Tag Archives: Washington Free Beacon

I Really Can’t Mourn This Man’s Death

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On September 28th, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Israel Defense Forces killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on the Iran-backed terrorist group’s Beirut headquarters.

The article reports:

“Last night, in a precise strike on Hezbollah’s terrorist headquarters in the neighborhood in Beirut, the IDF eliminated the leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, Hassan Nasrallah,” IDF international spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters in a briefing. “I can now confirm this to you.”

“Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world,” the IDF said on X.

The Israeli airstrike on Friday also eliminated Ali Karaki, Hezbollah’s Southern Front commander, and other leaders of the group, according to the IDF.

“The strike was conducted while Hezbollah’s senior chain of command, what’s left of it, were operating from the headquarters and advancing terrorist activities against the citizens of the State of Israel,” Shoshani said.

Hezbollah confirmed the death of Nasrallah on Saturday.

Shoshani said the Hezbollah headquarters were located underground, beneath a residential building in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, in keeping with the group’s strategy “to hide behind civilians.” He said the IDF always takes precautions to avoid civilian deaths, but he was not prepared to speak to the specifics of Friday’s airstrike, including the types of munitions that were used or the extent of the collateral damage.

If the terrorists are going to hide among civilians, civilians are going to be killed. I am just grateful that the IDF makes very surgical strikes when taking out terrorists.

The article also notes:

The Biden administration, which failed to impose a ceasefire on Israel and Hezbollah on Thursday, distanced itself from the strike against Nasrallah.

“The United States was not involved in this operation, and we had no advanced warning,” a Pentagon spokeswoman said on Friday.

A terrorist is killed and the Biden administration doesn’t even celebrate! They had no advanced warning because they cannot be trusted. There are too many people in the Biden administration who support Iran instead of Israel.

Why Are We Funding Terrorism?

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On July 1st, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a ruling by a U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The article reports:

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled on Friday that the lawsuit brought by victims of Palestinian terrorism can proceed, marking the second time the Biden administration’s motion to dismiss the case has been rejected. The court, in its latest decision, said there is evidence the Biden administration continued awarding taxpayer cash to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—the leading aid organization in Gaza—even after Congress blocked funding to that group due to its support for Hamas’s military infrastructure.

The lawsuit, originally filed in December 2022 by American victims of Palestinian terror attacks and Rep. Ronny Jackson (R., Texas), alleges the Biden administration violated federal law when it restarted aid to the Palestinians, including for programs in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. This money, they argue, subsidized terrorism and contributed to the Palestinian government’s “pay to slay” program, which provides imprisoned terrorists and their families with monthly stipends.

The latest decision paves the way for the case to “move forward, tearing away the veil from the Biden Administration’s illegal and dangerous $1.5 billion terrorism subsidy program for the Palestinians,” America First Legal, a watchdog group handling the lawsuit on behalf of terror victims, said in a summary of the case provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

In September 2023, Medill News Service reported:

Members of Congress and top experts disagreed yesterday about whether the Biden administration has been complying with the Trump-era law to withhold economic assistance from the Palestinian Authority.

The 2018 Taylor Force Act ended economic aid for the Palestinian Authority over the Palestinian Authority’s controversial policy of compensating the families of terrorists who died or have been imprisoned. Critics of the policy dub it “Pay to Slay,” and say it incentivizes terrorism against Israeli citizens and visiting Americans.

Congress passed the Taylor Force Act to prevent U.S. taxpayer dollars from incentivizing or funding Palestinian terrorism by cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority until the organization ceases to operate a fund providing salaries for families of deceased and imprisoned terrorists. During the hearing representatives of both parties expressed support for the Taylor Force Act, and questioned the witnesses on whether the Biden administration is complying with provisions of the Trump-era law.

“It is clear the Biden administration is not in compliance. The Palestinian Authority still has this fund in operation,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, R-NY. “The Biden administration resumed levels of payments and encouraged the Saudi government to do so.”

However, when asked by Rep. Dean Phillips, D-MN, the three witnesses disagreed on whether the Biden administration is complying with the law.

Elliott Abrams, President George W. Bush’s deputy national security advisor, said the Biden administration is “not fully” in compliance, but he said “our money is not going to the PA,” referring to the Palestinian Authority. Abrams believes the Biden Administration is not following the law’s requirements to highlight the issue of the Palestinian Authority funding terrorism at the United Nations and in relations with other countries.

America is funding both sides of the Israel/Hamas war. It is time we stopped. Please read both articles–they explain the details.

You Might Want To Ask Your Doctor Where He Went To School

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On Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the results of racial preferences in higher education.

The article reports:

Up to half of UCLA medical students now fail basic tests of medical competence. Whistleblowers say affirmative action, illegal in California since 1996, is to blame.

Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles’s David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).

The article notes:

As the demographics of UCLA have changed, the number of students failing their shelf exams has soared, trends professors at the medical school say are connected.

Between 2020, the year Lucero assumed her post, and 2023, when the first classes she admitted were taking their shelf exams, the failure rate rose dramatically across all subjects, in some cases increasing tenfold relative to the 2020 baseline, per internal data obtained by the Free Beacon.

“UCLA still produces some very good graduates,” one professor said. “But a third to a half of the medical school is incredibly unqualified.”

The collapse in qualifications has been compounded by UCLA’s decision, in 2020, to condense its preclinical curriculum from two years to one in order to add more time for research and community service. That means students arrive at their clinical rotations with just a year of courses under their belt—some of which focus less on science than social justice.

First-year students spend three to four hours every other week in “Structural Racism and Health Equity,” a required class that covers topics like “fatphobia,” has featured anti-Semitic speakers, and is now the subject of an internal review. They spend an additional seven hours a week in “Foundations of Practice,” which includes units on “interpersonal communication skills” and, according to one medical student, basically “tells us how to be a good person.” The two courses eat up time that could be spent on physiology or anatomy, professors say, and leave struggling students with fewer hours to learn the basics.

“This has been a colossal failure,” one professor posted in April on a forum for medical school applicants. “The new curriculum is not working and the students are grossly unprepared for clinical rotations.”

