Does Anyone Else Have A Problem With This?

On Thursday, The U.K Daily Mail reported that a CNN journalist was embedded with Hamas on October 7th and had prior knowledge of the attack. CNN has since fired the journalist.

The article reports:

CNN has ‘suspended all ties’ with a freelance photojournalist who appears to have been embedded with Hamas on October 7 at the time of the terror group’s barbaric assault on Israel. 

Hassan Eslaiah has been filing photographs of the conflict to CNN and The Associated Press since the Hamas attack on October 7. They include images of a burning Israeli tank from which soldiers were kidnapped.

Now, photos have emerged of him posing with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. He also posted a now-deleted video to Twitter in which he described how Hamas fighters kidnapped Israeli soldiers from the burning tank. 

The article concludes:

Honest Reporting notes that photographers Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa and Yasser Qudih ‘happened to be at the border just in time for Hamas’ infiltration.’

In response to the reporters, a Reuters spokesperson said that the agency acquired pictures on October 7 from photographers that it did not previously have a relationship with. 

‘The photographs published by Reuters were taken two hours after Hamas fired rockets across southern Israel and more than 45 minutes after Israel said gunmen had crossed the border. Reuters staff journalists were not on the ground at the locations referred to in the HonestReporting article,’ the statement also reads.  

‘Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically,’ the HonestReporting feature read. 

In his video front of attack, Eslaiah appears to be wearing his own clothes and is not identifiable as a member of the media. 

In 2021, it was widely reported that the Associated Press used the same office space as Hamas in Gaza. 

Eslaiah was previously pictured in a loving embrace with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in an undated photo. 

Honest Reporting was founded by veteran Israeli journalist Gil Hoffman. Its motto is the ‘audience deserves to know.’ 

‘When international news agencies decide to pay for material that has been captured under such problematic circumstances, their standards may be questioned and their audience deserves to know about it,’ one section of their report on Eslaiah reads.

‘And if their people on the ground actively or passively collaborated with Hamas to get the shots, they should be called out to redefine the border between journalism and barbarism.’ 

There should be a more severe penalty for withholding information about a surprise attack on innocent civilians.

How You Vote Impacts YOU!

On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported the following:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed Tuesday to extend their voluntary oil production cuts through the end of this year, trimming 1.3 million barrels of crude out of the global market and boosting energy prices.

The dual announcements from Riyadh and Moscow pushed benchmark Brent crude above $90 a barrel in trading Tuesday afternoon, a price unseen in the market since November.

The countries’ moves could increase inflation and the cost for motorists at gasoline pumps. It also puts new pressure on Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the United States, as President Joe Biden last year warned the kingdom there would be unspecified “consequences” for partnering with Russia on cuts as Moscow wages war on Ukraine.

Because of the Biden administration’s energy policies, we are not in a position to make any threats to any oil-producing country! Like it or not, fossil fuel is one of the major foundations of our economy. Fossil fuel powers the trucks that move products, the factories that produce products (those factories the Biden administration tax policies have not driven out of the country), and provides Americans with comfort and mobility. Under President Trump we were energy independent and inflation was under control. Until we go back to the policies that worked for the American people, our standard of living will continue to decline and inflation will continue to rise.

The article concludes:

In recent months, tensions eased slightly as Biden’s administration sought a deal with Riyadh for it to diplomatically recognize Israel.

But those talks include Saudi Arabia pushing for a nuclear cooperation deal that includes America allowing it to enrich uranium in the kingdom — something that worries nonproliferation experts, as spinning centrifuges open the door to a possible weapons program.

Prince Mohammed already has said the kingdom would pursue an atomic bomb if Iran had one, potentially creating a nuclear arms race in the region as Tehran’s program continues to advance closer to weapons-grade levels. Saudi Arabia and Iran reached a détente in recent months, though the region remains tense amid the wider tensions between Iran and the U.S.

Higher oil prices would also help Russian President Vladimir Putin fund his war on Ukraine. Western countries have used a price cap to try to cut into Moscow’s revenues. But those sanctions have seen Moscow be forced to sell its oil at a discount to countries like China and India.

The Best News Money Can Buy

On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

The Associated Press, the country’s top wire service, is now bankrolled in part by millions of dollars from left-wing foundations, including one founded by “1619 Project” author Nikole Hannah-Jones.

The news organization last year announced a series of “partnerships” to subsidize reporters covering climate change, race, and democracy. A review of the donor roster shows that the vast majority fund left-wing political causes, while none are supporters of conservative initiatives.

The Ida B. Wells Society, founded by “1619 Project” lightning rod Hannah-Jones, has teamed up with filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s Hearthland Foundation, for example, to foster “more inclusive storytelling” at the Associated Press.

