Monthly Archives: December 2021

This Might Easily Backfire

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On Sunday, Just the News posted an article about a law recently proposed by Democratic Representatives Hank Johnson (Ga.) and Jamie Raskin (Md.).

The article reports:

Democratic Reps. Hank Johnson (Ga.) and Jamie Raskin (Md.) on Wednesday reintroduced the Bivens Act, which would allow citizens to recover damages for constitutional violations committed against them by federal law enforcement officials.

The bill, which the lawmakers first introduced last year, seeks “to provide a civil remedy for an individual whose rights have been violated by a person acting under federal authority.” It would do this by adding five words — “of the United States or” — to a longstanding provision enacted in 1871, known as Section 1983, which gives individuals the right to sue state or local officials who violate their civil and constitutional rights. The additional words would include federal officials in the statute.

The FBI, Justice Department, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and federal prison officials are among the law enforcement entities that would be held accountable under the legislation.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) introduced a companion bill in the Senate this week.

Supporters of the legislation argue that no statute, including Section 1983, currently gives individuals the right to sue federal officials who violate the Constitution. Johnson and Raskin said as much in a press release, pointing to the former Trump administration as reason to pass their bill.

Obviously if this bill is passed, there are many possibilities for its abuse, but it also might open the path to justice for some of the January 6th defendants.

The article notes:

Several Jan. 6 prisoners allege the FBI, Justice Department, and federal prison officials under the Biden administration have violated their civil and constitutional rights.

Thomas Caldwell, 66, for example, says he was arrested at his Virginia farm in January and interrogated for hours without being told what he was being charged with. Caldwell, a military veteran, never entered the Capitol building on Jan. 6 but spent well over a month in solitary confinement.

George Tanios, 40, says he had a similar experience at his West Virginia home in March, claiming federal agents wouldn’t answer him when he asked why they were arresting him. He was imprisoned on charges related to the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick and remained in jail for months, despite the District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner concluding Sicknick died of unrelated natural causes. According to Tanios, his business was devastated as a result of his arrest and imprisonment.

Christopher Worrell was also arrested and imprisoned for his involvement in the Capitol riot despite never entering the building. In October, a federal judge found D.C. Jail Warden Wanda Patten and D.C. Department of Corrections Director Quincy Booth in contempt of court for refusing to turn over records related to the care of Worrell, who suffers from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and had a broken hand. The judge referred the matter to the attorney general “for appropriate inquiry into potential civil rights violations of Jan. 6 defendants, as exemplified in this case.”

Worrell’s lawyer said his client was subjected to “cruel and unusual punishment” in the jail that houses most of the Jan. 6 prisoners. The D.C. jail has come under heightened scrutiny in recent weeks over its conditions and treatment of inmates.

The U.S. attorney for D.C. is the federal official primarily leading the prosecution of Jan. 6 defendants. The position is appointed by the president.

It’s unclear whether Johnson, Raskins, or Whitehouse were aware their bills would potentially provide legal recourse for Jan. 6 prisoners. Raskins’s office had no comment when asked whether he’d considered this possibility before cosponsoring the legislation and whether he had any problem with the prospect of Jan. 6 prisoners using his bill as a way to sue the Biden administration for alleged mistreatment.

Stay tuned.

Why “No Bail” Laws Don’t Work

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article that illustrates why the ‘no bail’ policy currently in effect in New York City does not work.

The article reports:

He’s the Grinch who stole your wallet.

A serial pickpocket with more than 30 busts under his belt was pinched again last week while targeting unsuspecting tourists at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, only to be dumped back on the street the next day, law enforcement sources and authorities told The Post.

Gary Teasley, 65 — who has been known to wear snazzy outfits, including a long dark fur coat and fashionable hat, during his alleged crimes — is so familiar to cops that they’re on a first-name basis, a source said.

Teasley is such an illicit pro that he also used to keep a storage locker with stolen wallets and other goods — and a detailed record of the heists, broken down by location and category, sources said.

The article notes:

Teasley was arrested Friday after police said they spotted him unzipping the woman’s purse and reaching inside, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.

“We caught him red-handed,’’ a source said. “We called him by his first name. We said, ‘Hey, Gary, don’t give us a hard time.’ We’ve arrested this guy so many times, we’re on a first-name basis.

“He knows the deal, he was saying, ‘DAT, [desk appearance ticket],’ the whole bail-reform thing.

He’s “a very sharp guy, $1,000 suits, skilled at his craft,” the source said. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Teasley was hauled into court Saturday on charges of fourth-degree attempted grand larceny and “jostling.” He was released without bail.

Prosecutors had asked that he be released but with supervised restrictions, a rep for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said Sunday. The judge denied the request.

“I’ve personally been arresting him for 20 years,’’ a police source said. “These guys are all coming out of the woodwork around the tree.’’

I think it’s time to re-examine the consequences of the ‘no bail’ law.

Terror In The Tunnel Part 2

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On December 10th, I posted an article titled, “Terror in the Tunnel.” It was a first-person account of police brutality on January 6th. It was the first of two articles at American Greatness. Today I am posting about the second article.

The article reports:

The first thing Victoria White noticed after emerging from the tunnel where she was severely beaten by two D.C. Metropolitan police officers on January 6 was the floor of the U.S. Capitol. Dressed in jeans and a light red turtleneck, shoeless, White was soaked with whatever toxic chemical gas the police sprayed on protesters.

“I noticed that this beautiful flooring was all wet, soaking wet, like a pipe burst,” she told me this week in one of three lengthy interviews about her harrowing experience at the Capitol protest. Water, however, was not the culprit; the floor probably was drenched because law enforcement had doused Americans with chemical spray for hours inside the U.S. Capitol building.