Nearly a fourth of UCLA medical students in the class of 2025 have failed three or more shelf exams, data from the school show, forcing some students to repeat classes and persuading others to postpone a different test, the Step 2 licensing exam, that is typically taken in the third year of medical school and is a prerequisite for most residency programs.

Forgetting your actual mission can lead to getting lost on the road to success. The first problem we need to look at is to figure out why minority children are not getting the basic educational foundation from kindergarten to high school that they need to be successful in medical school–is it cultural or a failure of our schools? The second thing we need to look at is the fact that the medical school has lost its focus. A medical school needs to train doctors to practice medicine. Social justice and racial equality are fine, but if the doctor doesn’t know how to solve a problem, it really doesn’t matter what race the patient is.

We all need to strive for equality, but let’s not lose standards and practical knowledge in the process.

 

The Price Of Following The Crowd

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It’s a pretty safe bet that less than one percent of the students protesting in support of Palestine have any idea of the history of the Middle East. Most of them are simply doing the ‘cool’ thing with their classmates (not realizing that the people who are encouraging them are paid agitators).  So essentially, these students are followers–not leaders–who did not fully investigate the facts before they followed. This is not a trait employers generally look for when hiring people. Protesting is legal, destroying property and denying access to students are not. The students’ treatment of their fellow students who were Jewish was also despicable.

On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted the following headline:

13 Federal Judges Say They Will No Longer Hire Law Clerks From Columbia University, Citing ‘Virulent Spread of Antisemitism’ and ‘Explosion of Student Disruptions’

The article reports:

Thirteen federal judges said Monday that they would no longer hire law clerks from Columbia College or Columbia Law School after the university allowed an encampment on its lawn to spiral into a destructive occupation of a campus building. The judges cited the “explosion of student disruptions” and the “virulent spread of antisemitism” at Columbia, which has now canceled its main graduation ceremony because of the unrest.

Led by appellate judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, who spearheaded a clerkship boycott of Yale Law School in 2022 and Stanford Law School in 2023, as well as by Matthew Solomson on the U.S Court of Federal Claims, the judges wrote in a letter to Columbia president Minouche Shafik that they would no longer hire “anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or as law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024.”

“Freedom of speech protects protest, not trespass, and certainly not acts or threats of violence or terrorism,” the judges wrote. “It has become clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct.”

Actions have consequences. Tuition and housing at Columbia University costs approximately $85,000 a year. That’s a lot of money to pay for an education that, because of the actions of some students, disqualifies you from an entire group of jobs.

When Making Peace Isn’t Possible

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On March 18th, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the futility of trying to make peace with radical Islamists.

The article reports:

A California synagogue axed its leadership and is struggling to retain members after leasing its facility to a Muslim group that brought in an anti-Israel speaker who compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

Hamakom synagogue, a conservative congregation of around 900 families located in an upscale Los Angeles suburb, says it was trying to ease tensions between the Jewish and Muslim communities when it decided to lease its space this month to the Islamic Society of West Valley, a neighboring Muslim faith group that needed space to hold services during the holy month of Ramadan.

Hamakom entered into an agreement with the Islamic Society that allowed it to take over the synagogue’s main campus, pushing Jewish members onto a smaller satellite branch. In anticipation of the lease’s commencement, the synagogue’s leadership covered up pictures of Israeli hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to photographs reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, sparking anger among Jewish congregants.

Soon after the Islamic Society began using Hamakom’s facility, it hosted anti-Israel activist Hussam Ayloush, who said last year that Israel did not have a right to defend itself following the Oct. 7 attack and compared Israel to Nazi Germany. The invite led many Jewish members to threaten to resign from the shul, according to internal emails viewed by the Free Beacon, and prompted Hamakom to sever its rental contract with the Islamic Society within days of inking it.

I am sure that there are moderate Muslims in America who behave themselves better than the group that rented the synagogue. However, there is a major thread of anti-Semitism that runs through the Muslim faith. Until the Muslims themselves cut that thread, I would strongly suggest that no religious group lease space to Muslims.

Funding Countries That House Terrorists

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On March 5th, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about one consequence of the Biden administration’s pause on liquefied natural gas production in America.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas production is already turning into a major financial windfall for Qatar, even as the Gulf regime undercuts the United States and its allies by funding terrorists and sheltering fugitive Hamas leaders.

Qatar, which is the third largest LNG exporter after the United States and Australia, announced last week that it is expanding its natural gas production by 85 percent. The news came weeks after the Biden administration announced that it would freeze new domestic LNG export permits, a policy that many political observers viewed as a concession to climate activists ahead of the presidential election.

Brenda Shaffer, a senior adviser for energy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Qatar’s liquefied natural gas expansion was likely spurred by Biden’s policy announcement, adding that Doha will “benefit financially” from the pause.

“Nature doesn’t allow a vacuum. The United States is the biggest producer of natural gas in the world. To say that it’s going to put a pause or freeze for a few years, obviously [other countries] are going to pick up that market,” she said.

Energy experts told the Washington Free Beacon that Biden’s LNG announcement is already pushing buyers away from the U.S. market and toward adversarial competitors.

Limiting natural gas production in America does not limit the use of natural gas worldwide–other countries pick up the slack. Natural gas is a very clean fuel and does very little damage to the environment. The Biden administration’s energy policies have consistently negatively impacted Americans and benefitted America’s enemies. We need to go back to helping Americans and the American economy by becoming energy independent again.

Another Reason Not To Trust Much Of Middle East Reporting

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On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about an Al Jazeera journalist secretly worked for Hamas.

The article reports:

Adraee (IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee) said the IDF found the journalist’s laptop inside a Hamas camp in the northern Gaza Strip. “A laptop belonging to someone named Muhammed Samir Muhammed Wishah, born in 1986 from Bureij, was seized,” Adraee said. “It is clear from the documents that Muhammed Wishah is a prominent commander in the anti-tank missile units in the military wing of Hamas.” 

