Are We Living In A Police State?

News organizations are firing employees because of law ratings. CNN, BuzzFeed, and Vice Media have all recently announced layoffs. CBS is also firing reporters.

On Thursday (updated Friday), The New York Post reported the following:

The acclaimed CBS reporter who was investigating the Hunter Biden laptop scandal before she was fired last week had her personal files seized by the network in an “unprecedented” move, sources told The Post on Thursday.

Catherine Herridge — who is the middle of a First Amendment case being closely watched by journalists nationwide — was among 20 CBS News staffers let go as part of a larger purge of hundreds of employees at parent company Paramount Global.

Her firing had stunned co-workers, but the network’s decision to hold on to her personal materials, along with her work laptop where she may have other confidential info, has left many staffers shaken, according to insiders.

“It’s so extraordinary,” a source familiar with the situation told The Post, noting that the files — which are presumptively now the property of CBS News — most likely contain confidential material from Herridge’s stints at both Fox and CBS.

The source said the network boxed up all her personal belongings except for Herridge’s notes and files and informed her that it would decide what — if anything — would be returned to her.

“They never seize documents [when you’re let go],” a second source close to the network said.

Brit Hume posted the following on Twitter:

 

This is just one more step in the direction of a police state where the media is controlled by the people in power.

The article at The New York Post concludes:

Jonathan Turley — a legal scholar and a former CBS legal analyst who first broke the news of Herridge’s documents being seized in an opinion piece for The Hill — said the timing of the journalist’s termination raised suspicions.

“She was pursuing stories that were unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses, including the Hur report on Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity, the Biden corruption scandal and the Hunter Biden laptop,” Turley wrote.

Under normal circumstances, journalists are entitled to their notes and make available the files if needed in future ligation, but leaving sensitive documents in the hands of unnamed CBS officials, could compromise Herridge’s numerous other confidential sources.

It also potentially violates HIPAA laws, as her files may also contain personal and family medical records.

Turley said CBS’ “heavy-handed approach” to the files” is “dead wrong” and that it had “sent a chilling signal in the ranks” of the network.

SAG-AFTRA, the union which represents CBS staffers, condemned the network for seizing Herridge’s notes and research from her office.

“This action is deeply concerning concerning to the union because it sets a dangerous precedent for all media professionals and threatens the very foundation of the First Amendment,” the union said in a statement to The Post.

The union added it has been in touch with CBS News and is hopeful the matter “will be resolved shortly.”

We are in a dangerous place.

Tell Us Something Without Actually Telling Us Something

Recently WWAYTV3 in Wilmington, North Carolina, reported that Hertz is cutting back on its rental of electric vehicles.

The article reports:

Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

Electric vehicles have been hurting Hertz’s financials, executives have said, because, despite costing less to maintain, they have higher damage-repair costs and, also, higher depreciation.

“[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call.

And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz’s used EV rental cars.

“The MSRP declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla, have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden,” Scherr said.

Simply put, people are generally willing to pay a certain amount less for a used car than for a new one. As the price of new car goes down, that also pushes down what people are willing to pay to buy a used one.

As of now, electric cars are not the answer to green energy. There are serious ethical questions about the mining of the lithium that is used to make the batteries, and there are safety issues–don’t try to evacuate from a hurricane in an electric car if the puddles you are driving through contain salt water–that can cause the car to ignite. Iceland successfully uses hydrogen as fuel for its busses. There are other options for cutting pollution than electric cars.

Inquiring Minds Want To Know

On Friday, Rumble posted an article that included a tweet by Roger Stone that asked a very interesting question.

Here is the tweet:

The article notes:

Have you heard the latest? The Biden Boys are set to fiercely fight their congressional subpoenas. Remember what happened to the Trump officials who took a similar stand during the January 6th sideshow?

Who can forget when Peter Navarro refused to testify before the circus known as the January 6th Committee? That poor guy was convicted of contempt of Congress so quickly, it made his head spin.

On October 6, 2014, Politico reported:

A federal judge has declined a House committee’s bid to have Attorney General Eric Holder held in contempt of court — and perhaps even jailed — for failing to turn over documents related to the Justice Department’ s response to Operation Fast and Furious.

However, in a ruling Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson also denied Holder’s request for an indefinite stay of her prior order that the attorney general must turn over any “non-privileged” documents the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenaed as part of an investigation into the botched gunrunning investigation. The judge previously ruled that Holder must give the panel any documents that are not both predecisional and deliberative in nature.

On November 17th, CNN reported:

The White House says the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden lacks constitutional legitimacy and is calling on GOP-led congressional committees to rescind their subpoenas and interview requests, according to a new letter obtained by CNN.

The move sets up a showdown with House Republicans as the White House criticizes what it describes as “Congressional harassment of the President,” calling on the committees to withdraw subpoenas and a series of requests for interviews aimed at White House officials and Biden family members and associates.

Earlier this week, House Oversight Chairman James Comer said he sent a subpoena to former White House counsel Dana Remus to discuss Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. The Kentucky Republican had previously requested that Remus to appear for a voluntary interview, but the White House did not comply. And last week, the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas to the president’s son Hunter and brother James as well as a Biden business associate.

Ignoring subpoenas only matters when you are a Republican.

 

Does Anyone Else Have A Problem With This?

On Thursday, The U.K Daily Mail reported that a CNN journalist was embedded with Hamas on October 7th and had prior knowledge of the attack. CNN has since fired the journalist.

The article reports:

CNN has ‘suspended all ties’ with a freelance photojournalist who appears to have been embedded with Hamas on October 7 at the time of the terror group’s barbaric assault on Israel. 

Hassan Eslaiah has been filing photographs of the conflict to CNN and The Associated Press since the Hamas attack on October 7. They include images of a burning Israeli tank from which soldiers were kidnapped.

Now, photos have emerged of him posing with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. He also posted a now-deleted video to Twitter in which he described how Hamas fighters kidnapped Israeli soldiers from the burning tank. 

The article concludes:

Honest Reporting notes that photographers Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa and Yasser Qudih ‘happened to be at the border just in time for Hamas’ infiltration.’

