RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/us-senate-democrats-refuse-to-meet-with-right-wing-members-of-netanyahu-government/

According to the Times of Israel, a delegation of Senate US Democrats arrived in Israel on January 17, and asked not to meet with MK Ministers Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben Gvir or any members of their Otzma Yehudit party. The request was made by the office of Democrat Senator Jacky Rosen, to whom Haaretz refers as “pro-Israel.“ Yet in November 2021, Rosen visited the repressive, Muslim Brotherhood-supporting regime of Qatar. She had no problems meeting with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on her visit, despite the fact that he collaborated with the Chief of Hamas’ Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, as recently as 2021. Haniyeh thanked Al Thani “for his continuous support for Palestine and the Palestinian people.” Al Thani has also stressed at the UN that Israel must “end its occupation,” and advocated for full solidarity “with the brotherly Palestinian people in their aspiration to achieve justice.” Yet the cowardly Jacky Rosen met with Al Thani while refusing even to dialogue with members of the Otzma Yehudit party within the Netanyahu coalition.

Otzma Yehudit means Jewish strength or Jewish power. The party platform “calls for the annexation of the West Bank, and for complete Israeli rule between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.” This platform is in direct opposition to the Palestinian goal of obliterating Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, as often chanted in “free Palestine”rallies. After the manifest failure of the arrangements set forth in the Oslo Accords, the Otzma Yehudit platform should be applauded, not condemned by anyone who supports Israel’s right to exist and defend itself from those who would destroy it.

Far too many media outlets continue to reference the Otzma Yehudit as “far right” and “extreme” instead of simply by its name, thus editorializing on every news story. Most of these same media outlets did not refer to the Ra’am Party, a member of Israel’s last governing coalition, as an “extremist party,” despite its support for releasing Palestinian jihadi prisoners.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/24/chase-bank-closes-multiple-nyc-atms-early-due-to-crime-wave/

With crime on the rise in New York City, Chase Bank has announced that it will be shutting down numerous ATMs throughout the city earlier than usual.

CNN reports that the ATMs in question, which previously operated 24/7, will now close between 5 and 6 PM, in alignment with the hours when actual banks usually close on weekdays. A JPMorgan Chase spokesman added that some ATMs will close as late as 10 PM.

The bank said that the new policy will only affect a “small number” of machines throughout the city, but did not specify which locations or how many. The company cited “rising crime and vagrancy” as a primary motivation for the decision.

“We review our ATM hours on a case-by-case basis,” Chase said in a statement, “and for a variety of reasons may decide to temporarily close some overnight.”

At a press conference on Monday, Mayor Eric Adams (D-N.Y.) reacted to Chase’s decision by saying that “people don’t want to walk into the ATM and see someone urinating” or see someone screaming and yelling.”

“And that is what I’m saying I need to stop, because I don’t want my ATMs closing down. I don’t want people leaving our city. We have to create an environment that people are safe and feel safe.”

“Ensuring the safety and security of customers and employees has always been a top priority of the banking industry,” said the New York Bankers Association in its own statement. “As issues arise, NYBA and our members evaluate possible trends with the intention of working with banks, law enforcement and the local community toward solutions.”

New York City has been the epicenter of a rising crime wave that can be seen all across the country since the violent race riots in 2020. Overall crime in the nation’s largest city increased by 23.5 percent in 2022.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/divisive-and-diverse-you-cant-have-one-without-the-other/

“Diversity” and “Divisiveness” are perhaps our most important cant-words in both meanings of the word: “sanctimonious and hypocritical talk,” and “language peculiar to a specified group or profession and regarded with disparagement,” as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. That certainly fits the political and media industries, which trade in duplicitous language that distorts the meanings of words in order to construct narratives that serve their ideological preferences and gain leverage over their political rivals.

For the “woke” Left, there are few goods greater than “diversity,” and not many worse crimes than being “divisive,” an offense limited to Republicans. But the abuse of these words reflects a misunderstanding of our political order, which is founded on the assumption that the young country’s complex diversity meant that diverse “passions and interests,” and a corruptible human nature would generate divisive factional struggles for power, the necessary corollary to genuine diversity.

