RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-assault-on-liberty-1be5bb65?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

This column is as concerned as anyone about the things our president says when he’s left alone with a live microphone. But the actions Joe Biden has taken to prevent other Americans from saying things represent a much greater danger to our country. Democratic primary voters will soon have the opportunity to punish Mr. Biden for his relentless attack on our essential rights to free speech and let’s hope they seize the day. If it’s acceptable for the federal government to systematically trample on the First Amendment, how can any of our liberties be preserved?

Thank goodness many Americans are still determined to preserve them. In July this column noted the wonderful birthday present to America courtesy of U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana, who issued a July 4 injunction barring the White House and a number of federal agencies from communicating with social-media companies for the purpose of censoring speech by users of their platforms. The wise judge acted in a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana.

Now the Journal’s Jacob Gershman reports:

A federal appeals court ruled the Biden administration’s policing of social-media content during the pandemic likely violated the First Amendment, a decision that bars White House aides and other officials from pressuring online platforms to suppress protected speech.
In a 74-page opinion released late Friday, the New Orleans-based U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said administration officials coerced social-media platforms to censor disfavored views about Covid-19 health policies, the origins of the pandemic and other divisive topics including election security and Hunter Biden…
The decision in many respects affirmed the conclusions of a federal judge who ruled against the government on July 4 and castigated the Biden administration for establishing what he called an “Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’ ”

https://www.thefp.com/p/i-fought-government-censorship-and-won

Last week, a federal appeals court confirmed that science cannot function without free speech. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya reflects on a victory for himself—and every American.

When I was four, my mother took her first flight and first trip out of her native India to the U.S. with me and my younger brother in tow. We were going to meet my father, an electrical engineer and rocket scientist by training, who had won the U.S. visa lottery in 1970. He had moved to New York a year earlier. By the time we arrived he was working at McDonald’s because engineering jobs had dried up during a recession.

Both of my parents—children of the violent partition of India and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)—had grown up in poverty, my mother in a Calcutta slum. They immigrated to this country because they believed in the American dream. That belief led to the success my father ultimately found as an engineer and my mother found running a family daycare business. 

Our family had indeed won the lottery. But coming to America meant something more profound than financial opportunity. 

I remember in 1975 when a high court found that then-prime minister of India Indira Gandhi had interfered unlawfully in an election. The ruling disqualified her from holding office. In response, she declared a state of emergency, suspended democracy, censored the opposition press and government critics, and threw her political opponents in jail. I remember the shock of these events and our family’s collective relief that we were in the U.S., where it was unimaginable that such things could happen.

When I was 19, I became an American citizen. It was one of the happiest days of my young life. The immigration officer gave me a civics test, including a question about the First Amendment. It was an easy test because I knew it in my heart. The American civic religion has the right to free speech as the core of its liturgy. I never imagined that there would come a time when an American government would think of violating this right, or that I would be its target. 

Unfortunately, during the pandemic, the American government violated my free speech rights and those of my scientist colleagues for questioning the federal government’s pandemic policies. 

My parents had taught me that people here could criticize the government, even over matters of life and death, without worry that the government would censor or suppress us. But over the past three years, I have been robbed of that conviction. American government officials, working in concert with big tech companies, have attacked and suppressed my speech and that of my colleagues for criticizing official pandemic policies—criticism that has been proven prescient. 

On Friday, at long last, the Fifth Circuit Court ruled that we were not imagining it—that the Biden administration did indeed strong-arm social media companies into doing its bidding. The court found that the Biden White House, the CDC, the U.S. Surgeon General’s office, and the FBI “engaged in a years-long pressure campaign [on social media outlets] designed to ensure that the censorship aligned with the government’s preferred viewpoints.” 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/22-years-later/

“Only days after 9/11, Norwegian author Gert Nygårdshaug sneered at the idea that there might soon be an attack on ‘Oslo or Rome or Copenhagen.’ He was far from alone in his mockery. Then came Madrid, London, Bali, Beslan, Mumbai….The Western European elite played down, even denied, any connection among these events. Yet year by year the truth has become increasingly clear: though the U.S. was the target on 9/11, the front line of the war with Islamism is Europe.”

