Tag Archives: Ed Morrissey

When The Media Breaks The Law

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about the latest chapter in the saga of Nick Sandmann and the settlements reached with CNN and The Washington Post.

The article notes:

The first rule of Settlement Club is that you don’t talk about Settlement Club. And the second rule of Settlement Club — ah, heck, the first fifty rules of Settlement Club is that you don’t talk about settlements in lawsuits with mutual gag rules in place. Apparently that didn’t sink in at CNN or the Washington Post after both media outlets decided to quietly end the litigation brought by Nicholas Sandmann. Their employees went on social media attempting to spin the settlement and suggest that Sandmann only got a minimal payment to shut him up.

Big mistake, Sandmann attorney Lin Wood made clear almost immediately. “I know how to deal with liars,” Wood tweeted, and warned that new lawsuits would be filed unless “heads rolled” at both outlets:

…This started with speculation that Sandmann had indeed gotten paid nothing more than “nuisance value.” Law & Crime wrote a pretty comprehensive overview of the social-media discussion of that premise after some attorneys unconnected to the case tried to read the tea leaves from various announcements in both cases. It’s worth reading, at least for the legal theories behind the speculation. That included a rather anodyne statement from Wood expressing his opinion that the speculation was “uninformed, errant nonsense,” but added that “questions about confidentiality and the timing of the settlement will have to be directed to others.” Wood didn’t threaten anyone over the speculation — because they were not party to the confidentiality agreement, and neither was Law & Crime.

That isn’t the case with Stelter, Rangappa, and Zak. They work for the respondents in these lawsuits and act as their agents. As soon as they published and expanded on the speculation, they characterized the settlement in terms their employer specifically agreed not to do. Not only does that open up new avenues for Sandmann against the Post and CNN, it might allow Wood to add the three as respondents in a new libel/defamation action.

This may seem like a minor thing, but it is important that both parties act in accordance with the agreement they signed. I can understand why CNN and The Washington Post would want people to think that the settlement was small–they want to discourage future lawsuits. I can understand why Lin Wood would want to give the impression of a large settlement–it might discourage future character assassination of innocent people by the media.

Stay tuned. There may be more coming.

Some Common Sense From The Minneapolis City Council

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about a recent decision by the Minneapolis City Council.

The article reports:

Give credit where due for thinking outside of the box, I guess, although this idea belongs in a box … buried under the St. Anthony Falls. In the Minneapolis city council’s haste to prove it doesn’t need a professional and trained police force to keep the peace, they nearly decided to pay ad hoc bands of armed citizens to patrol the streets. Only late inquiries about this proposal from city residents and local media managed to change their minds:

The Minneapolis City Council briefly considered diverting money from police to citizen patrols, with the council’s public safety chairwoman suggesting an armed group as one that could potentially benefit.

During a budget meeting last week, Council Member Alondra Cano proposed cutting $500,000 from the Minneapolis Police Department for the citizen groups.

She described it as an effort to “respond to the hundreds of people who have formed their own community safety patrol systems to keep their blocks and their neighborhoods safe in this time of deep transition.”

She and nine of her colleagues voted in favor of adding the provision to the 2020 budget. On Wednesday, after residents and reporters contacted city officials seeking details about the proposal, the council walked it back.

Common sense made a brief appearance in the Minneapolis City Council.

The article concludes:

The Star Tribune notes that the city council seems to be out of rational ideas about how to make their no-policy fantasy into reality, which is how vigilantism nearly got a $500,000 grant and endorsement:

The change reveals how the City Council is struggling to come up with alternatives to the Minneapolis Police Department, even as a majority has vowed to end it. Council members and city staffers have, at times, found themselves unclear about what various proposals mean, even after they have voted on them.

In other words, the city council is completely incompetent, and now obviously so. This would qualify as satire if not for the lives that have already been lost and the lives that will be lost in the near future due to their failures to perform their basic duties as public officials. The city council is responsible for the police department and its performance, but they do not want Minneapolis residents to realize that. Instead, they want to pretend that a modern city of 425,000-plus residents don’t need law enforcement, mainly because they want to abdicate their own responsibilities for managing it.

Minneapolis is a home-rule charter city, so the state doesn’t have too many options in dealing with this disaster. The city’s voters will have to act to put an end to the circus they elected. In the meantime, the cities around them will have to deal with the fallout — and business owners will start looking elsewhere for better environments in which to operate.

This is the reason voting matters. The only way to improve the government of Minneapolis is to vote for people who actually understand how to make things better. The current city council obviously does not.

The Problem With Mail-In Voting

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about the recent primary in New York State. The primary was held on June 23. All voters had until May 29 to register online, in person at a local board of elections, or by mailing in a voter registration form.

The article reports:

How badly has the state of New York handled its vote-by-mail primary? Only today did the Associated Press make the call on the race in NY-16, concluding three weeks after the election that Rep. Eliot Engel lost to his primary challenger, progressive insurgent Jamaal Bowman — by sixteen points. It took that long to get through enough of the mail-in ballots and navigate the opaque reporting on the count for the AP to reach a firm conclusion in a landslide for Bowman.

That race is no fluke, either. The New York Times reports that some races have only a handful of ballots counted, and that outcomes of many of the primary contests have yet to be determined, more than three weeks after the election day. This portends disaster in November, the Times warns:

More than three weeks after the New York primaries, election officials have not yet counted an untold number of mail-in absentee ballots, leaving numerous closely watched races unresolved, including three key Democratic congressional contests.

The absentee ballot count — greatly inflated this year because the state expanded the vote-by-mail option because of the coronavirus pandemic — has been painstakingly slow, and hard to track, with no running account of the vote totals available.

In some cases, the tiny number of ballots counted has bordered on the absurd: In the 12th Congressional District, where Representative Carolyn B. Maloney is fighting for her political life against her challenger, Suraj Patel, only 800 of some 65,000 absentee ballots had been tabulated as of Wednesday, according to Mr. Patel, though thousands had been disqualified. …

The delays in New York’s primaries raise huge concerns about how the state will handle the general election in November, and may offer a cautionary note for other states as they weigh whether to embrace, and how to implement, a vote-by-mail system because of the pandemic.

