RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-political-prosecutions-are-common-south-america-brazil-mexico-venezuela-colombia-peru-supreme-court-trump-indictment-prosecution-931305ea?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

As Donald Trump faces indictment, many of his opponents are losing sight of a warning they issued in 2016. Then, Mr. Trump spoke of prosecuting Hillary Clinton and his supporters chanted “Lock her up!” Critics accused him of subverting a crucially important norm against political prosecution. They said that would be a dangerous turn, and they were right.

In much of Latin America, the use of the judicial apparatus as a means to sideline electoral opponents is part of the political culture. In a particularly egregious example, the autocratic Nicaraguan regime of Daniel Ortega arrested more than a dozen of his rivals just months before the November 2021 presidential election, many under treason charges created by a law Mr. Ortega’s government had enacted in December 2020.

Under international pressure—mainly from the U.S.—the regime released 222 political prisoners this February and had them flown to Washington. Under yet another treason law, however, they were stripped of their Nicaraguan citizenship and effectively expropriated.

Along with Nicaragua, political imprisonment is rampant in Latin America’s other full-blown autocracies, Venezuela and Cuba. These socialist regimes hold more than 250 and 750 dissidents, respectively, in arbitrary detention according to nongovernmental organizations Foro Penal and Justicia 11J. Like their sister regime in Managua, they often resort to the tactic of liberating political prisoners on specific occasions to obtain some short-term advantage.

https://bit.ly/3ztGe7h

1. The Passover Exodus, in general, and the Mosaic legacy, in particular, inspired the US Founding Fathers’ rebellion against the monarchy, which evolved into a concept of non-revengeful, non-imperialistic and anti-monarchy liberty, limited (non-tyrannical) government, separation of powers among three co-equal branches of government and the Federalist system, in general.

The goal of Passover’s liberty was not the subjugation of the Egyptian people, but the defeat of the tyrannical Pharaoh and the veneration of liberty throughout the globe, including in Egypt.

2. The Passover Exodus catapulted the Jewish people from spiritual and physical servitude in Egypt to liberty in the Land of Israel.

3. The Passover Exodus highlights the Jubilee – which is commemorated every 50 years – as the Biblical foundation of the concept of liberty. The US Founding Fathers deemed it appropriate to engrave the essence of the Jubilee on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Thus, the Liberty Bell was installed in 1751 upon the 50th anniversary of William Penn’s Charter of Privileges with the following inscription: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof (Leviticus, 25:10).” 

Moses received the Torah – which includes 50 gates of wisdom – 50 days following the Exodus, as celebrated by the Shavou’ot/Pentecost Holiday, 50 days following Passover. Moreover, there are 50 States in the United States, whose Hebrew name is “The States of the Covenant” (Artzot Habreet -ארצות הברית).

4. The Passover Exodus spurred the Abolitionist Movement and the human rights movement. For example,  in 1850, Harriet Tubman, who was one of the leaders of the “Underground Railroad” – an Exodus of Afro-American slaves to freedom – was known as “Mama Moses.” Moreover, on December 11, 1964, upon accepting the Nobel Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court centuries ago and cried, ‘Let my people go!’” Furthermore, Paul Robeson and Louis Armstrong leveraged the liberty theme of Passover through the lyrics: “When Israel was in Egypt’s land, let my people go! Oppressed so hard they could not stand, let my people go! Go down Moses, way down in Egypt’s land; tell old Pharaoh to let my people go….!” 

5. According to Heinrich Heine, the 19th century German poet, “Since the Exodus, freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent.”  

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/03/the-indictment-of-america/

Like all of us, Donald Trump is a flawed man, but he has become a symbol to those who vested him with a sacred trust. He was made president by us to lead our nation. He fulfilled his part of that bargain, as far as he was able. But too late. The government we asked him to administer was already too corrupt to allow him to do the job, lest they themselves be held to account. Now his persecution for doing what voters asked him to do is breaking the very covenant of government under which we live.

The political drift of the last 100 years has, with a few brief exceptions, been toward authoritarian rule. With the subversion of the English Common Law that had been our foundation, the last bastion of the Republic has fallen. The why and how are worth considering, but the “what” is now before us.

Nancy Pelosi gave away the game (yet again) last week when she said that President Trump had every right to “prove his innocence,” a sentiment applauded by her fellows, who share a total lack of understanding of just how this reverses the presumption of innocence as well as the foundational direction of our nation. When she tore up the president’s State of the Union speech behind his back after he spoke, it was enough to make her sense of the world clear. Her haughty response to a question about the details of the Affordable Care Act—“we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what’s in it”—was another. And her mocking laughter in the face of a query about the constitutionality of Obamacare was still another.

