Tag Archives: federal government

Creating An Unnecessary Constitutional Crisis

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On Thursday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the crisis at the southern border. There has been a crisis at our southern border since day one of the Biden administration when President Biden undid some of the procedures President Trump had put in place to deal with illegal immigrants. I am not sure why this is finally being addressed after three years, but I am glad that someone is taking action. It is very possible that it is finally being addressed because of the impact moving the illegal aliens around the country has had on Democrat-controlled cities. I am always suspicious of the timing of crises–in recent years they have become political tools.

John Hinderaker reports:

The Biden Administration has dealt a devastating blow to America by opening up the southern border to all comers. The influx of illegals threatens our national security and our economy, and it has placed an intolerable burden on the border states. How intolerable, is demonstrated by the panic that seizes blue cities when they are faced with a tiny fraction of the burden suffered by communities near the open border.

Joe Biden’s border policy is unconstitutional. Under Article II, his most fundamental duty as president is to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Biden has not faithfully executed our immigration laws; rather, he has deliberately sabotaged and negated them. This is an impeachable offense, but what to do in the meantime?

In Texas, a constitutional crisis may be brewing. Governor Greg Abbott, having had enough of the scofflaw Biden Administration, had fencing erected along the border to discourage illegal migration. Biden, determined to illegally undermine our country, directed that the fencing be torn down so that more illegals can pour in. The case reached the Supreme Court, which voted 5-4 to overturn a Court of Appeals decision that enjoined federal border agents from cutting the wire. So for now, the Court has the feds back in control.

The article includes a memo written by Texas Governor Greg Abbott stating that it is the responsibility of the federal government to enforce the border. It also includes screenshots of tweets by other governors supporting Governor Abbott.

The article concludes>

Sarah Hoyt says that Oklahoma, Montana, Virginia, Arkansas, West Virginia, Louisiana and Idaho have also lined up behind Texas. And, she reports, the entire Republican Governors Association has signed a letter supporting Abbott. So far, no Democrats. Fine: let’s let sovereignty be the issue on which the 2024 election turns.

I haven’t studied the constitutional issues raised by this crisis in any detail. For the moment, I would simply say, with Justice Robert Jackson, that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. No sane interpretation of the relevant constitutional provisions could conclude that a scofflaw president, by violating federal law and betraying his oath of office, can disable the states, who came together to form the federal government in the first place, from defending themselves against foreign invasion.

A nation without borders is no longer a nation. The battle has been joined. Let’s fight it out.

Where The Money Is Actually Going

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On Friday, Zero Hedge reported the following:

President Joe Biden is heaping another $5 billion onto a $136 billion pile of taxpayer-funded student loan debt forgiveness, as one of his signature 2024 (vote buying) schemes heading into the 2024 election.

Not only has moral hazard been reduced to an academic concept, shouldn’t taxpayer funds be used to bail out poverty-stricken Americans before people with college degrees who signed their names to a contract for non-dischargeable debt? We digress.

Around 74,000 student loan borrowers will now see debt canceled as a result of administrative changes enacted by the US Department of Education in the latest round of relief – including borrowers enrolled in the government’s income-driven repayment and public service loan forgiveness programs, Bloomberg reports.

Each program requires at least a decade of payment or service to be eligible for relief. Mismanaged federal student-loan plans have left some borrowers without promised relief after making payments for as long as 25 years. -Bloomberg

“My administration is able to deliver relief to these borrowers – and millions more – because of fixes we made to broken student loan programs that were preventing borrowers from getting relief they were entitled to under the law,” Biden said in a Friday statement written by other people.

Of those receiving taxpayer-funded assistance, roughly 60% are taxpayer-funded “public servants” – so the snake continues to eat its tail. So, buying votes with voters’ money.

Since when is the federal government able to change the details of a contract mid-stream? Since this is essentially an expenditure, why is it coming from the Executive Branch? The House of Representatives is supposed to be in charge of spending. This should quickly be found unconstitutional by the courts, but I seriously doubt anyone will bring the case.

At Least One Committee Is Moving In The Right Direction

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On Sunday, Townhall reported that the House Budget Committee passed three bills out of committee with bi-partisan support. That is good news. Now if we could just close the border, we would have it made.

The article reports:

The Fiscal State of the Nation Act (H.R. 6952) was passed with strong bipartisan support on a voice vote and without amendments. That bill will require the Comptroller General of the United States, a position I held from 1998-2008, to provide an in-person annual report on the country’s financial condition and fiscal outlook of the country to a joint session of Congress. 

The Debt to GDP Transparency and Stabilization Act (HR 6957) passed without amendment with a 22-12 bipartisan vote. That bill will require the President’s annual budget submission to provide information on the current state and projected outlook of federal debt/GDP based on the President’s proposed budget.

The Fiscal Commission Act (H.R. 5779) was the most important piece of legislation and was the subject of a vast majority of the markup session. It would establish a sixteen-person statutory commission that would, among other things, educate and engage the American people on our nation’s financial and fiscal challenges. Twelve of the commission members would be sitting members of Congress equally divided between the House and Senate and each major party. These twelve would be the voting members. Four of the commission members would be fiscal experts who would not have a vote. After receiving input and deliberating various options, the commission would make a package of fiscal reform recommendations designed to stabilize debt/GDP at no more than 100% within ten years and ensure the long-term solvency of various trust funds. Everything would be on the table – discretionary, mandatory, and revenues. If a majority of the commission’s voting members recommend a package of reforms with bipartisan support, it would receive an expedited vote in both houses of Congress and only require a simple majority vote in both houses for passage. The commission would issue its report in December 2024 or, depending on the final passage of the Fiscal Commission Act, no later than May 2025. 