One officer—White doesn’t know if he was D.C. Metro or Capitol police—handcuffed her with zip ties behind her back. She was told to turn around and face the wall near a statue, White recalled, but she didn’t know the location since it was her first time inside the Capitol. She likely was standing inside Statuary Hall.

Others were there, too, mostly men and one other older woman. Police paraded the group of about a dozen protesters through various parts of the building, up and down elevators, almost as if to disorient their captives. White said they were taken underground near what she described as a set of small train tracks—the Capitol’s people-mover to get members and staff around the complex quickly—and led outside.

Suddenly, White saw a massive bright light. “There was a big news camera and a guy in a dress coat and matching hat. I knew it was a reporter, but how did they know we would exit there? It made no sense to me.”

The role of the media in the events of January 6th needs to be explored. Were they simply reporting or were they agitating?

Please follow the link above to read the entire story. It chronicles events that should never happen in America.

The article concludes:

One of White’s friends who traveled to Washington with her was fired from her job as a nurse simply for being in the capital, not anywhere near the building, on January 6; she recently found a seasonal job in the service industry to make do.

“It’s horrible what people say,” White said. “They call you a racist even though my daughters are mixed race. Even people who know me, my friends, have said it. My own sister-in-law went out of her way to make it clear on social media that she thinks I deserve full punishment, even people who posted that they want me to be hanged. She liked all of the comments.”

“Now I should be killed for being there on January 6?”

After keeping quiet for the past 11 months, White felt it was time to tell her story.

“If I don’t stand up and speak out, who will? All the J6 defendants deserve someone to stand up and speak for them. I have made mistakes but if God is willing to use me and my story, whatever horrible things come, I am willing to do that.”

She is encouraging the nearly 700 January 6 defendants to do the same.

“It’s time to stand up for ourselves, our country, and for God.”

There are a lot of people in our government who have a lot to answer for in the way the protest of January 6th was handled. We still have a Constitution, and our political leaders swore an oath to uphold it.

A Puzzling Move

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On Saturday, The American Spectator reported that last month Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed Nigeria from the State Department’s list of countries hostile to religious freedom. In April, the U.S. government’s own Commission on International Religious Freedom had urged Secretary of State Blinken to keep Nigeria on the list.

The articled reports:

In 2020, the Trump administration designated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) on religious freedom. In a letter, the Family Research Council and host of other organizations committed to religious freedom have asked Biden: “How can it be, less than a year after that significant designation, that Nigeria’s CPC designation has been dropped without a public explanation?”

The groups note in the letter that anti-Christian persecution in the country has grown even more intense since 2020: “The ongoing violence, killing, and displacement against Christians and others have only increased. In fact, during 2021, massacres happen almost nightly, while by day, young boys are killed in the fields. Pregnant women are brutally dismembered, their babies mutilated before their eyes. And now, an entire church congregation has been abducted and held captive.”

Armed Islamic terrorists and radicals “have become even more brazen, torching entire villages and farms, ambushing, and killing innocent people in gory, unspeakable ways,” they write. “Mass killings—the kind that used to be sporadic—are now a national emergency. Catholic News Agency reported in July, ‘an estimated 3,462 Christians have been killed in Nigeria in the first 200 days of 2021, according to a new study. This equates to 17 Christians being murdered every day in Africa’s most populous country.”

The article concludes:

Biden has declared the promotion of transgenderism abroad a “priority” of American foreign policy. That apparently stands at the apex of his hierarchy of rights.  “[The State] Department has committed to increasing U.S. engagement on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) human rights issues abroad,” says Blinken. “As we do so, we work with partners around the world who bring to bear expertise on their unique challenges and innovative solutions. We recognize that, through these partnerships, we will be able to build a safer, more inclusive global society for all LGBTQI+ persons.”

This is what preoccupied Blinken in the months preceding the collapse of Afghanistan. Then after it fell, he told Congress that he was “focused on” the plight of the “LGBTQI+ in Afghanistan” under the Taliban.

Talk about an “unbalanced” agenda. Blinken can strain at the gnat and swallow the camel. As he trivializes human rights abuses, monstrous ones are occurring in a country that he claims is no longer a foe of religious freedom. Never mind that an organization called Genocide Watch says “Nigeria has become a killing field of defenseless Christians.” The group says that “between 11,500 and 12,000 Christians have been massacred since June 2015 when the Buhari Government of Nigeria came to power. These statistics are based on careful records kept by church groups that include the names of victims and dates of their murders.”

That Biden can overlook this while prattling on about the supposed glories of transgenderism and chastising Russia for its insufficient enlightenment (Blinken said that Biden rebuked Putin at their summer meeting for not supporting the LGBTQ agenda) reveals much about this administration’s bankrupt agenda. Only a president that prizes religious freedom at home will care about its loss abroad.

I believe that our President has mixed up his priorities.

Elections Have Consequences

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The election of Virginia Governor Youngkin has already had an impact beyond Virginia. Heeded or not, the election was a wake-up call for the radical leftist agenda being pushed in Washington, D.C. The election itself was important, but the policies that Governor Youngkin enacts will also have an impact on America’s future.

On Saturday, Fox News reported the following:

Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has signaled his intention to pull the state out of a climate compact that many small businesses there are glad to see go.

Youngkin has made clear his intention to pull Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The interstate compact places penalties on entities that exceed emission regulations set by an organization representing all member states.

The article concludes:

The RGGI currently boasts eleven member states in the initiative, all from the northeast: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia.

