Tag Archives: The Federalist

Creating Policies That Are Unconstitutional

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On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about a new policy that the Biden administration is creating. Recently, Forsyth County Public Schools (FCPS), a school district outside of Atlanta, reviewed their school libraries to flag age-inappropriate sexual material for removal.

The article explains what happened next:

Though the review process focused exclusively on sexual content and ended with the return of nearly all of the books under inspection to school library shelves, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) nevertheless opened an investigation into whether the district’s book review had created a “hostile environment” based on race and sex that the school district had unlawfully failed to remedy.

Rather than invite federal sanctions, FCPS cut short this investigation by entering into a resolution agreement with OCR. One particularly concerning provision of that “voluntary” agreement requires the school district to issue a statement reassuring students “that the District strives to provide a global perspective and promote diversity” in curating its library catalog — despite the fact that no federal civil rights law mandates such acts of worship at the altar of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion.

On June 8, the White House made clear that the FCPS matter was not an isolated investigation, announcing that OCR will appoint a new “coordinator” to warn state and local education agencies that heeding parents’ calls to remove sexually explicit books from school libraries could trigger the agency’s enforcement authority, including the withholding of federal funding.

The article concludes:

The Biden Education Department’s illegal interference in school library decisions is calculated to intimidate parents and school districts that want to ensure children do not read graphic sexual content at school. The real civil rights violation at issue here is OCR’s impermissible chilling of First Amendment rights regarding what books are appropriate for public school students. The president’s claimed authority to silence concerned parents and restrain school districts from curating library books is nothing more than fiction.

Something is very wrong here. What kind of people want our school students reading sexually explicit material? What are they attempting to do to the minds of the children? At this point, any parent with any common sense needs to remove their children from public schools.

About That Climate Change Thing…

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On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about the deadly summer heat Americans experience in the summer.

The article reports:

“Extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather hazard,” is the first claim in this Washington Post piece warning about the deadly summer heat — and it is almost certainly false.

First off, the only reason “extreme” temperature kills more people than other weather hazards is that deaths from weather have plummeted over the century, even as doomsday climate warnings about heat, hurricanes, tornados, floods, and droughts have spiked. Extreme weather accounts for only about 0.1 death for every 100,000 people in the United States each year. The Post should be celebrating the fact that humans have never been less threatened by the climate.

The Post warns that 30 million people in the U.S. may be “exposed” to dangerous heat “today.” That’s a lot of people, even considering nearly all of them live in the southernmost spots in the country and it’s the middle of the summer. The Post counts anyone exposed to heat over 90 degrees as being in some level of danger. Fortunately, most Americans enjoy the luxury and health benefits of air-conditioning, one of the great innovations of the past century.

Nowhere in the piece, however, do the authors tell us exactly how many Americans have perished from the oppressive heat. Anyway, it’s around 700 people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — if you liberally count heat as both the “underlying” and/or “contributing” causes. It is about 400 people when heat is the underlying cause. And that’s terrible. But, also, it’s around 3,600 fewer people than those who drown every year.

The article also notes:

And most of those deaths, despite the Post’s claim, are from the cold, which is far more lethal. I come to this information via a Washington Post piece that ran this very winter, which noted that for “every death linked to heat, nine are tied to cold.” That piece relied on a peer-reviewed Lancet study. Another peer-reviewed study in The BMJ found that “cold weather is associated with nearly 20 times more deaths than hot weather.” Other studies have come to the same conclusion.

During extreme heat, you have the option of filling up the bathtub and sitting in it until you cool down. During cold weather, if you lose power and have no way to heat your house, it will be a matter of hours before you either have to leave your home or find some way to keep your family warm.

Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE)

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On Saturday, The Federalist posted an article about an election integrity group known as Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE).

The article reports:

It’s no secret by now the 2020 election was fraught with complete chaos and confusion. In addition to leftist billionaires pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into local election offices to alter election operations, the contest was marred by Democrat-backed groups’ orchestrated legal campaign to change state election laws in their favor.

Regime-approved media were even running stories months before the election forecasting such a strategy. In February 2020, for instance, Politico ran an article detailing how “a constellation of left-leaning groups” were “spending millions of dollars” to launch “an avalanche of voting-rights lawsuits against state laws they say suppress participation in elections.” The lawsuits were widespread in nature, targeting provisions related to voter ID requirements, voter-roll maintenance, ballot signature verification, and more. Whether it was Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, states all over the country were barraged with Democrats’ legal blitz.

In order to prevent similar chicanery from continuing in future electoral contests, an election integrity group known as Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) is launching its counterstrategy ahead of the 2024 election. While speaking with The Federalist, RITE President Derek Lyons described how his organization is employing a three-pronged game plan to halt the left’s legal jihad, the first of which involves protecting existing statutes to ensure states have “the best election[s]” possible.

Their goal is to “protect the integrity of the ballot box from dilution, mismanagement, errors, [and] fraud,” Lyons said. They also want to make sure election integrity laws “are well defended and that they’re in place and operational for the upcoming election.”

The group is working to support voter ID laws and to assist in legal cases where left-funded groups are attempting to interfere in elections.

The article concludes:

According to Lyons, the final prong of RITE’s election integrity game plan involves “taking tools” out of leftist attorneys’ toolboxes so they don’t have “as many litigation options when it comes to elections.” Specifically, the strategy is aimed at limiting “abuse” of the “materiality provision” of the Civil Rights Act, which according to Lyons, has become Democrat lawyers’ new “favorite tool to get into federal court to try and dismantle state election laws.” Cases involving the provision normally deal with absentee ballot issues, such as witness certification, signature matching, and the dating of ballots, according to Lyons.

“At the end of the day, elections are a critical component to our democracy,” Lyons said. “It’s the instrument that normal, everyday Americans have at their disposal to try and shape the outcome of this country and it’s vitally important that they believe that it’s an effective tool for doing that.”

Additional information on RITE’s ongoing election litigation can be found here.