Bruce Bawer, “9/11, Five Years Later: A View from Europe,” December 2, 2006

“If we’d had a president who had dared to speak the truth about our enemies and about the ideology (which is to say theology) that motivates them, and had done so eloquently and stirringly and repeatedly, à la Churchill…it might have made a huge difference….But perhaps not. Perhaps the poison of multiculturalism — the fear of acknowledging that our enemies were, in fact, our enemies — was simply too potent….The tragic fact of the matter is that ten years after 9/11, we are more ignorant, and more vulnerable, than ever.”

Bruce Bawer, “9/11 and the Pastness of the Past,” September 11, 2011

“9/11 was a day of heroes and of villains, of stark contrasts between good and evil. Yet how quickly the politicians, journalists, and others in positions of power managed to make a muddle of it all. Instead of witnessing a democratization of the Middle East, we experienced a steady Islamization of the West. Instead of seeing freedom bloom in the Islamic world, we saw a rise in Western censorship and self-censorship on the subject of Islam.”

Bruce Bawer, “9/11: Twelve Years Later,” September 10, 2013

“His enemies call him a fascist. On the contrary, he’s the first U.S. president since 9⁄11 who genuinely seems to grasp that Islam is fascism.”

Bruce Bawer, “Remembering 9/11 in the Age of Trump,” September 11, 2018

“Twenty years on, under the disgraceful Biden, America feels like a damaged and diminished nation – its power weakened, its alliances shaken, its once-unshakable core beliefs largely shattered, not least by the suicidal compulsion to speak well of Islam.”

Bruce Bawer, “Celebrating Our Enemies, Twenty Years after 9/11,” September 10, 2021

“America has been transformed very quickly into a country that’s so dramatically different from the one we lived in on September 10, 2001, that the twenty-first anniversary of that atrocity can feel almost irrelevant to our present concerns and calamities. But let’s remember that it was on 9/11 that the shock was delivered to our system that, responded to in precisely the wrong way, saw us wade deeper and deeper into the current muck of doubt, deception, and division.”

Bruce Bawer, “That Day, Yet Again,” September 10, 2022

Sometimes it feels as if it happened just the day before yesterday, and other times it seems lost in the mists of time.

Time is like that.

At first there was intense shock. Then a sharply focused anger, a flourishing of patriotism, and a potent resolve. And then, over the years, increasing confusion, division, self-doubt.

https://dianebederman.com/depressed-dont-worry-be-happy/

Seems depression is rising.

So, what is depression?

Here is one definition:

“Depression (major depressive disorder) is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Fortunately, it is also treatable. Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease your ability to function at work and at home.”

I am beginning to wonder if we are misdiagnosing sadness as depression. And for a reason. How does a doctor know that it is depression for which he will happily prescribe medication, all kinds of medication, and not just sadness from life’s events? Seems there is no pill for sadness.

How is it possible that millions of people would not be sad after the years of Covid when “mental illness” in our children went through the roof, and now fear mongering over climate? And those attacks on free speech?   Is there a pill for that sadness, too? What about the damage we are witnessing that is being done to our children by adults who try and confuse them about their “being”?  Who let these people get close to our children to tell them they may be in the wrong body when they never questioned their body in the first place? And now schools taking away parental rights regarding the “identification” of their children? How many of those children will develop “depression”? And what about the removal of healthy genitals by our esteemed medical professionals? Do you suppose reading about that every day and watching videos of men twerking and sexual perversion, in front of children, might lead to sadness?  Is it possible some of us are very sad because we don’t understand why parents expose their children to “exposed” people in Gay Pride Parades or at Drag Queen shows – too often sponsored by our governments in the name of equity or some such BS?