The RGGI is currently being courted by Pennsylvania for membership. It boasts itself as the “first market-based, cap-and-invest regional initiative in the United States.”

The Cato Institute puts out an index of personal and economic freedom annually. The Sixth Edition (2021) has a list of states according to the “Miscellaneous Regulatory Freedom Score.” The least regulated state on that list is Arizona, the most regulated is North Carolina. Of the states in the RGGI, Connecticut ranks 31, Delware 29, Maine 33, Maryland 42, Massachusetts 49, New Hampshire 6, New Jersey 41, New York 47, Rhode Island 30, Vermont 14, and Virginia 20.

It appears to me that the RGGI is simply the latest cap and trade proposal put in place by the Democrats. To learn some interesting history on the cap and trade scams of the past, please read the article from August 2010 about what happened to the Chicago Climate Exchange when the Democrats were predicted to lose the majority in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, much of the talk of the environment is actually a smoke screen for hidden financial interests and governmental quests for more power.

An Interesting Change In Voting Habits

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On Thursday, The Patriot Journal posted an article about a shifting voting bloc.

The article includes an excerpt from Fox News:

A new poll from The Wall Street Journal found that Hispanic voters are now split between Republicans and Democrats on the generic ballot at 37%. A further 22% responded that they were undecided…

Hispanics were also divided nearly evenly on the question of a 2024 presidential rematch. In an identical election between President Biden and former President Trump, 44% stated they would vote for Biden, while 43% said they would vote for Trump.

The article at The Patriot Journal continues:

We’ve been seeing this trend all throughout the year. Several special elections were held in Texas in 2021. Candidates were running in largely Hispanic towns and districts, close to the border. And, what do ya know, Republicans won again and again. In some places, this was the first time a GOP candidate took the victory.

That’s a very bad sign for Democrats. And it’s not just about elections. Democrats pride themselves on being “inclusive” and “diverse.” Much of their messaging is that they are the party that supports people of color. And that Republicans only care about rich, white people.

But that narrative is completely shattered if half or more of the Hispanic voters break for the GOP. Democrats can’t claim they are the only ones that care about minorities if so many of them vote for the other party.

Many of the Hispanics that are voting GOP are unhappy with the open-borders policy of the Biden administration. People who came here legally do not appreciate the unsecured border. Our Hispanic population is very familiar with the character of the cartels currently controlling our border and smuggling gang members through our porous border.

The article concludes:

Democrats are already making excuses for these numbers. They claim they just need to do a better job at “reaching” Hispanic voters. But these Americans have seen what Democrats can do when given power. And they are not impressed. They want what we all want, a safe border, good education for their children, and—oh yeah—an economy that’s not terrible.

And it seems Democrats cannot deliver on any of that.

Unwarranted Fear

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On Friday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the Omicron variant of the coronavirus (just for the record, moronic is an anagram of Omicron).

The article reports:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has informed The Epoch Times that it has not documented any deaths from the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.

According to the WHO, “for Omicron, we have not had any deaths reported, but it is still early in the clinical course of disease and this may change.”

When reached for comment by The Epoch Times, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent its report on the Omicron variant in the United States from Dec. 1 through 8. It shows that there were no documented deaths from Omicron during that period.

The WHO’s latest weekly epidemiological update for Dec. 7 showed that all 212 Omicron cases documented across eighteen European Union (EU) countries were either mild or asymptomatic.

“While South Africa saw an 82 percent increase in hospital admissions due to COVID-19 (from 502 to 912) during the week 28 November–4 December 2021, it is not yet known the proportion of these with the Omicron variant,” the report noted.

Omicron has also been detected in the United States, first in California and later in Colorado, New York, Maryland, Utah, and many other states.

The first American patient with the variant was identified in San Francisco, testing positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 29 after returning from a trip to South Africa on Nov. 22.

The article concludes:

“No one here in South Africa is known to have been [hospitalized] with the Omicron variant, nor is anyone here believed to have fallen seriously ill with it.”

More recently, Dr. Coetzee told ThePrint that Omicron symptoms have been mild in both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.

“In the beginning of any wave, children and younger people are the first to be affected,” she told ThePrint. “As the wave progresses, more elderly, people with comorbidities, start getting affected. When that happens, we will know exactly how many severe cases there are.”

Viruses are serious. People who are vulnerable need to be protected and cared for. However, we do not need to go into a panic every time a new variant shows up. Every year we deal with new variants of the flu. It is not the end of the world. It’s time to end the endless panic and fear mongering.

Something To Follow Closely

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On Thursday, Breitbart reported that former President Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

The article reports:

Mark Meadows turned the tables on the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack on Wednesday, filling a lawsuit in federal district court in D.C. that argues the committee is unconstitutional and in violation of House rules.

CNN and other establishment media outlets played the lawsuit as a last-ditch effort by a man desperate to avoid a subpoena — or desperate to appease his former boss, Donald Trump.

Yet the lawsuit is a serious threat to the existence of the committee.

The lawsuit makes some familiar arguments, such as that the committee is violating the Constitution’s separation of powers by encroaching on executive privilege. Former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon, who is being prosecuted by the supposedly apolitical Department of Justice for contempt of Congress, is making the same case against his subpoena in federal court.

But Meadows goes further, pointing out that the January 6 committee violates the terms of its own enabling resolution.

The resolution, H. Res. 503, provides that the committee “shall” consist of 13 members, five of which “shall be appointed after consultation with the minority leader.”

But the committee only has nine members, seven of whom are Democrats, and only two of whom are hand-picked anti-Trump Republicans. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) rejected the five members chosen by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D-CA), an unprecedented step to ensure a one-sided inquiry.

