The Latest Definition of Chutzpah

Chutzpah is derived from the Hebrew word ḥuṣpāh (חֻצְפָּה), meaning “insolence”, “cheek” or “audacity”. Thus, the original Yiddish word has a strongly negative connotation.

On Thursday, Breitbart posted an article that brilliantly illustrates the concept of chutzpah.

The article reports:

Attorney General Merrick Garland said this week that he will defy subpoenas from Congressional Republicans that he does not agree with.

Garland’s statement came after Republican leaders in Congress threatened to hold him in contempt “in their efforts to gain access to audio recordings from special counsel Robert K. Hur’s investigation into President Biden’s handling of classified materials,” according to the Washington Post.

On June 6, The U.K. Daily Mail reported:

Former Donald Trump chief White House strategist Steve Bannon must report to prison to begin his four-month sentence for contempt of Congress under a new order from a federal judge Thursday. 

The longtime Trump advisor has until July 1 to surrender himself to the authorities, under a ruling by Judge Carl Nichols.

Bannon was back at a D.C. courthouse Thursday where prosecutors urged the federal judge to send him to prison immediately.

…Bannon was previously sentenced in October 2022 to four months in prison after being convicted of Contempt of Congress for failing to provide information or testimony to the House January 6 Committee.

On October 21, 2022, Newsweek reported:

After former Trump administration official, Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison and fined $6,500 in a Washington, D.C. courtroom, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder began trending on Twitter as users compared the outcomes of their two cases.

Bannon received his sentence on Friday after being found guilty in July on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena issued to him regarding the investigation into the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Holder, a Democrat who served in former President Barack Obama‘s administration, was held in contempt by the House in June 2012 “for failing to disclose internal Justice Department documents in response to a subpoena.” The White House and Justice Department did not attempt to criminally prosecute Holder after the contempt citation, CNN reported.

So I guess contempt of Congress is only a crime when Republicans do it.

Tearing Down The Foundation

The most important part of a building is the foundation. If the foundation is sturdy, chances are the building will stand. Our government is built on the concept of Judeo-Christian values. The Constitution states that our rights come from God and that the Constitution is there to insure those rights are protected–the rights do not come from government.

On Friday night, Attorney General William Barr gave a speech at Notre Dame about the attack on those traditional values that form the basis of our society. Yesterday The Observer posted an article about the speech. The Observer is a student-run, daily print & online newspaper serving Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s & Holy Cross.

The article reports:

U.S. Attorney General William Barr spoke at Notre Dame Law School on Friday evening, calling for a defense of Judeo-Christian values and religious freedom in response to growing secularism in America.

The event was reserved for students, faculty and staff of the Notre Dame Law School and de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, both of which hosted the lecture. It took place in the McCartan Courtroom while another room in the law school streamed the speech to another crowd of ticket-holding students and faculty.

Barr began by discussing the new challenges the United States is facing today. It’s a difficulty he said the Founding Fathers foresaw as “the supreme test of a free society.”

“The central question was whether over the long haul, we the people can handle freedom,” Barr said. “The question was whether the citizens in such a free society could maintain the moral discipline and virtue necessary for the survival of free institutions.”

In the Founders’ view, Barr said, free government was only suitable for people who had the discipline to control themselves according to a transcendent moral order. As John Adams put it, he said, the United States Constitution was made only for “a moral and religious people.” 

“Now, modern secularists dismiss this idea of morality as sort of otherworldly superstition imposed by a killjoy clergy,” Barr said. “But in fact, Judeo-Christian moral standards are the ultimate utilitarian rules for human conduct. They reflect the rules that are best for man not in the by-and-by but in the here-and-now.”

By the same token, he said, violations of these moral laws have “bad, real world consequences” for man and society — such as society is seeing today.

“I think we all recognize that over the past 50 years, religion has been under increasing attack,” Barr said. “On the one hand, we have seen the steady erosion of our traditional Judeo-Christian moral system and a comprehensive effort to drive it from the public square. On the other hand, we see the growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism.”

With escalating suicide rates, the drug epidemic, hate crimes and more, there is a campaign to “destroy the traditional moral order,” Barr said, and secularists ignore these results and press on with “even greater militancy.”

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The last part of the article includes the students’ reaction to the speech. Some of that reaction reflects the moral rebellion that has characterized many of our young college students.

CNS News also posted an article about the speech.

CNS News notes:

The secularist government attempts to alleviate bad consequences by advancing abortion, enabling drug use and assuming the roles of parent and spouse, Barr said. And, while promising unlimited freedom, the end result of the secularist religion is one of servitude, he warned:

“So, the reaction to growing illegitimacy is not sexual responsibility, but abortion.

“The reaction to drug addiction is safe injection sites.

“The solution to the breakdown of the family is for The State to set itself up as an ersatz husband for the single mother and an ersatz father for the children. The call comes for more and more social programs to deal with this wreckage.

“And, while we think we are solving problems, we are underwriting them.

“We start with an untrammeled freedom and we end up as dependents of a coercive state on whom we depend.”

“Interestingly, this idea of The State as the Alleviator of Bad Consequences has given rise to a new moral system that goes hand-in-hand with the secularization of society. It can be called the System of Macro-Morality. And, in some ways, it is an inversion of Christian morality.

“Christianity teaches a Micro-Morality: we transform the world by focusing on our own personal morality and transformation. The new secular religion teaches Macro-Morality. Once morality is not gauged by their private conduct, but rather their commitment to political causes and collective action to address various social problems.

