RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/reflections-peace-poetry-and-war-michael-finch/

The specter of nuclear war has risen again, it haunts our dreams for the first time in decades.  The “end of history” was supposed to have completed that chapter, but of course that evokes our own narrow vision of the world.  For those in the shadow of North Korea and for nations and peoples that fall in range of a seemingly inevitable nuclear Iran, those halcyon peaceful days of the end of history never existed.  Indeed, for all of us, “peace” never lasts, never endures, we all live in the shadows of chaos, war and share the nightmares of human nature and none of us can escape the horrors of our worst selves.

Trying to make logical sense of it is an impossible task, to get into God’s mind, to understand His will and his plans is a temptation that we all have, but it only leads further into a never-ending depressing fall into the abyss.  I will make sense as best I can by leaning on the writers and poets, the ideas and thoughts that speak as visions, and speak to hope.  Hope is indeed a dangerous thing, but hope and faith are all that ties us, tethers us, and anchors us from that endless abyss.

We yearn for peace, but peace is allusive.  Peace in our lives, peace in the world, it has never been, and never will be the norm.  We are blessed to live in a nation that has known peace as we have.  May we continue to be so blessed, though the horizon is darkening, and night is before us. 

The yearning is strong, but again, is so allusive.  William Butler Yeats wrote in his poem “Lake Isle of Innisfree” that “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow”.  Indeed.  Wendall Berry sought answers in his poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” which opens “When despair grows in me”, and “I come into the peace of wild things” closing with “I rest in the grace of the world and am free.”

And peace for the world, we also yearn for it, sometimes we become blinded by its allure.  Infamously British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 proclaimed we have “Peace for our Time”, yet just a year later the world would become fully engulfed in a war that would kill tens of millions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biden-loyalty-machine-democrats-dgb-disinformation-sec-climate-risk-fauci-covid-lockdowns-biden-inflation-

In her 2014 book, “A Fighting Chance,” Elizabeth Warren describes advice she received from Lawrence Summers when he was Harvard’s president: “I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People—powerful people—listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.”

Want to see this in action? In his 2021 book, “A Plague Upon Our House,” about his time as an adviser to the Trump administration on Covid-19, the Hoover Institution’s Scott Atlas describes “a functioning troika of ‘medical experts’ composed of Drs. Birx, Fauci, and Redfield.” He “noticed that there was virtually no disagreement among them. It was an amazing consistency, as though there were an agreed-upon complicity—even though some of their statements were so patently simplistic or erroneous.” Loyalty! But was that for the best? After two years of Covid restrictions, obviously not.

Loyalty is overrated. Harry S. Truman, worried about communist infiltration, instituted a Loyalty Program in 1947 via executive order, expecting “complete and unswerving loyalty” from federal employees. Seventy years later, FBI Director James Comey insisted that President Trump, at a private dinner, asked him for his loyalty. Mr. Comey declined. Mr. Trump then asked for “honest loyalty,” which Mr. Comey agreed to, knowing it didn’t mean anything.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a 2019 ruling: “Presidents are not kings. . . . This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.” Amen.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/09/covid-proves-it-democrats-couldnt-care-less-about-minorities-or-the-poor/

New research reveals the enormous harm that pandemic school shutdowns had on students, and that minorities and the poor suffered the most, especially in places run by Democrats.

To understand the impact of school shutdowns on learning, Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research compiled testing data on 2.1 million students in 49 states to see how school closures and the use of remote “learning” affected academic achievement.

The findings are deeply troubling. Closing schools “had profound consequences for student achievement.” Worse, it widened economic and racial education gaps. The researchers found that “high-poverty schools were more likely to go remote and the consequences for student achievement were more negative when they did so.”

One of the study’s authors, Thomas Kane, told the New York Times that “this will probably be the largest increase in educational inequity in a generation.”

The study also revealed a wide gulf between states based on how long they shuttered their schools – ranging from a handful of weeks to 20 weeks or more.

