Monthly Archives: June 2022

Seventy-Eight Years Ago

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Seventy-eight years ago, some very nervous young (and not so young) men were boarding boats in England in preparation for an invasion of France. My father was one of the men who landed at Utah Beach.

A website called allthatsinteresting reports:

Brig. Gen. Teddy Roosevelt Jr. — the eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt — landed with the first wave of soldiers at Utah Beach. After personally scouting the area, he determined that their location was better, as there were fewer German defenses.

“We’ll start the war from right here!” he stated, and he rerouted the rest of the landings to his location.

Roosevelt led the 8th Infantry despite using a cane – he had arthritis and a bad heart. Maj. Gen. Barton, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, later recalled meeting Roosevelt on the beach:

While I was mentally framing [orders], Ted Roosevelt came up. He had landed with the first wave, had put my troops across the beach, and had a perfect picture (just as Roosevelt had earlier promised if allowed to go ashore with the first wave) of the entire situation. I loved Ted. When I finally agreed to his landing with the first wave, I felt sure he would be killed. When I had bade him goodbye, I never expected to see him alive. You can imagine then the emotion with which I greeted him when he came out to meet me [near La Grande Dune]. He was bursting with information.

That’s called courage and leadership.

A website called business insider posted the following in 2012:

On this day 68 years ago, nearly 3 million Allied troops readied themselves for one of the greatest military operations of world history.

D-Day. And the push that led to Hitler’s defeat.

At least 160,000 of those troops landed on the shores of Normandy, France. As they stormed the beaches, General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s confident words summed up the incredible significance of their mission:

“You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you,” he wrote in a famous letter sent to troops before the assault. 

“We will accept nothing less than full victory! Good Luck!”

But there was another letter General Eisenhower wrote in case the operation failed:

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

Great leaders accept responsibility for their failures as well as their successes.

 

What Are We Teaching Our Children?

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On Sunday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about an event held Friday in a Texas gay bar. The event was called Drag the Kids to Pride. Follow the link at your own risk. You have been warned. The article includes two short videos of events at the bar. The activities involved are in no way suitable for the young children in attendance.

The article concludes:

One cannot imagine how parents can expose their young children to such nonsense. In general, children should be pulled out of the inept and failing public schools, which have now added perverse indoctrination to their other sins. But when parents go out of their way to inflict perversity on their kids, one can only despair.

I have no problem with teaching older children to be respectful of people who have an alternative lifestyle (yes, homosexuality is an alternative lifestyle) or to be respectful of their peers who struggle with gender dysphoria. However, these are lifestyles that are not mainstream and should not be encouraged to become mainstream. Before the growth of social media, gender dysphoria was very rare and generally young children outgrew it without any treatment. Unfortunately, social media has created an image of transgender as ‘cool’ and many teenagers having trouble adjusting to puberty are being caught up in the social pressure. This is a problem that will not in any way be helped by taking young children to a Drag the Kids to Pride event.

 

A Very Ironic Statement

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The school shooting in Texas was a horrible thing. Most Americans are still processing the fact that it happened. Meanwhile, the political class is using it as an excuse to  undermine one of the basic tenets of our Constitution. That’s not totally unexpected, but the irony in some of the statements being made is amazing.

On Friday, CNS News posted an article that included an amazing quote from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

The article reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) spoke in San Francisco at a “Wear Orange” event, where she advocated the enactment of gun-control legislation and said: “[L]et all of us do everything we can for the survival of our children.”

“Wear Orange” is a movement to prevent gun violence.

Does anyone see the irony in that statement?

According to a USA Today article from May 2022:

In 2019 at least 629,898 abortions were reported in the United States, according to the CDC.

What about the survival of those children?

In early June 2021, CBS News reported:

More Than 120 Kids Under 18 Have Been Shot In Chicago So Far This Year, In A Crisis With Wide-Ranging Effects

It should be noted that Chicago has some on the strictest gun laws in America. Some of Chicago’s gun laws include:

  • You must be 21 years old or older
  • You must possess a firearm owner’s identification card (FOID)
  • You must have a concealed carry license if you intend to remove your gun from your home

If these laws do not prevent the murder of children in Chicago, why does Congress think they will prevent the murder of children across the country? It should also be noted that criminals who intend to use a gun to commit a crime are not generally interested in following gun laws. All Congress would accomplish if they were able to get their gun-control laws passed would be to disarm law-abiding Americans. That alone will put more children and adults at risk.

It should also be noted that the catch phrase being used to sell this legislation to the American public is ‘weapons of war.’ Those wanting to take the gun rights away from Americans avoid defining ‘weapons of war,’ but the term sounds scary, so they keep using it.