Moreover, the “diversity” that progressives trade in is not real diversity, which comprises much more than superficial appearance. The American colonies were very diverse in ethnicities, religions, dialects, languages, folkways, cultures, and mores, the pluribus from which the American unum was comprised.

But this genuine diversity, which still characterizes the United States, is not what our “woke” institutions and ideologies mean by diversity. As David E. Bernstein writes in Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America,

“Modern America’s racial and ethnic classifications do not reflect biology, genetics, or any other biological source. Classifications such as Hispanic, Asian American, and white combine extremely internally diverse groups in terms of appearance, culture, religion, and more under a single, arbitrary heading. The government developed its classification scheme via a combination  of amateur anthropology and sociology, interest group lobbying, incompetence, inertia, lack of public oversight, and happenstance.”

The purpose of these classifications was to determine which political clients would be eligible for set-asides in government contracts and later, admissions to colleges, universities, and professional schools. This expansion came by dint of the 1978 Bakke decision, which papered over affirmative action programs’ blatant violations of the Civil Rights Act by creating “diversity” as a “compelling state interest” that justified ignoring the illegality of racial discrimination in the Civil Rights act. In the following decades, nobody, including subsequent Supreme Court decisions, has been able to provide a believable definition of “diversity,” or any empirical evidence of its contribution to improving desired educational outcomes or inter-ethnic relations. Yet this simplistic, vague, concept has become part of federal law and enjoys its enforcement powers.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2023/01/24/insanity-wrap-we-need-to-talk-about-the-real-insurrection-n1664443

There’s an actual insurrection going on and the January 6-obsessed left won’t talk about it. That’s the big crazy on today’s Insanity Wrap — an entire week’s worth of lefty nuttiness wrapped up in one easy-to-swallow medicated news capsule.

The last time Atlanta (and the rest of Georgia) tried to leave the Union, the Army eventually marched in and burned the place down. But now that Atlanta has been invaded by secessionist Yankees (more on that in a sec), we’re not supposed to talk about it.

Because of white supremacy and January 6 or something.

PJ Media’s own Victoria Taft wrote decisively on Monday for our VIP subscribers about the January 6 insurrection that wasn’t, but what about the very real Atlanta insurrection?

This has been going on for months, with little note from the mainstream media, but communist Antifa members — nearly all from other states — converged on Atlanta to form an “autonomous zone.” They reject federal, state, and local authority.

“You are now leaving the USA,” says a sign leading into the Atlanta zone.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/25/elected-officials-no-longer-reflect-views-values-of-average-voters-ii-tipp-poll/

Washington, you have a problem, and elected officials should take note: Regardless of party affiliation, those who elected you no longer have faith in the idea that you actually represent them, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

It’s no surprise that many voters are turned off by the political class these days. As repeated polls show, voters from both parties agree that the results of recent years from Washington have been less than stellar. And the voters feel Washington is divorced from their everyday concerns.

In the most recent online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken Jan. 4-6 from 1,107 registered voters across the country, we asked voters two questions about their elected officials in Washington.

In the first we asked simply: “In general, do you believe that elected officials in Washington represent MOSTLY the views and values of … ” with the choices being “their constituents,” “Big Donors,” or “not sure.”

The answer was overwhelming and doesn’t bode well for official Washington. Two-thirds (66%) said elected officials represent mostly the views and values of their big donors, not average Americans. Just 16% said they felt their elected officials represented their constituents. Another 18% said they weren’t sure.

When it comes to the politics of those who took the poll, which has a margin of error of +/-3.0 percentage points, this was one of the most uniform responses in I&I/TIPP Poll history.

