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Here’s today’s link to Fox News’ continually-updated bulletins on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/ukraine-russia-live-updates-03-28-2022

Latest developments: Ukrainian officials claim that Russia plans to split the country in two, like North and South Korea. President Zelenskyy laid out a roadmap for peace, but Russia censored his interview. Ukraine said it’s investigating graphic videos posted on the Internet that allegedly show Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian POWs in the legs. But Ukraine’s top military commander accused Russia of staging the videos as propaganda.

The big story is once again a reaction to something that fell out of President Biden’s mouth with a clank: A Kremlin spokesman called it “alarming” that Biden said of Putin, "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power." The 24/7 emergency verbal spill squad at the White House had to rush to “clarify” that Biden was not calling for regime change in Russia, which, as much as anyone might wish for it, is not something Presidents say out loud because they don’t want to spark World War III.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/03/27/joe-bidens-big-gaffe-perfectly-exposes-the-imbecility-of-the-experts-n541772

While Biden’s staffers desperately try to convince us that he “didn’t really mean it” for the 400th time, other liberals in the media are trying to spin it as brave truth-telling, or comparing it to Reagan’s famous quote, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Except they can’t decide between claiming that was also a slip of the tongue by Reagan (it wasn’t) or comparing Biden’s unfiltered blurt to Reagan (it’s a very different thing to challenge a leader to tear down a wall and to publicly call for a rival nation’s leader to be overthrown, particularly when that nation has nukes and you don’t know what he’ll do or if his replacement might be even worse.)

Do I personally wish Putin weren’t the leader of Russia? Of course! But would his downfall necessarily result in someone better taking his place? Considering the most likely successors, that’s an open question. The point is, I can talk about that because I’m not the President, but Joe Biden is. Yes, I’m as annoyed about that as you are.

As for all the panicking and spinning about Biden calling for Putin to be overthrown, then all the backtracking about how he didn’t really mean it that way...Okay, let me get this straight:

So Democrats are NOW saying that even if the President thinks Putin is a monster and shouldn’t be in power, he can’t actually come right out and SAY that because it might have enormous negative consequences. Privately, he might deplore Putin, but he has to publicly show respect because calling for him to be overthrown could spark World War III. They’re now embracing Will Rogers’ century-old definition of “diplomacy,” that it’s the art of saying “Nice doggy” until you can pick up a rock.

Here’s my question: when did this standard come back? I heard for four years that if Trump didn’t publicly denounce Putin, if he “made nice” with him at summits, etc., it meant he was a tool of the Russians. If he even admitted that Putin was smart while criticizing him for taking advantage of dumb US policies, it meant he "admired" Putin or was colluding with Russia. But now, we must understand that Presidents can’t just blurt out any random nasty thought about Russia that crosses their minds because their words carry weight.

Funny how it took having a Democrat President who blurts out any random thought that crosses his mind for them to finally realize that.

A note on the Oscars

March 28, 2022

By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)

Since I’m the resident showbiz historian, trivia expert and movie lover, it would normally fall to me to report on last night’s Oscarcast. But I didn’t watch it. And if I didn’t watch it, I can’t imagine who did.

Oh, I took a stab at it. But I only lasted until the end of the three-way monologue in which Regina Bell, Wanda Sykes and Amy Schumer did lines about how sexist and racist Hollywood is (gee, it must be run by Republicans! Oh, wait...) and took a gratuitous swipe at Mitch McConnell (yeah, that’s who Americans are riled up at as they put their mortgage payments into their gas tanks – way to read the audience, ladies.) They ended by taunting viewers in Florida and chanting, “Gay, gay, gay,” proving that they not only didn’t understand what the NOT-“Don’t Say Gay” bill is, they also didn’t care if one of our most populous states immediately tuned out. Heck, I’m in Texas, and that’s the point where I switched to the “Hometown” marathon on HGTV.

By the way, were I writing their material, I wouldn’t be so eager to embrace the sexualizing of young children. Do you really want to remind the audience of what a hotbed of pedophilia Hollywood is? Or make us think about the former king of the Oscars, Harvey Weinstein, who’s currently doing a 23-year prison sentence for rape and facing additional charges? Since the holier-than-thou stars already seem to have forgotten about all that pesky MeToo business, here’s a reminder of it from Kyle Smith in 2018:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/hollywood-sex-grooming-gang-les-moonves-harvey-weinstein/

I caught up with the rest of the show later through reviews and clips, and it’s obvious that as with most of this year’s movies, I didn’t miss anything worth seeing. The only major nominees I saw were “Lucy and Desi” (I liked them; didn’t like the movie) and “Nightmare Alley,” because my wife Laura is a film noir fan. It was a remake of someone else’s original that was lavishly produced, only gorier, more lurid, not as well written and 40 minutes longer than the original. So pretty much the standard Hollywood product these days. That’s why most of the movies I saw in theaters in the past year were TCM revivals.

There were all the expected genuflections to current liberal political obsessions like trans people; plus the usual dumb production decisions, like replacing the tech awards with an idiotic Twitter poll, having “who the heck is that?” presenters instead of actual movie stars, and showing disrespect for the “In Memoriam” honorees by turning it into a production number. If they were going to set it to music, why not “Take Me When I’m Gone to Forest Lawn”?

https://youtu.be/lnO5ZLlFWUM

But then the whole thing went permanently off the rails when Will Smith reacted to Chris Rock’s joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith by charging out of the audience and slapping Rock while twice yelling, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f---ing mouth!” That was bleeped on American TV, but went out over foreign broadcasts and is all over the Internet.

Instead of being arrested (and where was security, by the way?), Smith went back to his seat and was later rewarded with a Best Actor Oscar. He used his speech to cry, defend the assault as protecting his family, and apologize to the Academy (but not the guy he punched.) Several commentators noted that if it had been anyone else, he would have at least been removed if not arrested (and if he were white, charged with a hate crime), but certainly not rewarded and given an uninterrupted TV platform.

https://redstate.com/tladuke/2022/03/28/will-smith-got-his-feelings-hurt-at-the-oscars-and-hit-a-comic-now-come-the-real-jokes-n541904

Incidentally, far funnier than Rock’s joke was a CNN commentator’s attempt to blame Smith’s assault on – you guessed it -- Donald Trump.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-analyst-blames-trump-aftermath-will-smith-chris-rock-oscars-incident

Now, you might argue that Rock’s joke was tasteless or cruel (and it was), and Smith was being gallant in defending his wife. But it’s hard to claim that this is the most glamorous, sophisticated night of the year when the most memorable moment was a star having a meltdown and assaulting a comedian for telling a joke he didn’t like while shouting the F-word twice. It made a WWE Smackdown look sophisticated. And these people dare lecture the rest of us on how we’re supposed to behave because WE’RE not tolerant enough?

FYI: Please don’t claim that Will Smith is the exception. Here’s a story about Sally “The Flying Nun” Field threatening to physically assault Govs. Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott (who’s in a wheelchair, by the way) because she disagrees with their views on unfettered abortion and sexualizing kindergartens.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/03/26/sally-field-if-i-see-ron-desantis-or-greg-abbott-i-cannot-be-responsible-for-what-i-would-do/

There’s a famous book called “Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten.” Judging from this year’s Oscars, today’s celebrities act as if they’re still in kindergarten, and the only things they’ve learned there so far are sex lessons and gender politics.

Part 2 observed that many of the same people who originated the Russia Hoax also were involved in Trump’s impeachment over his (appropriate) phone call with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Paul Manafort, described as “ground zero for all manufactured Trump scandals,” was alleged to have dark dealings as a lobbyist in Ukraine, and we expressed curiosity as to how he, of all people, ended up as Trump’s campaign manager. George Soros, described as probably the most influential man in Ukraine, also ties into the story, through funding for an entity called the Democratic Integrity Project --- that name is so funny --- founded by Dianne Feinstein staffer and (yes) former FBI analyst Dan Jones, who gave Fusion GPS $3.3. million. Dan Jones brought in Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta, and their purported field of endeavor was –- egad –- to study how Russian intel operations were influencing elections.

Recall that during Trump’s impeachment, which would’ve been exposed as a joke if the existence of Hunter’s laptop had been revealed by the FBI, a parade of pro-Soros, pro-”Anti-Corruption” Action Center (AntAC) witnesses was brought in by committee chairman Adam Schiff. That’s about where we left off last week.

One quick update before we get into Part 3: Margot Cleveland has another great piece involving the laptop, this one analyzing the strategy behind the New York Times’ admission –- finally –- that it was real. First, she makes the point that if the laptop is real, that means the scandals are real, not “Russian disinformation” as was falsely maintained by so many, as calculated election interference. Like many, she also sees this admission as an attempt to “get ahead of the story” before it gets much worse. She outlines possible charges, some quite serious. Finally, she dissects the persuasive technique used by the NYT propagandists to downplay the seriousness and gain sympathy for Hunter. This last part, especially, is a must-read.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/25/4-big-takeaways-from-nyts-attempt-to-control-the-hunter-biden-narrative/

Back to Ukraine. As we said, when a new Ukrainian prosecutor tried to investigate Soros-funded AntAC, he met resistance from our own U.S. embassy staff. “We ran right into a buzz saw and we got bloodied,” is how one Ukrainian official put it. That buzz saw consisted of the Obama administration, the U.S. State Department, some in the FBI, and, of course, Soros and his Open Society Foundation.

John Solomon uncovered a memo dated around the time Manfort joined Trump’s campaign that contained a chart of people to BE investigated, including “some with ties to Manafort.” It’s thought that this refers to Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, who was a business rival of Soros who had already been looked into on a civil charge of money laundering and cleared.

This was also the time when Glenn Simpson was doing oppo research on Trump and Manafort, and the DNC’s Alexandra Chalupa, from Ukraine, was bad-mouthing Manafort in America. She visited the Obama White House 27 times.

AntAC was the perfect vehicle for going after Manafort. But as Dan Bongino points out, if AntAC really had wanted to root out corruption in Ukraine, they might have taken a peek into Burisma’s showering of money on the American Vice President’s son. As Bongino puts it, “...when your benefactor is an enormous investor in the Democratic Party committing to spending millions to try and stop Trump, maybe that investigation isn’t very appealing.”

A Latvian investigative agency, the Office for Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity, was actually trying to look into it, and they sent a memo to Ukrainian officials on February 18, 2016, notifying them that a transaction involving Hunter Biden and Burisma had been flagged.

Ukrainian officials failed to respond.

Later, when COVID hit, and hospitals and relief organizations needed all the help they could get, Soros gave $3 million –- not to help with THAT, but to Priorities USA Action, the Democrats’ Super PAC. It was earmarked specifically to fund a series of ads slamming Trump’s response to the virus. Soros had already just given them $2 million in January. Priorities indeed.

Bongino calls the Obama White House “an unofficial club for Ukraine obsessives.” There are other connections between AntAC (thus, Soros), the Obama White House and the FBI. Of these, Daria Kaleniuk, who now heads AntAC, met at the White House on December 9, 2015, with Eric Ciaramella, who would later come to fame as the anonymous “whistleblower” from Trump’s impeachment. At the time, he was a CIA employee working as a Ukraine (yes) specialist on the National Security Council. Later he was replaced in that position by Alexander Vindman, who also ended up testifying at Trump’s impeachment. Ciaramella had also worked with Joe Biden and John Brennan. It’s as I said: the same people just keep turning up again and again!

Since Ciaramella’s identity was kept secret during the impeachment, nothing was ever said about why he’d been moved out of the White House: he’d been accused of “leaking and working against Trump.” (Remember the huge concern with White House leaks during Trump’s early days in office?) That revelation would've done a lot to “impeach” this whistleblower.

As for the call from Trump to Zelenskyy that supposedly sparked the complaint, there was no wrongdoing in it at all. Certainly, no quid pro quo took place, because Zelenskyy got his military aid package and there was no investigation into Burisma and the Bidens, much as it was needed. Also, there was no cover-up, as Trump countered the false characterization of his call by releasing the full transcript himself. Of course, after that, Democrats continued to mischaracterize it and “mind-read” to cast his motives in the worst light they could, as they've always done with Trump about everything he's ever said or done.

Again, the laptop was central to the whole issue. It was evidence of the legitimate need to investigate the Bidens in Ukraine, and the FBI withheld it. Attorney General Bill Barr didn’t mention it, either, even after Biden lied about it, so the media were still able to present the false narrative that it was a Russian plot. Here’s the significance of Barr’s glaring omission.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-bill-barrs-silence-impacted-the-outcome-of-an-election_4357067.html

Ciaramella filed a complaint about Trump’s phone call with Intel Community IG Michael Atkinson and also summarized it in unclassified letters to Intelligence Committee chairs Adam Schiff and Richard Burr. He claimed he had “received information from multiple government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”

It seems so strange to read those words now, as we know today that Hillary’s campaign is the one that did this very thing, through the solicitation of information for the Steele “dossier.” It was also pro-Hillary people in our State Department --- oh, and Joe Biden ---who tried to intimidate Ukrainian prosecutors who might have looked too closely at Hunter.