In some ways, it was a natural partnership: The AP’s global investigations editor, Ron Nixon, serves on the Ida B. Wells Society’s board of directors. In others, it may prove more problematic, given that Hannah-Jones’s own reporting has been disputed by historians, who have argued—among other things—that her account of the motivations of the American revolutionaries is factually inaccurate.

The funding, much of it from these sorts of overly political actors, will make it more challenging for the Associated Press to swat away accusations of political bias. In one high-profile example, critics blasted the organization for revising its style guide to instruct reporters to avoid the use of terms like “the French,” which the AP indicated was “dehumanizing.”

The article lists some of the organizations that are now part of this ‘partnership.’

Here are a few:

The Ida B. Wells Society, founded by “1619 Project”

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation

The Outrider Foundation

The Public Welfare Foundation

Please follow the link to the article to get a better idea of the political leanings of these foundations.

The article notes:

AllSides, a group that tracks media bias across the industry, last year changed its rating for the AP from “center” to “leans left,” citing what it said was an increase in “word choice bias” and “bias by omission of views” in its coverage. AllSides says it closely monitors the Associated Press’s content because the AP’s content is “broad and far-reaching.”

Money Talks

On Monday, Newsbusters posted an article about some of the money flowing into the Associated Press from groups that promote environmental extremism.

The article reports:

The Associated Press has been running wild with leftist climate change propaganda while being paid millions by eco-extremist organizations. And yet AP still has the audacity to pretend it’s engaging in objective reporting. 

 MRC Business analysts found that from Feb. 15, 2022 through Feb. 15, 2023, The Associated Press (AP) pushed climate change alarmism and promoted woke environmental, social, governance (ESG) efforts across 64 climate-related stories after the legacy outlet received an $8 million grant from leftist nonprofit organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation, Quadrivium (the activist organization of News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch’s estranged son and climate activist James Murdoch), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

AP announced Feb. 15, 2022, that it would “significantly expand its climate coverage” with the goal to “infuse” the media landscape with climate journalism backed solely by private interest groups. AP called the new development a “sweeping climate journalism initiative” and claimed in its press release that it would retain “complete editorial control of all content.” AP also claims on its “About Us” page that it is in the business of “unbiased news,” which is little more than a pathetic joke. The so-called “journalism” AP has been doing on climate involves behaving like the de facto mouthpiece for its major left-wing donors who have an obsession with pushing apocalyptic climate narratives on the internet.

The article also notes:

The Rockefeller Foundation’s history in supporting causes fixated on overpopulation is a case in point why AP’s monetary tie to the organization is extremely problematic. One Jan. 5, 2022, Rockefeller Archive blog ridiculously stated that “Issues of family planning and concerns over population growth have long interested the Rockefeller family and their philanthropies. But deciding how to give funding, and to which aspects of the ‘population problem,’ has not always come easily.” The article included a 1967 statement doom mongering about overpopulation from late Rockefeller Foundation president J. George Harrar:

It is doubtful whether there is any problem in the world more threatening in its implications than uncontrolled population growth. Its effects are already, either directly or indirectly, touching the lives of almost every man, woman, and child.

MRC Business previously reported in October 2021 how Murdoch in particular was already heavily invested in a climate reporting hub at AP. MRC Business analyzed that Murdoch’s Quadrivium gave a whopping $14,250,000 to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) between 2013 and 2019. EDF is a left-wing “nonprofit environmental group known for its advocacy for public policies concerning global warming and a left-wing political agenda,” according to Influence Watch

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is frightening to think that money controls what we read that is supposed to be objective news, but unfortunately that is not a new idea for most of us.

There Are Many Forms Of Gun Control–None Of Them Constitutional

The Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution states:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Let’s put this in context. This is part of the Bill of Rights–a document that protects the God-given rights espoused in the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution is a document that limits the rights of government and protects the God-given rights of citizens. The right to bear arms was inserted to keep the people armed to prevent another tyranny like the one they had just escaped. The Second Amendment limits the government–not the citizens.

On Thursday, Breitbart reported:

Beginning in April 2023, Discover will become the first credit card issuer to track gun purchases made by their cardholders.

On September 11, 2022, Breitbart News noted that Visa caved to pressure from gun control groups and New York Democrats, agreeing to flag gun and ammo purchases via a new sales categorization. The Associated Press observed that Mastercard and other major credit cards also agreed to flag gun sales.

On March 2, 2023, the Independent Journal Review (IJR) reported that Discover will be first among credit card companies to track gun sales, inasmuch as the company will begin doing so in April.

Make no mistake–this is not a good thing. First of all, criminals who commit gun crimes do not generally purchase their guns legally using a credit card. This will only track legal gun owners, who are highly unlikely to commit gun crimes.