Adraee said the IDF found the journalist’s laptop inside a Hamas camp in the northern Gaza Strip. “A laptop belonging to someone named Muhammed Samir Muhammed Wishah, born in 1986 from Bureij, was seized,” Adraee said. “It is clear from the documents that Muhammed Wishah is a prominent commander in the anti-tank missile units in the military wing of Hamas.” 

The article concludes:

The IDF, calling out the Qatari state-owned news network, reposted Adraee’s post and wrote, “Hey @AlJazeera, we thought your journalists were supposed to give unbiased reports on situations, not actively participate in creating them on the front lines as Hamas terrorists.”

In January, IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari revealed evidence showing that two Gazan journalists killed by the IDF belonged to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist organization.

I had not realized that AlJazeera was Qatari owned. This is one more reason to question the role of Qatar as mediators in negotiations about the Israeli hostages. It is amazing what the IDF is discovering as they dismantle Hamas in Gaza.

The United Nations Has A Dietary Plan For America

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On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about one United Nations Agency’s plan to fight climate change.

The article reports:

The United Nations agency that is pushing wealthy nations to curb their meat consumption in the name of climate change is led by a top Chinese Communist Party official who is known for using the agency to serve Beijing.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization—which counts CCP official Qu Dongyu as its director—is set to release a plan next month that calls on “the world’s most-developed nations” to fight climate change by curbing “their excessive appetite for meat,” Bloomberg reported Saturday. It’s unlikely, however, that the directive will apply to China. The United Nations still considers China a developing country, and Qu himself has long faced criticism for using his U.N. post to advance Beijing’s interests.

The article explains one possible motive for the push toward eating less meat:

A reduction in global meat production, meanwhile, could help alleviate Chinese concerns over food security and land scarcity. China is the world’s largest meat importer thanks in part to “scarcity of land for feed and forage” and “rising production costs” that have limited its production, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report published in July. China experienced large-scale food shortages in 2022, prompting protests in more than a dozen cities.

In August 2023, The Guardian reported the following:

China is approving new coal power projects at the equivalent of two plants every week, a rate energy watchdogs say is unsustainable if the country hopes to achieve its energy targets.

The government has pledged to peak emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2060, and in 2021 the president, Xi Jinping, promised to stop building coal powered plants abroad.

But after regional power crunches in 2022, China started a domestic spree of approving new projects and restarting suspended ones. In 2022 the government approved a record-breaking 106 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity. One gigawatt is the equivalent of a large coal power plant.

So why is a country that is building coal plants to generate electricity at the rate of two a week complaining that Americans eat too much meat?

It really is time for America to leave the United Nations, take over the building in New York and turn it into condominiums.

Not Really Looking For A Solution

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Generally speaking, the words coming out of the Biden administration support Israel. Generally speaking. However, the actions of the State Department under President Biden tell a very different story.

On November 14th, The Daily Caller reported:

The State Department, as part of its efforts to support refugee arrivals, is working with a coalition of nonprofits that includes several anti-Israel groups.

The State Department partnered with Welcome.US, a coalition of nonprofit groups, corporations and former politicians, in September 2021 to help new Afghan refugee arrivals find sponsors, jobs and housing. The coalition includes Islamic Relief USA, Amnesty International and the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Oklahoma branch, all of which have made anti-Israel statements.

“The State Department applauds the launch of Welcome.US and looks forward to our ongoing collaboration and discussions with leaders across sectors to mobilize support to meet the needs of these arriving Afghans as they write a new chapter of the American experience,” the State Department said in a statement when the program launched.

Islamic Relief USA is affiliated with Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW). The Trump administration’s State Department cut ties with the group due to the “anti-Semitism exhibited repeatedly by IRW’s leadership,” Ellie Cohanim, then the deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism at the State Department, told the Washington Free Beacon at the time.

The article notes:

“The Council on American-Islamic Relations and Islamic Relief Worldwide are not innocuous ‘faith-based’ groups,” Asra Nomani, cofounder of the Muslim Reform Movement, a group fighting radical Islamism, told the DCNF. “They are dangerous organizations that believe in political Islam, or Islamism, and stoke anti-American, anti-Jew intolerance and hate.”

I have written about CAIR recently (article here). They are listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Trial. If you are not familiar with that trial, now is a really good time to learn about it. However, beware–many search engines will lead you to fake news about the trial. The best thing to do is to look up the exhibits provided by the government in the trial and read them. They are very relevant to what we are dealing with today.

An Interesting Campaign Donation

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On Friday The Washington Free Beacon reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) funneled $14,000 to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s campaign. Ilhan Omar is in a primary race with four challengers, including attorney Antone Melton-Meaux, who outraised Omar significantly in the second quarter of 2020.

The article reports:

The impressive fundraising haul allowed Melton-Meaux to spend more than $1.7 million over the first three weeks of July. Omar, meanwhile, spent just $784,000. More than $600,000—77 percent of those disbursements—went to a D.C.-based consulting firm run by Omar’s new husband.

Following his spending spree, Melton-Meaux holds $695,000 on hand, down from the $2 million he held at the end of the second quarter. Omar holds $732,000 on hand.

Omar, who did not respond to a request for comment, will square off against Melton-Meaux and three additional Democratic challengers during the state’s August 11 primary election. The late push from Pelosi suggests genuine concern for Omar, who has butted heads with the California Democrat in the past. Pelosi criticized Omar for using “deeply offensive” anti-Semitic tropes in February 2019 and condemned the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, which Omar supports, a month later. Omar quickly hit back, saying, “a condemnation for people that want to exercise their First Amendment rights is beneath any leader.” Melton-Meaux has campaigned against Omar’s support for BDS.

Ilhan Omar has some interesting skeletons in her closet. She has been charged with immigration fraud in order to get into America, and her funneling money to her now husband’s consulting firm has raised questions about her basic integrity. Her anti-Semitic comments have also put her in a negative light in some circles. It is interesting that Nancy Pelosi has chosen to support her in her primary campaign.

Deflecting Voters From The Truth

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Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about some comments made by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) on Thursday. Senator Feinstein described China as “growing into a respectable nation.” That is the same China that engages in slave labor, forced sterilization, religious persecution, and re-education camps. Sounds real respectable.