I’ll bet there is a pill for every sadness which will be diagnosed as depression.Think about it. If millions of people are diagnosed with depression and there is a pill for that… a happy pill… wouldn’t the government just love to have millions more on that pill? The ads for it would be – Don’t worry, Be Happy.

And while you are not worrying, your freedoms will be squeezed. Your rights will be taken away.  Your guns will be taken. Those 15 minute cities will grow exponentially. Your choice of food will be taken away from you. But not to worry. You will be happy on your happy pill.

Sounds hilarious, doesn’t it? But not to me, anymore. I know the difference between sadness and depression. Sadness lives in those of us who see the world falling apart, our freedoms shrinking, our rights taken away, our families destroyed and have to watch as friends and family continue to bend the knee to false gods and governments. How can we not be sad? But  NO. It’s depression. No-it’s sadness over fear for the future.

There is no pill to alleviate that sadness/depression. The sadness/depression…righteous anger?… that we feel has been brought to us by the governments we have elected – corrupt elites who care only about themselves and their pocketbooks. We have become so tired just trying to put food on the table, clothes on our backs and a roof over our heads – from the policies of the elites, that we have no energy left to fight back. And that is part of the plan. Along with a  pill for your “depression.”

https://victorhanson.com/the-frightened-left/

An impeachment inquiry looms and the shrieks of outrage are beginning.

The Left is now suddenly voicing warnings that those who recently undermined the system could be targeted by their own legacies.

So, for example, now we read why impeachment is suddenly a dangerous gambit.

True, the Founders did not envision impeaching a first-term president the moment he lost his House majority. Nor did they imagine impeaching a president twice. And they certainly did not anticipate trying an ex-president in the Senate as a private citizen.

In modern times, the nation has not rushed to impeach a president without a special counsel investigation to determine whether the chief executive was guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

But thanks to the Democrats, recent impeachments now have destroyed all those guardrails. After all, Trump was impeached the first time on the fumes of an exhaustive but fruitless 22-month, $40 million special counsel investigation—one designed to find him guilty of Russian “collusion” and thus to be removed from office but found no actionable offenses at all.

Instead, dejected Democrats moved immediately for a second try. In September 2019 a few weeks after Trump had announced his 2020 reelection bid, the Democratic House began to impeach the president on the new grounds that he had talked to the President Zelensky of Ukraine and said he might delay offensive arms shipments—unless the Ukrainians could demonstrate that they had ended corruption and, in particular, were no longer influenced by the Biden family quid pro quo shakedowns.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/ruling_regime_locks_up_george_washington.html

A Missouri man walked into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, dressed as George Washington.  He caused no damage, engaged in no violence, and was even recorded peacefully speaking with police before leaving.  For daring to dress as America’s pre-eminent Founding Father and symbolically rebuking our corrupt ruling class, Isaac Yoder was surveilled for seven months, eventually arrested, fined, and sentenced to a year in prison.  Welcome to the Imprisoned States of America, where patriotic love of country is condemned and political persecution flourishes.  

At a time when the Biden regime is trying to imprison President Donald Trump for the rest of his life, Yoder’s story seems particularly poignant.  If the American War for Independence were being fought today, there is no doubt that the D.C. despots squeezing the life out of the American people would enthusiastically take sides with the British.  As soon as dishonest and nefarious lawmakers, police officers, prosecutors, and judges decided to treat the J6 protest against election fraud as an “insurrection,” the miscreants who imperiously occupy D.C. made clear that they have fully rejected both the spirit and the principles of 1776. 

If Americans cannot assemble to petition their government for redress of grievances without fear of being labeled “insurrectionists” or “terrorists,” then there is no First Amendment protection remaining.  If the American press corps can stand back and watch this political persecution unfold for years without being bothered to point out the deceitfulness in portraying an unarmed crowd of ordinary citizens as engaging in “rebellion,” then there is no institutional organ outside government extant to fight today’s oppression.  It makes sense that Mr. Yoder would be targeted for especial FBI harassment; if George Washington, Sam Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were alive today, the FBI would be busy hunting them down, too.  Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Merrick Garland, and Mitt Romney would be calling them “traitors.”  And the news media would be breathlessly reporting about how our Founding Fathers’ fight for liberty is really about their love for slavery and the “patriarchy.” 