In 2016, The National Review reported:

In the study, led by epidemiologist Anthony Fabio of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health, researchers partnered with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police to trace the origins of all 893 firearms that police recovered from crime scenes in the year 2008.

They found that in approximately 8 out of 10 cases, the perpetrator was not a lawful gun owner but rather in illegal possession of a weapon that belonged to someone else. The researchers were primarily interested in how these guns made their way from a legal purchase — at a firearm dealer or via a private sale — to the scene of the crime.

So what is the usefulness of tracking legal gun sales? Why would anyone want to do that? That is a very good question.

Hidu, The Electronic-Sniffing Dog

On June 15th, The Associated Press posted an article about Hidu, the electronic-sniffing dog who aided the police in a pedophilia arrest in Mexico.

The article reports:

An unusual alliance of international activist groups, Mexican prosecutors and a dog trained to sniff out memory devices joined forces this month to catch a high-profile suspected pedophile in Mexico City.

First, Free a Girl, a Netherlands-based group that fights human trafficking, tipped off activists at the U.S.-based Operation Underground Railroad that Jason Maatman, a Dutch man who openly advocated sex with children, had gone to Mexico after fleeing pending court cases in the Netherlands.

Maatman apparently thought loose Mexican law enforcement would allow him to operate freely in Mexico City, a sprawling metropolis of 21 million where most crimes go unpunished.

But he didn’t count on Hidu, a recent graduate of a dog academy that teaches canines to sniff out triphenylphosphine oxide, or TPPO, a chemical coating used in electronic devices like flash drives and memory cards.

The article notes that Jason Maatman was using online chat rooms to find victims, and the police used those chat rooms to lure him out of his apartment. When he was apprehended near a gas station, he was found to have a gun and cocaine in his possession. The problem was that authorities did not know where he lived (where he probably had his child pornography stashed). Using surveillance cameras, the police were able to find his apartment. The next challenge was to find any digital material he might have.

The article reports:

Once police obtained a search warrant, that is where Hidu came in; a black lab, he had been trained by Todd Jordan at his Jordan Detection K9 academy in Indianapolis, Indiana.

TPPO is a chemical used in small, solid-state memory devices to avoid overheating. There is just enough of its distinctive odor for dogs to locate it.

Jordan started out by training “accelerant detection” dogs, to look for evidence in possible arson cases in which an accelerant — things like gasoline — may have been used to start a blaze.

But the electronics detection dogs he’s trained — now 83 and counting — have come to be more in demand because criminals now use flash drives to store everything from contacts to cryptocurrencies used in drug deals.

…Hidu was brand new at the work; he had graduated just two weeks before and this was his first case — In fact, it was the first overseas case that any of Jordan’s dogs had handled.

O.U.R. flew Hidu and his handler to Mexico City, where prosecutors were about to search the apartment.

“My understanding is there was a cellphone hidden in a laundry basket with just rancid total terrible laundry, you know, dirty clothes in one corner that no one would go into,” Osborne said. “The dog found that phone.”

Hidu found more child porn material taped to a wall beneath a painting, Osborne said. “The dog sniffed out a couple of the hard drives in a few places in his apartment that were difficult for humans to find, but the dog sniffed it out.”

Prosecutors said the drives and devices contained about 4 terabytes of child sexual abuse material.

Godoy, the prosecutor, credited Operation Underground Railroad and Hidu for their help in the bust.

The article concludes:

“The message is clear for those who prey on a girl, a boy or an adolescent: In Mexico City there will be no room for impunity, and those that hurt or target them will be found, tried and sentenced,” Godoy said.

But questions remained. “Why was he (Maatman) not placed on an international wanted list?” by Dutch authorities, Hölsken said.

I am glad to see the amount of international cooperation among nations on this issue. That is the only way we will stop this crime.

Information We All Need

On Tuesday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about Monkeypox. The article provides a brief summary of the things the public needs to know.

Here are some excerpts:

In total, 92 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed so far, with another 28 suspected cases, according to the World Health Organization. Most of the cases in the U.K. and Europe have been in young men with no history of travel to Africa and who were gay, bisexual, or had sex with men.

…All of the cases that have been confirmed through a PCR test were infected by the strain native to West Africa, but only one case has a direct tie to the region. The first to be confirmed in the U.K. was a person who had traveled from the U.K. to Nigeria and back. The person was immediately isolated upon return, and “the risk of onward transmission related to this case in the United Kingdom is minimal,” the WHO said. But that still leaves open the question of where the dozens of other cases came from.

A leading adviser to the WHO, Dr. David Heymann, told the Associated Press that sexual transmission at two raves in Belgium and Spain appear to have been major catalysts for the spread of the virus in Europe.