Bongino’s Chapter 8 in FOLLOW THE MONEY reveals even more connections and conflicts, some involving Adam Schiff and IG Atkinson, who defied a Justice Department order when he set events in motion to notify Schiff about the false whistleblower complaint. Highly recommended reading!

UPDATE: In very welcome breaking news, California Rep. Darrell Issa has announced that if (when!) Republicans take back the House this year, he will lead an investigation of the 2020 election-related suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The Epoch Times has a report --- it's "premium," but we'll have the full story coming up.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/republicans-plan-to-investigate-hunter-biden-laptop-story-issa


YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:

The deeper significance of Hunter laptop story, Part 2

The deeper significance of Hunter laptop story, Part 1

Before we get to the big breaking news --- and, yes, it really is the coolest story ever --- there’s also related news out of John Durham’s special counsel probe. In his request for an extended deadline for his production of classified discovery in the case against Igor Danchenko (who provided “dossier” information to Christopher Steele), Durham reveals that he plans to produce a large amount of classified material this coming week.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/john-durham-to-produce-large-volume-of-classified-discovery-in-steele-dossier-source-case

And now, fun times: On March 24, in federal court in Florida, President Trump, represented by the Ticktin Law Group of Florida and Habba Madaio & Associates LLP of New Jersey, sued former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the DNC and “dossier” author Christopher Steele, along with approximately 30 others involved in the Russia Hoax, for carrying out a plot to “weave a false narrative” that Trump was colluding with Russian actors to win the 2016 election.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21506628-trump-v-clinton

The New York Post was happy to announce it.

https://nypost.com/2022/03/24/trump-sues-hillary-clinton-dnc-over-unthinkable-russia-plot-in-2016-election/

In the document, there’s a long list of names of those being sued, and the cast of characters will be familiar to regular readers of this newsletter, the reporting of John Solomon, and the legal filings of John Durham. We have, in addition to Hillary and Steele, quite a lineup: Michael Sussmann and Marc Elias of Perkins Coie, Debbie Wasserman Schulz, Jake Sullivan, John Podesta, Hillary campaign chairman Robby Mook, Hillary communication adviser Phillipe Reines, Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS, Rodney Joffe and Neustar, and many others whose names you’ll recognize. The FBI is also well represented, with Spygate Hall-of-Famers such as James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith (who has already pleaded guilty after being charged with falsifying an official document) and Andrew McCabe. Trump also lists some “fictitious and unknown” persons and entities, to be revealed, I suppose, as Durham continues.

“In the run-up to the 2016 Presidential election,” it says, “Hillary Clinton and her cohorts orchestrated an unthinkable plot –- one that shocks the conscience and is an affront to this nation’s democracy.” The plot they created to exploit sensitive data sources to “weave a false narrative” about him was “so outrageous, subversive and incendiary that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison.”

That is true. As Paragraph 9 says, “In short, the Defendants, blinded by political ambition, orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton.” The suit goes on to say that when their plan failed and Trump was elected anyway, “the Defendants’ efforts continued unabated, merely shifting their focus to undermining his presidential administration.”

When you have time, perhaps over this weekend, please read through the whole 108-page document --- it makes for highly entertaining and satisfying reading, especially for my readers who are already familiar with the story. (If you know people who haven’t kept up, please share the documentcloud.org link above.) It really kicks in on page 13, with the “Statement of Facts,” which lays out the whole plot step by step. Importantly, it explains the primary motivation for the Hillary campaign, which was summarized by a DNC memo that had been obtained by by an individual using the name Guccifer 2.0, revealing that the DNC, because of Hillary’s own email scandal, needed to “muddy the waters around ethics, transparency, and campaign finance attacks on HRC.”

Leave it to Hillary and the DNC to muddy the waters around ethics and transparency, while they wade right in.

So, how can a public figure who was running for President sue for damages because of what was said about him? The suit makes it clear that “Trump has sustained significant injuries and damages.” To date, he claims that monetary damages to him, his campaign and his organization are in excess of $24 million, not counting “the loss of existing and future business opportunities.” That sounds like a conservative estimate.

“The Plaintiff,” the suit says, “does not claim nor seek any compensation for damage to his reputation, but rather, he seeks damages for the cost of dealing with the legal issues and political issues, which he was required to spend to redress the injurious falsities which were propounded by the Defendants, and all other losses incurred due to the tortious conduct of the Defendants.”

Go to page 60, and –- gotta love this –- you’ll see that Trump is also suing Clinton, the DNC, Sussmann, Elias and Perkins Coie under the RICO statute. “At all relevant times,” the suit says, these defendants “constituted an associated in-fact enterprise” within the meaning of that law, with a clearly delineated, ongoing organizational framework and command structure for carrying out its objectives: the Clinton Campaign and the DNC were at all relevant times mutually controlled by Clinton, who worked in tandem with their joint counsel, Perkins Coie, whose partners, Sussmann and Elias, simultaneously worked as general counsel for the Clinton Campaign and the DNC.”

Trump accuses them of a conspiracy to obstruct justice, saying they “willfully, knowingly, deliberately, and corruptly obstructed, influenced and impeded...the due administration of justice, and/or one or more official proceedings, including, but not limited to, Crossfire Hurricane and/or other investigations by the FBI, the CIA, the IG, and the DOJ.”

The suit goes on to allege a Count II RICO conspiracy, incorporating many more of the defendants, that deals with the time Trump was in office as President. He says that they “knowingly agreed, conspired, and acted in concert for the express purpose of injuring the Plaintiff’s political career and/or impeding his ability to effectively govern through a pattern of racketeering activity.”

The allegations go on and on, through numerous counts of conspiracy to commit malicious prosecution, theft of trade secrets, and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Stored Communications Act. Then, on page 95, it concentrates its ire on Hillary herself and the DNC, alleging that “Hillary was fully aware of the plan and hired and instructed the necessary parties to make it happen.”

Trump demands a jury trial “of all issues so triable.”

According to a story in The Epoch Times, the judge assigned to the case is a Clinton nominee, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks. Yes, we join you in wondering how that’s going to work. According to the court docket, U.S. Magistrate Judge Shaniek Maynard may handle some or all of the proceedings. We would think “all.”

We like what Bonchie at RedState.com said: that Trump is “suing everyone and their mother” connected with the Trump-Russia Hoax. Yes, this hoax involved a tremendous number of participants, but that’s one reason why it’s the most stupendous political scandal in our lifetimes. True, we don’t know if he’ll prevail in court, as it’s almost impossible for a public figure to win what essentially is a defamation case, but I have a feeling that’s not the main reason he’s doing this. He’s getting the facts out. This one’s for the history books.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/03/24/donald-trump-sues-everyone-and-their-mother-over-the-infamous-steele-dossier-n540539

Trudeau Update

March 25, 2022

Like President Biden’s advisers, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau probably hopes that the timing of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine distracted the public from his own catastrophic leadership and created a “rally-‘round” effect. But just as Biden’s approval ratings continue to circle the drain…

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/03/23/bidens-comeback-turns-into-a-house-of-horrors-and-not-just-for-him-n539782

Trudeau’s attempts to make people forget the unconscionable, dictatorial way he crushed the peaceful truckers protest are crashing like an 18-wheeler on an icy hairpin curve. Trudeau went to Brussels, where he made a speech to the European Parliament, piously condemning Putin for attacking “the values that form the pillars of all democracies,” and adding, “We have a responsibility to make the case to people about why these values matter so much — not just to Ukrainians but to us all.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2022/03/24/justin-trudeau-gets-wrecked-after-daring-to-lecture-the-eu-parliament-about-democracy-n1583896

That was too much for some of the Eastern European members who have hard experience with dictators to stomach. Croatian MEP Mislav Kolakusic followed Trudeau and blasted him straight to his face:

“Unfortunately, today, there are those among us who trample on these fundamental values…Canada, once a symbol of the modern world, has become a symbol of civil rights violations under your quasi-liberal boot in recent months. We watched how you trample women with horses, how you block the bank accounts of single parents so that they can’t even pay their children’s education and medicine, that they can’t pay utilities, mortgages for their homes.”

Romanian MEP Cristian Terhes refused even to attend Trudeau’s speech but issued a statement ripping him to shreds. He wrote in part:

“You can’t come and teach democracy lessons to Putin from the European Parliament when you trample with horse hooves your own citizens who are demanding that their fundamental rights be respected.” He called Trudeau a tyrant and a dictator, “like Ceau?escu in Romania” and “no better than Putin.” He declared, “Between the Russian imperialist tyranny, promoted by Putin, and the neo-Marxist tyranny pretending to be progressivism promoted by the likes of Trudeau, in which people are deprived of their rights and freedoms, becoming objects of the state, I do not choose any.”

So, memo to Canadians: I hope you haven’t forgotten what Trudeau and his supporters did, because the rest of the world hasn’t. Particularly not those who know a dictator and enemy of the people’s fundamental rights when they see one.

Liberals hoping that former Attorney General Bill Barr’s book tour would be a non-stop Trump-bashing fest must be keenly disappointed as Barr has proven to be an equal opportunity denouncer. First, he criticized Trump’s handling of the 2020 election, but also said that if Trump were the 2024 nominee, he’d have no choice but to vote for him because the “progressive” leftists are so horrendously bad for America.

Now, he’s done it again. Asked about Hunter Biden’s toxic laptop (which the New York Times just miraculously “verified” as true, a year-and-a-half too late), Barr said he refused Trump’s efforts to get him to talk about it before the election due to “possible ongoing investigations.” He said he was against injecting a criminal investigation against Biden’s son into the race without “definitive judgement” from the DOJ.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/03/22/what-ag-barr-found-shocking-and-disturbing-about-joe-bidens-2020-debate-performa-n2604852?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky1

But just as Democrats were preparing to flip-flop yet again and cite Barr as a statesman rather than a villain, he added that he was “very disturbed” by how Biden “lied to the American people.” He said Biden suggested it was Russian disinformation and pointed to that “baseless” letter from some intelligence people “which he knew was a lie, and I was shocked by that.”

All well and good, but also a day late and a dollar short. If he knew Biden was lying (and I’m frankly shocked that he would be shocked by Joe Biden lying) about something that the voters needed to know to make an informed decision, then keeping quiet wasn’t his patriotic duty. Speaking up was.

It wouldn’t have required verifying a DOJ investigation simply to say that there was no evidence that it was Russian disinformation. That’s a simple fact that some of us knew before the election. All of us should have known it.

Republicans scored a couple of important court victories this week. The Supreme Court rejected an attempt to replace the Wisconsin legislature’s voting district map with one drawn by the Governor that created an extra 7th majority black district. Defenders claimed this was necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

The SCOTUS ruled that this was in error. In Shaw v. Reno (1993), the Court ruled that under the Equal Protection Clause, districting maps that sort voters on the basis of race “are by their very nature odious.” Any state that draws districts based on race has to withstand strict scrutiny in proving that there’s a compelling state interest in doing so, and it must be “narrowly tailored” to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

https://utexas.app.box.com/s/7ca2iocqmaz9xk8xlklcwqrvisa842bu

The larger point here is that the Court reaffirmed that states can’t use the Voting Rights Act as a blanket excuse to gerrymander voting districts based solely on race. That can only be done in a very limited way, and they must have a solid reason for why it’s necessary.

The other court win came in Ohio, where federal District Judge Michael Newman ruled in favor of attorneys general from Arizona, Montana and Ohio in a lawsuit against Department of Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas.

https://www.westernjournal.com/judge-hands-republican-states-big-win-biden-blocking-dhs-order/

Mayorkas issued a memo to ICE agents, ordering them to prioritize deportations of illegal aliens who pose a threat to national security or public safety, or who recently came to the US. As for the rest, he wrote, “In exercising our discretion, we are guided by the fact that the majority of undocumented noncitizens who could be subject to removal have been contributing members of our communities for years…The fact that an individual is a removable noncitizen therefore should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them. We will use our discretion and focus our resources in a more targeted way. Justice and our country’s well-being require it.”

As you might imagine, federal immigration law doesn’t include an exception for those who’ve managed to dodge deportation long enough (those he euphemically called "removable noncitizens.") The judge quite correctly ruled that Mayorkas was attempting to rewrite the law to make it more to his liking. He cited a quote from a 1952 SCOTUS decision that we should probably embroider onto samplers and send to DC to decorate the entire executive branch:

“In the framework of our Constitution, the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker.”

That’s a bedrock tenet of the Constitution that the Obama Administration regularly flouted and that Biden has continued. Whenever Obama didn’t like a law Congress had passed, his DOJ would simply refuse to enforce it; and when Congress refused to pass a law he wanted, even one he admitted he had no power to enact, he would go ahead and create it anyway by “executive order.” Too many times, activist liberal judges went along with the insane idea that somehow, Obama had the power to create laws by executive order, but Trump didn’t have the power to rescind those unconstitutional edicts.

Let’s hope that this ruling heralds a trend of judges putting the brakes on Biden’s attempts to continue lawless rule by executive order and ignoring laws that he took an oath to enforce.

