RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jason-chaffetz-why-is-michael-cohen-prosecuted-when-hillary-clinton-eric-holder-and-lois-lerner-were-not

With a Republican president in place and soon-to-be Democrat-run House, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has conveniently remembered that they have the ability to prosecute people who lie to Congress. This was a power they had inexplicably forgotten about during the 10 years that Democrats were benefiting from witnesses who lied.

No doubt there should be consequences and accountability if you testify to Congress under oath and blatantly lie or violate the law. But the DOJ seems to have different standards based on which party’s political fortunes will be impacted. It is this unequal application of justice that is dividing the country and threatens peace.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney, struck a plea deal with the DOJ for lying to Congress. But what about all the other egregious cases of misconduct interacting with Congress? Why weren’t those pursued or prosecuted?

Let’s look back at how a very similar case was handled just a few short years ago. After FBI Director James Comey announced there would be no charges against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or any of her associates for a variety of potential unlawful acts, Comey testified before the House Oversight Committee. I was the Chairman of the committee at the time.

When I asked Comey specifically if he had reviewed Secretary Clinton’s testimony before the Benghazi Select Committee, he confirmed the FBI never reviewed nor considered that testimony. As Chair of Oversight, I along with JudiciaryChairman Bob Goodlatte sent a formal request to the DOJ. We never even got a response. Note the contradiction: Cohen is forced into a plea deal and Clinton’s lies to Congress were not even reviewed.

The inconsistency always seems to conveniently favor the Democrats and penalize those connected to Donald Trump.

https://www.city-journal.org/miami-dade-criminal-mental-health-project%E2%80%8B

Barbaric conditions in mental institutions were a common target of journalistic exposés during the asylum era of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These days, though, most accounts of gross maltreatment of the mentally ill concern jails, not hospitals. Deinstitutionalization emptied America’s asylums in the name of providing more humane treatment, but that approach has left many seriously mentally ill people on the streets, where, untreated, they can spiral into disorder and violent behavior—often putting them behind bars. This year, Alisa Roth’s book Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness and a series of articles by the Virginian-Pilot on mental illness in American jails have detailed the many ways in which incarceration tends to worsen serious mental illness.

For starters, jails are full of criminals. Serious offenders often harass, harm, and degrade those locked up for more minor offenses, including the mentally ill. Jails are noisy, and the population is highly transient (the standard stay is less than a month), making for “an especially unstable and disorienting social environment,” in Roth’s words. Effective treatment depends on an accurate diagnosis, but that can be a complicated process under ordinary circumstances (there’s no brain scan or blood test for mental illness), and even worse for a newly arrived jail inmate who may never have seen a psychiatrist before. When the mentally ill have trouble following jail rules, their difficulties can come across to corrections officers as insubordination.

Their propensity to break rules and commit additional crimes behind bars helps explain why mentally ill inmates often stay in jail far longer than typical inmates. They behave erratically, so it’s hard for them to mix with the general inmate population; but putting them in solitary confinement is unlikely to improve their condition. Recovery from mental illness requires not only therapy and medication but also meaningful opportunities for recreation and employment tailored to needs and capabilities. These aren’t likely to be abundant in jail, since, among other reasons, the unpredictability of release dates frustrates the development of plans for care. Incarcerated Americans have a constitutional right to mental-health care, thanks to Supreme Court and federal court rulings, but, far too often, those guarantees don’t equate to real-world benefits.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/the_sham_that_is_the_mueller_investigation.html

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has finally provided his team’s sentencing recommendation for three-star general Michael Flynn. He has acknowledged that Flynn has provided 19 separate interviews with the Mueller team. The heavily redacted report provides no information concerning the testimony that Flynn provided. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

Flynn has had to sell his home to pay his legal bills during this process. His 33-year career serving our country seems to have meant little to the prosecutors trying to get him to turn on Trump. Although we have no direct evidence for his sudden decision last year to plead guilty and cooperate, many believe that this was done to protect his son from being prosecuted. This is the type of prosecutorial overreach that borders on ethical violations. It certainly makes us wonder: what is prosecutorial discretion?

Shockingly, the basis for this investigation includes citation of the Logan Act of the 19th century, limiting foreign negotiations by the general public. Most observers believe that the transition team is not subject to this law, which has rarely been used and never successfully when challenged in court. Unfortunately, the FBI investigators reported that they did not believe that Flynn was intentionally lying when questioned about his interaction with then-Russian ambassador Kislyak.

The report includes recognition that he did not register when doing work for the government of Turkey. This is usually corrected by paper changes, not prosecution. Further, all the information that led to the inquiry was collected through government communication-gathering. Though the government is required to minimize the mention of names of U.S. citizens, this information was leaked to damage Flynn and ultimately Trump.

So far, most of the Mueller prosecutions have been process crimes and not ones with any connection to Russian collusion. This includes George Papadopoulos and Michael Cohen. This makes one wonder why Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein began this inquiry in the first place. It is hard to dismiss all the unequal justice, including the questionable FISA warrant on Carter Page, begun with a phony Russian dossier.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/supreme-court-racial-preferences-affirmative-action/

The Supreme Court could be ready to rule that racial discrimination is illegal, even if it is purportedly done for a good cause.

Editor’s Note: The following is the sixth in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track. The first entry is available here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, and the fifth here.

America has a race problem. It has always had a race problem. Slavery, as many have observed, is America’s original sin. The challenge that will confront the new Roberts Court is how far it will allow government to make amends for that sin, while preventing a new elite of social engineers from jury-rigging the right racial balances — all in the name of a racial diversity that has suddenly became an end of a just society, rather than merely a means. As with its passages on religion, the Second Amendment, or the role of the courts, the Constitution’s command is relatively clear. It is the Court’s past failures to live up to principle that has kept the issue in doubt, but the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh may finally put it to rest.

More than 150 years after the end of slavery, 60 years after the end of public-school segregation, and two years after America’s first black president left the Oval Office, accusations of racism fill our airwaves and screens. Democrats fresh off a solid midterm victory in Congress still claim that the suppression of minority voting cost them governorships and Senate seats, despite voter turnout that reached heights not seen since 1914. On the other hand, those same Democrats argue that governments should use racial data to draw voter districts and hand out government contracts, and argue that state and local police harbor such racial animus against minorities as to shoot them at high rates.

Meanwhile, Asian students have uncovered evidence that Harvard University has used ridiculous stereotypes to engineer the right racial balances in its admissions process. As a recent lawsuit against the Ivy League school has revealed, Asian Americans consistently make up just 19 percent of the student body, despite an increasing percentage of Asian-American college students nationwide. Asians score higher than any other group on academic criteria and extracurricular activities. If academic merit alone determined admissions, the university admitted that Asians would make up 43 percent of the student body, about the same level reached at the University of California at Berkeley after California ended affirmative action by popular initiative.