The article continues:

Furthermore, Meadows’s lawsuit points out that while the chair of the committee can order subpoenas, that authority is not absolute. H. Res. 503 requires the chair of the committee to consult with the ranking member before issuing a subpoena for a deposition. But the committee has no ranking Republican member, which could make the committee’s subpoenas invalid.

If Meadows’s lawsuit is successful, he could not only block his own subpoena, but could see the entire committee declared invalid. Pelosi and the Democrats would have to start over — this time, obeying the rules, with five Republican members.

The Democrats obviously overreached in the way the committee was set up and the way the members were chosen. It seems only fair that this should backfire on them. I am hoping it does.

The Coming Storm

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On Thursday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about productivity in America.

The article reports:

U.S. nonfarm productivity is a measure of economic activity within the engine of the U.S. economy. The U.S. productivity rate is a measure of how much value is produced by the economy through demand for the products and services, and the labor associated with the creation of those products and services.

I have often used the example of making bread {Go Deep}.  If you are making 10 loaves of bread, there is a set amount of cost associated with each loaf created.  The total cost of each loaf is the total cost to produce the entire batch divided by ten. However, if you have customers demanding 15 loaves of bread, you make more profit on the last five because it doesn’t cost 50% more in material or labor to make 50% more loaves.

Your productivity in the last five loaves is higher because the fixed costs of production (raw materials, energy) barely change, and the labor is only slightly higher.  The opposite is also true.  It costs more per loaf to make fewer than ten loaves because the fixed costs and your labor are pretty consistent, yet the finished value of 7 loaves is less than the finished value of ten.

Anecdotally, it has looked for quite some time that around May of this year the economy peaked, plateaued for a few weeks, and then began a slow downward progression.  Today the Bureau of Labor statistics puts some revised data to that third quarter (July, August and Sept) economic activity {data here}.  The quantified results align with what we sensed was taking place.

The value of all products and services generated increased by 1.8 percent.  However, the labor cost of generating that small amount of added value increased by 7.4 percent.  The difference between those two numbers is a drop in productivity of 5.2% over the entire quarter.

This is the largest quarterly drop in productivity since 1960 !

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes additional information on employment, wage growth, and other economic issues. Basically, it’s time to batten down the hatches for the oncoming economic storm.

An Amazing Coincidence

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On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon reported that a company owned by a man who gave generously to the Biden campaign has received a $500 million government loan to build a manufacturing facility in India. Why is the government giving out loans to build manufacturing facilities in India instead of in America? Isn’t it an incredible coincidence that a large donor to the Biden campaign receives a $500 million government loan?

The article reports:

The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation granted the loan to First Solar, which is owned by billionaire Walmart heir Lukas Walton, to build a solar module plant in India. Walton contributed over $300,000 to President Joe Biden’s campaign last year, and over $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee, according to campaign finance records.

The loan to First Solar is the “largest single debt financing transaction” issued by the DFC, the agency announced this week. The DFC said the investment in the India project will “promote DFC’s commitment to diversifying supply chains,” following demands from lawmakers that the agency avoid funding any solar projects connected to forced labor in China.

Ethics watchdogs said the loan raises questions about whether First Solar’s political connections played a role in the DFC’s decision. The federal financing agency, which was formerly known as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, has faced criticism in the past for funding projects linked to political donors. The loan also comes nine years after the Obama administration came under fire for approving $3 billion in loan guarantees to the same company—funding that Republican lawmakers alleged the company wasn’t qualified to receive.

The article concludes:

“The information currently accessible to the public raises the question of whether these companies received approval to use federal lands and taxpayer monies based not on the best value for the American people but the political clout of the recipients,” then-senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said at the time.

Although First Solar’s chairman testified to Congress that the company was “financially strong,” the business was forced to furlough half of its employees at its solar plant near Los Angeles weeks later.

Last year, First Solar paid $350 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit brought by two United Kingdom pension funds, which claimed the company inflated its stock price and misled investors about its finances.

The article does mention that the manufacturing facility is being built in India in order to create a supply chains that do not utilize forced labor. However, that does not answer the question as to why the plant was not built in America.

The Truth About The Jail

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On Tuesday, PJ Media posted an article with a link to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s report on the conditions in the Washington, D.C., jail where the prisoners taken on January 6th are housed.

The article reports:

The political prisoners cheered as they met  (Representatives) Gohmert and Greene. Some cried and all were visibly shaken (they were the only inmates on the tour to cry). They lined up to shake hands with Greene and Gohmert and began chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Takeaways from Greene’s report include:

    • Inmates claim they aren’t allowed to see their lawyers or family members
    • They aren’t allowed to get a haircut unless they are vaccinated. Some use Nair hair remover on their heads. Some keep their hair long.
    • Some of the J6 political prisoners claimed their cells were infested with rats and bedbugs when they first arrived.
    • They claimed the U.S. Marshals Service came through several days before the Green-Gohmert visit to paint and scrub dirt and mold from the showers. There were still visible signs of dirt and mold in the shower section.
    • One inmate told Greene his toilet doesn’t work. He has to wait until he is let out of his cell to use a restroom.
    • The inmates aren’t allowed to attend religious services so they hold their own.
    • Several inmates need medical attention. One has a broken finger. A seventy-one-year-old inmate, Lonnie Leroy Coffman, who hasn’t seen a doctor, watched as his lower forearm has turned purple and his thumb turned black. The other inmates suggested that if anyone can be released, it should be Lonnie.