Fiscal responsibility should be a bi-partisan effort. The inflation cased by our bloated federal spending impacts all of us either directly or indirectly. The plan proposed years ago to take one penny away from every dollar spent by the federal government still has validity. Someone simply has to have the courage to stand up and demand budget cuts.

Reining In The Federal Government

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In recent years, the federal government has altered the lives of Americans in small ways and big ways. The small ways include dishwashers that used to take an hour to cycle now take two hours, showerheads don’t put out the same amount of water that they put out ten years ago, and washing machines also take longer to wash the clothes. These changes are not the result of laws passed by Congress (which is where we are supposed to get out laws), they are the result of federal regulations. Well, the ability of federal agencies rather than Congress to pass laws is now being challenged in our courts.

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

A federal appeals court shot down the Biden administration’s efforts to repeal existing regulations on dishwashers and clothes washers on Monday.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in a legal battle between eleven red states and the federal government over the Department of Energy’s (DOE) efforts to impose energy and water efficiency standards for dishwashers and clothes washers that asserted it “is unclear that DOE has statutory authority to regulate water use in dishwashers and clothes washers,” according to the opinion’s text. The Biden administration has attempted to push new standards for both appliances since coming into office in 2021 as part of a wider push to nudge the market toward more energy efficient appliances, which in some cases are generally  less effective than their other models, the court asserted in its opinion.

In March 2018, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) proposed standards for dishwashers that allow the sale of models that run faster cycles, using more energy and water than standard dishwashers in the process. The Trump administration then adopted similar guidelines as policy in 2020, but the Biden DOE repealed those standards in 2021 before advancing its own standards that crack down on the faster models advantaged by the Trump administration’s rules in May 2023.

The article concludes:

Beyond clothes washers and dishwashers, the Biden DOE has also sought to impose energy efficiency regulations for items like water heaters, furnaces and pool pump motors. The administration has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on helping state and municipal governments pursue building codes

“In this opinion, the court has forced DOE to follow the law and even noted that one of the positions DOE took in this suit ‘borders on frivolous.’ This decision allows manufacturers to build better dishwashers, not be encumbered by counterproductive federal regulations,” Devin Watkins, an attorney for CEI, said of the opinion.

The DOE did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Recognizing The Procedure Put In Place By The U.S. Constitution

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On Sunday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about the the Defend The Guard Act recently passed in the New Hampshire State House.

The article reports:

The New Hampshire State House passed the Defend The Guard Act in a 187-182 vote on Thursday, which, if passed in the Senate and signed by the Governor, “would prohibit the deployment of the New Hampshire National Guard into overseas combat unless Congress first votes to declare war.”

This is much-needed legislation as the Biden Regime plunges the U.S. into foreign wars left and right, all while leaving American national security vulnerable and our borders wide open.

Defend The Guard has been introduced in other states, including Arizona.

Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers’ SB1367 “Defend the Guard” would have “Prohibit[ed] the National Guard of Arizona from being released into active duty combat unless the U.S. Congress has passed an official declaration of war, or has taken another official constitutional action as outlined.” After Senate Republicans passed this bill with zero Democrat support, Toma stonewalled it in the House, according to a Capitol insider and Bring our Troops Home founder Dan McKnight.

According to Cornell Law School:

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war. The President, meanwhile, derives the power to direct the military after a Congressional declaration of war from Article II, Section 2, which names the President Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. These provisions require cooperation between the President and Congress regarding military affairs, with Congress funding or declaring the operation and the President directing it. Nevertheless, throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, Presidents have often engaged in military operations without express Congressional consent. These operations include the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm, the Afghanistan War of 2001 and the Iraq War of 2002.

If passed, this new law will force the federal government to abide by the U. S. Constitution–at least as far as the New Hampshire National Guard is concerned.

The Accomplishments Of The Biden Administration

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On January 2nd, The Daily Caller posted the following headline:

Biden Added $745 Billion Worth Of Regulations In 2023

Just what we needed.

The article reports:

The Biden administration promulgated over $745 billion worth of regulations in 2023, according to information supplied by Advancing American Freedom (AAF) to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Biden administration has used rulemaking procedures in agencies to enact several of its left-wing policy initiatives, such as stringent emissions standards to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles and student loan forgiveness plans. From Jan. 1 to Dec. 29 of 2023, the administration greatly exceeded both the Trump and Obama administrations in terms of the regulations it issued, adding to the 743 rules since 2021, according to data from AAF, a government regulations watchdog.

Remember that when President Trump took office, he began removing regulations in order to allow the American economy to grow. What impact have these new regulations put on by the Biden administration had on economic growth?

The article notes:

“Since January 1, the federal government has published $745.2 billion in total net costs (with $129.2 billion in new costs from finalized rules) and 251.3 million hours of net annual paperwork burden increases (with 60.5 million hours in coming from final rules),” AAF told the DCNF. “[T]he Biden Administration heads into 2024 with to-date final rule cost and paperwork totals exceeding those of the Obama Administration by $173.7 billion and 91.4 million hours, respectively.”

The article reports:

Moreover, in the last working week of the administration from Dec. 26 to Dec. 29, which was shortened due to Christmas Day, the administration added $45.6 billion in total costs and added 43.4 million annual paperwork burden hours, according to AAF.

The article includes the following statement:

Today, we released new standards for fridges & freezers that reflect a joint agreement with manufacturers & advocacy groups.

This will save Americans $5B/year & underscores our ongoing work with industry partners to promote innovation & cut energy costs.https://t.co/0Q9UKTRB31 pic.twitter.com/mXWh6SxR2U

— Secretary Jennifer Granholm (@SecGranholm) December 29, 2023

Can we please have a new President in 2025 before this administration can do any more damage.

