That California Guy Who Traveled To Maryland To Get Brett Kavanaugh…

JUNE 8, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at PowerLine:

MORE ON THE WOULD-BE ASSASSIN

The man who traveled to Maryland to try to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh has been identified as Nicholas John Roske, from Simi Valley, California. He apparently made it to Justice Kavanaugh’s house before being apprehended:

Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif., was charged with attempted murder after two U.S. deputy marshals saw him step out of a taxicab in front of the justice’s house in Chevy Chase, Md., early Wednesday morning, federal prosecutors said. Mr. Roske was dressed in black and carrying a suitcase and a backpack, according to a federal affidavit.

Inside the suitcase and backpack, the authorities later discovered a “black tactical chest rig and tactical knife,” a pistol with two magazines and ammunition, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, a screwdriver, a nail punch, a crowbar, a pistol light and duct tape, in addition to other items, according to the affidavit.

His plan was to break into the house, kill the justice and then kill himself, according to the affidavit.

Needless to say, Roske is somewhat unbalanced:

Soon after, the Montgomery County Emergency Communications Center received a call from Mr. Roske, who said he was having suicidal thoughts and had a firearm in his suitcase, according to the affidavit.

He said he had traveled from California to Maryland “to kill a specific United States Supreme Court justice,” the affidavit said.

Officers from the Montgomery County Police Department arrived and found Mr. Roske still on the phone with the communications center.

This is precisely the sort of person likely to act on incitement to violence by the likes of Chuck Schumer.

The New York Post has more, including reaction from the group who published Kavanaugh’s home address:

Nicholas John Roske, 26, told police that he “began thinking about how to give his life purpose and decided that he would kill the Supreme Court Justice after finding the Justice’s Montgomery County address on the Internet,” court documents allege.

Roske said he was angry over the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion expected to overturn Roe v. Wade and the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 students and two teachers dead, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Ironically, Roske, who was armed with a Glock handgun and intended to kill Justice Kavanaugh, wanted more stringent (unconstitutional) gun control laws. Who can debate liberal logic?

Photos of Kavanaugh’s house were widely shared by the media after pro-choice activists staged demonstrations outside of his and other conservative justices’ homes to protest the leaked draft opinion, which suggested they intend to scrap the landmark 1973 ruling legalizing abortion.

Some activists shared Kavanaugh’s address online and encouraged protestors to demonstrate outside of his home. The location is also easily accessible from a quick Google search and can be found on modern-day Whitepage websites like Radaris.

The activists who published Kavanaugh’s home address quickly denied any responsibility for the entirely foreseeable attempt on his life:

The group wrote on Twitter Wednesday that it was not to blame for Roske’s alleged plan and said they are “committed to non-violence.”

“Fundamentalists will talk non-stop about how our peaceful protests inspired this, rather than the daily mass-murders in America,” the group wrote on Twitter.

Nice attempt at deflection. They are anti-gun, like the attempted murderer!

“We offer our thoughts & prayers to Brett & Ashley Kavanaugh after a California man arrived by taxi near their home, armed with a gun & knife, then called the police on himself to confess his murderous rage against the abusive alcoholic ‘Justice’.

That last is beneath contempt.

“We didn’t send him.”

No, you just told him where to go.

The Democratic Party and the liberal movement need to do some serious soul-searching in the wake of this attempted assassination. They caused it. They foreseeably brought it about. It was more or less inevitable, in view of the disgusting tactics they have used in recent years. And now they have run for cover.

Joe Biden has said nothing. The appalling Chuck Schumer, who personally incited this attack, has, as of this moment, said nothing at all. My friend John Ondrasik asks:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3JlZnNyY19zZXNzaW9uIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6Im9mZiIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0Zndfc2Vuc2l0aXZlX21lZGlhX2ludGVyc3RpdGlhbF8xMzk2MyI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJpbnRlcnN0aXRpYWwiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X3Jlc3VsdF9taWdyYXRpb25fMTM5NzkiOnsiYnVja2V0IjoidHdlZXRfcmVzdWx0IiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1534634387731623937&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F06%2Fmore-on-the-would-be-assassin.php&sessionId=92d4958af92055ef827d2dca2e9d1cd984328140&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=b45a03c79d4c1%3A1654150928467&width=550px

We are waiting to hear from them, but don’t hold your breath. Chuck Schumer will no more take responsibility for this attempted assassination than Joe Biden will take responsibility for $5 a gallon gasoline.

