Seven Things You Don’t Know About the Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case

If these trumped up charges were being used to disable a candidate in, say, Egypt or Russia, the U.S. State Department would condemn these tactics.

by Adam Mill for American Greatness

“We just have to demonstrate that he will not take power if he does run, making sure he—under legitimate efforts of our Constitution—does not become the next president again,” Joe Biden said of Donald Trump in an often overlooked remark just a few months ago. 

On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, acting as an agent of Biden’s campaign strategy to eliminate his most likely political opponent, finally unsealed the pretextual indictment being used for just that purpose. Over and over again, the indictment claims Trump, “with the intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof, made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.” But it fails to identify 1) the false statement, 2) why the statement was supposedly false, 3) the person or entity Trump supposedly intended to defraud, and 4) what crime Trump supposedly tried to cover up. These are nice-to-know details. 

As we’ll see, the available public record strongly indicates these gaps cannot be filled with sufficient facts to support a criminal charge. These aren’t criminal charges. This is a publicity stunt.

This operation to kneecap Trump’s electoral chances would not have been possible without a sweeping and coordinated disinformation campaign by supposedly independent legacy media outlets. It matters not whether one reads the New York Times, NPR, or another supposedly serious legacy media platform. The lack of serious legal analysis in all of them is apparent, as is their preference for innuendo and providing laundry lists of other unproven allegations.

The legacy media have overlooked a long list of weaknesses in the legal case against Trump. Let’s walk through a few key points the get-Trump media and their cult won’t consider.

1) What does the statute in question actually criminalize?

The district attorney is attempting to criminalize the way in which Trump recorded the reimbursement to Michael Cohen for a non-disclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels. The statute provides, “A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the second degree when, with intent to defraud, he . . . Makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.” Media reports gloss over the specific elements of this statute as well as Trump’s actions in the case, because Trump’s actual guilt or innocence is simply irrelevant.

2) Was Trump’s statement false?

Bragg is trying to prosecute Trump because of the way internal bookkeeping recorded payments to Cohen, who was Trump’s attorney at the time. Trump apparently labeled these expenses “legal fees” instead of something more specific detailing a non-disclosure agreement. But these were payments to his then-attorney for expenses. So where’s the falsehood? 

Although the payments to Cohen were understood as a reimbursement for Cohen’s expenses, would a business normally be required to subdivide “legal fees” from “legal expenses?” If there’s a rule prohibiting the labeling of “expenses,” as “fees,” nobody so far has pointed it out. 

3) Did Trump intend to defraud anyone?

In Trump’s FEC filing, he wrote, “In the interest of transparency, while not required to be disclosed as ‘reportable liabilities’ on Part 8, in 2016 expenses were incurred by one of Donald J. Trump’s attorneys, Michael Cohen. Mr. Cohen sought reimbursement of those expenses and Mr. Trump fully reimbursed Mr. Cohen in 2017. The category of value would be $100,001-$250,000 and the interest rate would be zero.”

The statute requires an intent to defraud. But whom is it alleged Trump intended to defraud? Who is the victim? If the FEC is the supposed victim of this supposed “false business record,” then the prosecutor is going to have a hard time showing that the FEC cared more about Trump’s internal bookkeeping than they seemed to with the FEC disclosure form, which spelled out the expense. Did Trump even disclose his internal record keeping to the FEC? Why would he if he filed a separate disclosure for that purpose? So how can it be said that the internal business record had anything to do with the FEC?

4) How does the Manhattan D.A. get around the two-year statute of limitations?

Nobody disputes the fact that the New York law criminalizing falsification of business records is a misdemeanor with a two-year statute of limitations. The only way, therefore, to drag this 2016 incident into a 2023 courtroom is to recharacterize it as a felony. But, it’s still not clear how the prosecutor can argue the case has not also passed the five-year statute of limitations on “all other felonies.” It’s possible the D.A. will argue that Trump has been, “continuously outside the state,” of New York which conceivably would allow the prosecutor to exclude that time from his calculation. Of all the leaks out of the Manhattan D.A.’s office, none appear to explain this giant roadblock.