An Important Question That Probably Will Not Be Asked

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On June 6th, The Federalist posted the following headline:

Here’s The Single Most Important Question 2024 GOP Presidential Candidates Must Answer

I will admit it was a question I had not considered.

The article reports:

The million-dollar question for 2024 contenders is: How will you win the general election under the present voting system?

The article notes the problems with the present voting system:

Ballot harvesting is becoming an accepted norm. Candidates not only have to earn votes but figure out how to collect as many votes as they possibly can. Are Republicans overnight going to out-harvest their opponents, or figure out some new means to identify and turn out voters otherwise sitting on the sidelines in sufficient numbers to overcome Democrats’ ballot-harvesting superiority?

“Zuckerbucks” continue to loom over our contests as well, despite bans in many states. The left is doing everything it can to steer private money toward public election administration — administration done in conjunction with left-wing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seemingly targeting the Democrat ballots needed to win.

The Biden administration is working to leverage federal agencies to mobilize presumed Democrat voters as well — also potentially in conjunction with the same NGOs — under a March 2021 executive order, “Promoting Access to Voting,” that has remained shrouded in mystery as the bureaucracy stonewalls over inquiries about its implementation. Republicans have started to engage in election administration, but largely in the context of monitoring over execution. What is the plan to combat Democrat control over election machinery?

The article also notes:

Lawfare is also now an integral part of our election system. Republicans have started to devote significantly greater attention and resources to the litigation game, but to catch up to Democrats will require a long-term, sustained effort, backed with real money. And filing suit over election policies and practices after votes have already been cast of course has proven a losing proposition, as demonstrated by courts’ unwillingness to grapple with fundamental issues around the 2020 election largely on technical grounds.

Meanwhile, Democrats have engaged in efforts to ruin the lives of Republican election lawyers — in their own words to “make them toxic in their communities and in their firms” — seeking to kneecap their competition before it ever reaches the courtroom.

This is an important election. If the people who want a one-party America where the Democrats are in control and opposition is silenced win, it is the end of our freedom as we know it. The corruption and manipulation that has occurred in our election process in recent years is going to be hard to combat.

More Questions For The Federal Bureau Of Investigation

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On Thursday, The Federalist posted an article about the pipe bombs found at the Democrat National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021.

The article reports:

The FBI is continuing to stonewall congressional oversight of the agency’s investigation into a pair of pipe bombs found at the Democrat National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021.

On Wednesday, House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee re-upped demands for a comprehensive briefing on the two-year-old case over which the FBI has refused transparency.

…Earlier this month, an FBI whistleblower told the Washington Times the FBI identified the vehicle the suspect entered shortly after planting the bombs but has not pursued the individual.

“The FBI had surveillance video that showed the person entering a car with a visible license plate after exiting a Metro stop in Northern Virginia,” the Times reported.

Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent who worked on the case, told the paper that the agency “tied whoever the person was that dropped the bombs with [surveillance] cameras all the way through the train and getting into a car with that license plate.” Seraphin also told the Washington Times that the two bombs were inoperable.

It is interesting to me that the two bombs were inoperable.

The more we know about January 6th, the more it looks like a false-flag operation. There were some people who behaved badly, but many of them were the people who were supposed to be upholding the law. It also should be noted that the events of January 6th prevented the questioning of the electoral votes in the presidential election. Based on what we now know, that was probably the purpose of the operation. Also remember that even since Speaker McCarthy supposedly released the video tapes of January 6th, we have seen very little of those tapes. Also note that the person who aired those tapes was fired. There is a lot about January 6th that just doesn’t add up.

Sometimes The Contrast Is Amazing

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On Wednesday, The Federalist noted:

According to the contemporary left, it’s “authoritarian” for local elected officials to curate school library collections but fine for a powerful centralized federal government to issue an edict compelling a major industry to produce a product and then force hundreds of millions of people to buy it.

Lately, the federal government seems to believe that it can control the tiniest details of the lives of Americans. Covid was a glaring example of this–you can’t work in certain places unless you have an untested vaccine, you can’t go to church, but you can go to a casino, children can’t attend school, etc. Well, the federal government got away with all those unconstitutional acts, so it’s going to try more. Hang on to your car–they are coming for it if it’s not electric.

The article reports:

President Biden is set to “transform” and “remake” the entire auto industry — “first with carrots, now with sticks”— notes the Washington Post, as if dictating the output of a major industry is within the governing purview of the executive branch. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing draconian emissions limits for vehicles, ensuring that 67 percent of all new passenger cars and trucks produced within nine years will be electric. This is state coercion. It is undemocratic. We are not governed; we are managed.

In fascist economies, a powerful centralized state — often led by a demagogue who plays on the nationalistic impulses of people — controls both manufacturing and commerce and dictates prices and wages for the “common good.” Any unpatriotic excessive profits are captured by the state. All economic activity must meet state approval. And crony, rent-seeking companies are willing participants. Now, I’m not saying we already live in a fascist economic state. I’m just saying the Democratic Party economic platform sounds like it wishes we were.

The article concludes:

“I want to let everybody know that this EPA is committed to protecting the health and well-being of every single person on this planet,” the EPA’s Michael Regan explained when announcing the edicts. No one is safer in an EV than a gas-powered vehicle. The authoritarian’s justification for economic control is almost always “safety.” But the entire “safety” claim is tethered to the perpetually disproven theory that our society can’t safely — and relatively cheaply — adapt to slight changes in climate. If the state can regulate “greenhouse gases” as an existential threat, it has the unfettered power to regulate virtually the entire economy. This is why politicians treat every hurricane, tornado, and flood as an apocalyptic event. But in almost every quantifiable way, the climate is less dangerous to mankind now than it has ever been. And the more they try to scare us, the less people care.

So let the Chinese communists worry about keeping their population “safe.” Let’s keep this one innovative, open, and free.

Elections matter, and the 2024 presidential election REALLY matters.