Most voter fraud occurs in absentee ballots or mail-in ballots. This is the place where ballot harvesting occurs–a person can go into a nursing home, get people with limited cognitive ability to sign a ballot, and fill out the ballot themselves and turn it in. Ballots can be stolen from mailboxes, filled out, and turned in. It is a nightmare to anyone who wants an honest election.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

The vote-by-mail system, however, truly is a disaster, and not just over security concerns. The timelines in our Constitution are too tight for the kinds of delays seen in this year’s primaries. We are at risk of being without a legitimate Congress as well as a legitimate president by the time the deadlines for both are reached. The only way to ensure that we can meet those deadlines is to vote in person by paper ballots utilizing optical-scan technology for fast and accurate counts. The delay from a relative small number of contests in that system where absentee ballots could make the difference will be easy to absorb, but we can’t wait several weeks to confirm outcomes in races with double-digit in-person vote gaps.

Stop pretending this is a Trump problem. This is an electoral legitimacy problem in more than one aspect, and it’s time we treated it as such. If we can go to Walmart in this pandemic, we certainly can figure out how to vote in person to choose this country’s leadership.

The Satellite Tells The Real Story

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Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about a recent explosion in Iran. The Iranian government claimed that the explosion that rattled nearby Tehran on Friday took place in a civilian area of Parchin and not at their secret nuclear-weapons research or missile research facilities. They even supplied photos of a burnt industrial gas tank, photos which turned out to be not entirely convincing.

The article reports:

An explosion that rattled Iran’s capital came from an area in its eastern mountains that analysts believe hides an underground tunnel system and missile production sites, satellite photographs showed Saturday.

What exploded in the incident early Friday that sent a massive fireball into the sky near Tehran remains unclear, as does the cause of the blast.

The unusual response of the Iranian government in the aftermath of the explosion, however, underscores the sensitive nature of an area near where international inspectors believe the Islamic Republic conducted high-explosive tests two decades ago for nuclear weapon triggers.

…Western analysts viewing the European Commission satellite photos believe that the explosion took place in a missile-building or missile-assembly area underground. The Iranians have moved a substantial part of their missile program underground over the years to hide it from these same kinds of satellites, but intelligence agencies have a pretty good idea where those locations are and what the Iranians are doing with them.

Still, the missiles aren’t a secret themselves; the Iranians openly brag about their capabilities, even to the point of photoshopping to make them look even more impressive. Why not just tell the truth, if this was an industrial accident? Perhaps because it wasn’t an industrial accident. Iran’s militias in Syria have come under attack by air over the last 24 hours, with Israel being suspected of launching the strikes:

The article concludes:

This brings us back to Parchin and Iran’s missile production and development. Right now, Iran has the missile technology to target Israel, but not a nuclear warhead to put on one of them — we think, anyway. Israel might have decided to slow down their missile production with an act of sabotage at Parchin, perhaps in part just to demonstrate they can do it. Iran has spent the last few years creeping up on Israel via the civil war in Syria, and Israel might have just delivered a kidney punch in return.

That might be why Iran isn’t too keen on admitting that they have holes in their security, let alone have suffered a setback on military production. Theocratic tyrannies don’t last long when their subjects realize their incompetence, and this one’s already on thin ice after shooting down a Ukrainian passenger flight a few months ago. Or so we hope.

Israel (and a number of Arab countries in the Middle East) have a vested interest in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power with missiles and warheads. Iran has made known its ambitions to create a caliphate in the area. Missiles and warheads would probably make that possible. Israel will do all it can to prevent that.

Protection For Me, But Not For Thee

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Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about a recent move by the Minneapolis City Council. The article reports that yesterday the council voted unanimously to pursue a still-ambiguous plan to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a more politically correct “Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention.” However, there are some problems with that vote.

The article reports:

The council voted unanimously to advance a proposal that would create a new Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention. Within that, the city could create a division that includes “licensed peace officers,” though it would not be required to do so.

It’s unclear how many, if any, officers would continue to be employed by the city if the proposal passes.

Council Member Cam Gordon said it’s consistent with the pledge from council members to fundamentally alter local policing in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis officers.

“Those things that we called the police department are gone,” Gordon said. “Certainly, there is a provision in here that would allow this council or future councils to maintain a Division of Law Enforcement Services, but I think what we need to do is have that possibility there and talk to people about what the future should look like.”

The article explains the problem with that vote:

Maybe we should know what the “future” looks like before changing the present. The city council can’t actually change the present anyway, thanks to a city charter that requires them to maintain a police department with precise staffing levels. The best they can do under the charter is impose a cut of around 20%, but even that would fall afoul of the collective bargaining agreement with the police union. (Agreements negotiated and signed by a succession of progressive city councils, I might add here.) That makes yesterday’s vote an exercise in pusillanimity; there’s no cost to it at all.

It gets worse:

The City of Minneapolis is spending $4,500 a day for private security for three council members who have received threats following the police killing of George Floyd, FOX 9 has learned.

A city spokesperson said the private security details have cost the city $63,000 over the past three weeks.

The three council members who have the security detail – Andrea Jenkins (Ward 8), and Phillipe Cunningham (Ward 4), and Alondra Cano (Ward 9)– have been outspoken proponents of defunding the Minneapolis Police Department.

So while the Council votes to get rid of the police department as it currently exists, the City is paying for private security for three council members. Protection for me, but not for thee. These are the people the voters of Minneapolis elected. I think it might be time to unelect them. We need to remember that the voters have the power to determine leadership. In 2018, the turnout of registered Minneapolis voters was 76%. That is a solid turnout. The voters need to learn to make better choices.

Finding Out Where It Began

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Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about the search for the origins of the coronavirus. It is not unreasonable to assume that China has not yet told the whole truth about the virus, where it began, and how many people have died in China as a result of the virus.