The article reports:

“We hold China as a potential trading partner, as a country that has pulled tens of millions of people out of poverty in a short period of time, and as a country growing into a respectable nation amongst other nations. I deeply believe that,” Feinstein said during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting.

She said that stripping foreign sovereign immunity from China would be a “huge mistake” and claimed that allowing individuals to hold China accountable for the spread of the virus could allow other countries to do the same to the United States. Her firm defense of China comes after a new flood of reports showing human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government. The Chinese Communist Party has organized the mass detention and forced sterilization of Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority, and drone footage showed blindfolded and shackled Uyghurs being forced onto trains.

Feinstein made the remarks during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting debating a bill that would allow individuals to sue the Chinese government for its release and subsequent cover-up of the novel coronavirus.

The statement actual makes sense when you consider something else reported in the article:

Feinstein has also benefited from her husband’s relationship with China. She pushed for expanded trade relations with China as her husband’s company was partnering with business ventures in the country. She said that a “firewall” existed between her political career and her husband’s business interests.

Unfortunately Senator Feinstein is not the only Congressman with financial ties to China. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is married to Elaine Chao. Her family owns a large shipping company in communist China. Does anyone believe that you could operate a large shipping company in communist China without the approval of the communist government? The connections and corruption in Washington runs deep. It is going to take more than I think we understand to drain the swamp.

Another Lie From A Political Candidate

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On July 10, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about Cal Cunningham, the North Carolina Democratic Senate nominee. It seems that Mr. Cunningham was less than honest about his connection to a company that received between $1 and $2 million in Paycheck Protection Program funds.

The article reports:

North Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Cal Cunningham falsely claimed he cut ties with his waste management company before it applied for up to $2 million in taxpayer-funded coronavirus relief.

After a Washington Free Beacon report revealed that Cunningham’s company, WasteZero, obtained between $1 and $2 million in Paycheck Protection Program funds, the North Carolina Democrat claimed he wasn’t working at the company “at the time they applied for the loan.” He accused incumbent senator Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) and his “allies” of “distorting the facts” and launching a “pathetic attempt to mislead voters.”

However, Cunningham on Thursday admitted that he was “aware” of WasteZero’s PPP loan application, telling the Charlotte Observer that he is “still available to do occasional hourly work” at the company. While Cunningham previously said he left the company on March 20—a week before the loan program was enacted on March 27—he signed the company’s 2019 annual report on March 31.

Meanwhile the article notes that Mr. Cunningham has criticized the PPP program:

Cunningham has repeatedly criticized the PPP, which aims to support struggling small businesses during coronavirus shutdowns. “For PPP loans to have ‘generally missed the industries and areas most heavily impacted by COVID-19′ is unacceptable,” he said in a June tweet. “Leaving behind small businesses—and disproportionately those that are Black and Latino-owned—harms communities.”

He may be critical of the program, but his company was willing to take the money, and he was willing to lie about his involvement with the company.

All Cities And States Need To Do This

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On Wednesday The Washington Free Beacon reported that the city of Detroit has removed thousands of deceased and duplicate registrants from its voter rolls after being hit with a lawsuit.

The article reports:

City officials cleaned up the voter rolls after the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a government watchdog, filed suit against them in December. Nearly 2,500 deceased individuals and 4,800 duplicate registrations were removed from the voter rolls. The officials have also moved to review another 16,465 registrants who lacked actual dates of registration.

“This is another win for election integrity,” said J. Christian Adams, the watchdog’s president and general counsel. “This case wasn’t complicated. The City of Detroit could have started to fix these problems before litigation, but didn’t. Other jurisdictions should take note—if you don’t act on solid data that your voter rolls are corrupted with dead and duplicate registrations, you will be sued.”

Debates over voter fraud have appeared as Democrats across the country push for mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump claimed that mail-in voting will lead to the “most corrupt Election in USA history.” Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are pressuring Senate Republicans to pass legislation to support such measures. Sen. Roy Blunt (R., Mo.), chair of the Senate Rules Committee, blocked a bill brought forth by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) on the issue, saying he worried it would lead to a “federal takeover of elections.”

The watchdog filed suit against two Detroit officials—City Clerk Janice Winfrey and Director of Elections George Azzouz—after studying Detroit’s voter list maintenance efforts dating back to 2017. Outside liberal groups, such as the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice and League of Women Voters of Michigan, swooped into the city to intervene on behalf of the election officials but ultimately did not play much of a role. Adams’s group dropped the lawsuit after the officials cleaned up the registrations.

Every illegal vote in an election cancels out the vote of a legal voter. If you want your vote to count, encourage your city, town, and state to clean up their voter rolls. Dead people do not have voting rights.

When Government Ignores The Constitution

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Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article yesterday about an incident in San Jose, California, that should give us pause.

The article reports:

In 2013, Lori Rodriguez called San Jose police to her home because her husband was having a mental health crisis and making violent threats. Seven years later, she is petitioning the Supreme Court to force the city to return her guns.

“It’s not right. I shouldn’t have to do this to get back what’s mine,” Rodriguez told the Washington Free Beacon. “They violated several of my constitutional rights.”

Rodriguez claims police ordered her to open the couple’s gun safe so they could seize all of the weapons in the home after her husband was detained for making threats that the city says included “shooting up schools.” Cops seized not only her husband’s weapons but also the guns that were personally registered to Rodriguez. The city has repeatedly rebuffed her requests to return her property.

The suit is now the sole case with Second Amendment implications remaining before the Court after the justices rejected 10 other gun-rights cases on June 15. Rodriguez’s legal challenge comes as the federal government and a number of states debate “red flag” bills that would allow authorities to deny gun rights to citizens. It has the potential to clarify the extent to which the Second Amendment protects individuals from seizures of firearms.

San Jose city attorney Richard Doyle did not respond to a request for comment. The city defended its actions, saying that authorities were within their rights to confiscate the guns, calling Rodriguez’s claim “borderline frivolous.”

“If the government has lawful authority to effect the forfeiture and observes the requirements of due process in so doing, it has complied with the Constitution,” Doyle said in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. “The forfeiture does nothing whatever to impair the previous owner’s right to buy, possess, or use firearms, and notwithstanding that the owner may recover the full market value of the guns through their transfer and sale.”

