RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/01/the_poisoning_of_america.html

It’s time for a new drug strategy. The Biden Administration’s harm reduction strategy isn’t working. America is in its worst drug abuse crisis in over a century. According to the CDC,  over 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, and almost 950,000 have died since 1999; figures for 2022 show a slight decline in overdose deaths over the previous year. The leading killer is illicit fentanyl — a synthetic opioid so powerful that two milligrams can kill you. Fentanyl and methamphetamine come from Mexico; their chemicals come from China. Drug cartels make fentanyl and add it to heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and counterfeit prescription drugs. The fake drugs look like Xanax, Adderall, and other prescription drugs but are laced with fentanyl. It’s easy to buy drugs on the Internet and social media. Young people buy “Xanax” and die from fentanyl poisoning. Yet, there is no outrage from our leaders.             

New York had the heroin and crack epidemics of the 70s and 80s. The response was more enforcement and treatment, and it worked for a while. But since then, the drug problem has progressively worsened; drug enforcement and treatment are not priorities for our politicians and government leaders. All aspects of the drug problem have been given a low priority since the mid-90s. Our society tolerates illicit drug use and has legalized marijuana use. Drug traffickers exploit modern technology to their advantage, but the U.S. government lags behind. We suffer the consequences of three decades or more of failed and inconsistent strategies coupled with permissive attitudes toward drug use.           

The Biden administration’s drug strategy isn’t working, and there is no urgency to address the problem. In 1989 President George H.W. Bush addressed the nation on TV to tell Americans what their government was doing about the drug problem. He announced the first National Drug Control Strategy, which contained substantial resource increases and a solid commitment to enforcement and treatment. He said, “[drugs are] the greatest threat facing our nation today.” The current administration rarely mentions the drug crisis. One can barely walk the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities without stepping over addicts, discarded syringes, and crack pipes. Violence in our major cities is often driven by drug-gang conflict. Such human misery is unacceptable in the wealthiest country on earth.

What is our current drug strategy for China and Mexico? These countries are not cooperative and cite America’s drug appetite as the problem — they are not wrong. U.S. border enforcement officials are overwhelmed by the flood of undocumented migrants and cannot focus on drugs smuggled over the border.

Here are recommendations to save American lives.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/sheila-jackson-lee-introduces-bill-to-criminalize-hate-speech/

Leftists don’t even make much of a pretense anymore; they don’t believe in the freedom of speech, and they mean to deny it to their political opponents. This is by far the most disturbing aspect of their agenda, for without the freedom to dissent, a tyrant can operate without any restraint whatsoever. Without the freedom of speech, there simply is no free society.

The latest example of the Left’s war on dissent comes from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Reparations), who has just introduced a bill in the House, the “Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023.” Only vicious racists could possibly object to combating white supremacy, right? Actually, the bill is cleverly framed, but like so many other Congressional initiatives, it’s far more insidious than its name would suggest.

The bill is designed to “prevent and prosecute white supremacy inspired hate crime and conspiracy to commit white supremacy inspired hate crime and to amend title 18, United States Code, to expand the scope of hate crimes.” The framers of the bill were thoughtful enough to provide a helpful explanation: “A person engages in a white supremacy inspired hate crime when white supremacy ideology has motivated the planning, development, preparation, or perpetration of actions that constituted a crime or were undertaken in furtherance of activity that, if effectuated, would have constituted a crime.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/01/18/d-c-city-council-overrides-mayors-veto-of-criminal-justice-reform-that-would-lessen-penalties-for-violent-crime-n1662915

Washington, D.C. is in the midst of a violent crime epidemic, but that didn’t stop the all-Democrat city council from overriding Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto to pass a criminal justice reform bill that contains several problematic provisions, including lessening the penalties for violent crimes and allowing people charged with a misdemeanor to demand a trial — a move experts say will cause the D.C. court system to collapse under a tsunami of unnecessary and expensive trials.

Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto argued, “allowing the veto to stand would be a significant step back in our work to modernize the criminal code, negating years of work, compromise, and engagement by the council.”

It’s true. The city council has been writing, debating, and massaging this bill for 16 years. But is that any reason to pass a bill if it’s bad?

Bowser’s objections were straightforward. “Anytime there’s a policy that reduces penalties, I think that sends the wrong message. That takes the focus off using guns or possessing guns, and I think that’s the wrong way to go,” Bowser wrote about her decision to veto.

Washington Post:

The bill would, among other things, eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, allow for jury trials in almost all misdemeanor cases, and reduce the maximum penalties for offenses such as burglaries, carjackings and robberies. Law enforcement leaders had expressed concern that it could burden an already stretched court system and would send the wrong message to residents at a time when the city is struggling with gun violence.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/hunter-biden-laptop-denier-now-admits-emails-real-dont-let-him-get-away-with-it

Douglas Wise, a former Defense Intelligence Agency deputy director and former senior CIA operations officer, is back in the news this week. 

In an interview with The Australian, Wise admits that he and others always knew that the emails on the Hunter Biden laptop were likely genuine. It was a remarkable admission from one of more than 50 former intelligence officials who signed a letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election as likely “Russian disinformation.” 

Yet, Wise still maintains that, while true, he and the other officials were right to call it out as likely “disinformation.” Arguing that something is true, but still constitutes disinformation sounds a lot like . . . well . . . disinformation.

The infamous letter from the former intel officials (including such Democrat figures like John Brennan, James Clapper, Leon Panetta, and Jeremy Bash) was used by the media to assure the public that there was nothing to see in the scandal. It was the perfect deflection in giving a cooperative media cover to bury the story of how the Biden family engaged in influence peddling worth millions with foreign figures, including some with foreign intelligence connections.

It worked beautifully. It was not until two years later that NPR, the New York Times, and other media outlets got around to telling the public the truth.

Now some of the signatories are trying to rehabilitate themselves. It is not hard. Figures like Bash have been rewarded for their loyalty. Others like Brennan and Clapper have become regulars on CNN to continue to give their takes on intelligence.

https://victorhanson.com/what-the-left-tells-us-about-the-left-part-four/

Police Killing of the Unarmed

Following George Floyd’s death, the Left went ballistic that the Washington Post of all places had found that unarmed black suspects were not necessarily killed in percentages higher than the percentages of blacks among the some 11 million who were arrested each year.

The distinguished Harvard University economist Roland Fryer (an African American) looked at police shootings in Houston and did not find that racial bias was a major factor in the use of deadly force.

The point, then, is that there is little data to suggest that white officers are systematically and inordinately lethally shooting unarmed black suspects. (Note that shortly after his research was published, Fryer was conveniently charged with sexual harassment—resulting mostly from off-color jokes—at Harvard and was put on leave by the university, and had his brilliant career essentially aborted if not destroyed.)

Videos changed the country forever on May 25, 2020. The smart phone clips appeared with a white Minnesota police officer with his knee on the neck of a black arrested suspect who later died. Autopsies (more than one) followed that variously suggested that either drugs or the deliberate use of the officer’s knee to obstruct Floyd’s breathing or both mostly caused Floyd’s death.

The major facts were mostly not in dispute: George Floyd, a career felon, who had been charged, convicted, and incarcerated for prior felonies, including a home-invasion robbery, during which he put a loaded pistol to the stomach of a pregnant woman, was arrested on reports he was attempting to pass counterfeit U.S. currency.