Can We Elect Argentina’s President As America’s President This Year?

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On December 27th, Headline USA reported the following:

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Newly sworn-in Argentina President Javier Milei purged over 5,000 government bureaucrats, fulfilling a campaign pledge to reduce the size of the inflation-burdened federal government. 

According to the Spanish-language newspaper El Pais, Milei signed an executive order to halt the contracts of federal workers hired in 2023, likely targeting individuals hired by his former leftist predecessor.

The order came after the capitalist president vowed to rescue Argentina from widespread corruption, inflation and wasteful government spending. 

El Pais reported that some disabled and indispensable employees will be exempt from the layoffs. However, the Argentine government announced a comprehensive audit within the next 90 days, hinting at potential future layoffs. 

The article notes that President Milei has been compared to President Trump in that President Trump has also pledged to shrink the federal government if he is elected in 2024. It will be interesting to watch the consequences of such a drastic change.

What First Amendment?

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The strength of a republic is partially determined by its media–does the media have the ability to inform the public without being threatened or coerced into reporting what the government wants reported? Right now the mainstream media (which can also be described as the government media) is neither holding elected officials accountable for their actions or reporting the truth to Americans. The government has also taken an aggressive stance against reporters who do not parrot the government narrative on current and past events.

On Friday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about another government attack on someone for committing journalism.

The article reports:

Steve Baker is a journalist for TheBlaze.com (Blaze Media) & was formally charged by the FBI for documenting the protest and unrest around the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

This isn’t the first journalist the Biden DOJ has attempted to prosecute, as Owen Shroyer of Info Wars was recently incarcerated for 47 days based on comments he made during his nightly news broadcast. There were several other reporters who have been investigated and charged.

However, Steve Baker’s case is drastically different than Shroyer’s situation. Steve was a well established reporter (not even a Trump supporter at the time) who attended the Trump rally with the intent of documenting the transfer of power during an important day in American history.

The FBI harassed him in July of 2021, but left him alone after becoming aware of his status as an established reporter. The only issue is, Steve eventually began investigating the federal government’s role in the events of January 6th and uncovered corruption at the highest levels of law enforcement. This apparently upset federal prosecutors who are now formally charging Baker despite him working actively as a credentialed journalist for TheBlaze.com.

The attack on opinions that do not agree with the government narrative is going to continue under the Biden administration. Eventually it will be aimed at all Americans who do not support the administration. Considering only about 30 percent of Americans approve of the job President Biden is doing, that could get interesting. Consider the fact that FISA has been extended despite having been abused and will probably be abused in the future. If you want your country back, do not re-elect anyone who voted to extend FISA, and remove the Democrats in the White House who have misused it.

More Shenanigans On The FISA Renewal

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On Monday, The Washington Examiner reported the following:

Neither of the two bills to reauthorize and reform a powerful spy tool used by American intelligence agencies will be voted on this week after the Rules Committee pulled the legislation amid intense backlash.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who sits on the Rules Committee, confirmed to the Washington Examiner that neither the House Judiciary Committee nor Intelligence Committee bills to reauthorize and reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would be voted on this week.

…Now, with the bills being punted until next year, it theoretically gives committees the time to work out the differences. The House is also expected to vote on the National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday, which includes a short-term extension of FISA until April 19, 2024, something certain members also oppose.

“I’m really disappointed that we’re talking about a four-month extension in the authorities of FISA,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who helped author the Judiciary Committee bill. “So we should be laboring through to get this thing done, in my opinion.”

Under Section 702 of FISA, the federal government can surveil foreigners without a warrant for national security purposes. The collected information becomes part of a vast database of foreign intelligence that incidentally includes information about U.S. citizens who may have been communicating with people overseas.

There have been documented abuses of FISA. Because of this, most members want reforms but disagree on what those reforms should be.

I personally think that we have seen enough abuses and misuses of FISA to want it to go away. Obviously Washington politicians and bureaucrats do not have the maturity to use it wisely.

On Monday, The Conservative Treehouse reported:

For those confused. There are two bills to modify the FISA702 reauthorization in the House.  (1) HR 6611 from the House Intel Committee and (2) HR 6570 from the House Judiciary Committee.  The intel committee bill expands domestic surveillance authority under the modifications; the judiciary committee bill requires the DOJ to get a search warrant before they can look at the incidental collection of American citizens.

Both bills came out of committee and were scheduled for a floor vote tomorrow, which has been cancelled due to public outcry (good job).  Speaker Mike Johnson initially planned to let both bills get voted tomorrow and the bill with the most votes advances to the Senate.  ?That’s a hot mess.

The House Intel Committee bill organized by Chairman Mike Turner is absolutely horrible. It expands FISA702 surveillance and makes things much worse.  The House Judiciary Bill organized by Chairman Jim Jordan is not structurally that much better, but it does put strong curtailments on the 702 surveillance authority by forcing the DOJ to get actual court approved search warrants on American citizens.

It should not come as a surprise to see a panel of 46 experts in Deep State weaponization come out in support of the Intelligence Committee bill, and then decry the insufferable 702 limitations put into place in the Judiciary Committee bill.   The bad guys want the House Intel version.

As I stated, it’s time for FISA to go away.

When You Have Someone In The White House Who Does Not Understand Basic Economics…

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On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about one of President Biden’s recent speeches. The President is most interesting when he is not reading his notes.

The article reports:

President Biden acknowledged Monday that prices are still “too high” and argued that companies should lower them after an 18% jump in consumer costs since he took office.

“We know that prices are still too high for too many things — that times are still too tough for too many families,” the 81-year-old said near the White House.