Here’s yet another reason why everyone should stop using Twitter and switch to an alternative site that respects freedom of speech. Here are a few options (hint: not Facebook):

https://rigorousthemes.com/blog/best-twitter-alternatives/

Not only did Twitter ban the Babylon Bee over a satirical story that accurately described HHS official Rachel Levine as a biological male, now they’ve suspended the account of the Christian Post for the same reason. Only to make matters worse, they claimed the CP might be in violation of French hate speech laws, and that if they disagreed, they might have to challenge the decision in a French court.

https://www.westernjournal.com/cowards-twitter-hq-cite-foreign-hate-speech-law-punish-american-company/

I didn’t realize that Twitter is a French company. Maybe that would explain why they seem to be totally ignorant of such American traditions as the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Act that protects them from lawsuits only as long as they act as a neutral platform and not a publisher/editor.

As that linked story notes, Twitter has a strange set of standards for what it does and doesn’t allow. Former President Trump is banned for allegedly fomenting violence, but the leaders of Iran who take daily breaks to chant “Death to America” still have Twitter accounts. The President of a nation that perpetuates genocide can stay on Twitter, but they ban comedians who tweet jokes pointing out that that nation perpetuates genocide.

Also, while they censor many conservative sites (including this one) for “disinformation” even though we’re telling the truth, there have been no repercussions for liberals who’ve wildly mischaracterized Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Bill and falsely labeled it as the “Don’t Say Gay Law.” In fact, they’re openly promoting that disinformation.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/paula-bolyard/2022/03/23/heres-what-the-social-media-censors-are-doing-about-the-dont-say-gay-lies-regarding-floridas-anti-groomer-bill-n1583733

Of course, Twitter is hardly alone in its attempts to silence people for speaking obvious truths that counteract leftist narratives. Take a look at how NBC applied more Photoshopping to “trans” swimmer Lia Thomas you’d see on a Vogue magazine cover shot of Kamala Harris.

https://www.westernjournal.com/odd-nbc-news-airbrushes-image-trans-swimmer-lia-thomas/

I would say the assaults on reality by both big media and social media have become trans…parent.

Here’s today’s link to Fox News’ continually-updated bulletins on the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/ukraine-russia-live-updates-03-24-2022

President Biden is in Europe for meetings with NATO, G7 and EU officials. He’s expected to urge more sanctions on Russia. On Thursday, the White House announced sanctions on 65 Russian banks, business elites and industries that are believed to be supporting Putin’s war, as well as more than 300 members of Russia’s federal assembly and more than 40 Russian defense companies. The White House also said the US will accept up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy told NATO that Russia is using its full army without restrictions against Ukraine, and he needs “military assistance without restrictions.” He said, "NATO has yet to show what the Alliance can do to save people…To show that this is truly the most powerful defense association in the world. And the world is waiting. And Ukraine is very much waiting, for real action.”

New York Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres called on the FBI to investigate the Russian Diplomatic Compound in New York City, which has long been described as a hub of Russian espionage in the US. I'd suggest fumigating the UN, too.

Those wondering how the outmatched and outgunned Ukrainians are managing to hold off the Russian army while inflicting so much damage will be interested in this story about how they received training for just such an emergency from US Army Special Forces, aka the Green Berets.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-armys-green-berets-have-lasting-impact-on-fight-in-ukraine

While Putin may dream of recreating the old Soviet Union, in one sense, he already has: thanks to the sanctions he’s brought on, Russians are once again standing in long lines to get basic necessities. They say it’s like the USSR came back overnight.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/23/were-going-back-to-a-ussr-long-queues-return-for-russian-shoppers-as-sanctions-bite

And this could turn the Western media against Zelenskyy: Men who identify as women are being turned back at the border when they attempt to flee Ukraine and told they’re men so they are required to stay and fight.

https://www.westernjournal.com/transgender-stopped-ukrainian-border-told-turn-around-fight-guards-find-real-gender/

This presents another logical conundrum for leftists: They think it’s transphobic for Ukraine to draft men who identify as women because they're really women and shouldn't be forced to fight. But they also think it’s sexist for the US not to draft women who were actually born female. Which is it?

James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has released documents showing how the Biden “Justice” Department got around a judge that ordered them to respect the group’s First Amendment rights as journalists by obtaining secret electronic surveillance orders that were not disclosed to the court, requiring disclosure of "all content" of communications associated with Project Veritas’ email accounts, including attorney-client communications.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/aclu-doj-project-veritas-ashley-biden-diary

This is on top of the strong-arm raids they conducted against PV, including roughing up O’Keefe in his own home, and seizing computers and other items.

They were allegedly investigating the theft of Presidential daughter Ashley Biden’s diary, which in itself is extremely questionable conduct for an allegedly nonpartisan agency. On top of that, as O’Keefe told me in an interview, Project Veritas didn’t even have the diary. A tipster had given it to them, they couldn’t authenticate it, so they gave it to law enforcement to return to its rightful owner. But these latest documents show that the Project Veritas emails the feds were collecting dated back to January 2020, eight months before they even knew the diary existed.

This whole thing smells of the White House corrupting federal law enforcement to use it as a battering ram against political opponents, including journalists. It carries a strong whiff of bananas, as in “banana republic.” The stench is so bad that even the liberal ACLU spoke out against the targeting of Project Veritas, saying they’re “deeply troubled” by these reports, and that this could have serious consequences for press freedom.

Incidentally, I notice that they couldn’t defend Project Veritas’ basic First Amendment rights without doing a little groveling to their liberal donors by starting out with, "We deplore Project Veritas’ deceptions,” yet not naming any of those alleged “deceptions.” O’Keefe loves to point out that PV is constantly accused of being “deceptive,” but critics don’t explain what’s deceptive about their reporting, and they’re never lost a lawsuit.

But in the spirit of the ACLU, let me also say that I stand strong in defending the First Amendment rights of Project Veritas and all journalists, even the New York Times, in spite of how much I deplore their deceptions.

Related: Our “nonpartisan” FBI backtracks after being outed for celebrating the SCOTUS nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/read-the-emails-advertising-fbi-event-to-honor-ketanji-brown-jacksons-nomination/

Yesterday, we received a comment on our Substack edition by reader Marcia D:

Wondering …… why do we continue to call our “leaders and their minions” ELITE? They aren’t! You are so wonderful with words, how about coming up with something that describes our Hollywood snobs etc better. LOVE your newsletter.

Dear Marcia:

Thanks for writing and for your kind appreciation. When we use...that word...it’s almost always meant ironically, so from now on, whenever appropriate, we’ll try to use quotation marks to make that clear. I decided to look at the various dictionary definitions of the word to see how they might apply to our political and societal “elite.” Here are a few…

Oxford Dictionaries has two definitions of the word as a noun. Since the second one relates to the “elite” 12-point typeface, we’ll toss that and focus on the first one: “a select group that is superior in ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.” This definition might apply if we were talking about, say, an “elite” fighting force, but it definitely does not apply when we talk about our political and cultural leaders, as (ironically) they have aptly demonstrated. Polls certainly bear that out.

Merriam-Webster shades the meaning of “elite” a little differently, offering several entries:

1) the choice part, or ‘cream,’ as in “the elite of the entertainment world.” No, that doesn’t fit our leaders at all. If they’re a choice, it’s not our choice. If they’re the cream, it has long since curdled.

2) the best of a class, as in “the superachievers who dominate the computer elite.” Sorry, no. If these leaders are the best we’ve got, we need to start thinking outside the box about where our leaders are going to come from. The ones in power now are not superachievers by any stretch of the imagination. I think some of them must realize this. Kamala Harris, for example, surely realizes on some level that she’s in over her head. Maybe that’s why she cackles uncontrollably --- to try to dispel her own panic.

3) the socially superior part of society, as in “how the French-speaking elite was changing.” No, that definition fits only if we look at how these leaders think of THEMSELVES. They are considered socially superior only within their own circle, perhaps in Hollywood or the Upper West Side. If this definition were modified to reflect that, it could work.

4) a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power and influence, as in “members of the ruling elite.” At last, here’s a definition that really does seem to fit, with a few caveats. First, we’ve got to put the word “education” in quotation marks, considering what a so-called Ivy League education means these days. And we’d definitely want to add the word “undue,” as in “undue influence.” Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to undo all that undue influence?

If used as an adjective, M-W’s definition is “superior in quality, rank, skill, etc., as in, “The elite chess players of today...hail from all over the world.” But while, tragically, our leaders do rank higher in power and influence than the rest of us –- that’s what makes them leaders, after all –- they only think they’re superior in terms of quality and skill.

Good lord, the President of the United States, arguably the 'elitest' of the elite, can’t even read a teleprompter, and that's too bad because he can't speak without one. If he were TRYING to destroy the country, I doubt he’d be doing anything differently. On the other hand, if that’s what he actually is trying to do, I take it back: he definitely has some skills. He's been in office little more than one year, and it's hard to watch the news at any given moment without thinking the words "hell in a handbasket."

Our (probable) next Supreme Court justice --- there's hardly anything more 'elite' than that lofty perch --- says she can’t even define what a woman is and doesn’t think her views on that or on CRT would be an issue for her as a justice. The bar has really been lowered.

Moving on, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines “elite” this way:

A group or class of persons considered to be superior to others because of their intelligence, social standing or wealth.

Again, our “elite” consider THEMSELVES to be superior in intelligence (some, I would call idiot savants) and, in many cases, social standing. Wealth, however, is a more objective standard that definitely does apply. To illustrate, I’ll use “elite” in a sentence: “Elites such as Mark Zuckerberg use their vast wealth and undue influence to buy elections.”

The Collins English Dictionary defines the noun “elite” like this:

The most powerful, rich, gifted or educated members of a group, community, etc.

Again, the same issues apply. This definition might work if we put “educated” in quotes and also, in quite a few cases, add just one letter to change “gifted” to “grifted.”

The Random House Kemerman Websters College Dictionary has several entries:

1) the choice or best of a group, class or the like. (NOPE.)

2) persons of the wealthiest class. (YES, generally that is true.)

3) a group of persons exercising authority within a larger group. (YES, indeed.)

Check your thesaurus, and you might see many of these synonyms for “elite”:

upper class, upper crust (I"d say it’s true, some of them are looking pretty crusty)

elect, chosen (Not by us, God knows)

cream, pick (Again, this cream is curdled)

intelligentsia (Hold on, ever hear the expression, "educated beyond one's intelligence"?)

beau monde, bon ton, high society, ‘smart set’ (Two words: Hillary’s pantsuits)

aristocracy, gentry, nobility (Two words: John Kerry)

technocrat (Well, we're definitely crawling with those)

selected (Editorial note: remember, they can be un-selected!)

I’m also reminded of the Cole Porter song, “You’re the Top.” You know, “You’re the top...you’re the Colosseum! You’re the top...you’re the Louvre Museum!” Except in the case of our “elite” leaders, I’d sing it this way:

“You’re a flop...you’re a big disaster

You’re a flop...you are not my master

You can censor me and de-monetize my words

But I’ll cause some blowback, I’ll go on Substack, I WILL be heard!

You’re a flop...just an Ivy Leaguer

You’re a flop...and your talent’s meager

As ‘elites’ you stink but you think that you’re tip-top

You are way down on the bottom, you’re a flop!

“Invasion of the Fact-Checkers” by Jacob Siegel of Tablet magazine.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/invasion-fact-checkers

Siegel takes us through the history of fact-checking, and how it's devolved from an attempt to ensure news sources were trustworthy to what it’s become today:

“An institutional fixture with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding behind it, along with battalions of NGOs and formerly broke journalistic authorities who are more than happy to cash fat checks and proclaim that America’s ruling bureaucrats at the FDA, the CDC, the FBI, the CIA, the Fed—and the entire alphabet soup of government agencies—along with the ruling Democratic Party, are never wrong about anything, at least nothing important.”

He offers multiple examples (most of which will be familiar to readers of this newsletter) of times when the self-proclaimed “fact-checkers,” with their “tin badges and unearned air of authority,” declared stories that challenged Democrat narratives to be false, only to have them later revealed to be true – although the “fact-checkers” seldom outright admit that. Hunter’s laptop is only the tip of the crack pipe that these people must be smoking.

He also goes into the specific ways in which these “fact-checkers” operate to protect their masters, including a tactic I wrote about recently: the logical fallacy of the “appeal to authority,” or quoting cherry-picked alleged “experts” as if their opinions were objective fact.

This “partisan plot against reality,” as Siegel puts it, is necessary to protect “progressive” narratives because if they didn’t have an excuse to censor “misinformation” (usually, facts that disprove their hooey), everyone with any sense would see how ludicrous leftists ideas are, from defunding the police to giving free crack pipes to addicts to teaching kindergartners racism and graphic sex lessons to claiming men can actually become women just by saying they are. It’s such obvious insanity that when people see it clearly, they revolt. Even parents in ultra-liberal San Francisco voted out their “woke” school board members in a landslide.

Recently, I’ve seen commenters on my sites complain about why we even bother writing about this stuff. They despair that it won’t make any difference. But it already is. If enough people keep pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, or that the guy in a woman’s swimsuit is clearly a dude, it gives others courage to also speak up. And when truth reaches critical mass, it can no longer be denied, censored or bullied into silence by a tiny minority of radical fantasists.