This Isn’t A New Strategy

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The deep state has been around for a while. I just finished reading The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe by Donald H. Wolfe. I was genuinely shocked by some of the behavior of J. Edgar Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, and a lot of other people. J. Edgar Hoover consistently broke laws in his surveillance of American citizens and was never held accountable. The activities of some of our leading political figures of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s were routinely kept hidden from the public with the cooperation of the media. There really isn’t anything new under the sun.

As shocking as the indictment of President Trump is, that is a political trick that has been done before in a presidential campaign.

On Monday, The Federalist reminded us:

But in evaluating whether Bragg’s charges against Trump are politically motivated, it’s worth remembering that Trump is the second major GOP presidential candidate in less than a decade that has been indicted by a local Democratic district attorney. And in that case, involving former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the prosecution was redolent of corruption and naked attempts to harm Perry’s national political ambitions.

In 2014, Perry was indicted on two felony charges. The first charge was abuse of official capacity, and the second was coercion of a public servant. Perry’s crime was using the veto power granted to him in the Texas Constitution.

What happened was this: Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat, was convicted of drunk driving and incarcerated. Working from the Travis County DA’s office, Lehmberg managed the state public integrity unit, a legal office responsible for rooting out public corruption. After she refused to resign her position following a fair bit of criticism over the fact that a person in charge of rooting out public corruption should not be known for being convicted of a crime, Perry threatened to veto the public integrity unit’s $7.5 million budget and eventually did veto the budget.

So the Travis County DA’s office, the very same office where Lehmberg worked, convened a grand jury and indicted Perry. It wasn’t difficult; aside from the old saying that prosecutors could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, Travis County is where “the People’s Republic of Austin” is located. It’s a notoriously liberal enclave where it is easy to find a jury politically hostile to Perry, who was an otherwise popular three-term GOP governor.

The outcome was predictable:

As for the charges against Perry, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals eventually dismissed the charges against Perry in a 6-2 ruling. The abuse of official capacity charge was dismissed on the grounds that it violated the separation of powers in the state constitution. It was always the case that Perry had wide latitude and authority to issue a veto in this instance. “The governor’s power to exercise a veto may not be circumscribed by the Legislature, by the courts, or by district attorneys,” noted the ruling by Judge Sharon Keller of the Court of Criminal Appeals.

The second charge, coercion of a public official, was dismissed on the grounds that it was a violation of the First Amendment to say the governor could not threaten to lawfully wield power on the grounds he was intimidating other public officials.

Unless they are stopped, the Democrat party will continue with using the court system to interfere in elections.

Misplaced Priorities?

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On Tuesday, The Federalist posted an article about some of the financial activities of the Silicon Valley Bank. Admittedly, the Biden economy has made life for banks more challenging, but that should encourage careful use of depositors money–not reckless spending by banks.

The article reports:

Silicon Valley Bank might have been able to make good on $74 million promised to customers had it not pledged the money to leftist causes.

According to a new database by the conservative Claremont Institute, the collapsed bank donated or pledged to donate nearly $74 million to groups related to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, told The Federalist that SVB’s failure on the heels of its left-wing activism “is yet another indication that SVB was focused on woke virtue signaling instead of protecting their customers’ deposits.”

“Time after time we see the same pattern: companies that are the most concerned with ESG scores and woke politics do the worst jobs serving their customers,” Hild explained. “The rest of corporate America should learn from SVB’s failure now, before they are the next company to make headlines for comically poor management.”

Public reports published on the company’s website offer a window into the bank’s leftist corporate apparatus that prioritized Wall Street’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards over its fiduciary duty to shareholders.

Robert DuChemin at Substack points out:

Something that is suspicious about Joe’s (Biden) behavior is that on Monday morning he guaranteed repayment of depositors such as Roku (that had $580 million on deposit in Silicon Valley Bank). On Monday night Joe had a “private” fundraiser in the neighborhood, at which executives of RoKu and other Silicon Valley Bank depositors were present.

So, on Monday morning China Joe gave them hundreds of millions of dollars from government funds and on Monday night they gave some of that money to the democrat party. Nothing to see here.

BTW, Roku only has 1,600 employees worldwide. There is no way in hell they needed $580,000,000.00, to make payroll this month. It is just one more lie from the Biden Administration, a gang that lies every time they speak.

This is corruption on a level that could even make Hillary Clinton jealous.

It’s where we are, folks.

A Real Solution To Medicare Funding

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On Thursday, The Federalist posted an article about the Biden administration’s plan to solve Medicare’s funding difficulties.

The article reports:

If anyone doubted President Joe Biden’s commitment to running for re-election next year, they need only examine his administration’s “plan” for extending Medicare’s solvency, published in advance of Thursday’s budget release. Rather than taking a serious approach to solving Medicare’s funding difficulties, the plan instead engages in political gamesmanship over the health care of millions of seniors. But an administration that wants to play games over Medicare should be careful what it wishes for because Republicans have ammunition to respond in kind.

The plan fails serious policy tests on several fronts. First, by relying largely on revenue to close shortfalls in Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, it ignores the program’s structural imbalances. None other than President Barack Obama said in 2011 that “if you look at the numbers, then Medicare in particular will run out of money and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up.” Four years after those comments, Obama signed legislation that restructured elements of the Medicare benefit to lower program costs. If Obama remained active in politics today, Biden would likely attack him for “cutting” seniors’ benefits.

The article suggests that the Republicans might  have an answer to the request for higher taxes:

If the Biden administration wants to engage Republicans in political games over Medicare, the president’s tax returns provide the GOP with ample opportunity to respond in kind. Multiple tax experts believe that Biden not only used the loophole his administration now wants to close but abused it in ways that violate IRS guidelines. For these reasons, last year I filed a whistleblower complaint with the IRS about Biden’s returns, which the IRS dismissed within a few short weeks.

If the Republicans have the intestinal fortitude to do this, it will definitely be a ‘get out the popcorn’ moment.

About That Speech

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On Thursday, The Federalist weighed in on President Biden’s State of the Union Speech.

Here are a few comments from the article:

Like Nero bragging about rebuilding Circus Maximus after burning it down, Joe Biden took to the podium tonight to take credit for solving a slew of problems he helped create.