The Company Town

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On Saturday, American Greatness posted an article about how Washington, D.C., currently functions (or does not function). The article is titled, “Dismantle the D.C. Company Town.” What a great idea.

The article reports:

Gertrude Stein famously warned that it was important to know how far to go when going too far. 

It pains me to admit that Democrats seem to have a far better sense of all that than do Republicans. Perhaps it’s because Democrats have a visceral appreciation of William Hazlitt’s observation that “those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.” The Democrats, that is to say, long ago became expert at the game of holding their opponents to standards that they themselves violate not just with impunity but with ostentatious glee. 

The news last week that Michael Sussmann was found not guilty by a D.C. jury of his ideological peers was another thumb in the eye of the American so-called system of justice. Scary-looking super-cop John Durham had indicted Sussmann for the same thing that brought down Trump’s flash-in-the-pan National Security Advisor Mike Flynn—lying to the FBI—but no one who has been paying attention thought the two men would be treated the same way. Flynn was close to Donald Trump, therefore he must be considered a sacrificial beast, someone to be made an example of, a pariah. And so he was. 

Sussmann, by contrast, was a covert employee of the Hillary Clinton campaign. He helped get the Russian Collusion Delusion going and lied to the FBI in the process. But he was on the side of the regime party, so, as Jonathan Turley observed as the Sussmann case unfolded, he was afforded every consideration while Flynn found himself ruined. In this tale of two trials, we got a textbook illustration of how you can deploy a two-tier system of justice in which, as George Orwell put it in Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. 

The article also notes the recent arrest of Peter Navarro:

Sussmann joins a long list of Hillary cronies and Department of Justice lackeys (but I repeat myself). In any just world Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Comey, Kevin Clinesmith, Loretta Lynch, and indeed Hillary herself would be behind bars. But this is our world, not any just world. 

And here’s some salt to rub in the wound. Peter Navarro, a former Trump economic advisor, was held in contempt of Congress because he refused to hand over documents to the Kangaroo Court, er . . . the Democrat-controlled January 6 inquisition. Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s self-declared “wingman” and Attorney General was also held in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over documents. But not to worry. As CNN reported soon after the affront, “The White House and the Justice Department made clear Friday what had been expected all along: Attorney General Eric Holder will not face criminal prosecution under the contempt of Congress citation passed by the U.S. House.”

The article concludes:

In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein says “all philosophical problems have the form ‘I have lost my way.’” The first response to being lost should be to retrace one’s steps in order to escape the maze. It’s time that Americans faced up to the reality that their governing apparat is a corrupt, self-engorging Leviathan. This is not, or not only, a partisan issue. Sure, Washington, D.C. is a fully paid-up concession of the Democratic Party, regularly voting some 93 to 95 percent Democratic. Sussmann was never going to be convicted there.

So a preliminary antiseptic, as I have argued elsewhere, would be to downgrade Washington in the political metabolism of the country. Indeed, I think the capital, if not the Capitol, ought to be dispersed. Washington, D.C., could continue to function as what it has already in part become: a sort of stage set where functionaries preen and simper before the cameras of a preposterous media and press corps. 

Donald Trump made a few half-hearted stabs at dismantling the lumbering machine that is the Washington establishment, but that seems like a long time ago and, besides, the swamp closed almost instantly to reassert its prerogatives. In his next term, however, he should make the destruction of the Washington machine one of his highest priorities. It won’t be easy. To be frank, I am not sure, absent some world-shaking calamity, it is even possible. But it is nevertheless necessary if anything resembling the republic as envisioned by the founders is to be salvaged.

We have wandered far from the republic the Founding Fathers created. I pray it is not too late to get it back.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

Laws Have Consequences

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On Saturday, Hot Air posted an article about a recent trend in Washington State.

The article reports:

Last July, a new law went into effect in Washington state that was described as “police reform.” House Bill 1054 made significant changes in how the police are allowed to do their jobs. Police unions had been protesting the measure, saying that it would negatively impact their ability to control crime, but the state’s Democrats cheered the bill as a way to bring more “equity” into the system. One of the changes put in place by the bill was a rule saying the police officers were no longer allowed to engage in high-speed chases except in very limited circumstances. In other words, if the cops see a driver doing something wrong and turn on their sirens and flashers but the motorist doesn’t pull over, there isn’t much they can do about it. To the great surprise of nobody with an IQ higher than tepid water, motorists have begun ignoring the police in increasing numbers and simply refusing to pull over.

I guess it’s equity if no one is held responsible for any lawbreaking while driving.