What the authors didn’t point out, but which is the inescapable conclusion to be drawn, is that states and cities run by Democrats kept their schools closed far longer than those run by Republicans.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/3480825-white-house-tacitly-endorses-intimidation-of-supreme-court-justices/

It was a horrific scene at a baseball field in Alexandria, Va. five years ago. Five people were shot while practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity. Among the wounded was Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was in critical condition while undergoing several surgeries to stop internal bleeding. Fortunately, he would survive, as would the others who were shot. 

They were extremely fortunate that three Capitol Police officers were present because they were assigned to Scalise given his leadership position in the House of Representatives. But if Scalise hadn’t been at practice that morning, the gunman would’ve had several more minutes before police arrived and could’ve killed or seriously injured more people. 

One would think that our leaders in Washington would have learned from this terrible day and would be doing everything in their power to condemn similar acts of violence from happening again.

But the Biden White House doesn’t seem to care that angry mobs have gone to the homes of six conservative Supreme Court justices to protest the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade after a draft document stating such, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, was leaked earlier this week. A liberal firestorm followed, as the overturning of the 1973 decision would send abortion law back to the states.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/ministry-of-truthiness

The Biden administration has set up a Disinformation Governance Board, its mission to expose, intercept, and otherwise chivy any form of untruthiness that might threaten the national security of the United States, especially if it comes from Russia. I haven’t laughed so hard since Jen Psaki, one of the nation’s top sources of disinformation, said she would continue to front another top source of disinformation, the White House press office, while under contract to join a third source of disinformation, MSNBC.

The good news is that this “Ministry of Truth” will be run by the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS is the DMV of federal agencies. Its multitentacled powers of snooping and scanning are matched only by the moronic incompetence of its staff. The DHS couldn’t spot disinformation if it came singing the “Song of the Volga Boatmen” and was wrapped in a $3 bill. That’s why it’s brought in an academic expert, Nina Jankowicz, to determine what is true and what is white supremacy or shilling for Russia or whichever thoughtcrime opposes the Democratic narrative of the day.

Misinformation is incomplete or mistaken. Disinformation is, as the Russians say, “active measures.” The full truth is deliberately edited and misrepresented. Carefully curated untruths are woven into fragments of fact to create a plausible atmosphere of truthiness. You can be misinformed from innocence or its cousin at the DHS, ignorance. But disinformation is intentional. It’s “information warfare,” part of a political program.

Jankowicz knows all about disinformation. As our very own Jerry Dunleavy reported, Jankowicz has obfuscated the nature of the anti-Trump “Russian collusion” dossier compiled by the ex-British spook Christopher Steele. Jankowicz was not misinformed when she reminded Sen. Lindsey Graham that the dossier “began as a Republican opposition research project,” but he was disinformed. It’s also true that Adolf Hitler began as a painter, but it would be disinformation to leave it there.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=5c87c1d8fb

The news of the past few weeks has been all aflutter over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.

The main issue for discussion has been, what does this mean for the future of free speech in the American public square? That’s an important issue, to which I don’t have the answer. I think that there are reasons for both optimism and pessimism. More on this issue later.

A second issue is what Musk’s Twitter venture signals as to progressive fantasies about net zero utopia. This second issue has been little discussed, let alone recognized at all, in the recent press coverage. So let me open the door.

The most logical way to look at what Musk is up to is that he is getting money out of Tesla in advance of an almost certain huge decline in its value, while placing his next bet on something else with a much better chance for major future growth. I think that he has recognized that the net zero utopia necessary for Tesla to have continuing exponential growth is impossible and not going to happen.

According to Forbes, Musk is currently the richest man in the world, with net worth in the range of $255 billion. That puts him far ahead of the next richest, who could be either Jeff Bezos or Bernard Arnault, each at around $140 billion, depending on current stock prices for Amazon or LVMH.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/07/justice-department-threatens-oath-keepers-with-life-in-prison/

In a letter obtained by American Greatness, the U.S. Department of Justice is threatening defendants charged with seditious conspiracy in the sprawling Oath Keepers case to accept plea deals or face life in prison.

Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia handling every prosecution related to the events of January 6, 2021, imposed a May 6 deadline for the remaining defendants to accept plea deals. Three men have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy; nine others, including Oath Keepers’ founder Stewart Rhodes, have rejected government attempts to reach a plea.

“We write to advise you of applicable penalties that could apply upon conviction at trial,” Graves’ chief prosecutor in the case, Kathyrn Rakoczy, wrote to defense attorneys in a letter dated May 2. (Every January 6 defendant who has faced a jury trial in Washington, D.C. has been found guilty on all charges by jurors following brief deliberations.)

After detailing the hefty prison sentences and fines associated with other offenses charged in the case, Rakoczy turned to the potential sentence for seditious conspiracy, a crime so rare that federal sentencing guidelines don’t cover it. “The United States takes the position that the most analogous offense to seditious conspiracy is ‘Treason,’” Rakoczy wrote. If a jury concludes the conspiracy involved conduct “that is tantamount to waging war against the United States,” Rakoczy explained, the government could seek a life sentence upon conviction.

Seditious conspiracy is defined as two or more people who “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof.” After pressure from the media and Democratic leaders, Graves’ office indicted 11 Oath Keepers with seditious conspiracy on January 12, 2022. Another Oath Keeper was indicted this week.

The Oath Keepers are not accused of carrying or using any weapons on January 6; none is charged with directly vandalizing government property. Two “stacks” of Oath Keepers entered the building after the joint session of Congress recessed that afternoon and walked through open doors with police nearby.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/clarence-thomas-says-supreme-court-wont-be-bullied-after-leak-of-draft-opinion-overturning-roe/

Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas warned that the Court can’t be “bullied” in comments at a judicial conference in Atlanta on Friday.

“We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don’t like,” Thomas said, according to Reuters. “We can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want. The events from earlier this week are a symptom of that.”

While Thomas did not explicitly discuss the leak of a draft opinion earlier this week that would overturn the decision in Roe v. Wade, the justice referenced “unfortunate events” of the past week during his talk, the Washington Post noted. The opinion, first reported by Politico and later confirmed as authentic by Chief Justice John Roberts, sparked condemnation from Democrats.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/bidens-thug-government/

The Democrats don’t care about politically motivated violence, American institutions, or the Constitution.

If Democrats and other Trump obsessives are really wondering why much of the country couldn’t care less about the Capitol riot, they need look no further than the Biden administration’s disgraceful response to the criminal leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion in the Dobbs abortion case, and to the intensifying threats from the radical Left that endanger the justices, their families, and the Court as an institution.

It is worse than a nonresponse. It is worse than a reckless response. The Biden administration and Democratic Party activists are complicit in the extortionate, norm-busting, burn-it-down id of the woke progressivism they extol.

It is thug government.

I thought President Trump should be impeached over January 6. I still do. Because they can’t help themselves, Democrats corrupted the impeachment. Rather than conducting a competent investigation and crafting impeachment articles that met the moment, they put impeachment in the service of their racialist demagoguery. The impeachment was not so much an attack on Trump, who emerged unscathed. It was an attack on Trump supporters and Republicans generally, who were smeared as white-supremacist domestic terrorists. Congressional Democrats also laid the foundation that would enable progressive activists to file legal actions against Republican lawmakers who supported Trump’s fraudulent “Stop the Steal” gambits in Congress and the courts — seeking their disqualification as “insurrectionists” under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

To the contrary, Trump should have been impeached on two grounds. First, the “Stop the Steal” con job — based on scant evidence of election fraud, patently absurd legal theories, and such artifices as the presentation of phony Trump elector slates as if they were legitimate alternatives to the authentic Biden slates certified by the states at issue — was a willful undermining of the states’ constitutional authority over presidential elections. It was thus a profound betrayal of the president’s core duty to defend the Constitution and execute the laws faithfully.

Second, the president was derelict in failing to use his executive powers and his influence over his supporters to oppose and end an uprising at the seat of government. Far from protecting the Capitol, members of Congress, and the vice president, the president swerved between provocative rhetoric that further endangered them and inaction when he could have short-circuited the mayhem by swiftly calling for the rioters to stand down, and backing those words with firm enforcement action.