RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-progressive-purge-begins-11610319376?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

“New and aggressive uses of corporate, politically endorsed power to silence larger swathes of the right will be destructive in a way that all Americans may live to regret.”

Can right-wing populist sentiment be banished from American life by the brute force of social-media censorship? We’re about to find out. After Wednesday’s mob invasion of the Capitol that disrupted the counting of electoral votes, big tech firms have moved, aggressively and in unison, against Donald Trump and his supporters. The companies say they want to marginalize the violent fringe, but their censorship will grow it instead.

On Thursday and Friday came the Facebook and Twitter bans of Mr. Trump. Given the extraordinary circumstances, some commentators who normally oppose web censorship were untroubled.

An exception who deserves to be listened to is Alexei Navalny, the Russian democracy advocate and scourge of Vladimir Putin who was poisoned last year. He pointed out that, unlike the open election process that ousted Mr. Trump, social-media decisions to de-platform elected officials are unaccountable and arbitrary. “Don’t tell me he was banned for violating Twitter rules. I get death threats here every day for many years, and Twitter doesn’t ban anyone,” Mr. Navalny tweeted.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/11/army-investigating-officer-who-led-group-to-deadly

An Army psychological warfare officer is being investigated for busing people more than 300 miles to attend the Trump rally that turned into deadly riots at the Capitol, Army officials have confirmed.

Capt. Emily Rainey, 30, confirmed to the Associated Press that she led more than 100 people to Washington, DC, on Wednesday as part of a North Carolina protest group she heads called Moore County Citizens for Freedom.

While her commanders at Fort Bragg are reviewing her involvement in the rally, Rainey said she was fully up front about her plans to go — and insisted her group was not involved in storming the Capitol.

“I was a private citizen and doing everything right and within my rights,” the avid anti-masker told the AP on Sunday.

“I told my bosses before I went that I was going, and I told them when I got back.”

Rainey told the wire service that she was on leave at the time — and CBS News claimed that she had actually already handed in her resignation over her involvement at an earlier protest in the Fort Bragg area. It was not clear when the protest was nor what part she is said to have played.

She quit after getting a career-ending letter of reprimand but was still listed as on active duty because the process to consider her resignation takes time, CBS said.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-1-9-incitement-to-mob-violence-a

In case you were wondering, the Manhattan Contrarian hereby condemns mob violence without qualification, and whether coming from the left or right side of the political spectrum.

Until this past week, I had actually been quite impressed at the ongoing restraint of Trump supporters and others on the right for not having responded in kind to the hundreds of violent riots across the country perpetrated during 2020 by Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and numerous other groups on the progressive left. The assault on the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday was a huge unforced error by those who crossed the line into lawbreaking and violence.

I would have thought that the Democrats who had condoned and encouraged mob violence for months on end would have been too embarrassed to speak out against this rare transgression by their opponents. But of course, that’s not the way this works. The New York Times, having spent months downplaying and dismissing mob violence from Antifa and BLM as “mostly peaceful protests,” had this on its front page on Thursday January 7:

By Friday January 8, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had had her team draw up a new draft article of impeachment against the President. The draft accuses the President of “incitement of insurrection” and “willfully inciting violence against the Government of the United States.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/01/11/the-purge-has-begun-where-it-stops-nobody-knows

In the weeks since the November presidential election, numerous liberals, leftists, and other opponents of President Donald Trump have called for a purge of him and his supporters from public life.

Just days ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20, those purges have begun in earnest.

In the wake of the protest that turned into a mob and then into a riot at the U.S. Capitol building, various media and high-tech companies have used the moment not simply to condemn the violence, but to remove the president of the United States and countless other Americans from their digital platforms.

It’s understandable that many Americans are shaken by what they saw at the Capitol last week. It’s part of a larger pattern of mob law.

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today.

But the crimes of a few lawbreakers should not be used as an excuse to punish and silence other Americans simply because of their political beliefs.

Those actions appear to be targeted and coordinated. It’s a deeply disturbing trend, given that Biden and his fellow Democrats are less than 10 days from effectively controlling both Congress and the executive branch.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-trump-isnt-guilty-of-incitement-11610303966?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

House Democrats have drafted an article of impeachment that accuses President Trump of “incitement to insurrection.” Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin said Thursday that his office is “looking at all actors here and anyone that had a role” in the Capitol riot. Some reporters have construed that as including Mr. Trump.

The president didn’t commit incitement or any other crime. I should know. As a Washington prosecutor I earned the nickname “protester prosecutor” from the antiwar group CodePink. In one trial, I convicted 31 protesters who disrupted congressional traffic by obstructing the Capitol Crypt. In another, I convicted a CodePink activist who smeared her hands with fake blood, charged at then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a House hearing room, and incited the audience to seize the secretary of state physically. In other cases, I dropped charges when the facts fell short of the legal standard for incitement. One such defendant was the antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan.