“We’ve made progress, but we have more work to do,” Biden added. “Let me be clear to any corporation has not brought their prices back down, even as inflation has come down, even supply chains have been rebuilt: It’s time to stop the price gouging and give the American consumer a break.”

The prices of some goods, such as food products, are expected to decline in the coming months, but periods of general deflation are rare in US history.

Biden previously used his bully pulpit to try to pressure oil companies to take action to lower gas prices last year.

The only one price gouging is the federal government–they call it taxing. The cause of our current inflation is government spending, but that is the one cause that Washington consistently refusing to examine.

We need a businessman in the White House and many more in Congress.

Spied On Again

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On Wednesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted the following headline:

Congress demands answers from White House over ‘invasive’ surveillance program known as Hemisphere that has tracked TRILLIONS of phone records for Americans each year – even if they are not suspected of a crime

Who authorized this surveillance?

The article reports:

Congress is demanding answers from the Biden administration about a secret spying program that tracks more than a trillion phone records from innocent and unsuspecting Americans each year.

The under-the-radar system, known as Data Analytical Services or ‘Hemisphere,’ has been in operation for over a decade. It allows federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to tap into the phone records of U.S. citizens who have not been accused of any crime.

Under the Hemisphere program the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) pays phone service provider AT&T to hand over phone records as far back as 1987.

The deal first came to light in 2013 after a bombshell New York Times report, but it has since been expanded.

The article notes that Congress is ready to investigate why the government is spying on innocent Americans.

The article reports:

Republican congressman Andy Biggs, Ariz., accused the government of spying on Americans.

Hemisphere is ‘invasive’ and allows ‘government agents warrantless access to trillions of Americans’ domestic communications records,’ he said.

Biggs went on: ‘The federal government doesn’t care about your privacy and it’s long past time we end these abuses and hold rogue actors accountable.

‘The Hemisphere Project highlights major loopholes in federal law through which the government is able to spy on Americans without judicial oversight, such as the purchase of personal data.’

Congress is currently considering renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702.

That allows for warrantless surveillance of foreigners but often catches the conversations of Americans.

Biggs said it must also look at the Hemisphere program.

The article concludes:

The program is run primarily by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Its stated purpose is to help investigate drug traffickers and other complex criminal enterprises.

However, it has also been used to arrest jewelry store robbers, a murder suspect and even a woman who was making nuisance bomb threats.

The program bypasses usual privacy regulations through a complex network of funding.

Rather than directly funding the surveillance, the ONDCP provides a grant to the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which in turn pays AT&T to operate the program.

Because of this Hemisphere is not subject to a federal Privacy Impact Assessment like most projects funded by federal agencies.

The program is obviously not successful in stemming the drug problem; why is it still in place?

The Future If President Trump Is Elected In 2024

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If you are a government worker, you should probably work very hard to make sure President Trump does not become President again. The changes he is planning to make will be good for the country, but not necessarily appreciated by government employees.

On Tuesday, Newsmax posted an article about what is being planned if President Trump is elected. President Trump is a much greater threat to the deep state than he was in 2016–he has a much better idea of who the goods guys are and who the bad guys are. That is one of many reasons there will be a desperate attempt to stop him from being elected.

The article reports:

Project 2025, a well-funded effort that is essentially a transition team orchestrated by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, has already begun recruiting and screening potential candidates who would be in place for the next Republican administration.

More specifically, a second Donald Trump administration.

The goal, according to a report by Axios, is to have 54,000 like-minded Trump loyalists ready to be hired and placed across every level of the federal government in January 2025.

The article notes:

In order to install 54,000 federal workers hand-picked by this effort, Trump has said he would reinstate Schedule F, a personnel policy to erase employment protections for tens of thousands of federal workers through reclassification, which makes them easier to fire.

And with the army in place, Trump in the early days of his second administration can revamp the Justice Department, FBI and intelligence community, swiftly move on deporting illegals “by the millions per year,” and eradicate woke ideology from the military, according to Axios.

“And the goal is that we are just like a snowball rolling downhill. It keeps building momentum and whoever the nominee is, whoever the next president is, we’re going to be ready on Day One,” Chretien said.

Sweeping reform is what is needed. The question is whether or not we can have an honest election to allow that reform to happen.

Protecting The Privacy Of Americans

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One of the things that happened after January 6th was that bank transactions and credit card transactions in the Washington, D.C., are were tracked to see who was in Washington on that day. One person I know who went to the rally and then went back to her hotel had her business’ PayPal account canceled essentially because she used her credit card to buy a hamburger. She was never anywhere near the Capitol building. How did PayPal know she was in Washington?

On Friday, The Epoch Times reported the following:

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has subpoenaed Bank of America (BoA) for information over the company’s alleged sharing with the FBI of private customer data from around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, events in Washington.

The subpoena is part of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government’s probe “into major banks sharing Americans’ private financial data with the [FBI] without legal process for transactions made in the Washington, DC, area around Jan. 6, 2021″—the day that supporters of President Donald Trump breached the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying the 2020 election, which the former president has called rigged and stolen. Politico first reported the Nov. 16 development.

The committee subpoenaed relevant documents from the bank, including internal communications about the decision to transfer the information to the FBI, any communications that the bank had with the agency, and any other information. The lawmakers gave Bank of America a June 8 deadline to comply.

The article also notes:

Those who had used Bank of America accounts to purchase a firearm, regardless of when or where the transaction took place, were bumped to the top of that list.

The article includes a possible solution to this obvious invasion of privacy:

However, in a Nov. 16 letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, informing him of the subpoena, Mr. Jordan, who also chairs the Weaponization Select Subcommittee, wrote that, “it is unclear what ‘legal’ process permits the FBI or BoA to share the sensitive customer information of potentially thousands of BoA customers and implicate them in a federal law enforcement investigation without any clear criminal nexus.”