Believe me, we deal with it every day. You’d be astounded how often our stories get labeled as “misinformation” by Big Tech and limited in their reach by Google, Facebook, etc. This despite the fact that my writers are diligent researchers who are scrupulous about getting details right, double-checking and citing sources for accuracy and making sure that quotes are verified and in context.

And if you think you can’t fight this, consider the following wonderful news: Mark “Bought the White House for Joe Biden” Zuckerberg thought that Facebook was so powerful that it could start censoring its own customers under the guise of “fact-checking misinformation.” After all, where else could they go? Turns out they could go to other social media sites, or spend their time more productively by working to elect Republicans.

The stock price of Facebook parent Meta Platforms recently took a tumble after it was reported that Facebook saw a drop of 500,000 daily active users, its first-ever quarterly decline. Keep arrogantly treating your users as if they’re a captive audience that you can freely abuse, and that trend will continue, as they flee to sites like Gab and MeWe that respect freedom of speech.

I’ve got one compound word for Facebook, Twitter and anyone who thinks it’s futile to keep exposing Big Tech's arrogance and censorship because they’re just too big to fail:

“MySpace.”

Anyone remember that? At one time, it was so big, it was the Blockbuster Video of the Internet. Now, it’s what Seth Meyers once called “the abandoned amusement park of the Internet.” If Facebook, Twitter, et al, think their biased “fact-checkers” will protect them from customer revolt, then that abandoned amusement park might soon become even larger. It can’t happen soon enough.

Tuesday, questioning got underway in the Senate confirmation hearing of Biden SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. As has become standard for these hearings, it was a made-for-TV production, except the shows produced for Republican nominees like Kavanaugh and Barrett resembled “American Horror Story” while the shows produced for Democrat nominees are more like “Queen For A Day.”

To draw a few “Goofus and Gallant”-like comparisons: Democrats grilled Kavanaugh about the meaning of in-jokes from his old high school yearbook that he didn’t even write. But they accused Republicans of racism for asking Jackson about judicial rulings that she did write.

Kavanaugh was expected to remember every detail of what he did every day when he was a teenager. Jackson claimed not to remember the basis of the Dred Scott Decision, one of the most important SCOTUS rulings in history, and that was fine.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-supreme-court-nominee-says-not-quite-remember-basis-massive-scotus-decision/

With Kavanaugh, everything from his beer consumption to his personal diary was fair game for questioning. With Jackson, thousands of pages of documents have been withheld from Republicans, from records of her tenure on the US Sentencing Commission to her own probation rulings.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/outraged-republicans-allege-democrats-withheld-supreme-court-nominee-documents

Kavanaugh was falsely accused of being a rapist. Republicans were criticized for even asking Jackson why she routinely gave lower-than-requested or suggested sentences to child porn defendants.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-responds-hawley-child-porn-comments-nothing-could-be-further-from-the-truth

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Other highlights of the day included Jackson saying that “Critical Race Theory doesn’t come up in the work I do as a judge.” Sen. Ted Cruz then read a quote from her saying that Critical Race Theory is part of her work as a judge.

https://instapundit.com/511014/

Jackson also claimed that she couldn’t define what a “woman” is...

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/23/ketanji-brown-jackson-excites-a-lot-of-comment-when-shes-asked-to-define-woman-n539723

…She doesn’t know when life begins…

https://www.lifenews.com/2022/03/22/ketanji-brown-jackson-has-absolutely-no-idea-when-human-life-begins-um-i-dont-know/

…And she thinks “illegal aliens” are simply “non-citizens.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/03/22/ketanji-brown-jackson-calls-illegal-aliens-noncitizens-senate-hearing/

I can only imagine the media reaction if a Republican woman had professed such shocking ignorance of issues she regularly deals with in her job.

Ironically, in this theatrical production, Jackson is playing the role of a conservative centrist who respects the Constitution, which I don’t find convincing, but she's getting raves from the media for her performance. Kavanaugh and Barrett actually were conservative centrists who respect the Constitution, and the same critics savaged them. So I guess claiming to be a conservative centrist who respects the Constitution is only praiseworthy if the media knows you’re acting.

Part 1 observed that some of the names from Trump’s first impeachment, mostly from our own embassy in Ukraine, were the same as those involved in the Trump/Russia Hoax as revealed in special counsel John Durham’s indictment of Clinton/DNC attorney Michael Sussmann. We wondered why that might be.

Before we continue with that, here are a few updates on the Hunter laptop story:

Monday on Jesse Watters Primetime, investigative reporter Peter Schweizer reiterated what he’s said about Hunter being close to criminal indictment. He said The New York Times “got a lot of cooperation from Team Biden” before they ran the story on Hunter that included their admission that the laptop was, indeed, real. He says Biden’s team were “trying to position themselves.” Of course, this case isn’t really about Hunter but the President of the United States, and a criminal indictment would open up “that whole can of worms” concerning dad’s connections to dirty money and the associated tax issues and huge national security concerns.

https://noqreport.com/2022/03/22/the-ny-times-admitted-the-truth-about-hunter-biden-because-they-know-something-is-about-to-happen/

So, “does Hunter Biden become the sacrificial lamb?” Schweizer asked. “Does he end up taking a plea deal that might even mean jail time in order to protect his father?”

Also, Margot Cleveland has a new piece detailing eight Joe Biden scandals revealed in Hunter’s laptop that have been finally been confirmed in mainstream media as real. She echoes Schweizer, saying, “These scandals are not about Hunter Biden. They are about now-President Biden.” These are areas that an honest media would ask about, she says –- the implication being that they won’t. Her piece a must-read.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/22/8-joe-biden-scandals-inside-hunter-bidens-macbook-that-corporate-media-just-admitted-is-legit/

Now, to Part 2. Yesterday, as a way to help understand Ukraine and the Bidens’ activities there, we recommended Chapters 2 and 8 in Dan Bongino’s book “FOLLOW THE MONEY: The Shocking Deep State Connections of the Anti-Trump Cabal. Let’s pick up there…

According to Bongino, the hard-working Ukrainian people are “desperate for honest leadership” but “have been consistently let down by a broken political class eager for power and riches.” Ukraine and Washington DC are the two centers of a group he calls Scandal Manufacturers of America (SMA), which dedicated itself to a takedown of Donald Trump. These people helped come up with the Russia Hoax, and later, when that failed to take him down, they assisted with his first impeachment. That’s why we see some of the same names in both.

(Side note: The New York Times caught some richly-deserved grief from Candace Owens when they accused her of copying “Russian state media” when she “advanced the idea that Ukraine is a corrupt country.” She informed them she’d learned of Ukraine’s corruption from The New York Times, offering as one example an NYT editorial called “Ukraine’s Unyielding Corruption.” We bring this up so as not to also be falsely accused of working on behalf of Putin when we point out the deep well of Ukrainian corruption.)

Bongino calls Paul Manafort “ground zero for all the manufactured Trump scandals.” Manafort was a consultant for Trump’s campaign and then the chairman, bringing with him tons of baggage from alleged dark dealings in Ukraine. What we have always wondered --- perhaps Bongino has the answer --- is this: exactly how did someone who was so notorious as a shady lobbyist get to BE chairman of Trump’s campaign? It was just soooooo convenient for Trump’s enemies to have Manafort, of all people, in that spot. So we suspect there’s more to this story. His baggage was made to order for anyone looking to derail Trump’s campaign. Rick Gates, Manafort’s business partner, was with the campaign as well, as deputy, and later became a cooperating witness for the special counsel in Manafort's trial.

Manafort lasted with Trump for about six months. Ironically, what brought him down –- in five days –- was FAKED evidence in the form of a “black ledger” of supposed payments from a pro-Russia political party. By continuing to hound him after he left, Trump’s enemies thought they might bring Trump down, too. The ledger had nothing to do with the Russia hoax; it was a red herring, to cast a cloud over the campaign and provide a pretext for ongoing investigation.

George Soros, probably the most influential man in Ukraine, is a big part part of this story, too. He gave $1 million to the humorously-named Democratic Integrity Project, headed by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI analyst and staffer for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Jones had started the nonprofit (seems pretty profitable to me) after Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS approached him with the idea of forming the organization. Then, after filling its coffers to the tune of $7 million, Jones turned around and wrote a check to Fusion GPS for $3.3 million! I am not making this up. The same players keep turning up again and again.

Fusion GPS’s task: to research how Russia intelligence operations were affecting elections around the world. And they brought in Hillary’s campaign chairman John Podesta to help. Still not making it up, my friends. This was after Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails had been purloined (the narrative became that they were hacked by Russia) and published by Wikileaks, to the DNC’s embarrassment.

(Incidentally, John's lobbyist brother Tony was under investigation at that time for “cashing in” in Ukraine. He was paid $1.2 million to promote a plan conceived, ironically, by Manfort and Gates.)

Then there’s the story you know, the investigation of Burisma by prosecutor Victor Shokin until then-Vice President Biden got him fired by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee. By now everyone has seen the video of Biden bragging about it before a live audience --- without mentioning Hunter was on the Burisma board.

There’s much more, involving Soros and an investigation by Shokin’s replacement into a Soros-funded organization, the ironically-named Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC). This was when the new U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (remember her from Trump’s impeachment?) gave the prosecutor a list of people not to prosecute, including a founder of AntAC. Second-in-command George Kent had already tried to discourage the prosecutor from investigating. According to reporter John Solomon, their message to Ukraine officials was this: “Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama.”

There are others in Ukraine tied to both the Russia hoax and Trump's impeachment. California Rep. Adam Schiff, running the impeachment, trotted out our diplomatic “experts” from Ukraine to talk about Trump and his “impeachable” phone call to President Zelenskyy. Those were Americans, our diplomatic corps, who'd been telling Ukrainian prosecutors who they could and could not prosecute and treating a Soros-funded organization like some sort of sacred cow. Soros supported Hillary and was Trump’s political enemy. He funded an organization conceived by Glenn Simpson. Something smells like bad borscht.

Of course, if our own FBI hadn’t withheld Hunter’s laptop, the justification for Trump’s phone call would have been clear.

Oh, the muck in the swamp gets deeper. Looks as though there will have to be a Part 3.

Ukraine Update - March 23

March 23, 2022

Here’s today’s Fox News link to the latest bulletins on the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/ukraine-russia-live-updates-03-23-2022

The latest headlines:

Russian forces continued shelling the cities of Mariupol and Kyiv. Thousands of Mariupol residents fled Tuesday, and Ukrainian forces continued to hold off the Russians in Kyiv. Ukraine claimed Russian troops took 15 rescue workers and bus drivers captive who were trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Mariupol. Poland expelled what it said were 45 Russian spies claiming to be diplomats (in America, we call those “U.N. ambassadors” and don’t expel them.) The Russian ambassador to Indonesia claimed that Putin plans to attend the G20 Summit in Bali in October. I’d say that’s about as overly optimistic as his belief that Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops and a puppet government with open arms.

There will be a NATO summit tomorrow to discuss what to do about Ukraine. Russia’s Foreign Minister warned that if NATO sends peacekeeper troops into Ukraine, that “would lead to a direct clash between the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the alliance," which was taken as a warning of it sparking World War III. Of course, if NATO, which was formed to prevent Russian aggression, sends a message to Putin that they can be so easily intimidated just by a threat from Russia, it might make an eventual World War III sparked by Russian aggression even more likely.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-foreign-minister-lavrov-issues-cryptic-warning-about-direct-clash-with-nato

Among the many Obama-era policies that left America weaker, add this: he saw no reason to maintain the Cold War policy of having a US military big enough to deal with two simultaneous regional conflicts. Yeah, we could never possibly have to deal with military threats in more than one place at the same time.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/two-war-doctrine-obama-pentagon-russia-taiwan-ukraine-china

So this continues Obama’s streak of getting everything wrong except for warning that we should “never underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to (BLEEP) things up.”

Speaking of corporations that try to force woke leftism onto their customers, Disney is forging ahead with its push to indoctrinate small children with LGBTQ propaganda. At an employee town hall Monday, Disney CEO Bob Chapek groveled that he should have spoken out earlier and more forcefully against the new Florida law banning inappropriate sexual and gender lessons in schools for children age 7 and under.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/03/22/disney-launching-task-force-to-make-more-lgbtq-content-for-children-and-families/

He announced that Disney is creating a special “task force” to “develop action plans to make more LGBT-aware content for children and family.” So if you’ve been thinking of canceling your Disney-Plus subscription, now seems like a good time.

If you want even more reasons: some Disney employees staged a walk-out Monday to protest Florida not letting small children be indoctrinated with inappropriate sexual messages. They claimed they “have been forced into an impossible and unsustainable position” by the “magnitude of the threat to LGBTQIA+ safety represented by this legislation.”

