RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17071/impeachment-constitution-mcconnell

[I]t is CNN and the other media that failed to understand the distinction between defending the Constitution and defending the person.

To have voted to convict citizen Trump would have given Congress a roving commission to seek out and disqualify any potential candidate who ever held federal public office or who might run for office in the future. McConnell correctly rejected that open-ended power grab.

One does not have to agree with the substance with what President Trump did or said on January 6, in order to correctly conclude that the Senate had no jurisdiction over him once he left office, and that the statements he made — whatever one might think of them — are fully protected by the Constitution.

Back in the bad old days of McCarthyism, anyone who supported the constitutional rights of accused communists was deemed to support communism. That was wrong then, just as it is wrong today to believe that everyone who defends Trump against an unconstitutional impeachment necessarily supports his views or actions.

CNN and other left-wing media went on a rampage after Senator Mitch McConnell delivered his speech explaining why he voted to acquit Donald Trump, despite his belief that Trump had engaged in improper behavior. They accused McConnell of hypocrisy and inconsistency — arguing that if he believed Trump had done wrong, he was obligated to vote for conviction. But it is CNN and the other media that failed to understand the distinction between defending the Constitution and defending the person.

McConnell taught the American people a civics lesson by explaining that the Senate had no constitutional authority to place a former president on trial, even one who had been impeached while still serving in office. In doing so, he echoed a constitutional argument I have been making from the very beginning of this unconstitutional power grab by the Democrat-controlled Congress. The language of the constitution is clear:

“The President … shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/14/the-wages-of-trump-hatred/

Over the last five years, the pathology of Trump Derangement Syndrome has been widely described. It was more than a chronic disease and was often characterized by an array of rapidly advancing symptoms of deterioration in reasoning, emotional stability, and personal ethics. 

More practically, often the deranged Trump hater found in his odium a cover for all sorts of prior personal intemperance and careerist dissipation. Loudly hating Trump became a passport for excess, private and public, and a sort of preemptive insurance that excused or rather greenlighted smears, slander, and personal misdeeds.

The Anti-Lincoln Project

For over a year, the theme of the NeverTrump Lincoln Project was the organizers’ professed superior morality. They had it; most others on the Right did not. Only a select heroic few of the Republican Party would dare to break ranks to end the danger to the country posed by a supposedly morally inferior Donald Trump. 

Forget Trump’s economic, domestic, cultural, and foreign policy record that had belied critics by its successes—despite historic opposition, investigation, denigration, and obstruction. No matter. Character was king. Again, the Lincoln Project had it; Trump followers did not. 

The Lincoln Project’s Band of Brothers—initially four financially strapped, embittered middle-aged white male Washington insiders—lectured the country that those few, those happy few, that band of brothers would fight for us. If only they were adequately funded, they could save us from the moral turpitude of four more years of Trump. 

Their ostensible promise to the Left was that they would hold down their end of the bargain by maintaining the 10-12 percent of Republicans who did not vote for Trump in 2016. In truth, they may have had nothing to do with preserving a bare six percent of Republicans who would again vote against Trump. That was a modest aim, but apparently, every bit of Trump derangement was fundable. Or as the departing, now mansion-buying Steve Schmidt put it, “I really didn’t give a sh-t how many Republicans were voting for Trump or not.”

If one were to believe all the sermonizing of these latter-day Elmer Gantrys, then their inherent paradoxes, hypocrisies, and selfish agendas might magically disappear. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/seven_turncoats_.html

What motivated those Republicans to vote guilty?

Burr, (NC), Sasse, (NE), Romney, (UT), Collins,(ME), Murkowski, (AK), Cassidy,(LA), Toomey, (PA)

I have learned to hate all traitors, and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery.  Aeschylus

Is it their own moral narcissism as Roger Simon suspects, a misplaced sense of their own moral righteousness?  It can’t be because their constituents wanted them to vote guilty.  They will likely each be censured in their home states for their betrayal.  