How Trouble Maker IS CHUCK SCHUMER? JOE BIDEN?

JUNE 8, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at PowerLine:

ARE THE DEMOCRATS TO BLAME?

The Democrats should be held accountable for last night’s attempt on the life of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Most notably, of course, Chuck Schumer issued a fatwa against Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch, which last night’s would-be assassin apparently attempted to execute.

But that’s not all. The GOP’s communications staff reminds us of the Democrats’ shameful history of encouraging violence against conservative Supreme Court justices:

A man was just arrested outside of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home with plans to kill the justice, and the silence from Democrat leaders is deafening.

As of this writing, Joe Biden has still not condemned the attempt on Kavanaugh’s life, with the White House instead having a mid-level staffer do it for him.

The truth is that Biden and Democrats are directly responsible for this assassination attempt, excusing and encouraging activists for weeks to target justices and their families at their homes:

May 5: Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to condemn activists posting the justices’ home addresses online.
May 6: Psaki refused to say if Biden “has a view” on activists harassing justices at their homes.
May 6: Nancy Pelosi called on protesters to actively pressure justices to influence their decisions.
May 8: Pelosi said “the focus” is to influence and change the Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision on Roe v. Wade.
May 9: Psaki refused to condemn protests at justices’ homes even though it is against the law.
* Psaki also refused to condemn the doxing of justices’ personal information even as threats of violence grew.
May 10: Psaki downplayed the harassment, claiming protests “have been peaceful to date and we certainly continue to encourage that outside of judges’ homes.”
May 11: Chuck Schumer answered “yes” when asked if he was “comfortable with protests…outside the homes of Supreme Court justices.”

Right now, Pelosi is even holding up a Senate-passed bill that would improve security for justices and their families. In 2020, Schumer threatened justices, by name, with a “whirlwind…you won’t know what hit you.”

It’s past time for Biden and Democrats to condemn this violence.

The last word, for now, goes to Comfortably Smug:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3JlZnNyY19zZXNzaW9uIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6Im9mZiIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0Zndfc2Vuc2l0aXZlX21lZGlhX2ludGVyc3RpdGlhbF8xMzk2MyI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJpbnRlcnN0aXRpYWwiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X3Jlc3VsdF9taWdyYXRpb25fMTM5NzkiOnsiYnVja2V0IjoidHdlZXRfcmVzdWx0IiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1534554035596009472&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F06%2Fare-the-democrats-to-blame.php&sessionId=acd7f97bc6cb737eea8e315267f7171f838aa75b&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=b45a03c79d4c1%3A1654150928467&width=550px

It is worth noting that the would-be assassin who was arrested last night had in his possession more firearms (one or more, we are told) than all of the January 6 “insurrectionists” together (zero).

America Speaks

A. L. Luttrell, a full blooded American from the Arlin Report….

4 hours ago·arlinluttrell.wordpress.comUser Info

Yellen Speaks Yellen!

Reblogged this on ARLIN REPORT……………….walking this path together and commented:
Filling positions of importance with incompetents, unqualified individuals was/is part of the Biden Administrations executive team to assure failure. Destruction! After all they are purposely allowing/pushing gas prices skyward. All other prices across the board rise with it, milk, food, services etc., etc., etc. Those that were having a difficult time just making ends meet, now are finding it nearly impossible. What happens when that happens? Those people are weakened. That also includes all those in the middle. The jackass who is supposed to be in charge said we were saving more under his administration. Joe must have failed simple math in grade school. I am retired, living on SS and a pension. I can attest that my bank account at the end of the month has less dollars in it than It did starting about 18 months ago; when Biden was falsely sworn in. It is as if Satan swore him in. Biden has failed at everything, EVERYTHING! That is intentional, they want us to easily be rescued (falsely) by the global reset. All this happening while before they even got in office (as the plan was already set) Biden was bought/bribed, by China and who knows who else. Hunter was the go between in the middle of the big plan………with the BIG GUY. Biden is a political felonious criminal, on the largest scale ever seen (Hillary holds down the 2nd spot and she is actually envious of Joe). On Thursday the Jan. 6 committee will distract you from Biden and move their attention to Trump. That he holds down the number 1 spot. In truth, Trump has brought things to light, that they (Deep State) have kept us in the dark on. This is why they continue to try and destroy him. All things Biden are much worse than all things Trump. (Arlin Report comment)

“The dilapidating state of our culture, institutions, and politics!”