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/03/22/disney-employees-whove-been-forced-into-an-impossible-and-unsustainable-position-over-dont-say-gay-bill-walk-out/

To me, the correct response to that walkout for a company that makes children’s entertainment would have been to slam the office doors and change the locks, not grovel to get them to come back.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/california-disney-employees-stage-walk-out-over-floridas-parental-rights-bill/

Particularly since I suspect those employees (and the CEO, of course) are the ones responsible for conservative and religious Disney employees (you know, like you might expect to work for DISNEY) issuing an anonymous public statement accusing the company of allowing “progressives” to create a hostile work environment in which anyone who disagrees with their radical views is bullied, branded as a bigot, punished or fired.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/they-call-their-fellow-employees-bigots-conservatives-at-disney-issue-open-statement-detailing-hostile-work-environment

As Stephen Kruiser of PJ Media reports, a lot of people who grew up loving what Disney used to be are sadly starting to rethink supporting a company leadership so goofy that it openly despises its customers’ values.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2022/03/23/the-morning-briefing-disneys-lgbqtwxyz-frenzy-sows-division-in-the-company-family-n1583460

Here’s another hopeful sign that people have had enough of “woke” corporations trying to impose leftist political views on customers:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/unamerican-express-critics-launch-campaign-against-racially-divisive-policies-at-credit-card-giant

An organization called “Color Us United” has been formed to promote the Rev. Martin Luther King’s dream of a “colorblind America” and to fight back against the forces that are trying to advance their political power by promoting Critical Race Theory and injecting racial divisiveness into every aspect of life. They’re launching a pushback campaign against what they call one of the worst corporate offenders, American Express.

CRT critic Christopher Rufo had reported that the credit card giant "is teaching its employees that the country was fundamentally racist, that capitalism was fundamentally oppressive and that their White employees were guilty of White privilege and internalized White supremacy. All of these horrific crimes based solely on their skin color." So Color Us United founder Kenny Xu contacted Rufo. He says they discovered that Rufo was correct, that AmEx was “telling their members that capitalism is racist, and they were arranging their members on a privilege hierarchy based on race” and awarding bonuses based not on merit but on practicing “equity,” meaning who hires more blacks and fires more whites, providing “a financial incentive to be racist.”

Xu says AmEx is just the tip of the corporate iceberg, but his group will focus its initial campaign, dubbed “UnAmerican Express,” on them. They plan to urge shareholders to pressure the company to drop its leftist, racist bullying and encourage consumers to use the term "UnAmerican Express" (since they're acting in a way unworthy of calling themselves “American”) and not employ their services until they change their policies.

You’ve got to give Color Us United credit for daring to stand up and speak out against this pernicious trend. There’s more at the link.

With all that’s been discussed about Hunter Biden’s laptop --- what it reveals about the Biden family and the shocking lengths to which government agencies, politicians and the media LIED, at least until Biden was safely in office --- there’s yet another aspect to the story, one we touched on last week but would like to examine more deeply now.

Doesn’t it seem like an odd coincidence that the very parts of the world that are exploding now are the ones the Biden family was greatly profiting from; namely, Ukraine, Russia and China? (For this discussion, we’re focusing on Ukraine.) This is why voters deserve to know all about a candidate’s potential conflicts of interest before putting him in office.

And doesn’t it also seem weird that the same people whose names we first heard during Trump's first impeachment, some of them officials at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, are now popping up in revelations about the Trump/Russia Hoax? The two casts of characters overlap --- why is that?

It’s long been known by people in government that the corruption in Ukraine made it possible for some Americans to profit hugely. Hunter Biden is an easy example, but numerous people with marketable influence in both parties have apparently used corrupt institutions in Ukraine as their own personal ATM, laundering huge piles of cash as they changed hands for various reasons. Nobody asked questions. The elite members of this club brought in their families, friends and colleagues. It’s been going on for decades.

NOTE: As we’ve said before, the corruption in Ukraine in no way excuses the cold disregard and unforgivable violence Putin has shown to its people, most of whom were just trying to make a living and support their families and communities. Russia is chock-full of corruption as well. So is America, for that matter, as we’re learning more each day. Those who use Ukrainian corruption to rationalize what Putin is doing are trying to defend the indefensible.

That said, it’s also important to recognize that what we’re seeing of the corruption is just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine if Hunter had somehow dimly remembered his laptop was at the repair shop and had managed, in his drug-addled state, to crawl his way back there and pick it up. Life would have gone on, with most of us likely never knowing the extent of Biden family graft. Maybe a few dedicated reporters like Miranda Devine and Peter Schweizer would have succeeded in nibbling around the edges, perhaps written books that conservatives would read, but that would’ve been it.

Likewise, what if Hillary’s use of a private server as Secretary of State had never been exposed? What if Guccifer had never hacked into Sidney Blumenthal’s account and ended up with her private address on classified emails about Benghazi, and if State Department lawyers hadn’t noticed that address themselves and looked into it? Hillary’s criminal (yes) use of a private server for classified official business would have remained a secret. With her load of baggage lightened, she might’ve been elected President after all. At any rate, she would’ve gotten away clean.

Some of my readers –- I know, because they write to me –- are thinking, “Well, she DID get away clean. Why do we even bother talking about these scandals? Nothing ever happens.” At the risk of sounding like Hillary herself, they carp, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

I would argue that it makes a tremendous difference that we don’t just live with the lies. Those of us who’ve been investigating this for years are at last breaking through to the public at large, who only now are learning what we’ve known for some time: that a reasonable prosecutor WOULD have taken Hillary’s case, that there really ARE deep-state actors in our bureaucracy, that the Bidens --- including “the big guy” --- ARE corrupt, that “Russia” WAS a hoax all along, that the laptop IS real and the FBI withheld it during Trump’s impeachment, that social media is a leftist propaganda arm, and that some people who say they care about “our democracy” really just want to keep their personal gravy train rolling. Americans are wising up. The next step (and it’s a loo-loo) is to acknowledge that suppressing the laptop WAS election interference, likely changing the outcome of the Biden-Trump race.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/suppression-of-hunter-biden-laptop-stories-defeinitely-impacted-2020-election-barr_

Incidentally, Barr also says that Biden knowingly lied about the laptop being Russian disinformation. He was “shocked,” he says. Barr tells us this...NOW??

https://slaynews.com/news/bill-barr-comes-clean-says-joe-biden-lied-to-american-people-he-knew-it-was-a-lie-and-i-was-shocked-by-that/

According to investigative reporter Peter Schweizer, the timing of the admission in The New York Times that the laptop is real, with the coordination we might assume they had with Hunter’s legal team and the White House, indicates to him that Hunter is likely to be indicted. (So, does he then get pardoned by his father?) Jonathan Turley, in an interview with Brian Kilmeade Monday night, agreed. “There’s only so long you can deny something that’s staring you in the face,” he said. He noted that since they’ve finally acknowledged it’s real, we can move forward to talk about what it means.

Which brings us back to Ukraine. Mollie Hemingway’s book RIGGED, the chapter “Burying Biden Corruption,” details not only Hunter’s profits in Ukraine ‘serving’ on the Burisma board but also how committee chairman Adam Schiff made sure this were never brought up in the hearings, as it would’ve justified Trump’s “impeachable” phone call to President Zelenskyy. The word “rigged” applies just as well to that sham impeachment as it does to the election.

Dan Bongino has been talking about the curious re-emergence of the same Ukrainian names we heard during the impeachment. He dug up an article in Politico from November 2019, about Ukrainian-American DNC political consultant Alexandra Chalupa wanting to “raise the alarm” about Trump campaign director Paul Manafort’s alleged Russian ties. Recall that Manafort was forced to resign, and later hounded by Robert Mueller’s special counsel, over the so-called “black ledger” of payments supposedly made to him by a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine –- a ledger that has been determined to be fake. What Politico said at the time about Republicans trying to hold back “a mountain of emerging evidence” that showed Trump “used his leverage over Ukraine to pressure the country’s leaders to investigate his political rivals” seems laughable now. What a waste of our nation’s time and taxpayers’ money.

Let’s see...I can think of an American VICE-President who used his leverage to pressure Ukraine’s leaders NOT to investigate someone. That was joe Biden.

A photo turned up of Chalupa in the White House, standing next to the man identified as the impeachment “whistleblower” over Trump’s phone call. Recall that we were never supposed to say his name, but we did: Eric Ciaramella. The big take-away: These people were all working together, folks, and that’s the real “collusion.” Remember this about Ciaramella, from Paul Sperry?

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/10/30/whistleblower_exposed_close_to_biden_brennan_dnc_oppo_researcher_120996.html

Look for our Part 2 tomorrow. In the meantime, we recommend two chapters in Bongino’s 2020 book “FOLLOW THE MONEY: The Shocking Deep State Connections of the Anti-Trump Cabal”: Chapter 1 --- “Insane in Ukraine,” and Chapter 8 --- “Whistleblowing in the Dark.”

The first day of the Senate confirmation hearings for Biden Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson consisted of nothing but opening statements by Jackson and the Senators.

Jackson said, “During this hearing, I hope you will see how much I love this country, the Constitution, and the rights that make us free. I decide cases from a neutral posture. I evaluate the facts, and I interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath. I know that my role as a judge is a limited one – that the Constitution empowers me only to decide cases and controversies that are properly presented. And I know that my judicial role is further constrained by careful adherence to precedent.”

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/live-day-1-ketanji-brown-jacksons-supreme-court-confirmation-hearing/

That’s reassuring, but also hard to believe. Jackson wasn’t chosen by whoever’s making President Biden’s decisions for him just because she brings much-needed diversity to the SCOTUS by being yet another liberal Harvard alum. There were other judges who checked Biden’s “black/female” boxes, but Jackson was known as the most leftwing activist of the choices.

Senate Democrats provided the comic relief by admonishing Republicans that they had promised to keep the process “civil.” This from the same people who accused Judge Barrett of being in a "Handmaid's Tale" style religious cult and who smeared Brett Kavanaugh as a drunk, rapist and rape gang organizer with zero evidence.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/03/21/ted-cruz-destroys-democrats-during-jackson-confirmation-hearings-n1568303

As Sen. Ted Cruz reminded them, it’s the Democrats who have a disgusting history of turning SCOTUS hearings into “high tech lynchings” (Clarence Thomas’ term for the hearings he faced, thanks to then-Senator Joe Biden.) Biden also voted against a black female Bush nominee. He claimed it was because he disagreed with her philosophy and rulings, but by the Democrats' own claims, we can assume he just was being a racist.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/21/ted-cruz-and-ben-sasse-remind-democrats-what-scotus-hypocrites-they-are-n538948

The Republicans launched no personal attacks on Judge Jackson, but they made it clear that they had serious reservations about her previous statements and rulings. These include seven cases in which she gave pedophiles sentences far more lenient than federal guidelines called for, and her comments praising “The 1619 Project” and saying that judges should consider Critical Race Theory in sentencing defendants.

That doesn’t sound like being neutral and applying the facts without favor and in adherence to precedent. It would be nice to know more on her thinking about sentencing, but Sen. Chuck Grassley complained that his request for public records on Jackson’s four years on the US Sentencing Commission (which Democrats cited as part of her valuable experience) had been blocked and 48,000 pages worth of documents withheld from view.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/03-21-22%20Grassley%20Statement.pdf

Republican Senators, and indeed all Americans, deserve to know whether an unelected judge who may be handing down decisions that affect all our lives for decades to come is telling the truth about respecting the Constitution, the rule of law and limits on judicial power. Without that reassurance, we could end up with a two-tiered “justice” system – one in which people who, say, attempted to block the sacred duties of Congress by creating a disturbance in the chamber to block the Kavanaugh confirmation were let go without being accused of “insurrection” while a Trump supporter who was told by a Capitol Police officer that he could enter the Capitol, so he came in, looked around and left, faces up to 20 years in prison.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/03/21/man-told-by-an-officer-that-he-could-enter-the-capitol-on-jan-6-now-faces-20-years-in-prison-n1568195

It never used to be necessary even to ask SCOTUS nominees if they believed in the type of banana republic “justice” system where people are punished or released based on their political beliefs rather than their actions. Unfortunately, now it is. And Republicans didn’t create that.

We all like to think, or at least hope, that likely voters are the best informed voters. But a shocking new CSPAN poll of likely voters may shake our faith.

https://redstate.com/andrewmalcolm/2022/03/22/new-poll-on-the-supreme-court-confirms-americans-are-absolute-dummies-n539138

It found that 44% of respondents didn’t know that the three branches of government were co-equal. Nearly half (46%) think the SCOTUS is a partisan institution (granted, they might have a point, at least unofficially.) 61% claimed they were closely following Biden’s SCOTUS nominee, but 72% have no idea who it is, and 85% didn’t know she’s a black female, which was Biden’s #1 criteria for choosing a nominee. And while Roe v. Wade was the best-known SCOTUS decision, only 6% knew Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark ruling that ended segregation in schools.

But that’s not the only poll that reflects badly on the public’s grasp of important information. A YouGov America survey found that people must assume that the louder a voice a group has in the media, the larger it is, which ain’t necessarily so.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/03/18/when-it-comes-to-estimating-the-size-of-minority-groups-americans-fail-miserably-n2604722

Asked to estimate the size of various groups, on average, respondents thought that 21% of the US population is transgender (it’s actually 1%), that 26% make over a million dollars a year (in reality, less than 1%), that 27% are Muslim (1%), 27% are Native American (1%), 30% are Jewish (2%), 30% are gay or lesbian (3%), 33% are atheist (3%), and that 41% of Americans are black (actually 12%.) Although it’s possible that 41% of people currently in TV commercials are black.

