Tag Archives: Congressional hearing

Remember When Patriots Ran Congress?

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On Tuesday, The Federalist posted an article about a recent vote taken in the Senate.

The article reports:

None of Democrats’ witnesses in a congressional hearing Tuesday could say resolutely that they believe only citizens should be able to vote in a federal election.

During a Senate Judiciary Hearing on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee asked the witnesses to provide a basic “yes” or “no” answer to a series of questions about non-citizens voting.

“Do you believe that only citizens of the United States should be able to vote in federal elections?” Lee asked each of the witnesses.

“We don’t have a position about non-citizens voting in federal elections, we believe that’s what the current laws are, and so we’re certainly fighting for everyone who is eligible under current law to vote,” Executive Director of The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Damon T. Hewitt said.

“That’s a decision of the state law but I want to emphasize –” President of Southwest Voter Registration Education Project Lydia Camarillo said.

“It’s a decision of state law as to who should vote in federal elections?” Lee interjected.

“States decide who gets to vote in various elections, and in federal elections I believe that we should be encouraging people to naturalize and then vote,” Camarillo said.

“Okay but you’re saying that the federal government should have no say in who votes in a federal election?” Lee pressed.

“I don’t have a position on that,” Camarillo responded.

The article concludes:

The John Lewis Voting Rights Act seeks to federalize all elections by stripping states and local jurisdictions from making changes to their elections without approval from federal bureaucrats. If the legislation is passed, the U.S. Justice Department could essentially take over an election if its left-wing allies claim minority voters are being harmed by something as simple as requiring an ID or proving citizenship to vote.

A federal judge recently ruled Arizona’s law requiring individuals to prove U.S. citizenship in order to vote in a statewide election is not discriminatory and could proceed after leftists lodged a series of suits.

“Arizona’s interests in preventing non-citizens from voting and promoting public confidence in Arizona’s elections outweighs the limited burden voters might encounter when required to provide” proof of citizenship, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled.

The potential for mischief under the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is endless. Just for the record, there is no reason for non-citizens to vote in American elections–they have no skin in the game. If things go bad in America, they can simply go home.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

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On Tuesday, The Daily Caller noted that Harvard President Claudine Gay will remain at her job after accusations of plagiarism. This action does not seem to be consistent with the University’s Code of Honor.

The article reports:

The Harvard Corporation, which is one of Harvard’s governing bodies, announced Tuesday that they would remain supportive of Gay after a contentious Congressional hearing and accusations  of plagiarism, although the Corporation admitted that a review of her work found “a few instances of inadequate citation.” Harvard University has disciplined students for similar violations of its honor code, which prohibits turning in work that is “not their own,” The Harvard Crimson reported. 

I like the term “inadequate citation.” That term is further proof that he who controls the vocabulary controls the issue.

The article notes:

The Honor Council heard 138 cases of “academic integrity cases” during the 2020-2021 school year and 99 of those resulted in an “academic dishonesty violation,” in which 27 students were forced to withdraw from the school, according to the Crimson. There were 47 reported violations regarding plagiarism during the academic year.

“Students who, for whatever reason, submit work either not their own or without clear attribution to its sources will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including requirement to withdraw from the College,” Harvard’s plagiarism policy reads.

An approximate average of 18 students per year were forced to withdraw from Harvard between the 2015-2016 academic year and the 2020-21 academic year, according to the Crimson.

The article concludes:

Along with Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth faced calls for removal after refusing to say whether calls for genocide against Jews violated the schools’ codes of conduct. Gay and Magill both backtracked their comments, and the latter resigned on Dec. 9.

Harvard and Gay did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Priorities, People

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On Tuesday, NewsMax posted an article about the Congressional hearings concerning January 6th that will begin on Thursday night. This will be a dog and pony show the likes of which we have not seen for a long time.

The article reports:

Sen Marco Rubio, R-Fla., blasted the Jan. 6 House panel for hiring a network executive to produce its prime-time hearing set for Thursday night.

Axios reported Monday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s partisan select committee — comprised of Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans — had employed former ABC News President James Goldston to produce the prime-time hearing.

“Instead of focusing on $5 gas, 6000 illegal immigrants a day, record fentanyl deaths, or the violent criminals terrorizing America democrats use taxpayer money on a TV producer for the prime time political infomercial from the Jan 6th circus,” Rubio tweeted Monday morning.

…Rubio earlier this year ripped into liberals’ “ridiculous and shameless hypocrisy” for their outrage over the Capitol attack while they “downplayed” riots across the U.S. in 2020.

“Get ready to witness the shameless hypocrisy of the far left politicians & liberal activists masquerading as journalists who downplayed & excused riots & looting during the summer of 2020,” Rubio tweeted with a video on the one-year anniversary of the attack.