At the top of his State of the Union address, the president boasted that he had “created more jobs in two years than any president created in four years.” No president — not Joe Biden nor Donald Trump — creates jobs. But Biden’s contention was exceptionally misleading, considering he inherited an economy that had been unplugged by an artificial, state-induced shutdown. If the government compels businesses to shutter, it doesn’t “create” jobs when allowing them to open.

Presidents don’t create jobs, but their policies create an atmosphere that either encourages or discourages economic growth. President Biden’s economic policies have not encouraged economic growth.

The article also notes:

Three years ago, the unemployment rate was at 3.5 percent. Today, Biden reminded us that it was at a historic low of 3.4 percent. More than 30 million people lost their jobs to Covid lockdowns. Biden claims to have “created” 12 million jobs during the past two years. The one big difference is that the labor participation rate still hasn’t recovered to pre-Covid numbers. It’s great that people are working again. But millions fewer are in the market for jobs.

The article concludes:

Biden went into his well-worn platitudes and myths about how the rich don’t pay taxes — “[n]o billionaire should be paying a lower tax rate than a school teacher or a firefighter!” — and proposed higher rates on the wealthy and corporations. He also promised to micromanage the economy with a slew of new regulations that would interfere in voluntary contracts struck between employees and employers and consumers and businesses.

Biden implored Congress to pass the PRO Act, a bill that would empower the government to impose unions on businesses and workers who want no part of them. Biden hawked an entire menu of crude economic populism — including price controls and protectionist trade policies that would undermine growth, competition, job creation, and innovation while driving up the cost of virtually every construction project in the country.

There were numerous lies, half-truths, and deceptions. There was a slew of antiquated economic ideas and sloganeering. But, surely, the president’s biggest lie of the night was to claim, “I’m a capitalist.”

We have a President who needs to take an Economics Course. He does not understand (or chooses to ignore) basic economic facts.

Rejecting Change That Would Have A Negative Impact

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On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article about a positive change that came out of last week’s Republican National Committee (RNC) meeting.

The article reports:

While most corporate media coverage of last week’s Republican National Committee (RNC) meeting was devoted to the contested leadership race between Ronna McDaniel and Harmeet Dhillon, the organization’s conference yielded a significant win for election integrity.

During the meeting, RNC members unanimously passed a resolution rejecting the use of ranked-choice voting (RCV) in U.S. elections. In an RCV system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. Such a process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.

The process is confusing to the voters and can allow a person who really does not have the support of the majority of the voters to win an election.

The article concludes:

Should they adopt ranked-choice voting, state lawmakers would be subjecting their citizens to a process that disenfranchises both candidates and voters alike. Moreover, the chaotic system would further undermine voters’ already-waning confidence in America’s elections.

State legislatures across the country would be wise to follow the RNC’s lead in rejecting the use of RCV. With its multiple rounds of counting and confusing methodology, the RCV system will almost assuredly end in disaster. (Just ask Alameda County, California).

“Every state should strive to increase voter confidence through procedures that tighten election protections, not turn them into a demolition derby. Everyone should oppose rigged choice voting,” Taylor said.

Ranked-choice voting would further undermine confidence in our elections and would likely put people in office that the majority of the voters did not support. It is a really bad idea that needs to go away.

Why I Don’t Want To Give The Government Any More Money

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On Monday, The Federalist reported the following:

While millions of jobless Americans struggled to make ends meet during devastating government-mandated lockdowns, thousands of federal employees double-dipped from taxpayer-funded pandemic unemployment funds while mostly working from home.

Despite staying on taxpayers’ payroll during the height of the pandemic panic, greedy bureaucrats in the Internal Revenue Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, United States Postal Service, Amtrak, and the Secret Service defrauded taxpayers out of millions more dollars under the guise of Covid unemployment fund and wage assistance programs.

…Thanks to rushed and lax standards, whereby “claimants only needed to self-certify they met eligibility requirements when they filed for [pandemic unemployment assistance] benefits,” more than $8.8 million in taxpayer funds were funneled to 638 DHS employees unlawfully. FEMA’s state workforce agencies also paid out $1.2 million in “lost wages assistance” to 935 DHS workers who were “fully employed.” At least 366 of those ineligible DHS officials were actually paid overtime during the period they were approved, receiving up to hundreds of dollars per week on top of normal unemployment benefits.

I have no way of knowing whether this was corruption or simply bad record keeping, but either way it is totally unacceptable. Unless the government can show us that it is capable of managing the money it collects in taxes, we should not increase the amount of money (or the debt ceiling) that we are giving it.

The article concludes:

Already, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), an oversight committee within the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, determined that “tens of thousands” of federal employees applied for and received Small Business Administration loans even though their status as government-employed disqualified them from taking the handout.

Ernst (Republican Sen. Joni Ernst), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, noted in her letter that the PRAC’s investigation into loans is ongoing and could yield even more deception and taxpayer money wasted by government workers.

Federal employees weren’t the only ones who wrongfully raked in millions of pandemic dollars. Hundreds of state and local government staff in Georgia, Indiana, and Louisiana also defrauded taxpayers.

This is not acceptable.

When The Federal Government Interferes With The Press

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Unfortunately, the federal government seems to be intent on interfering with the press only when it protects important Democrats–Republicans they attack.

On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article listing eight times the federal government played a part in covering up the crimes of the Biden family.

The article lists those incidents:

1. Censoring the Hunter Biden Laptop Story

2. Quietly Seizing Hunter’s Laptop from Repair Shop

3. Seizing and Returning Hunter’s Second Laptop

4. Downplaying or Ignoring Intelligence Threats to Provide Plausible Deniability

5. Running Sham Investigations and Burying Information

6. Stepping Up When Hunter’s Gun Goes Missing

7. Stepping In When Ashley Biden’s Diary Shows Up

8. Keeping the Ducks in a Row and Quiet

The article concludes:

Attorney General Merrick Garland represents the final and biggest protector of the Biden family, with the investigation into Hunter Biden continuing under the oversight of the Biden administration’s Department of Justice. Similarly, the DOJ, through the Western District of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Attorney’s Office, “is still overseeing the criminal investigation into the bankrupt health care business from which James Biden allegedly siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance repairs to his beach house.” 