Again, this is a great example of the premise of Dr. Todd Rose’s book “Collective Illusions,” that so much of what people believe is based on misconceptions and falsehoods, many of them promulgated by groups with an agenda that are trying to sound bigger and more powerful than they really are. And the way they keep those illusions alive is by scaring people out of questioning them.

Daring to Speak Up

March 22, 2022

It’s good to see that more people are finally daring to speak up about the outrageous unfairness of allowing biological males to compete against female athletes and steal all their records, awards and scholarships.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/va-tech-swimmer-ncaa-transgender-participation

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-candidates-women-defeated-by-lia-thomas

Let’s hope it’s a sign that people are finally shaking off their fear of “cancel culture” and letting a tiny minority whose voices are amplified by social media cow them into quietly accepting – or at least not speaking up about -- things that are obviously wrong.

As a reminder, revisit this story from last November.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/11/11/america-is-being-held-hostage-a-progressive-left-that-represent-6-of-the-electorate-n1531975

It reported that Pew Research Center found only about 6% of the electorate are far-left “progressives” who believe the kind of radical “social justice” views that are being forced onto the rest of us. Ironically, these champions of “diversity and inclusion” are mostly young, white, college-indoctrinated (I can’t bring myself to say “educated”) atheists who’ve decided that their point of view is the only one that’s allowed to be expressed. If any other group that looked like them were doing the same thing they’re doing, they’d call those people racists and fascists. But at a paltry 6% of the population, they’re not just the tail wagging the dog, they’re a stub tail.

On a related subject, if you haven’t seen this weekend’s “Huckabee” on TBN yet, then check out my interview with Dr. Todd Rose, author of one of the most important books of the decade, “Collective Illusions.” It’s a game-changer and a mind-opener.

https://youtu.be/FMo-rxxytAE

It will make you realize how people have been misled to believe this nation is irreparably divided into warring radical camps with no common ground, when in fact, most of us still believe in the same traditional American values we’ve always believed in. We’ve just been bullied and brainwashed by a small group of far-too-influential loudmouths into accepting poisonous media and political narratives that aren’t true.

Hunter Biden Story Update

March 22, 2022

We’re working on a deeper dig into the latest about Hunter Biden’s laptop, but until then, here’s a round-up of the New York Post’s great commentary and follow-up on the New York Times FINALLY admitting, a year-and-a-half too late, that the Post's scoop about the laptop and the incriminating information on it was true and not “Russian disinformation.”

First, the Post editors’ op-ed blasting their dishonest, biased, Democrat campaign mouthpiece competitor, the Times:

https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/the-times-finally-admits-hunter-bidens-laptop-is-real/

Columnist Michael Goodwin on how the Times and other Big Media and Big Tech companies continue to try to hide their successful efforts to tilt the 2020 election by preventing voters from knowing the truth about Biden family corruption:

https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/the-new-york-times-hates-to-say-the-post-told-you-so/

Kyle Smith has more on the actual “collusion to rig an election” that the Times eagerly took part in:

https://nypost.com/2022/03/18/how-big-tech-media-and-dems-killed-the-hunter-biden-story/

White House press secretary Jen Psaki keeps spinning and deflecting to keep from answering questions about Hunter Biden and his influence peddling deals.

https://nypost.com/2022/03/18/jen-psaki-brushes-off-bidens-conflicts-of-interest/

Finally, today’s MUST-READ: The New York Post’s front page story about the 51 alleged “intelligence experts” who signed a letter suggesting that the laptop story was Russian disinformation. This was used as an excuse by the media to ignore the story and by social media giants like Twitter to censor any mention of it and to suspend accounts of people who dared to share it.

https://nypost.com/2022/03/18/intelligence-experts-refuse-to-apologize-for-smearing-hunter-biden-story/

The Post attempted to contact all 51 of these lying spies to see if they wanted to apologize for their false claim misleading the voters. Most ignored their ringing shoe phones and didn’t respond.

Of the handful who did, none apologized. All lamely pointed to some weasel words in the 5th paragraph of the letter that admitted they didn’t know if the emails were genuine or not, but that it “has the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” If they were honest (and we’re getting deep into hypotheticals here), they would have said they “didn’t know” and let it go at that. The claim that it might be Russian disinformation was all the media outlets needed, and the signers never issued a clarification when that was treated as solid fact.

It should be pointed out that one of the chief instigators of this letter, and one of the few who responded to defend it, was former DNI director and professional liar James Clapper. I don’t use that term “professional liar” lightly or as a pejorative, but as an accurate title. Clapper is now a CNN pundit (a pretty good indication all by itself), he has a history of perjuring himself before Congress…

https://jonathanturley.org/2013/07/03/perjury-by-permission-clapper-apologizes-for-false-testimony-and-the-congress-remains-silent/

…And he spent years on CNN calling Trump a “Russian asset” as he pushed the “collusion hoax” drummed up by Hillary Clinton and her campaign.

These days, he and his CNN cohorts spend a lot of their time pushing the idea that a few unarmed nuts commandeering Nancy Pelosi’s podium for 10 minutes was a serious attempt at “insurrection.” I would argue that if Clapper and his fellow “intelligence experts” and “reputable journalists” want to see true insurrectionists who misused their positions of power to try to undermine and overthrow the duly elected President of the United States, they might try looking into the nearest mirror.

I don’t quote every childish thing that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweets to her enraptured fans because there are only 24 hours in a day, but this one was especially weird and noteworthy. A follower asked, "How do you respond when people accuse you of being a 'socialist'?" The answer to that, of course, is that she is a socialist. She calls herself a “Democratic socialist,” which is a distinction without a difference.

But for some reason, she decided to whisper conspiratorially into the camera, "Let me tell you a secret. Most people don't really know what capitalism is. Most people don't even know what socialism is. But most people are not capitalists, because they don't have capitalist money. They're not billionaires."

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/landonmion/2022/03/19/let-me-tell-you-a-secret-aoc-whispers-to-her-followers-that-most-people-dont-understand-what-capitalism-is-n2604764

If she learned this in her Boston University economics class, she should demand a refund of her capitalist parents' tuition money. Capitalism isn’t the money billionaires have. It’s the economic system that allows people who start with nothing to become millionaires and billionaires.

She went on, "The label doesn't matter as much as talking about policies. That's easier to understand. Do you think people should die because they can't afford insulin? Do you think that fossil fuel CEOs should decide whether the planet gets set on fire? Me neither."

For the record, I know quite a few capitalists, and none of them think people should die for lack of insulin or that anyone should set the planet on fire. But after looking at her Twitter feed, you might want to set your phone on fire.

You can see why I don’t bother to talk about this subject much, but that one was crazy enough to make the news, and it’s a good lead in to this introduction to her Republican challenger, Tina Fortes.

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/aoc-challenger-tina-fortes-new-ad-has-aoc-and-her-squad-pals-shaking-in-their-boots/

She’s a small businesswoman who supports the police, border enforcement and school choice. She recently said, “AOC and her allies have killed New Yorkers with their bail reform and soft-on-crime policies, imprisoned us in our homes with lockdowns, ruined small businesses with shutdowns, violated our rights with mandates, and tortured children with masks for political science, not medical science. Enough is enough. New Yorkers have suffered because these liberals acted like dictators drunk on power. They must be stopped and it starts with firing AOC.”

She even had a better answer than AOC to the question of why people call AOC a socialist: “AOC is a communist sympathizer. She’s the darling of the Democratic Socialists of America – a Marxist organization that glorified Cuba’s Castro regime and Venezuela’s Maduro regime.”

You’ve also gotta love her campaign slogan: “Make AOC Bartend Again.”

Sadly, AOC “represents” a New York district that’s so blue that Nancy Pelosi was likely referring to it when she said that in some New York races, a glass of water with a (D) after its name could win. But who knows? Maybe this is the year when even in districts like that, a Republican could have a chance. Especially when the Democrat glass of water is half-empty and obviously cracked.

Dear Miss Mannerly:

I am a highly respected journalist for a major, very-long-running and highly respected weekly television news show. On occasion, I am called upon to interview a particular person, a powerful but deeply frustrating individual, and I always try my best to conduct myself like the highly respected professional I am.

But he just makes it so hard! And not just for me –- none of my colleagues and friends can stand him or the people who support him.  We don't care for his uncouth, bombastic style, although I must admit he was polite when I was interviewing him.

Being a seasoned, objective journalist who is always in pursuit of the truth, I have felt the need a couple of times to actually correct this man, on camera, right in the middle of our conversation.  Perish the thought that I would allow misinformation in one of my interviews!  I tried to do it as politely as possible, even calling him “sir” as I corrected him. But both times, stories came out later that showed him, technically, to be right, I suppose. In the last instance, I had told him a particular piece of evidence was ‘unverified” when apparently it was real. Goodness, that was an honest mistake. if it was real, why would our own FBI have chosen not to reveal it?

Anyway, now some are saying not only that I owe him an apology, but two apologies. How should I handle this?

– Clueless

Gentle reader:

If she is not mistaken, Miss Mannerly believes she saw both of those “Clueless” interviews. Here is what you should do, without delay:

Go to your desk and select two pieces of the most beautiful personal stationery you own. Hand-write, preferably in calligraphy if you are skilled in that area, two heartfelt thank-you’s to this gentleman for allowing you to interview him. Apologize profusely for correcting him on camera, and admit you were wrong –- wrong in your facts, and wrong to falsely “correct” him. Include an offer to issue an on-camera apology if he would like you to do this, admitting you were wrong and promising that it will never happen again.

Mail these two letters of apology under separate cover. On the flap of each envelope, it would be a nice touch to add a wax stamp with the CBS logo, to at least offer the impression that your colleagues are sorry as well. Perhaps the producers of your show would like to write separate letters of apology. Miss Mannerly assumes they are all very sorry, as she has heard on occasion that yours is a “sorry show.”

It would be thoughtful to send flowers as well; make sure the bouquet includes some purple lisianthus, the flower of appreciation and gratitude.

Even the Washington Post has admitted, perhaps inadvertently, what the January 6 "investigation" is really all about for Democrats.

We won’t link to WAPO here, because they’re a paid subscription-only service and a propaganda rag --- a candy mint AND a breath mint --- but Tristan Justice at The Federalist offers a great report on the story. WAPO’s headline on Friday was “Jan. 6 committee faces a thorny challenge: persuading the public to care.” (Incidentally, they also ran an op-ed by esteemed former attorney general James Comey on March 7, “Every Jan. 6 case matters.” We think it matters, too, but for very different reasons.)

But here’s the Federalist’s piece from Sunday: “Democrats running the Jan. 6 Committee finally admitted the obvious: it’s a show trial all about the midterms.”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/19/democrats-admit-jan-6-committee-is-all-about-midterms/

Democrats in Congress –- also “Republicans” Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney, who has devoted her congressional tenure not to representing the people of Wyoming but in securing a personal vendetta against Trump –- are dismayed because after 14 months, interest in their Priority-One “investigation” has grown tepid, even among many of their Democrat constituents. Gee, who would have thought that with skyrocketing gas prices, a lingering pandemic and the world suddenly becoming a giant powderkeg, Americans have had other things to think about? And those other things do NOT help Democrats.

The left is so concerned about this --- so desperate to have this one thing to run on --- that they’ve reportedly discussed hiring a journalist (correction: “journalist,” or maybe we should just go on and say “propagandist”) to write their reports and produce compelling videos that could be spread around the internet and played during their televised hearings. They’ve been talking about starting public hearings, ideally televised in prime-time (!), in April. According to the Democrat who chairs House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, they intend to showcase “how Trump interfered with official congressional business through his false rhetoric and unlawful actions.”  In other words, they want to say President Trump is a liar and a criminal.  On prime-time TV.  Before the elections.

(If they do hold those televised hearings, you’ll be happy to know that “we watch the news, so you don’t have to!” My writers tell me they deserve hazard pay for this assignment, due to the extreme toxicity.)

https://www.axios.com/jan-6-committee-prime-time-hearings-418b8cbb-6ac5-48c2-807c-a307b426ba97.html

To show what kind of propagandizing we’re up against, a more recent write-up that we won’t link to, from the “social justice” website Truthout, included this paragraph: “Trump’s words were indeed incendiary. On the morning of January 6, 2021, he gave a speech to his loyalists in front of the White House, telling that their country was being ‘stolen’ and that they couldn’t take it back ‘with weakness.’ He then encouraged the mob to go to the Capitol while Congress was in session, certifying the Electoral College win for Biden.” NOT mentioned was that he told them to go “peacefully and patriotically” and that he never said anything about interfering with the process. Also not mentioned by the ironically-named "Truthout" was the fact that the people who moved the barricades and breached the Capitol were already there when Trump was speaking and didn’t even hear him.

Misinformation!  Lack of context!  Of course, Twitter and Facebook will suspend them immediately.

