RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/id-take-tulsis-record-in-syria-over-the-cias/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=fourth

I sometimes wonder what “liberalism” the defenders of the liberal world order have in mind when the subject comes to Tulsi Gabbard. Appalled by radical Islam after 9/11, Gabbard volunteered to serve in the Hawaii National Guard, deploying to Iraq in 2004 and 2005 in a medical unit. She completed officer training at Alabama Military Academy, then served overseas in Kuwait. In 2020, she transferred to the U.S. Army Reserve and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel.

You might think that people who claim to respect the troops so much might hesitate before calling someone with this kind of record a foreign asset or even accusing her of being a foreign agent. You would be wrong.

Since this summer, she has been given the dreaded “quadruple S” status by the TSA — meaning she is being tracked at excruciating expense across every flight she takes — and is subjected to a far more invasive form of search reserved for active terror suspects. This status, for an active Army reservist and officer?

Even the more conventional case against her has some obvious holes. Noah Rothman writes:

She bought wholesale the utterly baseless line retailed by Moscow that Russia and its vassal state were the only countries committed to fighting ISIS. In contrast, she maintained, the United States was helping prop up radical elements within Syria’s anti-Assad rebels (the Assad regime took a hands-off approach to ISIS and even purchased its own oil from the terrorist group while it subdued the more moderate insurgents in places like Homs and Aleppo).

To my knowledge, Gabbard has not repudiated those positions. They cannot be described as “anti-war,” as so many of her boosters would like to claim, because she deploys them in support of war — Syria’s wars, Russia’s wars, and the terrorists’ wars, just not America’s wars.[Emphasis added.]

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/15/one-month-in-and-the-govt-is-already-257-billion-in-the-red-doge-has-a-lot-of-work-to-do/

On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would head the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That same day, the Treasury Department released a report showing why this effort is so desperately needed.

In his announcement, Trump said that he’s assigned the two to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.” It will, he said, “become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time.”

At Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in late October, Musk, when asked how much he thought he could “rip out of this $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget,” said: “Well, I think we could do at least $2 trillion.”

Washington insiders scoffed at the entire idea of a “government efficiency” department or that these two government outsiders could somehow find $2 trillion to cut.

The truth is a Manhattan Project-level effort will be needed to restore a semblance of fiscal responsibility to the federal government.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-trumps-foolish-futile-matt-gaetz-ag-nomination/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=first

I’m as stunned as anyone that President-elect Trump has nominated Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) for attorney general, reminding everyone of Trump’s propensity to step on his own good publicity and provoke needless fights that undermine his ability to accomplish things the country needs done. That said, I suspect Nathan Wade would have a better chance of getting confirmed to run the Justice Department than Gaetz does, so I don’t see the point in wasting a lot of time discussing this.

I’m not going to dwell further on the sex-trafficking investigation in which Gaetz was implicated but never charged. I wrote about it at the time. The feds couldn’t make the case and he’s presumed innocent. As Luther related early this year, it’s been reported that Gaetz’s ridiculous, solipsistic move to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) was payback for the latter’s role in an ongoing ethics probe of Gaetz. The congressman has denied any wrongdoing. Nothing has been established, so I’m not going to repeat mere allegations at this point. I imagine we’re about to hear a lot more about them in the coming weeks, and become better informed about whether there’s fire under the smoke.

In that regard, the president-elect has done his eccentric protégé no favors.

I also don’t see much use in going down the rabbit hole of whether, as the rabidly anti-Trump, highly irregular House January 6 committee claimed, Gaetz was among a group of GOP Congress critters who broached the subject of a pardon following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. I thought it was underhanded of the committee to imply that people were guilty of crimes — potentially including crimes of violence — based on speculation about pardons, particularly when Trump didn’t grant such pardons. A pardon is not necessarily an admission of guilt — something to bear in mind in an era of lawfare, when politicized actors weaponize investigative processes against their adversaries mainly for the purpose of humiliating and bankrupting them.

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/diversifying-doulas-hhs-spends-hundreds?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

“Equity” concept appears 829 times in Department’s 2025 budget request, reaching academia, bureaucrats, researchers and care providers.

The private sector is learning the hard — and costly — way that much of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion model is discriminatory and subject to expensive litigation. That has corporations “quietly altering” their approach, according to the Associated Press.

While federal agencies have also faced a mountain of legal challenges, the Biden administration has nevertheless pressed on with the President’s commitment to a “whole of government” DEI effort.

The Department of Health and Human Services — with a budget surpassed only by the Pentagon — employs 294 DEI staffers at an annual cost of $38.7 MILLION.

That’s doesn’t even include another $29.4 million in payroll for seven Offices of Minority Health embedded within various HHS agencies!

While their roles are dedicated to DEI, related efforts have permeated through virtually every area of the department.

Variations of the term “equity” appear an astonishing 829 times in the department’s 2025 budget request to Congress, impacting hundreds of millions of dollars of spending programs.

Resulting funds pour out across the country to achieve equity and “justice” in public health — to Black churches recruited to push vaccinations; to universities for hiring diverse researchers; and to special outreach for anyone from criminals, to the LGBTQ+ community, to the indigenous, and…doulas??

