Tag Archives: The Federalist

What Has Happened To Our Supreme Court?

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As I am sure you remember, the Democrats have threatened to pack the Supreme Court if it rules against their agenda items (many of which are unconstitutional). That may explain why Chief Justice Roberts has made some very questionable rulings lately.

On March 8, The Federalist posted an article about a recent dissent by Chief Justice Roberts.

The article reports:

Chief Justice John Roberts was the only dissenter in the U.S Supreme Court’s most recent ruling favoring a couple of Christian students who challenged their university for restricting when, where, and how they could speak about their faith and disseminate materials on campus.

The article includes the following Tweet:

When have eight of the Supreme Court Justices agreed on anything?

The article at The Federalist summarizes the case:

Uzuegbunam et al. v. Preczewski et al. first materialized after Chike Uzuegbunam, a student at Georgia Gwinnett College, was stopped by campus police for handing out religious materials on campus, a reported violation of the school’s “Freedom of Expression Policy,” which limited distributions and other expressions to free speech zones only with permission from the administration. Even after Uzuegbunam moved to the designated areas with permission, however, campus police attempted to stop him from speaking and handing out religious literature, prompting him and another student, Joseph Bradford, to take legal action against the university for violating their First and 14th Amendment rights and seek nominal damages.

The students’ attempts to sue the school, however, were shot down by both a district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit after Georgia Gwinnett College changed its “Freedom of Expression” policy to remove barriers on when and where students could speak on campus and filed a motion to dismiss the case as moot. The Supreme Court took up the case after Uzuegbunam and Bradford noted that their rights were still violated no matter what the university modified its policy to reflect and still required a ruling on nominal damages.

Justice Clarence Thomas authored the opinion of the court, agreeing with the students’ case.

The student’s First Amendment rights were violated. What other recourse did he have but to sue the school?

The End To Honest Elections

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The Democrats in the House of Representatives have passed HR1. There were no Republican votes for the bill. That is the bill that will fundamentally change American elections to the point where honest elections will become a thing of the past.

The Federalist posted an article yesterday listing fifteen of the major problems with the bill.

This is the list. Please read the entire article for details:

1. Openly Breaks the Constitution

2. Set Up Star Chambers to Intimidate Judges

3. Mandate Mail-in Ballots, 10-Day Delay in Results

4. Eliminate Voter ID Election Security

5. Register Millions Of Criminally Present Foreign Citizens to Vote

6. Explode Opportunities for Election Cheating

7. Prevent Cleaning Up Voter Rolls

8. Unleash Mobs on Political Donors

9. Gerrymander Districts to Favor Democrats

10. Make Vote Hacking Easier

11. Let Former Felons Vote Before They’ve Completed Their Sentences

12. Help 16- and 17-Year-Olds Vote Illegally

13. Bans Keeping the Records Necessary for an Election Audit or Recount

14. Mandates Ballot Drop Boxes

15. Giving U.S. Territories Extra Democrat Seats in Congress and the Electoral College

I honestly don’t know if the Republicans can stop this disaster from passing in the Senate. If it becomes law (and survives the court challenges that will follow because it is unconstitutional–states control their own elections), we will have lost our republic.

Learning From Statistics

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The two-week lockdown of the economy to flatten the curve of the coronavirus has now lasted almost a year. In some cases when the lockdown was lifted, the cases spiked, and the lockdown was reinstated. However, in other cases, when the lockdown ended quickly, there was no spike in the number of cases.

Yesterday The Federalist posted an article about the success of Florida in dealing with the coronavirus crisis. The article contains a number of graphs, so I strongly suggest you follow the link to read the entire article.

Here are a few highlights from the article:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis started lifting lockdown restrictions back in May, allowing stores and restaurants to begin reopening in all but three counties in South Florida. The stay-at-home order also ended at the beginning of May. Unlike New York and California, Florida never tried to bar people from going to religious services.

At the end of September, DeSantis lifted all remaining statewide COVID-19 restrictions. Traveling back and forth from COVID-conscientious Northern Virginia to Florida, I could notice a difference. In Florida, kids were going to school, wedding parties were throwing receptions, young people were studying at coffee shops, and families were taking Christmas pictures downtown on the square.

…Since April, Florida’s unemployment rate has remained better than New York’s and California’s.

Schools in Florida are open too, and have been since August. My brother goes to one of them. I’ve seen kids playing at recess.

Amid all this, Florida ranks 33rd in pediatric cases per capita, better than California, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The state of New York has not released its numbers on pediatric cases.

…Not only is Florida’s economy enduring the effects of COVID-19 much better than locked-down states, its death rates are below the national average. At the beginning of February, the Heritage Foundation reported that Florida’s death rate was 123.3 per 100,000 residents — a tragic number, but below the national average of 132 people per 100,000.

Florida’s experience is consistent with epidemiological experience and research, as the infectious disease experts who authored the Great Barrington Declaration pointed out last October: “Basic epidemiological theory indicates that lockdowns do not reduce the total number of cases in the long run and have never in history led to the eradication of a disease.  At best, lockdowns delay the increase of cases for a finite period and at great cost. ”

This is also consistent with recent, peer-reviewed research done on COVID spread in different countries that finds lockdowns and their severity have no ultimate effect. Numerous other recent studies make this conclusion.

Florida was also below the national average rise in total deaths per capita, which would include deaths caused by lockdowns in other states. As early as July, CDC Director Robert Redfield said of young people: “We’re seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID.”

Nationally, there was a 16.9 percent increase in total deaths, regardless of cause. Florida’s increase was lower at 14.8 percent. Meanwhile, New York saw a 30.1 percent spike and California’s deaths increased by 18.6 percent.

If the states are considered laboratories to experiment with programs to see if they are successful, the rest of the nation should be following the example of Florida. That would be ‘following the science’ or at least ‘following the statistics.’

This Shouldn’t Have Surprised Anyone Who Was Paying Attention

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There is a uni-party in Washington. It allows people who choose to be part of the uni-party to arrive in Washington as Middle Class Americans and become millionaires very quickly without actually building a business or selling a product. I don’t know if we will ever be able to end its reign. Sometimes it is even difficult to figure out which politicians are members of the uni-party. Eventually, however, they reveal themselves. Usually those in the uni-party are consistent is supporting the uni-party rather than the American people.

Yesterday The Federalist posted an article about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his long-time relationship with the uni-party.

The article notes:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “got a load off his chest” with his speech closing out Friday’s second failed impeachment attempt against former President Donald Trump. “Unfortunately,” however, “he [also] put a load on the back of Republicans. That speech you will see in 2022 campaigns.”