June 8, 2022

Progressive America is the Twilight Zone

By J. Robert Smith at American Thinker:

The dilapidating state of our culture, institutions, and politics (the order is deliberate) has been decades in the making.  Blame Boomers — the culture definers among them — for getting the ball rolling downhill in the highly romanticized lied about 1960s.  They spawned the decadent counterculture, which set in motion every society-rotting development we’re grappling with today.  Bill and Hillary Clinton are the aging avatars of counterculture radicals who turned into establishment exploiters.  

Real Clear Politics’ average for “Direction of Country” polls is currently an eye-popping wrong track, 70.7%, while right direction stands at a paltry 22.4%.  Other than D.C. lifers, welfare moochers, and people wanting their college debt loans erased, who are these 22%?  And who, this side of lobotomies, is the smaller percentage of “not sure?”       

America’s accelerating tumbling is the handiwork of a corrupt, ideologically driven, incompetent — dare say, venal — elite.  Don’t doubt that most of the incompetence stems from an irreparably flawed leftist worldview and age-old, mind-twisting power- and money-lust.        

A calamitous, destructive, painful descent is happening before our eyes.  We’re witnesses to history — but the imperative is to be actors against what we’re witnessing.  Winning elections, though critical, won’t alone fix things.  The culture needs to be retaken.  Institutions need to be recaptured — or routes around them created.  

The attack on American Civilization is multi-fronted.  Progressivism — an Orwellian inversion if there ever was one – is reminiscent of the classic TV show, The Twilight Zone.  In the show’s opening title, Rod Serling would say, in part, about the world of imagination that viewers were to enter: “It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.”

That’s where America is now, between light and shadow.  But there’s nothing imaginary about America’s degradation.  Despite the propagandists’ efforts to gaslight us, we see, touch, smell, taste, and hear ruin.  It intrudes upon us.        

Climb any summit and take a look.  What you’ll see is a path this nation is being dragged down by the most dissolute concentration of human beings ever produced on these shores… a route that at its terminus is the “pit of man’s fears.”  That pit is where they’ll dump us unless we defeat these terrible people.

America’s troubles aren’t from “We the People.”  We the People are decent, law-abiding folk.  We’re working jobs and raising our kids.  We’re good neighbors.  We play between the lines, as they say. 

We’re being crushed, increasingly daily.  Inflation climbs, while energy shortfalls cause gas and grocery store prices to soar, stretching family budgets.  How far off is the breaking point for tens of millions of people living paycheck-to-paycheck?  Biden just shrugs and blathers.      

The U.S.-Mexico border – what border, you say?  What’s replaced the southern border is a Biden-created superhighway for illegals and gangbangers.  Fentanyl, meth, and other poisons ride that highway with ease.  Drug overdoses killed 107,000 Americans in 2021.  What will the grim tally be this year?   

Crime grows worse and keeps spreading.  How about the mass shootings in Philly, Chattanooga, and other cities last weekend?  Yet, Democrats neuter cops and their DAs protect thugs.   

Is an ominous, long, hot summer in the offing?  The Department of Homeland Security warns “yes.”  But do we trust Biden’s DHS? 

 

From Fox News, June 7:

“Threat actors have recently mobilized to violence due to factors such as personal grievances, reactions to current events, and adherence to violent extremist ideologies, including racially or ethnically motivated or anti-government/anti-authority violent extremism,” DHS said. [Italics added]

The department stressed that “foreign adversaries — including terrorist organizations and nation state adversaries — also remain intent on exploiting the threat environment to promote or inspire violence, sow discord, or undermine U.S. democratic institutions.” [Italics added]

Is DHS hinting that hordes of white supremacists and American First patriots will cause mayhem in an election year?  Curiously coincidental, no?  Or is DHS suggesting that Antifa and BLM will take to city streets again, as they did in 2020, instigating worse violence and destruction?  Ah, but DHS is too partisan and woke to suggest that. 

And those “nation state adversaries?”  Doesn’t that stink of “Russia, Russia, Russia?”  Are we being set up for false-flag events?