Please follow the link to the article and the link to the 28-page report on the visit to the prison.

The article notes the beginning of the conclusion to Representative Greene’s report:

The congressional visit to the D.C. jail on November 4 unquestionably proved that there is a twotrack justice system in the United States. This two-tiered system is not based on race, violence, or conviction of crime, but politics.

Some of our government officials need to be sued and put in prison.

Terror In The Tunnel

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On Wednesday American Greatness posted a first-hand account of a woman who was brutally beaten by police in Washington, D.C.,  on January 6th.

The article reports:

Amid video evidence, court filings, and firsthand witness accounts, new questions have emerged about the exact cause of Boyland’s (Rosanne Boyland, a 34-year-old Trump supporter from Georgia) death. A report issued by the D.C. Medical Examiner’s office in April claimed Boyland, a recovering addict, died of an accidental drug overdose. But others in the vicinity of Boyland when she lost consciousness insist her death was caused by law enforcement officers, who deployed a toxic chemical spray and, in some cases, used metal sticks, riot shields, and their own fists against Trump supporters.

White (Victoria White), 39, found herself in the tunnel near Boyland—and her harrowing account describes nothing short of criminal misconduct by still-unidentified members of the D.C. Metropolitan Police department. Further, her experience bolsters allegations that police contributed or directly caused the death of a second unarmed female Trump supporter on January 6.

Like hundreds of thousands of Americans, White traveled from her home to Washington, D.C. to hear President Trump’s speech and protest the results of the rigged 2020 presidential election. A resident of Rochester, Minnesota, White, her daughter, and friends took turns driving so they would arrive in Washington on time. They stayed at the home of one of her friend’s parents in suburban Virginia.

Amid video evidence, court filings, and firsthand witness accounts, new questions have emerged about the exact cause of Boyland’s death. A report issued by the D.C. Medical Examiner’s office in April claimed Boyland, a recovering addict, died of an accidental drug overdose. But others in the vicinity of Boyland when she lost consciousness insist her death was caused by law enforcement officers, who deployed a toxic chemical spray and, in some cases, used metal sticks, riot shields, and their own fists against Trump supporters.

The story continues:

White then saw a man standing on a ledge near a window; as he attempted to break the glass, she began screaming at him. “I yelled, ‘we don’t do that sh*t’ and I grabbed his backpack to pull him off.” (Her account is confirmed by video and the government’s criminal complaint against her.)

The site of that confrontation is directly to the left of the lower west terrace tunnel. Looking for a way out of the dense crowd—she had lost sight of her friend at this point—White pushed her way toward the tunnel shortly after 4 p.m. and squeezed into the front opening.

That’s when she encountered a horror scene.

Grown men were crying, White said, from being doused repeatedly with a noxious chemical gas inside the tight confines of the tunnel. People were being crushed. Cops clad in full riot gear had filled the tunnel with the gas, causing victims to vomit and pass out.

“We were trapped. Police were pushing us out using riot shields and people outside were pushing in. I kept falling. A cop sprayed mace directly into my face.”

Then, she said, she felt the first blow.

It came out of nowhere, White told me. With her back to the line of officers, White tried to stand up but repeated blows to her head by an officer in a white shirt, presumably a D.C. Metro police supervisor, prevented her from regaining her footing.

“Because of my history, I started having flashbacks,” White told me slowly, choking up as she recalled what happened. “I felt like I had felt all those years, the times when I would get hit.” She remained crouched down as blow after blow, first by a stick then someone’s fist, landed on the top of her head and face. At one point, she confronted the abusive officer, reminding him “he took an oath to the Constitution.” Her remarks enraged the officer; he called her a “bitch” and continued the pummeling.

After several minutes, White was brought out of the tunnel by another officer. Her jacket, which she tied around her waist in the heated tunnel and contained her cell phone and money, was gone. So were her shoes. She was drenched in chemical spray.

The article concludes:

A motion filed last month by Joseph McBride, her new attorney, in the case of Ryan Nichols (another January 6 client of McBride’s), provided more explicit details related to the attack on White. McBride viewed three hours of surveillance footage recorded by security cameras inside the tunnel on January 6; that video remains under a protective order for now.

According to McBride, the supervisor hit White at least 13 times with the metal stick and at least five times in her face with his fist. He then “spears and pokes [White] with his baton about the head, neck, and face so as to inflict maximum pain,” McBride wrote. This happened as White tried to escape the tunnel numerous times. Another officer joined in and “starts beating [White] in the head with his baton, landing twelve strikes in seven seconds.”

White’s head was bleeding; she was covered in red welts.

How White survived is anyone’s guess. “It’s a miracle,” she told me. “I could have died.”

McBride is petitioning the court to remove the protective order so the American people can see what happened inside the tunnel on January 6. The Press Coalition, representing 16 major news corporations, has joined McBride’s request to make the three-hour video public. Biden’s Justice Department has until Friday to respond. 

Please follow the link to read the entire article. This shouldn’t happen in America.

Destroying America’s Foundation

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The basic foundation of any western society is the family. Unfortunately many in the political left have been on a mission to destroy the American family since the 1960’s. On Wednesday The Daily Wire posted an article about the status of the two-parent family in America.

The article reports:

Children need a mother and a father — a context that more American youth than ever are lacking.

Among the 130 million households in the United States, only 17.8% feature married parents with children — down from over 40% in 1970, according to the Census Bureau.

The article quotes the Daily Mail:

There are currently just 23.1 million American homes with those ‘nuclear families,’ which is the fewest since 1959. The reasons given for the drop include the pandemic delaying marriage and a continued decline in birth rate.