The article continues:

The police aren’t allowed to give chase unless there is an increased bar of “reasonable suspicion” that the driver is impaired or there is “probable cause” to believe that the driver had committed a violent crime or sexual assault. This has basically put an end to high-speed pursuits because if they guess wrong, they won’t wind up getting a conviction anyway and the department could be tied up in endless lawsuits.

The article concludes:

This was all entirely predictable and, in fact, state Republicans and police unions did predict it last year. This shouldn’t have required a rocket scientist to figure it out. Your average, law-abiding citizen who may have committed a minor traffic infraction is probably still going to pull over when the police hit their lights. But if you know you are driving while intoxicated or you’ve stolen a car or have outstanding warrants, why would you pull over for the cops when you know they can’t chase you? Criminals will clearly be happy to risk hitting the gas and making a clean getaway rather than being hauled off to jail.

This is yet another item in a long list of examples of “police reform” going on around the nation. When you reduce the disincentive for committing a particular crime, you get more of that type of crime. When you announce that the cops can no longer chase you, criminals will flee since they have nothing to lose. And we’re talking about a lot more than just your random person who had a few too many beers. Seemingly random traffic stops are one of the most common ways that people with outstanding warrants wind up being taken into custody. That tool is now unavailable to the police in Washington in most cases, so there are going to be more wanted fugitives out there roaming the roads.

The legislators in Washington State need an infusion of common sense.

Someone Who Was There

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On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article by Patrick Neville, who was a student at Columbine High School who survived the shooting there in 1999.

Please follow the link to read the entire article, but I will post a few highlights here:

I consider myself one of the lucky ones as I had walked by the propane tank bombs that never exploded at Columbine High School. My friends weren’t as lucky. As parents gathered at my old elementary school to pick up their children, I will never forget the look of worry and desperation as my friend’s dad asked me, “Pat, have you seen him?” This father coached my soccer team growing up. He was always calm, direct and confident. He wasn’t that day, and he would never see his son alive again.

This was more than 23 years ago. At Columbine, the perpetrators used pipe bombs and firearms, (some obtained illegally) and tried to kill many more with propane tanks. This happened in the middle of the assault weapons ban, mind you.

…While some have learned lessons from the tragedy, many politicians have not. The assault weapons ban, and other “gun control” measures didn’t save my friends, nor did a flashy sign declaring my school a “gun free zone.” A brave and heroic teacher did save many lives at my school. Yet, after every tragedy like this, Democrats immediately start beating the gun control drum. Sadly, many Republicans start looking for gun control policies to say they “did something.” They need to start looking through a different lens. Instead of restrictions and control, they need to empower citizens, teachers and parents to solve this problem.

An overwhelming amount of mass shootings occur in places where citizens are banned from carrying firearms. As more and more people realize this is a problem, states have started to adopt policies to allow people to equip themselves to protect our children.

The article concludes:

When I shop for a car, I look for lots of things, but one of the most important to me is making sure it has features that will protect my most precious cargo, my children. The car market has responded to parents like me by providing all sorts of safety features. If we had more school choice the education environment would be different. Schools could have SROs or not based on market signals. Each school could feature different safety measures, whether site security or trained staff, and they could incentivize staff to go through the training.

Instead of seeing parents with the look of worry and desperation, I want to see parents with the look of being empowered. Empowered about restoring our God-given, constitutional rights and duties to protect ourselves, our families and our communities. We all need to work together to reverse the alarming trend of mass shootings, and take meaningful measures that will secure our schools, places of worship, and other vulnerable spaces that are often exploited by the worst of humanity. I, for one, will never stop working on finding solutions to this problem.

Common sense from someone who was there.

Let The Charges Begin

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Yesterday, NewsMax reported that an Arizona woman has been found guilty in a ballot collecting scheme in Arizona.

The article reports:

An Arizona woman accused of illegally collecting early ballots in the 2020 primary election pleaded guilty Thursday in an agreement with state prosecutors that saw the more serious forgery and conspiracy charges dismissed and limited any potential for a lengthy prison sentence.

Guillermina Fuentes, 66, could get probation for running what Arizona attorney general’s office investigators said was a sophisticated operation using her status as a well-known Democrat operative in the border city of San Luis to persuade voters to let her gather and in some cases fill out their ballots.

Prosecutors were apparently unable to prove the most serious charges, dropping three felony counts alleging that Fuentes filled out one voter’s ballot and forged signatures on some of the four ballots she illegally returned for people who were not family members.

Admittedly, the prosecutors did not prove the more serious charges, but the question remains as to exactly how many ballots she legally returned versus how many ballots she illegally returned.

The article notes:

Attorney general’s office investigation records obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request show that fewer than a dozen ballots could be linked to Fuentes, not enough to make a difference in all but the tightest local races.