In response to the reporters, a Reuters spokesperson said that the agency acquired pictures on October 7 from photographers that it did not previously have a relationship with. 

‘The photographs published by Reuters were taken two hours after Hamas fired rockets across southern Israel and more than 45 minutes after Israel said gunmen had crossed the border. Reuters staff journalists were not on the ground at the locations referred to in the HonestReporting article,’ the statement also reads.  

‘Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically,’ the HonestReporting feature read. 

In his video front of attack, Eslaiah appears to be wearing his own clothes and is not identifiable as a member of the media. 

In 2021, it was widely reported that the Associated Press used the same office space as Hamas in Gaza. 

Eslaiah was previously pictured in a loving embrace with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in an undated photo. 

Honest Reporting was founded by veteran Israeli journalist Gil Hoffman. Its motto is the ‘audience deserves to know.’ 

‘When international news agencies decide to pay for material that has been captured under such problematic circumstances, their standards may be questioned and their audience deserves to know about it,’ one section of their report on Eslaiah reads.

‘And if their people on the ground actively or passively collaborated with Hamas to get the shots, they should be called out to redefine the border between journalism and barbarism.’ 

There should be a more severe penalty for withholding information about a surprise attack on innocent civilians.

Sometimes You Just Have To Wonder

On Friday, Breitbart reported the following:

On Thursday, CNN hosts Poppy Harlow and Boris Sanchez blamed climate change for the recent surge in gas prices with the former saying that the surge in prices is a reason “to get it in check when it comes to climate change.”

On “CNN This Morning,” CNN Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans stated, “There [are] a couple of things happening here: They’re still well below last year. Last year, at this time, we were hitting record highs, right? $4.30, last year, at this time, today, they’re $3.71. They’ve been jumping overnight. Some of these jumps have been pretty big. One of the reasons is the incessant heat means these refineries have to — are going offline for maintenance, they can’t run full throttle when it’s 115 with the heat index, just like people can’t work full throttle outside or on factory floors when it’s so, so hot. So, that’s one of the reasons. The other reason is, Russia backed out of this grain deal. And so, you had a rise in all kinds of commodity prices, corn, wheat, barley, all these prices have been going up. And sometimes, you tend to see commodities move together. But mostly, this heat thing has some of these refineries either slowing down or offline for maintenance. And that means they’re not processing as much gasoline.”

We have summer every year. During the summer it gets hot. I remember back in the 80’s when they had to close the Phoenix airport because it was too hot and there wasn’t enough lift in the air for the planes to take off. I also know that they have found plant fossils in Greenland, a place where no one can currently plant anything. Can we assume that Greenland at some point was subject to global warming? If we are so warm now, why can’t we grow crops in Greenland in the places that are now iced over? I would also like to remind everyone that weather is cyclical and tends to average out. No one is currently mentioning that we had an unusually cold June this year. Don’t the temperatures generally average out?

Peace Would Be Better Than Escalation

It is unfortunate that we keep throwing money and arms into an endless war that is doing nothing but kill large numbers of people on both sides. It is unfortunate that no one seems to be interested in finding a peaceful solution.

On Saturday, The Daily Caller reported:

Political leaders from Spain and the United Kingdom voiced their disagreement Saturday with President Joe Biden’s change of heart over providing widely-banned cluster munitions to Ukrainian forces, according to Politico.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Spain’s Defense Minister Margarita Robles each voiced their disagreement with the Biden administration’s decision to provide cluster munitions to Ukrainian forces in Saturday remarks to reporters, according to Politico. Biden’s decision to send the munitions marks the latest reversal of U.S. policy to send weapons to the Ukrainians that had previously been deemed too sensitive.

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated the administration’s view that Russia’s use of cluster munitions in the war “would potentially be a war crime” in February 2022. Biden said that the choice to change his mind and send cluster munitions to the Ukrainians was “a difficult decision” in a Friday interview with CNN.

The article notes:

“Spain, based on the firm commitment it has with Ukraine, also has a firm commitment that certain weapons and bombs cannot be delivered under any circumstances,” Robles said Saturday, according to Reuters. “No to cluster bombs and yes to the legitimate defense of Ukraine, which we understand should not be carried out with cluster bombs.”

The munitions are banned by numerous other U.S. allies, including Germany, France, Japan and Australia, because the submunitions they contain often do not detonate right away, leaving the dangerous duds on the ground and posing high casualty risk to civilians, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition’s website.

On July 8, CNN reported:

Cluster munitions scatter “bomblets” across large areas that can fail to explode on impact and can pose a long-term risk to anyone who encounters them, similar to landmines. Over 100 countries, including the UK, France and Germany, have outlawed the munitions under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but the US and Ukraine are not signatories to the ban.

I can’t help believe that this is a decision that America will regret in the future.

 

 

When CNN Gets It Right

On Friday, Breitbart posted an article about the overlooked item in the discussion about forcing the government to forgive outstanding college loans.

The article reports:

On Friday’s “CNN News Central,” CNN Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans discussed President Joe Biden’s student loan plan that was struck down by the Supreme Court and noted that the plan was really “taxpayers paying off all this student debt, but not addressing the core problem.”

Romans said, “This would have been significant relief, when you think of 44 million Americans with this student loan debt. And the typical student loan forgiveness was going to be $10,000, about half of borrowers have 20,000 or less. So, that would have been a real big relief for so many people. But, from the very beginning, there was also the discussion that it didn’t do anything to address the root cause here, which is inflation in the cost of higher education, right? So, this would have been paying off a bunch of student debt, taxpayers paying off all this student debt, but not addressing the core problem. So, that’s someplace where the White House and higher education can really try to fix the core — the root of that problem.”

In September 2022, U.S. News posted the following graph:

Just as a point of reference, this is the inflation chart from the U.S. Inflation Calculator site:

Shouldn’t we be looking into the inflationary cost of college instead of enabling that inflation by offering to pay off student loans? I realize that our money is worth less than it was in 2003–but not two and a half times less. It’s time to put strings on student loans. Colleges need to be encouraged to act with more fiscal responsibility. Colleges also need to use some of their legacy money to lower the cost of tuition for students.