Thanks to our scheming, corrupt elites, we can no longer take what any federal government department or agency says at face value.  Ask Peter Navarro about the gross injustice of Biden’s Justice Department.  Michael Sussman walked free from a D.C. court presided over by a Democrat-appointed judge (who cut the defendant slack via admissibility of evidence) and a D.C. jury populated with Democrats, including some Hillary Clinton contributors and one or two with casual connections to the defendant. 

The nation’s leadership class has destroyed trust in government, and when trust vanishes, we’re playing a dangerously unpredictable game loaded with wild cards.

Biden’s misbegotten administration is the last of the Democrats’ trademarked “deals”: New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, Great Society, and whatever other branded scam they’ve sold voters since.  Biden won’t ever surpass FDR as the greatest progressive president ever, per his deluded aspiration.  The question is, will he be regarded as the worst president ever, dropping lower than James Buchanan (another Democrat) who idly watched as fellow Democrats hatched the Civil War?    

Careful, though.  What follows the fall of progressivism isn’t necessarily a rebirth of freedom — unless we fight hard for that.  Democrats keep moving left into darker precincts.  The communist and fascist-inspired liars that they are, they’re pushing everything from authoritarianism to totalitarianism under the guise of “democracy.”  A federal takeover of elections, SCOTUS court packing, skirting the 2^nd Amendment, COVID lockdowns, mask mandates, reckless spending, weaponizing the DoJ and FBI against political opponents… Where do you think Democrats are trending?      

We have 100-plus years of history informing us what fates befell Russians, Chinese, Cubans, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Venezuelans, Jews, and so many others when anti-liberty forces prevailed.  The naïve among us insist that “America is different.”  But it’s irrefutable: evil is afoot in this country.  Human nature crosses all boundaries.  Good or evil are choices. 

The 2020s contain the battlegrounds where America’s future will be decided.  Will the country emerge a free, culturally healthy, and prosperous nation or will it sink into a facsimile of L.A. or Chicago — or something far worse?  As to the ruin of Democrat-run cities, the bottom hasn’t been reached yet.   

Good or evil are, indeed, choices.  Freedom is a choice.  Tyranny happens when good men choose merely to be witnesses… choose to do nothing else… choose not to act from fear.  Often, those who start as witnesses end up forced to dig graves for the very rights and liberty that distinguishes them as human beings possessing intrinsic worth and dignity… God’s creatures, not anyone’s chattel.      

Let’s finish with Rod Serling’s closing narration from the Twilight Zone, Season 3, Episode 9, “Death’s-Head Revisited”:

“There is an answer to the doctor’s question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes — all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s Earth.”    

J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover.             

 

“Democrats own these policies, just as they have owned urban policies for decades”.

NYT, WaPo: By golly, we think urban voters might be unhappy with crime

ED MORRISSEY Jun 08, 2022 at HotAir:

AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

What might have been the first clue? In reality, voters had begun revolting against prosecutorial dereliction and policies that set criminals loose to offend with impunity for the better part of two years. Progressives and their media allies (with some exceptions) have tried convincing voters that all is well.

Now that voters have a say, the response is unmistakable. The New York Times reports the “message” sent to Democrats in its news section:

Voters in California delivered a stark warning to the Democratic Party on Tuesday about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022, as a Republican-turned-Democrat campaigning as a crime-fighter vaulted into a runoff in the mayoral primary in Los Angeles and a progressive prosecutor in San Francisco was recalled in a landslide.

The two results made vivid the depths of voter frustration over rising crime and rampant homelessness in even the most progressive corners of the country — and are the latest signs of a restless Democratic electorate that was promised a return to normalcy under President Biden and yet remains unsatisfied with the nation’s state of affairs.

“People are not in a good mood, and they have reason not to be in a good mood,” said Garry South, a Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist. “It’s not just the crime issue. It’s the homelessness. It’s the high price of gasoline.”

For voters, their daily lived experiences will always take precedence at the ballot box. When economies function well and households can afford to spend on luxuries, then secondary and tertiary issues may matter in elections. When inflation is running away, gas prices double in a year, and you live in areas suddenly ridden with violent crime, those issues will drive voters no matter what messaging gets used or how much money is behind it.

We’ve seen hints of this in other primary results before yesterday, and even in Virginia’s election last year, in which education and parental access became acute. Yesterday’s revolt in deep-blue California made that dynamic unmistakable.