Notwithstanding the clear conflicts of interest, Garland has ignored calls by congressional leaders to appoint a special counsel to investigate the financial dealings of the Biden family. Instead, Garland appointed Jack Smith as a special counsel to investigate Trump. 

Apparently, the only thing as strong as the get-Trump attitude of the deep state is the protect-the-Bidens stance of the federal government. 

I don’t know how long a republic can stand without equal justice under the law.

Concerns About ERIC

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ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center) is a voter-roll management system used by many states. Unfortunately, ERIC is not politically neutral.

On Monday, The Federalist posted an article saying that Alabama will withdraw from ERIC.

The article reports:

However, member states may not realize ERIC was started by far-left political activist David Becker, who has dedicated his life to attacking conservatives and advancing left-wing policies. Becker also started the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), one of two leftist groups that funneled $419 million in grants from Mark Zuckerberg to mostly blue counties of swing states, funding Democratic get-out-the-vote operations from government election offices in 2020. ERIC shares voter roll data – including records of unregistered citizens – with CEIR, which then reportedly creates targeted mailing lists for unregistered but likely Democrat voters and sends them back to the states for voter registration outreach.

Additionally, per government watchdog Verity Vote, ERIC doesn’t actually clean states’ voter rolls, but rather inflates them. Though member states are allegedly required to clean their voter rolls, nothing happens. A March 2022 audit by Michigan’s auditor general found the state’s Bureau of Elections failed to sufficiently clean its voter rolls, though Michigan had joined ERIC in 2019. Likewise, the District of Columbia (another ERIC member) has also been sued for its failure to clean its rolls.

The article concludes:

While Alabama’s outgoing secretary of state, John Merrill, has repeatedly signaled his support for ERIC, Allen campaigned on removing the state from the system. Instead of relying on ERIC to clean Alabama’s voter rolls, Allen plans on using change-of-address information from the United States Postal Service, driver’s license records from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, and death records from the Alabama Department of Public Health to maintain accurate rolls.

Alabama is the second ERIC member state to withdraw from the pact. Louisiana suspended its participation in January over similar concerns.

If we are going to have honest elections, we need clean voting rolls. That’s really not that hard. When I moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina, I got a census letter from the town I lived in asking me to confirm that I still lived there. I suppose I could have lied, but it is a relatively small town, and eventually any lie would be discovered. Anyway, letters like that are how they keep their voter rolls updated. I also think that using information from the Post Office, Division of Motor Vehicles, and other public sources would be helpful in keeping voting records straight.

 

Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

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The Republican Party has never been known for their unity. The presence of Donald Trump has not helped that problem. Because President Trump and his supporters are a major threat to the status quo in Washington, some Republicans and most Democrats would like to see him and his supporters go away. Some ‘establishment’ Republicans are working hard to see that Trump supporters do not get elected in the mid-terms–even if it means electing Democrats.

On Saturday, The Gateway Pundit reported the following:

The Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC aligned with Mitch McConnell, is pulling money from New Hampshire’s Senate race – this is despite the fact polling shows the race close.

Beginning on October 25th, $5.6 million in spending will be slashed from the state.

Yahoo reported:

A Republican super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) confirmed on Friday that it would be withdrawing spending from New Hampshire’s Senate race even as recent polling shows a tight contest.

A spokesperson for the Senate Leadership Fund confirmed to The Hill that it would be slashing $5.6 million from the state beginning on Oct. 25.

“As the cycle comes to a close, we are shifting resources to where they can be most effective to achieve our ultimate goal: winning the majority,” Senate Leadership Fund President Steven Law said in a statement.

On Thursday, The Federalist reported:

Seven affiliates of the Alaska Republican Party have now formally slammed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for his interference in the Alaskan Senate contest against the party-endorsed candidate.

On Wednesday, the Republican Women of Kenai became the latest Alaska Republican group to lambast the Kentucky senator and demanded his own state party censure him. In March last year, the Alaska Republican Party censured Sen. Lisa Murkowski and pledged to support a primary opponent. The party endorsed Kelly Tshibaka four months later. Because Alaska will use ranked-choice voting in its general election in lieu of traditional party primaries, the two Republicans are still embattled in competition.

…Last week, former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Tshibaka, railed against McConnell for spending millions on Murkowski in Alaska while pulling out of Arizona, where the SLF canceled $18 million in planned support for Republican venture capitalist Blake Masters.

The establishment in both parties is not going to go quietly. We might as well get used to that. However, the Republicans seems to have more populist candidates than the Democrats, so the split is more obvious in the Republican Party. Think before you vote–do you want more of the same or do you want representatives who actually represent you. If you want representatives who actually represent you, your answer is not with establishment candidates in either party.

An Interesting Head Fake

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On Tuesday there were rumors that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was going to send an airplane full of migrants to Delaware to President Biden’s home. The press bought into the story and waited at the airport. While they were waiting at the airport, they somehow avoided telling Americans what was actually happening at the southern border.

The Federalist reported the following on Wednesday:

As amazing as it was to watch the media’s best and brightest flock to Delaware at such incredible speed, the same can’t be said for those same “journalists” when it comes to traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border, where Customs and Border Protection just apprehended a dozen people listed on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) in August alone.

According to Fox News, the “[n]ew data released by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) this week show that there were 12 individuals encountered by Border Patrol between ports of entry at the border whose names matched on the TSDB – which contains information about the identities of those who are known or ‘reasonably suspected’ of being involved in terrorist activities.”