…There is not currently a vaccine made specifically to prevent monkeypox infection, but smallpox vaccines have proven to be at least 85% effective in preventing monkeypox. Experts also believe that administering a smallpox vaccine after a monkeypox exposure may help prevent the disease or make it less severe.

The article concludes:

Infectious disease experts said this outbreak is very different from COVID-19, which caught the U.S. public health infrastructure off guard. Unlike symptoms of COVID-19 infection, symptoms of monkeypox are visual and cases are easier to trace. Monkeypox is also far less transmissible than COVID-19. And unlike COVID-19, monkeypox is not an airborne pathogen.

“Contact tracing COVID-19 is a nightmare, and I don’t want to say it’s a piece of cake, but it’s a much more straightforward proposition [to trace monkeypox],” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

The Food and Drug Administration has also approved several antiviral medications to treat smallpox and diseases like it.

“That’s why I’m pretty optimistic that we’ll be able to contain it because the overall level of transmissibility is low, the incubation period is longer, and in about two weeks, the characteristic rash makes contact tracing easier, and we already have vaccines and antiviral drugs ready to go. … [COVID-19 is] really just the opposite of monkeypox,” Hotez told the Washington Examiner.

At least there is some good news.

How Spin Works

The shortage of baby formula is no joke for young parents. The fact that pallets of formula are showing up at the southern border for illegal immigrants is an indication of how much those in Washington care about the welfare of average Americans. However, one interesting aspect of this crisis is the media’s attempt to keep the blame away from the Biden administration. On Saturday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog detailing the media spin.

The article reports:

You can tell the Biden administration has badly bungled the infant formula situation when the best their shills at the Associated Press can do is play the “Republicans pounce” card: “GOP’s new midterm attack: Blaming Biden for formula shortage.”

Republicans aiming to retake control of Congress have already sharpened a message centering around blaming Democrats for high inflation, expensive gas, migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and violent crime in some cities.

But GOP leaders landed on an issue this week that it hopes could prove even more potent: tying President Joe Biden to a shortage in baby formula.
***
Asked if his administration had responded as quickly as it should have, Biden said, ”If we’d been better mind readers, I guess we could’ve. But we moved as quickly as the problem became apparent.”

But the defense by the White House illustrates how finger-pointing at the Biden administration has already spread far and wide among Republicans in Washington, on television and on social media. It’s a new issue for the GOP to hammer at and a way to address families at a time when Democrats believe outrage over the U.S. Supreme Court possibly ending the right to an abortion could galvanize women and other key voters, and thwart or at least lessen a Republican wave in November.

The AP takes up the cudgels for Joe Biden, describing the now-famous photo and video of stacks of formula containers at an illegal immigrant facility at the border:

The AP has not independently verified the photo’s authenticity or when exactly it was captured. Some conservative pundits and news outlets have since spun even greater tall tales from the photo…

“Spun even greater tall tales.” Remember that this is not an opinion piece, it purports to be news reporting.

…with some claiming that they show Biden is shipping “thousands” of pallets of baby formula to the border while parents in the U.S. struggle to find formula.

So how many pallets are there? The AP has no idea.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that Border Patrol is “following the law” that requires the government to provide adequate food, specifically formula for children under the age of one, who are detained at the border.

GOP political consultants nonetheless call it a ready-made issue that resonates with voters.

Somehow I don’t think the spin is going to work on young American mothers trying to find formula for their babies.

Funding Our Enemies

On Saturday, The Associated Press reported:

President Joe Biden signed an order Friday to free $7 billion in Afghan assets now frozen in the U.S., splitting the money between humanitarian aid for poverty-stricken Afghanistan and a fund for Sept. 11 victims still seeking relief for the terror attacks that killed thousands and shocked the world.

No money would immediately be released. But Biden’s order calls for banks to provide $3.5 billion of the frozen amount to a trust fund for distribution through humanitarian groups for Afghan relief and basic needs. The other $3.5 billion would stay in the U.S. to finance payments from lawsuits by U.S. victims of terrorism that are still working their way through the courts.

International funding to Afghanistan was suspended and billions of dollars of the country’s assets abroad, mostly in the United States, were frozen after the Taliban took control of the country in August as the U.S. military withdrew.

The article concludes:

The United Nations last month issued an appeal for nearly $5 billion, its largest ever appeal for one country, estimating that nearly 90% of the country’s 38 million people were surviving below the poverty level of $1.90 a day. The U.N. also warned that upward of 1 million children risked starvation.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday night that it is “encouraged” by Biden’s executive order.

“”It’s also important to reiterate that humanitarian assistance alone will be insufficient to meet the tremendous needs of Afghan women and men and children over the long term, and it is critical that the Afghan economy is able to restart in order for these needs of the Afghan people to be met with a sustainable and meaningful manner,” Dujarric said.