A grand jury in New York City has indicted President Trump, but this is problematic. The allegations against him are unworthy of grand jury attention, even after the penalties for these so-called crimes were increased, post facto, from potential misdemeanors to felonies by the wave of a single judicial hand. Laws are now made that way, as if by magic, and not by legislatures as the Constitution once demanded. We are now ruled by men, not laws, and the struggle for power amongst them will ruin us.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/03/a-spring-of-leaks/

Judge Aileen Cannon was right.

In her controversial order authorizing the appointment of a neutral third-party to review the classification status of documents seized during the FBI’s pillage of Mar-A-Lago last summer, Cannon cited as a main concern the Justice Department’s chronic habit of leaking to the news media. Leaks hinting at what FBI investigators allegedly found, including perhaps nuclear secrets, were reported by reliable media apparatchiks just a few days after the FBI’s unprecedented raid of a former president’s home. 

Clearly aware that federal prosecutors already were collaborating with the media to spin the raid as legitimate amid a public outcry, Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master to “ensur[e] the integrity of an orderly process amidst swirling allegations of bias and media leaks,” she wrote in her September 5 ruling. A proper investigation, she continued, “does not demand unquestioning trust in the determinations of the Department of Justice.”

Cannon, a Trump-appointed district court judge in Florida, at one point confronted prosecutors about the illicit leaks. “Government’s counsel stated that he had no knowledge of any leaks stemming from his team but candidly acknowledged the unfortunate existence of leaks to the press.”

A pile-on ensued against Cannon; the Justice Department appealed her order and prevailed in the appellate court. But Cannon foresaw exactly what has unfolded in the press over the past seven months. And as Trump prepares to fight his very first indictment handed down by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, leaks are springing up all over the corporate media to bolster the appearance of Trump’s criminality.

A lengthy piece in the Washington Post over the weekend gave a detailed account of the obstruction side of the classified documents investigation now led by Jack Smith, the special prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland last year to give the false impression of investigative impartiality. If the Post’s reporting is accurate, the obstruction inquiry seems as weak as the original case; recall of the 13,000 items of evidence stolen by FBI agents during the lengthy raid, the government later claimed only about 100 papers contained classified markings.

“The additional evidence comes as investigators have used emails and text messages from a former Trump aide to help understand key moments last year, said the people, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation,” Post reporters Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, and Perry Stein wrote.

The reporters specifically named Molly Michael, a former White House assistant who followed Trump to Florida after his term ended, as the aide whose communications are under scrutiny. Investigators also have “witness statements, security camera footage, and other documentary evidence” that purportedly proves Trump was involved in inspecting boxes of materials after receiving a subpoena last May to produce more classified records, the Post further disclosed.

It is highly unlikely those specifics were leaked to the Post by Team Trump—particularly since the carefully timed leak worked in the government’s favor.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/soross_justice_in_us_and_israel_.html

George Soros must be tickled pink. He is living out his childhood fantasy of being “some kind of god, the creator of everything,” as he told the British Independent in 1993, shortly after pocketing at least $2 billion after betting against the British pound. That allowed the megalomaniac billionaire “to live it out,” to meddle in domestic affairs and finances of many countries, lead numerous “color revolutions,” and promote his incoherent interpretations of Henri Bergson’s and Karl Popper’s philosophies on the Open Society, giving it an Orwellian twist by so naming his mega political foundations. 

Imagine the gleeful Soros watching the much-despised former president Donald Trump arrested on trumped-up charges. At the same time, his lavish (mostly indirect) funding to progressive-Left groups in Israel is creating chaos and division, threatening the unity and national security of the Zionist Jewish State.

Soros denies funding the election of Manhattan’s progressive-left District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who concocted the inditement. The New York Times reported, “A spokesman for Mr. Soros said that the two men had never met, nor had Soros given money directly to Bragg’s campaign.” Perhaps. But keep in mind that in 2016, Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF), which serves his global network, was judged the least transparent (rated 0) not only among U.S. major think tanks but… “200 think tanks… in 47 countries” worldwide that Transparify ranked.

So, how did Soros contribute to Bragg’s election?