The average age of a woman at her first marriage is now 28.6 years. In the 1950s and 60s, women typically married at 20.4 years old. The average age for men to marry for the first time in 2021 was 30.4 years old. America’s fertility rate dropped to 55.4 births per 1,000 in the second quarter of 2021, down from 58.5 in the same period of 2019.

Americans are also living alone at a higher rate than they used to. The percentage of adults in the US living with a spouse was 50 percent, down from 52 percent 10 years ago. Over 37 million adults lived alone in early 2021, up from 33 million in 2011. As far back as 1960, 87 percent of adults lived with a spouse.

Oddly enough, there is a government program that is related to this decline:

When the War on Poverty began paying single mothers, the number of single mothers increased. When the government subsidizes something, that something increases. Television also played a role in glamorizing single-parent families. Murphy Brown was a prime example.

The article at The Daily Wire also notes:

Analysts and commentators have pointed toward declining rates of religiosity, higher living expenses, the permutation of LGBTQ ideology, and even climate alarmism to explain the erosion of the American family. Indeed, the United States economy is already feeling pressure from the nation’s demographic crisis — for example, through the looming insolvency of Social Security and other programs.

I would suggest that a decline in acceptance of the basic values that America embraced before the 1970’s also plays a major role. Again, the culture has downplayed the importance of fathers and the role of mothers in raising their children. Children who grow up in stable two-parent homes have a much better chance of being successful and well-adjusted than children who grow up fatherless.

A Super-Spreader Event Among The Vaccinated

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There are some real questions as to how effective the coronavirus vaccines actually are. Supposedly the vaccine will not prevent you from getting the coronavirus, but it will protect you from a severe case of the disease. Evidently, getting the vaccine does not prevent you from spreading the disease.

On Tuesday The New York Post reported the following:

A total of 68 doctors and nurses who work at a Spanish hospital have tested positive for COVID-19 since attending a massive Christmas party last week, officials said Monday.

The infected medics work in the intensive care unit at University Regional Hospital in Malaga. They were all present at the Dec. 1 celebration that had 173 attendees, according to the Andalusian regional government.

The source of the outbreak was still under investigation and authorities said a large meal for hospital staff could also be to blame.

The cases are all considered mild.

All the staffers who tested positive had either received their third booster vaccines or antigen tests before the party.

It would be interesting to know how many people who attended that event did not develop the coronavirus. How many people at the event had natural immunity from having and recovering from the coronavirus?

The vaccines for the coronavirus may result in the individual who received the vaccine having a milder case of the virus. However, it is becoming obvious that the vaccine does not prevent the disease or prevent the spread of the disease. The vaccine does not actually offer protection from getting the disease. So why are the ‘powers that be’ so anxious for everyone to get the vaccine? That is the question I want answered.

The Search For Transparency

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On Wednesday, NewsMax posted an article about the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) timeline in releasing data on the Pfizer vaccine.  The FDA has requested 75 years to produce the data.

The article reports:

Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the data, which the FDA at first said would take 55 years to produce at 500 pages per month for the entire 329,000 page cache of documents.

Now the FDA is asking a judge to give it 75 years to produce the data, saying there’s over 59,000 more pages than weren’t mentioned in the first request. That would take the full release to 2096, wrote Aaron Siri, a lawyer working on the case.

“If you find what you are reading difficult to believe — that is because it is dystopian for the government to give Pfizer billions, mandate Americans to take its product, prohibit Americans from suing for harms, but yet refuse to let Americans see the data underlying its licensure,” he wrote.

The medical group is suing to speed things up.

The group says the data should be made public quickly because the FDA spent only 108 days reviewing it before granting emergency use authorization to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — and because vaccine mandates are being issued by local and federal entities, Epoch Times reported.

The article concludes:

On Dec. 2, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., introduced a bill calling for the head of the FDA to release all records about the vaccine in 100 days.

“Since the Biden administration is hell-bent on forcing these vaccine mandates on us, the public has every right to know how this vaccine was approved, especially in such a short amount of time,” he said in a statement. “After all, the FDA managed to consider all 329,000 pages of data and grant emergency approval of the Pfizer vaccine within just 108 days.”

The article cites what I think is one of the most important issues here:

that is because it is dystopian for the government to give Pfizer billions, mandate Americans to take its product, prohibit Americans from suing for harms, but yet refuse to let Americans see the data underlying its licensure

That should not happen in a free country.

 

Vaccine Mandates In America

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On Wednesday One America News reported that Senator Mike Braun (R-Ind.) has stated that a number of Democrats will be joining the efforts to strike down the vaccine mandates planned by the Biden administration. The Senator stated, “It gets every senator, every House member on record, so I think it’s going to make it tough for Biden to keep pushing forward when it was a bad idea to begin with.” We need to get every senator and every House member on the record for every vote. Transparency is part of the solution to our currently run-amok government.

The Senator also stated, “Any swing state senator, anybody that is listening to their people back home…this doesn’t poll when its vaccine or job and even when you say vaccine or get tested for a job, most of the people who are digging in, regardless of their reasons, aren’t viewing it as an option.”

The article concludes:

Braun cited a poll by Axios that found only 14 percent of Americans support vaccine mandates. He also highlighted the ongoing litigation to outlaw Biden’s mandates.

Opposing the mandates does not mean that you oppose the vaccine. It simply means that you oppose the concept of forcing people to take a shot they do not want. Also, the mandates make no allowance for natural immunity. If you are ‘following the science,’ that allowance needs to be made.

 

Does The Government Have The Right To Mandate Vaccines?