5) How can Bragg argue that a misdemeanor should be treated as a felony?

In order to get the longer statute of limitations, the prosecutor appears to be invoking this statute: 

A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second

degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit

another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.

Under this theory, the prosecutor needs to go back to the well to charge Trump for essentially the same “fraud” a second time. To get to the misdemeanor, the D.A. had to argue that Trump recorded the payment as “legal fees” in order to defraud . . . some unspecified person. Who? We aren’t clear on this based on the leaks or the language of the indictment, but the argument appears to be that Trump was attempting to defraud the Federal Election Commission, which regulates campaign finance. 

The problem is the FEC has actually declined to prosecute this very same transaction and Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to a suite of crimes, including at least one related to this payment. Bragg’s case, then, requires one to believe Trump was attempting to cover up Cohen’s payment by identifying the reimbursement as “legal fees.” But this is where the case begins to eat its own tail.

If Trump reimbursed Cohen, long-standing precedent provides that Cohen is no longer the one making the contribution for purposes of the FEC reporting. FEC regulations say, “A loan, to the extent it is repaid, is no longer a contribution.” Thus, if Trump reimbursed Cohen for the Stormy Daniels payment, it can no longer be considered a contribution on behalf of Cohen. This is devastating to the prosecution’s theory because individuals who are not the candidate (e.g., Cohen, but not Trump) are subject to the $2,700 per individual contribution limit. But Trump could give as much money as he wanted to his own campaign, without limits, so long as he disclosed it—which he did.

So, again, who did Trump supposedly defraud with the “false” business record?

What is the “other crime” Trump supposedly was covering up by recording the expense as “legal fees?” In order to get there, we have to ignore FEC regulations providing that Trump reimbursing Cohen makes it a Trump contribution, not a Cohen contribution. But that is, in fact, the rule. According to Bragg’s theory, Trump attempted to “cover up” Cohen’s crime by recording the expenditure as “legal fees.”

Essentially, the prosecutor is trying to argue it both ways. First, because he wanted to argue that Trump exceeded the $2,700 limit, he argued that Trump didn’t reimburse Cohen for the fees. But Bragg’s office also contends that Trump did reimburse Cohen for purposes of demonstrating a cover-up. The prosecution’s entire theory rests on the proposition that Trump always intended to reimburse Cohen for the payment, making Cohen’s payment a loan. But if Trump paid Cohen back and reported it to the FEC, then it appears he complied with campaign finance law. 

6) The indictment appears to fail to meet New York minimum requirements.

Under New York law, and contrary to the statement made by the prosecutor during his press conference, an indictment must include, “A plain and concise factual statement in each count which, without allegations of an evidentiary nature . . . asserts facts supporting every element of the offense charged and the defendant’s or defendants’ commission thereof with sufficient precision to clearly apprise the defendant or defendants of the conduct which is the subject of the accusation.” Each of these indictment counts fails to identify the supposed false statement, fails to identify the underlying crime Trump is supposedly guilty of covering up, and fails to explain who Trump was supposedly defrauding by entering these “false” business records. About the only thing that differentiates one charge from another is a reference to specific documents which supposedly contain some kind of false statement. 

7) Does the prosecution apply the same rules to Democrats?

Many have pointed to the lenient treatment Hillary Clinton received when the FEC settled with her for mischaracterizing the fees paid by her campaign for the dossier used to frame Trump as “legal expenses.” The fact pattern seems strikingly similar to the one now being used by the Manhattan D.A. to prosecute Trump, yet Clinton escaped with a measly $8,000 fine and, notably, was neither indicted nor arrested. 