 

My Head Is Spinning!

The Covid pandemic has brought us a lot of information and a lot of censorship of information. Oddly enough, a lot of the information that was censored is now being reported as true. Currently the difference between a conspiracy theory and a major news story is a few months.

On Tuesday, Issues & Insights reported the following:

This disinformation business sure has gotten complicated lately.

In the past few days, a key federal agency concluded that COVID was likely the result of a Chinese lab leak. A prestigious medical journal reported that natural immunity is better than vaccines against COVID. Another that mask mandates were worthless. And President Joe Biden’s advanced age is now, according to Biden, a legitimate issue.

All of these claims had been labeled as “disinformation” by the mainstream press, by “independent” fact-checkers, by social media platforms. Anyone who espoused them was attacked as a crazy anti-vaxxer, QAnon racist, Russian stooge who deserved to be de-platformed, demonetized, and discredited.

Take the lab-leak story. The Energy Department, “citing new intelligence,” changed its view on the origins of COVID-19 and now thinks it did, in fact, escape from a lab in Wuhan, China.

The article notes how the lab leak theory was treated in the past:

A-list journalist Anne Applebaum once compared Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., to a Soviet propagandist for suggesting that COVID came from a lab. A New York Times reporter said the lab-leak theory had “racist roots.” The editor in chief of Scientific American called it a “conspiracy theory.” CNN said it was “like something out of a comic book.”

Politifact, one of the supposed independent guardians against disinformation, said that any such claim was “inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire!” Facebook banned posts mentioning the lab-leak theory.

The article concludes:

One of the articles that Google is right now targeting is our Feb. 23 editorial applauding Congress for investigating COVID vaccines (Congress To Probe COVID Vaccines — And It’s About Time).

Apparently, merely calling for a congressional investigation “promotes harmful health claims or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus,” according to Google’s thought police.

So, let’s review.

The stuff labeled as dangerous disinformation keeps turning out to be true. The supposed guardians of credible information turn out to be some of the biggest peddlers of actual disinformation. And groups that are supposedly targeting disinformation are really just out to defund conservatives.  

In all this confusion, one thing is perfectly clear. If you want to know what will be labeled as disinformation tomorrow, just look at whatever is on the left’s agenda today.

The mainstream media is simply pointing out the need for Americans to find alternative sources for their news.

When The Chickens Come Home To Roost

When the chickens come home to roost, deny, deny, deny. That is how James Clapper is handling the charges that the letter signed by 51 retired intelligence community leaders influenced the election.

On Thursday, The Washington Examiner reported the following:

In case anyone is wondering who was responsible for the idea that the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper assures us it was not the 51 retired intelligence community leaders who penned the letter which said it was. Instead, it was the media who mischaracterized their words.

Clapper’s signature topped the list of prominent former government officials willing to stake their reputations on the infamous letter that was written to sow doubt about a story that, if it had not been suppressed, could arguably have changed the result of the 2020 presidential election.

One of the major problems with that statement is that in August on 2017, James Clapper was hired by CNN as a national security analyst. He was the media he is accusing of mischaracterizing his words.

The article notes:

Specifically, Clapper, who is best known for lying to Congress in 2013 about the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ telephone records and for his role in perpetuating the Russian collusion hoax, blamed Politico for “deliberately distorting” their letter in an October 2020 piece titled , “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”

“There was message distortion. All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation,” Clapper told Washington Post “fact checker” Glenn Kessler. “Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five.”

Paragraph five is indeed a disclaimer. It states : “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

But if Clapper felt the letter had been deliberately distorted, he certainly had ample opportunity to clear things up. After leaving office at the end of the Obama administration, Clapper became a political analyst for CNN, giving him a major media platform from which to do so. Yet he remained silent — even as leftist pundits and congressional Democrats spread the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop story had been planted by Russia.

It’s amazing how many things go on in Washington that no one is responsible for. It’s like there are invisible people in that city that are there simply to create havoc!

Is This Legal?

As the Republicans prepare to take the majority in the House of Representatives, Democrats are preparing for the change. However, some of the preparation seems a little odd.

On Sunday, The Epoch Times reported the following:

Outgoing House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said the Jan. 6 committee will have to “scrub” some evidence from its final report before Republicans take over the house in 2023.

During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Schiff was asked by anchor Dana Bash about Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) becoming chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee and will “go through the evidence you left out … you’re saying that there won’t be evidence that will not be made public?”

“The evidence will all be made public,” Schiff told Bash in response. “Now, we will have to make sure that we scrub that evidence for personally identifiable information, that the evidence that we provide protects people’s security, it doesn’t put them at risk. So, there are things that we’re going to have to do along those lines.”

The article also notes:

Elsewhere in his interview, Schiff declined to say whether he would comply with a House Republican subpoena when the GOP takes control.

“We’ll have to consider the validity of the subpoena,” he said. “But I would certainly view my obligation, administration’s obligation to follow the law. And the fact that they have disrespected the law is not a precedent I would hope that would be broadly followed. But we’ll have to look at the legitimacy or lack of legitimacy of what they do.”

Schiff, meanwhile, did not say when the final Jan. 6 select committee’s report would be released to the public. The panel will end with the start of the next Congress in January 2023—like all other select committees created during the current session of Congress.

So there are only consequences for not complying with a subpoena when the Democrats issue the subpoena? I am honestly beginning to wonder if our unequal system of justice has reached the point on no return.

The Globalists Have Hit A Snag

On Monday, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about the recent Italian elections.

The article reports:

Voters in yet another EU nation turned away from the leftward tilt of Brussels and more toward self-determination. Italy has elected its first right-wing coalition government in decades, and will almost certainly have its first female prime minister. Georgia Meloni led her Brothers of Italy into a dominant role in the coalition, as both CNN and Reuters describe this as “the most right-wing government since World War II”:

The mainstream media is in panic mode.

CNN reported:

Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni has claimed victory in a general election that seems set to install her as Italy’s first female prime minister, leading the most far-right government since the fascist era of Benito Mussolini.