After all, the Ohio congressman wrote, “If such a lawful authority exists, as BoA asserts, for BoA to freely share private financial information without any legal process or specific nexus to criminality, Congress has a responsibility to consider reforms that adequately protect Americans’ information.”

This is something to keep an eye on.

When Our Government Works Against The Interests Of The Voters

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On November, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the partnership between an agency in the Department of Homeland Security and several university centers to identify online content worthy of censorship. Why is our government working with universities to censor free speech? Might that be part of the reason our colleges have become indoctrination centers?

The article reports:

An agency within the Department of Homeland Security partnered with several university centers to identify online content worthy of censorship, according to a new report from the House Judiciary Committee.

The report, a project of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, detailed how the federal government formed a partnership with the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, and other groups. Titled the “Election Integrity Partnership,” the consortium aimed to identify election-related content that needed to be censored.

The report said the partnership was established in July 2020 by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a small agency within the Department of Homeland Security. The partnership then worked with social media companies to throttle content that questioned the integrity of the election process.

“The federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes, and political opinions,” the report said. “This pressure was largely directed in a way that benefited one side of the political aisle: True information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.”

The article also notes:

The report named several prominent politicians, people, and conservative news outlets that had been targeted for censorship, including former President Donald Trump, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the Babylon Bee satire site, and Newsmax.

“Stanford and others, in collaboration with the federal government, established the EIP for the express purpose of violating Americans’ civil liberties: Because no federal agency ‘has a focus on, or authority regarding, election misinformation originating from domestic sources within the United States,’ there is ‘a critical gap for non-governmental entities to fill.’ CISA and Stanford created the EIP to bridge this ‘critical gap’ — an unconstitutional workaround for unconstitutional censorship,” the report said.

The report contained numerous screenshots of emails between government officials and employees of Twitter, Facebook, and the university “misinformation” centers, many of which included direct requests to censor content.

One of the things that was censored was any reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Government agencies knew the laptop was real and probably anticipated the information on it being reported before the election. The letter from the retired intelligence agents came out in October 2020, just before the election. Any valid information on the laptop was censored. At some point, American voters are going to realize that they have been manipulated and lied to by their own government. That will be interesting to watch.

The Videos Should Be Released Soon

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On Saturday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about the video tapes of the events of January 6, 2021.

The article reports:

In July, The Gateway Pundit and Cowboy Logic offered proof that the DOJ edited video to incriminate the Oath Keepers during their trial.

Today we offer evidence that the DOJ’s star witness in the Oath Keepers trial, Special Agent David Lazarus. lied under oath and was not present during an alleged confrontation as he testified in court. He was in a different location.

During the trial dealing with the events of January 6th, the Oath Keepers claimed that they had surrounded Officer Dunn, facing outward to protect him from the crowd.

According to J6 defendant Kelly Meggs and other Oath Keepers, Officer Dunn’s testimony changed throughout the trial. His final testimony was that he felt threatened by the Oath Keepers. From the evidence we have gathered at The Gateway Pundit we believe Harry Dunn was not being honest during his testimony.  And there is now video to confirm this.

During their trials (OKI, OKII and OKIII), video footage provided by the prosecution was presented and given as “evidence” to the defense.  As Don and Donna and The Gateway Pundit reported earlier – This video footage was doctored by the federal government!

The article continues:

The video was from reporter Stephen Horn’s footage from J6. The Horn video is roughly 2 hours in length… Horn starts outside the capitol, then enters and then ends once again, outside.  Around the 55-minute timestamp, or around 48 minutes into the video file, Horn enters the Small House Rotunda where the Oath Keepers are seen guarding Officer Dunn. The video that was provided as trial evidence mysteriously stops with a freeze frame seconds before Horn approaches the Oath Keepers.

The end result is that during the Oath Keeper trials, video footage that shows the Oath Keepers guarding Office Dunn, in a semi-circle facing away from Dunn, and speaking with protestors to diffuse anger or hostile actions toward Office Dunn, was never seen in court and could not substantiate their claim. It was edited out by the prosecution!

No Oath Keeper in trials 1, 2 or 3 ever saw this footage in trial!

Kelly Meggs and Jessica Watkins both called Don and Donna when they watched the show on June 17, 2023. They both stated that this was the first time they have ever seen this footage. They also speculated that this evidence had been altered or tampered with by the DOJ prosecution to prevent validating their claim that they protected Dunn.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The footage of this incident should be made public in the near future. At that point, Americans will be able to see the video and make their own judgement.

The Long Reach Of The Government Just Got Longer

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The Patriot Daily wire is reporting the following today:

The federal government is issuing warrants from compliant Google to turn over anyone typing in certain search terms.

But they assure the American public that they can be trusted. Just like the federal government assured Americans they would not abuse the secret FISA courts to spy on innocent Americans!

We now know that crooked feds were spying on Donald Trump, his family, his campaign and his presidency using the secret courts to obtain warrants.

Frankly, I use Duck Duck Go as a search engine. I am not sure if they have been hit by warrants yet.

The article includes the following excerpt from a Yahoo News article:

The U.S. government is reportedly secretly issuing warrants for Google to provide user data on anyone typing in certain search terms, raising fears that innocent online users could get caught up in serious crime investigations at a greater frequency than previously thought.

In an attempt to track down criminals, federal investigators have started using new “keyword warrants” and used them to ask Google to provide them information on anyone who searched a victim’s name or their address during a particular year, an accidentally unsealed court document that Forbes found shows.