David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, on Wednesday urged release of the funds to prevent famine.

“The humanitarian community did not choose the government, but that is no excuse to punish the people, and there is a middle course — to help the Afghan people without embracing the new government,” Miliband said at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the matter.

I hate to be cynical (but I’m good at it), but does anyone think that the money given to the Taliban will be used to improve the living conditions of the people living in Afghanistan? We only need to look at the Gaza Strip to see how humanitarian aid can be misused to buy weapons and build military infrastructure. All of that money should go to the victims of 9/11 and their families. Why are we funding terrorism?

When The Fact Checkers Are Not Paying Attention

Generally speaking, The New York Times has been immune from the fact checkers. Somehow they are willing to overlook the misinformation and ‘leaked from anonymous sources’ misinformation that The New York Times routinely prints. The latest example of this is a claim by the times that “there had been a “longstanding American policy treating the settlements as illegal” prior to Secretary of State Pompeo’s 2019 reversal of that purported policy. (“Mixed Signals on Israeli Annexation Reflect Split Among Officials,” June 22, 2020, David Halbfinger and Michael Crowley.) That is simply not true.

CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis) notes the following:

• Note that although President Carter took the position that settlements are illegal, this was quickly reversed by the Reagan administration, which held that settlements are “not illegal.” Subsequent administrations either reiterated Reagan’s view or refrained from taking a position on legality.

• Note that the New York Times itself repeatedly reported on Reagan’s view that settlements aren’t illegal, and in the past several years has twice published corrections after wrongly suggesting the U.S. had consistently viewed settlements as illegal.

• Just as those corrections were appropriate, so too is it necessary to correct last week’s piece by Halbfinger and Crowley.

• Note that memos by past legal advisors in the State Department archive are advisory, and do not set policy or bind subsequent U.S. presidents. While Carter administration legal advisor Herbert Hansell believed settlements were illegal, the Reagan administration rejected that view.

CAMERA further notes:

To be fair, the Times isn’t the first to make this mistake. In October 2016, the Washington Post corrected its claim that the U.S. regarded settlements as illegal. A month later, the Associated Press corrected the same claim. The following month, The Times (UK) corrected, as did ABC News and the Times of Israel. In 2018, the Times of Israel corrected again. The Financial Times corrected this same error in November 2019. And two days later the Economist ran a correction of its own.

Even the New York Times itself has, in the past, corrected this false claim. After a March 2017 editorial asserted that the U.S. “has consistently held that settlement building in the occupied territories is illegal,” a correction clarified, “An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated the United States’ position on settlement building in the occupied territories. It has been highly critical of the activity, but has not consistent [sic] held it to be illegal.”

From the news side, an August 8, 2013 correction in the NY Times likewise acknowledged that “the United States has taken no formal position in the last several years on whether [settlements] are legal or illegal.”

Unless those corrections were themselves in error, last week’s claim about a “longstanding” policy that settlements are illegal (and a similar claim last November by the same reporter, David Halbfinger) can’t be true.

This sort of reporting by The New York Times might help explain why much of the Jewish vote (generally readers of The New York Times) is misinformed on America’s policy toward Israel and the value of Israel in the world community.

I Question The Wisdom Of This Decision

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit reported that Nevada’s Governor Steve Sisolak (D) issued an emergency order barring the use of anti-malaria drugs such as chloroquine for Coronavirus patients. This seems very odd to me as those drugs have had some success in curing the disease.

The article includes information from the Associated Press (with emphasis added by The Gateway Pundit):

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevada’s governor on Tuesday night issued an emergency order banning gatherings of more than 10 people in the state indoors or outdoors, a more aggressive move to try to stop the spread of the coronavrius.

Sisolak said the order does not apply to private homes or the homeless, but includes places like social clubs, parks, libraries and sports fields.

Sisolak signed an emergency order earlier Tuesday barring the use of anti-malaria drugs for someone who has the coronavirus. The order restricting chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine came after President Donald Trump touted the medication as a treatment and falsely stated that the Food and Drug Administration had just approved the use of chloroquine to treat patients infected with coronavirus. Sisolak said in a statement that there’s no consensus among experts or Nevada doctors that the drugs can treat people with COVID-19.

I believe President Trump said that the drug had been previously approved for use as a malaria treatment and was showing promise as a treatment for coronavirus (when combined with azithromycin). We may actually have some test results on the use of these drugs by the end of this week. So far there is valid anecdotal evidence that the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin will slow the progression of the coronavirus and shorten the time a person has the virus.

I think if I contracted the virus in Nevada, I would leave the state quickly in case the virus got worse–I would want to have all options available to me in case I got really ill.