James Hohmann covers that messaging in the Washington Post’s opinion section, in contrast with the NYT’s treatment. In contrast to the usual approach to law-and-order reaction, however, Hohmann chooses an interesting and somewhat compelling frame of reference for Boudin’s recall:

More people died in San Francisco last year from fentanyl overdoses than covid-19, yet District Attorney Chesa Boudin did not convict a single person in 2021 for dealing the lethal opioid.

This helps explain why one of the most liberal cities in America voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to recall Boudin and repudiate the prosecutor’s soft-on-crime approach.

Boudin’s defeat is the latest wake-up call for Democrats, who have lost the public’s trust on criminal justice and play down voter anxieties about crime at their peril. …

Boudin pulled out all the stops as he clung to his job. He tried to gaslight residents by pretending crime wasn’t as bad as voters perceived. He blamed courts for shutting down during the pandemic. He blamed cops for not making enough arrests. Voters saw through the desperation.

It’s not just Boudin that has been “gaslighting” voters on crime, and it wasn’t limited to his recall period. Democrats have been playing these same Jedi mind tricks in urban centers across America in desperate attempts to avoid Hohmann also suggests a potential spin from Democrats who want to avoid Boudin’s stink. A lot of them might pretend that Boudin never did represent them:

Boudin was never beloved by local party officials. The Democratic establishment, including former senator (and district attorney before that) Kamala D. Harris, endorsed a more pragmatic candidate who had been a successful prosecutor in the office.

Come on, man. Boudin himself might have faced some establishment opposition in his initial foray, but Boudin was no fluke either. He was among the vanguard of radical-progressive attorneys pushed by the Left into district attorney offices around the country, a movement that suited Democrats enough at the time to brag about their reform-minded agenda. Democrats took credit for their decarceration policies right up to the moment when it became clear that those policies had turned their urban power bases into toxic, blighted communities.

Democrats own these policies, just as they have owned urban policies for decades. Voters have finally gotten fed up enough to push back, but their anger has been clear and palpable for at least the last couple of years. Their losses in deep-blue areas of a deep-blue state are bad enough now that even the media has stopped spinning crime and its impact. And even Democrats now admit that it’s not just crime, but homelessness and inflation that voters care about most — and they’re failing on all counts.

FDR, THE DICTATOR!?

June 8, 2022

FDR, Racist President

By Eddie Willers at American Thinker:

A 2021 C-SPAN survey of over 100 presidential historians ranked Franklin Roosevelt as our third greatest president, behind only Washington and Lincoln (but watch out, FDR is number three with a bullet).

Would FDR rank so high, however, if his racism was considered?

Of course, branding someone today as racist is one the most powerful cudgels that can be wielded. But the racism epithet has been appropriated almost exclusively by the left and, not surprisingly, left-of-center racism is rarely considered.

So, if FDR was a racist, why does he rank so high?

It starts with the myth that he ended the Great Depression with his big government, big spending policies. If these are the main reasons for his high rank, the facts show he failed miserably. Unemployment averaged about 17 percent throughout the Depression, despite massive federal spending and the creation of enormous public works programs. Moreover, Americans suffered needlessly from FDR’s big government, anti-business New Deal policies. UCLA economists, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian, concluded that without the National Industrial Recovery Act policies the Great Depression would have ended in 1936, which means that FDR’s policies added seven years of misery before the Depression finally ended in 1943.

How was this racist? Well, Black Americans were seated at the back of the New Deal bus. National Recovery Administration labor codes, shaped by unions, excluded Blacks from above-market wages. As a result, large numbers of unskilled Black workers were pushed out of the job market. In addition, Black Americans were paid less for the same New Deal work as their white counterparts. And the initial Social Security program didn’t cover agricultural and domestic workers, the employment categories for almost 90 percent of Black workers.

Moreover, FDR was not going to endanger his electoral majority for the sake of Black Americans. As described in The Nation, “The political reality of the Democratic Party is that it catered to the racist wing of the party based in Dixie. Roosevelt felt it imperative to retain the support of politicians like Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, an open white supremacist who proposed an amendment to the federal work-relief bill on June 6, 1938 that would deport 12 million black Americans to Liberia at federal expense to relieve unemployment.”

FDR also ignored the historic and persistent victimization of Black Americans. For example, in 1933 24 Black Americans were lynched. These atrocities spurred the drafting of the Costigan-Wagner bill in 1934, which would have made it a federal crime if law enforcement failed to respond professionally to a lynching. But in the face of Southern Democrat opposition, FDR killed the Costigan-Wagner bill with his silence.