But Clinton’s case, in many ways, was much worse. First, she used campaign funds, not her own personal funds. Second, no plausible theory exists for arguing expenses for framing Donald Trump were anything but an effort to gain an advantage in the election. In Trump’s case, he used personal funds to kill a story about an alleged affair. The electoral benefit of this was negligible as the public had already heard many stories about Trump’s philandering. Yet he nevertheless reported the expenses to the FEC while simultaneously disputing that the expense was election related. 

But it seems people have forgotten that Clinton donors also ran a particularly cynical campaign of compensating women for accusing Trump of more philandering. As noted in The Hill: 

A well-known women’s rights lawyer sought to arrange compensation from donors and tabloid media outlets for women who made or considered making sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump during the final months of the 2016 presidential race, according to documents and interviews.

California lawyer Lisa Bloom’s efforts included offering to sell alleged victims’ stories to TV outlets in return for a commission for herself, arranging a donor to pay off one Trump accuser’s mortgage and attempting to secure a six-figure payment for another woman who ultimately declined to come forward after being offered as much as $750,000, the clients told The Hill.

The women’s accounts were chronicled in contemporaneous contractual documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The Hill, including an exchange of texts between one woman and Bloom that suggested political action committees supporting Hillary Clinton were contacted during the effort.

Bloom, who has assisted dozens of women in prominent harassment cases and also defended film executive Harvey Weinstein earlier this year, represented four women considering making accusations against Trump last year. Two went public, and two declined.

The selective investigation and prosecution of election laws based on the political orientation of the candidate is a clear violation of international standards of election fairness. Indeed, the United States once condemned Egyptian authorities abusing the criminal process to neutralize potential opposition candidates. In other words, if these trumped up charges were being used to disable a candidate in, say, Egypt or Russia, the U.S. State Department would be condemning these tactics in the strongest possible terms. But since Trump is the politician seeking access to the ballot, our own government seems blind to the election fairness standards we supposedly champion abroad.

X22, Christian Patriot News, and more- April 5

 

Steadfast and Resolute – There are More of us Than Them

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Nothing, not one single thing, is going to break the resolve of the MAGA movement to support the one and only option to the UniParty apparatus in Washington DC.

We are wide-eyed and awake to the constructs that surround us.  We are steadfast, resolute and resolved to the task at hand. As Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going,”… as long as we don’t stop, we succeed. Never relent. Never give in. Never give up. {Direct Rumble Link}  WATCH:

If not us, then who? If not now, then when?

How Climate Alarmism Killed Real Environmentalism

Many of the environmental problems confronting the planet have nothing to do with CO2 emissions and, in many cases, are worsened by misguided steps being taken to curb CO2 emissions.

by Edward Ring for American Greatness

The environmentalist movement is a political weapon. It unites the most powerful special interests in the world behind an agenda that will further centralize power and wealth, eliminate any hope of financial independence for the vast majority of people, and transition previously free and independent nations into managed, sham democracies that have lost their sovereign agency.

The overwhelming theme of environmentalism today, designed to obscure its true agenda, is the alleged “climate crisis.”

Americans may or may not eventually muster the impertinence to successfully challenge the political power grab masquerading as environmentalism today. But either way, its centerpiece, the “climate crisis,” is responsible for devastating harm both to what was once a legitimate environmentalist movement, as well as to the environment itself.

Policies ostensibly designed to manage the planet’s climate are taking attention and resources away from genuine environmental threats. At the same time, a growing percentage of people are recognizing the fraudulent essence of the “climate crisis” agenda and, as a result, are becoming indifferent to legitimate environmental concerns.

This is a tragedy. While crooked billionaires bleat incessantly about how “the planet has a fever” and grasp additional billions for their cronies in the businesses of renewable energy and “carbon credits,” we fail to address truly important environmental problems. Compared to “overheating oceans” and “burning continents,” however, these problems lack sex appeal.

Here are just a few of the environmental disasters in progress that nobody talks about either because they’re making too much money pushing the climate change scam, or because they’re thoroughly disgusted with the climate change scam and disregard all environmentalist concerns.

