descendants of slaves, after they kissed the ring of notorious race-baiter, tax cheat, and liar Al Sharpton. None has a clue exactly how such a policy would be implemented, and it’s clear their support is nothing more than virtue-signaling and pandering to the racialist left. Nor is it likely such a policy will come to pass.

But this political stunt is still useful for exposing just how dishonest is the left’s use of slavery in our public discourse. Once a universal evil now existing only in the global shadows, slavery has been weaponized by the left and identity politics tribunes in order to attack the West, especially the United States, and caricature both as unique evils responsible for all the world’s ills.

First, this focus on the West ignores the fact that all peoples everywhere kept slaves. Slavery was as unexceptional as the domestication of animals. Nor were Europeans the biggest slave-owners and slave-traders. Eight centuries before the Europeans began importing slaves from Africa, the Islamic Middle East had been exporting or kidnapping slaves––an estimated 17 million Africans, over one-and-a-half times the estimated 10 million purchased by Europeans. Millions were forced-march across the Sahara to coastal ports. The males were brutally castrated––all the genitals, not just the testicles–– to provide eunuchs for harems and service to rulers. Thousands died along the way from their wounds, their bones littering the desert sands. And don’t forget the millions of white Europeans kidnapped and sold into slavery by privateers serving the Muslim Barbary states in North Africa, or the Balkan Christian boys, perhaps as many as one million, taken from their parents, forcibly converted, and made to serve the Ottoman regime as janissaries.