Rubio previously broke with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who described the Jan. 6, 2021, events as a “violent insurrection.”

It’s really hard to describe something as a violent insurrection when the only people who had guns were the police. There were two protesters killed by the police. Contrast that with the fact that during the summer of 2020, protesters weren’t killed–innocent civilians were. Yet, Congress is focusing on January 6th.

The article notes:

“There was no way they were going to overthrow the government of the United States,” Rubio told NewsNation in early February.

“I​​t was a riot. It was a dangerous riot. It was a violent one. It should have never happened, and it should never happen again. But I also do not think people should be misled to think this somehow was on the verge of overthrowing the government.”

The House select committee has employed Goldston partly because it wants the prime-time hearing to draw the attention of Americans who haven’t followed its probe in hopes that the Jan. 6 events resonate in voters’ minds as the November midterm elections approach.

As has been said by people smarter than I, the sole purpose of this production on Thursday night is to try to prevent President Trump from becoming President again. The fear is that now that he has some idea whom he can trust, he might actually be able to begin to drain the swamp that Washington has become.

Is A Refusal To Answer An Answer?

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There are many Americans who believe that a lot of what we saw on January 6th was a false flag operation. The fact that no one can explain why President Trump’s request for the National Guard was denied adds to that suspicion. The fact that Roy Epps mysteriously disappeared from the FBI’s Most Wanted List after being seen on video telling people to go into the Capitol also adds to that suspicion. A Congressional Hearing on Tuesday added further fuel to the suspicion that January 6th was a set-up.

The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article on Tuesday about the Congressional Hearing. The article reports:

An FBI agent refused to give answers on Tuesday as to who Ray Epps is and whether any agents or informants participated in any capacity in the January 6 Capitol riot.

Senator Ted Cruz demanded to know the level of involvement, if any, the agency had in the deadly attack last year and wanted to know more about an ex-Marine accused of being an FBI plant sent to help incite the events last year.

‘How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of January 6th?’ Cruz asked the FBI’s Executive Assistant Director of the National Security Branch Jill Sanborn during a hearing on domestic violence threats on Tuesday.

‘Sir, I’m sure you can appreciate that I can’t go into the specifics of sources and methods –’ Sanborn began, but was cut off but Cruz re-asking the same question.

‘I can’t answer that,’ said Sanborn, who joined the hearing virtually.

‘Did any FBI agents or confidential informants commit crimes of violence on January 6?’ Cruz pushed.

‘I can’t answer that.’

‘Did any FBI agents or FBI informants actively encourage and incite crimes of violence on January 6?’ the Texas Republican senator asked.

Sanborn repeated the same answer for a third time.

Cruz then said that President Biden needs to answer questions about the FBI’s supposed role in January 6.

‘Unfortunately, under Joe Biden we have seen an incredibly partisan Department of Justice,’ Cruz said. ‘And both the Department of Justice and the FBI have an arrogance that they are not accountable to anyone, that they can stonewall.’

So much for the transparency of the Biden administration.

Words Matter

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We have routinely heard the events at the Capitol on January 6th described as an armed insurrection. That has been the narrative of the mainstream media. However, it seems that there is a basic problem with that narrative.

Just the News posted an article yesterday about the Congressional hearings regarding the event.

The article reports:

No firearms were recovered on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 during the riot, and no shots were fired by the demonstrators, an FBI official on Wednesday told Congress.

“To my knowledge we have not recovered any [firearms] on that day from any of the arrests at the scene at this point,” said Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. “No one has been charged with a firearms violation.”

Sanborn made her comments during a joint oversight hearing in the Senate to examine the breach of the U.S. Capitol. In addition to Sanborn, witnesses included the commander of the Washington, D.C. National Guard, and civilian officials from the Pentagon.

During testimony, Sanborn responded to questions from Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who asked whether firearms were present or used during the siege.

“How many shots were fired that we know of?” Johnson asked.

“The only shots fired were the ones that resulted in the death of the one lady,” Sanborn said, referencing Ashli Babbitt, a protester who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer during heightened tension inside the building.

The article also notes:

Other testimony examined the timeline of when the National Guard was dispatched to help an overwhelmed civilian police force during the siege on the Capitol.

The National Guard was dispatched to the riot more than three hours after Capitol Police made a desperate call for help with a “dire emergency,” a two-star general testified Wednesday before Congress.

Major Gen. William Walker, who commands the District of Columbia National Guard, told senators that the 1:49 p.m. call for help from the guard on Jan. 6 was approved in a message that reached him after 5 p.m. At that point, troops who were waiting on buses sped to the Capitol, and helped to secure a perimeter, Walker said.

There is something very wrong with both the actions of a few people on January 6th and the response to the events both as they unfolded and later. There is no reason that the area around our nation’s Capitol Building should look like the green zone in Baghdad.