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On Saturday, The American Thinker posted an article about events in Europe surrounding mandatory vaccines.

The article notes six basic provisions of the Nuremberg Code which was enacted after World War II to prevent medical experiments on people without their consent.

These are the provisions:

    1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. [This includes the consent being free of duress.]

[snip]

    1. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
    2. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
    3. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
    4. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.

The Covid vaccine is an experimental vaccine. It has not even gone through a three-year-trial period to begin to establish any long-term effects.

The article continues:

In Austria, where vaccines will soon be mandatory, people must show their papers.  Germany is planning to go down this path, too.  In Slovenia and Dhanbad, India, you cannot get gas for your car unless you’re vaccinated.  In Greece, they fine unvaccinated people over $100 per month.  In Australia’s Northern Territory, there are concentration camps for people who might have COVID.  And of course, tens of thousands of Americans are losing their jobs for refusing to get the jab.

It’s important to remember that this vaccine fanaticism exists even though it’s unquestionable now that people who are vaccinated can both catch COVID and infect others.  The vaccines have, at best, a minimal effect on the omicron variant (which hasn’t stopped Biden and Fauci from doubling down on vaccine demands), something we know because so many of the newly diagnosed cases of the omicron variant are in vaccinated people.

So: A disease that’s eminently treatable; a vaccine that’s not very effective, especially against the omicron variant; the same vaccine has unusually high risks; and government officials are high on the drug of totalitarianism.

Into this environment steps Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the E.U. commission, who wants all of Europe to follow Austria’s path with forced vaccinations, never mind that doing so would mean vaccinating unwilling people, violating the Nuremberg Code:

European Union countries should consider mandatory vaccination to combat Covid and the Omicron variant, the head of its Commission has said.

The article concludes:

In March 2020, the world’s political leaders were trying their best in an information vacuum. Now, however, we are seeing an Iron Curtain of COVID totalitarianism falling across the Western world — and we’d better say “no” before the dark night of fascism finally falls on America, too.

Losing Our Competitive Edge

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American Education has not been improving over the past few decades. Test scores have been going down, and America’s ranking among the other countries in the world has gone down.

According to an article posted on February 28, 2021, at a website called The Balance:

The United States is not investing as much in human capital as other developed countries. As a result, its comparative advantage is falling behind. For example, U.S. students’ math skills have remained stagnant for decades.1

This means they are falling behind many other countries, such as Japan, Poland, and Ireland, which have greatly improved. In fact, U.S. test scores are now below the global average. 

…The Program for International Student Assessment tests 15-year-old students around the world and is administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2018, when the test was last administered, the U.S. placed 11th out of 79 countries in science. It did worse in math, ranking 30th.2 

The U.S. scored 478 in math, below the OECD average of 489. That’s well below the scores of the top five, all of which were Asian nations: Singapore at 569, Macao at 555, Hong Kong at 551, Taiwan at 531, and Japan at 527. China was not included in this ranking, since only four provinces participated.

The article implies that this is the result of not spending enough money on education. I disagree, but I cited the article because I wanted to post some numbers to prepare you for what I am about to share.

On Monday, Fox News posted an article about California’s efforts to reform mathematics education in the name of social justice.

The article reports:

Hundreds of highly distinguished science and math professors have signed an open letter expressing “urgent concern” over California’s efforts to reform mathematics education in the name of social justice.

The letter, signed by 597 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals, said the California Department of Education’s (CDE) proposed new mathematics framework will aim to reduce achievement gaps by limiting the availability of advanced mathematical courses to middle schoolers and beginning high schoolers, making it more challenging for students to succeed in STEM at college.

Denying access to accelerated courses to advanced students will not improve the education of anyone. Different people have different talents, and allowing them to pursue those talents is helpful to all concerned. I can assure you that China and Russia are not limiting the progress of their advanced students.

The article notes:

The signatories demanded that all students, regardless of background, have access to a math curriculum “with precision and rigor,” and that students be offered multiple pathways to explore mathematics at varying grade levels of middle and high school.

“Far from being deliberately held back, all students should have the opportunity to be nurtured and challenged to fulfill their potential,” the letter said. “This is not only for their own benefit but also for society and the nation’s economic competitiveness.”

The open letter echoes similar concerns in an open letter over the summer, signed by more than 1,100 Californians working in science and technology, who argued it is “immoral and foolish to intentionally hold back the intellectual growth of students by forcing them to waste time in unchallenging classes.”

Bright students in unchallenging classes lose interest in school and tend not to continue their education. The California reform proposal is a recipe for disaster.

 

 

 

Not Surprising

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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.

 

The Real Numbers

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On Monday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the crisis at America’s southern border.

The article reports:

Newly revealed Immigration and Customs Enforcement data show that deportations have dropped 90% under the Biden administration, noted for its open-border policies and red tape tying the hands of immigration agents.

What’s more, removals of illegal immigrants convicted of murder, rape, and arson have experienced a dramatic drop from pre-pandemic policies put in place by the Trump administration, which put a high priority on them.

The new data were unveiled today by the Center for Immigration Studies and policy director Jessica M. Vaughan, known for her ties to ICE and Border Patrol officials. She told us that President Joe Biden’s “deliberate refusal to enforce immigration laws is one of the most clueless and egregious acts of negligence in modern government history.”

It is no surprise that deportations are down, though the level is shocking, she said in her report. When Biden came to the Oval Office, he moved swiftly to dismantle former President Donald Trump’s border policies, which had greatly slowed the flow of illegal migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes a chart showing the drop in the number of deportations and the report by the Center for Immigration Studies. It makes no sense to stop deporting illegal aliens who have committed crimes in America. If the liberals in Congress and some of our states are so determined to empty out our prisons, it seems as if they might actually want to send dangerous criminals back to where they came from.