The office of Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican seeking his party’s U.S. Senate nomination, provided the records after delays of more than 15 months.

It is the only case ever brought by the attorney general under the 2016 “ballot harvesting” law, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

Investigators wrote that it appeared Fuentes used her position as a powerful figure in the heavily Mexican American community to get people to give her or others their ballots to return to the polls. Fuentes and her co-defendant were seen with several mail-in envelopes outside a cultural center in San Luis on the day of the 2020 primary election, the reports show. The ballots were taken inside and dropped in a ballot box.

She was videotaped by a write-in candidate who called the Yuma County sheriff. The reports said the video showed her marking at least one ballot, but that charge was among those dropped.

I am more than a little skeptical of some of the details provided in this article. If they had films of her marking a ballot, why did they drop the charges? My feeling is that this is simply the tip of the iceberg and our fearless leaders are reluctant to pursue it too aggressively for fear of what they might uncover. The good news is that there are a few non-political private groups that are working toward uncovering the fraud in the 2020 election.

Our Southern Border

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On June 2nd, Breitbart reported the following:

U.S. border officials are quietly bussing a vast flood of wage-cutting, rent-spiking migrants into Americans’ towns and cities, despite the court-ordered preservation of the Title 42 barrier.

“It’s like 8,000 to 9,000 a day now,” and there are more on the way, migration monitor Todd Bensman told Breitbart News.

U.S. border chief Alejandro Mayorkas and his pro-migration deputies are using the Title 42 barrier to send some Central American single men and families back to Mexico. But Mayorkas is cutting loopholes in the barrier to place everyone else on government-funded buses to cities and towns around the United States, said Bensman, who works for the Center for Immigration Studies.

They’re [letting in] people from the Middle East, Asia, Africa — the extra-continentals — and also from Cuba and South America. They’re letting in Peruvians — about 500 a week now. They’re letting in Ecuadorians and tons and tons of Venezuelans.

The article describes the shelter system that has been set up in America for these illegal immigrants:

The U.S. shelter network is a northern mirror of the cartels’ southern network of camps, bus stations, and housing created to transport migrants up through Mexico to the U.S. border.

The northern-side network has been created by a variety of U.S. nonprofits that are funded by donations from pro-migration business elites, progressive charities, and government contracts. They form a nationwide catch-and-release network that helps the U.S. government and cartels smuggle the indebted migrants into Americans’ jobs without exposure from national TV broadcasters.

The number of illegal immigrants coming across the border has a detrimental impact on the wages of Americans:

The elite-delivered flood of migrant workers aids employers, investors, and wealthy professionals. But it imposes much damage on many millions of working-class Americans, who are forced to accept lower wages, higher rents, crowded schools, and lower political status in their own homeland.

That wage loss has been lauded by business interests, such as Goldman Sachs, and is acknowledged by many business groups and even by Biden’s White House advisors. The flood of cheap labor is expected to reinflate the post-1990 Cheap Labor Bubble that has suppressed wages for tens of millions of ordinary Americans. The Wall Street-boosting bubble was deflated by President Donald Trump’s low-migration/high-wage policies in 2020 and 2021.

Migration advocates also celebrate the displacement of Americans in their own country. “The phenomenon of [population] replacement, writ large, is America, and has been from the beginning, sometimes by force, mostly by choice,” said a May 17 op-ed in the New York Times. “What the far right calls “replacement” is better described as renewal.”

Progressives claim that the migrants will offset the economic damage to ordinary Americans by buying food and services from Americans — despite the evidence of minimal wage growth since 1990. ‘The average effect, at all skill levels, is nothing in the short term,” said Michael Clemens, a migration expert at the Center for Global Development.

Please follow the link to read the entire article.

This is not a problem created by one political party–the Republicans are as guilty as the Democrats. The Chamber-of-Commerce Republicans love the cheap labor that the illegal immigrants provide. Open borders is a policy supported by people in both political parties who are part of the Washington swamp. The Republicans (and the Democrats) have had multiple opportunities to solve the crisis at the southern border AND the illegal immigration crisis. Both parties have chosen not to solve the problem.

More Questions Than Answers

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The mainstream media reported very little about the actual testimony in the trial of Michael Sussmann. That might have been by design. There were a number of things that were mentioned in the testimonies of various witnesses that remind us of previous events where questioning those events was considered a “conspiracy theory.” It seems as if many of those “conspiracy theories” might need reexamination.

On Thursday, The Epoch Times posted an article about some of that testimony.