Who’s responsible for that quote? It might surprise some it wasn’t Donald Trump Jr. or Rep. Matt Gaetz — it was Sen. Lindsey Graham, a moderate, hawkish Republican not up for re-election for six whole years.

So why would Mitch McConnell do something that would hurt Republicans? Because his power does not change whether Republicans are in the majority or the minority.

The article continues:

…So what’s all behind this? After four years of yelling “MAGA!” while pushing his own classic, corporate Republican policies, McConnell had hoped to rid himself and his conference of the conservative populist nationalism the former president had championed and go back to the way things were. He wants a return to promising to tackle illegal immigration before winking at corporate America that nothing will change. He wants to raise money on fighting the abortion of our infants while comfortably lifting nary a finger. He wants to shrug and change the subject when asked about men dominating women’s sports and using women’s bathrooms. He wants fewer taxes and more wars. Hell, he wants someone to blame for the Republican losses in the Georgia special election, and with them the loss of his seat at the head of the Senate.

Instead, his push to impeach ended with rebuke from his own conference. Angry and embarrassed, he blamed his own colleagues as well as the former president, performing a 20-minute attack ad for the left to use on Republicans for the next election cycle and beyond.

The article concludes:

…The second impeachment trial was the final act in years of Democrats trying to usurp the former president and isolate and ostracize his supporters. After January’s shocking $8.3 million post-election fundraising haul — driven largely by small gifts averaging $32 a person — the decline of corporate and PAC influence in favor of base voters’ influence is starkly visible. Corporate politicians like McConnell don’t like this shift because it makes them responsible to that base, so this year, instead of trying to lead a changing party, he stamped his approval on Democrats’ attacks on it.

Far from over, as so many in power would prefer, the lines of the populist conservative fight for the Republican Party and the country are more clearly and publicly drawn than ever before. When they eventually take back the Senate as the pendulum of voter anger inevitably swings back against the current Washington rulers, Senate Republicans would do well to remember the opening months of 2021 — and remember Mitch McConnell.

Until the American voters remove the uni-party from Washington, we will not see immigration reform, lower taxes, less spending, or government that is responsive to the American people. We are responsible for the government we have.

The Title Sounds So Innocent

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The Biden administration has declared war on domestic terror. That sounds good. We really don’t need domestic terrorists roaming around the country. But what do they mean? The Federalist posted an article today that might provide some insight into the coming war on domestic terror.

The article reports:

The Biden administration is planning to use the full force of the federal government in pursuit of a new war. Its target? American citizens.

This countering “domestic violent extremism” effort, declared in the wake of the latest Capitol riot, represents the real-world counterpart to the corporate media rhetoric about the need to “deprogram,” “de-ba’athify,” and drone the Deplorables.

If this is a dangerous political witch hunt masquerading as a national security imperative, it should disturb every American. Half of the country could potentially be ensnared as would-be if not actual terrorists.

In a little-discussed Jan. 22 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki asserted “[the] assault on the Capitol … underscored what we have long known: The rise of domestic violent extremism is a serious and growing national security threat.” Consequently, the administration plans a three-part response:

    • Developing a comprehensive threat assessment, coordinated with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security on domestic violent extremism.
    • Building “National Security Council capability to focus on countering domestic violent extremism,” including conducting “a policy review effort to determine how the government can share information better about this threat, support efforts to prevent radicalization, disrupt violent extremist networks, and more.”
    • Coordinating “relevant parts of the federal government to enhance and accelerate efforts to address DVE … an NSC-convened process will focus on addressing evolving threats, radicalization, the role of social media, opportunities to improve information sharing, operational responses, and more.”

In short, the Biden administration plans to turn the institutions and tools used to pursue foreign adversaries on “wrong-thinking” Americans. There are several reasons this is so troubling.

The article concludes:

It’s also worth noting who is leading this effort, and his political and policy predilections. As Psaki revealed, Joshua Geltzer will be responsible for the “scoping effort.”

During a September 2019 hearing before the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittees on National Security and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the former Obama administration National Security Council official and prolific Trump critic called for adopting a “transnational” approach to countering “violent white supremacy.” This included increased terror organization designations, use of the intelligence capabilities of the “international terrorism”-focused National Counterterrorism Center, and tech companies “policing their platforms to remove not just incitement to violence, but also, the ideological foundations that spawn such violence.”

Geltzer was careful to caveat that creating a “domestic analog to the foreign terrorist organization designation regime” might be unconstitutional and that efforts to counter violent white supremacy “must not be used as an excuse for interfering with the lawful expression of political advocacy.” But it is hard to square these seemingly conflicting statements.

In this charged and hysterical political environment, we should be all the more so concerned about the threats to our liberties, particularly of a national security regime with vastly expanded domestic powers. The first role of government is to protect our lives and liberties. The heavy burden is on our leaders to justify infringements on the latter in service of the former.

Stay tuned.

How Politics Can Negatively Impact The Health Of Americans

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The Federalist is reporting today that Amazon has offered the Biden administration Covid vaccine distribution assistance. That’s very nice, but notice that the offer was not made to the Trump administration. That is disgraceful. That is putting politics above the health of Americans. Whether you are planning to get the vaccine or not, the availability of the vaccine is critical.

The article reports:

Amazon offered the Biden administration vaccine distribution assistance with its vast trove of nationwide resources moments after President Joe Biden was sworn into office on Wednesday. Amazon, the company said, was “ready to assist” with the new president’s goal to vaccinate 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of the new administration.

“We are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts,” Amazon’s CEO for worldwide consumer business Dave Clark wrote. “Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately in the fight against COVID-19.”

The article notes the difference the timing of the offer makes:

The five-to-six-week delay in offering resources when such assistance was available, as vaccination implementation struggled at the state level, likely came at a cost of thousands of lives as viral cases reached new heights in the new year, all while lockdowns enriched the coffers of the corporate tech giants profiting handsomely from the pandemic. The optics of the delay, without any substantive explanation for it, make it appear guided by animus toward Trump and is reminiscent of the Pfizer announcement of its vaccine efficacy days after the November election. Biden was informed of the vaccine’s effectiveness before officials in the Trump administration, who learned of it through the media.

The Trump administration devoted its resources primarily to vaccine development through Operation Warp Speed, successfully landing two reliable vaccines by the year’s end. Vaccination, however, has been left up to the states, a decision that now-President Biden has declared a mistake. He is moving to federalize vaccination efforts, aiming to give 100 million Americans immunity by the end of his first 100 days in office, which comes at the end of April.

Finally, the article notes:

Amazon’s decision to provide access to its vast nationwide resources, however, provides a point of optimism that Biden’s aspirational goals might be possible with the private-sector help not afforded from the same company to his Republican predecessor.