The article continues:

Several of the guns confiscated from Rodriguez by San Jose police have special sentimental value, according to Rodriguez. Police confiscated not only handguns that she and her husband purchased but also a war souvenir inherited from a family member.

“One of them is a gun my great uncle brought back from WWII,” she said. “I really want that one back. You can’t replace that one, obviously.”

Don Kilmer, Rodriguez’s lawyer, said that while the case implicates the 2nd Amendment, in addition to the 4th and even 14th Amendments, it ultimately comes down to an undisputed fact: Lori Rodriguez is not prohibited from owning the firearms San Jose took from her house.

“Her mental health has never been at issue,” Kilmer told the Free Beacon. “The law that the city is holding these guns under says that you can confiscate weapons of people who are mentally ill. Lori is not mentally ill.”

In the years since the initial police call, the Rodriguez family continues to live together, but Lori has taken steps to ensure she can legally own the confiscated firearms. She has transferred all of the firearms into her name and she is the only family member who knows the combination to the gun safe. Her lawyers argue that she is in compliance with all California gun laws—including those for individuals who live with people who can not own firearms themselves.

If her husband was the problem and he had no access to the gun safe, how can the city justify taking her guns away? This is definitely overreach.

When Lady Justice Removes Her Blindfold Things Go Downhill Quickly

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This article is about the Michael Flynn case. I wanted to bring everyone up to date on some recent information about Judge Emmett Sullivan, but I also wanted to inform readers about some of the reasons the deep state does not like General Flynn.

First, the current news. The Gateway Pundit posted an article today which stated that in the past Judge Emmett Sullivan arranged a speaking gig for James Comey at Howard University for $100,000. That does not sound like a person who would be likely to be an impartial judge in the Flynn case. There are some other problems with Judge Emmett Sullivan as an impartial judge listed in the article. Please follow the link above to read the details.

Now, let’s review some past history. The information I am about to share came from the blogosphere. I am sure there are other sources, but these were the most available to me.

On December 4, 2017, Pacific Pundit reported:

Corrupt Andrew McCabe has long been overlooked in this whole “Russia-Collusion” BS that lead to the fake news of Mike Flynn claiming Trump as a POTUS candidate told him to contact the Russians. There McCabe is a Clinton hack who’s wife donated to Hillary’s BFF, Democrat Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe in the amount of $500,000. But there’s more to this whole Flynn story than what’s been reported by the fake news media. While working for Obama, Flynn intervened after a female employee named Robyn Gritz accused Andrew McCabe of sexual harassment. This enraged McCabe and it lead to the retaliation of investigating Flynn by McCabe and other hacks at the FBI. Funny how the media doesn’t report this story.

…Flynn’s intervention on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz was highly unusual, and included a letter in 2014 on his official Pentagon stationary, a public interview in 2015 supporting Gritz’s case and an offer to testify on her behalf. His offer put him as a hostile witness in a case against McCabe, who was soaring through the bureau’s leadership ranks.

The FBI sought to block Flynn’s support for the agent, asking a federal administrative law judge in May 2014 to keep Flynn and others from becoming a witness in her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case, memos obtained by Circa show. Two years later, the FBI opened its inquiry of Flynn.

The EEOC case, which is still pending, was serious enough to require McCabe to submit to a sworn statement to investigators, the documents show.

There’s more. On February 4, 2017, The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump’s national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.

The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes—the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber—included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn’s credibility, multiple sources revealed.

The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration’s efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.

Insiders familiar with the anti-Flynn campaign told the Free Beacon that these Obama loyalists plotted in the months before Trump’s inauguration to establish a set of roadblocks before Trump’s national security team, which includes several prominent opponents of diplomacy with Iran. The Free Beacon first reported on this effort in January.

I am posting this to illustrate the undermining of President Trump that has been going on since before he took office. This is not acceptable behavior in a representative republic. If this is not dealt with and consequences felt, we will lose our republic.

A Step In The Right Direction

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By now most Americans have realized that China is not our friend–they have stolen intellectual property for years, the have manipulated their currency to gain trade advantages, and they have gifted the world with the coronavirus. Well, someone in Washington is attempting to take action to prevent further bad behavior.

The Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday that Republican Senator John Kennedy and Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen sponsored a bill in the Senate that could prevent some Chinese companies from listing their shares on U.S. exchanges unless they follow standards for U.S. audits and regulations. The bill passed by unanimous consent. It still has to pass the House of Representatives and be signed by President Trump.

The article reports:

“The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act” bars securities of any company from being listed on any U.S. securities exchange if it has failed to comply with the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s audits for three years in a row.

The measure also would require public companies disclose whether they are owned or controlled by a foreign government.

The bill is written to apply to all foreign companies, but it is targeted at China, and follows intense criticism of Beijing by Republican President Donald Trump that has been echoed by Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

Trump and other officials in his administration insist that China mishandled the novel coronavirus during the early weeks of an outbreak that has spread into a global pandemic that has killed more than 320,000 people and cratered global economies.

Beijing denies such allegations.

“There are plenty of markets all over the world open to cheaters, but America can’t afford to be one of them. China is on a glidepath to dominance and is cheating at every turn,” Kennedy said in a statement.

“For too long, Chinese companies have disregarded U.S. reporting standards, misleading our investors,” Van Hollen said.

Let’s hope this bill becomes law.

Follow The Money And Be Prepared

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I think most Americans would agree that George Soros is not a positive influence on the American political scene. His money can be found buying influence and supporting candidates for election that bring chaos into our legal system. He is working hard to continue these efforts.

The Washington Free Beacon reported the following yesterday:

A powerful donor club cofounded by liberal billionaire George Soros quietly established two big-money entities to help its effort to inject $275 million into the 2020 election.

The Democracy Alliance, a coalition of deep-pocketed Democratic donors, launched the Strategic Victory Fund super PAC in March. The PAC appears to be aimed at state-based initiatives and can collect and spend unlimited sums on political advertisements. The group also created the Strategic Victory Fund nonprofit arm, which supplied the PAC’s initial $500,000 deposit.

