RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Trump has selected independent-minded U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to replace National Security Advisor Mike Flynn who vacated the key White House post last week under a cloud.

The Independent Journal Review said McMaster, who will retain his active military status, would appeal to conservatives, describing him as someone who is “six different kinds of badass.”

McMaster “is highly respected by everyone in the military, and we’re very honored to have him,” Trump said yesterday afternoon in Palm Beach, Fla. The president acknowledged Vice President Mike Pence played a role in the selection process.

Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who had replaced Flynn on an interim basis, will become McMaster’s chief of staff, according to Trump. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton, who had been in the running to succeed Flynn, was reportedly asked to play an unspecified role in the Trump administration.

Fresh from his overseas tour apologizing for Trump’s presidency, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said McMaster was an “outstanding choice” and “a man of genuine intellect, character and ability.”

“He knows how to succeed,” the curmudgeonly failed presidential candidate said in a statement. “I give President Trump great credit for this decision.”

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman the House Intelligence Committee, hailed McMaster for his “history of questioning the status quo and infusing fresh thinking and new approaches into military affairs.”

Iraq war veteran Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), also lauded the choice, describing McMaster as “one of the finest combat leaders of our generation … a true warrior-scholar.”

A career officer and strategist, McMaster holds a doctoral degree in American history and is considered to be a serious intellectual and strategist. He lacks Flynn’s background in the intelligence community but commanded forces in both Iraq wars.

Surprisingly, the Los Angeles Times, a fairly reliable barometer of current left-wing thinking, failed to experience a grand mal seizure while reporting on McMaster yesterday, which may suggest the Left won’t spend a lot of time laying land mines for the new presidential appointee. The paper’s report didn’t go particularly hard on the general.

We live in unusual times. While most of my Leftist friends refuse to admit it, the Obama Administration tilted far to the left: ObamaCare became the biggest government program since the 1960s. The “Life of Julia” and Pajama Boy represented the promise of Obama’s paternalistic government. Administrative agencies like the EPA, the Consumer Protection Bureau and the FCC enacted and administered laws, and then assessed penalties on violators – acting as judge, jury and executioner. Universities, once bastions of free speech, became temples of intolerance toward those who dared speak freely against accepted norms. The Administration compartmentalized voters, deepened divisions and then plumbed the subsequent fractious behavior for political advantage.

Mr. Obama backed away as leader of the free world – leading from behind in Libya, doing nothing as Russia annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine. He ignored Assad’s crossing of his “red line” in Syria, and watched as China invaded, then developed airbases on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. He opened the door to Cuba, but ignored its human rights’ violations. Israel was isolated and North Korea continued its nuclear program. He stood by as Venezuela sank into dissolution, and provided Iran the time and means to develop nuclear weapons. Despite Islamic attacks at home, Mr. Obama never called Islamic terrorism by name, for fear of offending Muslims.

The seeds that were sown by those on the far Left – coastal elites, academic chauvinists, environmental militants, vacuous minds from the world of entertainment, a potpourri of constituents that had been segregated for easy access, and millions of people dependent on the largesse of government – are now reaping the whirlwind. The consequence: for six years, Republicans have picked up State legislative seats and governorships, indicating that people want government to protect their God-given rights, not to take them away. It has been a trend ignored by the Left.

There have always been fringe elements on the Right, like white supremacists and knuckle-dragging anti-evolutionists, but they never dominated the Republican Party. The Left argues that the Tea Party is far-right, but they want a smaller, less authoritarian government. They argue that George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan were far-right, but, for both, practical politics came before ideology. Consider the bi-partisan support their major legislative initiatives received in Congress. Can you imagine a Republican Speaker of the House with the idiotic, supercilious hollowness of Nancy Pelosi? – “We must pass this bill to find out what’s in it.” Can you imagine a Republican getting away with the lies told by Hillary Clinton about Benghazi, or the promises Mr. Obama made about being able to keep your doctor and your health plan if you prefer? The lies and exaggerations of Mr. Trump are childish and silly, but they do not undermine our democracy. Can you picture an ex-Republican President starting an advocacy group designed to undermine his successor? Can you imagine the media giving a pass to a Republican candidate for President who was counseled for twenty years by a bigot like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright?