The article reports:

If Xi Jinping’s propaganda war and economic threats tried to save China from humiliation, it just backfired on Beijing. Health ministers from more than 100 countries have signed onto a call at the United Nations General Assembly for a probe into the origins of COVID, a demand drafted by the European Union. The demand doesn’t name China, but it does name the UN subordinate agency World Health Organization:

More than 100 health ministers from around the world are expected to call for an independent evaluation of the World Health Organization’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic during the organization’s 73rd general assembly on Monday. …

President Trump has been Beijing’s chief accuser, but he is not the only one to have alleged that Chinese officials covered up the virus during its early stages and exacerbated its spread into a pandemic.

The WHO has also faced criticism, with some observers saying the agency was at least far too credulous in believing Beijing’s reassurances, which it then amplified uncritically to the wider world.

The WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has also been under scrutiny after he heaped praise on Beijing’s coronavirus response.

The article concludes:

Xi is stalling for time, and transparently so. He wants to push this off as long as possible to (a) let the momentum behind this push abate somewhat, and (b) get more time to cover up what happened in Wuhan. The UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) and the WHO members who have funded China’s mouthpiece had better strike while the iron is hot.

Finally, perhaps this UNGA rebellion against Xi might take the blinders off the American media, who paint attempts to hold China responsible as some sort of dodge for Trump. It turns out that the US media’s bête noire isn’t the only one pointing the finger at China; in fact, pretty much everyone else but the American media is doing so. The only success Xi has actually had with his propaganda war has been in American newspapers and television broadcasts. If having the notoriously anti-American UNGA side with Trump doesn’t wake up the American media to its exploitation from Beijing, nothing will.

Leadership?

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Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about a recent statement by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

The article reports:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled Thursday that the House is unlikely to return to session later this month, her clearest indication yet that Congress — like the rest of the country — could remain shuttered for weeks or even longer as the coronavirus crisis continues.

In a half-hour interview, Pelosi issued a stark warning to President Donald Trump, urging him not to prematurely rush to reopen major segments of the country before the coronavirus is under control, which she said could further send the U.S. economy into a tailspin.

“Nobody can really tell you that and I would never venture a guess. I certainly don’t think we should do it sooner than we should,” Pelosi said when asked if she still planned to bring the House back on April 20, which is the current target date.

“This has taken an acceleration from when we started this…Little did we know then that at this point, we’d be further confined.”

It would be nice if the House of Representatives convened to see if they could do anything to help Americans weather the crisis. On the other hand, considering how partisan and ineffective the House of Representatives is, we might actually be better off with them staying home.

The article concludes:

Congress, to put it mildly, is an essential business in constitutional governance. In a national emergency, they need to show up and do their damned jobs. Doctors, nurses, the armed forces, the National Guard, police, paramedics, firefighters, and even grocery-store workers and restaurateurs are showing up to their jobs in this national emergency. Shouldn’t we expect the same or more from our elected officials?

Pelosi and McConnell need to get their members back to Washington now. If those don’t want to do those jobs any more, then they should resign and be replaced by people who are more willing to lead in times of crisis. And if Pelosi and McConnell are reluctant to do that, even just to settle how to operate remotely in a national emergency, then Trump should start demanding it publicly — every day, in his coronavirus briefings — by asking, “Where’s Congress?”

Addendum: Not that I’d expect the media to adopt this policy, but they shouldn’t give any political oxygen to members of Congress who aren’t leading in a national crisis…

Why are we paying Congress right now while Americans are missing paychecks?

Waiting For The Next Step

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For thirty-five years, I lived about ten miles from Kraft Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. New England sports fans are dedicated–even when their team is losing. I learned to appreciate the New England Patriots (actually I am a Jets fan, but I learned to appreciate the talent of the Patriots). I wasn’t really surprised to hear today that Tom Brady will be leaving the New England team. It has been an amazing 20 years for Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about Tom Brady’s announcement that he is leaving the New England Patriots.

The article includes an Instagram post by Tom Brady:

The article concludes:

That era has finally closed out, and what an era it was. It was the kind of dominance that free-agency and the draft were designed to prevent by providing parity to the NFL. It seems unlikely that we’ll ever see it again, but that’s part of the fun of playing the games. At the very least, Brady earned that Greatest of All Time title, and we had fun watching him do it — even if many of us were wailing and gnashing our teeth while he did. No matter where he lands, it’s a long shot that Brady can generate that kind of dominance in the time he has left, but he might have enough to take a more complete team to the Super Bowl. Never count him out.

I will miss watching Tom Brady play. He made the game look easy.

 

 

I Think He Needs To Do Some Work On His People Skills

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Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about a recent Joe Biden event in Detroit.

The article reports:

Say what you want about the inevitable Joe Biden presidential nomination, but at least it will be entertaining. At least, it will be as entertaining as arrogant ignorance ever gets, a combination that Biden has mastered over long decades in the public eye. Biden went stumping for votes in a Detroit auto plant today, a natural venue for campaigning thanks to the Obama administration’s rescue of GM and Chrysler.

Instead, Biden got caught up in a gun-control argument with a worker who accused him of “actively trying to end our Second Amendment right.” Biden offered a pungent reply — “You’re full of s**t!” — and then things got really testy:

…Biden denies in this clip that he wants to confiscate anyone’s guns. One week ago, though, Biden publicly proclaimed that he would put Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke in charge of his gun policy, a former presidential aspirant who explicitly called for gun confiscations by law enforcement following an assault rifle ban.

The Second Amendment may be a problem for Democrat candidates. Recent statements by all of the presidential candidates and many legislators have advocated gun buy-backs (a polite word for gun confiscation). There are a lot of people in America who value their Second Amendment rights either for hunting or for self-protection. I think most voters are smart enough to see the writing on the wall–that we will lose our Second Amendment rights under either a Democrat President or a Democrat Congress. And I do think Joe Biden needs to work on his people skills.

A Small Step Toward Justice

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is reporting today that there have been some small steps taken by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court to insure that the civil rights of Americans will not be violated as they were in the case of Carter Page.