FDR’s neglect of Black Americans continued during World War II when he opted not to desegregate the military. During most of the war Blacks were assigned to menial positions, such as mess halls and latrine duty. Full desegregation of the military didn’t occur until 1948 under the Truman administration.

As poorly as Blacks were treated, FDR’s racism reached an unimaginable low when he issued Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, becoming the only U.S. president to inter American citizens in concentration camps. FDR issued the order out of the belief that Japanese Americans presented a unique threat to national security. Notably, Americans of German and Italian descent weren’t considered similar threats. As a result, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up and incarcerated in concentration camps. They had no choice but to sell their homes and businesses at discount prices. They lost their professions, livelihoods, and savings. They spent the war in primitive conditions in remote locations, in uninsulated cabins without plumbing, and were fed surplus government food. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, when paranoia was greatest, it would have taken a strong and principled leader to protect the guaranteed rights of Japanese Americans. That leader, however, wasn’t FDR.

Although Executive order 9066 violated the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans, it’s interesting that it was upheld by FDR’s Supreme Court in the infamous Korematsu v. United States decision.

Although FDR had a constitutional responsibility to protect the rights of Black and Japanese Americans, he had no such constitutional responsibility to help European Jews. That said, at a time when moral leadership may have made a profound difference for millions of innocent people, FDR was found lacking.

Just as with the Japanese, FDR’s attitude toward European Jews was informed by his bigotry. According to historian Rafael Medoff, “Roosevelt used almost identical language in recommending that the Jews and the Japanese be forcibly ‘spread thin’ around the country. I was struck by the similarity between the language FDR used regarding the Japanese, and that which he used in private concerning Jews — that they can’t be trusted, they won’t ever become fully loyal Americans, they’ll try to dominate wherever they go.”

FDR’s indifference to the fate of European Jews was probably best symbolized by his handling of the fate of the ill-fated ship, the St. Louis. Although he could have offered a safe haven to the forsaken Jews aboard the St. Louis, FDR not only refused them entry into the U.S. but ordered a Coast Guard cutter to shadow the ship as it forlornly journeyed up the East Coast to prevent any desperate Jew from slipping into the U.S..

Furthermore, during World War II FDR made it clear that the U.S. wasn’t interested in aiding European Jews. He repeatedly rejected efforts to liberalize the refugee status of the Jews, he didn’t warn the Nazis that there would be consequences for their genocidal behavior, and he cajoled Jewish leaders into maintaining their silence in the face of his monstrous anti-Jewish policies. Even late in the war, when the allies enjoyed air superiority and were regularly operating in the vicinity of Auschwitz, the military stubbornly refused to bomb either the Auschwitz death camp or the Auschwitz railways. All FDR offered the Jews was a feckless promise that the only way he could help them was by winning the war.

Did it matter that FDR was a racist? It did if you were a Black American and your quest for racial justice was put aside because FDR didn’t want to upset the Dixiecrats. It did if you were a Japanese American whose life was upended when FDR illegally incarcerated you because he didn’t trust you. And it did if you were a Jew in a death camp whose desperate hopes were crushed because FDR was indifferent to your plight. Moreover, unlike the fake racism the left regularly inveighs against its opponents, FDR’s racism was toxic and had real world consequences.

FDR’s Liberty Valance legend has persisted for nine decades; it’s long past time the legend is replaced by the facts.

Eddie Willers is the pen name of a technical writer living in Northern New Jersey.

Trouble, Trouble IN NEW YORK CITY!

NYC Mayor: Our prosecutors are “a laughingstock” of the country

JAZZ SHAW Jun 08, 2022 at HotAir:

AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, FIle

The Mayor of New York City held a press conference yesterday that was full of fire and brimstone. The cover of the New York Post really says it all. “Mayor’s plea: We took 2,600 guns… But the shooters are back on the streets.” Eric Adams stood strong for the men and women of the NYPD, praising their efforts to work quickly to investigate gun crimes and make arrests. He was particularly impressed with the work of the recently restored gun crimes task force. (Which the former mayor had abolished because it was “racist” or whatever.) But he lashed out publicly at the District Attorneys, prosecutors, and judges who continue to operate the jails as if they have revolving doors.

Mayor Eric Adams lashed out at prosecutors and judges Monday for cutting loose suspected shooters to unleash more gunfire on the Big Apple’s streets — saying the “bad guys no longer take them seriously.”