I don’t even have the words to say how angry this makes me. We are watching an all out war on anything President Trump accomplished, the demonetization of conservative thought (and conservatives), and a political party that defines unity as the crushing of any opposing ideas. This is not healthy for our country.

Don’t Expect The Restoration Of Unity

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The Federalist posted an article today with the title, “Why Joe Biden Can’t Restore Unity.”

The article explains:

Biden, however, will not oversee the restoration of national unity—whatever that actually means—because our culture now operates on a bloated definition of bigotry that unjustly implicates decent people in the evils of racism, sexism, violence, and hatred. Biden and his administration accept this definition and will consequently fan the flames.

They already have. On Wednesday, Biden set out to sign an executive order that would prohibit the federal government from “discriminat[ing] on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.” His list of Day One executive orders also included several measures on “diversity” and “equity.” This innocuous language masks intensely charged policies built to enforce the left’s standards by rendering dissent hateful.

Biden deliberately delivered an inaugural address that steered clear of “deplorable” language, but enforcing a definition of “gender identity” that requires people to accept of cultural leftism or face charges of violence and hatred basically has the same effect. Decent people disagree on this matter and on others, but the left’s current progressive-or-bigot binary formulation reflexively defines many decent people as bigots.

The article concudes:

Bigotry is, of course, still alive in this country. But it dwells not in the hearts of the vast majority of conservatives and centrists and even authentic leftists who happen to disagree on particular questions of race and sex. Biden and The New York Times don’t need to agree with the conservative agenda to foster some sense of unity. They merely need to dispense with the notion that dissenters from cultural leftism are necessarily bigots.

Hyperbole is obviously an immutable feature of political rhetoric. That sense of unity Biden wishes to recapture, however, will elude us until the cultural left abandons its bloated definitions of bigotry. It’ll require more than a letter in Harper’s or a Boomer president who waxes poetic about serving “all Americans.”

This is about our institutions purging their dominant cultural ethos and cleaning up the pipeline. At best, it will take many years and a lot more than presidential platitudes.

It is naive to expect the country to unified when there is fundamental disagreement on moral issues. Many Americans, myself included, believe that abortion is murder. We believe that homosexuality is in conflict with Biblical Christianity. We don’t want to hurt those who have had abortions or those who are homosexual, but we just cannot support their choice. We want the freedom to live with our beliefs while extending them the freedom to live with their beliefs. Until both sides of the spectrum stop calling names, unity is impossible.

Hiding The Truth

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Yesterday The Federalist reported that YouTube will ban all videos dealing with election fraud.

The article notes:

“As we shared previously, we do not allow content that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election,” YouTube’s statement read. “This policy applies to videos uploaded on or after December 9.”

You mean the videos of the vote counters blocking the windows so that the observers couldn’t observe? You mean the videos of the vote counters pulling out suitcases of ballots after sending everyone home? You mean the videos of the vote counters scanning the same ballots multiple times? Those videos?

The article concludes:

“Now that the election results have been certified, and due to the extraordinary events that transpired yesterday, videos uploaded on or after today (January 7) that violate this policy will both be removed and a strike will be applied to the channel,” the statement said. “As strikes can impact a channel’s standing, including the ability to upload … we recommend that you be familiar with the policy when publishing relevant content on YouTube.”

This decision follows several moves by other big tech companies to censor President Donald Trump after a destructive mob breached the Capitol on Wednesday. Facebook and Instagram recently announced they are banning the president from their platforms indefinitely, citing concerns that he is inciting violence.

Twitter also took action against Trump, locking his account on Wednesday for reportedly violating its Civic Integrity policies. Snapchat locked Trump’s account on its platform shortly after rioters began their descent on the Capitol building.

And so it begins. Even before the Democrats take power, they are limiting free speech and the free flow of information. I suspect this is only going to get worse.

Down Memory Lane

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Yesterday in Washington was horrible. It was horrible because the Capitol was breached and people killed, but the other casualties of the day were honest, transparent elections and any hope of consistency from our media and elected officials.

Yesterday The Scoop posted an article about an event people may have forgotten.

The article notes:

When far-left radical communists protesting against the appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court took over the Hart Senate Office Building atrium on Capitol Hill on October 4, 2018, leftists on Twitter PRAISED them.

The article includes the following screenshot:

That was then, this is now.

Now let’s take another trip down memory lane to July 2, 2020. The Federalist reported the following:

Thursday afternoon, Democrats killed a resolution aimed at curbing mob violence. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced the bill after a man in Utah was mobbed then shot by a group of rioters. The non-binding resolution offered a statement of support for peaceful protesters and law enforcement who do their job well, while condemning violence and the desecration of monuments across the country.

“A non-binding resolution is the tiniest first step of a response,” Lee read as he introduced it. “We need to do much, much more… but in this divided political moment,… showing that Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats are able to speak with one voice against woke mob violence and in defense of equal justice and civic peace would be a welcome step.”

The resolutions itself states that the country was “founded on universal principles of freedom, justice, and human equality.” It also acknowledged that “throughout our nation’s history, Americans have struggled to realize those ideals … but nonetheless made greater progress toward them than any nation on earth.”

The resolution was immediately attacked. The article reports:

The intended bipartisan resolution swiftly ran into problems. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) spoke directly after Lee to kill the bill. “The resolution reeks of supremacism. Reeks of supremacist views. And it seeks to mischaracterize overwhelmingly peaceful protests across the nation.”

Menendez then offered to support the resolution on one condition: if it condemned President Trump. He stated that if a sentence was added condemning “politicians who incite violence, especially President Trump,” the resolution would be acceptable. He then attacked the president for retweeting a video of two homeowners pointing firearms at a mob that stormed the gates to their private neighborhood.

What happened yesterday was tragic, but those in Congress and in the media need to look in the mirror before blaming others.

Changing The Rules

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The Federalist posted an article today about some of the rules that are being put in place in the House of Representatives. These rules will damage America. They will also result in major Democrat losses in the House of Representatives in 2022. The question is how much damage can the Democrats do in two years.

The article reports:

House Democrats blocked a Republican measure Monday to cut a provision in the Democrats’ rules package for the 117th Congress exempting favored legislation from PAYGO requirements such as the socialist Green New Deal.

PAYGO requirements stipulate that any legislation spending money must include a “payfor” component that could come in the form of additional legislation analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) offering members insight into the true cost of any new spending bill. Under the proposed Democratic rules, however, proposals such as the Green New Deal are exempt from the requirement, protecting its supporters from having to answer how to cover its initial estimated $93 trillion price tag.

Are there any fiscally responsible Democrats that could have stopped this?