The article reports:

A lawyer representing Democrats proposed alterations to an FBI statement on the hacking of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to avoid undermining the narrative from his clients, according to emails released as part of the trial of former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann.

FBI officials in mid-2016 were drafting a statement regarding an alleged intrusion into the DCCC network and sent the draft to Sussmann, a lawyer representing the DCCC, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and other Democrats.

Jim Trainor, assistant director for the FBI Cyber Division, wrote to Sussmann on July 29, 2016: “Michael—our press office is once again getting a ton of calls on the DCCC matter. A draft response is provided below. Wanted to get your thoughts on this prior to sending out.”

Sussmann zeroed in on the first sentence, which he said seemed to undermine what the DCCC was saying about the reported intrusion.

“The draft you sent says only that the FBI is aware of media reports; it does not say that the FBI is aware of the intrusion that the DCCC reported. Indeed, it refers only to a ‘possible’ cyber intrusion and in that way undermines what the DCCC said in its statement (or at least calls into question what the DCCC said),’” Sussmann said.

Sussmann proposed changing the press release from saying the FBI is aware of reporting on “a possible cyber instruction involving the DCCC” to saying the bureau “is aware of the cyber intrusion involving the DCCC that has been reported in the media and the FBI has been working to determine the nature and scope of the matter.”

There has been speculation that the intrusion into the DCCC came from Seth Rich, who was later murdered in Washington. Part of the basis for that speculation is the fact that the computer gurus who understand how data is transferred and how fast data is transferred have stated that the only way the large amount of data involved could have been transferred would be through a fire stick by someone on the inside.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. There are an awful lot of unanswered questions about the activities of the DCCC and the DNC during the 2016 election.

Spying On Congress

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On Thursday, Just the News reported that the charges against the U.S. Capitol Police for illegally spying on a Congressman have been proven valid.

The article reports:

An internal investigation has confirmed Capitol Police entered Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls’ office and photographed a whiteboard containing his sensitive legislative plans, concluding the officer who took the picture exercised “questionable judgment” and the department lacked policies and training to avoid an unnecessary intrusion on lawmakers’ constitutionally protected work.

…Nehls told Just the News on Thursday night he was “a little disappointed” the internal probe did not resolve a key factual question about the officer’s claim of why he entered the congressman’s office over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

He said the failure to resolve that key question and the surfacing of other unusual facts turned up during the internal probe only heightened his fears that Capitol Police targeted him for investigation for political reasons related to his criticism of the Democrat-led Jan. 6 committee investigation.

“I personally believe that Nancy Pelosi has weaponized the U.S. Capitol Police as her own investigations unit,” Nehls said in an interview with the “Just the News, Not Noise” television show. “She goes after anybody that has dissenting point of views. I obviously have been a very vocal critic of the January 6th committee and the events of January 6.”

The Capitol Police provided a statement to Just the News that did not address the IG’s criticisms of the officer or the department but strongly insisted Nehls was never under criminal investigation and that any suggestion to the contrary only undermined the police force.

The article concludes:

The internal probe determined it was the only time the officer had ever used his department-issued smart phone to take a picture for investigative purposes, and it interviewed a supervisory sergeant who explained the department “does not investigate Members of Congress so he does not understand what” the officer “was thinking when he took the photograph of the whiteboard.”

The officer “exercised questionable judgment in concluding it was his duty or mission to read and photograph the written product of a congressman or the congressman’s staff contained on a whiteboard in a private congressional office,” the inspector general concluded.

“His actions are mitigated by the fact that in its review, OIG found no evidence of where this type of scenario was discussed or relevant guidance was provided by the Department,” the report added.

Nehls told Just the News he hoped a new Congress next year could find consensus to ensure Capitol Police have better policies and procedures to protect the privacy and work of lawmakers.

“I think that it is very incumbent upon whoever the Speaker of the House, the Sergeant at Arms are in the next Congress that we protect the limited amount of integrity that that institution has, and that is making sure that members can feel safe and secure in their offices,” he said

“This, Democrats and Republicans alike should support the idea of saying this should never happen to anybody,” Nehls added. “You cannot go in and start taking pictures of legislative materials or things that you find suspicious.”

There are a lot of indications that the swamp that is Washington, D.C., needs to be filled in and ended.

Using Spin Instead Of Solving The Problem

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On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article detailing how the Biden administration plans to address the problem of rising inflation as they approach what could be a disastrous mid-term election. Mid-term elections tend to lose seats for whatever party holds the White House. If this year’s mid-term is an honest election, the prospects for the Democrat party are looking bleak.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party finally have a plan to get inflation under control and address the economic anxiety felt by millions of Americans. It’s not a plan in the conventional sense, but rather a public relations campaign to convince the American people that “despite their current misgivings, the economy is actually doing quite well.”

