Civil Commotion

The strategy is unmistakeble: Blithely ignore the facts, lie, stoke the ignoramuses with fear.

We just watched Democrats EMBARRASS themselves at the Mueller hearing. Even after I was completely EXONERATED, they still can’t give up the WITCH HUNT.

This is the Democrat Party that has embraced SOCIALISM as their official platform and completely abandoned all sanity.

Democrats have made it clear that radical big government socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are calling the shots now. That’s why their party continues to prioritize illegal immigrants over the American people.

It’s up to YOU to send a message that America will NEVER be a socialist country. I need you on my team to ensure victory and help us Keep America Great.

That’s why I’m asking you to rush a contribution split between my campaign and the Kentucky GOP who are on the front lines of the fight against socialism this cycle. This is so urgent that all contributions will be DOUBLE-MATCHED until 11:59 PM TONIGHT.

Contribute ANY AMOUNT before 11:59 PM TONIGHT and you will make DOUBLE the impact to help us Keep America Great.

America has come too far in the last few years to let Democrats drag us back to the failed big-government socialist policies of the Obama era.

My team is going to send me a list of everyone who contributes and takes a stand against socialism. Will I see your name on that list?

Please contribute before 11:59 PM TONIGHT to get your contribution DOUBLE-MATCHED.

Thank you,
Donald J. Trump
President of the United States

This man can’t draw a breath without disgracing the whole country.

The notion that the average citizen should care deeply about the rule of law and constitutional norms — and even actively defend them — has become terribly passé. Now, all that truly matters is whether we are entertained by someone who can command televisual excitement the way Trump does on a daily, hourly basis. If he can’t, whatever the underlying facts, no one gives a damn.

Andrew Sullivan

I have wondered often since the Trump candidacy, Were Americans always so ignorant and shallow?

Certainly, Richard Nixon was removed from office for less grave offenses, and he at least tried to obscure them; Trump brazenly flips-off Constitutional norms. So, yeah, it appears that We, the People, have lost something necessary for self-governance. On the other hand, just 20-years ago the public discussion was dominated by newspapers and a handful of television broadcasters, and they generally tended to be well-informed and high-minded even if sometimes misguided; so it may be that a huge bloc of We, the People, were always ignorant and shallow — but had no means of organizing themselves and expressing their empty-headed ‘thoughts.’

What is certain is that the country is in grave trouble, and the Constitutional assumption of an informed and engaged citizenry isn’t holding.

What do you know? Liberty University has a problem with honest journalism.

In my first week as editor in chief of the Champion, Liberty University’s student-run weekly, our faculty adviser, Deborah Huff, ordered me to apologize. I’d noticed that our evangelical school’s police department didn’t publish its daily crime log online, as many other private university forces did, so I searched elsewhere for crime information I might use in an article. I called the Virginia Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators to find out what the law required Liberty to disclose. But the public affairs worker there told the Liberty University Police Department, which complained to Huff. She called to upbraid me: Apparently, I had endangered our newspaper’s relationship with the LUPD. Huff and Chief Richard Hinkley convened a meeting inside a police department conference room, and Huff sat next to me while I proffered the forced apology to Hinkley — for asking questions. Huff, too, was contrite, assuring the police chief that it wouldn’t happen again, because she’d keep a better eye on me.

This wasn’t exactly a rude awakening. I’d spent the previous three years watching the university administration, led by President Jerry Falwell Jr. (who took a very micromanaging interest), meddle in our coverage, revise controversial op-eds and protect its image by stripping damning facts from our stories.

This should not surprise anybody. At the heart of Christianity is a preposterous fiction, and maintaining it requires relentlessly pruning reality; literally, the devout refuse to live in the real world and build an alternate reality for themselves.

Raleigh Woman Defends Use of N-Word:
“I Suffer From Tremendous Anxiety”

After a white patron at a Bonefish Grill in Raleigh, North Carolina, was filmed in a cellphone video calling a black customer the N-word, the woman, Nancy Goodman, defended her use of the racist slur in an interview with local TV station WRAL.

“I used that word because they forced me into it,” Goodman, 71, told WRAL reporter Sarah Krueger. “I would say it again to them.”

Like everyone else who watched yesterday’s hearings, I thought that Robert Mueller seemed halting and uncertain during much of his testimony. Which is not to say that Mueller failed to say what needed to be said:

• Russia attacked the last election, and is attacking our next election right now.

• Trump was not exonerated by the investigation. In fact, he is susceptible of prosecution for obstruction of justice if he leaves office before the statute of limitations expires.

• The investigation did not “establish” a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign — but found plenty of evidence of a conspiracy.

Unfortunately, because a very great many Americans are influenced more by dramatic theater than actual facts and thought, the copiously-documented fact that the country is in the hands of a cheap demagogue and criminal is unlikely to have the effect it should. So Mueller, the Movie, was a … flop.

The sole bright note may be the stupefyingly bad behavior of the Republicans, who refused to engage the evidence of criminality and chose instead to attack an honorable and plainly-tired public servant with a record vastly more accomplished than any of their own. There is no nice way to spin it: The Republican conduct was squalid, disgraceful, soiled the Congress and embarrassed all clear-headed and decent-minded people.