The Problem With Red Flag Laws

Yesterday Hot Air posted an article about Florida’s Red Flag Law. Please follow the link to read the entire article. Based on what has happened since the law was passed, some of Florida’s counties were awash with crazy people and other counties had a totally sane population. I doubt either is entirely true.

The article reports:

Florida enacted its red flag law in the spring of 2018 and they didn’t lose any time in putting it to use. And I mean a lot of use. But as this report from the Associated Press indicates, use of the law is not consistent from county to county and there are serious questions remaining as to how fairly it’s being applied.

That is the problem with Red Flag Laws–they deny a citizen due process and they are arbitrary in the sense that an unhappy neighbor can file a complaint without a truly good reason.

The article continues:

The first thing I would point out here is that the AP article was edited to have a rather disingenuous title. It reads “In 2 years, Florida ‘red flag’ law removes hundreds of guns.” While that’s technically true, the actual number is more than 3,500, so “thousands of guns” would have been a more accurate description.

The article concludes:

Here’s one other hole in the state’s red flag law that has many people concerned. These red flag hearings are not considered criminal proceedings so you aren’t entitled to a lawyer assigned by the court. If you’re too poor to afford a good attorney, your chances of prevailing at the hearing go way down. With all that in mind, how many of these “success” stories about gun confiscations were actually brought by people with an ax to grind against their neighbor or angry ex-wives and girlfriends? Once the judge makes the decision to confiscate your weapons, that’s pretty much it. You’re allowed to appeal, but again, if you don’t have a good lawyer what chance do you have?

I’ve been on the fence about these red flag laws since they first started cropping up. In extreme cases like the ones I mentioned at the top, I can definitely see firearms removal as being justifiable. But the system is also open to abuse and there appear to be few safeguards in place for the wrongly accused.

How Do You Reconcile This?

The Associated Press posted an article today about a recent fund raiser held by Kamala Harris. The fund raiser was hosted by was hosted by six partners of the law firm Kirkland and Ellis.

The article reports:

Kamala Harris bemoaned the influence of the powerful and connected elite last Tuesday when she called on top Justice Department officials to recuse themselves from any matter related to Jeffrey Epstein. She said their former law firm’s work on behalf of the financier accused of sexual abuse “calls into question the integrity of our legal system.”

Yet the same day, Harris’ husband headlined a Chicago fundraiser for her presidential campaign that was hosted by six partners of that firm — Kirkland and Ellis, according to an invitation obtained by The Associated Press.

…”If any connection with Kirkland and Ellis is a stain on (senior Justice Department officials), why isn’t a connection with the law firm for the receipt of campaign contributions a stain on her own campaign?” said Paul S. Ryan, an attorney for the good-government group Common Cause.

Ian Sams, a Harris spokesman, said there wasn’t a problem with accepting the campaign contributions because the firm is big and the partners who hosted the fundraiser didn’t work on Epstein’s plea agreement.

“The people involved in that case have not supported her campaign, and she wouldn’t want that support anyway,” Sams said.

This explanation represents some of the best doublespeak I have heard recently.

July 4th On The Mall

The Associated Press posted this picture of the Independence Day celebration in Washington, D.C., yesterday. I want to give them credit for the picture. The article was the usual biased junk from the mainstream media.

I watched the President’s speech. It was inspiring. Our military deserves to be saluted every day of every year. Their courage and steadfastness is what has allowed this country to remain strong. The event was played on C-SPAN last night. Hopefully they will air it again.

The Appropriate Response And The Slanting Of The Story

Yesterday John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about the warfare of the future. In the article Mr. Hinderaker mentions that according to The New York Times, Russia and China are working on the technology of hypersonic weapons. These weapons would render our missile defense systems useless.

The article also mentions President Trump’s response to the Iranian attacks on oil tankers:

Cyber warfare is almost old hat by comparison. The Associated Press (AP) says that President Trump ordered cyber attacks on Iran in place of actual bombings:

U.S. military cyber forces launched a strike against Iranian military computer systems on Thursday as President Donald Trump backed away from plans for a more conventional military strike in response to Iran’s downing of a U.S. surveillance drone, U.S. officials said Saturday.

The article then illustrates how the Associated Press can spin a story by quoting the AP’s reporting on the President’s response:

“This is not a remote war (anymore),” said Sergio Caltagirone, vice president of threat intelligence at Dragos Inc. “This is one where Iranians could quote unquote bring the war home to the United States.”

Caltagirone said as nations increase their abilities to engage offensively in cyberspace, the ability of the United States to pick a fight internationally and have that fight stay out of the United States physically is increasingly reduced.

Note that the AP accuses the United States of picking a fight internationally.

The article concludes:

Did the U.S. pick a fight here? I thought Iran did that, by bombing tankers in international waters and shooting down an American drone. But for the AP, like many other American liberals, anything other than Obama-style supine acquiescence constitutes picking a fight.