Inflation is soaring and gas prices are through the roof, but Americans are wrong to be concerned about the direction of the country, the president and his allies will argue this month. Politico reports that Biden has assembled a team of experts and professional communicators to make the case that, actually, the economy is good. The White House effort to “communicate on our accomplishments” kicked off on Monday with a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which Biden touted his stewardship of “the most robust recovery in modern history” and cited a bunch of macroeconomic statistics to make his case.

No one who routinely makes trips to the gas station or the grocery store is going to believe that the economy is doing well.

The article concludes:

The dubious public relations campaign is in keeping with the Democratic Party’s longstanding belief that all of their electoral problems could be solved by simply explaining to skeptical voters that they have no good reason to be skeptical. It is also indicative of a White House in disarray. Biden is reportedly furious at his subordinates for failing to come up with a winning message ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, and White House chief of staff Ron Klain is rumored to be on the chopping block. Anita Dunn, a longtime Biden aide who once provided “damage control advice” to disgraced Hollywood rapist Harvey Weinstein, could take his place after the midterms.

Considering all of the information bubbling beneath the surface about Hunter Biden’s laptop and what is on it, Anita Dunn might be a really good choice for chief of staff.

 

Still Searching For The Leaker

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On Tuesday, The Western Journal reported that the investigation into the leaking of the abortion opinion draft from the Supreme Court is heating up.

The article reports:

Inside the Supreme Court, an investigation into the leak has now reached the point where law clerks are being asked to provide cellphone records and sign affidavits, CNN reported Tuesday, citing three sources it did not name.

Why are people inside the Court still leaking to CNN?

The article notes:

Chief Justice John Roberts met with law clerks after the leak. Each justice gets four clerks, and the prized spots that can be steppingstones to a high-profile career.

CNN estimated that in addition to the 36 clerks, others would have had access to the draft, totaling about 75 people in all.

The report said it was not clear whether other court employees were being asked to share cellphone records.

The court’s internal investigation is being led by the court’s marshal, Gail Curley.

Curley, a lawyer and former Army colonel, oversees the police stationed at the court’s building.

The article concludes:

Justice Clarence Thomas said the damage done to the court by the leak was severe.

“I do think that what happened at the court is tremendously bad,” Thomas said at a recent conference.

“I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them. And then I wonder when they’re gone or destabilized, what we will have as a country? And I don’t think the prospects are good if we continue to lose them,” he said.

If the pool of suspects is only 75 people, the investigation should be completed fairly quickly. I wonder why it has not been.

The Seeds Were Planted For The Destruction Of The Republic In 2012

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On Tuesday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article that explains a lot of the initial and ongoing attacks on the Trump administration and President Trump. It also offers a possible explanation as to why so few in the Washington swamp have been willing to fight the seemingly endless corruption.

The article reports:

There is very little that surprises me, but this is completely stunning.  An FBI whistleblower came forth to inform Rep Jim Jordan and Rep Matt Gaetz that the FBI maintains a workspace inside the law firm of Perkins Coie.  {Direct Rumble Link}

In response to a letter sent by Rep. Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan, Perkins Coie, the legal arm of the DNC and Hillary Clinton, admitted they have been operating an FBI workspace in their Washington D.C. office since 2012.  Pay attention to that date, it matters.

This is a huge development.  Essentially, what is being admitted in this claim is that a portal existed into FBI databases within the law firm that represents democrats.  This means access to FBI database searches exists inside the office of the DNC and Clinton legal group.  Think about the ramifications here.

CTH has long claimed there was some kind of direct portal link between the Clinton campaign team and the FBI databases.  There were too many trails of extracted non-minimized research evidence in the hands of the Clinton team that CTH could not trace to a transferring FBI official.  If Perkins Coie operated a portal in their office that allowed them to conduct search queries of American citizens, then everything would make sense.  That access portal is exactly what is being claimed and admitted in this report.

The start date of 2012 is important for several reasons, not the least of which is FISA presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer criticizing the scale and scope of unlawful FBI database access going back to exactly 2012.  Keep in mind a FISA-702 search, is simply an unlawful FBI warrantless electronic search of an American (“702” represents the American citizen) into the central database -maintained by the NSA- that contains all electronic data and communication.

I have been in the deep hole of the FISA-702 database search query violations for so long I don’t even need a flashlight.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes some of Rosemary Collyer’s prior report on FBI abuses of the database.

There were some people who warned us when the Patriot Act was passed after 9/11 that it would lead to government abuses and illegal spying on Americans. Evidently they were right.