Is it their own insecurity re: their membership in the swamp?  Is it money?  Were they somehow paid for their guilty votes?  That would surprise no one.  

We’ve long known that Romney’s hatred for Trump ate his brain, destroyed any core values he ever had, if he had them.  Murkowski has never been a reliable conservative nor has Susan Collins.  They are both Democrats in their heart of hearts. Cassidy was a Democrat all his life until 2006, so he too is a fake republican.   

As for Toomey and Burr?  Pick any of the above suggestions but the most obvious answer is they are both moral narcissists. They each probably think they are securing some sort of positive legacy, but their names will be infamous.  How could they get things so wrong?  

They live in the bubbles of their own making.  They each seem to believe they are superior to their colleagues who voted not guilty when in fact they are just garden variety arrogant pretenders.  They’re political hacks without a shred of decency.  

Oh, they think they’re the most decent people amongst the swells, but they are just cheap reproductions in a long line of cheap reproductions.   The American Congress has a long and storied history of seating scoundrels.  Perhaps they took their cues from the Lincoln Project; that would make perfect sense.  Like-minded reprobates generally find each other in their common causes.

This second sham of an impeachment was clearly unconstitutional, which is why Chief Justice Roberts wanted no part of it, even though he loathes Trump.  It would have been nice if he had released a public statement asserting that fact, but he is something of a cowardly cad himself as we all now know.  

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/youtube_is_now_blocking_links_to_american_thinker.html

Am I the only one (I don’t think so) who is concerned that the First Amendment is now hanging by a thread?

YouTube appears to be – no, it definitely is – blocking links to American Thinker. When one attempts to post a comment to a YouTube video or to reply to someone else’s comment that includes a link to American Thinker, the comment cannot be posted. This is the message one receives:

We weren’t able to add your reply. Please try again.

“Trying again” achieves nothing except the same result no matter how many attempts are made. When the same comment is attempted again, but without the American Thinker link, the comment is posted immediately.

I first noticed this phenomenon on Friday as I attempted to reply to a viewer’s comment to the video of Jamie Glazov’s interview with me on the subject of “What’s Up With Fox News?” – the same topic as my feature article at American Thinker today (Sunday, February 14). When my reply didn’t go through after multiple attempts, I deleted the link to AT from my draft comment and it was posted without delay.

This is not a temporary glitch. The same result was noticed again in an attempt to post a comment to YouTube that I made this morning (February 14).

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/governor-andrew-cuomo-must-go-joseph-klein/

Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial has concluded with an acquittal, just like his first impeachment trial a year earlier. Both impeachments were travesties of justice in which Democrats weaponized the impeachment process to exact political revenge on Trump. But there are times when government leaders have so badly abused their powers and violated the public trust that they must be held fully accountable for their misdeeds and removed from office if necessary. New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo is a prime example. 

Thousands of elderly nursing home residents in New York lost their lives last spring because of Cuomo’s reckless disregard of human life in exercising his emergency powers to deal with the coronavirus crisis. He ordered last March that elderly patients infected with the coronavirus be sent from hospitals to nursing homes. “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to [a nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19,” the order stated. “[Nursing homes] are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”

As previously uninfected nursing home residents began to drop like flies in the wake of Cuomo’s directive, the governor reversed course last May. But Cuomo took no personal responsibility for the tragic loss of life. Instead, after shifting blame to anyone but himself, Cuomo and his top aides covered up the true extent of the human toll the nursing home directive had inflicted. 

The first shoe that dropped evidencing a possible coverup was New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ release of a damaging report last month. The report estimated that if deaths of nursing home residents in hospitals from the coronavirus had been counted, the total tally of nursing home resident fatalities would have increased by more than 50 percent.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/tyrannical-lefts-sinister-conspiracy-silence-david-limbaugh/

Why does the left want to silence conservatives? Why do rank-and-file Democrats go along with this abomination? Leftists have bad intentions, but how about the Democrats who enable them? I prefer to think they’ve being manipulated.