1) Loss of Insect Population: By some estimates, and for reasons we don’t yet adequately understand, the total insect mass on Earth is dropping by an estimated 2.5 percent per year, faster than any other endangered species. This is an existential threat. Insects pollinate many vital food crops. They play a critical role in consuming decomposing animals and plants. They are an essential link in the food chain, the glue that connects microorganisms to smaller predators. Wind turbine blades are a mass killer of insects. Whatever else is killing insects, it won’t stop because we banned fossil fuels.

2) Aquatic Dead Zones: While criticism has been appropriately directed at unjustifiable attempts to shut down farms that use fertilizers derived from nitrogen and phosphorus, the problems posed by these compounds cannot be ignored. But the consequences of overloading waterways with nutrient runoff, either from flood irrigation, dairy and cattle manure, or insufficiently treated urban wastewater, have relatively little to do with “climate change.” Instead, the problem is that nutrient-rich waterways nourish overgrowth of algae, which produce deadly toxins that kill fish en masse and create massive aquatic dead zones. A rational approach to this challenge would be to stop connecting it to climate change, which is a stretch at best, and instead develop precision irrigation and fertilizing methods, as well as adaptive reuse of effluent from livestock and humans.

3) Overfishing: The overfishing of the oceans is another environmental catastrophe in the making that has nothing to do with climate change. Banning incandescent light bulbs will do nothing to stop illegal fishing trawlers from strip-mining the oceans with drift nets that can be over 30 miles long. Cramming humanity into small apartments will not prevent factory ships from clearcutting the floor of the continental shelf with weighted nets that scoop up every living organism. Anyone who thinks humanity hasn’t by now acquired the capacity to extract every scrap of living protein out of the oceans isn’t paying attention. Rational solutions are to enforce fishing quotas, and encourage industrial aquaculture onshore and in coastal waters.

4) Energy Security in Developing Nations: One of the many ironic results of the climate alarmist war on fossil fuel is the inability of equatorial African nations to achieve energy security, which is a prerequisite to prosperity, which, in turn, causes population stabilization. Instead of having energy security, these burgeoning, desperately poor populations are stripping the forests of wood for fuel and wildlife for food. The primary threat to wilderness and wildlife on Earth today is not “climate change.” It is that climate alarm has inspired the international community to do everything in its power to deny prosperity to the poverty-stricken populations living in proximity to the world’s great tropical forests.

5) The Biofuel Disaster: Which brings us to biofuel, an example not only of an environmental catastrophe that is ignored in favor of climate alarm, but an environmental catastrophe explicitly caused by climate alarm. Over 500,000 square miles are now given over to biofuel monocultures, most of them saturated in chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, most of them replacing what previously were tropical rainforests. In exchange for this devastation, biofuel produces less than 2 percent of global transportation fuel.

6) Massive Oceanic Garbage Patches: In the Central Pacific Ocean, a body of water larger in area than every continent on Earth put together, there is a concentration of floating garbage spread over nearly 8 million square miles. It is the largest of several massive concentrations of plastic waste, contaminating literally every living oceanic organism from plankton to whales.

The plastic-spewing superpower these days is the Philippines. With less than 2 percent of the world’s population, this island nation produces nearly one-third of the estimated 1 million tons of plastic dumped into the ocean every year. The solution is to develop more sanitary landfills, implement new and more effective methods to reprocess plastic waste, and where possible, invent substitutes to plastic. But “climate change” has nothing to do with this problem.

7) Population Crash: The population crash currently afflicting every developed nation on earth may be good news for those environmentalists who have succumbed to misanthropic nihilism, but for the rest of us, it’s possibly the biggest catastrophe of all.