The Left has long played identity politics for political advantage, creating envy and dispelling pluralism. Newspapers no longer disguise their preferences, nor do cable or network TV. But they and Mr. Obama have not operated in isolation. Talk radio preaches to the converted. Real news and fake news have proliferated, with no distinction made. C-SPAN was created thirty-eight years ago, with the intent to make government more open to the people. But there have been unintended consequences. Today it is available in 100 million homes, which means that when individual Senators and Representatives address their respective bodies they talk less to each other and more to those who elected them. In 1980, CNN became the first twenty-four-hour news station. Today, Wikipedia lists sixty-one such news stations. Partisanship has long been a reality, but its worst tendencies were accentuated by Mr. Obama.

But, back to the road not taken. If Democrats in Congress had tempered Mr. Obama’s most radical instincts, if they had guided him toward a more centrist path, they (and we) wouldn’t be in the pickle we are. (Or, if you prefer, have the opportunities we do!) Mr. Trump tapped into a backlash against an increasingly omnipotent federal government: ObamaCare belied its promise of choice. Excessive regulation impeded economic growth. For the first time in our history more small-businesses failed than started. Big banks got bigger, while small ones disappeared. Racism increased and wealth and income gaps widened. Democrats did not help their cause with the ethically-challenged Mrs. Clinton, but neither did Republicans with a political novice and wild card. The reasons another Democrat did not follow Mr. Obama were due to his abandonment of the American worker and the anti-liberal policies of his Administration.

President Clinton, who I found morally repugnant, moved the Democratic Party toward the center. Working with a Republican-led House, he signed the Welfare Reform Bill, which required welfare recipients to work; a Balanced Budget Agreement, which strengthened the Medicare Trust Fund; and the Landmark Education Investment Act, which doubled investment in education technology and increased funding to charter schools. Together, he and Congress created 20 more Empowerment Zones and 20 additional rural Enterprise Communities, which helped private sector job growth. Together, they encouraged NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe. It was Mr. Clinton’s ethical lapses, not his policies, that hurt Mr. Gore’s prospects in 2000.

I wonder if Democrats today, like Robert Frost in 1920, ponder on how different things might have been had they, in 2008, taken the middle road? Frost was satisfied with his choice. Are Democrats with theirs? The fact that Mr. Obama has formed a community organizing project, a 501(c)3 called Organizing for Action, linked to George Soros and with a training manual to challenge his successor with constant protests – itself a first – suggests no lesson has been learned, at least not by him or his disciples.

A 1964 political melodrama, Seven Days in May, envisioned a futuristic (1970s) failed military cabal that sought to sideline the president of the United States over his proposed nuclear-disarmament treaty with the Soviets.

Something far less dramatic but perhaps as disturbing as Hollywood fiction played out this February.

The Teeth-Gnashing of Deep Government

Currently, the political and media opponents of Donald Trump are seeking to subvert his presidency in a manner unprecedented in the recent history of American politics. The so-called resistance among EPA federal employees is trying to disrupt Trump administration reform; immigration activists promise to flood the judiciary to render executive orders inoperative.

Intelligence agencies had earlier leaked fake news briefings about the purported escapades of President-elect Trump in Moscow — stories that were quickly exposed as politically driven concoctions. Nearly one-third of House Democrats boycotted the Inauguration. Celebrities such as Ashley Judd and Madonna shouted obscenities to crowds of protesters; Madonna voiced her dreams of Trump’s death by saying she’d been thinking a lot about blowing up the White House.

But all that pushback was merely the clownish preliminary to the full-fledged assault in mid February.

Career intelligence officers leaked their own transcripts of a phone call that National Security Advisor–designate Michael Flynn had made to a Russian official.