Addressing the media and supporters in the early hours of Monday morning, Meloni said it was “a night of pride for many and a night of redemption.”

“It’s a victory I want to dedicate to everyone who is no longer with us and wanted this night,” she said. “Starting tomorrow we have to show our value … Italians chose us, and we will not betray it, as we never have,” she said.

Preliminary results put an alliance of far-right parties, led by Meloni’s ultraconservative Brothers of Italy party, on track to win at least 44% of the vote, according to the Italian Interior Ministry.

Ed Morrissey notes:

Ahem. If Italy had elected Mitt Romney, that would also be “the most far-right government” since Mussolini. In American terms, Italy’s politics has ranged from the CPUSA to, say, Bill Clinton since World War II. Even Silvio Berlusconi fit within the left-of-center EU salons while dabbling in populism and narcissism.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

Frankly, from this description, Meloni appears to be a business-as-usual politician. If Draghi finds her mainstream enough to maintain a political engagement with Meloni, and if Meloni has already set in place the relationships that will make coalition-building and consensus possible, that doesn’t sound very “fascist” to me — and not even very “far right,” for that matter. Time will tell, but this looks like yet another media freak-out over not very much except something that doesn’t suit their tastes.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It’s fun to watch the media go crazy because someone got elected who might actually understand that they work for the people.

A New Level Of Spin

On Friday, Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about the recent decline in gasoline prices. The article illustrates the spin the mainstream media is trying to put on the current price of gasoline. Although some of us a grateful for the recent decline in prices, most of us are also aware that gasoline prices averaged $2.379/gallon on January 21, 2021 (source here).

The article reports:

Nevertheless, CNN’s Chris Isidore wants us to celebrate the $100 per month “raise” we’re all getting at the pump, courtesy of The Most Beneficent Majesty of Joe Biden:

Next time you stop at a gas station, think of it as a $100-a-month tax cut. Or a maybe $100-a-month raise.

The steady drop in gas prices over the last few months has turned into an unexpected form of economic stimulus, coming at a time when the Federal Reserve is trying to cool the economy and battle rising prices with higher interest rates.

Since hitting a record of $5.02 a gallon on June 14, the national average price for regular gas is down $1.10, or 22%, to $3.92, according to AAA. That average has now fallen for 67 consecutive days.

Since the typical US household uses about 90 gallons of gas a month, the $1.10 drop in prices equals a savings of $98.82.

You can believe that after the mid-term elections the Biden administration will not care what the cost of gasoline is. It will probably rise back up to $4.00 a gallon or more and then magically decrease to about $3.50 just before the 2024 election. That is how things work in Washington.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

Furthermore, the price didn’t drop because the Biden administration brought massive new supplies into the market. The prices dropped due to a fall in demand for gasoline as it got too expensive for American consumers to use on vacations and other non-essential travel. That indicates an economic contraction on the way, not a pay raise.

This argument gets almost obscene when we consider what’s happened to Americans’ disposable income over the Biden presidency and the inflationary wave Biden created. For five straight quarters, real disposable personal income — adjusted for inflation — has fallen in a compounding series of buying-power setbacks for Americans. As I wrote the week before last:

In fact, with the exception of the massive sugar high of Biden’s American Rescue Plan stimulus, real disposable personal income — which is adjusted for inflation — has been in negative territory throughout Biden’s presidency. Those numbers are comparisons to the previous quarter, too, which means that this has a compounding effect. The most recent read of -0.5% on real disposable income is not from a baseline but shows a decline from the previous quarter’s -7.8%, which was a decline from the previous quarter, and so on.

In other words, Q2’s -0.5% wasn’t an improvement. It merely showed that the rate of decline slowed, but that real disposable personal income was still declining.

That’s what CNN has the cojones to describe as a pay “raise” in its economic “analysis.” It’s breathtaking in its intellectual dishonesty.

This is only one example of what we should expect to see as we enter the political silly season.

Rewarding Bad News Reporting

Most of us remember this picture from the summer of 2020:

CNN’s intrepid reporter explained that the protests were ‘mostly peaceful’ as we watched the city burn down behind him.

On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

The CNN journalist best known for reporting from the burning scene of “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” following the justified non-fatal police shooting of armed sexual-assault suspect Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., has been nominated for an Emmy award.

CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez was one of five nominees in the “Outstanding Emerging Journalist” category. A Washington Free Beacon analysis determined that the word “emerging” is a euphemism for “non-white.” Other nominees included Anna Kook of Al Jazeera Plus, the controversial media outlet funded by Qatari oligarchs, and Vice correspondent Paola Ramos, a “Latinx Communications Strategist” who worked on Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign in 2016.

The Kenosha riots in August 2020 lasted nearly a week and caused tens of millions of dollars’ worth of property damage. Rioters took to the streets after a bystander posted a video of Blake’s encounter with police. Mainstream journalists repeatedly spread disinformation by describing Blake as “unarmed.” In fact, he was armed with a knife and was harassing his girlfriend who had previously accused Blake of sexually assaulting her. Blake survived the shooting, which occurred after two officers unsuccessfully attempted to subdue him with a Taser and repeatedly ordered him to drop the knife.

Unbelievable.

On July 28, The Hollywood Reporter reported the following:

”At a time when critical, monumental, and world-changing events are more immediately available and accessible than ever before, the work of the journalists and documentarians that bring us the truth of these stories is under tremendous assault. We honor these individuals’ courage and excellence of craft that allows each of us to be better informed and understanding of the issues of our day,” said Adam Sharp, NATAS (National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences) president and CEO.

Just to give you some examples of the nominees:

Outstanding Live News Program

ABC World News Tonight with David Muir ABC

Anderson Cooper 360 CNN

CBS Mornings / CBS This Morning CBS

NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt NBC

The Lead with Jake Tapper CNN

Today NBC

Gee, I don’t see anything from Fox News, NewsMax or One America News. Why am I not surprised? How many lies have these news organizations told in recent years. How many stories about the Russian Hoax did they share? How many stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop did they not report? How many lies have they told about January 6th?

