RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-accuser-must-testify/If Ford won’t agree to testify, hold the vote tomorrow as planned.

In my column yesterday, I contended that the unverifiable sexual-assault allegation against Judge Brett Kavanaugh bore “all the hallmarks of a set-up.” I based that assessment on the patently flimsy evidence, coupled with Senate Democrats’ duplicitous abuse of the confirmation-hearing process. To repeat myself:

If the Democrats had raised the allegation in a timely manner, its weakness would have been palpable, it would have been used for what little it’s worth in examining Kavanagh during his days of testimony, it would be put to rest as unverifiable, and we’d be on to a confirmation vote. Instead, we’re on to a delay — precisely the Democrats’ objective. They want to slow-walk Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote until after the midterms, in the hopes that they swing the Senate in their favor and have the numbers to defeat the nomination.

Well, whaddaya know: Late last night, the partisan Democratic attorneys retained by the putative victim, Christine Blasey Ford, delivered a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), the Judiciary Committee chairman, contending that before any hearing at which she is summoned to testify takes place, there must be a “full investigation by law enforcement officials [to] ensure that the crucial facts and witnesses in this matter are assessed in a non-partisan manner.”

My personal favorite part of the missive is the lawyers’ complaint that, based on published reports, it seems that some of the senators have already “made up their minds” about Professor Ford’s story. This takes some gumption, coming from Democratic activists who are working in tandem with Democratic senators who decided to vote against Judge Kavanaugh long before the hearing started. The lawyers utter this tripe while in the middle of a transparent gambit to block the nomination by delaying it interminably — or at least until after the November election.

What a crock.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/trump-regulation-cuts-saved-taxpayers/

When businesses have to worry about complying with too many rules, it makes it much harder for them to operate.

President Trump’s decision to do away with a number of federal regulations has saved taxpayers $1.3 billion this year, according to the American Action Forum.

That $1.3 billion number is actually double the goal that Trump had set for these savings, according to the Washington Times. Casey Mulligan, chief economist at Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, told the newspaper that the reason the figure wound up being double the administration’s goal was because Barack Obama’s administration had actually far underestimated just how much its regulations were costing Americans.

“President Trump is not getting rid of all regulations by any means,” Mulligan said. “But some of the most problematic ones, he’s getting rid of them.”

When Trump became president, one of the first things he did was issue Executive Order 13771, which demanded that federal agencies repeal two existing regulations for every new one created. This has resulted in agencies eliminating 22 regulations for every new rule by the end of the 2017 calendar year, according to the Wheaton Business Journal. The Journal also reports that the White House estimates that the lifetime savings due to those rollbacks will be around $8.1 billion.

You might not like everything that President Trump says or does (I know I don’t), but you really have to agree that this is one area where he deserves credit. After all, extensive regulations are bad for the economy. When businesses have to worry about complying with too many rules, it makes it much harder for them to operate — and it makes it harder for entrepreneurs to open a new business from scratch. A more relaxed regulatory environment, on the other hand, makes it easier for existing business and makes it simpler for someone with an idea for a start-up to be able to make that idea a reality without having to worry about so much red tape. Having more businesses leads to there being more jobs available, which is obviously a positive thing for any economy. What’s more, since complying with regulations can be so costly, having fewer of them also gives businesses the opportunity to pay their workers higher wages than they would otherwise be able to pay.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271291/worst-ex-president-derby-bruce-thornton

Jimmy Carter must be pleased. He got to surrender his “worst postwar president crown” to Barack Obama, and now with Obama’s recent return to public appearances, Jimmy is hopeful that his award for “worst postwar ex-president” will soon be gone as well. The real question for the rest of us is whether Obama will help or hurt the Dems in November.