The media charge against Flynn was that he had nefariously talked to higher-ups in Russia before he took office. Obama-administration officials did much the same, before Inauguration Day 2009, and spoke with Syrian, Iranian, and Russian counterparts. But they faced no interference from the outgoing Bush administration.

No doubt the designated security officials of most incoming administrations do not wait until being sworn in to sound out foreign officials. Most plan to reset the policies of their predecessors. The question, then, arises: Why were former Obama-administration appointees or careerist officials tapping the phone calls of an incoming Trump designate (and Trump himself?) and then leaking the tapes to their pets in the press? For what purpose?

Indeed, Trump’s own proposed outreach to Russia so far is not quite of the magnitude of Obama’s in 2009, when the State Department staged the red-reset-button event to appease Putin; at the time, Russia was getting set to swallow the Crimea and all but absorb Eastern Ukraine. Trump certainly did not approve the sale of some 20 percent of North American uranium holdings to Russian interests, in the quid pro quo fashion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did, apparently in concert with Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation — and to general indifference of both the press and the intelligence community.

In addition, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that career intelligence officers have decided to withhold information from the president, on the apparent premise that he is unfit, in their view, to receive it. If true, that disclosure would mean that elements of the federal government are now actively opposing the duly elected president of the United States. That chilling assessment gains credence from the likelihood that the president’s private calls to Mexican and Australian heads of state were likewise recorded, and selected segments were leaked to suggest that Trump was either trigger-happy or a buffoon.

Oddly, in early January, Senator Charles Schumer had essentially warned Trump that he would pay for his criticism of career intelligence officials. In an astounding shot across his bow, which was followed up by an onslaught in February, Schumer said: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. . . . So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

Schumer was evidently not disturbed about rogue intelligence agencies conspiring to destroy a shared political enemy — the president of the United States. What surprised him was how naïve Trump was in not assessing the anti-constitutional forces arrayed against him.

All 5 Connecticut Representatives to Congress are liberal Democrats as well as the Governor and the two Senators ….rsk

Not satisfied in having two of the worst U.S. senators in Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, Connecticut has twice elected (via the timely appearance of fell-off-a-truck ballots in Bridgeport) the nation’s worst governor, Dannel Malloy, who has taken a small state of considerable wealth, natural beauty and historic inventiveness and bankrupted it. Now, having wrecked a state that, like California, one would have thought was unwreckable, the chief Nut of the Nutmeg State has decided to make it harder for the law-abiding to exercise a constitutional right:

Gun rights supporters and state Republican lawmakers are fighting huge gun permit fee increases proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, saying they would price many people out of being able to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The Democratic governor wants to quadruple the five-year renewal fee for pistol permits from $70 to $300 as part of his plan to offset a budget deficit estimated at $1.7 billion in the next fiscal year. For people getting their first five-year pistol permits, the fees would increase from $140 to $370, which includes a $70 charge collected by cities and towns. The proposed fees would be among the highest in the country.

Fees for background checks needed to obtain pistol permits also would increase, from $50 to $75. Malloy’s pistol permit and background check fee plan would raise nearly $12 million a year in additional revenue. The National Rifle Association called Malloy’s proposal “outrageous.”

Well, of course it is. It’s also very unlikely unconstitutional, as we’ll no doubt learn once Judge Gorsuch becomes Justice Gorsuch. To hinder the free exercise of a constitutional right is to, in effect, deny that right, and by forcing legal gun owners in Connecticut to help pay for Malloy and the Democrats’ binge years of out of control spending on favored constituencies is exactly the kind of politics that convinced the nation to vote for President Trump last fall.

His voting record is standard Dem/liberal on Cuba, Israel, Voter ID,…but this may be encouraging…rsk
Smart Democrats recognize that their party has deep problems that won’t be solved by the Trump-hatred that is the motivating power of its base. They see that the party has lost touch with rural areas, and takes for granted support levels of 90% among blacks, who are expected to turn out and vote at rates that equal or exceed whites.

What is unusual is a smart Democrat having the guts to speak these truths these truths openly and on the record.