Equity Is Different From Equality

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On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article reporting that Oak Park and River Forest High School is transforming its grading systems. The school is bringing equity into its grading system.

The article reports:

School board members discussed the plan called “Transformative Education Professional Development & Grading” at a meeting on May 26, presented by Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning Laurie Fiorenza…

“Traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap,” reads a slide in the PowerPoint deck outlining its rationale and goals.

It calls for what OPRF leaders describe as “competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book…encouraging and rewarding growth over time.”…

Sullivan calls grading based on traditional classroom testing and homework performance “outdated practices” and foster “unconscious biases.”

“Teachers may unintentionally let non-academic factors—like student behavior or whether a student showed up to virtual class—interfere with their final evaluation of students.,” she said. “Traditional student grades include non-academic criteria that do not reflect student learning gains—including participation and on-time homework submission.”

So now students will get credit for simply showing up for class.

The article notes:

The key slide titled “Summary of Findings” reads as follows:

  • Traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap
  • Integrating equitable assessment and grading practices into all academic and elective courses requires the collaborative effort of a team of educators committed to improvements that
    benefit all students
  • Many OPRFHS teachers are successfully exploring and implementing more equitable grading practices such as: utilizing aspects of competency-based grading, eliminating zeros
    from the grade book, and encouraging and rewarding growth over time
  • Teachers and administrators at OPRFHS will continue the process necessary to make grading improvements that reflect our core beliefs

The article concludes:

I’m not sure what happens to these equitably graded kids when they get their first job and find out they have to a) show up for work when scheduled, b) get the job done while on the clock and c) not create a disruption in their place of work . All that to say, some of these changes don’t sound very helpful in the long run.

On the other hand, as a parent there is an argument to be made that zeroes in the grade book on one minor assignment can create a real hurdle for students, some of whom may have actual reasons for missing an assignment now and again. The middle school my kids attended also allowed for test corrections in many cases which allowed students to make up some of the missing points by redoing the work after the fact. So I’m not necessarily against everything they are suggesting here but I think I draw the line when showing up and doing the work don’t count against you at all.

At some point, aren’t we supposed to be preparing students for the real world?

Is Anyone Surprised?

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On Tuesday, NewsMax reported that a federal jury in Washington, D.C. has found Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann not guilty of lying to the FBI.

As I noted on May 22nd:

JONATHAN TURLEY: Durham faces a lot of challenges in this trial. The judge in the trial has hit the prosecution with limiting orders. This jury pool is a nightmare for the prosecutors. There are three Clinton donors on the jury. In the last 24 hours, the judge turned down a motion to dismiss a juror whose daughter is actually playing on the same team with the daughter of Sussmann. So I think for the prosecutors, it seems like the only thing that is missing on the jury is Chelsea Clinton. A jury of your peers is not supposed to mean other Clinton people. And so, I think that the prosecutors have quite a challenge with this pool.

Unfortunately we have reached the place as a country where equal justice under the law is a myth. Considering the people involved in his wrongdoing, there was no way Michael Sussman was going to be found guilty.

The article at NewsMax reports:

The trial focused on whether Sussmann, a cybersecurity attorney and former federal prosecutor, concealed from the FBI that he was representing Clinton’s campaign when he presented computer data that he said showed a possible secret backchannel between Russia-based Alfa Bank and Trump’s business company, the Trump Organization. The FBI investigated but quickly determined that there was no suspicious contact.

The bureau’s then-general counsel and the government’s star witness, James Baker, testified that he was “100% confident” that Sussmann had told him that he was not representing any client during the meeting. Prosecutors say he was actually acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and another client, and that he hid that information so as to make it seem more credible and to boost the chances of getting the FBI to investigate.

Lawyers for Sussmann deny that he lied, saying that it was impossible to know with certainty what he told Baker since they were the only participants in the meeting and neither of them took notes.

They argued that if Sussmann said he wasn’t acting on the Clinton campaign’s behalf that that was technically accurate since he didn’t ask the FBI to take any particular action. And they said that even if he did make a false statement, it was ultimately irrelevant since the FBI was already investigating Russia and the Trump campaign and would have looked into the Alfa Bank data no matter the source.

Read that last paragraph again. Then consider what would happen to an ordinary citizen if he lied to the FBI. The defense is saying that even if he lied to the FBI, it really isn’t important.

Has America become a banana republic where justice is determined by political affiliation?

Revealing The Slippery Slope

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One of the actual good points of having Joe Biden as President is that he accidentally tells the truth when he wanders off of the teleprompter. He recently did that in regard to what he would like to do about gun laws. Townhall posted an article on Monday with a very telling statement by President Biden.