Democracy Alliance helps set the Democratic agenda and Vox has called it the “closest thing that exists to a ‘left-wing conspiracy’ in the US.” The two new groups appear to be part of the $275 million anti-Trump strategy its board approved in February of 2019. The strategy includes supporting state-based organizing in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, and Virginia. It would also work to elect more progressive politicians at the state and local levels while building a candidate pipeline. The network additionally pinpointed at least 25 rural communities to build infrastructure and leadership for “civic engagement and progressive agenda development.”

Both the PAC and the nonprofit were incorporated by North Carolina attorney Michael Weisel, who also incorporated other Democracy Alliance efforts, including its Committee on States. Gara LaMarche, president of Democracy Alliance, confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that the super PAC and nonprofit are part of the organization’s 2020 efforts. Scott Anderson, executive director of Strategic Victory Fund, was previously the executive director of the Committee on States. Anderson did not respond to a request for comment.

The Strategic Victory Fund’s dark money nonprofit arm funds the Organizing Together 2020 campaign, a large-scale effort to better position Democrats to take on Trump. Organizing Together was launched to boost Democratic campaign infrastructure in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The campaign, which consists of a coalition of 14 liberal groups, is co-chaired by Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo, New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, and former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe. The total cost of its efforts is estimated to run between $20 and $60 million.

North Carolina is a battleground state. Residents need to be prepared for a barrage of anti-Trump ads (twisting the truth wherever possible) and lots of negative letters to editors and bots on social media. This is a time when voters need to rely on their own research rather than what they are being told. This will probably be the most expensive presidential campaign in history and hopefully will prove that money can’t buy elections.

This Is A Very Strange Story

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Remember when the media was blaming President Trump for the death of the man in Arizona who died from drinking fish tank cleaner? Well, he did die from drinking fish tank cleaner, but there are a lot of details surrounding his death that somehow have been overlooked in the major media.

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article on Friday about some details that were somehow left out of the mainstream media.

The article notes:

But friends of 68-year-old Gary Lenius, the Arizona man who passed away last month from drinking a fish tank cleaner that contained an ingredient, chloroquine phosphate, that Trump had touted as a potential coronavirus cure, say they are still struggling to understand what drove an engineer with an extensive science background to do something so wildly out of character.

These people describe Lenius as intelligent and levelheaded, not prone to the sort of reckless and impulsive behavior he reportedly engaged in on the day he died. This account is based on interviews with three people who knew Lenius well and paints a picture of a troubled marriage characterized by Wanda Lenius’s explosive anger.

The article goes on to detail some of Wanda Lenius’s destructive behavior toward her husband–destroying his aircraft model collection that represented hours of work to create and at one time breaking husband’s laptop screen, allegedly because she was angry he had updated the Windows software on her computer.

The article notes:

In a phone interview with the Free Beacon, Wanda said she and her husband had seen President Trump praise a drug called chloroquine on the news, citing preliminary studies that showed it could be a promising treatment for coronavirus. She said she remembered purchasing a jar of “chloroquine phosphate” years before to clean a fish tank.

The powder form of the drug is sold by aquarium suppliers and is used to treat viral outbreaks in large fish tanks. She told the Free Beacon she had mentioned this to her husband “and he kind of laughed at me, you know. It was just a regular conversation.”

She said she didn’t think about chloroquine again until a few days later, March 22, when Lenius confessed to her that he had hurt his leg while riding his new dirt bike and might have to go see a doctor.

“I’d already stocked the house with groceries and extra dog food and everything was set. We were ready to self-isolate,” said Wanda. “He didn’t want to tell me that he got hurt bad because he knew I was upset. I didn’t want him to ride a motorcycle, he was 68 and I didn’t want him getting hurt.”

Wanda Lenius said her husband was planning to schedule a doctor’s appointment to have his leg looked at and the couple worried he might pick up coronavirus at the clinic. That’s when, she said, she reached for the fish tank cleaner in her pantry.

There is no way of knowing if Wanda Lenius knew that her actions would result in her husband’s death. However, it was a really, really dumb thing to do. I suspect the friends of the couple have their own ideas of what the truth is, but I suspect we will never really know if Wanda Lenius understood exactly what she was doing.

Sometimes The News Is Just Silly

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Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a recent comment made by a CBS news anchor. It is an amazing comment.

The article reports:

CBS This Morning anchor and Barack Obama donor Gayle King gushed over Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams on Tuesday morning, saying the former state legislator and failed gubernatorial candidate is “extremely qualified” to be vice president of the United States.

Abrams is openly lobbying to serve as Joe Biden’s running mate come November, despite never being elected to any office beyond the state legislature. As she touted her voting rights work and “competence and skills and willingness to serve,” King cut in to praise her as ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

“That’s a great nuts and bolts answer because everybody knows you’re extremely qualified,” King said. “I’m looking for something about Stacey Abrams the person. Why is she a good choice and have you had any talks at all with the Biden team?”

What is the world are her qualifications? The article notes that Abrams has never held a position higher than House minority leader in the Georgia legislature. It also notes that she told Elle magazine in an article published April 15 that her credentials for vice president included “25 years in independent study of foreign policy.” Exactly what does that mean?

The article also notes:

Outside of her political career, Abrams is a noted romance novelist, publishing several books under the pen name “Selena Montgomery.” CBS is currently adapting one of her novels, Never Tell, into a TV drama.

Keep in mind that if Joe Biden is the Democrat nominee for President, his choice of running mate is extremely important. The videos Joe Biden is making in his basement don’t show a man who would be able to handle the job of president, so it is likely his vice-president will assume the office sometime during his first term if Joe Biden is elected. Stacy Abrams may be a very nice person, but she has never actually run a business or exhibited leadership skills. Her claim to fame is that the Georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from her by suppressed voter turnout when the numbers actually show increased voter turnout. No objective person looking at her resume would in any way describe her as extremely qualified.

This Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone Who Is Paying Attention

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Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article that clearly shows how the media alters the news to fit its narrative. The media has worked very hard to ignore the sexual assault charges against Joe Biden. They have mostly buried the story, and when they have reported it, they have put it so far into their publications that no one will see it. Well, they have also added (and subtracted) things from the story to paint a picture that may not be accurate.