The article reports:

Substantively, it might not seem like much, but symbolically, this order will sting the FBI and Department of Justice. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court effectively barred any agents involved in the Carter Page FISA warrants from taking part in its proceedings as a consequence of the misconduct that took place in Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Also, the court will now require agents and attorneys to swear under oath explicitly that they have included all potentially exculpatory evidence in their presentations:

A secretive federal court on Wednesday effectively barred F.B.I. officials involved in the wiretapping of a former Trump campaign adviser from appearing before it in other cases at least temporarily, the latest fallout from an internal inquiry into the bureau’s surveillance of the aide.

A 19-page opinion and order by James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, also largely accepted changes the F.B.I. has said it will make to its process for seeking national-security wiretaps following a damning inspector general report about errors and omissions in applications to monitor the adviser, Carter Page.

But Judge Boasberg ordered law enforcement officials to specifically swear in future cases that the applications to the court contain “all information that might reasonably call into question the accuracy of the information or the reasonableness of any F.B.I. assessment in the application, or otherwise raise doubts about the requested findings.”

…The banishment of Crossfire Hurricane figures is almost certainly meant to be embarrassing, but that’s about as much teeth as FISC has in this situation. As the New York Times’ Charlie Savage points out, the court has limited authority to deal with FBI misconduct. It has no oversight over the Department of Justice at all, which is an executive-branch agency. Presumably the court’s rotating judges had already adopted a more skeptical approach to more recent surveillance warrant applications after reading the Michael Horowitz report, but unless Congress changes the FISA law, courts are still required to follow it.

Speaking of which, the law is due to expire, and Donald Trump has already declared he won’t sign an extension without significant changes. Given what happened in Crossfire Hurricane, few would be surprised to know that, of course:

Unless it it renewed, FISA sunsets on March 15th. There are recommendations on the table to reform the law. President Trump has stated that he will not sign an extension of the law without reforms. Considering how the law was illegally used against him and his campaign, I think that is a very reasonable approach.

Playing Chess With World Trade

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America has been on the wrong end of bad trade deals for a long time. We watched our manufacturing jobs leave America after NAFTA. We watched the steel industry disappear after being undercut by Chinese steel held up by subsidies by the Chinese government. President Trump is a businessman. As a businessman, he is trying to level the trade playing field. In some areas he is getting cooperation at home and abroad; in some areas he is not. China has been a difficult country to deal with regarding trade. The uneven playing field they have enjoyed for years has been very profitable for them. Because their economy is based on an uneven playing field, they are reluctant to make changes. Their economy is currently struggling, and if President Trump stands his ground, the Chinese economy could face serious challenges. That’s where we are. There is, however, some positive news about where we might be headed.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about a possible breakthrough in the talks with China.

The article reports:

Did China finally blink in Donald Trump’s trade war? Trump himself seems to think so. At the G-7 summit, Trump told reporters that a statement earlier in the day from a top official in Beijing showed that China had finally expressed a real interest in redefining the trade relationship between the world’s top two economies. It’s “the first time” that Trump sees China acting in good faith, he said

The article continues:

After rapid-fire escalations in tariffs by both sides, China’s vice premiere called for “calm.” Liu He also declared Beijing’s willingness to conclude a trade agreement and called for talks to begin immediately:

“We are willing to resolve the issue through consultations and cooperation in a calm attitude and resolutely oppose the escalation of the trade war,” Liu, who is President Xi Jinping’s top economic adviser, said, according to a government transcript.

“We believe that the escalation of the trade war is not beneficial for China, the United States, nor to the interests of the people of the world,” he added.

U.S. companies are especially welcome in China, and will be treated well, Liu said.

“We welcome enterprises from all over the world, including the United States, to invest and operate in China,” he added.

“We will continue to create a good investment environment, protect intellectual property rights, promote the development of smart intelligent industries with our market open, resolutely oppose technological blockades and protectionism, and strive to protect the completeness of the supply chain.”

The last time we thought we had a deal, the person who made the deal was executed when he returned home. Hopefully this time will turn out better for everyone.

Will The Victims Receive Justice?

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The death of Jeffrey Epstein was not the end of the story. Today Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about one of Epstein’s victims filing a lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, described as one of Epstein’s enablers.

The article reports::

A new front in the Jeffrey Epstein case opened Wednesday morning, as Epstein accuser Jennifer Araoz filed a lawsuit against his estate, his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell and three unnamed female household staff.

Araoz alleges she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by Epstein at his New York City townhouse when she was 14 and 15 years old, including a forcible rape in 2002. She first disclosed her alleged abuse publicly in an exclusive TODAY Show interview with Savannah Guthrie of NBC News on July 10, the same day she filed papers in New York state court saying she intended to sue Epstein.

The complaint Araoz filed Wednesday alleges Maxwell and the other staffers “conspired with each other to make possible and otherwise facilitate the sexual abuse and rape of Plaintiff.”

Meanwhile, The U.K. Daily Mail reported today:

Ghislaine Maxwell, long-time consort of Jeffrey Epstein and the alleged procurer of victims in his underage sex trafficking ring, has been laying low in a New England beach town, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively.

Maxwell, 57, is in a relationship with Scott Borgerson, 43, and has been living with him at his secluded oceanfront property at the end of a long private road in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.

The British socialite has been loath to leave the $3 million mansion, a source told DailyMail.com amid heightened focus on Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators following the convicted pedophile’s apparent suicide on Saturday.

‘She’s become a real homebody, rarely ventures out. She’s the antithesis of the woman who traveled extensively and partied constantly with Epstein,’ said a source familiar with Maxwell’s new life.

Hot Air concludes:

Araoz explains her decision in today’s New York Times to press forward with her civil claims, not just against Epstein’s estate but also against his “adult enablers.” Without them, Epstein could never have succeeded in the scope of his predation, Araoz convincingly argues:

The power structure was stacked against me. His money, influence and connections to important people made me want to hide and stay silent. Those same powerful forces let him hide and evade justice.