Among Democrats, 61% said “Big donors,” compared to 68% of Republicans and 73% of independents. “Constituents” garnered 20% of Democrats, 16% of Republicans and just 9% of independents.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/the_quixotic_quest_for_reparations.html

The idea of reparations for African Americans due to slavery began during the Civil War when General William Tecumseh Sherman, on January 16, 1865, issued Special Field Order No. 15 that called for allocating up to 40 acres and lending mules to newly emancipated slaves. President Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, ignored the order but the idea has nevertheless lived on. Not much happened on reparations until 1988 when Representative John Conyers introduced HR 40, a bill to establish a national commission to study reparations, but this bill died in committee.

In 2019, however, with the murder of George Floyd and COVID-19 impact on communities of color, the dam has burst. The House of Representatives has again taken up the idea of a national commission and countless cities such as Boston, Chicago,  San Francisco plus the state of California have created official reparations commissions. Evanston, Ill has awarded $25,000 each to 15 Black resident to make amends for past housing discrimination.  The Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States in 2021 pledged $100 million in reparations for descendants of those enslaved by the order.

A major justification for reparations is to equalize the racial wealth divide. As the Brookings Institution, hardly a radical thinktank, put it, “Central to the idea of the American Dream lies an assumption that we all have an equal opportunity to generate the kind of wealth that brings meaning to the words ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’”

Will awarding large sums of money to Black people equalize the racial wealth gap? The answer is “no,” and the political damage that this effort will far outweigh its immense monetary cost.

This wealth gap is massive and enduring. According to recent Federal Reserve data, the average White family has eight times the wealth of the average Black family with the average Black family’s wealth being 15% of what the average White family possesses.  Nineteen percent of Black families have zero or negative net wealth. The gap extends far beyond income differences though this is significant. Differences exist in inheritances, multiple savings and investment plans, plus how Whites gravitate toward investments that appreciate over time, especially home ownership and education.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/23/police-injured-by-friendly-fire-on-january-6/

A New Jersey man will be sentenced on Friday for his participation in the events of January 6, 2021. Julian Khater, 33, faces up to eight years in prison for allegedly using pepper spray against three police officers, including the late Brian Sicknick, that afternoon.

Khater and his friend, George Tanios, were arrested in March 2021 in connection with the alleged assault. After spending more than 18 months in a fetid D.C. jail under pretrial detention orders—Judge Thomas Hogan repeatedly denied attempts by his family to post bail—Khater pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon. (Tanios rejected numerous plea offers on the same charges; prosecutors finally dropped the assault counts, and he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors.)

The Justice Department’s case was flimsy from the start, which I explained shortly after the pair’s arrest. Khater and Tanios are nothing more than human props to sustain arguably the biggest falsehood related to January 6—that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed in the line of duty. Even though a coroner concluded Sicknick died of two strokes caused by a blood clot near his brain, his death is still shamefully exploited by everyone from Joe Biden to congressional Democrats and even Sicknick’s own loved ones.

Capitol police announced Sicknick’s passing on January 7, 2021, with claims he was “injured while physically engaging with protesters.” Donald Trump and his supporters were immediately branded as cop killers.

The story, however, kept changing. First, the New York Times reported Sicknick had been bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher. After the paper retracted that story in February 2021, the media, no doubt prompted by the Justice Department, suggested Sicknick died of an allergic reaction to chemical spray.

In an attempt to salvage the credibility of its first bogus account, the Times published another lengthy report in March 2021 with cherry-picked clips and screenshots designed to reenact the assault. “New videos obtained by The New York Times show publicly for the first time how the U.S. Capitol Police officer who died after facing off with rioters on Jan. 6 was attacked with chemical spray.” 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/latest-arrest-shows-the-corruption-of-the-fbi/

On Saturday, the FBI arrested one of its own. Charles McGonigal, who used to head counterintel for the Bureau in New York and investigated Trump over Russiagate, was busted at JFK Airport and has been charged with violating the sanctions placed on Oleg Deripaska.

Deripaska, a Russian oligarch allied with Putin, has his name scrawled on parts of Russiagate. Before Christopher Steele was brought on board to produce the infamous dossier aimed at Trump, the British ex-agent had been working on a project for Deripaska to go after Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, who would also prove to be an FBI target.