The crash is usually attributed to cultural and economic causes, but environmental factors may play a direct and indirect role. Humans today ingest increasing levels of chemical endocrine disruptors unknown a century ago, present in everything from the air, water, and food, to fabrics and cosmetics, harming health and fertility. They are not only a direct physical cause of declining birth rates through lowered fertility, they may also cause behavioral changes that indirectly lower birth rates. Endocrine disruptors should be removed from the environment and avoided in the meantime. But carbon dioxide, the climate alarmist boogeyman, has nothing to do with endocrine disruption.

These are just some of the environmental problems confronting humanity and the planet that have nothing to do with CO2 emissions and, in many cases, are worsened by misguided steps being taken to curb CO2 emissions. By now, the fraudulent reality of “renewables” that aren’t renewable is well documented, even if that fact receives scant attention in the mainstream press. But this additional fact—that the climate alarmist focus on achieving “net zero” is discrediting environmentalism at large, and taking attention away from other serious environmental threats—is perhaps the saddest chapter in the story of a movement that has lost its way.

EXCLUSIVE: Biden Admin Is Funding Overseas Lithium Projects While Shutting Down American Mines

EXCLUSIVE: Biden Admin Is Funding Overseas Lithium Projects While Shutting Down American Mines

Tristan Justice

 

April 04, 2023

American taxpayers are funding critical mineral projects abroad while their government blocks new mines at home. According to new documents from the Department of the Interior made public by the Freedom of Information Act, the Biden administration is actively funding “sustainable lithium extraction” in Argentina. 

Federal agencies, according to records obtained by the Functional Government Initiative and shared with The Federalist, “are conducting bi-weekly virtual meetings and trainings with representatives from Argentina’s Ministry of Productive Development the Argentine Geological Mining Service, and the three provinces of Catamarca, Jujuy, and Salta with the goal of creating a regional lithium resource inventory covering all three provinces.” 

“This work is funded by the U.S. Department of State,” the document reads. 

The Biden administration is shutting down new mining projects on American soil at the same time. In January, the Interior Department took another step to block the Twin Metals project in northern Minnesota. The proposed mine would tap the Duluth Complex within the Superior National Forest, where 95 percent of the nation’s nickel reserves and 88 percent of American cobalt reserves remain underground. 

The Biden administration also moved closer to implementing a 20-year ban on mining in South Dakota’s Black Hills National Forest last month. Three days before the announcement, the Interior Department cut offnearly 16 million acres in Alaska from any sort of resource extraction indefinitely. 

While projects from Alaska to Minnesota face setbacks, the administration has taken a different approach to the proposed Thacker Pass mine in Nevada. If approved by federal courts, the $2.2 billion mine 200 miles northeast of Reno would produce enough lithium to build 1.5 million electric vehicles annually for 40 years, according to the company behind the project. 

Lithium, a key component for electric vehicles, is forecast to face shortages as soon as two years from now, according to a 2021 report from the International Energy Agency. Meanwhile, President Biden has set a goal of 50 percent of new U.S. car sales to be electric by the end of the decade. 

“Given the promising domestic lithium resources in Nevada, North Carolina, California, and other states,” said Debra Struhsacker, a hardrock mining and environmental policy expert, “let’s hope the U.S. State Department is making similar investments to advance and facilitate the development of U.S. lithium mines, where mining will adhere to strict environmental protection and worker health and safety regulations.”

President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act last summer to stimulate American mineral production as demand for critical resources rose with the subsidized acceleration of emissions-free technology. Not only are the critical minerals central to the administration’s wind and solar projects, but they are essential for defense technologies and popular products from cell phones to laptops. While the Cold War-era law was triggered to proliferate American mining operations, the White House considers Canadian mines a “domestic source” eligible for taxpayer support.

“Canada is a preferred partner of the United States with critical mineral resources and expertise that could be leveraged to expand processing capacity and the manufacturing of intermediate and final goods, further strengthening North American supply chains,” read a report from the White House. 

Meanwhile, the use of taxpayer dollars to build mining operations overseas reflects a broken domestic permitting process that keeps capital-intense projects in limbo for years, and sometimes decades. 