That changes, starting now. I want my story to hold Epstein to account and also his recruiters, the workers on his payroll who knew what he was doing and the prominent people around him who helped conceal and perpetuate his sex-trafficking scheme. Their hideous actions victimized me and so many young girls like me. …

Standing up to the entrenched network of power and wealth that surrounded Epstein is scary, but I am no longer afraid. Reliving these experiences is tough, but I’ve learned to be tougher.

I used to feel alone, walking into his mansion with the cameras pointing at me, but now I have the power of the law on my side. I will be seen. I will be heard. I will demand justice.

So will others, especially now that Epstein’s dead and his “power structure” is on the run. Or at least the part of it that we know about at the moment. When other victims start adding some high-profile male names to this “power structure” in court documents, we’ll see how well the justice system works.

We are about to find out if there really is equal justice under the law

A Small Step Forward For Americans Filling Prescriptions

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Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about the new initiative rolled out by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

The article reports:

Democrats ate the GOP’s lunch on health-care messaging in 2018’s midterms. The Trump administration might be preparing better for the 2020 election. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar rolled out a new initiative today that would allow for prescription purchases from Canada, addressing a key Democratic talking point on the cost of health care:

“President Trump has been clear: for too long American patients have been paying exorbitantly high prices for prescription drugs that are made available to other countries at lower prices. When we released the President’s drug pricing blueprint – PDF for putting American patients first, we said we are open to all potential solutions to combat high drug prices that protect patient safety, are effective at delivering lower prices, and respect choice, innovation and access,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. “Today’s announcement outlines the pathways the Administration intends to explore to allow safe importation of certain prescription drugs to lower prices and reduce out of pocket costs for American patients. This is the next important step in the Administration’s work to end foreign freeloading and put American patients first.”

The article lists some of the details of the plan. Please follow the link above for more information.

The article also lists some of the problems with the plan:

The question of pharmaceutical importation has its complexities, and it might not be a great idea in terms of long-term policy outcomes. For one thing, drug prices in Canada are artificially low thanks to intervention by the Canadian government, which will be tougher to maintain if demand increases exponentially via re-importation into the US. (Canadians in particular might not be very happy about what happens to their drug prices.) It doesn’t solve the major problems in pharmaceutical production costs, which are consolidation in the industry, copyright issues, and bureaucratic delays in FDA approvals, among others. It’s a Band-Aid over a gaping wound.

However, it’s going to be a very popular Band-Aid in the short run. The new HHS effort also lends itself to a slow rollout, which will play right into Trump’s need to pre-empt Democrats on health care in this cycle…

The article takes a rather cynical view regarding the motive for this action, but at least temporarily many Americans will appreciate the savings. On a personal note, one of the maintenance drugs my husband takes for heart problems sells for $600 a month. With the help of our health insurance, we have managed to get that price down to $70 a month, but the idea of having to pay $600 a month out-of-pocket for a drug is more than a little frightening.

This is a small step in the right direction. I understand that high drug prices are the result of the procedures for the invention, development, and selling of a new drug, but Americans shouldn’t have to pay for all of the research while other people reap the rewards of that research without paying for it.

The Economy Continues To Move In A Positive Direction

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Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about the latest economic numbers. As usual when a Republican is President, the ‘experts’ were surprised that the numbers were better than expected.

The article reports:

It’s not great news for the White House, but it could have been a lot worse. The US economy’s growth slowed to 2.1% in the second quarter, down a full point from Q1. However, with economists predicting a recession right around the corner, the growth is still substantial enough to look positive:

Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in the second quarter of 2019 (table 1), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 3.1 percent.

The Bureau’s second-quarter advance estimate released today is based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see “Source Data for the Advance Estimate” on page 2). The “second” estimate for the second quarter, based on more complete data, will be released on August 29, 2019.

The increase in real GDP in the second quarter reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), federal government spending, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by negative contributions from private inventory investment, exports, nonresidential fixed investment and residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased (table 2).

The deceleration in real GDP in the second quarter reflected downturns in inventory investment, exports, and nonresidential fixed investment. These downturns were partly offset by accelerations in PCE and federal government spending.

President Trump weighed in on Twitter:

The article at Hot Air concludes:

“Not bad” is a little bit of an understatement, actually. It’s pretty good, especially in the context of the global economy. That’s the bigger anchor, especially the trade disputes that at least for one quarter hit our exports hard.

The steady growth with low inflation should result in the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates in the near future.

Prepare The Popcorn

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Washington is nothing if not leaky. The leaks are starting to come out about the Inspector General’s report. The report will be scrutinized and edited before any (or all) of it is released to the public in September, so we really don’t know what we will be allowed to see. It seems to me that if (if?) there is corruption in our government that the American people are entitled to know about it, but that’s just naivete`.

Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today giving his take on the subject.

The article reports:

If RealClearInvestigations’ sources accurately describe Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ upcoming report, it’s no wonder Donald Trump fired James Comey. According to two sources reportedly briefed on the upcoming Horowitz report, the former FBI director repeatedly lied about not targeting Trump in his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Comey also had what amounted to a spy in the White House, raising the specter of J. Edgar Hoover all over again:

Sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will soon file a report with evidence indicating that Comey was misleading the president. Even as he repeatedly assured Trump that he was not a target, the former director was secretly trying to build a conspiracy case against the president, while at times acting as an investigative agent.

Two U.S. officials briefed on the inspector general’s investigation of possible FBI misconduct said Comey was essentially “running a covert operation against” the president, starting with a private “defensive briefing” he gave Trump just weeks before his inauguration. They said Horowitz has examined high-level FBI text messages and other communications indicating Comey was actually conducting a “counterintelligence assessment” of Trump during that January 2017 meeting in New York.

In addition to adding notes of his meetings and phone calls with Trump to the official FBI case file, Comey had an agent inside the White House who reported back to FBI headquarters about Trump and his aides, according to other officials familiar with the matter.

Who authorized placing spies inside the White House? Wouldn’t that come under the definition of treason–spying on the American government? If the spies were reporting back to James Comey, who was James Comey reporting back to?

Stay tuned.

Child Abuse In Our Schools

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about a lawsuit filed by some parents against an Oregon school district. The case began with an 8-year-old boy with a stomach issue and ends with that child being encouraged to be a girl.