In Case You Had Doubts

On Thursday, Newsbusters posted an article about a recent comment by CNN’s Don Lemon.

The article reports:

Recently, CNN’s New Day has been on a streak of providing fairly objective reporting. Alas, it was a streak that Don Lemon decided to end this Thursday morning, ambling over from his nightly slots for what seemed to be a monthly Festivus tradition of his: complaining that the media isn’t doing enough to attack Republicans. Essentially openly opposing new CNN boss Chris Licht’s reported desire to bring CNN back to journalism and away from Lemon’s brand of partisanship.

The reason Lemon graced the TV screens at such an early hour was apparently due to an interview on Wednesday evening, where former Proud Boys spokesperson Jason van Tatenhove expressed fears of political extremists rising to prominence in the Republican Party, and NYU History professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat said, “I don’t think a lot of people know that on the local and state level there’s a lot of intermingling and fusion between extremists and the GOP, and I really see the GOP as an extremist entity now.”

The following quote from Don Lemon should leave no doubt in your mind as to what the mainstream media is doing:

We sit around and we talk about these things and we — we want to give this false equivalence to Democrats and Republicans. That is not where we are right now. Republicans are doing something that is very dangerous to our society, and we have to acknowledge that. We have to acknowledge that as Americans, we must acknowledge that as journalists, because if we don’t we’re not doing our jobs

Actually, their job as journalists is to report the news as it is–not to inject their opinion and not to (according to them) try to save the country.

The article also mentions Don Lemon’s desire to hold Republicans responsible for overturning Roe vs. Wade. So he believes that the Republicans are dangerous to society because they want to prevent the killing of babies. It seems to me that a society that values life might be less dangerous than a society that supports the killing of unborn babies.

An Interesting (And Necessary Lawsuit)

On Tuesday, The New York Post reported that John Paul Mac Isaac, the Delaware computer repairman who lost his business after turning Hunter Biden’s laptop over to authorities, has sued Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, CNN, The Daily Beast and Politico, saying they falsely accused him of peddling Russian disinformation.

The article reports:

Mac Isaac came to legally own the laptop after Biden’s son Hunter dropped it off at his store for repairs in April 2019 and never came back. The material on the laptop has raised serious questions about what Biden knew of his son’s overseas business deals, during which he and the president’s brother Jim Biden often invoked his powerful name.

Mac Isaac handed over a copy of the laptop’s hard drive to the FBI in December 2019, and eight months later, alerted then-President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who provided a copy of the hard drive to The Post.

When The Post’s first story broke in October 2020 — just three weeks before the presidential election — Twitter and Facebook moved to censor it. Then Schiff (D-Calif.) and 51 former intelligence officials labeled the laptop Russian disinformation

In the aftermath, Mac Isaac says, his business and reputation were ruined.

“Twitter initially labeled my action hacking, so for the first day after my information was leaked, I was bombarded with hate mail and death threats revolving around the idea that I was a hacker, a thief and a criminal,” Mac Isaac said.

When The New York Post posted information about the laptop on Twitter, they were banned from Twitter (the ban was lifted on October 16, 2020).

The article concludes:

Mac Isaac has penned a book about his ordeal — “American Injustice: My Battle to Expose the Truth” — which will be released in November.

The Post exclusively revealed the existence of Hunter Biden’s emails in a series of reports in October 2020 based on the contents of a damaged MacBook Pro laptop that was abandoned at Mac Isaac’s shop in the Biden family’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

After downplaying the emails as unverified, both the New York Times and the Washington Post authenticated many of them — including some apparently being used in a federal probe of suspected tax fraud, money laundering and foreign lobbying violations by Hunter Biden.

Calls to Schiff, CNN, the Daily Beast and Politico were not immediately returned.

As long as the Democrats control the Justice Department, no one in the Biden family will never be held accountable for the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

When The Actions Just Don’t Match The Words

On Tuesday, Breitbart posted an article about a particularly odd comment in President Biden’s State of the Union address.

The article notes:

President Joe Biden used his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to call on Congress to “secure the border,” after his administration allowed roughly 1.5 million migrants to pour across the southern border in his first months in office.

This is a direct quote from the speech (via CNN):

And if we are to advance liberty and justice, we need to secure the Border and fix the immigration system.
We can do both. At our border, we’ve installed new technology like cutting-edge scanners to better detect drug smuggling.
We’ve set up joint patrols with Mexico and Guatemala to catch more human traffickers.
We’re putting in place dedicated immigration judges so families fleeing persecution and violence can have their cases heard faster.

We’re securing commitments and supporting partners in South and Central America to host more refugees and secure their own borders.

On December 9, 2021, The Washington Times reported:

If anyone is dismantling the immigration system, it is the Biden administration. While it systematically reversed the most successful border security policies ever created, it has been lying to the American people and projecting its failures onto its predecessors.

Within the first few days of taking office, Biden discontinued the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), better known as the Remain in Mexico program. He ended it even though it was the most successful border security program ever created and resulted in a significant decrease in illegal immigration. Even after officials from the Trump administration, including myself, consulted with his transition teams on multiple occasions about the risks of ending MPP along with the data that show it was a game-changer, Biden dismantled it anyway.

He also ended the Safe Third Country agreements the Trump administration had put in place with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the homelands of a majority of the illegal migrants entering the U.S. This policy was also effective at stemming unlawful immigration into the U.S. and helping to prevent thousands of fraudulent asylum claims. This policy made it possible for migrants who claimed to be fleeing fear and persecution from their home government to claim asylum in the first safe country they entered.  

The Biden administration then dismantled the deportation process by placing a moratorium on all deportations. To end consequences for illegal behavior only brings more illegal behavior. The proof can be seen in the caravans and accelerated flow of migrants since Biden assumed office.  

Securing the border is a really good idea. Americans are being killed not only by the illegal drugs coming across the border, but by illegal aliens driving drunk, and stealing from and assaulting American citizens. President Biden needs to undo the Executive Orders he put in place that have made our country less secure.