Delays resulting from litigation brought by anti-development activists have led lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to call for permitting reform. 

---

No One But Donald Trump Would Be Charged With These Fake 'Crimes'

posted by Alan Dershowitz at Newsweek 

On Tuesday, a historic event took place: For the first time in history, a sitting U.S. president was indicted and charged. In a Manhattan courtroom, former President Donald Trump became the first president and the first presidential candidate ever to be indicted, arrested and charged.

Since the indictment was announced last week, the nation has waited with bated breath for the indictment to be unsealed in the hopes that there would be something inside that justified such a momentous move on the part of New York's District Attorney, Alvin Bragg.

There was not. Bragg's indictment and accompanying statement of facts produced 34 absolutely ridiculous charges based on bookkeeping and record entries that don't even amount to a prosecutable misdemeanor—certainly not the felony with which former President Trump was charged.

The 34 charges hinge on hush money payments the former President allegedly paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Yet paying hush money to prevent publication of an adulterous sexual encounter is not a crime. Alexander Hamilton did it. So did thousands of other high-profile Americans. None of them ever disclosed such payments on public corporate records. After all, why pay the hush money if you have to publicly report the reasons it was paid?

Yet DA Bragg assured the American people that prosecuting such false record cases are the "bread and butter" of his office. I challenge Bragg to show us those cases. He won't be able to, because no one who pays hush money to conceal sex, then discloses that fact in public filings.

Yet that is the essence of Bragg's weak case.

There is a bit more to the indictment and the accompanying statement of facts than the sordid Stormy Daniels matter. District Attorney Bragg has sliced the salami very thin and turned this and related episodes into 34 separate charges. But at the bottom this is a records case.

In order to turn a questionable misdemeanor into an even more questionable felony, Bragg has had to allege that the reason Trump made false entries was to cover up other crimes. Here is where the indictment is at its weakest. Although the indictment itself does not specify which crimes were allegedly in Trump's mind, the statement of facts indicates that they generally related to election issues. The theory is that Trump hid the real reason for the hush money payments for the purpose of helping his campaign, rather than to hide the adulterous affair from his wife, children and business associates.

It's weak at best, and nearly impossible to prove at worst.

There are other, more specific allegations in the indictment and statement of facts, and they will be presented to a jury in order to determine whether the specified felonies have been committed. But the jury it will be presented to will consist of Manhattan voters, if Bragg gets his way. Recall that Bragg campaigned on the promise to get Trump, and so the jury pool will undoubtedly include Manhattanites who voted for him to fulfill that pledge. By voting to convict Trump, they can help Bragg fulfill the pledge he made to voters and presumably jury members.

This does not seem to assure a fair trial, and that is why Trump's lawyers will undoubtedly move for a change of venue—something Bragg will no doubt strenuously oppose, because the last thing he seems to be aiming for is a fair trial.

Despite the 34 charges and the lengthy documents, it remains clear that no reasonable District Attorney would have devoted this much time and this many resources to ferreting out records-keeping violations if there had not been a political motive behind it. Bragg's predecessor had the same evidence and declined to prosecute. So did Bragg at the beginning of his term—a decision which created a backlash and pressure on Bragg to change his mind. Bragg did so, and the result was Trump's appearance in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday.

His appearance marked a sad departure from past precedent and a high likelihood that this deeply flawed indictment will create a new precedent under which elected prosecutors of one party will search for possible crimes against their political opponents.

One remarkable aspect of this indictment is that none of the 34 charges cites any alleged victim of Trump's crimes. They are the personification of victimless crimes. But there are real victims: the American system of justice and the rule of law.

Inventing a Law to Destroy a Political Opponent

Inventing a Law to Destroy a Political Opponent

Shmuel Klatzkin for Spectator.org

Making political difference a felony undermines democracy for everyone.

The indictment of Donald Trump brings into sharp focus two great constitutional principles. Great in that they are foundational — without them, whatever edifice one may build above is compromised and will sooner or later collapse.