The article reports:

Parents in Woodburn said their 8-year-old son was held back from recess multiple times for one-on-one conversations about his gender identity – and they had no idea.

The mother and father in Woodburn are now suing a school district for nearly a million dollars after they say a second-grade teacher singled out their son by asking him if he was transgender. The parents say the teacher had inappropriate conversations with the child at school without their permission. …

The parents say this all started when their son started using the staff restroom because of a stomach problem. They say their son was uncomfortable using the boy’s bathroom because of his medical condition. However, they believe the teacher assumed their son was uncomfortable because he was transgender.

“Still today, a year later, if he plays with my niece, he’s a girl in that moment… if he plays with my nephew, he’s a boy,” said the mother.

The mother says her son was left confused and hurt after being singled out. Now, a year later, the 9-year-old is taking anxiety medication and going to therapy, according to his parents. The family says the boy’s confusion and emotional distress has also affected the entire family. The father says he’s suffering from panic attacks and the mother says she’s now on medical leave, suffering from anxiety and depression, and staying home from work.

It is entirely possible that the panic attacks and anxiety on the part of the parents might be something of an overreaction, but their complaint is certainly valid.

The article notes:

There’s video at the link, but it’s not embeddable here. Bear in mind that this wasn’t a teenager, which might be bad enough, but an eight year old with a stomach problem. Even granting the best of possible intentions, why wouldn’t the first step in dealing with suspicions of gender dysphoria be to contact the child’s parents? It’s not as if the parents in this case are social neanderthals, at least from the perspective of Academia. They tell reporter Bonnie Silkman in the video that they aren’t concerned about what identity he chooses as long as he chooses it, and not get indoctrinated into it by an activist teacher.

The article concludes:

The most impressively loco part of this story is that the teacher still works at the school — a full year after the school confirmed the parents’ story. The only correction the teacher received was to be reminded of the district’s policies on “controversial issues” and to notify parents and the school when she “alters a student’s regular school day.” Meanwhile, this family will be dealing with the aftershocks of her actions for years.

The school district declined to comment on the story because of the lawsuit, but they might owe an explanation to the other parents in the district, especially to those whose children are within this teacher’s supervision. How many other children has she attempted to indoctrinate into transgender identities? And how many of the parents in this school district — and elsewhere — might start considering private schools or home-schooling to protect their children from predatory behavior?

If I had children in that school district, this article would cause me to consider seriously the option of home-schooling.

This Makes My Heart Hurt

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about the spending bill the President signed this morning.

The article notes:

Forty-eight hours before the government would have shut down, Congress produced the conference report containing the seven remaining funding bills for the FY2019 budget. And less than 20 hours after producing the 1,159-page monstrosity, both the House and the Senate are expected to pass the bill. Perhaps members will take a nap with it under their pillow to absorb it by osmosis.

It’s not a good bill, and even if it were, how would anyone know? I am sure some members of Congress assigned various sections of the bill to staff members in the hopes of getting most of it read, but this is no way to run a country.

Meanwhile, the President is charged with defending our borders. We have had and continue to have thousands of people forming caravans to break into our country. Any public official who took an oath to defend our Constitution has an obligation to defend our borders. I really don’t understand why that is so difficult to understand. Well, yes I do–it’s about money and voters. When the Democrats look at illegal aliens, they see Democrat voters. Illegal aliens are already allowed to vote in local elections in some cities and states. When Republicans look at illegal aliens, they see cheap labor. Since much of the campaign money for Republicans comes from PAC’s related to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (made up of corporations that support cheap labor), Republicans are not inclined to seal our borders.

So what impact does illegal immigration have on those of us who are ordinary citizens? In June 2018, Numbers USA reported:

A recent report by the Migration Policy Institute, entitled Chilling Effects: The Expected Public Charge Rule and Its Impact on Legal Immigrant Families’ Public Benefits Use, revealed that 10.3 million out of the 22 million foreign nationals in the U.S. receive benefits from at least one welfare program funded by taxpayer dollars. Additionally, 54.2% of foreign national children, age 17 and younger, are granted welfare benefits. The data also showed that 46.3% of foreign national welfare recipients are adults, age 18 to 54, and 47.8% are older than 54.

MPI examined a leaked draft of an executive order that would deny green cards to individuals who use public benefits, or have relatives who do. The report goes on to explain how the Trump Administration’s Public Charge Rule would reduce the number of foreign nationals on welfare, cause a decrease in immigration levels, and make it more difficult for foreign nationals and their dependents to be eligible for welfare benefits.

A website called nokidhungry.org reports that 17.9 percent of American children under the age of 18 are living in households that experienced limited or uncertain availability of safe, nutritious food at some point during the year. (Source: Feeding America). That number is a disgrace when you consider the amount of money we provide to poor families in this country, but it also illustrates the fact that we cannot afford to support more low-income families–particularly if they are not American citizens.

It is pathetic that Congress could not support preserving our country. Thank God we have a President who is willing to fight to preserve America.

I Just Wish All Terrorists Were This Dumb

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about a would-be New York City terrorist. The way the New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation uncovered this plot is somewhat amazing.

The police were investigating a bomb threat called into a school. When a 15-year-old student was bored in class one day, her teacher, Christian Toro, told her to call in a bomb threat to liven things up. When the threat was investigated, the student told the authorities that the teacher had suggested it. (I can’t believe she was stupid enough to follow the suggestion.) The teacher resigned, and two days later his brother returned the laptop computer that had been issued to Christian Toro by the school. When a school technician examined the computer, he found an instruction book on how to make explosives. NYPD dropped by to pay the former teacher a visit. Meanwhile, the student indicated to authorities that her relationship with the teacher was inappropriate. The former teacher was arrested for statutory rape. The student also mentioned that she and a friend had been in the teacher’s apartment and had been paid to empty black powder from fireworks. The investigation of the former teacher continued.