The article reports:

The New York Times edited a controversial passage in an article about a sexual assault allegation against former vice president Joe Biden after his campaign complained, the paper’s executive editor said Monday.

Dean Baquet, in an interview with Times media columnist Ben Smith, explained why edits were made to the following sentence, which appeared as follows in the print edition of the paper, on page A20: “The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.”

Baquet said the Times decided to delete the second half of the sentence, without explanation in the form of an editor’s note, because “the [Biden] campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct.”

Smith asked a number of questions challenging Baquet to defend the Times‘s excessively cautious approach to reporting the sexual assault allegation against Biden—first made public by a former staffer, Tara Reade, on March 25—in light of the paper’s decidedly more aggressive approach to publishing similar allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Baquet failed to muster a coherent response beyond noting that the standard for reporting on such allegations is “very subjective.” He explained that the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in 2018, which included testimony from a woman, Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexually assaulting her in high school, constituted a “hot story” that required a “different news judgement.”

Maybe I’m missing something here, but in the era of ‘me too,’ aren’t ” hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable” considered sexual harassment? Brett Kavanaugh had no history of questionable behavior around women–in fact, his reputation was just the opposite. Joe Biden has a history of strange behavior around women and children. You can easily find examples of this on various internet sites.

Any credibility The New York Times has left as an unbiased news source has been totally destroyed in the recent past. They are responsible for misleading and dividing Americans.

The Fight For Honest Elections

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The goal of elections in America is to have every citizen vote and every citizen’s vote counted. When a non-citizen votes, it cancels out the vote of a citizen. That is one of the arguments for voter id requirements.

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a recent Texas lawsuit that had to do with voting.

The article reports:

The largest county in Texas settled a lawsuit with a watchdog group after refusing to release records dealing with noncitizens on its voter rolls.

A federal district court in Houston entered a settlement agreement this week between the Harris County voter registrar and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF). The settlement calls for the county to turn over records on its cancellations of ineligible voters, copies of registration applications that have blank or negative responses to citizenship questions, and all registrar communications with law enforcement regarding ineligible registrants, among other records. Officials from Harris County, the most populous county in Texas, previously testified that “thousands” of noncitizens were discovered on its voter rolls every year.

The settlement comes as the election watchdog group seeks to clean voter rolls in major cities ahead of the November elections. Democrats have pushed back against attempts to clean voter rolls, often calling them “purges.” Individuals removed for ineligibility tend to belong to demographic groups that lean Democrat. Texas has in recent years become a target of national Democrats, who have poured millions into the Lone Star State in attempts to gain power.

The article concludes:

PILF has filed a number of lawsuits in cities across the country in recent months. The group filed a suit against Detroit officials after discovering 2,500 dead registrants on the city’s voter rolls. Nearly 5,000 voters appeared more than once on the rolls, and there were more registered voters than there were eligible voters in the city.

PILF also filed suit against Pittsburgh officials after finding dead voters, duplicate registrants, and 1,500 registrants aged 100 or above (49 marked as being born in the 1800s) on county voter rolls.

It is really sad that Americans do not turn out to vote in high numbers, yet those who come here illegally vote. There is something wrong with that picture.

Changes Needed

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Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about legislation sponsored by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.). The legislation would bring back pharmaceutical manufacturing from China to America, aiming to reduce a dependency that could seriously limit the U.S. coronavirus response.

The article reports:

Cotton’s is just the latest proposal to onshore pharmaceutical supply chains, including a similar one from Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and rumblings from the White House about a “buy American” executive order. Prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, many are beginning to see the cost-savings from Chinese-made pharmaceuticals as not worth the risk of undersupply during another pandemic, or during a potential conflict with America’s main geostrategic rival.

“China unleashed this plague on the world, and China has to be held accountable,” said Cotton during a Fox News interview Wednesday evening. “It’s too grave a threat to let our health rest on Chinese drugs.”

The Cotton bill would directly target Chinese API producers, requiring the FDA to track the point of origin for APIs and drugs made outside of the United States, as well as requiring drug companies to list the country of origin for APIs on their products. It would also prohibit all federal entities—including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Defense—from purchasing drugs that use APIs made in China.

The bill also aims to bolster domestic pharmaceutical production capacity. It would allow domestic manufacturers to immediately expense the costs of expanding production capacity, giving such businesses a major write-off on their taxes. If successful, that provision could help U.S.-based manufacturers compete with lower-cost Chinese ones, keeping drug prices low even as production moves back to the United States.

The really positive aspect of this is the tax break–unless drugs manufactured in America have a lower price than those manufactured in China, Americans won’t buy them. Any bill that aims to bring manufacturing back to America needs to consider the cost of making whatever is manufactured. We have cheap energy right now, and our corporate tax policies generally make America a good place to do business. Both of these factors are the result of having a businessman in the White House.

The article concludes:

Perhaps, in part, because of these profits, discussion of repatriating pharmaceutical production appears to have spooked Chinese authorities. In a Tuesday tweet, the country’s ministry of foreign affairs claimed that “trying to move medical supply chains back to the U.S. from China is unrealistic and unhelpful,” adding that it would be “a wrong remedy for #COVID19 pandemic.”

Seems Fair To Me

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On Saturday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the logical next step after the Supreme Court decision that mandatory government union dues violate the First Amendment.

The article reports:

In 2018, Mark Janus convinced the Supreme Court that mandatory government union dues violate the First Amendment. Now he wants his money back.

After his triumph at the High Court, Janus asked a federal trial judge to require the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) pay out about $3,000 in agency fees the union collected from his paycheck between 2013 and 2018. The judge declined and Janus lost on appeal, prompting a new petition to the Supreme Court.

So-called right-to-work cause lawyers including the Liberty Justice Center and the National Right to Work Foundation are litigating some 30 cases that collectively seek $120 million in garnished wages for public sector workers. Public sector unions proved surprisingly resilient after the Janus decision, seeing modest increases in membership and limited losses of revenue. Judgments ordering restitution to aggrieved workers, however, could vindicate doomsayers who predicted the end of agency fees would devastate organized labor. Approximately 5.9 million public employees paid mandatory fees prior to Janus, a massive pool of prospective plaintiffs.