The clearly frustrated mayor also fumed that soft-on-crime policies were turning the city’s criminal justice system into “a laughingstock of our entire country.”

During a news conference with NYPD officials in Brooklyn, Adams praised cops for being “laser-focused on the shooters” and making arrests but demanded that “the other team must do their part.”

The Mayor is clearly frustrated and it’s reached the point where he feels compelled to point out the obvious. He said, “after the shooting, after the arrest, after being let go — You know what they do? They go do another shooting.” The NYPD is already aware of this because they keep arresting the same people over and over again.

He pointed out that criminals in New York City “no longer believe you can’t do a shooting.” He continued, saying that criminals don’t take criminal justice seriously anymore.

While the Mayor didn’t mention him by name, he was clearly making a reference to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The DA came into office promising to put fewer people behind bars and proceeded to make good on that threat. He later walked back some of his initial directives in response to public outrage, but prosecution and conviction rates remain woefully low even as the number of arrests is rising. Adams also blasted the judges who are handing down lenient sentences for gun crime convicts.

The timing of this tirade was probably not accidental. He did it on the same day that Californians went to the polls in their primary and ousted Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. It appears that Adams is seeking to leverage the anger and frustration of New York voters to apply some pressure on Bragg, the City Council, and the judges in the Big Apple’s criminal courts.

Nothing that the Mayor is saying requires an advanced college degree to grasp. His cops are doing their jobs. The prosecutors and the courts are not. And far too many voters are furious over the lack of progress. Perhaps we are approaching the point where some actual progress can be seen on the horizon.

Yellen Speaks Yellen!

JUNE 8, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at PowerLine

YELLEN ABOUT STUPIDITY

The venerable office of Secretary of the Treasury goes back to Alexander Hamilton. Looking over the roster of former Secretaries, one can observe that it has rarely been held by lightweights or hacks. Janet Yellen makes a mockery of the office. She degrades the office in performing its responsibilities poorly and ranging far afield to parrot the shibboleths and follies of the Biden administration like a Stalinist apparatchik.

Yesterday Yellen testified before the Senate Finance Committee on the administration’s 2023 budget. C-SPAN has posted video of the entire hearing here, the committee here, Yahoo Finance here (on YouTube). Let us take a look at two clips.

Comrade Janet is barking mad in apparatchik city.

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The inflation ignited by the Biden administration lies within the core of her responsibilities. Has she heard that hope is not a strategy? Apparently not.

“Solar panels are ugly. They are inefficient. They are expensive”.

JUNE 7, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at PowerLine:

THE MADNESS OF SLOW JOE: SUN KING EDITION

The mad scientists whom Gulliver discovered in Laputa had an interesting project. They sought to extract sunlight from cucumbers.

The mad scientists have nothing on slow Joe, the president of the United States. We are in the middle of a historic rise in the price of gasoline. Prices are rising so fast that, if you didn’t fill up your car yesterday, you’ll be paying more for the privilege today. And slow Joe can take pride in his contribution to our plight.

Biden seized the moment yesterday to order “emergency measures Monday to boost crucial supplies to U.S. solar manufacturers and declared a two-year tariff exemption on solar panels from Southeast Asia as he attempted to jumpstart progress toward his climate change-fighting goals,” as the AP puts it.

Everything about it is wrong with one exception. It represents Biden’s obeisance to the priorities of the lunatic left. That is the only sense in which it is right.

Solar panels are ugly. They are inefficient. They are expensive. They trash the environment. Their manufacture requires and produces toxic chemicals. They are made with slave labor. They are unreliable. They will never make up what fossil fuels contribute to the electric grid.

The Harvard Business Review adds this poignant footnote: “Economic incentives are rapidly aligning to encourage customers to trade their existing panels for newer, cheaper, more efficient models. In an industry where circularity solutions such as recycling remain woefully inadequate, the sheer volume of discarded panels will soon pose a risk of existentially damaging proportions.”

Commandeering American industry on behalf of the production of solar panels raises a question of legality under the Defense Production Act. Assuming the legality of invoking the act in this case, the administration itself appears incapable of articulating a sane rationale on behalf of its actions (video below). The Department of Energy elaborates a rationale here.

We await the president’s multi-trillion dollar plan to extract sunlight from cucumbers. It is the perfect complement to his so-called “clean energy” goals.

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