In May 2021, Soros contributed $1 million to Color of Change, the leading online “racial justice” Political Action Committee (PAC). Most of Soros’s contribution, “a significant portion of the money [went] to support Bragg in his 2021 campaign.” In addition, Bragg was funded indirectly by large contributions Soros and his OSF gave to other Democrat PACS and not-for-profit organizations, which, in turn, funneled money to advance Soros’s progressive agendas and candidates, including Manhattan’s DA. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/04/social-security-is-in-far-worse-shape-than-you-think/

The latest Social Security annual report, projecting that the Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2033, a year sooner than previously thought, politely explains that the Trustees “reassessed their expectations for the economy in light of recent developments.”

What recent developments, you ask? Rising inflation, declining output, weakened GDP forecast, and worsening labor productivity.

In other words, this is another bitter fruit from President Joe Biden’s poisoned economic tree.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen responded to the news about Social Security that “the Biden-Harris administration is committed to ensuring the long-term viability of these critical programs so that retirees can receive the hard-earned benefits they’re owed.”

But in his latest budget proposal, Biden offered no proposals whatsoever to shore up Social Security or prevent a looming 23% cut in retirement benefits that current law will require once the Trust Fund is emptied.

As bad as this seems, Social Security’s financial picture is actually far more dire. It’s likely that the Trust Fund won’t even make it to 2033.

The Social Security trustees have had to downgrade the Trust Fund repeatedly for the past 40 years when their economic and demographic assumptions turned out to be too optimistic. Back in 1983, for example, the trustees promised that the Trust Fund would remain solvent through 2058. By 2003, they were saying it would only be solvent until 2044.

https://www.thefp.com/p/i-felt-bullied-mother-of-child-treated

When he was 14 years old, Caroline’s son got a pharmaceutical implant in his arm that was supposed to help relieve his psychological distress. It was a puberty blocker called Supprelin, and it would continuously release a drug for about the next two years that would arrest further sexual development. Caroline, 43, had been queasy about approving this, but she was assured by the psychologist at the The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital that this was what her son needed—that it was the standard treatment for young patients experiencing discomfort with their sex.

Instead of providing relief, Caroline told The Free Press, her son experienced a devastating decline in his mental and physical health after this intervention. Among the side effects of Supprelin, according to a handout from the Transgender Center, are “mood changes, and weight changes.” The manufacturer’s website also lists “depression, including rare reports of suicidal ideation and attempt.” 

Casey (not his real name) soon experienced all of these. Within a semester, Casey went from all As and Bs to a report card dotted with Ds and Fs. Many days he found it impossible to get out of bed. He missed so much school that it triggered an official meeting about his truancy that included a circuit court judge. He gained more than 30 pounds. 

Most alarmingly, during one therapy session about seven months after he started the blocker, he told the center’s psychologist that he was having suicidal thoughts. She recommended he be immediately checked into the psychiatric ward at Children’s Hospital. When he came out, he was taking several drugs for depression and anxiety. 

Caroline felt desperate and helpless, and she’d had enough. In June of 2022, she wrote an email to the clinic demanding immediate removal of the puberty blocker. The doctors in charge disagreed.

The Supprelin is still in Casey’s arm.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/prosecuting-political-foes-is-incompatible-with-democracy/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%2004-03-2023&utm_medium=email

These are heady times for those who hate both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. The news that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had persuaded a grand jury to indict the former president on charges that have yet to be made public was greeted with chortles of satisfaction from the Jewish left, which was already celebrating the recent setback suffered by the Israeli prime minister after he put judicial reform on hold.

The prospect of Trump being booked in New York is not only being celebrated by those who call Netanyahu “crime minister” because of the long-running legal case on corruption charges that he has been fighting in and out of the courts for years. It has also allowed them to see the pair, despite the obvious differences between the two men and the legal stratagems that have been deployed against them, and their predicaments as part of a common struggle against what Haaretz called the way they both attack their respective countries’ democratic institutions.

To the left, that’s the important point.

Their claim is that both Trump and Netanyahu are enemies of democracy. That makes achieving their downfall not so much a matter of alleged wrongdoers getting their comeuppance but can be portrayed as a righteous cause in which threats to the common good are eliminated by lawfare. In that way, even the flimsiest of charges or the use of tactics that target an individual rather than enforcing the law is normalized rather than condemned as violating legal ethics. Actions that would easily be seen as an abuse of power are justified because of a supposedly higher purpose to the prosecution.

As different as the cases against Trump and Netanyahu are, what they have in common is that both men are political leaders being singled out by prosecutors for charges that weren’t so much tailored to their circumstances as they were invented for the sole purpose of taking them down.