Let’s put this in perspective. In July 2021, I posted an article about the Biden administration using military bases to fly illegal immigrants around the country. The article came from Breitbart, the media didn’t even bother to report it. In April 2022, The New York Post reported on night flights of illegal immigrants coming into an airport in upstate New York (article here). Somehow the major media overlooked the story. It was okay for the government to fly illegal immigrants anywhere, and there were no complaints. When the immigrants land near the sanctuaries of the rich and powerful, anger, lawsuits, and hysteria follow. Meanwhile, people on the terrorist watch list freely enter our country through our porous southern border.

Something is very wrong with this picture.

Unacceptable Behavior By Search Engines

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On Monday, The Federalist reported that Google and Yelp have both agreed to stifle search engine results for life-saving pregnancy clinics.

The article reports:

Despite the fact that nearly 2 in 3 Americans support public funding for life-saving pregnancy centers, many of which offer free or discounted pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and other care to women in need, both Google and Yelp have decided to harness their censorship power to implement the “fake clinic” framing touted by Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Two months after congressional Democrats demanded Google block search results for crisis pregnancy centers, the Silicon Valley giant also announced it would add labels to pro-life clinics explicitly stating that they do not offer abortion services.

Is this the policy of organizations that truly care about women’s health?

The article concludes:

“It’s well-reported that crisis pregnancy centers do not offer abortion services, and it’s been shown that many provide misleading information in an attempt to steer people seeking abortion care to other options,” Yelp’s VP of User Operations Noorie Malik said in a statement. “With this new consumer notice we’re aiming to further protect consumers from the potential of being misled or confused.”

Shortly after news that the Supreme Court planned to overturn Roe v. Wade broke, Yelp and Google offered to subsidize travel for its female employees to get abortions. Google, which already has a long history of banning and throttling pro-life advertisements, even promised to delete the location history of anyone who visits an abortion facility.

Abortion is not healthcare. There are actually very few instances where the dangers of abortion are less than the dangers of continuing a pregnancy. Abortions do have risks, and the pro-abortion community has done a very good job of hiding those risks. To create obstacles for women who are searching for crisis pregnancy centers is certainly not in the best interests of women or of society.

The Rest Of The Story…

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On July 6th I posted an article about oil from the United States’ Strategic Oil Reserve being shipped overseas. I was willing to give President Biden the benefit of the doubt because evidently there are international rules that govern where oil is sold. However, new information about the transactions involved is troubling.

Today The Federalist reported the following:

On Wednesday, Reuters revealed that more than 5 million barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves were sent overseas as part of President Joe Biden’s latest release initiated in March.

Some of that oil went to India, some to the Netherlands, and some was sent to China where the president’s son has engaged in years of potentially criminal business activity embroiling the Biden White House in scandal since the 2020 campaign.

On July 7th, The Washington Free Beacon reported:

“The Biden administration sold roughly one million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese state-controlled gas giant that continues to purchase Russian oil, a move the Energy Department said would ‘support American consumers’ and combat ‘Putin’s price hike,’” the Beacon’s Collin Anderson reported. “Biden’s Energy Department in April announced the sale of 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation. That company, which is commonly known as Sinopec, is wholly owned by the Chinese government.”

…Power the Future founder Daniel Turner admonished Biden for selling “raw materials to the Communist Chinese for them to use as they want.”

“We were assured Biden was releasing this oil to America so it could be refined for gasoline to drive down prices at the pump. So right off the bat, they’re just lying to the American people,” Turner told the Washington Free Beacon. “What they’re saying they did and what they did are not remotely related.”

Turner also said the decision highlights the Biden family’s “relationship with China.” Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is tied to Sinopec. In 2015, a private equity firm he cofounded bought a $1.7 billion stake in Sinopec Marketing. Sinopec went on to enter negotiations to purchase Gazprom in March, one month after the Biden administration sanctioned the Russian gas giant.

Obviously some of the decisions made have not been in the best interests of Americans, and some of the decisions made have probably enriched the pockets of Hunter Biden. However, I predict there will be no consequences. It is too close to the mid-terms, and there are too many Republicans who are afraid to challenge any of the corruption in the Biden administration. It is a shame there are not enough principled Democrats or Republicans to speak out against obvious corruption.

Who Is Actually Guilty Of Mass Shootings?

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On Monday, The Federalist posted an article citing the statistics on who is actually committing mass shootings. It’s not white supremacists.

The article reports:

Of the 82 mass public shootings from January 1998 to May 2021, 9 percent have known or alleged ties to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, or anti-immigrant views. Many of the anti-immigrant attackers, such as the Buffalo murderer, hold decidedly environmentalist views that are more in line with the Democrat agenda.

Other groups commit mass public shootings disproportionately more than whites do. While non-Middle Eastern whites make up about 64 percent of the population, they make up 58 percent of the mass public shooters. Another 9 percent are carried out by people of Middle Eastern origin, who make up only 0.4 percent of the country’s population. That makes Middle Easterners the most likely ethnic or racial group to carry out mass public shootings.

Blacks, Asians, and American Indians also commit these attacks at a slightly higher rate than their share of the population. Hispanics commit them at much lower rates (11 percent lower) than their share of the population.

It is interesting to me that Hispanics are the least likely to commit mass shootings. Is that related to the fact that in many cases, Hispanics have a fairly solid family foundation. What is the percentage of two-parent families in the Hispanic population versus other populations?

The fact that Middle Easterners have the largest number of mass public shootings in relation to their population should not  be a surprise. Many Middle Easterners who have come to America have not assimilated into the country and do not understand our culture. Many are also taught that killing infidels is a duty and will get them into paradise.

The article continues:

Seventy-one percent of mass public shooters have no identifiable political views. But you would never know this from watching TV police dramas or listening to Biden’s constant claim that white supremacists pose the biggest threat of domestic terrorism.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed in testimony in April that white supremacy is the top terrorism-related threat to the homeland. But when pressed, Mayorkas couldn’t name a single white supremacy case that his department referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution.

White supremacists with guns are not the threat that our government would have us believe. It’s not just that white supremacy is rare. So too are gun crimes. The number of gun crimes has been falling dramatically, and they now make up less than 8 percent of violent crimes in America. Yet we constantly hear the opposite from politicians who support gun restrictions.