Well said, sir.

Failed Parenting

One of the most important things a parent can do is lead by example. Any time a parent does something that is not above board, it is a pretty good bet that their child will learn that it is okay to take shortcuts that may not be entirely honest. Unfortunately there seems to be a group of parents that despite their success has not yet figured this out.

The Associated Press is reporting today that federal authorities have charged a number of wealthy and famous people with falsifying information to make sure their children got into their schools of choice. I understand the desire of any parent to provide the best education possible for their children, but this scheme definitely stepped over the line.

The article reports:

Fifty people, including Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, were charged Tuesday in a scheme in which wealthy parents allegedly bribed college coaches and other insiders to get their children into some of the nation’s most elite schools.

Federal authorities called it the biggest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department, with the parents accused of paying an estimated $25 million in bribes.

“These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in announcing the results of an investigation code-named Operation Varsity Blues.

…At least nine athletic coaches and 33 parents, many of them prominent in law, finance or business, were among those charged. Dozens, including Huffman, were arrested by midday.

The coaches worked at such schools as Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, Wake Forest, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles. A former Yale soccer coach pleaded guilty and helped build the case against others.

The article continues:

The bribes allegedly were dispensed through an admissions consulting company in Newport Beach, California. Authorities said parents paid William Singer, the founder of the Edge College & Career Network, the bribe money to get their children into college.

Prosecutors said Singer was scheduled to plead guilty in Boston Tuesday to charges including racketeering conspiracy. John Vandemoer, the former head sailing coach at Stanford, was also expected to plead guilty.

Colleges moved quickly to discipline the coaches accused. Stanford fired Vandemoer, UCLA suspended its soccer coach, and Wake Forest did the same with its volleyball coach.

Several schools, including USC and Yale, said they were victims themselves of the scam. USC also said it is reviewing its admissions process to prevent further such abuses.

This is a sad commentary on where we are as a society. Obviously some parents want to take the guess work out of college admissions. What is the lesson they are teaching their children? I wonder exactly how much of these scheme the children involved were aware of. Certainly if a child is recruited for a sport he has no knowledge of, he might notice that something is amiss. I hope the penalties for the parents are severe. As much as I can sympathize with the stress of getting children into good colleges (all three of my daughters are college graduates, two have advanced degrees), what these parents did is inexcusable–first of all because it is patently dishonest and second of all because of the example it sets for the students.

Manipulated By The Department Of Justice And The Press

Little by little emails are being released that reveal how the government used its power to interfere in the 2016 election to make sure that Hillary Clinton won. I guess that is another example of the basic effectiveness of our government agencies. However, the actions taken by the government were illegal. Those actions have somehow escaped the investigative skills of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Yesterday Sara Carter posted an article about some recently discovered emails that provide further insight into what was going on during the Presidential campaign.

The article reports:

Newly released text messages and documents obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reveal that senior members of the FBI and Department of Justice led a coordinated effort to leak unverified information to the press regarding alleged collusion with Russia to damage President Donald Trump’s administration, according to a letter sent by the committee to the DOJ Monday.

The review of the documents suggests that the FBI and DOJ coordinated efforts to get information to the press that would potentially be “harmful to President Trump’s administration.” Those leaks pertained to information regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant used to spy on short-term campaign volunteer Carter Page.

The letter lists several examples:

  • April 10, 2017: (former FBI Special Agent) Peter Strzok contacts (former FBI Attorney) Lisa Page to discuss a “media leak strategy.” Specifically, the text says: “I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go.”
  • April 12, 2017: Peter Strzok congratulates Lisa Page on a job well done while referring to two derogatory articles about Carter Page. In the text, Strzok warns Page two articles are coming out, one which is “worse” than the other about Lisa’s “namesake”.” Strzok added: “Well done, Page.”

The letter notes the troubling nature of the text messages. Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions after a scathing report from the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigation charging McCabe with lying to investigators and leaking to the press. Last week, the DOJ announced that McCabe is currently under a grand jury investigation.

The article concludes:

In March this news outlet also revealed that Weissmann, a top prosecutor on the Mueller team, had met with reporters from the Associated Press in April 2017 just one day before their explosive story on Paul Manafort’s dealings with Ukraine officials.

According to sources familiar with the meeting, the reporters had promised to share documents and other information gleaned from their own investigation with the Justice Department.

AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton told this news outlet, “we refrain from discussing our sources.”

“Associated Press journalists meet with a range of people in the course of reporting stories, and we refrain from discussing relationships with sources. However, the suggestion that AP would voluntarily serve as the source of information for a government agency is categorically untrue,” added Easton.

At the time of the meeting, Weissmann was head of the Justice Department’s fraud division. He was the most senior member of the Justice Department to join the special counsel in May.