When The Numbers Do Not Align With The Words

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On Sunday, The Blaze posted an article about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. At the time the tax cut was passed, Democrats loudly professed that the bill was only ‘tax cuts for the rich.’ The article illustrates the fallacy of that claim by reporting actual numbers. You can follow the link above to the article to read some of the ridiculous claims made by Democrat leaders.

After detailing some of the claims made by leading Democrats, the article reports:

However, new analysis shows the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts benefited middle-income and working-class Americans the most. The Heartland Institute — a free-market think tank — analyzed data from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The analysis declared that assertions made by Democrats about the GOP’s tax cut law were incorrect.

The Heartland Institute examined IRS data from 2017 to 2018, the first year the tax cuts went into effect.

“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced average effective income tax rates for filers in every one of the IRS’s income brackets, with the largest benefits going to lower- and middle-income households,” the report stated.

“For example, after accounting for all tax deductions and credits, filers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $40,000 to $50,000 received an average tax cut of 18.2 percent,” the Heartland Institute said.

“The IRS data further show that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act appeared to have a strong upward effect on economic mobility,” the report noted. “The number of filers with an adjusted gross income of $1 to $25,000 decreased by more than 2 million in just one year, while the number of households reporting incomes higher than $25,000 increased in every income bracket.”

The article concludes:

The Heartland Institute concluded, “The available evidence is clear: Based on tax data from 2017 and 2018, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced taxes for the vast majority of filers, led to substantial improvements in upward economic mobility, and disproportionately benefited working- and middle-class households, many of which experienced tax cuts topping 18 percent to 20 percent.”

Contrast the above with one of the provisions in The Build Back Better Bill. That bill will raise the SALT (state and local tax) deduction to $80,000. That means that you can deduct up to $80,000 in state and local taxes from your federal income tax. The tax plan instituted under President Trump limited that deduction to $10,000. Do you honestly know any middle class Americans who pay $80,000 in state and local taxes? Raising the SALT tax limit to $80,000 is indeed a tax cut for the rich.

Poetic Justice

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On Monday, The Western Journal posted an article about the Jussie Smollett case. It seems that one of the really critical mistakes Mr. Smollett made in staging his fake hate crime was one that as an actor he should have easily avoided.

The article reports:

It’s surprising, even for a man who’s spent so much of his career in front of a camera, that Jussie Smollett was upset the most infamous moment in his life wasn’t caught on camera.

Was it his undoing? Would it have led to his downfall sooner? It’s unclear, but prosecutors say one thing foiled Smollett’s original plan to create the perfect “hate crime” — the direction of a camera on the street.

(The Western Journal was one of the first outlets to point out the holes of the Smollett case in 2019 — and we kept fighting the system after he received little more than a slap on the wrist from prosecutors who wanted the case to go away.

In testimony last week, Chicago police Detective Kimberly Murray told the court the former “Empire” actor seemed to be “upset” when he was told the attack hadn’t been recorded on camera, according to WMAQ-TV.

Smollett, who had been questioned by Murray on the morning he reported the January 2019 incident, said two men had beat him up in a racist, homophobic attack while he was returning from a sandwich run. He’s now standing trial for six counts of felony disorderly conduct after reporting what’s alleged to be a hate crime hoax — one he orchestrated thinking there would be a camera there to record it.

Murray, according to WMAQ, “said Smollett was ‘upset’ when she told him a surveillance camera in the area didn’t capture the alleged attack because it was pointed away from the scene. Murray said she explained to the actor that the cover on the pod camera makes it impossible to know which way it is pointing.”

The real clue that the attack was staged was Mr. Smollett’s claim that his attackers yelled, “This is MAGA country!” No one in Chicago who values his life is going to yell that–even if he believes it!

A True Illustration Of Gaslighting

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On Saturday, The New York Post posted an article with the following headline, “Biden’s top aide Ron Klain complains press coverage is too negative.” Wow. I guess he would have been really unhappy during the Trump administration with the coverage of President Trump. The Trump children were accused of all sorts of illegal activities, but the accusations were proven false. No one in the media seems to be accusing Hunter Biden of anything even though there is evidence out there that has been proven true.

The article reports:

He’s the Whine House Chief of Staff.

President Biden’s top aide, Ron Klain, took to Twitter Saturday to decry press coverage of his boss.

The chief of staff — known to insiders as the “Prime Minister” for his outsize influence inside the West Wing — shared an opinion essay from the Washington Post arguing that Biden was receiving worse coverage than former President Trump.

The piece from Post opinion columnist Dana Milbank warned that “My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.”

Milbank said he came to the conclusion after an analysis of more than 200,000 articles from 65 news organizations by the information company FiscalNote.

“We need a skeptical, independent press. But how about being partisans for democracy? The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative,” Milbank carped.

Klain agreed. “Submitted for your consideration,” he said linking to the piece.

It’s amazing to me that anyone with a brain can call President Trump authoritarian and call the Biden administration self-governance. By what authority did President Biden shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline? By what authority did President Biden try to institute vaccine mandates? By what authority will President Biden attempt to ban unvaccinated Americans from airplanes and trains (coming soon)? By what authority will Americans be required to have vaccine passports (coming soon–article here). Americans have always been allowed to travel freely within the country. I fear that will be coming to an end under the Biden administration. That is much more of an authoritarian government than the self-governance that Mr. Klain professes to support.

When I first saw this headline, I thought it was from The Babylon Bee.