The first of these principles is that voiced now by the legion enemies of Donald Trump. It had been voiced earlier by the legion enemies of Hillary Clinton and today by the legion enemies of Joe Biden. It is the idea, traced quite properly by Fortescue back to Biblical law, that everyone, even the king, is answerable to the law of God. The English Common Law tradition, also quite properly, sees itself as sanctioned by God’s law and assented to willingly by the people to bring peaceable governance to the nation. Thus, Magna Carta and the Petition of Right, establishing constitutional limits to royal power, and explicitly restricting the king’s power. All are under the law.

Presidents in office have an immunity from prosecution as did kings. But presidents have so only while in office, and once outside it, whether by conviction on articles of impeachment or simply at the end of their elected term, those immunities disappear.

The public grasps the unfairness of a two-tiered legal system. If, for the same action forbidden by law, some people go to prison while others enjoy their liberty, corruption has taken hold. The stench of this corruption is what gave power to the cry of “drain the swamp!” — the apprehension of tens of millions of Americans that powerful elites at the center of American government held one law for themselves and an entirely different one for those they called deplorables and clingers, whom those elites thought (and still think) need to be put in their place by their betters.

Those same elites have their own way of looking at things, and believe, or at least say they believe, the same principle that commands nearly everyone’s assent. The endless impeachment campaigns that marked the whole of the Trump presidency were constantly defended by trumpeting this entirely correct principle — even the president is answerable to law. There must not be two systems of law. Or, in the words of the Good Book, “There shall be one law for you and for the stranger who comes to live with you.” Even the one who has come as a stranger, and lacks connections and power, is equal to the most noble and powerful before the law.

But this principle of one law does not stand alone. Just as the one law of the Bible was familiar to all — as Deuteronomy had commanded, “You shall teach them (the laws) to your children and you shall speak of them…” — so, too, the law to which all are answerable is law known and public. If law can be concocted at will, tailored to fit the political aims of those in seats of power, then its equal protection is meaningless. How can a person avoid doing something they couldn’t know was illegal? Thus, the idea of Common Law — the law people know and accept willingly upon themselves.

While both we and Britain accept constitutionally that statues can be added that will likewise command the citizens’ compliance, there is an instinctive revulsion to laws that are so complex that only those with specialized knowledge even know of their existence. There is even greater revulsion at seeing those laws used to silence unfavored political actors by criminalizing their political differences.

Writing about the great constitutional landmark of the passing of the Petition of Right during the rule of the first King Charles, Winston Churchill said:

We reach here, amid much confusion, the main foundation of English freedom. The right of the Executive Government to imprison a man, high or low, for reasons of State was denied; and that denial, made good in painful struggles, constitutes the charter of every self-respecting man of any time in any land. Trial by jury of equals, only for offences known to the law, if maintained, makes the difference between bond and free.

“Only for offences known to the law” — that phrase echoed in my mind as I heard the masters of network news refer again and again to the mysterious legal theory that somehow lies behind the indictment of Trump. Even these glib partisans, who years ago abandoned the ideal of objective journalism under the Trump Exception, could not avoid sounding troubled about this unprecedented prosecution. Paying hush money is no crime (though blackmail and extortion are). Deliberately accounting for such a payment on the books as a legal expense is at worst a misdemeanor, not the felony with which Trump is being charged. What is the theory, even these masters of information muse, by which the statute of limitations is avoided and by which a local official undertakes a federal prosecution?

Muse they well might. Perhaps there is a theory. And the implication being, perhaps, that we all should have known in advance to guide our conduct by a theory that even now is not known to ardent supporters of most everything anti-Trump.

The talking heads speculated with grave concern over the difficulties the prosecutor might have in connecting this misdemeanor to a federal felony offense, since Trump is not charged with any such offense. Perhaps, these tribunes of truth mused, it is in connection with some New York statute, a statute that was not obvious to anyone of the network commentators, none of them particularly well-inclined towards Trump.

