RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/soros-backed-pac-spends-big-to-install-liberal-da

PITTSBURGH — A D.C.-based social justice PAC with no ties to western Pennsylvania has invested a whopping $734,000 into electing liberal public defender Matt Dugan as Allegheny County’s district attorney over incumbent Steve Zappala in next Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Democratic primary.

The Justice and Safety PAC, a national organization backed by liberal billionaire businessman George Soros, has used the bulk of its money on ads and mailers aimed at Zappala’s record. Take the Soros money out of the equation, and Dugan has only raised $76,764.17 for his entire campaign, with Zappala raising $226,800.

Zappala has blasted the outside influence, noting that the social justice PAC was spending 10 times as much money to elect Dugan as Dugan was spending on himself.

“No rational person believes that any politician who gets nearly all their funding from one source won’t be taking orders from them once taking office,” Zappala spokesman Mike Mikus said in the statement.

Instead of donating directly to Dugan, the Soros group is listing the commercials and mailers as in-kind donations with Dugan’s authorization. This unusual arrangement allows the PAC to have final say on the ad.

In short, Dugan seemingly has no say, even in his own campaign message.

In 2017, Soros himself spent $1.7 million supporting the winning campaign of Larry Krasner for Philadelphia district attorney, a whopping five times as much as Krasner himself spent. The amount represented over 30% of all the spending in the seven-candidate primary.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/karine-kamala-and-the-killers/

“Our hearts go out to the trans community as they are under attack right now.”

That was Biden White House press secretary Karine Saint-Pierre, several days after Audrey Hale murdered Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Mike Hill, 61, William Kinney, 9, Katherine Koonce, 60, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Hallie Scruggs, nine years old and the daughter of Covenant Presbyterian pastor Chad Scruggs. By any standard, this mass murder, committed in the run-up to “Trans Vengeance Day,” was an act of terrorism.

Biden press secretary Karine Saint-Pierre did not name or condemn Audrey Hale, a woman who thought she was a man. The White House mouthpiece also failed to name a single victim, including Mike Hill, who was black. No word from Saint-Pierre whether Hale could have been motivated by racism.

The Nashville mourners might be hard pressed to find a similar demonstration of indulgence for  terrorism and callousness toward their victims. Something similar took place on December 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, California.

That day, employees of the Inland Regional Center gathered for holiday party. A National Police Foundation report explains what happened.

“Suddenly, a door swung open and a person clad in all black, with a mask shielding his or her face, stepped inside, wielding what appeared to be an automatic rifle. Without saying a word, the person, now believed to be [Syed] Farook, opened fire.” Then Tashfeen Malik followed.

“She also wore all black and entered the room shooting. Together, the shooters fired more than 100 rounds.”  The shooters then “hastily departed, heading out to a black SUV they had parked just outside, leaving behind a chaotic scene of noise, fear, and pain.” And death.

American-born Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, a green-card holder born in Pakistan, murdered Robert Adams, Isaac Amianos, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damien Meins, Tin Ngyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco, and Michael Wetzel.

Isaac Amanios, 60, immigrated from Eritrea to California in 2000 to escape violence and repression. Bennetta Betbadal, 46, fled to America with her family to “escape Islamic extremism and the persecution of Christians that followed the Iranian Revolution.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/05/michael-mukasey-at-the-nri-ideas-summit/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=second

” My job was to do law, and to have enough faith in the law to know that if I did it right, the result would be justice. Law can be a strength if it can be used to keep a society open to the opinions of all, and if, but only if, its administration can be placed in the hands of those for whom the law itself is the only agenda.”

When Abbé Sieyès, the 18th-century French clergyman and political theorist, was asked what he did during the Reign of Terror that accompanied the French Revolution, his answer was brief and to the point: “I survived.” Which is to say, he kept a low profile until the terror blew over, and so he didn’t wind up under the guillotine, as did several of his colleagues.

I don’t think we can afford to follow that passive example today, as we live through our own reign of terror, due in large measure to the advance of what is known as the woke agenda in which people can have their careers decapitated if they compliment a co-worker on her appearance or can be made to vanish from social networks for endorsing the wrong idea. Unlike the 18th-century Reign of Terror, this one seems unlikely to blow over on its own.

The proponents of this agenda are advancing their cause using control of what University of Texas scholar Michael Lind called three separate gateways: college education, professional accreditation, and commercial services, in particular media platforms. He did not mention government as a separate category, but I would suggest that it should be added to the list.

The theme of this conference, of course, is the sources of American strength, and one of those sources undeniably is the rule of law. But that presents us as conservatives with a particularly acute problem because several of those gateways are largely in the control of the private sector, which in turn poses the dilemma of whether the power of government can be brought to bear here in a way consistent with the Constitution’s limits on the reach of government, or not, and consistent with the economic freedom that has helped make this country great, or not. And the solution to that dilemma is by no means clear.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-deep-state-is-all-too-real-congress-chevron-delegation-civics-hunter-biden-985ed65e?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

There are two competing conceptions of American governance: the version students are taught in the classroom, and the one that exists in the real world. Grade-school civics teaches that Washington is designed to operate under a system of checks and balances, constrained by the Constitution and empowered by the consent of the governed. In practice, however, power has become concentrated in the executive branch and largely wielded by unaccountable career bureaucrats. The notion of a “deep state” isn’t a conspiratorial talking point but a manifest political reality.

The separation of powers is an animating principle of our nation’s founding documents. As the Constitution outlines, the U.S. has three distinct and coequal branches of government: a legislature that passes laws, an executive branch that implements them, and a judiciary that interprets them. This built-in division is meant to restrain government overreach and prevent abuses of power. The president and members of Congress regularly stand for election to ensure the government is accountable to the governed, and the judiciary serves in good behavior to ensure that justice is dispensed impartially.

While this sounds nice in theory, the federal government typically doesn’t honor it in practice. Congress has delegated much of its lawmaking authority to the executive branch since the 1930s. Federal agencies now issue regulations that have the force and effect of the law. “Administrative judges”—executive-branch employees—routinely preside over trial-like proceedings without juries, letting agencies act as both prosecutor and judge.

Under the Supreme Court’s Chevron doctrine, courts generally defer to the executive branch’s interpretation of the law—both in regulatory and enforcement proceedings. Many of the Constitution’s checks and balances, from the separation of powers to the right to jury trial, have fallen by the wayside.