Carter and Obama are competing in the same category: reactive presidents. In 1976 Carter seemed the antidote to the scandal-plagued Nixon years. The church-going peanut farmer from Georgia appeared to be the principled outsider who could cleanse the stains of Vietnam and Watergate. No matter that Vietnam’s escalation had been a Democrat show, or that Nixon had drawn down U.S. troops in Vietnam from nearly half a million in 1969 to 27,000 in 1972. Or that Watergate, as Conrad Black described the Europeans’ bemused reaction, was “a pious exercise in Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy covering the crucifixion of a capable and successful president,” one confected and peddled by the Nixon-hating media. As democracies are wont to do, the electorate swung from a good president perceived to be bad, to a bad president perceived (at first) to be good.

Carter didn’t take long to show Americans that their reactive votes were a mistake. Carter was a knee-jerk moralizing internationalist who accepted the lie that America’s “recent mistakes,” as he said in his inaugural address, were the font of all the global disorder. Hence “principled” behavior by mere force of example would defuse conflicts and end human rights abuses. Disarmament, arms control agreements, the “disintegration” of the CIA, as Henry Kissinger put it, and the promotion of human rights would convert our inveterate rivals and enemies into friends and liberal democrats. As Carter said in his memoirs, “Demonstrations of American idealism” and “moral principles” should be the “foundations” of American power.

The consequences, of course, was the amoral Soviet Union’s global rampage, and Carter’s befuddled and timid response to the Iranian hostage crisis, which jump-started today’s neo-jihadist terrorism. His arrogant, misplaced piety, and his sermons about a “crisis of confidence” and an “inordinate fear of communism” disgusted many Americans. They knew that American confidence depended on vigorous action and patriotic pride, not homilies about our sins. Ronald Reagan was their answer, and a revived economy and a dismantled Soviet Union was the result.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271370/exposing-deep-state-plotters-matthew-vadum

President Trump’s sweeping order this week directing intelligence agencies to declassify documents from the more than 18-month-old investigation related to the Left’s electoral collusion conspiracy theory involving Trump and Russia may shed light on what really happened in the 2016 election.

In an interview with Hill.TV yesterday, the president said he ordered the mass declassification to show the public that the FBI investigation of the conspiracy theory began as a “hoax.” Exposing it could be one of the “crowning achievements” of his presidency, he said.

“What we’ve done is a great service to the country, really,” he said. “I hope to be able to call this, along with tax cuts and regulation and all the things I’ve done… in its own way this might be the most important thing because this was corrupt.”

Trump criticized how the FBI handled the Russia probe, accusing it of misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, and of spying on his campaign.

“They know this is one of the great scandals in the history of our country because basically what they did is, they used [former Trump campaign aide] Carter Page, who nobody even knew, who I feel very badly for, I think he’s been treated very badly. They used Carter Page as a foil in order to surveil a candidate for the presidency of the United States.”

“It’s a hoax, beyond a witch hunt,” Trump said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/schumers-fbi-ploy-1537313532

Democrats have succeeded in delaying a vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination until the Senate holds a public hearing with him and his accuser scheduled for Monday, but they’re still not happy. Now they don’t even want to hold that hearing until the FBI investigates the alleged sexual assault that happened when the two were in high school.

“The FBI conducted a background check on Judge Kavanaugh before these allegations were known,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday on the Senate floor. “It is now the FBI’s responsibility to investigate these claims, update the analysis to Judge Kavanaugh’s background, and report back to the Senate.”

Other Democrats have picked up the same chant since Senator Dianne Feinstein announced last week that she had forwarded to the FBI a letter that accuser Christine Ford had written to her. Both Senators know this isn’t the role that the FBI plays in nominations, and their demand shows that their real motive here is further delay.

The FBI doesn’t conduct criminal investigations into nominees, especially not into an alleged incident that would not have been a violation of a federal statute. State law would be at issue. That’s why the FBI responded to Ms. Feinstein’s statement last week by saying it had no plans to conduct a criminal probe and merely added Ms. Ford’s letter to Judge Kavanaugh’s background file.

The purpose of a background check is to interview people about the character and qualifications of a nominee. The FBI makes no judgments about the veracity of the people it interviews, and its role isn’t to issue a judgment about the nominee. The FBI simply compiles information that is then submitted to the White House.