The article reports:

So police got a search warrant for the apartment shared by the twin Toros — and hit paydirt:

They discovered a box on the floor of the bedroom closet containing a glass jar of black powder, 20 pounds of iron oxide, five pounds of aluminum powder, five pounds of potassium nitrate, and two pounds of confectioners sugar. A small container held iron oxide and aluminum powder that had been mixed into thermite, which the complaint describes as “an explosive material that can create heat and high temperatures.”

They also found Tyler Toro’s diary, which had all sorts of interesting comments, including this epigram: “UNDER THE FULL MOON THE SMALL ONES WILL KNOW TERROR.” Yeah, nothing creepy at all about that.

So let’s recap. The teacher had decided to build a bomb for “terror,” but rather than keep things quiet, he had teenage students emptying out fireworks for the powder in large quantities. He then started having sex with one of them, and then encouraged her to call in a fake bomb threat to relieve her boredom. If all this is true, the only thing Toro didn’t do is to install a large sign on his apartment building that said “TORO TWINS TERROR, INC.”

The article concludes:

If stupidity was a federal crime, Christian Toro would be a death-penalty case. And yet, it apparently took all of this sequence of events for someone to finally say something about the Toros and their black-powder reclamation project. Next time, let’s hope “see something, say something” gets taken more seriously earlier in the cycle. Thankfully, an alert IT technician at the school managed to get it right.

I wish all terrorists were this stupid.

The Impact Of President Obama On The Democrat Party

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Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about President Obama’s impact on the Democrat party. Mr. Morrissey states that members of the party are seeing the damage President Obama has done to the party and are asking him to move to the center to make peace with the Republicans. It is becoming very clear that President Obama has no such intentions.

Politico reported today:

As much Hillary Clinton anticipation as there is, two weeks later, Democrats are still reeling and anxious. Obama may have built his political career without the party — and created anti-establishment alternatives — but he’s a lame duck with a new Congress that’s been elected to oppose him. He needs Democrats. And they need him.

“The base craves his leadership,” Brazile said in an interview later that week, following a meeting of the DNC committee that’s beginning to set the rules for the next presidential nomination. “They want him in the mix, talking about what Democrats accomplished, what Democrats are fighting for, and what the president has done to make lives better.”

President Obama could easily make Washington work–under normal conditions, a President who was so soundly defeated in the mid-term election would move toward the center. We are already seeing that President Obama has no such intention.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

Obama didn’t learn the Bill Clinton lesson after the first midterms. He’s not interested in learning it after his second massive defeat, either. Even with Bill Clinton’s more strategic direction, Democrats ended up losing narrowly at the end of his presidency. Obama may be leading Democrats into a reverse 2008, or perhaps even worse.

The future looks very interesting.

I Might Be A Member Of The Flat Earth Society

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I might be a member of the flat earth society. I don”t believe the earth is flat, but I don’t believe that global warming is caused by man either. So Secretary of State John Kerry compares me to a member of the flat earth society. Well, let’s see how John Kerry’s data on man-made global warming stacks up with reality.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about what the scientific models have predicted about global warming and what has actually happened.

This is the chart:

wsj-temps-lg2

As you can see, the truth has simply not kept up with the scientific predictions.

The Wall Street Journal posted an article yesterday that stated:

“Consensus” science that ignores reality can have tragic consequences if cures are ignored or promising research is abandoned. The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker. The recent Obama administration announcement that it would not provide aid for fossil-fuel energy in developing countries, thereby consigning millions of people to energy poverty, is all too reminiscent of the Sick and Health Board denying fresh fruit to dying British sailors.

Before we take actions that negatively impact the economy of the entire world, we really do need to make sure that the science we are using to justify the actions is valid.

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The Quest To Turn Texas Blue

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Texas is a red state. It votes Republican. It also has one of the fastest growing economies in the country because of the policies Republicans have put in place. However, the Democrats have decided to focus on making Texas a blue state. That is fine–America is about competition–but they are not entitled to break the law to do it.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about laws being broken in the quest to turn Texas blue.

The article reports:

Battleground Texas has a mission — to turn the deep-red state of Texas as blue as Austin, a monumental if not quixotic task. Like other activist groups, the progressive organization conducts voter-registration drives, attempting to get like-minded citizens to turn out in force in the next election cycle. Project Veritas did an undercover operation of Battleground Texas and found out that registering voters is just the start of those efforts. According to the video, the group’s leaders cull information from those registration forms and build their database of personal information — which is a direct violation of Texas law:

This is the video:

Project Veritas also discovered that Enroll America was also making illegal use of date obtained in registering voters.

Voting is a very important part of being an American. If we don’t protect the ballot box, we will lose our say in our government. Thank God that Project Veritas is exposing the cheating going on in preparation for the 2014 elections.

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Blaming Others For A Crisis You Caused Yourself

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I have written about the Central Valley in California before. In September 2010, I posted the following vacation picture (rightwinggranny.com):

IMG_2957.JPG

This picture was taken driving through the Central Valley of California. In case you can’t read the sign, it says, “Stop the Congress Created Dust Bowl.”

This is what is really going on in the Central Valley of California:

A letter to the editor at the Herald and News in July 2009 stated:

“Thousands of people have also become unemployed or lost the ability to farm, which adversely affects both local and national economies.

“In addition to the California drought, there has been court-ordered protection of a 2-inch smelt fish that has stopped the pumping of water from the delta that is necessary for agriculture in central California. If it is listed as an endangered species, it’s likely that California agriculture, which supplies a third of the nation’s food supply, will be permanently changed.”

The water was cut off to protect the delta smelt, a small fish that was getting caught in the pumps. California is currently having a drought, but the drought has been exacerbated by the water shutoff.

Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air yesterday stating that President Obama during his visit to the Central Valley blamed the drought on global warming.

This is a YouTube video of the President’s statement:

The article at Hot Air quotes Investor’s Business Daily on the history of the Central Valley drought:

The one thing that will mitigate droughts in California — a permanent feature of the state — is to restore the water flow from California’s water-heavy north to farmers in the central and south. That’s just what House Bill 3964, which passed by a 229-191 vote last week, does.

