RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/02/06/impeachment_impossibility_145193.html

“Ultimately, the Senate can exercise its clear jurisdiction to hear the case, complete with senatorial bloviations, and lawyerly dodges. But, if the outcome is anything other than the status quo ante, meaning Trump remains eligible for the presidency in the future, the Senate will deal a grave blow to not just the Constitution but to every member of We the People who thinks they still have a choice.”

Perhaps they are thinking about the next election or their political legacies, but Democrats and some Republicans intent on impeaching and convicting former President Donald Trump are not reading the Constitution correctly. 

When the Senate trial begins Monday, there will be lots of grandstanding and lawyerly pettifogging, and we will find out if Democrats can convince 17 Republicans that they need to convict the former president. 

Fortunately, I don’t think they’ll succeed. I say fortunately because impeaching Trump would be wrong, constitutionally speaking. 

Forty-five Republicans recently voted that this second Trump impeachment trial is in itself unconstitutional. They are incorrect. 

The bipartisan group of 55 senators who voted to proceed to the trial think that the Senate can apply a sanction after conviction. Constitutionally, they’re wrong, too. 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-when-the-white-house-cant-handle-the-truth

On January 21, President Biden’s first full day in office, White House press secretary Jen Psaki began her briefing with this: “When the president asked me to serve in this role, we talked about the importance of bringing truth and transparency back to the briefing room.” Now, the administration’s position on opening schools shut by COVID lockdowns is testing that pledge.

Psaki’s problem started on Wednesday, when the White House COVID Response Team held a teleconference for the press. Among the group was Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the president’s new choice to head the Centers for Disease Control. A reporter asked Walensky about the CDC’s priorities for vaccination, and in particular whether “the federal government would be working more closely with states to kind of get more vaccinations to teachers in particular so that schools can reopen in the fall.”

Walensky said that a group inside the CDC, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, had created a priority list for those receiving vaccinations. In December, the committee included teachers in what was called the 1b category, meaning they would be among those who should be next in line. But that wasn’t law — it was the CDC’s guidance for states to follow, or not to follow.

“We’ve left that to the states to manage,” Walensky explained, “in terms of recognizing the prioritization of ACIP, but also manage at their own local level.”

And then: “That said, I want to be very clear about schools, which is: Yes, ACIP has put teachers in the 1b category, the category of essential workers. But I also want to be clear that there is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely. So while we are implementing the criteria of the Advisory Committee and of the state and local guidances to get vaccination across these eligible communities, I would also say that safe reopening of schools is not — that vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools.”

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-limbaugh/2021/02/05/the-tyrannical-lefts-sinister-conspiracy-to-silence-conservatives-n1423575

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’re being manipulated.

As worried as we should be about the hyper-exploding 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://amgreatness.com/2021/02/05/democrats-hypocrisy-on-political-violence-runs-deep/

There is a reason Republicans don’t wear t-shirts emblazoned with the image of Augusto Pinochet, but Democrats do wear shirts emblazoned with the image of Che Guevara.

After the Civil War, the Democratic Party (with the notable exception of the Ku Klux Klan) had renounced employing domestic terrorism, armed insurrection, and political violence as tools for advancing their agenda. This nearly unanimous bipartisan consensus between Republicans and Democrats prevailed for around 100 years, throughout syndicalists and anarchists bombings and assassinations, including of President William McKinley. It prevailed up through the Puerto Rican nationalists’ 1950 assassination attempt on President Harry Truman, which claimed the life of White House Police Officer Leslie Coffelt; and the 1954 attack in the U.S. House Chamber, which wounded five representatives, including the Hon. Alvin Barkley (R-Mich.).

In each instance, the overwhelming majority of the country supported the convictions under law of these terrorists. And, of course, the same was true with regard to the perpetrators of the political violence that took the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Kennedy brothers.

But as the Baby Boomers came of age and the Vietnam War raged, the consensus regarding political violence, armed insurrection, and domestic terrorism began to change. While the overwhelming majority of anti-war protestors were non-violent, there emerged a group of leftist domestic terrorists and violent insurrectionists—many of them the privileged spawn of well-to-do parents—bent upon the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, which they deemed a fascistic, imperialistic empire. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/the-impeachment-trials-stacked-deck/

EXCERPTS:

Trump should receive a fair chance to present the facts and legal arguments of his defense.

A s the Senate launches its second impeachment trial of Donald Trump next week, its members must confront the deep unfairness of the proceedings.

The Senate rashly claimed jurisdiction over a former president, fumbled on the selection of a presiding judge, and ignored the constitutional — not political — standards that should prevail. Further, it has given Trump’s depleted legal team little time or means to present a full defense — the only guarantee that the American people will accept the verdict as fair. Trump’s lawyers will have to accept these unfair conditions, though might conceivably be able to appeal directly to the federal courts to stop a show trial (more on that later).

Nevertheless, the Senate has ignored the constitutional limits on its powers and refused to follow principles of fairness in the trial. As we have argued earlier, the constitutional text — read in light of the understanding held by the Framers — does not appear to permit the trial of executive officers after their terms have ended. If the Framers had wanted to provide for the Senate trial of an impeached former president, they could have said so explicitly, as did several state constitutions of the Founding period. Days ago, 45 senators supported proceeding with a losing motion by Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) to dismiss the impeachment on this constitutional ground alone.