Perhaps.

“Only for offences known to law.” Without this principle, we do not have freedom. That is what is at stake. Even Trump’s enemies within the Republican Party, and there are many, have largely united in defense of this principle, even as very many of them will work very hard to support someone else for the 2024 nomination.

Politics is politics. Let the people decide by their vote.

Making political difference a felony undermines democracy for everyone. Hold to the principles that make constitutional government real. Hold in fierce contempt those who would demean our law and our democracy by inventing law to destroy their political opponents.

'Fat and Mentally Ill' Is Not a Netflix Sitcom but the State of Our Young People in Terms of Military Readiness

Jennifer Oliver O'Connell reporting for RedState 

And add “heavily medicated” to that list. American Military News reported on a Pentagon study that surmised that the current state of America’s youth is not conducive to military service.

Go figure.

A Pentagon study revealed that 77 percent of young Americans do not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, drug use, or mental or physical problems.

“When considering youth disqualified for one reason alone, the most prevalent disqualification rates are overweight (11 percent), drug and alcohol abuse (8 percent), and medical/physical health (7 percent),” the Pentagon’s 2020 Qualified Military Available Study of Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 read.

Dept of Defense Chart on Qualified Military Available (QMA) Study (Credit: Department of Defense)

Military.com interviewed a Department of Defense spokesperson who further elucidated on this growing problem:

Maj. Charlie Dietz, a Department of Defense spokesman, confirmed that the study shared with Military.com was accurate and said all the services are being challenged by the current recruiting environment.

“There are many factors that we are navigating through, such as the fact that youth are more disconnected and disinterested compared to previous generations,” Dietz said. “The declining veteran population and shrinking military footprint has contributed to a market that is unfamiliar with military service resulting in an overreliance of military stereotypes.”

It also doesn’t help that our military leaders are choosing to focus on correct pronouns rather than actual strength, fighting abilities, and skills that win conflicts rather than avoid them. Russia and China are actually preparing their people and their fighting forces for war. The U.S.? Not so much, as my colleague Mike Miller wrote:

The Twins of Woke, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley have worked tirelessly to transform the greatest fighting force on the planet from “a few good men” to even fewer self-identified genders with self-assigned pronouns.

If it wasn’t the U.S. military we were talking about, the failed social experiment would be somewhat humorous — instead of a potentially clear and present danger to the security of the United States. As it stands, I’d have a hard time suggesting enlistment to a loved one or friend.

My colleague streiff also weighed in on the lack of readiness and why WOKE is killing off any potential of a strong fighting force:

Readiness labors under the same obeisance to wokeness. While a young man or woman with braces can’t enlist because the military can’t guarantee access to orthodontic care, a mentally disturbed person with body-altering surgery and hopped up on a variety of drugs is allowed access to weapons and welcomed as a member of the team. Men and women who refused to accept the politically driven and medically ineffective COVID vaccine were forced out of the service. Even when courts forced the reversal of this policy, they were not readmitted.

Those who would be most eligible, the generational offspring of those serving or who have served, are being discouraged from enlisting thanks to this focus on social activism and gender ideology. As for other factors that affect the readiness of young people, we have spent the past 10 years (probably longer) indoctrinating our children to hate America, hate themselves, and hate each other. There’s a Proverb that says without a vision people cast off restraint. Our youth are given no purpose, they lack a vision of what life can and should be, so there is no reason or focus for them to strive for anything.

Obesity, drugs, and mental disorder are clear signs of a lack of focus and purpose. Youth who are physically challenged and prepared are often focused, and that focus and discipline help maintain emotional stability. They are less likely to turn to drugs, alcohol, or mind-altering substances because they have a vision for their future and goals in mind. So, the fact that we have 77 percent of youth who have none speaks volumes about how deeply public education and its agenda have destroyed our kids.

The alarm bells are being sounded, and we may not have the time or the resources to reverse course.