The article continues:

“On only day two of the 117th Congress, House Democrats are already attempting to strip Americans of the transparency they deserve in order to push through an expensive progressive wish-list,” House Budget Committee Republican Ranking Member Jason Smith of Missouri admonished lawmakers. “This exemption is irresponsible since arguably it could apply to any radical, progressive, out-of-touch legislation dreamed up next by House Democrats.”

Democrats blocked the Republicans’ Motion to Commit, striking the exemption by a margin of 217 to the GOP’s 203 voting in favor. The radical proposals Smith prophesied are certainly in the pipeline.

The article concludes:

With few votes to spare on major legislation, Pelosi will need to keep her caucus’s farthest-left members on board. The final check on two years of Democrats passing every item on their wish list with an incoming Democratic president then falls to the Senate, control of which will be decided in the Georgia Senate runoffs Tuesday.

Hang on to your wallets. This is going to get very ugly and very expensive.

Standing Up For Those Who Helped In A Crisis

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When the nightmare of lockdowns, masks, and hand sanitizer began in February, some of the small breweries stepped up and stopped making alcohol to drink and made hand sanitizer instead. Unfortunately, those who wrote the stimulus bill for Congress were ungrateful.

Today The Federalist is reporting the following:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is overriding the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which made a surprise announcement Tuesday that any distillery that switched to producing hand sanitizer this year during the pandemic will owe thousands of dollars in fees and could be charged twice if they do not cease production immediately.

HHS Chief of Staff Brian Harrison announced Thursday: “Small businesses who stepped up to fight COVID-19 should be applauded by their government, not taxed for doing so. I’m pleased to announce we have directed FDA to cease enforcement of these arbitrary, surprise user fees. Happy New Year, distilleries, and cheers to you for helping keep us safe!”

The article explains the history of the fees:

The early and uncertain days of the pandemic created a high demand for hand sanitizer. Many craft-brewing distilleries, which found their regular operations at a standstill due to COVID shutdowns, pivoted to making sanitizer to stay financially afloat and help with the sudden shortage. More than 800 distilleries shifted from spirits to sanitizer, offering it for sale and even donating it to their communities.

How were the distilleries rewarded for their swift, resourceful, and admirable actions? The FDA slapped them with a notice that they owed an unexpected fee to the government of more than $14,000. Any facility described as an “over-the-counter drug monograph” facility would be subject to a $14,060 Monograph Drug Facility Fee.

The CARES Act, passed into law earlier this year as an initial round of COVID-19 spending defined all distilleries producing hand sanitizer as such facilities. Under the now-voided rule, distilleries would have been forced to shut down production of hand sanitizer and notify the federal government of their change in status in order to avoid having to pay the same fee in 2022.

For the blindsided distilleries, the unexpected fee would have been devastating in an already financially difficult year.

This is another example of things hidden in bills passed by Congress that hurt American businesses. It is time we limit Congressional bills to five pages and require that they deal with one subject only. Right now the lobbyists are writing the bills and hiding things in them that hurt Americans. It’s time to make some changes in the way Congress operates.

 

The Coming Threat To Religious Liberty

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The Federalist posted an article today contrasting the Trump administration’s handling of religious liberty in America with the plans the Biden administration has for religious liberty. Joe Biden has already stated that he intends to sue the Little Sisters of the Poor again because they refuse to follow the contraception guidelines of Obamacare. Doesn’t the government have better things to do than sue a charitable organization that is doing good work?

The White House issued a proclamation yesterday marking the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket.

The proclamation declared:

We pray for religious believers everywhere who suffer persecution for their faith. We especially pray for their brave and inspiring shepherds—like Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong and Pastor Wang Yi of Chengdu—who are tireless witnesses to hope.

To honor Thomas Becket’s memory, the crimes against people of faith must stop, prisoners of conscience must be released, laws restricting freedom of religion and belief must be repealed, and the vulnerable, the defenseless, and the oppressed must be protected. The tyranny and murder that shocked the conscience of the Middle Ages must never be allowed to happen again. As long as America stands, we will always defend religious liberty.

A society without religion cannot prosper. A nation without faith cannot endure—because justice, goodness, and peace cannot prevail without the grace of God.

The article contrasts that statement with statements made and policies supported by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris:

Although he professes to be Catholic, Biden has already indicated he will once again target religious groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, as the Obama administration did, in an attempt to force such religious orders to participate in state-funded abortion.

And Biden’s soon-to-be vice president, Kamala Harris, is an open anti-Catholic bigot. She infamously imposed an unconstitutional religious test on a nominee for the federal bench in 2018. When Brian Buescher was nominated as a District Court judge, Harris inveighed against him for being a member of the Knights of Columbus, asking, “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?”

Of course, the Knights of Columbus (of which, full disclosure, I’m a member) has no special position or focus on abortion. The charitable organization simply adheres to the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion, marriage, and everything else. Harris’s obvious implication was that adhering to orthodox Catholic moral teaching somehow renders a person unfit for positions of public trust, such as the federal judiciary.

Aside from this appalling incident, Harris has a long record of going after organizations whose positions are in line with Catholic moral teaching, especially on abortion. As California attorney general, she authorized a raid on the home of David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress, which had exposed the illegal trafficking of organs from aborted children by Planned Parenthood.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. Things are not looking good for religious freedom in America during the next four years.

 

Don’t You Usually Get Arrested For Breaking The Law?

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The Federalist is reporting today that despite the fact that more than 1,700 Georgians were singled out for illegally casting two ballots in 2020 elections – including last month’s presidential race–no one has been prosecuted.

The article reports:

The majority of double voters were Democrats who cast an absentee ballot either by mail or drop box and also voted in person on Election Day, officials said, which is a felony under state law.

The highest share of offenders were from Fulton County, which includes Atlanta – many of whom were allowed to cast a second ballot by poll workers, officials said.

Hundreds of workers assigned to county poll sites were recruited and trained by the Democrat-run Georgia chapter of the ACLU and by Happy Faces Personnel Group, a minority-owned temp agency run by Democrat donors, according to documents obtained by RealClearInvestigations. 

The ACLU chapter is now signing up poll workers for the Jan. 5 runoff races. And the temp agency remains under contract with the county to supply workers for that critical election, despite complaints from poll managers and poll watchers that its recruits were “poorly trained” and “highly partisan.” The Georgia runoffs will determine control of the U.S. Senate.

Though the number of suspected double-voting felons is the largest in state history, RealClearInvestigations has learned that no cases have been referred to the state attorney general for criminal investigation.