But Obama’s plan is not to get that worthy bill through the Senate (where Democrats are holding it up) but to shovel pork to environmental activists and their victims, insultingly offering out-of-work farmers a “summer meal plan” in his package.

“We are not interested in welfare; we want water,” Nunes told IBD this week. He and his fellow legislator Valadao are both farmers who represent the worst-hit regions of the Central Valley in Congress and can only look at the president’s approach with disbelief.

“He’s not addressing the situation,” Valadao told us.

“They want to blame the drought for the lack of water, but they wasted water for the past five years,” said Nunes.

The two explain that California’s system of aqueducts and storage tanks was designed long ago to take advantage of rain and mountain runoff from wet years and store it for use in dry years. But it’s now inactive — by design. “California’s forefathers built a system (of aqueducts and storage facilities) designed to withstand five years of drought,” said Nunes.

“We have infrastructure dating from the 1960s for transporting water, but by the 1990s the policies had changed,” said Valadao.

Environmental special interests managed to dismantle the system by diverting water meant for farms to pet projects, such as saving delta smelt, a baitfish. That move forced the flushing of 3 million acre-feet of water originally slated for the Central Valley into the ocean over the past five years.

If California would stop flushing millions of gallons of water into the ocean and give it to the farmers, the Central Valley would not be a dustbowl. It is truly a shame that President Obama chooses to use the hardship of the farmers as a political platform rather than solving the problem. This drought is not caused by global warming or climate change–it is caused by Washington politicians!

 

 

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This Shouldn’t Be A Surprise To Anyone

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about the United Nation‘s suggested solution to climate change. United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres stated that democracy is a poor form a government to solve the problem of global warming–communism works much better.

When you consider some of the problems in communist countries in regard to environmental damage, this statement is ridiculous. We remember Chernobyl. We have seen the pictures of Chinese cities where the smog is so thick people are wearing surgical masks.

On Monday, The Federalist posted an article about communism and its impact on the environment. The article reported:

When the Berlin Wall came down and the Iron Curtain was finally lifted to expose the inner workings of communism to Western eyes, one of the more shocking discoveries was the nightmarish scale of environmental destruction. The statistics for East Germany alone tell a horrific tale: at the time of its reunification with West Germany an estimated 42 percent of moving water and 24 percent of still waters were so polluted that they could not be used to process drinking water, almost half of the country’s lakes were considered dead or dying and unable to sustain fish or other forms of life, and only one-third of industrial sewage along with half of domestic sewage received treatment.

An estimated 44 percent of East German forests were damaged by acid rain — little surprise given that the country produced proportionally more sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and coal dust than any other in the world. In some areas of East Germany the level of air pollution was between eight and twelve times greater than that found in West Germany, and 40 percent of East Germany’s population lived in conditions that would have justified a smog warning across the border. Only one power station in East Germany had the necessary equipment to clean sulphur from emissions.

The article at The Federalist concludes:

There is no society, nor has one ever existed, which featured zero pollution or harm to the environment. The only question is how best to manage it, and which system is best positioned to accomplish this. On that question the answer is surely capitalism, home to the world’s richest countries and cleanest environments. It isn’t even close.

Actually, democracy is not the entire answer. The other part of the answer is private property rights and free enterprise. When people own something, they take better care of it. When it pays to invent a cleaner way of doing something, that method gets invented. When people are oppressed by their government, they don’t have the energy to worry about their environment–they are simply worried about getting enough food to feed their families and enough heat to stay warm. Worry about the environment in a communist country is a luxury that people cannot afford.

To suggest that communism is the solution to the (non-existent) problem of global warming is naive at best. Christiana Figueres’ statement shows how far the United Nations has come from the idea of supporting the concept of freedom for all people. The United Nations has become a reflection of the tin-horn dictators that have taken it over in recent years.

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Good News For Religious Freedom

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about a recent decision by a divided three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The ruling states that forcing business owners to fund and facilitate contraception and sterilization services against the tenets of their faith encroaches on their free exercise of religious belief, and that the government’s argument that protecting womens’ health trumped that right was absurd.

The article reports:

…What Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote in her decision was that corporations themselves, whether for-profit or non-profit, do not have First Amendment standing for religious exercise.  However, those who own or run them do, and even though the Gilardis’ businesses are corporations, the net effect of the HHS mandate is to penalize the Gilardis individually for living their faith.

The argument the Obama Administration has made for the requirement that companies provide contraception and abortion services is that these services need to be covered in order to protect women’s health. The Court seems to be saying that providing insurance for these services does not necessarily protect a woman’s health and should not override the religious freedom granted in the First Amendment.

This case or a similar case will eventually make its way to the Supreme Court.

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Losing Your Health Insurance Because Of ObamaCare

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One of the unintended consequences of ObamaCare has been the changing of the American workforce from a full-time workforce to a part-time workforce. As companies attempt to cut expenses and avoid the extra expense of the policy requirements of ObamaCare, they are cutting the number of full-time employees. The problem is that the ObamaCare policies require coverage that many people do not want or need and have not previously paid for. I can assure you that as a senior citizen I don’t need pregnancy coverage on my health insurance.

Well, there is also another problem. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air reported today that Darden Restaurants will have to cancel the healthcare coverage they have previously offered to their part-time employees due to the requirements of ObamaCare.

The article reports:

Darden will no longer offer part-timers limited-benefit insurance because Obamacare forbids it. Darden said it will offer other programs to part-timers such as a bundle of discounts on prescriptions, and cash payments for services such as doctor’s visits.

They might pay less for premiums, but they’re going to pay more overall.  That’s because the so-called bronze plans that cost the least still are more expensive for most applicants even with the scalable subsidies, and also because deductibles will likely be much higher than Darden employees had under their employer plan. That means that those consumers will have to spend thousands of more dollars than they did in previous years before their insurance benefits kick in at all.  For those working part-time, that will take a particularly vicious bite out of their disposable income.

Unfortunately, the government will run health insurance about as efficiently as state governments run their motor vehicle agencies. Prepare for long lines and incredible red tape.

 

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