RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-indictment-accelerates-americas-race-to-the-bottom-alvin-bragg-new-york-polarization-clinton-edc1d2b2?mod=opinion_lead_pos6
Mr. Penn was a pollster and adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, 1995-2008. He is chairman of the Harris Poll and CEO of Stagwell Inc. Mr. Stein, a Democrat, served as New York City Council president, 1986-94.

The demonization of political opponents is entering its next depressing but predictable phase—the use of the most partisan parts of the criminal-justice system to arrest and prosecute political opponents on flimsy charges. Too much of the public, increasingly divorced from bedrock national values, is cheering it on.

It’s the logical extension of Donald Trump’s claiming he won the election he lost; of Joe Biden’s branding “MAGA Republicans” a “clear and present danger” to “our democracy”; of right-wing groups planning and executing an assault on the Capitol; of the Russia-collusion hoax; of partisan impeachments; of tech companies censoring political and scientific information to promote ideological and partisan agendas; of retired intelligence officials interfering with the 2020 election by making false claims about the Hunter Biden laptop; of law students shouting down federal judges with the encouragement of university administrators.

The routine violation of political norms worsened under the Trump and Biden administrations but began under President Obama. He personally upbraided the Supreme Court in his 2010 State of the Union address, falsely characterizing its holdings in the Citizens United case. His administration weaponized the Internal Revenue Service against grass-roots conservative groups and initiated the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s interference in the 2016 election.

Most voters in last month’s Harvard CAPS/Harris poll endorsed indicting Mr. Trump—51% of all respondents and 80% of Democrats. When asked if such an indictment would be politically motivated, 59% said yes. When asked if any payments to Stormy Daniels were campaign or personal expenses, 67% said they were personal—the opposite of the theory in the New York indictment. Most expect Mr. Trump to be acquitted, which means some respondents’ answers violate the basic principle that prosecutors shouldn’t bring charges that they can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/04/06/the-morning-briefing-alvin-braggs-insane-clown-circus-adds-a-kangaroo-to-the-court-n1684981

When it was announced that “Bragg’s Folly” would be getting its Manhattan premiere this week, we all knew that would be the dominant story for days. Those of us on the non-rabid side of the political aisle knew that it was going to be a you-know-what show, but it’s even worse than I imagined.

And I have quite the imagination, ladies and gentlemen.

I don’t write about legal matters because I only know enough about the law to avoid breaking it. I have colleagues who are much better equipped to deal with such things and they’ve been doing a splendid job of it these past few days.

My friend Stephen Green wrote about what he called “the most outrageous claim” in the kinda/sorta indictment charges against Trump:

“The charges against Trump do not include any tax fraud offenses,” Josh Gerstein reported on Wednesday, “that some legal experts said they hoped to see to buttress the seriousness of the case.”

I must interrupt myself for a moment to remind you that when someone at POLITICO uses a phrase like “some legal experts said…,” what they really mean is, “group-thinking swamp-dwellers all agree…” That done, let’s get back to Gerstein’s report.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/06/if-rule-of-law-dies-so-does-our-republic/

A number of columns and editorials in recent weeks have openly wondered if the notion of a nation ruled by laws — fair laws reasonably interpreted by well-trained, unbiased, disinterested judges — was dying. Sorry, but it might already be dead.

The overtly political mugging of Donald Trump by a Soros-backed New York district attorney wielding a risible 34-count felony indictment that could put the ex-president behind bars for more than 100 years is bad enough.

But the absurd nature of the accusations make clear the legal charges have nothing to do with the law, and everything to do with Democratic politics.

It’s an obvious example of overreach by a prosecutor, New York’s leftist District Attorney Alvin Bragg, solely for political reasons. It’s an embarrassment to the once-great Empire State, and a travesty of law that will have a damaging effect on Americans’ faith in the legal system.

The left has mastered on technique, straight out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” — Rule #13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

That’s precisely what is being done to ex-President Donald Trump.