Joe Biden joins Russia’s Putin, Nicaragua’s Ortega, Venezuela’s Maduro, Brazil’s Lula, China’s Xi, Iran’s Khamenei, and Turkey’s Erdoğan as another twenty-first-century tyrant with no qualms about locking up his political opponents.  There was a time when both the elected officers and the entrenched bureaucracy in the United States would have universally condemned foreign leaders for their efforts to undermine freedom of speech, dissent, and political self-determination abroad; now it is the United States that follows the example of the world’s worst authoritarians.  And just as every brutal dictator proclaims that he faithfully serves “the people,” America’s ruling regime will continue to insist that its illiberal displays of force, rampant censorship, and political targeting are all necessary to “protect our democracy.”

Across language and geography, ruling regimes throughout history have used a strikingly similar label to demonize their political adversaries: “disloyally affected person.”  The British used the term to lock up members of the Irish Republican Army.  Both Lenin and Mao used the phrase to justify mass executions of anti-communists.  Castro’s Secret Police used the alleged offense as an excuse to imprison and torture political opponents in Cuba.  Now the U.S. government throws around this spurious charge — disloyalty to the State — as if dissent against the permanent ruling class were the height of criminal activity.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/was-trump-an-officer-of-the-united-states-constitution-14th-amendment-50b7d26?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Apart from the four criminal indictments brought against Donald Trump, those who would end his campaign for the presidency by means other than an election seem to be putting increasing faith in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, known as the Insurrection Clause. That faith seems to be seriously misplaced.

To the extent its text is relevant here, the section in question denies to a discrete category of people—including those who have taken an oath “as an officer of the United States . . . to support the Constitution of the United States”—the right to serve as a “Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office . . . under the United States” if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against same.”

A good deal of attention has focused thus far on whether the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an “insurrection or rebellion” and, if so, whether Mr. Trump “engaged” in it. Those questions, however, need not be answered until two preliminary questions of law are addressed: Is the presidency an “office . . . under the United States,” and was the presidential oath Mr. Trump swore on Jan. 20, 2016, to support the Constitution taken “as an officer of the United States”?

The latter question is easier. The use of the term “officer of the United States” in other constitutional provisions shows that it refers only to appointed officials, not to elected ones. In U.S. v. Mouat (1888), the Supreme Court ruled that “unless a person in the service of the government . . . holds his place by virtue of an appointment . . ., he is not, strictly speaking, an officer of the United States.” Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated the point in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010): “The people do not vote for the ‘Officers of the United States.’ ”

https://newsblaze.com/usnews/crime/lululemon-disorderly-society_192742/

Allegory: A burglar breaks into your home to steal your property. You try to stop him. You get arrested for disturbing the act of burglary.

Lawlessness and Crime Rule

This is what we are witnessing in the United States of America. Lawlessness rules.

A Lululemon store is like your home. Two store employees tried to stop shoplifters who were shoplifting in their store. They two were fired. The shoplifters are roving free with the stolen merchandise.

The Lululemon Athletica Inc., commonly known as Lululemon, is a Canadian multinational athletic apparel retailer headquartered in British Columbia, Canada, and incorporated in Delaware, United States.

Many people living in the United States of America have lost all sense of reality and genuine social justice and have turned the world upside down which is encouraging bad behavior and criminality with impunity.

Shoplifting Episode at ’99 Cent’ store*, Los Angeles

During the week of August 20th 2023, I went shopping at a 99 Cent store, its name tells the reader the value of the items the store offers for sale.

*99 Cents Only Stores is an American price-point retailer chain based in Commerce, California. It offers “a combination of closeout branded merchandise, general merchandise and fresh foods.” The store initially offered all products at 99¢ or less. Today, thanks to inflation, the items sold are at $1.26 and up.