The article reports:

President Biden raised eyebrows on Monday when he spoke about what he considers sensible restrictions on “high-caliber weapons” in the wake of the horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last week.  

The president recalled visiting a trauma hospital in New York, where he explained doctors showed him X-rays of gunshot wounds that were caused by different firearms. 

“They said a .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out — may be able to get it and save the life,” Biden told reporters outside of the White House. “A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.”

He went on to claim “there’s simply no rational basis for [high-caliber weapons] in terms of thinking about self-protection, hunting.”

Well, actually, that’s not true. If you need to protect yourself from someone who is going to harm you, you want a bullet that will actually stop them. If someone is stupid enough to attack you, they deserve whatever bullet will stop them. Particularly as a woman, I want a high enough caliber to stop a person before they can get to me.

The article notes:

So while most Democrats have targeted what they call “assault weapons” in the wake of the mass shooting, Biden appears to be setting his sights on handguns, too, which isn’t the first time he’s singled out one of the most popular firearms in America.

The article concludes:

He also repeated a false claim about the Second Amendment and cannons.

“The Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute. You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed,” Biden said. “I think things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it.”

The Washington Post has previously given him four Pinocchios for this claim, noting that no federal law existed about which types of weapons private citizens could own.

“Some readers might think this is a relatively inconsequential flub. But we disagree,” The Washington Post wrote last year. “Every U.S. president has a responsibility to get American history correct, especially when he’s using a supposed history lesson in service of a political objective. The president’s push for more gun restrictions is an important part of his political platform, so he undercuts his cause when he cites faux facts.

“Moreover, Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim — and it’s been deemed false,” fact checker Glenn Kessler continued. “We have no idea where he conjured up this notion about a ban on cannon ownership in the early days of the Republic, but he needs to stop making this claim.

Evidently facts don’t matter to Democrats when they are attempting to take gun rights away from Americans. No Republican who votes for any more gun laws should be re-elected in November. Let’s just enforce the laws we have.

Could This Happen Here?

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On Tuesday, BizPacReview posted an article about the gun ban in Canada proposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The article reports:

The leftist Canadian leader made the announcement during a press conference and adamantly stated that the country’s citizens have no business carrying guns without the explicit intent to hunt with them or use them for sport.

“Two years ago, our government banned 1,500 models of assault-style weapons,” he intoned. Then Trudeau listed weapons that are now banned in Canada.

“We also expanded background checks to keep firearms out of the wrong hands. We did it because it is what responsible leadership required us to do. And now, as we see gun violence continue to rise, it is our duty to keep taking action,” the prime minister proclaimed.

So if the laws you already passed are not working, why are you adding more similar laws?

The article continues:

“Today, we’re moving forward. We’re introducing legislation to implement a national freeze on handgun ownership. What this means is it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada,” Trudeau declared.

“In other words, we’re capping the market on handguns,” he stated, indicating that Canada would go the way of Australia on guns with confiscation becoming a potential threat to armed citizens there.

“We recognize that the vast majority of gun owners use them safely and in accordance with the law, but other than using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives,” Trudeau said, according to the CBC.

“We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action firmly and rapidly it gets worse and worse and gets more difficult to counter,” he charged.

His wording eerily echoes that of President Joe Biden, who commented on Monday that 9 mm handguns are a threat in America that has to be addressed. He posited that there is no “rational basis” for such high-caliber weapons for self-protection, bluntly calling for a ban on them.

The article concludes:

Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) warned on Twitter, “The dystopian future Trudeau is manifesting in Canada is coming to America if U.S. citizens don’t get involved.”

“The U.S. Constitution is a gift from God. A bulwark against despotism. A unique advantage for Americans. The basis of American exceptionalism. Will it hold?” Representative Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) tweeted.

Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) wrote, “The True North strong and (less) free…” mocking the Canadian national anthem in regards to the stripping of gun rights.

Robby Starbuck, who is running for the House of Representatives in Tennessee, wrote. “Don’t let any leftist tell you that they’ll stop at AR-15’s. They won’t. Just look at Canada. In 2020 they banned AR-15’s. Two years and three weeks later they’re banning handguns too. This is the Dem’s plan. Don’t let them gaslight you. Our 2nd Amendment rights shall not be infringed!”

Chris Palombi (R-Md.) tweeted, “O Canada… Trudeau is turning our neighbors to the north into a totalitarian dictatorship. Just wait until the slippery slope continues and they begin seizing guns… Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Does anyone actually believe that when legal gun owners surrender their guns, criminals will surrender theirs? If legal gun owners surrender their guns, criminals with guns will have a country full of unarmed victims. That’s not really a good thing.