Google has to respond to thousands of warrant orders each year, but the keyword warrants are a relatively new strategy used by the government and are controversial.

“Trawling through Google’s search history database enables police to identify people merely based on what they might have been thinking about, for whatever reason, at some point in the past,” Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told Forbes.

“This never-before-possible technique threatens First Amendment interests and will inevitably sweep up innocent people, especially if the keyword terms are not unique and the time frame not precise. To make matters worse, police are currently doing this in secret, which insulates the practice from public debate and regulation,” she added.

The government said that the scope of the warrants is limited to avoid implicating innocent people who happen to search for certain terms, but it’s not publicly disclosed how many users’ data are sent to the government and what the extent of the warrant requests are.

This may be what eventually will change the focus of the American Civil Liberties Union to protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans, which is what they should actually be doing.

Isn’t That Special?

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about the people who attended the funeral of Representative John Lewis.

The article reports:

Washington, D.C. attendees to the Atlanta funeral of the late Rep. John Lewis are exempt from following the District of Columbia’s strict quarantine rules after returning home from Georgia, the D.C. mayor’s office says.

Lewis, a longtime member of Congress and one of the major figures of the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, died on July 17 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. After lying in state at the United States Capitol, his body was returned to Atlanta for a funeral at that city’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.

…The extraordinary exemption from Bowser’s quarantine orders is just one example of congressional members being released from strict coronavirus mitigation rules in the District of Columbia. 

Earlier in July, Bowser declared that D.C. residents must wear masks while in public indoor spaces, as well as outdoors when likely to be around other people for “more than a fleeting time.”

Yet exempt from that order were “persons in the judicial or legislative branches of the District government while those persons are on duty,” as well as “any employees of the federal government while they are on duty.”

Though the mayor’s office is not requiring members of Congress to wear face coverings, this week Pelosi instituted a mask mandate for the House of Representatives, shortly after Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) tested positive for COVID-19.

Pelosi threatened to have congressional members and staff removed from the House if they don’t comply with the mandate, calling the failure to wear a mask “a serious breach of decorum.”

Who says there is not a ‘ruling class’ in America?

It gets worse. Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog posted the following today:

The double standards in public health guidelines, left-wing protest, and all the rest might be enough to make a reasonable observer wonder if the plague is all it’s cracked up to be. Has anyone other than Amber Athey gone in for a close-up and asked the obvious questions in connection with the funeral of civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis? Athey asks the pointed question: “Who deserves a funeral?” Answer: Not you or me or our loved ones, that much I can tell you. (Thanks to Spectator USA for making Athey’s column freely accessible at our request.)

Maybe we need to take a closer look at some of the decisions being made ‘to protect our health.’

Putting An End To A Really Bad Idea

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Breitbart reported yesterday that President Trump has announced that his administration is moving forward to eliminate the AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing) rule. I wrote about this rule on July 1 (article here). The goal of the rule is to end single-family housing in the suburbs.

The article at Breitbart reports:

During his remarks last Thursday, the president targeted the disastrous Obama rule.

“The Democrats in D.C. have been and want to, at a much higher level, abolish our beautiful and successful suburbs by placing far-left Washington bureaucrats in charge of local zoning decisions,” Trump said on the White House South Lawn. “They are absolutely determined to eliminate single-family zoning, destroy the value of houses and communities already built, just as they have in Minneapolis and other locations that you read about today. Your home will go down in value, and crime rates will rapidly rise.”

Trump continued:

Joe Biden and his bosses from the radical left want to significantly multiply what they’re doing now. And what will be the end result is you will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs. Suburbia will be no longer as we know it. So, they wanted to defund and abolish your police and law enforcement while at the same time destroying our great suburbs.

“The suburb destruction will end with us,” the president said, adding:

Next week, I will be discussing the AFFH rule — AFFH rule, a disaster — and our plans to protect the suburbs from being obliterated by Washington Democrats, by people on the far left that want to see the suburbs destroyed, that don’t care. People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they’re going to watch it go to hell. Not going to happen, not while I’m here.

The article concludes:

The AFFH rule is a bald-faced federal government takeover of every community. By using its power to approve banking and funding, the federal government would have the ability to tell suburban areas who will be allowed to live in their neighborhoods and what kind of homes they can build to force immigrant and low-income residents into every neighborhood. In the end, the rule would destroy wealth and lower property values. It would also tend to undermine any bastion of conservative voters by injecting government-dependent voters into every single American community.

Ending this rule is a welcome idea to those who imagine that the federal government should not be telling people how to build their communities.

Notice that this is a government program–not a law passed by Congress. It is time we went back to the idea that laws are passed by Congress–not created by un-elected government bureaucracies.

Making It Easier To Deport Criminals

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Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about a decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday.

The article reports:

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled to make it easier for the federal government to deport lawful permanent residents (LPRs) who have been convicted of serious crimes.

In a 5-4 decision, the top court justices sided against a man who was seeking to cancel deportation orders stemming from firearm and drug offenses. LPRs who are subject to deportation orders can apply to have their removal canceled under a federal immigration law if they meet strict eligibility requirements.

That law gives the attorney general power to cancel the removal of an applicant who has been an LPR for five years and has resided continuously in the United States for seven years, during which time he or she must not have been convicted of an aggravated felony. If an LPR is found to have committed such felonies, a rule called the “stop-time rule” would be triggered. This rule would cause the accrual of the seven-year requirement to pause from the time when the individual commits a crime that renders them “inadmissible.”

The court on Thursday ruled to uphold a lower court decision that found the man ineligible for the discretionary cancellation of his removal because he had committed aggravated assault offenses within the initial seven years of his residency, even though those crimes were not grounds for his deportation.

