RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/confederate-statue-in-arlington-cemetery-to-stay-for-now-federal-judge-rules/

A federal judge intervened on Monday to stop the removal of an Arlington National Cemetery monument commemorating national reunification after the Civil War.

U.S. district judge Rossie Alston issued a temporary restraining order shortly after work began Monday morning to remove the Civil War landmark, which the Defense Department ordered to be removed by January 1.

Alston’s ruling was delivered in response to a lawsuit that sought the restraining order. A preservation group called Defend Arlington, which is tied to Save Southern Heritage Florida, filed the suit Sunday in Alexandria, Va. The judge will hear opinions from both parties on Wednesday before deciding whether to extend the restraining order.

The plaintiffs alleged the U.S. Army, which runs the cemetery, is violating regulations by seeking a quick removal that will possibly “desecrate, damage, and likely destroy” the monument “as a grave marker and impede the Memorial’s eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places,” according to the lawsuit. An attorney for the plaintiffs reportedly said they have evidence that the hasty deconstruction project would disturb grave sites.

Over the weekend, Arlington National Cemetery said it will ensure the protection of “the surrounding landscape, graves, and headstones,” while announcing tentative plans to remove the Confederate memorial by December 22. The cemetery intends to comply with a congressional mandate that was issued after an independent commission recommended its removal last year, as part of a larger effort to rename military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/12/why-a-formal-impeachment-inquiry-is-now-necessary/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=second

To make the serious allegations against the Bidens penetrate the public consciousness, Republicans must stage their own show.

Since the prospect was first raised, I have been of the view that the Republican Party would be better off moving too slowly than too fast in its inquiry into the Biden family’s peculiar business dealings. James Comer and Chuck Grassley have done sober and sedulous work over the past couple of years, and I have worried that, if they were to run out over their skis, they would fatally undermine their own efforts. As National Review’s editors correctly observed this week, impeachment is ultimately a political question, not a legal question, and it is thus subject to the slings and arrows of demagoguery and the vicissitudes of public opinion. Hitherto, my advice to the GOP has been to keep up the good work and wait for the right moment. An inquiry was already ongoing. What need could there be to formalize it?

I have changed my mind. Naturally, I still consider it imperative for the Republicans to remain diligent and shrewd and for all involved to stick assiduously to the facts. But, having watched the brazen manner in which both the White House and the press have continued to stonewall, I have come to the conclusion that a more ceremonial investigation is, in fact, necessary. In theory, the media ought to be keenly interested in informing the country of where things stand. In practice, its leading lights have effectively been working for the president. If the GOP is to have any chance of conveying what it has found thus far — and, despite the foot-stamping and gaslighting, what it has found thus far is extremely interesting — it will be obliged to do so under its own steam. We are a long, long way away from Woodward and Bernstein. To break through, the Republicans will need to stage their own show.

Thus far, the White House’s response has been to deny everything in the hope that the questions will go away. And, thus far, that has worked. Why? Certainly, it is not because President Biden’s denials have been proven reliable. Far from it! Asked recently whether he had done anything wrong, Biden was categorical: “I did not,” he replied. “It’s just a bunch of lies.” Perhaps so. But one cannot help but notice that this is exactly how President Biden has spoken about all of the other allegations, too. “I have never talked with my son or my brother, or anyone else in the distant family about their business interests, period,” Biden said in 2019. Actually, he had. “My son has not made money, in terms of thing about, what are you talking about — China,” Biden insisted in 2020. The records show that his son’s firm made $11 million there. “That’s not true,” Biden said this year, when asked whether “Hunter Biden’s business associates sent over $1 million to three of your family members.” As it happened, it was. Now, President Biden is claiming that he was not financially involved with his son’s business — or, as CNN is putting it, that that he was not “improperly” involved with his son’s business. This may turn out to be true — we’ll see. Given how the rest of his denials have panned out, however, it ought at least to be treated with skepticism.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/18/we-are-well-beyond-hypocrisy/

The abject narcissism of the insular Left is startling. They apparently believe the American public is amnesiac enough to forget what leftists once did, now that they’re doing the utter opposite. And they assume we are to discount their hypocrisy and self-absorption simply because they self-identify as erudite and moral and assume their opponents are irredeemable and deplorable.

Impeachment

The Left is saturating the airwaves with outrage over the current House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry. They allege that formally investigating Joe Biden’s role in the family grifting operation is somehow a poor constitutional precedent, if not out-of-bounds entirely.

So we hear further arguments that it will be unwise to impeach a first-term president when he loses his House majority, that there is no reason to “waste” congressional time and effort when Biden will be automatically acquitted in the Democratically controlled Senate, and that the impeachment is cynically timed to synchronize with president’s reelection efforts.

All of these are the precise arguments many of us cited when Donald Trump was impeached in December 2019 (as his reelection campaign began, and immediately after being cleared of the 22-month, $40-million-special-counsel Russian-collusion hoax).

The Democrats tried to remove an elected president over a phone call without a special counsel’s report. So Trump was impeached only after the 2018 election led to a Democratic House majority, which went from eating up nearly two years of his administration in the Russian-collusion hoax straight into the impeachment farce. There was no concern about the cost to the nation of putting an elected government into a continual state of siege.

There is one difference, though, between the Trump impeachment and the Biden impeachment inquiry. Donald Trump was impeached because he accurately accused the members of the Ukrainian government of paying Hunter Biden, with his zero fossil fuel expertise, an astronomical sum to serve on the Burisma board—as the costly quid that earned the lucrative quo from his dad Vice President Joe Biden.

No one now denies that Joe Biden got prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired by threatening to cancel legislatively-approved U.S. aid. Shokin knew about the skullduggery through which the Biden family eventually received $6.5 million from Ukraine—and so Biden ensured his firing, and publicly bragged about it in performance-art fashion.

In sum, Trump had a perfect right as commander in chief to delay (he did not cancel) aid to Ukraine, to ensure that its government was not still paying off the Bidens for their lobbying efforts on its behalf.