With 2024 looking grim for the Democrats, their only hope is to make Trump into an arch-villain. This, they seem to think, will unite their party’s dispirited base voters, while depriving MAGA voters and others who see Trump as a bulwark against the left’s virulent socialism with an option on Election Day.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/05/why-the-resistance-is-still-so-much-worse-than-trump/

‘Lock her up!’ That was former US president Donald Trump’s unofficial slogan during the 2016 presidential election campaign. His supporters would chant it at rallies, while Trump held forth on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s various dodgy dealings. Elite liberals, for their part, clutched their pearls and spoke darkly about the autocratic threat to America posed by a Trump presidency. Seven years later, Clinton is a free woman, even after four years of Trump in the White House. Meanwhile, Trump is being hauled before a court, on ginned-up charges, while those very same elite liberals wish each other ‘Merry Arrestmas’.

The indictment of Donald Trump in New York has provided yet more proof – though it certainly wasn’t needed – that anti-Trumpism remains a far bigger threat to freedom and democracy than Trumpism itself. The soldiers of the self-styled Resistance – the hysterical, elite-led movement against the Trump presidency – have been out in force again on social media, openly celebrating the charges being brought against Trump. ‘Trump finally got indicted!’, tweeted Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters, once dubbed ‘Queen of the Resistance’. Democratic strategist Rachel Bitecofer was similarly giddy. ‘Nice capstone to the best day I’ve had in 7+ years’, she tweeted, next to a lovely photo of a rainbow. It seems these supposed lovers of liberal ‘norms’ haven’t heard of ‘innocent until proven guilty’.

What Trump is allegedly guilty of in this case amounts, to use a legal term, to some pretty weak piss. He is accused of falsifying business records so as to covertly reimburse his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, for hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. (Daniels claims to have had an affair with Trump and was threatening to go public ahead of the 2016 election.) It’s all very seedy, of course, and on the specific charges of falsifying business records Trump could well be bang to rights. But on their own these would amount to misdemeanours that New York County district attorney Alvin Bragg almost certainly wouldn’t have felt able to pursue in court – not least because doing so would have looked outrageously petty and politically motivated, coming from an elected Democratic official.

https://www.jewishpress.com/judaism/holidays/two-passover-questions/2023/04/05/

The mysterious order of the Pesach Seder and the diversity of the various parts of the evening, as well as the actions we are directed to take that are included in the Haggadah, have all fascinated commentators as well as everyday Jews for centuries.

Here are two questions that are worth asking the attendees gathered around your table this year; they should promote thoughtful discussion and debate.

Question One: How many plagues were there?

Immediately after the stage in the Haggadah when the Ten Plagues are named comes the part where we find Rabbi Yossi the Galilean initiating the very strange topic of the number of plagues that the ancient Egyptians were punished with.

This part of the Haggadah immediately precedes the section where the joyous song Dayenu is found. The three quoted rabbis in this portion in the Haggadah lived over 1,800 years ago.

Rabbi Yossi explains that there were actually 60 plagues. Rabbi Eliezer is then quoted for his take on this that there were 240 plagues. Finally, Rabbi Akiva differs with his fellow rabbis and takes the view that there were 300 plagues.

What is going on here? It is made plain in the Torah that there are Ten Plagues. Why did this debate take place at all? What’s more, why was this strange discussion thought to be important enough to be included at all in the Haggadah? Doesn’t this whole topic seem extraneous?

https://thespectator.com/topic/brandon-johnson-mayor-chicago-ruin/

Adam Smith once wisely remarked that “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” There is much less room for ruin in a city, as Portland, San Francisco and Seattle have proved in recent years, and Detroit, Memphis and Gary, did even earlier. Now, Chicago has decided to join that dismal parade.

The Windy City was already marching toward the abyss under its outgoing mayor, Lori Lightfoot. She was elected four years ago with over three-quarters of the vote. This year, she got so few votes in the first primary (about one sixth) that she was eliminated from the runoff. That second election, held on Tuesday, pitted Brandon Johnson, an African-American organizer for the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, against Paul Vallas, a Greek American who had led several major school systems around the country. Vallas’s résumé was far more impressive than his achievements in those jobs. His bumbling campaign against Johnson revealed those shortcomings once again.

These ethnic markers — a black candidate versus a white one — are important in American urban politics, where political organizations are often formed around neighborhoods, ethnicities and race. One striking feature of the late Chicago election was the complete absence of the Irish Americans. For a century, they had led the city’s political machine, handing out subordinate positions and lucrative patronage jobs to allies in various ethnic and racial communities. Those days are long gone, destroyed by the city’s changing demographics and federal court rulings that killed the old patronage machine.