The ruling is widely viewed as a victory for the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has been running on a platform that pushes for stronger enforcement of national immigration laws.

There is no reason for us to allow criminals who are not Americans to remain in this country. We are perfectly capable of creating enough criminals on our own–we don’t need to take anyone else’s.

I Totally Agree

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Yesterday the U.K Daily Mail posted an article about some recent comments by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Senator made it clear that the federal government was going to help the states with financial problems caused by the shutdown of the economy but not with financial problems caused by bad management.

The article reports:

Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that he is OK with states going bankrupt instead of increasing federal bailouts even further – as Democrats demand more money for state and local governments be included in the next coronavirus relief bill.

‘My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that,’ McConnell lamented.

‘That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of,’ he continued in an interview with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt Wednesday.

‘I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route,’ the Kentucky Republican senator said. ‘It saves some cities. And there’s no good reason for it not to be available.’

Many of the states looking for bailouts need bailouts because of unfunded liabilities such as pension funds and retiree medical expenses. The only way these problems are related to the coronavirus is that there is reduction of tax revenue coming in. However, these problems were eventually going to occur with or without the coronavirus.

The article notes:

He also insisted, however, that he didn’t want to send money to states just to have them used the money to bail themselves out of preexisting issues, like a pileup of pension debts.

‘You know, we’ll certainly insist that anything we’d borrow to send down to the states is not spent on solving problems that they created for themselves over the years with their pension programs,’ McConnell told Hewitt.

‘There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations,’ he continued.

The Senate Majority Leader said he knows that states’ would rather have money given to them by the federal government in another large-scale coronavirus stimulus package.

I agree with Senator McConnell. Each state is responsible for its own financial situation. That’s part of what federalism is about. States who have managed spending better will come through this crisis in better shape. It is my guess that states that have consistently mismanaged money and raised taxes will have people moving out of their states in the coming months.

Shady Statistics

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Fox News is reporting that the federal government is classifying the deaths of patients infected with the coronavirus as COVID-19 deaths, regardless of any underlying health issues that could have contributed to the loss of someone’s life.

The article reports:

Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, said the federal government is continuing to count the suspected COVID-19 deaths, despite other nations doing the opposite.

“There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU [intensive care unit] and then have a heart or kidney problem,” she said during a Tuesday news briefing at the White House. “Some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death.

“The intent is … if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that,” she added.

Asked whether the numbers could skew data the government is trying to collect, Birx said that would mostly apply more to rural areas where testing isn’t being implemented on a wide scale.

“I’m pretty confident that in New York City and New Jersey and places that have these large outbreaks and COVID-only hospitals. … I can tell you they are testing,” she said.

Dr. Michael Baden, a Fox News contributor, said it’s reasonable to include the death of someone infected with the virus, who also had other health issues, in the COVID-19 body count.

Follow the link to read the entire article. This seriously causes me to wonder about the validity of any of the numbers we are seeing regarding deaths due to the coronavirus. People die of heart attacks, cancer, and strokes every day. If they have the coronavirus, those deaths are reported to be the result of the virus. It would be interesting when this is over to compare the number of deaths from heart attacks, cancer, and stokes from this time period to another time period. If the number is significantly lower during this time, it would be easy to conclude that the coronavirus deaths were being exaggerated.

This Is A Really Good Question

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Yesterday National Review posted an article with the following headline, “Why Are the Airlines Still Flying Out of New York?” That is a really good question.

The article reports:

I am baffled by the continuation of air travel between New York City and the rest of the country. At the moment, the greater New York area is at the center of the coronavirus crisis in the United States, and yet Kayak confirms that, even today, anyone from the city and its environs can get on a plane and travel almost anywhere within the United States. Why?

As I write, direct flights from Newark to Miami are going for $19 on Frontier and $29 on American Airlines. Given the seriousness of the pandemic — and the number of businesses that have been shuttered as a precaution — this seems downright bizarre. Why, one might reasonably ask, are airplanes not subject to the same social distancing rules as other commercial services? The crab shack on the beach near me is closed because the authorities in my county are worried that its customers may stand too closely together while waiting for their tacos. Is this not an equal risk in Basic Economy on United Airlines?

The federal government enjoys only limited powers — and it should enjoy only limited powers. But even my cramped reading of the Commerce Clause allows the authorities in Washington, D.C. to regulate commercial interstate air travel. President Trump threatened a federal quarantine the other day, and then, on the advice of his team, rescinded the threat. Given the legal questions at hand — and the fact that the national government simply does not have the resources to enforce such a rule — this was likely for the best; thinly tested though the relevant precedents may be, it is not at all obvious that the National Guard is allowed to prevent cars from crossing the state line between New York and Pennsylvania. But do you know what the federal government is allowed to do — and, indeed, what the federal government already does? Regulate commercial air travel. Why is it not doing so here?

Air travel should be suspended until we see the number of cases level off. Until then, the airlines are just allowing the virus to move freely around the country.

An Attempt At Justice

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Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about lawsuits brought by Carter Page. It seems to be common knowledge that before being targeted by the Obama administration as a back door to spy on the Trump campaign, Carter Page had done a lot of work for three-letter government agencies and was regarded as a reliable source of information.

The article reports:

Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court against the Democratic National Committee, law firm Perkins Coie and its partners tied to the funding of the unverified dossier that served as the basis for highly controversial surveillance warrants against him.

…“This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred during the last few years is exposed and remedied,” attorney John Pierce said Thursday. “Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.”

He added: “This is only the first salvo. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high. … The rule of law will prevail.”

The lawsuit will be heard in the Federal District Court in Northern Illinois.