The AP meeting arranged by Weissmann came to light in a letter sent to Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-CA, late last year, requesting specific FBI and DOJ documentation related to the controversial Fusion GPS dossier that alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

That meeting with the AP was attended by three different litigating offices. Two employees from the U.S. Justice Department and the other representative was from the U.S. Attorney’s office, according to the sources. FBI agents also attended the meeting, law enforcement sources confirmed.

According to sources, the FBI agents in attendance filed a complaint about Weissmann and the meeting with the DOJ fearing his arrangement of such a meeting would hurt the investigation.

Laws were broken, government agencies were involved in politics, and people need to be held accountable. It’s time for justice to replace the clown show that is Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

A Lie Goes Halfway Around The World Before The Truth Gets His Boots On

This is a story about how the media got it wrong. I don’t believe that they intentionally got it wrong, I think they were just in a hurry to be first with a story. That can be risky.

On February 16th, Politico posted an article about the history of the claim that Nikolas Cruz was associated with white supremacist groups. Since the charge of racism or white supremacy is very popular now, I suppose it’s not a surprise that this charge was levied against this deeply troubled young man. It’s easier to blame racism than it is to blame the Promise Program (article here) which prevented the gun shop owner from knowing Nikolas Cruz should never have been allowed to buy a gun. I don’t know if Nikolas Cruz would have been able to get a gun illegally or not, but at least if his information had been included in a background check, it would have slowed him down a little. At any rate, the media decided he was a white supremacist.

The article explains how that happened:

On Thursday afternoon, the Anti-Defamation League reported that a white supremacist group claimed ties with Nikolas Cruz, who confessed to the shooting spree that killed at least 17 people, including many high-school students, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

“A spokesperson for the white supremacist group Republic of Florida (ROF) told the Anti-Defamation League on Thursday, February 15, that Nikolas Cruz [….] was associated with his group,” the ADL reported. The ADL quoted a man named Jordan Jereb, who runs the small group, which is based in Tallahassee.

“Jereb added that ROF had not ordered or wanted Cruz to do anything like the school shooting,” the ADL wrote in a blog post that was quickly picked up by ABC News and The Associated Press, and later percolated through dozens of other media outlets. Even The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, picked up the claim.

…But a few hours later, after law enforcement agencies said they had no evidence linking Cruz to ROF, Jereb said his identification of Cruz was a “misunderstanding” and that he, too, had been the subject of a “prank.” On online forums and Twitter, trolls and white nationalists gloated at the disinformation they had sowed.

“All of our evidence seems to point to the ADL getting this wrong,” said Joan Donovan, a researcher who tracks online misinformation campaigns for Data & Society, a think tank in New York City.

The ADL subsequently revised its report, as did many news outlets.

The saga continues:

In posts to Gab, a social-networking site used by many in the alt-right, early Friday morning, one user said the Discord group “spent around 18 hours orchestrating, contacting ABC, being interviewed by reporters, etc.”

Members swapped links to articles that identified Cruz as a member of ROF, celebrating each story and keeping a tally of media interview attempts.

“ABC messaged me. Asked to use my name in this article,” wrote one user.

“This is spreading like wildfire,” wrote another user, “Renegade,” after someone in the chat shared a link to the ADL blog post.

“All it takes is a single article,” the first user wrote back. “And everyone else picks up the story.”

ABC News reported that its reporters spoke with three “former schoolmates” of Cruz, but did not indicate whether these communications were over social media. A spokesperson for ABC News declined to comment on how its reporters vetted the identities of these purported acquaintances.

For its part, an AP spokesperson said, “AP spoke with the leader of Republic of Florida, who said Cruz was a member of his group and had participated in exercises in Tallahassee. In the course of continued reporting, police and other groups were not able to confirm Cruz’s association with the white nationalist militia, and that is what is reflected on the wire.”

Others in the Discord chat said they were contacted by a reporter from The New York Times.

At some point, the trolls started a “confessional” 4chan thread dedicated to convincing readers that Cruz had been a member of ROF. The ADL confirmed this 4chan post was the one that led to their blog post.

The people behind the disinformation campaign were very proud of themselves. The article reports:

By Thursday evening, 4chan users were celebrating their efforts, posting screenshots of their communications with reporters and faux posts pretending to be ROF members.

“[T]hey are so hungry for a story that they’ll just believe anything as long as its corroborated by a few people and seems legit,” wrote the creator of one 4chan thread.

Donovan, the disinformation researcher, said reporters need to be more vigilant against these kinds of campaigns, which are going to get only more common and more sophisticated.

“We have to start thinking of these white nationalist groups as what some of them describe themselves — ‘media militias,’” said Donovan. “They think of media as adversarial territory.”

The internet can be a dangerous place for truth.