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-work-to-restore-our-republic-is-just-beginning/

Just as the Founders intended, the American people have used their First Amendment rights and freedom to vote, and rebuked the Democrats for their political malfeasance and hubris. So definitive has been the message that the Donks are now devouring one another over who or what is to blame for the debacle. Of course, they’re avoiding the real causes of their political disaster––their long leftist project to “fundamentally transform America,” as Barack Obama infamously put it.

But we shouldn’t take this entertaining autophagy to mean we still don’t have a lot of hard work to do in order to solidify and strengthen our battered Constitutional order. Remember, tyranny never surrenders power easily.

The first order of business obviously rests with President Trump. He’s already made a good start by naming his campaign manager, Susan Wiles, his Chief of Staff. Her brilliant management of the campaign bespeaks the skills and temperament needed for the huge task of staffing the federal government with the right people who can repair the damage done over the past four years.

To do that, Trump must staff federal agencies and his cabinet not just with the competent and ethical, but also patriots and Constitutionalists rather than technocrats, opportunists, and feral careerists. The issue isn’t just partisanship, but the very nature of large-scale government bureaucracies that are not accountable to the citizens. Such institutions are vulnerable to “professional deformation”: the institution’s legitimate function displaced by its own self-serving narrative, which exists to determine hiring and promotion, and is prone to fossilization into received wisdom––that is, the proverbial “box” we’re supposed to think outside of.

https://www.declassified.live/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=8t06w&next=

The New York Times today confirmed Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors plan to resign before Donald Trump takes office in January. In what must have been a painful article to write, Devlin Barrett and Glenn Thrush, two reliable mouthpieces for the Department of Justice, said Smith’s office is “drawing up its plan for how to end the cases” against the incoming president. It is also unclear whether Smith will file a confidential report summarizing the special counsels’ work, a requirement under the DOJ special counsel rules.

Smith further “finds himself on the defensive,” according to the Times, as House Republicans prepare to investigate the investigators. “Republican lawmakers told Justice Department officials who had worked on the Trump cases to preserve all of their communications for investigators,” Barrett and Thrush wrote. “That is a sure sign that a new balance of power in Washington will make Mr. Smith among those being hunted by congressional investigators and others.”

https://tomklingenstein.com/americans-have-rejected-dojs-lawfare/

The people of this great nation are slow to anger, patient, and inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. They also have an ancient reverence for the rule of law, deferring to its pronouncements in even the most controversial matters. But, for the last eight years, some of the most corrupt, cynical, and treacherous men and women ever to walk the halls of power in Washington, D.C., exploited these admirable traits. I’m speaking, of course, of the leadership and even some of the rank-and-file of the Department of Justice. 

Finally, on November 5, the people of the United States of America delivered a late but stunning rebuke to the ruling elite, the Washington bureaucracy, and above all the Department of Justice. Indeed, never in this country’s history has such a public and censorious rebuke been delivered so clearly to a single federal agency. 

That rebuke makes clear that the Department of Justice has failed totally to meet the high standards of excellence expected by the American people. It has disgraced itself in every respect: wallowing in dishonesty, targeting its opponents, kid-gloving its allies while hammering its enemies, obliterating legal norms, weaponizing the legal system, prosecuting the political opposition, and normalizing lawfare. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/13/how-high-does-the-fema-scandal-go/

Until the Daily Wire uncovered concrete evidence that the Federal Emergency Management Administration was telling relief workers to avoid Trump-supporting homes, the press was happy to take FEMA’s word and debunk accusations of political favoritism.

Now that the FEMA employee at the center of the current scandal is saying that she’s a scapegoat and that the problem is far deeper and wider, will the mainstream press ignore this too?

In the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, FEMA came under attack for its seemingly sluggish response to devastation in heavily Republican areas of the Southeast.

Poppycock, responded the press, regurgitating talking points from the agency.

But then the Daily Wire got hold of messages from a FEMA supervisor telling workers to “avoid homes advertising Trump” in Lake Placid, Florida, when going door to door to find those who qualified for financial aid. It also had screenshots of reports from workers saying they were “not able to access property,” with a note “Trump sign, no contact, per leadership.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21113/clean-fusion-power

As the world discovered when the United States deployed the power of atomic energy to end World War II, the nation that has the means to harness this incredible force in any of its many forms has the means of dictating terms to the rest of the globe.

So it should come as no surprise that China is devoting financial, technological, and educational resources to harness what is commonly called, “controlled fusion.” Or, to be specific, to place the enormous energy that powers the Sun inside a reactor that, in turn, could replace virtually every fossil fuel facility on the planet, running on a virtually inexhaustible supply of “clean” fuel.

From subduing the political power of those enemy nations seeking to use their oil and gas reserves to bully America, to addressing climate change concerns, controlled fusion could be as powerful an advance as fire and the wheel.

The Chinese fully recognize the implications of owning this kind of strategic achievement.

Industry reports suggest the Chinese government is putting billions into developing laboratories required to study how to create a sustainable controlled fusion reaction. It is far from easy, as it requires extremely high heat and enormous pressures. One energy industry report says:

“They are training a growing cadre of scientists, with a goal of training 1,000 new plasma physicists to support this program. This plan by the Chinese government shows a real commitment to fusion and makes them a possible front-runner in the global rush to viable fusion technology.”