“This system allows us not to worry so much about the strictures on our own private lives, because we can find salvation on the picket line. We can signal our finely-tuned moral sensibilities by participating in demonstrations on this cause or on that.”

The generation that is fighting to destroy the foundation of America will have to live with the consequences of their actions. They might not like what they have created.

The Heart Of The Matter

In September 2018, The Western Journal reported:

President Trump ordered declassification of several documents and texts related to the FBI’s Russia investigation during the 2016 presidential election.

Included among the documents are the 21 pages of the FISA court application used by the FBI to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Monday.

Sanders added that the president has also directed the release of all reports by the FBI of interviews with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr in relation to the Russia investigation.

One of the people involved in the declassification process was Dan Coats. Evidently he has been something of a bottleneck in the process. Thus, he is resigning. President Trump is expected to nominate Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe to replace him.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse reported:

On May 23rd, 2019, President Donald Trump gave U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr full authority to review and release all of the classified material hidden by the DOJ and FBI.

Sixty-five days ago….

It has been 65 days since President Trump empowered AG Bill Barr to release the original authorizing scope of the Mueller investigation on May 17, 2017. A Mueller investigation now being debated and testified to in congress, and yet we are not allowed to know what the authorizing scope was…. Nor the 2nd DOJ scope memo of August 2nd, 2017… Nor the 3rd DOJ scope memo of October 20th, 2017.

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit noted:

Ratcliffe, a pro-Trump GOP favorite grilled Mueller real good on Wednesday about his Constitutional abuses and according to Axios, Trump was impressed with his performance during the House Judiciary Hearing.

‘Can you give me an example other than Donald Trump where the Justice Department determined that an investigated person was not exonerated because their innocence was not conclusively determined?’ Ratcliffe asked Mueller.

Mueller was left stuttering and could not answer Rep. Ratcliff so he mumbled something about this being a ‘unique situation.’

Ratfcliffe interjected and told Mueller the reason why he can’t find another example of this happening is because it doesn’t exist.

Dan Coats is a Deep State stooge and is causing a bottleneck for Barr and Durham in the declassification process in their Spygate investigation.

Stay tuned. The Inspector General’s report is due out in September. Some declassification may take place before then. I honestly don’t know if the media will report what actually happened or if many Americans will believe it. What appears to be the case is that we have watched Peter Strzok’s insurance policy against the Trump presidency in action for more than two years now. Hopefully that insurance policy will not only fail miserably but result in jail time for those who misused the intelligence assets of America.

Law Enforcement Is A Problem For Some Congressmen

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about Donald Trump’s nomination of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. The nomination is not welcomed by the Democrats, and they are trying to derail it before it gets anywhere near confirmation. The race card is coming out again–they’re now using the Alabama senator’s full name, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. This links the Senator to the South and its past history of racism. The efforts are somewhat pathetic, and we need to examine what is behind them.

The article reports:

Democrats are particularly anxious about immigration because of the unusually tenuous nature of President Obama‘s policies on the issue. Those policies can be undone unilaterally, by the new president in some cases, and by the attorney general and head of homeland security in other cases. There’s no need for congressional action — and no way for House or Senate Democrats to slow or stop it.

There are extensive, and in some cases, strict immigration laws on the books, passed by bipartisan majorities of Congress. Obama wanted Congress to change those laws. Congress declined. So Obama stopped enforcing provisions of the law that he did not like. A new administration could simply resume enforcement of the law — a move that by itself would bring a huge change to immigration practices in the United States. No congressional approval needed.

Part of a President’s Oath of Office is to uphold the Constitution–that includes enforcing the laws. Unfortunately Congress did not force him to keep his Oath. Now the Democrats in Congress are trying to block the appointment of someone who would enforce the laws that are currently on the books.

The article lists a number of current immigration policies that could be changed without any action by Congress.

Here are some of those policies:

1) End the embargo on worksite enforcement. “Experience has shown that employers respond very quickly and voluntarily implement compliance measures when there is an uptick in enforcement,” Vaughan notes, “because they see the potential damage to their operations and public image for being caught and prosecuted.”

2) Restore ICE’s authority to make expedited removals of illegal immigrants who are felons or who have recently crossed into the United States.

3) Tighten requirements for H-1B visas, including banning such visas for low-salary, low-skill jobs, revoking visas that are followed by layoffs of American workers, and other measures.

4) Stop suing states that take action to support immigration enforcement, and instead support such enforcement. After Arizona’s famous SB 1070 law, Obama cracked down, arguing that the federal government has the sole authority to enforce immigration law, and also to not enforce immigration law. President Trump could choose to enforce the law.

5) Force sanctuary cities to observe the law. Trump campaigned extensively on the subject of sanctuary cities, mentioning San Francisco murder victim Kate Steinle in many speeches. Attorney General Sessions could enforce an existing law, 8 USC 1373, which prohibits local communities from banning their officials from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

All of these are simply corrections to Presidential overreach that occurred during the Obama Administration. Since they were never approved by Congress, they don’t have to be undone by Congress.

Immigration is one of many reasons Senator Sessions will make a fantastic Attorney General. It is safe to assume that under Senator Sessions the politicization of the Justice Department will end. The Senator is quite capable of draining the swamp that has been created during the last eight years–from bogus investigations of the New Black Panther intimidation case, Fast and Furious, the Internal Revenue Service‘s targeting of conservative groups, etc.

Senator Sessions will bring America back to equal justice under the law. Any Congressman who does not support that concept does not belong in Congress.