The article concludes:

Trial judges in about two dozen other cases and two appeals courts have reached the same conclusion and rebuffed worker attempts to recoup lost wages. If allowed to stand, those decisions “are likely to doom all such cases,” Janus’s petition to the High Court warns.

“This Court should grant review so the employees in these suits can recover a portion of the ‘windfall’ of compulsory fees unions wrongfully seized from them,” the petition reads.

Other Janus follow-on cases are currently pending before the Supreme Court. One petition asks the Court to declare the so-called integrated bar unlawful under Janus. Integrated bar rules require lawyers to join a state bar association and pay fees as a condition of practicing law. Another petition asks whether employers can designate a union as the sole representative of its workers in collective bargaining.

The Court will hear the case in its next term, which begins in October, if it grants review. AFSCME’s response to Janus’s petition is due on April 9. The case is No. 19-1104 Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31.

Open Secrets details some of what the dues paid to AFSCME were used for:

In the 2016 races, almost all of AFSCME’s more than $1.7 million in candidate contributions went to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. The breakdown is similar in the 2018 election cycle — more than 99 percent of its $1.1 million in candidate contributions so far have gone to Democrats.

The AFSCME also contributes millions of dollars to liberal outside spending groups.

The union has given roughly $3.6 million to outside spending groups in the 2018 election cycle alone. More than 70 percent of that spending has gone to a super PAC called For Our Future, which was formed by labor unions to support Democratic candidates. Sky Gallegos, who is listed as For Our Future’s treasurer, is the Democratic National Convention Committee’s deputy CEO for intergovernmental affairs.

The union gave just over $11 million to outside spending groups in 2016, and about half those contributions went to For Our Future.

The AFSCME has lobbied Congress on right-to-work policies, according to lobbying disclosures. The union’s lobbying efforts overall have totaled than $2.3 million annually since 2009, peaking at $2.9 million in spending in 2011.

Union dues account for much of the money in politics. If people who choose not to join the union are not required to pay union dues, this will impact political campaigns in America.

Changing The Rules As You Go Along

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The Democrat party claims to be the party of diversity, yet after a number of primary elections in which mainly Democrats voted, there were only three candidates left–two old white men and one woman. Now they have changed the debate rules so that the woman won’t be eligible to participate in the next Democrat debate. Doesn’t sound very diverse to me.

The Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday that under the newly announced rules for the March 15th Democrat debate, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat who represents Hawaii, is not eligible to participate.

The article reports:

Under the newly announced rules for the March 15 CNN/Univision debate, candidates must have at least 20 percent of the awarded pledged delegates in order to qualify.

…Elderly white male candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have already locked up the required delegates, but the rule change makes it nearly impossible for Gabbard to qualify, even with a strong showing in the next round of primaries. The congresswoman needs 335 more delegates to lock up 20 percent by March 15, but only 352 are up for grabs on March 10.

Gabbard suggested on Thursday that she would attend the debate if invited, tweeting that she would “welcome the opportunity to raise & discuss the foreign policy challenges we face.”

DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa appeared to downplay the prospect of Gabbard making the debates in a Super Tuesday tweet, saying, “of course the threshold will go up.”

It’s  interesting to me that they changed the rules to let Mayor Bloomberg participate and now they have changed to rules to exclude Tulsi Gabbard. I suspect her presence would make for a much more interesting debate.

The article concludes:

The exclusion of Gabbard comes one day after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) suspended her campaign, leaving the race with only one female candidate and prompting extensive soul-searching and criticism from Democratic women and media figures.

“I so wish that we had a woman president of the United States, and we came so close to doing that,” said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I do think there’s a certain element of misogyny.”

Former presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) omitted Gabbard entirely in her reaction to Warren’s departure, telling reporters, “Look at what’s happened. There are no women currently in this race.”

The Democrat presidential primary has reached the point where it is a soap opera that is moving very slowly toward something. I think it’s time to get out the popcorn!

It’s Always A Good Idea To Follow The Money

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Hot Air posted an article yesterday about the money that funded the March for Our Lives. The March for Our Lives took place on March 24, 2018, in response to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on February 14, 2018. Isn’t it amazing how people managed to organize and put all that together in about five weeks?

The article reports that according to The Washington Free Beacon:

The March For Our Lives Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization launched in the aftermath of the deadly 2018 shootings at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, is bankrolled almost entirely by large donations in excess of $100,000. The group reported $17,879,150 in contributions and grants over the course of 2018, its first year of operations. Ninety-five percent of those contributions came from 36 donations between $100,000 and $3,504,717—a grand total of $16,922,331.

The group’s 990 tax form shows another 38 donations totaling between $5,000 and $100,000, which together accounted for an additional $876,114 of revenue. The remainder, just 0.5 percent of total receipts, came from those giving less than $5,000.

The group isn’t required to release the names of its donors but the Free Beacon notes that Marc Benioff and Eli Broad each donated a million dollars. Influence Watch has a list of some of the other big-name donors including Steven Spielberg and his wife who gave a combined million dollars:

A number of celebrities gave financial support to the organization: George and Amal Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg, and Kate Capshaw each donated $500,000 for the event. The clothing company Gucci donated $500,000 to the movement. Actress Sara Ramirez notably donated $20,000 to the GoFundMe page. Professional basketball player Dwayne Wade also donated $200,000 to the organization.

All of that doesn’t include the largest contribution by far which came from CNN in the form of an endless stream of air time and online promotion for the Parkland kids, culminating in that awful special in which the Parkland kids and Sheriff Scott Israel were pitted against Dana Loesch and Marco Rubio.

The WFB story also includes a rundown of what the money was spent on. The largest chunk (nearly $8 million) went to funding the March itself. Another $4 million went to a 24-state tour to register young voters.

It is somewhat amazing to me that many Hollywood celebrities who are guarded by men with guns are perfectly willing to support taking guns away from ordinary citizens who are not guarded by men with guns.