All of the current rhetoric coming from our political class has one purpose–to convince Americans that giving up their guns will make them safer. Those who study history understand that nothing could be further from the truth.

Does This Violate RICO Laws?

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The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act was passed in 1970 as a way to deal with organized crime. It has since been misused to go after abortion protesters and other people, but it was originally passed to fight organized crime. I think it should be used on any person who violates the law in their protest of the Supreme Court leak regarding Roe v. Wade. On Thursday, The Federalist posted an article about plans by an pro-abortion group regarding protests of the recent Supreme Court leak.

The article reports:

A left-wing group is gathering abortion activists to march at Supreme Court justices’ homes next week, with stipends available for some protesters who participate in the Roe v. Wade crusade.

Beginning on Sunday, the group organized under the moniker “Ruth Sent Us” will embark on a week-long demonstration, with plans to protest outside the homes of the six conservative Supreme Court justices, whose alleged addresses have been published on the group’s website.

“Our 6-3 extremist Supreme Court routinely issues rulings that hurt women, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights. We must rise up to force accountability using a diversity of tactics,” reads the group’s website, advertising monetary compensation for recruits. “Are you a muralist or chalk artist? Are you a graphic designer who would like to contribute remotely? Large-scale art will be included in the protests against the Supreme Court. Stipends available.”

What is the difference between protesting and intimidation?

The article concludes:

Demonstrators with “Ruth Sent Us” appear to be coordinating with several allied activist groups including Code Pink, Kavanaugh Off Our Court, and Black Lives Matter. While the website advertises “peaceful protests,” the recent memories of Black Lives Matter riots terrorizing the country remain fresh in the minds of the public as communities are still rebuilding. This week’s violence in Los Angeles offers little comfort.

Harassment of conservative policymakers at their private homes has become an increasingly popular tactic among left-wing activists, who demonstrated at Kavanaugh’s home in September over anxieties related to Roe v. Wade. Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley and Fox News prime-time anchor Tucker Carlson have each also suffered from protesters staking out their D.C.-area residences.

There is a difference between protesting and harassment. As soon as a protester steps on your lawn and you ask him to leave, if he stays there, he is trespassing. Trespassing laws need to be upheld. If people want to protest in the street, they should be allowed to, but as soon as a protester steps on a lawn, he should be arrested.

A Louisiana Court Gets It Right

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On Tuesday, The Federalist reported that a Louisiana appellate court reinstated Attorney General Jeff Landry’s lawsuit challenging Mark Zuckerberg’s infiltration of the state election system with private “Zuck Bucks” that flooded the country during the 2020 election.

The article reports:

The lawsuit, State of Louisiana v. Center for Tech and Civic Life, originated in October 2020. That’s when Louisiana, through Landry, sought a court order declaring that “private contributions to local election officials and the election system in general are unlawful and contrary to Louisiana law.” Landry’s lawsuit followed attempts by the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life to dole out millions in targeted grants to election officials throughout the state.

By the time Landry sued, more than 20 officials throughout the state had applied for grants of nearly $8 million, but after the attorney general warned them the funds were illegal, most abandoned their efforts. Orleans and Calcasieu parishes, however, went on to accept more than $810,000 in funds for the 2020 election.

While Landry succeeded in limiting the impact of the Zuckbucks in Louisiana to two parishes, his efforts to prevent what he called “the corrosive influence of outside money on Louisiana election officials” initially failed when a state trial court dismissed his lawsuit against the Center for Tech and Civic Life and its partner organizations.

In tossing the case, the trial judge held there was no legal basis to prevent “registrars of voters, clerks of court, or other local election officials from seeking and obtaining grant dollars to assist with the funding the necessary staff and equipment for the upcoming November 3, 2020 election.” In reaching this conclusion, the trial court relied on Louisiana’s constitution, specifically article 6, § 23.

That provision authorizes “political subdivisions” to “acquire property for any public purpose,” by among other things, “donation.” The trial court then reasoned that because “registrar of voters and clerks of court are ‘political subdivisions,’” “they are allowed to accept private donations,” including to run elections. Accordingly, the trial court tossed the state’s lawsuit and allowed the private funds to flow into the parish coffers.

The article explains the problem with the Zuckbucks:

Details from other states confirm Landry’s concerns. In Wisconsin, a retired election clerk in a large Wisconsin county explained how, behind closed doors, “political activists working for a group funded by Mark Zuckerberg money seized control of the November elections in Green Bay and other cities, sidelining career experts and making last-minute changes that may have violated state law.”

Similarly, in other states, Zuckbucks created “a ‘shadow’ election system with a built-in structural bias,” according to analyses conducted after the election. Post-election analyses of the data likewise reveal the $350 million in funding disproportionately favored Democrat-heavy areas — so much so that it could have changed the outcome of the election.

The article concludes:

Backlash against buying the election for Biden with Zuckbucks has prompted several states to pass laws expressly prohibiting the use of private funds for election purposes. As of March 2022, private funds are either restricted or banned in the running of elections in more than a dozen states. State legislatures in five additional states passed similar restrictions on outside funds, but those bills were vetoed by the governors — all of whom were Democrats.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards is one of the five Democrats to veto a legislative ban on the private funding of elections. But with last week’s appellate court decision reinstating Landry’s challenge to the use of private funds in elections, the state may nonetheless prevail in its attempt to keep outside money from interfering in future elections.

Before the case returns to the trial court, however, the Center for Tech and Civic Life may attempt to appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court. The Federalist contacted an attorney for the group, asking if an appeal would be forthcoming, but our request for comment went unanswered.

When get-out-the-vote drives are centered in areas controlled by one party and paid for by private money, they can swing an election. There is a difference between active citizens conducting volunteer registration and get-out-the-vote efforts and private companies pouring millions of dollars into those efforts. If every America took the responsibility of voting seriously and showed up to vote, these drives would have no impact.

Are Electric Cars Really Green?