The article also notes:

An investigation by Raffensperger’s office revealed that at least 1,042 people knowingly voted twice in the June primary, with 60 percent of them using Democratic Party ballots. Hundreds more broke the law again on Nov. 3. Voting twice is a felony punishable by one to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000. Yet none of the total 1,736 confirmed cases of double-voting has been referred for prosecution, even though some cheaters were overheard bragging about violating the law.

In a guide for Georgia poll workers, the ACLU came close to encouraging double-voting: “Voters can cast a regular in-person ballot even if they requested an absentee ballot.” The chapter also facilitated absentee voting by listing the locations of all the drop boxes in the state, including some 36 drop boxes installed in Fulton County.

At some point, we are going to have to get tighter controls on absentee ballots and mail-in ballots. Double voting is not acceptable.

A Broken Promise

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Historically, Britain leased Hong Kong from China. However, in 1984, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang negotiated the underlying plan for the lease to end, such that Hong Kong would remain a semi-autonomous region for a 50-year period after the lease ended. According to that agreement, Hong Kong would remain free and semi-autonomous until 2034. Unfortunately that is not what is happening.

Yesterday The Federalist reported that Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow were arrested and sent to prison on Wednesday following their involvement in a series of protests created in resistance to the Chinese Communist Party’s tightening control of the territory.

The article reports:

Joshua Wong received the heaviest sentence with 13 and a half months in prison, Agnes Chow was sentenced to 10 months, and Ivan Lam received seven months. While Wong has been charged in other cases, Chow is still facing potential charges of inciting secession and all of the activists are subject to further scrutiny from the Chinese government.

…Wong, Chow, and Lam were all part of a pro-democracy political party Demosisto, which disbanded shortly before the communist National People’s Congress passed a new “security” law in July that criminalizes regular protest activity as “terrorism” for disrupting traffic, “subversion” for disrupting any government agents, and “secession” for groups speaking of potential independence. Any attempt by protest groups to work with the members of the international community was also made a criminal offense.

Violators of the new legislation were subjected to harsh punishments including potential life in prison.

The activists previously pleaded guilty for participating in what was deemed an “unauthorized assembly” in front of police headquarters in June of last year when the pro-democracy protest movement first began to gain international attention.

As noted by the New York Times, both Wong and Lam, eventually joined by Chow, were influential in organizing and lifting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement off of the ground. Nearly 10 years ago, the activists recognized the influence the Chinese Communist Party was having on their generation and began to coordinate protests against a “national education curriculum in Hong Kong schools, which they considered ‘brainwashing.’”

The young activists also helped organize the Umbrella Movement, a series of campaigns and protests against “limits on direct elections in 2014.”

When urgency and awareness picked up about the Hong Kongers’ fight for freedom in 2019 following protests over China’s intention to extradite criminal offenders to be tried in mainland China, they rose into the international spotlight as leaders of the movement.

This doesn’t sound as if China is living up to its part of the bargain. The really sad part is that no country in the world will stand up to China on this matter. In that case, we can expect a total end to freedom in Hong Kong.

Does Wearing A Mask Matter?

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Yesterday The Federalist posted an article about the effectiveness of masks in curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Because of the previous sentence, I expect the fact-checkers on Facebook to flag this article, but their flags can’t dispute facts. The article at The Federalist includes twelve graphs contrasting the spread of the virus where masks were mandatory with the spread of the virus where masks were not required. Please follow the link to the article to see those graphs.

The article concludes:

Why Don’t Masks Work?

Why don’t masks work on the general public? For one, if you read the fine print on most consumer masks you will see something along the line of “not intended for medical purposes and has not been tested to reduce the transmission of disease.” Masks can work well when they’re fully sealed, properly fitted, changed often, and have a filter designed for virus-sized particles. This represents none of the common masks available on the consumer market, making universal masking much more of a confidence trick than a medical solution.

If we actually wanted effective masks, then manufacturers should be conducting scientific tests evaluating masks specifically for their ability to reduce the spread of coronavirus. The Food and Drug Administration and CDC should be making recommendations on which masks to use and approving masks based on their scientific efficacy rather than promoting the wrapping of any piece of miscellaneous cloth around your face.

Effective masks, if they exist, should then be distributed to highly vulnerable groups for use only in rare and extenuating circumstances. There would be little point for the population at large to wear masks all the time because while focused protection may be possible, it is not possible to eradicate the virus at this point or stop its spread.

Our universal use of unscientific face coverings is therefore closer to medieval superstition than it is to science, but many powerful institutions have too much political capital invested in the mask narrative at this point, so the dogma is perpetuated. The narrative says that if cases go down it’s because masks succeeded. It says that if cases go up it’s because masks succeeded in preventing more cases. The narrative simply assumes rather than proves that masks work, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.

The narrative further ignores places like Sweden and Georgia, which never required masks in the first place, and it suppresses new scientific evidence if it doesn’t support desired political results, such as data from the world’s only randomized trial investigating if masks actually protect from COVID-19. Even a Nobel laureate has been canceled because his COVID charts and data were found to be undesirable.

History does not bode well for times that politics meddles with science. Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a leader in disease surveillance methods and infectious disease outbreaks, describes the current COVID scientific environment this way: “After 300 years, the Age of Enlightenment has ended.”

In the end, it will be the loss of credibility in our scientific institutions, and the unnecessary division they have sowed among us, for which masks will be remembered.

Stay tuned. Eventually the truth will prevail.

Corroborating Evidence

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The Federalist reported yesterday that Secret Service records confirm the travel dates and trips taken by Hunter Biden that were reported in the emails posted by The New York Post last week. That is not good news for the Democrats attempting to claim the emails are fake and are based on attempts by foreign governments to interfere with our election. Actually, the release of the emails was done by people who want to make sure American voters understand the history of one of the candidates for president.

The article reports:

In one email reported by the Post, sent from Hunter Biden to his business partner Devon Archer dated Apr. 13, 2014, Hunter refers to a trip to Houston slated for “tmrw.” Secret Service records released by Johnson and Grassley corroborate details of the trip with a travel entry from Hunter Biden for Apr. 13, 2014 to Apr. 14, 2014 to Houston.

In another email published by the Post, senior Burisma adviser Vadim Pozharski allegedly wrote on May 12, 2014 of a trip to Como Lake. Secret Service records reported a travel entry for Hunter Biden to Lake Como, Italy just more than a  month earlier dated Apr. 3 to Apr. 6.

“Other reports indicate that, in May 2014, Mr. Biden and Mr. Archer may have been in Doha, Qatar,” the senators wrote. “USSS records contain a travel entry for Hunter Biden to Doha, Qatar on May 11, 2014 – May 14, 2014.”