In the tangled relationship that is an apt metaphor for Russiagate, the Russian billionaire appeared at times to be an FBI asset and at other times employed FBI personnel.

McGonigal is reportedly one of a number of ex-FBI agents who became freelance consultants, like American versions of Steele, under investigation. And connections between ex-FBI officials and the Russians have gone even higher than McGonigal. Louis Freeh, Bill Clinton’s former FBI director, represented a number of Russian oligarchs and his deceased predecessor, Director William Sessions worked for a top Russian mafia figure linked to Putin.

We may very well find that the retired FBI officials who haven’t gotten contracts as commentators for cable news have gone to work for the Russians. And McGonigal may be the first of a number of FBI figures who were tasked with fighting Russian influence who instead learned enough to go to work for the Russians.

If McGonigal is guilty, it’s because he was following in the footsteps of retired FBI directors and top elected officials. Deripaska had previously managed to purchase the services of former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole to “persuade U.S. officials his client isn’t a criminal” and of a firm linked to Hillary’s communications director and Bill Clinton’s deputy press secretary. When you can buy both sides of the 1996 presidential election, why quibble at a mere FBI official? Russia may be a mafia state, but unfortunately we’ve become one too.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19345/civil-criminal-line

There are two major reasons why criminal liability has been extended to cover negligent behavior. The first is evidentiary: it is often difficult or impossible to prove a specific intent to commit a crime, so the law takes a shortcut, substituting negligence, which is far easier to prove.

The second reason is to put the burden of preventing harms on the persons most able to do so.

Another consequence [of this expanding criminalization of what used to be civil violations], which we are currently experiencing in the political world, is the weaponization of the criminal justice system for partisan purposes.

There are two fundamental mechanisms of justice for wrongs committed. The first is civil, in which the wrong is compensated economically — by the payment of money. The second is criminal, in which the wrongdoer is punished — by imprisonment, probation or fine.

Our constitution recognizes this historic distinction by guaranteeing different rights in civil and criminal cases. The Bill of Rights provides that “in all criminal prosecutions,” a plethora of important procedural protections must be accorded the defendant. These include a “speedy and public trial by an impartial jury”, “the assistance of counsel”, the ability to confront adverse witnesses and call favorable ones, prohibitions against compelled self-incrimination and double jeopardy, reasonable bail and no “cruel and unusual punishment.”

In civil cases, on the other hand, there is little more than trial by jury and basic due process.

https://thespectator.com/topic/the-democrat-think-tank-implicated-by-bidens-classified-documents-penn-biden-center/

Joe Biden has become the Typhoid Mary of classified documents, spreading them as he goes. They keep turning up in batch after batch, everywhere but the floor at a Wilmington Starbucks. The president has said almost nothing about the mess, except to reassure us that “people know I take classified documents seriously.” That defense has since taken on a slight change of punctuation: “People know I take classified documents. Seriously.” He certainly does. He takes them everywhere.

Most recently, classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC established by Biden in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania. The documents raise additional questions. Why were Biden’s lawyers searching there in the first place? We still don’t know. More broadly, how was this center funded, and what were Joe Biden’s connections to the university? Again, we don’t know. Similar questions arise about the Biden Center at the University of Delaware, where Biden has stored over 1,800 boxes.

All these questions remain unanswered, and the White House is stonewalling anyone who dares to ask. The universities themselves are silent as a graveyard.

Important as these questions are, they are not the only ones surrounding Penn’s Washington-based Center. Two others have received little attention but point to deeper troubles at our politicized universities.

The first is that the Penn Biden Center was (and is) effectively an adjunct of one political party, based at a major research university. That’s wrong. No university should embrace such partisanship. It violates the university’s fundamental duty as an institution to maintain its scholarly neutrality. Of course, professors and students are welcome to take whatever political stances they wish, either as individuals or as voluntary groups. But the university itself (and its departments) should avoid them unless they bear directly on the university’s educational responsibilities.