Hostile journalists and lawmakers have suggested Mr. Trump incited the riot when he told a rally that Republicans need to “fight much harder.” Mr. Trump suggested the crowd walk to the Capitol: “We’re going to cheer on brave senators and congressmen and -women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

In the District of Columbia, it’s a crime to “intentionally or recklessly act in such a manner to cause another person to be in reasonable fear” and to “incite or provoke violence where there is a likelihood that such violence will ensue.” This language is based on Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), in which the Supreme Court set the standard for speech that could be prosecuted without violating the First Amendment. The justices held that a Ku Klux Klan leader’s calls for violence against blacks and Jews were protected speech. The court found that Clarence Brandenburg’s comments were “mere advocacy” of violence, not “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action . . . likely to incite or produce such action.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16935/senate-trial-trump

Some pundits and Senators have suggested that a former President can be impeached and tried as a private citizen. I don’t know if they think this applies to all former presidents, including Clinton, Carter, Bush and Obama, or whether it is applicable only to a president, like Trump, who has just recently left office. But either way, they are simply wrong as a matter of the Constitutional text and meaning.

The relevant text of the Constitution reads as follows: “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” (Article II, Section 4)

The Framers of the Constitution debated impeachment extensively. It is clear that they intended it to apply only to sitting presidents and other office holders and not to private citizens who previously held that office.

The Framers did, however, regard impeachment and trial as part of one single process, culminating in removal from office. And so, if removal from office is no longer a possibility, it would seem that Congress would have no jurisdiction to impeach.

What they want to do is to impeach President Trump without giving him an opportunity to defend himself at a Senate trial. This would be analogous to a prosecutor deciding to indict someone and then deny him a trial at which he could disprove his guilt or prove his innocence. That would be a core denial of due process, as would impeaching a president based on a majority of the House while denying him a trial in the Senate that requires a two-thirds super majority to remove.

Some pundits and Senators have suggested that a former President can be impeached and tried as a private citizen. I don’t know if they think this applies to all former presidents, including Clinton, Carter, Bush and Obama, or whether it is applicable only to a president, like Trump, who has just recently left office. But either way, they are simply wrong as a matter of the Constitutional text and meaning. The relevant text of the Constitution reads as follows: “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” (Article II, Section 4)

Another provision of the Constitution says that an impeached president (or other office holder) may be disqualified “to hold and enjoy any office….” So some are arguing that the Constitutional provisions regarding impeachment should be interpreted to apply to any person who may be eligible to run in the future. Such an absurd interpretation of the Constriction would literally allow millions of ordinary citizens over the age of 35 to be impeached and disqualified from future office holding.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/10/crazy-2020-is-dead-long-live-crazier-2021/

The proper conservative response to last Wednesday’s violent entry into the Capitol and vandalism, as well as assaults on law-enforcement, is to identify the guilty parties and ensure they are arrested.

Such deterrence will prevent any future devolution from legal popular protests into thuggery. No constitutional republic can tolerate its iconic heart stormed, breached, and defiled.

Is Some Violence Worse than Others?

Of course, there is no such thing as “good” or “acceptable” violence of either Trump supporters or of the Antifa and BLM sort.

Yet the latter were largely exempt from any consequences for most of the summer—despite Joe Biden’s demagogic implication that the now multibillion-dollar funded BLM was treated harshly in comparison to the rogue Trump rioters.

Do we remember the authorities’ exemptions given to “warlord” Raz Simone and his armed thugs who, with absolute impunity, took over a Seattle “autonomous zone” known as CHOP or CHAZ, where four shootings and two deaths followed? Who exactly destroyed or vandalized thousands of state and federal public monuments—some in Washington, D.C.—and burned and looted hundreds of buildings with impunity?

Those who wrongly demanded to defund the police, now rightly deplore the lack of a Capitol police presence. Their only consistency is their own perceived political self-interest.

Biden himself rarely if ever, without exceptions, outright condemned the atrocious violence of Antifa and indeed contextualized it as an “idea”—a disincarnate entity that apparently could magically also burn and loot.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/what-now-bruce-bawer/

I’ve been ranting for years about the perfidy of the left. At times I’ve been accused of exaggerating. On rare occasions I feared – or hoped? – that perhaps I was exaggerating. In fact I can now see that these people are worse than I ever imagined. Worse than most of us ever imagined.

Worse, even, than Donald Trump, with all his insight, imagined.

He went into office determined to clean up the swamp. He was tireless. But not tireless enough. No mere mortal could have been tireless enough. Trump had denounced the swamp in apocalyptic terms, but it proved to be even deeper and more extensive than he knew. It reached into the upper echelons of the intelligence community and the military, into cabinet departments and the judiciary.

Not only did the Democrats try to derail his campaign and then his presidency. Even people whom he appointed to White House jobs proved unreliable. Far from being too suspicious, he’d been too trusting. He’d appointed two-faced D.C. insiders. He’d trusted people who turned out to be snakes in the grass.

The news media, with very few exceptions, made it their task to thwart his progress and poison his name with a constant flow of disinformation. They said Trump had told people to drink bleach. They said he’d called neo-Nazis “good people.” They said many other outrageous things that they knew were outright lies. They relentlessly repeated the charge that he did nothing but lie, lie, lie, when in fact it was they, the media, who were constantly feeding us lies.