The article concludes:

Page could sue Steele, except that Steele is in England and has made it clear that he doesn’t plan to visit the U.S., ever again. Nearly all potential defendants other than Steele–Comey, Clapper, McCabe and the like–would try to erect a firewall by denying any knowledge that the Steele dossier was a fraud.

Whether such guilty knowledge could be proved is doubtful. At a minimum, Page will have to get far enough to conduct meaningful discovery against the existing defendants. Do the DNC’s or Perkins Coie’s emails contain evidence of a conspiracy to lie about Carter Page, for the purpose of damaging Donald Trump? Who knows? If the participants were careful, they don’t; then again, those who were talking to each other in 2016 and 2017 probably didn’t foresee that their actions might one day be exposed in court. So perhaps they were careless. Maybe, too, any such communications were deleted or destroyed long ago.

There is at least one obvious exception to the above analysis–the DOJ lawyer who misrepresented a CIA email to the FISA court. The email said that Carter Page was a CIA asset. The lawyer changed it to say that Page was not a CIA asset. That guy, who has been fired and I assume will be criminally prosecuted, has no defense other than causation. He likely would argue that he was just a cog in a giant wheel of lies, and that Page would have been equally defamed, surveilled and harassed even if he hadn’t lied about the CIA email. Which undoubtedly is true, although it is questionable as a defense.

What Carter Page is doing is noble. Let’s hope he succeeds in shedding light on the biggest political scandal, by far, in American history.

Finally, a fun fact: Page is represented by the same lawyers who are representing Tulsi Gabbard in her defamation case against Hillary Clinton, who called Gabbard a Russian asset. Which, of course, is what she and her minions also called Carter Page, an equally absurd lie.

Stay tuned.

A Very Easy ‘Follow The Money’

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The Washington Examiner is reporting today that the House is planning to vote next week on a law that would override right-to-work laws in the 27 states that have those laws.

The article reports:

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, argued that such “right-to-work” laws are unfair to unions and the workers that back collective bargaining, necessitating his bill, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

“Under current law, unions are required to negotiate on behalf of all employees, regardless if they belong to the union or not,” Scott told the Washington Examiner. “The PRO Act simply allows workers to decide that all workers represented by the union should contribute to the costs associated with negotiating on their behalf.”

Scrapping the state laws would force potentially millions of individual workers to give away part of their salaries, whether they wanted to or not, said Greg Mourad, vice president of the National Right to Work Committee, which represents workers in cases against unions. “The term ‘right to work’ means the right to not have to pay for union so-called representation that workers don’t want, didn’t ask for, and believe actually goes against their interests,” he told the Washington Examiner.

The article notes:

Right-to-work laws say that employees cannot be forced to join or otherwise financially support a union as a condition of their job. Specifically, the laws prohibit union-management contracts from including so-called fair share fee provisions that require all workers to support the union financially.

When you consider that unions donate large amounts of money to Democrat campaign coffers, this bill is not a surprise. However, it seems to me that it is a violation of the Tenth Amendment–the federal government does not have the authority to determine right-to-work laws in individual states.

The article concludes:

The resurgence in right-to-work laws may now be ebbing. No other state appears poised to adopt one. Missouri would have been the 28th state, but voters last year approved a referendum stopping the measure before it went into effect.

The PRO Act would rewrite the NLRA to undo the 1947 amendment. “This bill, and others we’ve seen in various states, tries to subtly redefine ‘right to work’ to mean only the right to not have to formally be a member of the union, which is already guaranteed by the Supreme Court,” Mourad said. Nonmembers would still be obligated to support unions financially.

There has long been support for scrapping right to work on the Left, but the PRO Act enjoys unprecedented support among Democrats. The Senate version of the PRO Act was introduced with 39 original co-sponsors, comprising almost the entire Democratic caucus. The legislation is certain to pass the Democrat-majority House but is unlikely to be taken up in the Republican-led Senate.

“They’re testing the waters for the next time they are in the majority,” Vernuccio said.

In this instance, the Democrats are standing for the unions–not for the working man. This is simply a scheme to take more money our of workers’ pockets, give it to unions, and have unions give it to Democrat candidates. Democrat majorities in Congress are not helpful to the average American.

Respecting The Tenth Amendment

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The Tenth Amendment states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

To say that we have wandered from this principle is the equivalent of saying that there is some sand in the Sahara Desert. President Trump is slowly trying to put in place policies that will allow the states to reclaim at least part of the authority they were originally given under the constitution. Yesterday One America News posted an article about plans being looked at to change the way Medicaid is funded.

The article reports:

According to a Wall Street Journal report, President Trump is expected to release guidance that would make it easier for states to apply for block grants in the coming weeks.

The way these block grants work is that each state that applies for the program would receive a capped chunk of federal money to spend on Medicaid, however they choose. If a state spends less than what is given, they are able to keep that money for themselves.

Thus, the measure motivates state governments to make cuts on Medicaid as well as relinquish the federal government’s requirement to match what states spend on the issue. Many local lawmakers have reportedly praised the new tactic as financially responsible.

“We don’t need to put welfare in the Constitution to meet the needs of the most vulnerable,” said Jonathan Small, member of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. “It will cost $374 million in state taxpayer dollars, to cover 628,000 able bodied adults.”

Conservatives argue another perk is that Medicaid block grants are more efficient at the end of the day.

“Officials say it could improve the way Medicaid is administered since states can tailor their health care program to their citizens needs,” stated Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee. “Ultimately what that means is that the cost of healthcare will be lowered if states line up to be more efficient because they’ll be rewarded for such, then it will lower the cost of healthcare which is why it will be a win for the country.”

Hopefully bringing Medicaid back to state control would also cut down on the fraud that is so rampant in the program. Needless to say, Democrats oppose the move.