So far the attempts by people supporting Joe Biden for President to debunk the emails have failed. The biggest question in my mind is, “If the FBI took possession of the computer in December, why did we have to wait almost a year for anything on the computer to become public?” The FBI really does not look very unbiased right now.

The article notes:

The Biden campaign has not disputed the authenticity of the Post’s reported emails.

Does Anyone Remember Robert Bork?

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On September 29, 2020, The Federalist posted an article remembering some of the activities surrounding the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork.

The article reports:

Mary Ellen Bork, the widow to the late federal Judge Robert Bork, wrote a response to an article in the Wall Street Journal reminding readers of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s role in her husband’s failed confirmation to the Supreme Court.

“Most people don’t remember the hearings on Robert Bork for nomination to the Supreme Court, but I do,” she wrote. “The week of hearings in 1987 showed me Joe Biden’s partisanship and pragmatism.”

…The original article in the Wall Street Journal states, “This began the modern era of hyper-politicized judicial nominations, though for the Supreme Court it has largely been a one-way partisan street.”

According to the widow, the “Democrats flagrantly lied about Bob’s record of opinions,” just days after Biden dropped out of the presidential race due to plagiarism.

“In the course of one week Sen. Biden orchestrated a vicious lying assault and was caught passing off someone else’s words as his own,” she said. “Thirty-three years later he is still a man without a compass, guided now by prevailing progressive winds.”

Be prepared for a rerun of the Democrat’s activities surrounding that nomination.

Breitbart is reporting the following today:

Senator Chris Coons (D-DL) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s positions were “disqualifying” for the post she was seeking.

Coons said, “Well, I’m going to be laying out the ways in which Judge Barrett’s views, her views on reaching back and reconsidering and overturning long-settled precedent are not just extreme, they are disqualifying.”

He continued, “She has taught at a well-regarded law school. She clerked for Justice Scalia, but she has views that make her not qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. President Trump has said he would only nominate someone who would overturn the Affordable Care Act, taking away health care protection for more than 100 million Americans in the middle of a pandemic. Both President Trump and members of the majority on this committee have said they would only vote for a nominee who would overturn Roe vs. Wade.”

I would like to refer back to an article at rightwinggranny posted on September 27.

I stated the following:

There are a few things that should be noted about the upcoming confirmation hearings. Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on May 8, 2017, and confirmed on October 31, 2017, by a 55 to 43 vote. Three Democrats voted with the Republicans–Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, and Indiana Senator Joe Donnelly. That was less than three years ago. She has been vetted.

This is going to be very ugly, and there will be a lot of lies told by those who oppose this nomination. The lady is extremely qualified and should be confirmed. However, the Democrats will do anything to prevent that from happening. That is a shame, but that is where we are.

Looking The Other Way

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The mainstream media shows its bias not only in how it reports things, but also by its choice of what to report. Something that should be a major story right now is the questionable international financial dealings of the son of one of the presidential candidates.

The Federalist posted an article today about the media’s failure to say anything about a Senate Intelligence Committee report that came out last week.

The article reports:

Last week, a Senate Intelligence Committee report detailed how the son of a major presidential candidate, who has an extensive history of shady foreign business dealings, received a $3.5-million wire transfer from the wife of a Russian politician. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and most major media outlets didn’t cover the wire-transfer story at all. Four years ago, not reporting such a story was a possibility too absurd to even contemplate — but then again, no one would have predicted the candidate with the shady Russia ties is not Donald Trump, but Joe Biden.

People often talk about how Trump is responsible for destroying political norms, and that’s a valid concern. One of the truly frightening things about the Trump era, however, is how institutions have exploited a perceived crisis in truth-telling to justify abandoning their own standards by blaming it on Trump. Increasingly, we see major stories break where the media establishment decides on a collective omertà because the story undermines its own credibility or might sway voters in directions it doesn’t approve of. When that happens, no news is good news.

In case you have forgotten, this is the video posted at YouTube of Joe Biden bragging about withholding tax dollars until the investigation into his son’s company in Ukraine was halted:

It is embedded in case it magically disappears in the coming weeks. Corruption among members of the Biden family is not unusual. It is amazing how much wealth the family accumulated during the time Joe Biden held various political offices.

The article concludes:

Edicts need to come down from major media outlets about reporting the news when it happens, not when political circumstances necessitate or dictate how a story is covered. One way of preventing such obvious imbalances in coverage is to pursue ideological diversity in newsrooms along with actual diversity — if no one in your newsroom attends church weekly, owns a gun, or regularly votes Republican, you don’t have reporters who are going to raise objections about imbalanced coverage, much less understand half the country.

Right now, any understanding of half the country begins and ends with the fact that they loathe and distrust the media. Perhaps not all of that anger at the media is justified, but it’s righteous enough, especially after last week. For once, the media were handed a Russian influence-peddling scandal on a silver platter, and the vast majority of major outlets declined to even mention it. Such bad behavior makes the calculus for determining who’s a bigger threat pretty clear for a lot of Trump supporters. Even if the president does and says things that make them uncomfortable, he’ll be gone in four months or four years. A media that hides the truth this brazenly is going to be much harder to get rid of.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. You won’t find this information on the majority of your cable news channels.

Lies Debunked During The Trump Administration

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Until Donald Trump became President, the following quote summed up Washington:

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies… is a foolish idea. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”
― Carroll Quigley

Americans kept on voting in different political parties. but nothing changed. Then Donald Trump (who is something of a bull in a china shop) was elected. On Friday, The Federalist posted an article listing “10 Major ‘Consensus’ Lies President Trump Has Shattered Forever.” Please follow the link to read the details in the article. I will simply give you the list.

The 10 items are:

1. The Press Does Not Choose Sides

2. There Is No Deep State

3. Democrats Own Black and Hispanic Votes

4. MeToo Is About Protecting Women and Children

5. Climate Change Alarmism Isn’t About Raw Power

6. Free Trade Requires Wrecking U.S. Manufacturing and Enriching China

7. Defending Unborn Babies Is a Losing Political Issue

8. Judges Are Nonpartisan

9. Democrats Aren’t Purging History or the Constitution

10. The Obama Administration Was Scandal-Free

This is what the article says about the ‘scandal-free’ Obama administration:

Obama’s deliberate sabotaging of the peaceful transfer of power by orchestrating a “Russia collusion” hoax that nearly took down his successor is one of the most egregious political scandals in American history. His administration’s efforts to use a cabal of high-ranking intelligence and law enforcement officers to conduct a disinformation campaign designed to implicate a sitting president as an agent of a hostile country can be described as nothing less than an attempted coup.