As I was moving around the store doing my shopping, I saw a black man moving fast from aisle to aisle, without a shopping cart, picking up merchandise and collecting them on one of the store’s shelves. I got his drift. He was planning to bag all the merchandise in the black bag he carried and then run out of the store with his loot.

I called the store manager to alert him. He did not bother to step out of his office.

At the cashier, on my way out, I brought up my suspicion. I told her to call for help to stop the shoplifter in his tracks. Here is what she told me almost verbatim: “these shoplifters come here, sometimes even several times a day; they pick up merchandise and leave. The store management and owner don’t care. No one stops them. I see it every day and I am sick of this lawlessness but there is nothing I can do.”

Here Is Some of the Almost Daily News in California

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/senate/manchin-trashes-biden-administration-alaska-oil

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) trashed the Biden administration’s decision to pull oil and gas leases from Alaska on Wednesday, claiming the move was the latest example of the administration “caving to the radical Left.”

The Department of the Interior said on Wednesday it would prohibit oil and gas drilling on more than 10.6 million acres in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, ensuring “maximum protection” for more than 40% of the reserve, which is located in Alaska’s North Slope and is the largest undisturbed public land in the United States.

“I can’t explain to the American people why we would willingly become more dependent on foreign oil imports, eliminate good paying American jobs and drive up the cost of our electric bills and gas prices across the country,” Manchin said. “This is yet another example of this administration caving to the radical Left with no regard for clear direction from Congress or American energy security.”

Manchin called the move “embarrassing” and an attempt to circumvent Congress because the administration allegedly knows it does not have the support to get it approved properly. The senator added that the move allows Iran and Venezuela to produce more oil with fewer environmental regulations.

“We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

                                                                                                                                Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA)  July 31, 1968

Identity politics has divided us into categories, convenient for politicians to address perceived concerns and, more dangerously, to exert control, turning us into a nation of oppressed and oppressors, so that Washington’s “progressives” can ride in as savior. Identity politics places the group above the individual, while those who think independently – outside the box – are slighted, demeaned, or cancelled. One consequence is rising distrust and hatred; a second is that the group, not the individual, defines who we are; and a third is a loss of faith in America, its history and in its accomplishments.

Issues of identity have a long history. Women’s rights date back before the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments in 1848. My paternal grandmother, a well-educated woman, was forty-five when the 19th Amendment was passed, allowing her to vote in 1920. It was in 1965, a hundred years after the civil War, that the Voting Rights Act directed the Attorney General to enforce the right of Blacks to vote. However, even as we made progress – slow as it has been – self-manufactured divisional bitterness increased.

It is important to step back, not to rest on laurels, but to gain perspective and celebrate what our nation has achieved over more than two centuries. Winston Churchill, in a back-handed compliment, is alleged to have observed: “The Americans will always do the right thing…after they have exhausted all the alternatives.” America continues to evolve, too fast for some and too slowly for others. We are best off when momentum is deliberate, when we individually, as Governor Reagan is quoted in the rubric, accept responsibility for our actions.  Our country is unique in the annals of human history. It is based on the rule of law, and on the individual, his sovereignty and his uniqueness – “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…” Those words have evolved over time to include more of our citizens. We have further to go, but we have come a long way. We do not want to return to a time where some groups are favored, and others excluded, as identity politics would have us do.
It is true that as social animals we seek out those with common interests, which explains why there are myriad groups devoted to such pursuits as fishing, bridge, antique cars, golf, and P.G. Wodehouse. It is why sororities and fraternities exist on college campuses, why there are different religious denominations, and why civic organizations, like Rotary, Elks, American Legion, and the Knights of Columbus, exist in communities across America. Fifty and sixty years ago, some of these organizations were restrictive, based on race, gender, and/or religion, but such restrictions lessened in the wake of the passage of civil rights legislation and as tolerance became more common. Man’s social progress has always been evolutionary. We live today in a nation more accepting and tolerant than that known to our grandparents. We have further to go, but we have been moving in the right direction.