The Tyranny Variant

Because it has been done gradually, most of us have been slow to realize how many of the freedoms we had taken for granted have disappeared in the past two years. I am still hoping to see some of my grandchildren this summer without having everyone in their house go into quarantine because I am visiting from another state. Americans used to travel freely. I keep a mask in my car. I never know when someone will demand that I wear it in order to enter a building. Its effectiveness is questionable, but those in authority choose to ignore that fact. If a friend is in the hospital, I can’t visit them. In some situations I need a Covid test every week if I have not had the vaccine in order to go to work. Some college students, fully vaccinated, need a Covid test to return to school after Christmas break. Will we soon have vaccine passports that can be demanded by any authority at any time? (Papers, please.) Where are the freedoms our Founding Fathers fought for?

On Wednesday, American Greatness posted an article asking the question, “Will We Reach Herd Immunity Against the Tyranny Variant?” That’s a good question.

The article notes:

The good news is that the end of all of the COVID madness is apparently in sight. While low IQ pundits and hosts on MSNBC and CNN were doing their best to whip up one more frenzy of lockdowns and mandates over the “great and terrible” Omicron variant, the truth is Omicron, while highly contagious, is not evenly remotely deadly. It means most people, even the triple vaccinated (technically triple jabbed with a therapeutic medicine, as we don’t actually have a vaccine), multiple booster shots while wearing five masks Karens are probably going to get it—which means we’ll reach herd immunity and be back to normal within a few months

That’s the good news. The bad news? Once COVID fades into the background, most if not all of our major institutions will still be broken. The CDC and NIH need serious reform. Corporate propagandists will still be around, acting not so much as “news sources” but as outlets for administrative state narratives. Tyrants from the federal to the local level will be looking for the next fear tactic to scare Americans into abdicating more power to the state. Big Tech will still be censoring and shutting down anything it disagrees with as it tramples the Bill of Rights. 

The only hope is that enough Americans will have been inoculated after this bout of madness to be immune to, and deeply skeptical of, the next attempt to erode their rights. We will get some inkling of whether that’s the case in the coming elections. If Americans are acquiring a herd immunity to tyranny, look for them to actually demand their supposed representatives look out for and defend their rights.

Have Americans done enough to protect the integrity of our elections in the past year to be able to fight the tyranny variant? I don’t know.

Not Surprising

It is no surprise to anyone that the media is acting as cheerleaders for the Biden administration. Currently that job is rather difficult–rising gas prices, rising inflation, supply chain issues, open borders, Afghanistan, vaccine mandates, the end of American energy independence, saber rattling by our enemies, etc. It’s not a pretty picture. However, in true Biden administration fashion, the President is meeting with the media to try to change their spin on the various crises rather than trying to solve the problems.

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the Biden White House’s attempts to persuade the media to report on the disasters the Biden administration is creating with a more positive spin.

The article reports:

The White House has been working with major news outlets “behind the scenes” to “reshape coverage” on the economic crisis, according to CNN.

The administration has been “briefing major newsrooms over the past week” while “discussing with newsrooms trends pertaining to job creation, economic growth, supply chains, and more,” CNN reports, citing an anonymous source.

The administration has argued that “the country’s economy is in much better shape than it was last year.” CNN reported the conversations have “been productive, with anchors and reporters and producers getting to talk with the officials.”

The article quotes a Dana Milbank article where he states that the press has done more negative reporting on President Biden than it did on President Trump:

“Sure, Biden has had his troubles, with the delta variant, Afghanistan and inflation,” Milbank continued. “But the economy is rebounding impressively, he has signed major legislation, and he has restored some measure of decency, calm and respect for democratic institutions.”

A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that three out of 10 Americans think the country is doing “somewhat well” under Biden. Biden received a higher disapproval rating when polled on the economy, immigration, race relations and inflation.

News coverage of Biden’s first 100 days in office were “modestly more negative than positive,” according to a Pew Research Center study.

Gaslighting at its best. After a while, you just wonder what the media is looking at that they continuously get things so wrong. Would someone please list the accomplishments of President Biden for me.

 

As The Details Come Out

On Tuesday, NewsMax reported that Chris Cuomo has been indefinitely suspended by CNN after news of how he helped his brother with sexual assault accusations surfaced. The problem is not that he gave advice to his brother–the problem is that he used his resources as a newsman to gather dirt of his brother’s accusers.

The article reports:

The network said documents released by New York’s attorney general Monday indicated a greater level in his brother’s efforts than the network previously knew.

“As a result, we have suspended Chris indefinitely, pending further evaluation,” the network said.

The article concludes:

Chris Cuomo had previously acknowledged talking to his brother and offering advice when the governor faced the harassment charges that led to his resignation. But the information released Nov. 29 revealed far more details about what he did.

The anchor did his show Monday night without mentioning the topic. In the past, he’s said he’s never reported on his brother’s situation for the network and never tried to influence coverage. On-air in August, he said: “I tried to do the right thing,” adding he “wasn’t in control of anything.”

Cuomo interviewed his brother on the air a number of times during the first two months of the COVID-19 epidemic. It was a hit with viewers, although it violated CNN’s policy of not having Cuomo report on his brother, and was a programming choice that has grown worse with time and additional revelations.

The Democrat party in New York is changing. One indication of that is the waning power of the Cuomo family. One wonders who is going to come forward to fill the gap they have left. Unfortunately, I fear it will be the more radical elements of the party. It should be noted that Kathy Hochul, the current governor of New York, won her seat in the New York legislature in 2011 as a member of the Democratic Party and Working Families Party. Her biography lists her as a Democrat, but that is not her history. Please do your own research on the Working Families Party. They are not your father’s Democrat party.

Now Even The Climate Is Racist

It has long been known that cities are hotter than the countryside. Some of the ‘scientists’ measuring global warming have purposely put some of their temperature measuring devices near air conditional exhausts or runways where planes idle to make sure that the surface stations show an increase in temperature. In 2012 a study was posted at WattsUpWithThat explaining that half of the global warming in America is artificial. Yesterday CNN posted an article explaining that urban heat is worse in black neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia, due to racism.