Conservatives need to pay attention to Representative Emanuel Cleaver, former Mayor of Kansas City, former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, and in his 12th year representing Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes parts of Kansas City and also some rural areas. A conservative friend who knows Rep. Cleaver tells me that he is someone well worth listening to, a reasonable man who can be dealt with on an honest basis.

You can gauge Rep. Cleaver’s independence and courage by noticing that he openly proclaimed his intent to attend the inauguration of President Trump and suffered hate phone calls for his position that did not stop him.

Interviewed yesterday on MSNBC, he laid out a devastating critique of his party. He states that the black vote cannot be taken for granted.

President Trump needs to recognize Rep. CleAver as a potential ally in his quest to lift up urban America.

Murder rates in four of the nation’s big cities have returned to levels not seen since the 1990s, an alarming surge that police officials are struggling to slow even as crime nationally is near historic lows.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of homicide data since 1985 for the 35 largest cities shows that four—Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee and Memphis, Tenn.—have in the past two years approached or exceeded the records set a quarter-century ago, when cities across the country were plagued by gang wars and a booming crack trade.

Twenty-seven of the country’s 35 largest cities saw per capita homicide rates rise since 2014, though most are still relatively low compared with 1990s levels, the data show. Meantime, New York and Los Angeles, the two biggest cities, are experiencing long-term drops in murders.

Murders in Chicago last year rose to their highest rate since 1996, with 27.8 homicides for every 100,000 residents, based on police and the latest census data. Memphis equaled its highest rate last year in a Federal Bureau of Investigation database that goes back to 1985, at 32 murders per 100,000 residents.

The pace has continued in some of these places in the first seven weeks this year, with 47 people killed in Baltimore, putting the city on track for one of the highest annual rates since at least 1970.

In Chicago, there were 330 shootings so far as of Friday, compared with 324 over the same period last year. And in Milwaukee, 17 people have been killed, compared with nine at this point last year

Three young children in recent days were fatally shot in Chicago. “This violence offends all of our sensibilities,” said Kenneth Johnson, commander of the city’s Englewood police district. “We all have to work together…we all have to have some skin in this fight.”

As early as Tuesday, the Education Department may rescind the Obama Administration’s Title IX “guidance” on transgender restrooms. A federal judge blocked the policy last August, but that won’t mute the outcry among those who want the feds to dictate cultural norms nationwide.

Last May the Obama Administration issued a “Dear Colleague” letter asserting that a “school must treat the student consistent with the student’s gender identity” when it comes to transgender access to restrooms. School districts and colleges that didn’t comply risked being sued and losing federal funds.

Recall that in 2015 the Justice Department joined a lawsuit by Gavin Grimm, a transgender high-school student in Virginia, who wanted to use the boys’ bathroom. This contravened Gloucester County school district policy. While “students with gender identity issues” were allowed to use private bathrooms, the Obama Administration wasn’t satisfied.

A federal judge dismissed Mr. Grimm’s lawsuit but was overruled by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Gloucester County school board appealed but the Obama Administration then issued its “Dear Colleague” letter. Thirteen states sued to block enforcement on grounds that the restroom edict stretched the law and the Administration ducked a formal rule-making. Title IX rules require that schools provide restrooms that are comparable for both sexes, but the law says nothing about gender identity.

In August federal Judge Reed O’Connor issued a nationwide injunction. He said the guidance contradicted “the existing legislative and regulatory texts” and “bypassed the notice and comment process required” by the Administrative Procedure Act.

The judge also scored the Administration for not allowing a “safe harbor in providing transgender students individual-user facilities as an alternative accommodation.” Further, the Obama DOJ has not “offered evidence that Plaintiffs are not accommodating students who request an alternative arrangement.”

Transgender students deserve respect, but restroom policy should be determined by localities, not federal diktat. Public mores are changing, and many universities provide accommodations similar to those required in the “Dear Colleague.” The guidance has been enjoined for six months, so rescinding it will do no harm and would let the Education Department focus on higher priorities than serving as national bathroom monitors. It’s worth keeping in mind that public distaste for this kind of cultural imperialism helped Donald Trump win.