Along with “Fast and Furious,” the IRS targeting of conservatives, the cover-up of the administration’s culpability in Benghazi, the use of consent settlements to coerce companies to underwrite Democrat slush funds, and the Department of Justice’s cover-up of Hillary Clinton’s unsecured email server and pay-to-play schemes through the Clinton Foundation, the Russia hoax secures Obama’s legacy as a singularly corrupt American president.

Sometimes you need a bull in a china shop to get rid of all of the old, out-of-date inventory!

The Deep State Is Still Fighting

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Yesterday The Federalist posted an article stating that CIA Director Gina Haspel is personally blocking the declassification of documents detailing corruption at the highest levels of the intelligence community during the 2016 election, according to The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis.

The article reports:

“I’m told that it is Gina Haspel personally who is blocking continued declassification of these documents that will show the American people the truth of what actually happened,” Davis said.

Notably, Haspel was previously the London CIA station chief under former CIA director John Brennan during the 2016 election. “Recall it was London where Christopher Steele was doing all this work,” Davis said, noting Haspel was the “main link” between Washington and London at the time. Haspel was hand-picked by former CIA director John Brennan to run the CIA’s operations in London, where she served as the spy agency’s bureau chief from 2014 through early 2017.

The article concludes:

“So many of the people blocking these documents are likely implicated by them. You have these career bureaucrats whose careers may be destroyed by the facts within them,” he (Davis) said.

“I think at this point, we need the president, Donald Trump, to step in and say, ‘No more obstruction. No more blocking.’ We need transparency and the American people need to hear the truth.”

Many of the people in the intelligence community believed that Hillary Clinton would be elected President in 2016. They did things that broke the law because they knew that after she was elected, they would not be held accountable. The probably felt that they would be rewarded for their efforts after the election. Please understand that if Joe Biden is elected any charges related to misbehavior by the intelligence community will magically disappear. If this occurs, it will be a green light for similar behavior in the future. Also understand that at least half of the American population still believes the lies put forth by the intelligence community. We are at a very dangerous place.

This Is Frightening

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Yesterday The Federalist posted an article about some information declassified and released by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe yesterday.

The article reports:

Not only were Russian officials aware of Hillary Clinton’s campaign plan to accuse Donald Trump of being a Russian asset, top U.S. intelligence authorities knew of Russia’s knowledge of Clinton’s plans, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe disclosed to congressional officials on Tuesday. Before they launched an investigation into whether Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia, intelligence agencies learned that Russia knew of Clinton’s plans to tarnish Trump with the collusion smear.

At one point, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan personally briefed then-President Barack Obama and other top U.S. national security officials that Russia assessed Hillary Clinton had approved a plan on July 26, 2016, “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,” according to Brennan’s handwritten notes.

Fired former FBI Director James Comey and fired former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok were even sent an investigative referral on September 7, 2016, regarding Russia’s alleged knowledge of Clinton’s plans to smear Trump as a treasonous Russian agent, Ratcliffe wrote. Rather than investigate at the time whether Russian intelligence had infiltrated the Clinton operation’s anti-Trump campaign and sowed Russian disinformation within it, the FBI instead used unverified gossip from a suspected Russian agent to obtain federal warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.

There is no evidence the FBI ever investigated the Clinton campaign’s documented use of Russian agents and intelligence assets to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, raising questions of whether the top federal law enforcement agency may have itself interfered in the election by using its powers to arbitrarily target the campaign of the outgoing administration’s political enemy.

The article concludes:

Clinton personally pushed the Russia collusion claims on multiple occasions. Following her surprising defeat, she immediately pivoted to a campaign of blaming Russia for election meddling with Trump’s assistance. Within the last few weeks, Clinton has repeated her claim that Trump stole the election from her with Russia’s help.

While Comey, Strzok, and other Obama-era FBI officials have claimed that the investigation of Trump was legally predicated, U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is investigating the propriety of the entire Crossfire Hurricane operation, has publicly stated, based on evidence he has obtained, that he does not necessarily believe that to be the case.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. This abuse of federal power is something that needs to be dealt with. It is a safe bet that if Joe Biden wins the election, all of this corruption will be buried and the same techniques used against any opponent of the Democrats. At that point we will no longer have a recognizable America. The voters need to know what happened before the election. Unfortunately the deep state will prevent that from happening in order to continue its war against the American people.

More Spin

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Mollie Hemingway posted an article at The Federalist today that illustrates how the media manipulates information in order to fit a pre-planned narrative.

The article reports:

Adam Goldman broke, and cushioned, the news that former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was to plead guilty to fabricating evidence in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application to spy on Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page.

His job was to present the news as something other than an indictment of the FBI’s handling of the Russia collusion hoax, to signal to other media that they should move on from the story as quickly as possible, and to hide his own newspaper’s multi-year participation in the Russia collusion hoax. One intelligence source described it as an “insult” to his intelligence and “beyond Pravda,” a reference to the official newspaper of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Here’s how Goldman did it.

The New York Times used to put every Russia collusion story it had on the front page. Then, when the narrative fell apart, the Times moved on to a new narrative of redefining America as irredeemably racist.

Even though Clinesmith’s guilty plea is directly relevant to the false story the Times peddled for years, and even though it broke the news of his guilty plea, the publication hid the story deep in the paper and put a boring headline on it. “Ex-F.B.I. Lawyer Expected to Plead Guilty in Durham Investigation,” as if begging readers to move on. If they didn’t, the subhead told them that the news really wasn’t such a big deal. “Prosecutors are not expected to reveal any evidence of a broad anti-Trump conspiracy among law enforcement officials,” it claimed, without, well, evidence.

In fact, while the charging document was brief, it revealed that while Clinesmith deliberately fabricated evidence in the fourth warrant to spy on Page, all four warrants failed to mention the information the CIA gave the FBI months before the first warrant was filed. That information was that Page, a former Marine officer who graduated from the Naval Academy, had been a source for the agency, sharing information about Russians the agency was interested in. In fact, he’d done it for five years.

The article notes:

Goldman claims, without evidence, that Trump “has long been blunt about seeing the continuing investigation by the prosecutor examining the earlier inquiry, John H. Durham, as political payback.” In fact, Trump has said that no president should go through what he went through: the weaponization of a political opponent’s conspiracy theory to undermine a duly elected president.

Is it payback when you are trying to find the truth and prevent future wrongdoing?

The article concludes:

Had the FBI been properly informed that Steele was working both for the Clinton-funded operation and the Russian oligarch, they said they would have been much more sensitive to the possibility his entire operation was related to Russian disinformation. Also, Steele’s two most explosive claims — about Michael Cohen being in Prague and the “pee tape” claim — were both thought to have been part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

The dossier was key to securing the wiretap on Page, which Goldman doesn’t mention. He instead writes, “Investigators eventually suspected that Russian spies had marked Mr. Page for recruitment” as the reason they were able to get a wiretap.