As worried as we should be about the hyperexploding national debt and our inevitable fiscal catastrophe, I am even more worried about the left’s success in turning America into a police state (ironic, given its simultaneous war on the police).

People still able to summon their rational faculties during this pandemic have to be concerned about this insane, concerted effort to control people’s thoughts and speech. How can those who purport to rage against the fascism of former President Donald Trump, which was an abject Democratic and media myth, promote actual fascism in our culture?

It strains the mind to imagine that fair people can deceive themselves into believing that silencing and canceling people for “offensive” views is consistent with our liberty tradition. Some rationalize that because government is not the moving agency in this censorship, and because the Constitution only restricts state action, not that of private entities, there is no violation of our constitutional principles.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/15/yet-another-big-lie-behind-bidens-1-9-trillion-covid-bill/

Last week, governors and mayors from around the country came to the White House with cups in hand for COVID aid and found a president eager to listen to their pleas of poverty.

“They’ve been working on their own in many cases,” President Joe Biden said, promising to come to the rescue with $350 billion in federal “relief” funds.

It was a good act.

But back home, states across the country are reporting huge surpluses, thanks not only to previous federal COVID handouts (which totaled more than $400 billion) but because tax revenues are surging as the economy rapidly rebounds.

As the City Journal reports, “Undoubtedly some states and cities have faced challenges, but nationwide, state and local governments have seen tax revenue rebound to pre-pandemic levels, even as they have continued to receive a large influx of federal funds.”

Don’t believe it? Look at this sampling from recent news accounts about states’ running budget surpluses, some of them at historic levels, many of them a surprise to local lawmakers.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/impeachment-mcconnells-verdict/91420/

It is one of the ironies of the trial of President Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection that the remarks most likely to be studied by historians is the speech delivered after the verdict — not guilty — was brought in. It was after the Senate ordered the outcome be sent for safekeeping with the Secretary of State, and the court of impeachment was adjourned, that Senator Mitch McConnell unloaded.

His speech is likely to go down as one of the most remarkable ever delivered in the Senate. It was a constitutional highwire act worthy of the Great Wallenda. And, not to put too fine a point on it, it might well prove to be more damning to Mr. Trump than anything said by the prosecution — more damning, even, than a guilty verdict from the Senate would have been, though that can be but guesswork.

Mr. McConnell had just finished voting to acquit a former president he has clearly come to detest. He evidently felt that he had to say something to justify, or explain, that decision. So he opened with a five-word sentence. “January 6th,” he said, “was a disgrace.” Americans “attacked their own government,” “used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like,” and “beat and bloodied our own police.”

They also, Mr. McConnell said, “tried to hunt down the Speaker” and built a “gallows” while chatting “about murdering the Vice President.” They did this, he added, “because they’d been fed wild, falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth because he was angry. He lost an election. Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/02/black-lives-matter-rioters-bite-cops-assault-72-daniel-greenfield/

It’s okay. Impeachment over that “insurrection” is over so it’s okay to start launching new insurrections.

Police arrested nearly a dozen anti-NYPD protesters and a member of the press was assaulted during a demonstration in Manhattan Friday night, according to the NYPD.

From the very neutral language, you know these weren’t conservatives. 

The demonstration was peaceful until an American flag was burned and protesters rushed at police officers, according to the NYPD.

It was mostly peaceful until the violence began.

The situation quickly dissolved into chaos as police vehicles were vandalized and a mob attacked a Daily News photographer, police said.

Lots of passive voice. Events happen for no apparent reason. The “situation” somehow becomes “chaotic”. It’s like this is a natural phenomenon with no connection to human behaviors. Imagine media coverage of the Capitol Riot describing how the “situation quickly dissolved into chaos as some protesters grappled into police while others wandered through Congress” as opposed to, “Mitt Romney was seconds from death at the hands of a mob determined to kill everyone.”

The Daily News identified the photographer as Sam Costanza, who said a group of 10 to 15 protesters attacked him. The photographer said he might have a broken nose, according to The Daily News.

That’s about as many members of the press as were injured at the Capitol Riot.