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I am not a scientist, and I don’t claim to be one. However, I do possess a certain amount of common sense. That common sense makes me wonder if the fact that an electric car uses electricity that has to be generated from somewhere else negates the ‘green’ quality of the electric car. Doesn’t it make more sense to use a combustible fuel that directly powers the car without a middle man than to use fuel that has to be generated somewhere else? And what are the sources of the electricity for electric cars? Again, I don’t claim to be a scientist. However, I am not the only one wondering if electric cars are really green.

On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article about electric cars.

The article reports:

Instead of investing in American energy, Democrats are actively suppressing the American energy industry and then telling Americans to spend their savings on overpriced electric cars to solve their problems. But the left isn’t being honest about the environmental and financial costs of those trendy electric vehicles.

…To advance their climate agenda and deflect backlash about rising gas prices, Democrats are telling Americans that driving electric cars is for the greater good of the environment, fully knowing the charging stations for these cars are not fossil fuel free. 

In reality, one of Tesla’s Supercharger stations was reported to get 13 percent of their energy from natural gas and 27 percent from coal. Power plants burn coal to generate electricity to power electric cars and emit a higher fossil fuel footprint than the left would care to admit. 

While these vehicles may be falsely advertised, many who invest in these overpriced cars are able to avoid paying the currently outrageous gas prices. Still, Americans’ growing reliance on electric cars and the batteries they require will increase our dependence on countries such as China for materials. 

“Chinese companies, particularly CATL, have secured vast supplies of the raw materials that go inside the batteries,” The New York Times reported in December. “That dominance has stirred fears in Washington that Detroit could someday be rendered obsolete, and that Beijing could control American driving in the 21st century the way that oil-producing nations sometimes could in the 20th.” 

By increasing our use of electric cars, the United States will require more lithium batteries and will further rely on China to sustain our supply. While the current energy crisis could be an opportunity for America to increase our energy independence, the current administration refuses to take advantage. 

Americans buying electric cars is not a winning strategy for America.

Pay Attention To The Pattern

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On Tuesday, The Federalist posted an article about the actions of private corporations regarding the war in Ukraine. Private corporations are denying services or products to Russia or to entitles connected to Russia. They are conducting their own private boycotts. Some of these companies are major corporation such as American Express, Apple, and Microsoft. That may seem like a good thing, but the pattern is troubling.

The article reports:

It could be tempting to cheer the move for targeting Russia’s authoritarian regime and condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attacks on the people of Ukraine. But the actions by private companies against Russians are part of a larger swing by U.S. corporations to deny services to those whose opinions they deem unacceptable — and that’s exactly the kind of social credit system Russia is building to impose on its own people.

That’s what we saw in Canada when bank accounts and other assets of protesting truckers were frozen.

The article notes:

Punishment might include anything from slower internet speeds to being barred from flying or staying in certain hotels. There have also been reports of people being denied higher education and having their pets confiscated.

If you think comparisons between Russia and China’s authoritarian credit systems and the increasing dragnet in the United States are outlandish, just think about how Mastercard and American Express blocked donations to Americans whose beliefs about the 2020 election were found unacceptable, while Visa’s political action committee used the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 to “temporarily suspend[] all political donations.” Paypal, Venmo, and Shopify all went after people who were supposedly involved in the riot.

A friend of mine had her Paypal account terminated because she used a credit card to buy a hamburger in Washington on the weekend of January 6th. She did not go near the Capitol–she went back to her hotel room after the rally, but her Paypal account was still canceled because her credit card company reported that she had made a transaction in Washington that weekend. This is not the America I grew up in.

The article concludes:

We shouldn’t cheer U.S. firms for appointing themselves the arbiters of who deserves to participate in our economy (and by extension, our society). If they can do it to Russia, they can do it to you.

But we also shouldn’t cheer such actions because they move us one step closer to blurring the line between ourselves and the authoritarian tyrants we purport to denounce. If we defeat Russia or China by making our differences unrecognizable, we’ve already lost.

What Happens Next?

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On Tuesday, The Federalist reported that the Wisconsin Office of Special Counsel, headed by retired state Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman, has concluded that nearly $9 million in Zuckerberg grant funds directed solely to five Democratic strongholds in Wisconsin violated the state’s election code’s prohibition on bribery.

The article reports:

Last August, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos authorized the Office of Special Counsel, headed by retired state Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman, to investigate concerns about election integrity and the 2020 election. Gableman delivered an interim report to the state assembly on November 10, 2021. Earlier today, the special counsel provided a second interim report to the state legislative body, noting the report “is final in the sense that it provides a list of recommendations with time for the Legislature to act before the close of its session in March.”

The article also notes:

The Zuckerberg 5 also violated the federal and state constitutional guarantee of equal protection, according to the special counsel report. The grant money targeted specific voters for special voting privileges, to the disadvantage of similarly situated voters located in other Wisconsin counties. The report also detailed troubling evidence the Zuckerberg 5 counties allowing private groups working with the granting organization, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, to “unlawfully administer aspects of the election,” including in one county where one organization was unlawfully embedded in local government election administration.

The special counsel’s report also highlighted the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) illegal directive to clerks to ignore the state election code governing voting in nursing homes. In several nursing home locations throughout the state, 100 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in the 2020 election—an unheard-of rate that included many ineligible voters.

Non-citizen and incapacitated citizens also remained listed on Wisconsin’s voting rolls, in violation of the law, according to the report. Because some non-citizens qualify for driver’s licenses, the law requires non-citizens’ names be removed from the master roll, but that was not done, according to the special counsel. Likewise, individuals declared incompetent must, by law, be removed from the master list, but again that did not occur.

I suspect the problems in Wisconsin are not unique. I also suspect that these problems are simply the tip of the iceberg. I have personally seen evidence of strange things happening in calculating voting totals via Dominican voting machines and other computer anomalies that are also cause for suspicion. We need to take a really good look at how we vote and how those votes are counted before the mid-term election. Election integrity is important and needs to be upheld by our courts and our representatives.