The article reports:

On a warm September afternoon, Mona Scott sat on the front porch while her home baked like an oven. As she ran a frozen water bottle across her forehead and arms, Scott told CNN her air conditioning broke 10 days earlier and had not yet been fixed.

“The windows are painted shut,” Scott said. “We come outside at night to sleep because it’s too hot inside.”

Like Scott, residents in the low-income communities across south and southwest Atlanta are struggling to cope with the hottest summer since the Dust Bowl period of the 1930s.

Why are the windows painted shut? Can’t you scrape the paint off and open them?

Note: “the hottest summers since the Dust Bowl period of the 1930’s.” If global warming has been happening so rapidly, why was this the hottest summer since the 1930’s? How many SUV’s were driving around in 1930?

The article continues:

Across America’s largest cities, Black homeowners are nearly five times more likely than White families to own homes in these historically redlined communities, according to a study by Redfin. These communities, like where Scott resides in South Atlanta, endure the greatest burdens of our rapidly warming planet, and now tend to be the hottest and poorest areas.

Extreme heat threatens the health and well-being of underserved communities today, while predominantly White neighborhoods reap the cooler benefits of decades of investment.

“I went to get groceries the other day and I thought I was going to pass out.” Scott told CNN. She said she suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, which are underlying health conditions made worse by excessive heat.
Keeping the lights on is hard enough financially for Scott, and so many other disadvantaged community members, let alone having access to reliable air conditioning.

Do these residents have jobs? If not, how much do these residents receive a month in housing assistance, food stamps, and basic welfare payments? Are they required to work for these payments? How is that money spent?

The article also notes:

Some cities, like New Orleans and New York, suffer from the worst urban heat in the nation, according to a recent study by Climate Central. Atlanta, affectionately known as “Hotlanta,” is also particularly hot.

Spelman College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, partnered with a NOAA campaign and other universities to map the hottest and most vulnerable communities. Spelman’s involvement is significant because it is the first time a historically Black college or university has led an initiative such as this, Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, assistant professor of environmental and health sciences at Spelman College told CNN.

“As we think about global challenges like climate change, this is one of the issues that disproportionately impacts Black and other communities of color,” Jelks said. “So, it’s very important that we are at the table.”

Am I supposed to believe that global warming seeks out minority communities and makes them hotter? I don’t think so. Not all of the poor who live in urban areas are minorities. Not everyone who lives in a southern urban area is a minority. Everyone who lives in a city lives in a place where it is warmer than the corresponding rural area. That has nothing to do with race, creed, or color–it is simply science. I object to the idea of trying to turn climate change (the climate has been changing since the earth was created–why else did they find evidence of plant life under the ice in Greenland?) into a racial issue.

When The Media Totally Goes Off The Rails

It must be difficult right now to hold a job in the mainstream media. Think of all the pretending you have to do–Joe Biden is a good President, Kamala Harris is qualified to take over as President if necessary, the 2020 election was not stolen, January 6th was the end of our Republic. And the beat goes on.

On Sunday, Newsbusters posted an article about a recent discussion that occurred on CNN.

The article reports:

As we have all learned from Joe Biden’s presidency, the phoniest/baloney-est claim from liberals is that they have a deep desire for national unity. There is no unity in compromise, only in surrender to the Left.

At the end of Sunday’s Reliable Sources, fill-in host John Avlon interviewed the PBS gasbag Ken Burns, asking him about national unity, and he’s as phony as Biden. This is CNN, so Avlon demands unity in exaggerating the January 6 riot:

AVLON: You’ve made the point in terms of the quest for unity, that at the end of the day, Americans usually can rally together when something catastrophic has occurred. Sometimes that’s what’s required to focus it on our underlying humanity. And yet, the attack on the Capitol on January 6 does not seem to have united us. Instead, there is remains an effort to rewrite even that recent history. So, what hope do you have about a path forward when we have not been able to unite around an attack on our capital, the worst and the first since the War of 1812?

BURNS: Yeah — it’s terrifying. This is one of the great crises along with the Civil War, the Depression, and the Second World War that we have in large measure because things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mere entropy is loosed upon the world.

Somehow I suspect that neither one of these men has ever served in the armed forces.

The article concludes:

BURNS: And I don’t think there’s any right- thinking American — we can disagree on how you get things done — what the role of government is that I don’t think anybody wants this noble experiment to dissolve just when we have in our grasp the possibilities and the tools with which to solve these things. And we have looming ahead of us, this huge global threat of climate change that has to be addressed, and we can’t now permit the Flat Earth Society any more time.

The obvious question is who decides what the Flat Earth Society or its equivalent is. The left is convinced that the only path to unity is forcing everyone to agree with them.

My How Things Have Changed

On September 1, 2020, CNN posted an article titled, “Past vaccine disasters show why rushing a coronavirus vaccine now would be ‘colossally stupid’.” Wow.

The article reports:

Vaccine experts are warning the federal government against rushing out a coronavirus vaccine before testing has shown it’s both safe and effective. Decades of history show why they’re right.

Their concern that the FDA may be moving too quickly heightened when FDA Commissioner Dr. Steven Hahn told the Financial Times that his agency could consider an emergency use authorization (EUA) for a Covid-19 vaccine before late stage clinical trials are complete if the data show strong enough evidence it would protect people.

The commissioner has the authority to allow unapproved medical products to be used in an emergency when there are no adequate or approved alternatives. An EUA is not the same as full approval and it can be withdrawn.

The article reports:

Markel (Dr. Howard Markel, a pediatrician, distinguished professor, and director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan) said people’s mistrust of the system makes the idea that the FDA would rush this process before late stage clinical trials are complete “colossally stupid.”

“This is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard this administration say,” Markel said. “All it takes is one bad side effect to basically botch a vaccine program that we desperately need against this virus. It’s a prescription for disaster.”

FDA Commissioner Hahn said that the vaccine decision will be based on data, not politics, but Kinch (Michael Kinch, a professor of radiation oncology in the school of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis) shares Markel’s concern.