I digress.  Anyway, Democrats want an interim January 6 report in addition to their final report, which will be timed to fall shortly before midterm voting starts. California Rep. Peter Aguilar told WAPO that they want to make sure their reports aren’t written in “Congressional Research Service” style but in a way that will engage readers. Here’s the key observation from the WAPO story, which gives Democrats’ real motive away:

“...A final report...will be published ahead of the November midterms –- with the findings likely a key part of the Democrats’ midterm strategy. They hope their recommendations to avoid another insurrection will be adopted, but also that their work will repel voters from Republicans who they say helped propel the attack.”

Most of us understand that the vast majority of Trump supporters who showed up for the Capitol Hill rally were simply exercising their constitutionally-protected right to assemble and protest. And according to an analysis done by The Federalist, only 8 of the 96 subpoenas issued by Nancy Pelosi’s inquisition went to individuals associated with violence at the Capitol. In addition to those 96 subpoenas, there are 100 more for the telephone records of individuals whose names are still under seal.

To the surprise of no one, the Committee is not even touching the legitimate security failures on that day, including Pelosi’s failure to provide security after thousands of National Guard troops had been offered by President Trump. Here’s an enlightening article from (of all places) CNN in July of last year, explaining where the Democrats were and were not willing to go in their “investigation.”

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/20/politics/january-6-probe-republican-strategy/index.html

One thing the Democrats can in fact be gleeful about is the successful adoption into the lexicon of the word “insurrection” to describe that day’s riot. By any stretch of a sane person’s imagination, a small, ragtag group of unarmed people upset by what they saw as election fraud is NOT an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. Neither is a crowd of mostly elderly and otherwise harmless people who entered the Capitol not knowing they were doing anything wrong. But thanks to a huge propaganda push, it became the mainstream go-to word, used routinely.

It was, of course, used in the WAPO piece, as seen above. And Arnold Schwarzenegger, who unfortunately has spent way too much time around the Kennedy family, used it in his otherwise-powerful video to the Russian people about the fight in Ukraine.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60794809

“And may I remind you,” Schwarzenegger said, “that I speak with the same heartfelt concern as I spoke to the American people when a wild crowd was storming the U.S.Capitol, trying to overthrow our government.”

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/full-transcript-arnold-schwarzenegger-urges-russian-troops-in-ukraine-to-go-home/

News flash to Arnold: They were NOT trying to overthrow our government. But such a characterization is certainly in keeping with Tristan Justice’s observation on the anniversary of January 6: that the Democrats are using their lore about that day to substitute one hoax for another. It’s pure politics.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/06/one-year-ago-today-a-new-hoax-was-born/

Here’s yet another reason to love Dolly Parton: she requested that her name be removed from this year’s nominees for the “Rock and Roll” Hall of Fame. Dolly was at #4 out of five open slots on the fan vote board and feared she might beat out someone who actually belongs there. She’s one of the greatest country singer/songwriters of all time, but she’s not a rock musician and she and everyone else (except the Rock Hall of Fame board, apparently) knows it.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/dolly-parton-removes-herself-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-nomination

Her request was humble and generous toward other artists, as is typical of Dolly, but it could also be read as subtly chiding the Hall of Fame for its notorious habit of nominating people who don’t belong there while snubbing those who obviously do (I’ve previously noted the long list of those who’ve been inexplicably snubbed, including Jethro Tull, the Guess Who, the Monkees, Blue Oyster Cult, the Jam and Meat Loaf, while the Sugar Hill Gang, Tupac Shakur, Laura Nyro, Janet Jackson, Madonna and Jay-Z are all in.) Dolly nicely wrote that her husband has always wanted her to cut a rock album, and she hopes they’ll consider her again if she ever does that.

Not-nice subtext: “I’ve NEVER made a rock album, Einsteins!”

Now, let’s hope Lionel Richie, Dionne Warwick and Eminem follow suit. Nothing against any of these artists, but like Dolly, they don’t make rock music and they know it.

I’m also sad to have to report that Willie Nelson’s sister, Bobbie Nelson, has died at 91.

https://www.keranews.org/arts-culture/2022-03-11/bobbie-nelson-willie-nelsons-sister-and-bandmate-dead-at-91

She was his first band member and the pianist for his iconic band for decades. She could play whatever style Willie’s songs required, from old time gospel to rollicking honky-tonk to Great American Songbook. Willie recently wrote of how she always looked after her little brother, and that she was a “genuine piano prodigy,” far more of a musical prodigy than he was. Check out that story from the Dallas public TV station KERA to learn more about this remarkable lady who contributed so much to Willie’s musical legacy from just outside the spotlight, and to see a rare sample of her performing all on her own.

There’s an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. With virtually everyone in San Francisco now having become a crime victim thanks to “progressive” district attorney Chesa Boudin’s policy of ignoring crime and releasing criminals back into the streets, is it possible that even San Francisco liberals are capable of having some sense literally knocked into their heads?

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2022/03/17/woke-california-district-attorney-finds-himself-in-hot-water-n537284

A new poll by EMC Research found that 68% of likely primary voters plan to vote to throw Boudin out of office. That includes 64% of registered Democrats. Nearly three-quarters of respondents have an unfavorable opinion of Boudin, and 61% believe he’s responsible for the rising crime rate. Really? What was their first clue?

Between this and the recent surprise ousting of three ultra-left school board members, there are hopeful signs that even in San Francisco, the “woke” can wake up when things get bad enough. It remains to be seen, however, whether they will replace these blights on the public good with anyone better, or, as New Yorkers have done, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

This is, after all, the city so tolerant and devoted to diversity that its elected officials now refuse to do business or travel to more than half of America. A recent memo from the City Administrator pointed out that due to their disapproval of other places’ insufficiently woke policies on such leftist shibboleths as abortion, LGBTQ+++ issues and election integrity laws (i.e., “voter suppression”), San Francisco is now boycotting 28 of the 50 states.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2022/03/15/san-francisco-boycotts-most-of-the-u-s-for-insufficient-wokeness-n1566587

This is making it difficult and expensive for the city to conduct basic public business, since they have to source every necessity from building contractors to bus parts from the dwindling handful of options that are still pure enough in their wokeness. And I’d be willing to bet there aren’t too many good contractors or bus part factories still in those places, since they’ve probably already moved to red states.

You’d think that when a city is overrun with crime, homelessness, drug needles and human feces, the people would be so furious that they’d throw out every last public official who thinks none of that is as important as virtue signaling about other places not showing enough deference to trans people. But in San Francisco, the jury is still out. I’m hopeful for the next elections, but I’ll believe they’re recovered their sanity when I see it.

Mass Migration Event

March 18, 2022

Axios reports that US intelligence officials fear a “mass migration event” in which 170,000 illegal immigrants will stream across the Mexican border if the Biden White House ends a Trump-era immigration policy of expedited expulsion due to the pandemic.

https://www.westernjournal.com/report-biden-officials-fear-mass-migration-event-coming-southern-border-soon/

The White House responded with this statement: “Of course the administration is doing our due diligence to prepare for potential changes at the border. That is good government in action. As always is the case, this Administration is working every day to provide relief to immigrants, restore order, fairness and humanity to our immigration system and bring it into the 21st century.”

I would respond that of all the ways you could describe Biden’s handling of the border and (illegal) immigration, “good government in action” is hardly the phrase that springs to mind. Consider that this 170,000-strong “mass migration” that some are so worried about is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the over 1.8 million illegal entrants, the highest on record, that were estimated to have come into the US during Biden’s first year alone.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/forecast-1-8m-illegal-migrants-under-biden-worst-ever-year

The Administration reportedly plans to deal with this potential surge through the newly-formed Southwest Border Coordination Center, which functions like a “war room,” “coordinating responses to issues relating to the southwest border among different agencies.”

Or for once, they could just not end a Trump policy that’s working. Or try securing the border instead of leaving it wide open. For the record, those things would be examples of “good government in action.” I point that out for them because I suspect they would never recognize that on their own.

Warning to all “fact”-checkers and online content moderators (censors): This commentary discusses the theme of election interference, specifically in the 2020 presidential election. And it's all demonstrably true. While some on the left like to rail about supposed “voter suppression,” there’s something else that really can and does affect the outcome of elections, and that’s why it’s used. I’m talking about voter INFORMATION suppression. Voters need information, and to deny them this is to deceive them. We’re tired of the lies.

A poll from the Media Research Center a few weeks after the election in seven key swing states showed that, among the Biden voters who were unaware of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and some others such as the Tara Reid allegations, a full 16 percent said that if they’d known, they would not have voted for Biden. They included 4 percent who would have switched and voted for Trump, another 4 percent voting for a third candidate, and another 4 percent not voting for President. Another 5 percent would not have gone to the polls at all. Then there were 5 percent who just wouldn’t answer the question.

https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/alexander-watson/poll-shows-media-censorship-cheated-voters-vital-info-robbed

Recall that the great Miranda Devine of the New York Post broke the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop, abandoned by him at a Delaware computer repair shop, and later wrote a bestselling book –- highly recommended –- called LAPTOP FROM HELL. Of course, readers of this newsletter know all about what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop and don’t need a refresher. Along with incredible debauchery surrounding Hunter’s personal life, it contained startling information about the Biden family’s foreign business dealings.

Major news outlets such The New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico and NPR suppressed the story before the 2020 election, with the NYT calling it “unsubstantiated” even in September of 2021. Later the Times re-edited that story for their archives but did not issue a formal correction.

But on Wednesday, deep into an inside-page story about Hunter Biden’s taxes being under federal investigation, they quietly acknowledged the legitimacy of the laptop story, saying that files from Hunter’s laptop had been “authenticated.”

To the surprise of no one, major TV networks other than FOX News didn’t even seem to notice, though we may safely assume they did. But on Thursday, the NY Post editorial board had this response, a must-read:

https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/the-times-finally-admits-hunter-bidens-laptop-is-real/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=Slack

Recall that Hunter’s former partner on some China business deals, Tony Bobulinksi, came forward in the fall of 2020, right after Devine had broken the story, and confirmed that the Hunter emails bearing his name were real. (He was also interviewed by the FBI.) “How did the Times [finally] authenticate the laptop?” asks the NYP board. “It doesn’t say...No facts have changed since fall 2020. They knew the laptop was real from the start. They just didn’t want to say so."

The Post editorial board also mentioned the meeting between Joe Biden and an official from Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian energy company that had hired Hunter and his partner Devon Archer to be on its board. The Times had cast doubt on this meeting as well, they said, simply by quoting a Biden campaign spokesperson who said it the meeting wasn’t on his official schedule. Well, if a Biden campaign spokesperson says so...!  But Devine can document that it must have taken place.

(Note: We’re not linking to NYT stories on this because it is a subscription service that only pretends to be reporting the news. You’d actually have to give them money even to read one article.)

Sixteen months after Joe Biden was elected –- barely squeaking by in key battleground states –- the Times felt it was safe to quietly mention that the laptop was “authenticated.” Can you even imagine what their reporting on this would have been like in October 2020 if such a laptop had belonged to someone in Donald Trump’s family? It would have been more frenzied than a drug-fueled orgy at Chateau Marmont, one of Hunter’s favorite places to party in Los Angeles.

Speaking of must-read commentaries, Matt Vespa at Townhall has a great one, pointing out that the Hunter Biden laptop story was THE “October Surprise” of the 2020 election, buried by the liberal news media and smeared by the same people who peddled the Steele “dossier” and the whole nonsensical Russian hoax in 2016.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/03/17/reckoning-all-the-crow-the-liberal-media-will-eat-over-hunter-biden-story-should-choke-them-out-n2604702?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky2

How many times does it have to happen? In story after story, we’ve got it right and they’re shown to be wrong, and they just keep trying to keep the lies going. Vespa points out that when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about this on Thursday, she could only weakly deflect. “I would point you to the Department of Justice,” she said, “and also to Hunter Biden’s representatives. He doesn’t work in government.” That’s irrelevant, Jen, and you know it.

Of course, in this era when so many are (unwisely) getting their news from social media, it wasn’t enough that newspapers such as the Times were suppressing information before the election. Twitter had to help, too, and they did, by actively censoring the Post for days, punishment for daring to report their true story. “Twitter banned us for supposedly publishing ‘hacked materials’ that weren’t hacked,” the editorial board said. “The company’s CEO apologized, but by that point, they had accomplished what they wanted. Like the Times, they cast enough doubt to avoid making their preferred candidate look bad.”

In October of 2020, readers of the Post (and this newsletter, of course) knew “that Hunter Biden pursued business deals in Europe and Asia” to the tune of billions of dollars, and that he “may have leveraged his father’s position as Vice President to do it.” There was much more, as you’re aware, such as the reference to setting aside 10 percent of the spoils for “the big guy.” But Twitter and other social media did what they could to contain all of this.

And the term “Russian disinformation” (used interchangeably with “misinformation” because many so-called journalists don’t even seem to know the distinction) was everywhere. Biden himself blamed Russia, in a presidential debate. Thursday night, Tucker Carlson had a great interview with Miranda Devine and also aired a fun montage of “journalists” and public officials repeating variations of the same "Russian disinformation" talking point over and over.