But a Senate trial compounds this fundamental problem by placing Senator Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) in charge of the proceedings, rather than Chief Justice John Roberts. The Constitution states that the chief justice “shall” preside over the trial of the president. But Donald Trump is no longer the president. Roberts could not preside because no constitutional clause clearly provides for the trial of an ex-president.

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

One of the most disheartening things since Trump left office is that he took his bravado with him. Thanks to the Democrats’ new ownership of the police state, the Supreme Court’s passivity, and the Democrats’ turning events at the Capitol on January 6 into America’s Reichstag’s fire, Democrats have cowed Republicans. It’s therefore nice to know that Trump is still Trump – as evidenced by his response to the Screen Actor’s Guild, which threatened him with expulsion over January 6.

All people, no matter how peanut-sized their brains, know now that what happened on January 6 had nothing to do with Donald Trump. Even the FBI has admitted that the events were planned long before January 6 and had nothing to do with Trump. Worse, even the WaPo had to admit that the FBI may well have been warned in advance…and done nothing.

The timeline of events also shows that (a) Trump was still speaking when events began to play out at the Capitol and (b) Trump told his supporters to behave alike Americans: peaceably go to the Capitol and cheer on Republican senators who were attempting to get some sunlight onto claims of massive election fraud.

One of the main figures in the Capitol fiasco was a leftist, and there were multiple non-Trump supporters involved. Moreover, it appears that it’s fake news that protesters beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/04/americas-political-prisoners-first/

In September 2019, Couy Griffin, founder of Cowboys for Trump, met with President Trump in the Oval Office.

His group, according to its website, believes “securing our border, protecting our Second Amendment, and protecting the lives of the unborn are the most vital and key aspects in America’s Greatness.” Trump supporters riding on horseback—often carrying American flags and Trump banners—participated in rallies across the country to show support for the president.

Today, Griffin sits in a jail cell denied bail.

Prosecutors charged Griffin with one minor count of trespassing as part of the Justice Department’s sweeping investigation into the events of January 6. Griffin, who is a county commissioner in New Mexico, never entered the Capitol but investigators scoured his social media account to find evidence that he was “well within the restricted area” of the building.

Griffin did not assault a police officer or break any windows or even steal an important leader’s laptop. His real crime, of course, is that he’s a supporter of Donald Trump—and his real threat to society, according to U.S. prosecutors and a federal judge, is that Griffin dares to doubt the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. (In his post-arrest interview, Griffin told the FBI “the election was stolen.”)

Arguing that Griffin is a flight risk and should remain in jail throughout his trial, government lawyers claimed his refusal to accept Joe Biden as the legitimately elected president would cause him to also “deny the authority of the judicial officers appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.”

Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, who was neither appointed by the president nor confirmed by the Senate, concurred. “This is an offense that, at bottom, was an attempt to stop democracy from moving forward because people were unhappy about the results of the election,” Faruqui preached during a February 1 hearing. “I don’t think that the defendant will follow my conditions if he believes I am part of this machine of the democratic process.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/05/bidens-banana-republic/

A New York Times reporter has suggested the president appoint a “reality czar,” who would lead “a cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism.” Please tell us, comrade, when the show trials begin. We don’t want to miss them.

The author of this idea is Times technology reporter Kevin Roose, who was writing about “how the Biden administration can help solve our reality crisis.” His is not a lone recommendation on how the ruling class should re-educate, curb, and cancel the unruly masses to the right of center. Others want the Biden White House to establish various versions of George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, which was itself a ministry of propaganda. The Democrats and allied activists are itching to shut down speech they don’t agree with, but do it under the cover of preserving and honoring “truth.”

Odd, isn’t it, that the same people who claim to be so interested in truth and reality today for four years couldn’t stop talking about how the Russians put Donald Trump in the White House? Maybe they’re engrossed only with their version of the truth – their own fantasies and efforts to indoctrinate an entire population.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/will-democrats-election-reform-push-backfire-on-the-dark-money-left/?itm_campaign=headline

Democrats dominate dark-money spending and always have.

T here’s more projection in Washington than in a chain of movie theaters. An excellent example of this is the Left’s relentless attack on “dark money,” cast as a distinctly conservative poison polluting American politics. So goes the hooey.

Just what it is, how much of it there is, who gets the bulk of the dark dough, and whether there is an approaching day of ruing for Democrats and their cash-flush “philanthropy” sidekicks, such as Arabella Advisors and the Tides Foundation — the Left’s superlative hypocrisy on the issue is matched by that of a supportive, echo-chamber media — are questions prompted by the legislation deemed so important, so vital and urgent, it gets the distinction of being numbered H.R. 1. The bill’s formal title is the “For the People Act of 2021” (we might suggest the “For the People Who Are Not Conservatives Act”), and it is sponsored by John Sarbanes (D., Md.). The Senate version’s sponsor is Jeff Merkley, the Oregon Democrat to the left of whom is the Pacific Ocean.

The legislation states that its mission is “to expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes.”

Yes, and unicorns are real.

The bill is a massive thing, and it should be, given its insatiable appetite. H.R. 1 intends to dictate and channel campaign spending (that pesky free-speech right); to essentially federalize elections by undermining the rights of individual states’ voters to set voter qualification, registration, and identity standards; and to stymie citizens’ right to ensure, in their localities, the integrity of elections and registration rolls (the non-cemetery ones). That’s among other things. (The Heritage Foundation provides an excellent analysis of this bill’s predecessor, introduced in the prior 116th Congress.)