All of which to say, in a story about malfeasance on Carter Page’s FISA warrants, Goldman doesn’t mention the dossier until the penultimate paragraph of a 30-paragraph story.

These are just a few of the ways Goldman manipulates the story to protect the Russia collusion hoax he participated in. Because they were co-conspirators in the hoax, too many in the corporate media are serving as obstacles to holding the FBI and other powerful government agencies accountable for their actions.

Be prepared for much more silly-season spin.

The Next Generation Of The “Cancel Culture”

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On Friday The Federalist reported the results of a recent Cato Institute survey of Americans asked whether or not it was okay to fire people who support President Trump.

The article notes:

The Cato Institute just released a new report showing that 62 percent of Americans are inclined to self-censor what they say politically “because others might find them offensive.” Even moderate leftists report they feel increased fear of offending the offendable, while only the most “staunch liberals,” as Cato described them, feel free to speak their minds. The “very conservative” have been pushed deepest in the closet: they are most likely to refrain from saying what they think politically, at nearly twice the rate of the “very liberal.”

Buried deeper in the report, however, is a stunning data point that might be one of the most troubling current cultural indicators. Forty-four percent of Americans younger than age 30 believe a company is correct in firing an executive because he or she personally donated to President Trump’s reelection campaign.

The companion finding was also disturbing. Twenty-seven percent of people under 30 said they were fine with an executive being fired because he or she donated to the Joe Biden campaign. The means that of Americans under 30 years old, 73 percent think it would be wrong to fire an executive from a company for donating to the Biden campaign, while only 56 percent believe it would be wrong to do so for a Trump donation.

The article concludes:

It was not all that long ago that the liberal clarion value was the misattributed Voltairean principle, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Today that seems to have been replaced with the brutally authoritarian, “I disagree with what you believe, and I will make sure you lose your livelihood because I went digging and found out you made a private campaign contribution to someone I think is evil.”

If, God forbid, the autopsy of the American experiment is ever written, this growing expectation that political submission be a condition of one’s employment will certainly be noted as a significant stage in its demise. It demonstrates that the world’s most hopeful self-government is moving in a very bad direction, and that should profoundly bother us all.

This is frightening. It is a further indication that many Americans do not understand the founding documents of America. Free speech was one of the foundations of those documents. Viewpoint discrimination is an intimidation tactic that should be totally unacceptable in a free country. Firing an executive because they donated to a political campaign should not even be a consideration. The fact that it is is one of many reasons that the names of people who make donations under $1000 to a political campaign should be kept private. The names of people who make large donations or the names of organizations that make large donations should be made public.

 

Information We Need NOW!

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On Saturday The Federalist posted an article explaining why U.S. Attorney John Durham, the lead prosecutor looking into the origins of the Russia probe and the spying on the Trump campaign, should release the results of his investigation before November. I will admit that I am more interested in seeing those in the intelligence community who broke the law held accountable than I am in seeing a report.

The article reports:

As reported by the Washington Examiner, several sources have indicated that “Durham may end up waiting until after November to reveal what he has found or to hand down indictments” because Durham does not want his investigation or any decisions to be viewed as “political.” This would be a mistake. There is no question that he should release his findings and issue any necessary indictments before the November elections.

The voters need to know if the investigations that went on in 2015 and 2016 of the Trump campaign and people associated with it were warranted. If those investigations were not warranted, those responsible need to be held accountable before the election. Anyone who has been following the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) releases by Judicial Watch has a pretty good idea of what went on. Unfortunately, Americans who depend on the mainstream media for their information have no idea of the information in the documents so far declassified and made public. It is totally unfair to ask voters to make a decision in November without giving them the information they need to make an informed decision.

The article notes:

Historically, the Department of Justice has refrained from taking any action for partisan purposes. As reported in Just Security:

Department of Justice employees are entrusted with the authority to enforce the laws of the United States and with the responsibility to do so in a neutral and impartial manner. This is particularly important in an election year.

The Memorandum further states (emphasis added):

As Department employees … we must be particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department’s reputation for fairness, neutrality and nonpartisanship.

Simply put, politics must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges. Law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.

The article argues that that policy does not apply in this case:

While this policy makes sense overall, it does not make sense in this case for several compelling reasons. First, there is no evidence that Durham’s investigation is partisan in nature or that it is being conducted for partisan political purposes like the Michael Flynn and Roger Stone investigations. Durham’s investigation began long ago and well before Americans were seriously thinking about the 2020 elections.

Second, the purpose of Durham’s investigation appears to align with the department’s mission. Specifically, through his investigation, Durham is seeking to protect the integrity of the election process in the United States. More particularly, Durham is investigating whether one or more people were involved in a plot to sabotage a presidential candidate or to overthrow a duly elected president.

This is not a political issue that “benefits” one party or another. Rather, it is an investigation, the results of which will help Americans of all political leanings. Durham’s findings are vital for all Americans who care about democracy and the integrity of the election process. Americans deserve to know what happened leading up to the 2016 elections.

It’s time for Americans to learn the truth about what the Justice Department and the intelligence community did to undermine the campaign and presidency of President Trump.

A Toxic Website

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The Federalist posted an article yesterday about some additions to The National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) website that I would consider toxic. The NMAAHC is part of the Smithsonian museum group.

The article includes a screenshot of “Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness.”

Some of the traits listed on this chart are negative traits. However, some of the traits listed on the chart are traits needed to become a contributing member of society and avoid poverty. For instance, a two-parent family is less likely to be poor than a nuclear family. Delayed gratification is often the key to success and stability–it can also be called self-discipline. That is not a racist concept. Being polite should not be considered a racist concept. Respecting authority is also a key to an ordered society–it is not a racist concept. The chart notes that our aesthetics are based on European culture. That is because up until Ted Kennedy changed the immigration laws in 1965, we were a country of European immigrants. In 1860, slaves made up 12.8 percent of America’s population (article here). In a time that did not have mass communication, they were not going to have a lot of influence on the culture regardless of their status.

What this chart does is undermine the foundations of a civilized society. The foundations of America are Judeo-Christian. They include such things as two-parent families, a work ethic, manners, respect for authority, and all the things that make living together possible. Without those things society would devolve into chaos. I am sorry that the Smithsonian considers those things ‘white.’ I consider them civilized. Categorizing these values as ‘white’ places an obstacle in front of people of color if they want to be successful. Calling those things that result in success ‘white’ discourages others from doing the things necessary to succeed.  If someone considers the foundations of our society ‘white’ and thus racist, I suggest they find a country whose foundations and expectations are more to their liking and emigrate there.