“This could do substantial damage,” Kinch said. Kinch, who is a patient in one of the vaccine trials himself, said the clinical trial process needs to be followed to the end. A too-early EUA for a vaccine could cause a “nightmare scenario,” for a few reasons.

One, the vaccine may not be safe. Two, if it is not safe, people will lose faith in vaccines. Three, if a vaccine doesn’t offer complete protection, people will have a false sense of security and increase their risk. Four, if a substandard vaccine gets an EUA, a better vaccine may never get approval, because people would be reluctant to enroll in trials and risk getting a placebo instead of a vaccine.

“People are going to die unnecessarily if we take chances with this,” Kinch said. “We’ve got to get this right.”

If you notice that this is an unusual point of view from CNN, look at the date of the article–it was posted when Donald Trump was President. The mainstream media did everything it could to undermine the vaccine and question its effectiveness. The irony is that they were actually right–there are legitimate questions about the vaccine’s effectiveness and safety. However, I posted this article so that people would see the contrast between what the media was saying then and the media’s current support of vaccine mandates. Unfortunately the coronavirus is political. It has been from the start.

 

 

Unbelievable Reporting

The following video is from CNN. I don’t expect you to watch the entire video–the first minute and a half will tell you everything you need to know.

Just because they are shouting “death to America” doesn’t mean they are unfriendly. They are simply keeping law and order. Tell that to the young girls who have already been raped and the people who have already been assassinated. This lady is the new incarnation of Baghdad Bob.

Even CNN Is Fact-Checking President Biden

On Thursday, CNN posted an article about President Biden’s Wednesday Town Hall Meeting.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden participated Wednesday in the second CNN town hall of his presidency, taking questions from anchor Don Lemon and local residents in Cincinnati.

As he did at his February town hall, Biden made a number of false or misleading claims. We haven’t been able to look into every single thing he said Wednesday night, but here is a rundown on some of his remarks.

Here is the list of false or misleading claims. Please follow the link above to the article to see the details:

But then, during a third exchange, Biden said that since the vaccines “cover” the highly transmissible Delta variant of the virus: “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.”

…After he was asked by a citizen if he is concerned about higher prices, especially inflation in gasoline, automotive and food prices, Biden asserted that “the cost of an automobile, it’s kind of back to what it was before the pandemic.”

…Biden criticized the broad corporate use of “noncompete” clauses that restrict workers’ ability to leave for jobs at other companies. He said, “For example, you have over 600,000 people out there signing — 6 million people signing a — I better check the number — of — signing noncompete agreements. Not because they have … any secret, but because they were working for one fast-food restaurant, and they’re told they can’t get 10 cents more going across town, going to the other fast-food restaurant. Why? To keep wages down.”

…Talking about the ongoing Senate negotiations over a bipartisan infrastructure bill, Biden said he thinks the negotiators need only until Monday to resolve outstanding issues. He said, “You had up to 20 Republicans sign a letter saying, ‘We think we need this deal. We think we need this deal.’ “

…Touting his expansion of the child tax credit, which was part of the $1.9 trillion relief package he signed into law in March, Biden claimed, “It’s called the child tax credit. If you have a child under the age of 7, you get 300 bucks a month — 350 bucks a month. If you have a child under — between 7 and 17, you get a total of 200 bucks a month.”

…Biden said, “Now, by the way, remember when I first got elected, the issue was, well, I said I was going to do a million shots a week, and people said, ‘Biden can’t do that’ or ‘Biden team can’t do that.’ And it was 2 million.”

You know a Democrat is in trouble when CNN starts fact-checking them!

 

Welcome To A Police State

CNN reported yesterday that the Biden administration is considering the use of private corporations to track the social media of the political extremists among us. When you read the excerpts from the article, please remember that this is CNN.

The article reports:

The Biden administration is considering using outside firms to track extremist chatter by Americans online, an effort that would expand the government’s ability to gather intelligence but could draw criticism over surveillance of US citizens.

The Department of Homeland Security is limited in how it can monitor citizens online without justification and is banned from activities like assuming false identities to gain access to private messaging apps used by extremist groups such as the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.

Instead, federal authorities can only browse through unprotected information on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and other open online platforms. A source familiar with the effort said it is not about decrypting data but rather using outside entities who can legally access these private groups to gather large amounts of information that could help DHS identify key narratives as they emerge.

The plan being discussed inside DHS, according to multiple sources, would, in effect, allow the department to circumvent those limits. In response to CNN’s story, DHS said it “is not partnering with private firms to surveil suspected domestic terrorists online” and “it is blatantly false” to suggest that the department is using outside firms to circumvent its legal limits.

The purpose of this, of course, is to prevent domestic terrorism (you know, like from Trump voters). Meanwhile, how much effort have Democrats put into stopping riots in Portland and in Minnesota? How much compassion has been shown to the business owners whose businesses were destroyed in those riots? You can bet your life those rioters are not the ‘domestic terrorists’ the Biden administration is looking for.

The article notes:

FBI director Christopher Wray has been emphatic during recent public testimony that the bureau does not investigate ideologies or even conspiracy theories in and of themselves, but restricts its social media monitoring to cases where they believe a crime, or potential crime, was committed.

But if the DHS could help provide a broad picture of who was perpetuating the “narratives” of concern, the FBI could theoretically use that pool of information to focus on specific individuals if there is enough evidence of a potential crime to legally do so, the source added, noting the two agencies are working closely with one another in this area.
“What do you do about ideology that’s leading to violence? Do you have to wait until it leads to violence?” said one former senior intelligence official.

“We are exploring with our lawyers, civil rights, civil liberties and privacy colleagues, how we can make use of outside expertise,” the DHS official added, referring to the department’s efforts related to encrypted applications.
The problem with that, the source familiar with the effort acknowledged, is DHS would be operating in a space that would likely make civil liberties’ advocates, not to mention conservatives’, hair stand on end.

Privacy advocates on the Hill have already questioned the Defense Intelligence Agency’s efforts to get around restrictions on collecting Americans’ location data without a warrant by purchasing that data from commercially-available databases.

Make no mistake. This will result in the federal government being used as a political arm of the Democrat party. It does not say good things about the future freedom of Americans.