We couldn’t find a clip of just that segment posted yet; here’s the whole episode with the segment starting at 24:30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr6HL74NjHo

I said recently that Lesley Stahl needed to apologize to President Trump for contradicting him during an interview, after he correctly said he’d been spied on. Update: She now needs to apologize twice, this time for repeatedly insisting that the laptop “can’t be verified” as Hunter’s. When Trump presses her to tell him how she knows, she vapidly keeps insisting it can’t be verified.

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=50581443-31DE-4A4C-9858-8274544E8A62

President Trump was asked on Thursday–- not by Lesley Stahl –- about the NYT’s admission about the laptop, and we’d like to leave you with his comments, brief and to the point.

https://100percentfedup.com/trumps-response-to-hunter-laptop-story-being-confirmed-by-nyts-is-pure-gold-video/

I hope you’re able to escape from what the great Irish-American humorist P.J. O’Rourke called “All the trouble in the world” and enjoy St. Patrick’s Day today.

We took a brief pause from breaking news so that my staffers could spend some spring break time with their families, so I thought we should catch up on all the trouble in the world that we missed. But it turned out that there was very little “new” in the news for the first part of this week.

Vladimir Putin continued his horrific attack on Ukraine, ratcheting up the unconscionable attacks on civilians, including bombing a theater in Mariupol that was being used as a shelter for hundreds of civilians and plainly labeled on the outside with the Ukrainian word for “children.” At this writing, the death toll is still unknown, but there are hopeful signs, with reports of survivors emerging safely.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-forces-bombed-mariupol-theater-despite-signs-warning-children-were-sheltering-inside-ukraine

We’d also like to extend our sympathies and prayers to the families of Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and his colleague, Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, who were both killed when they were struck by incoming fire outside Kyiv. Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall was also injured in the attack, but he’s been safely evacuated and will recover. Our prayers for him as well.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/fox-news-cameraman-pierre-zakrzewski-killed-ukraine

The Biden Administration seems conflicted about whether this invasion makes Putin a “war criminal” (a rather toothless term, if the alleged criminal recognizes no authority to enforce the law against him.) Russia fired back, citing the many people killed by American bombs around the world. They conveniently overlook the difference that America bombed states and terrorist organizations that attacked us first, and while there have tragically been instances of innocent people who were killed, we’ve never invaded any nation that hadn’t attacked us first or harbored people who did.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/president-biden-calls-putin-war-criminal-invading-ukraine

Despite what you might have heard from Kamala Harris, Ukrainian President Zelensky said Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and he conceded that it is unlikely Ukraine will join NATO, which was one of the pretexts that Putin used for his invasion. That could signal a potential break in a ceasefire agreement, but only if you believe Putin is honest about his motives.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/zelensky-ukraine-conflict-nato-russia-b2037181.html

However, Ukraine has joined the EU’s Energy Union, uniting its power grid with Europe’s. Zelensky also warned that World War III may have already started in his country.

I miss the good old days, when the media were telling us that if Trump got elected, he’d start World War III, and I could rest easy knowing that was just partisan nonsense.

Another Biden Word Salad

March 17, 2022

President Biden continued making public statements that had people again calling for him to take a cognitive test. They weren’t just word salad, they were a whole word salad bar.

The weirdest might have been when he started talking about how people try to blackmail their exes with naked photos. There’s a Presidential quote for the ages! But Nick Arama at Redstate.com thinks he knows how that image found its way into Joe’s brain and thus fell out of his mouth: it’s exactly the kind of thing that might happen to his son, Hunter.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/16/biden-makes-bizarre-comment-about-naked-blackmail-that-has-everyone-talking-n536855

Other bizarre Bidenisms ranged from tongue fumbles like referring to Kamala Harris as the First Lady to transparent whoppers such as saying that his “green energy” push that’s helped gas skyrocket to upwards of $7 a gallon will save Americans $500 a year in energy costs. This stuff might be funny if it weren’t coming from the alleged leader of the free world during a time when we need someone who’s capable of dealing with countless domestic problems while also avoiding World War III.

https://www.westernjournal.com/word-salad-climate-dressing-6-disastrous-moments-joe-bidens-speech-dnc

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/03/16/bidens-remarks-at-equal-pay-event-were-a-dumpster-fire-n2604627

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/15/bidens-trainwreck-dnc-fundraiser-speech-shows-where-his-priorities-lie-n536386

During one of her press briefings a few days ago, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki brought up that old accusation about Russia “hacking” the 2016 election. There is no evidence that Russia changed any vote tallies or did anything else to change the outcome, and Psaki never really made clear what she meant by “hacking the election,” so we find it ironic that she said this in the same briefing in which she spoke about “misinformation.”

It’s also pretty hilarious that anyone questioning the electronic security of the 2020 vote is roundly scorned, even censored and canceled, while questioning the electronic security of the 2016 vote is just fine, even patriotic at a time when Russia has shown itself to be such an enemy.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/psaki-says-russia-hacked-2016-election-during-briefing-on-combating-disinformation

We’d like to focus on one part of Jerry Dunleavy’s report, the paragraph that has to do with the supposed Russian “hacking” of the DNC’s emails. He wrote that “U.S. intelligence officials did conclude Russian operatives were behind the hacking of Democratic emails in 2016. Russian military intelligence interfered in the 2016 presidential election, in part by spearphishing Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email systems, then providing them to WikiLeaks, for dissemination, Robert Mueller’s special counsel report concluded. Russia has denied involvement, and WikiLeaks has denied receiving emails from Russia.”

Of course, we can’t believe anything that comes from the Kremlin –- or, sadly, from U.S. intelligence officials –- but I do have considerably more confidence in what comes from WikiLeaks. The story about Russia “hacking” the DNC still belongs in the category of misinformation. It’s a talking point. I say this even though Robert Mueller concluded in his special counsel report that this had happened. We know now that this conclusion was reached without any actual evidence, because the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike never allowed the FBI to do a forensic examination of the DNC server. The FBI never demanded that they turn it over and, incredibly, took CrowdStrike at its word. We scratch our heads at how the U.S. intel community could legitimately have had “high confidence” –- their words –- that the Russians did this. For what it’s worth, here’s what Mueller said at the time, as reported by Dunleavy in 2019...

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mueller-says-russias-gru-stole-clinton-dnc-emails-and-gave-them-to-wikileaks

But fast-forward to 2022, and Margot Cleveland is reporting that Special Counsel John Durham is investigating the 2016 DNC server hack. If anyone is serious about getting down to the truth about this, you know he is. Until now, there was no known link between the Alfa Bank hoax being investigated by Durham and the DNC “hack,” but now there is. As it happens, the Defense Department tasked the same Georgia Tech researcher involved in the Alfa Bank hoax –- “Researcher – 1” in Durham’s court filings pertaining to the Michael Sussmann case but known to be Mano Antonakakis –- with investigating the “origins” of the DNC hacker.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/10/exclusive-special-counsels-office-is-investigating-the-2016-dnc-server-hack/

And here is Cleveland's update on that story:

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/14/exclusive-researcher-tells-durham-he-saw-holes-in-the-alfa-bank-hoax-before-democrats-shopped-it-to-the-fbi/

According to an email obtained by The Federalist on March 9 in response to a “Right-to-Know” request, the special counsel’s office is indeed investigating the so-called “hack,” and “prosecutors harbor concerns” about the Defense Department’s choice of this particular researcher to investigate it.

Cleveland’s report provides a good refresher on Durham’s investigation, but it boils down to this: According to Durham’s indictment of Sussmann (Perkins Coie attorney for the Hillary campaign and DNC), a cyber executive named Rodney Joffe (“Tech Executive- 1”) asked Antonakakis and another Georgia Tech researcher, David Dagon (“Researcher – 2”) to find some way to use internet data to connect then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia. Antonakakis –- whom I would add has shown himself in emails to be strongly anti-Trump –- apparently couldn’t find anything useful, because he told Joffe that the results “do not make sense with the storyline you have.” Even so, Joffe came up with a draft “white paper” containing the fake story of a connection between Trump and Alfa Bank, which he gave to these two men and another researcher involved, April Lorenzen, to review. Then Sussmann passed this “white paper” to then-FBI general counsel James Baker, purportedly out of his sense of duty but secretly in service to Joffe and the Hillary campaign, which Durham found was being billed for Sussmann's services.

Until The Federalist got hold of this particular email from Antonakakis, nothing was known of any connection between the Alfa Bank story and the DNC “hack,” but he's the link. Antonakakis had written it to general counsel and other higher-ups at Georgia Tech about a week after his testimony before Durham’s DC grand jury, highlighting “areas of concern” that he wanted to discuss “after the dust settles.” In Cleveland’s words, he “launched a soliloquy that perfectly described the Russia-collusion and the plot by anti-Trump politicians and the deep state intelligence and law enforcement communities to take down the President of the United States.”

It was also a rant in which he painted himself as the victim of the special counsel. He said he’d been asked “point-blank” if “DARPA [the central R&D organization of the Defense Department] should be instructing you to investigate the origins of a hacker (Guccifer2.0) that hacked a political entity (DNC)?” How DARE the special counsel’s office ask that question, he steamed. It’s easily determined from the email that he had indeed been asked to investigate this.

The fact that he was being questioned because his team had allowed itself to be exploited by Sussmann and Joffe for political reasons seems to have been lost on him.

Antonakakis reveals himself to be a sanctimonious and hypocritical piece of work who actually believes he was involved in this fake-narrative project to “preserve our democracy.” Yes, that's the phrase he used, one we've heard all too often from Democrats.

So, why did the special counsel’s office “dare” to ask him about this? Something had to lead Durham to find out, or at least suspect, that Antonakakis had been tasked by DARPA with investigating the DNC "hack." And something had to lead Durham to be concerned about this. What did this arm of the Defense Department have to do with it, and who there was involved? Did they gain access to the DNC server? If so, was it Sussmann, as attorney for the DNC and Hillary’s campaign, who granted it?

This opens up a whole new area for Durham, but one that continues to tie together the same group of folks. Sussmann ties them to Hillary, where (as we’ve said many times) all roads lead. Too much remains a mystery about the DNC “hack” --- note that we always put "hack" in quotes, as there is no proof it even WAS a hack, let alone by Russia. Julian Assange has said flat-out that neither Russia nor any other state government was his source. Yet it seems to have been the event that spawned the whole long “Russia Russia Russia” hoax that, in some circles, still refuses to die. Other than Assange, who else knows the identity of whoever obtained the Podesta/DNC emails and gave them to him?

My good friend Colonel Ken Allard has sent me this Ukraine update for my newsletter readers. I hope you will read it!

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

Three weeks into the Russo-Ukraine War of 2022, it is reasonable to ask: Who is deterring whom - and from what?

So far, the only one being deterred seems to be Joe Biden, who clumsily refused to allow Polish Mig-29’s to be transferred to Ukraine despite the fervent pleas of embattled president Volodomyr Zelenskiy. Meanwhile, Old Uncle Joe was busy linking Vladimir Putin not only to the war in Ukraine but also to sky-rocketing American gas prices and rising inflation, twin outrages for which the Russian premiere bears only slight, if any, responsibility. Through such constant buffoonery, President Biden seems intent on channeling that canonical Mayor of Amity, hilariously reassuring townsfolk that a lucrative tourist season lay just ahead, despite Jaws occasionally snacking on their relatives.

Because we are a nation divorced from studying such politically incorrect subjects as military history, we can no longer distinguish the consequential from the trivial, the capillaries from the arteries.  From Afghanistan to Ukraine, our intelligence community has been hit hardest, seemingly unable to predict whether Tuesday will be followed by Wednesday. Not only were our intel weenies utterly mistaken in predicting how fast the Taliban would triumph but they also admitted last week to the House Intelligence Committee that they had seriously under-estimated the fighting spirit of Ukraine’s citizens. Naturally, they over-corrected, reciting a laundry list of Russian tactical shortcomings. Caught up in the latest zeitgeist, Francis Fukuyama - famous for predicting the end of history several decades too early - argued last week “Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine…The army in the field will reach a point whether they can no longer be supplied nor withdrawn, and morale will vaporize.” https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/preparing-for-defeat/

While we can all hope that Professor Fukuyama will be proven right, America’s enemies seem to be a long way from desperation. While we plead for them to produce additional oil and prepare to sign yet another nuclear non-proliferation scam, the Iranians were not deterred at all - raining their rockets down on an American consulate in Irbil, Iraq. How much does Putin fear NATO - with or without a rearmed Germany - when he launches air-strikes that came within a dozen miles of Polish territory over the weekend? And for good measure also threatened to target logistical routes acting as lifelines to the Ukrainian resistance?

Please forgive me for casting doubt on such widely-cherished Beltway assumptions: But Vladimir Putin and his fellow conspirators in the new Axis nations are not desperate! Instead, they have concluded - correctly in my view - that America suffers from catastrophically weak leadership, that it has abandoned its core spiritual values, as well as the world-beating confidence that our country once took for granted. While conceding that American martial prowess can be painfully recovered (or at least not entirely ruled out) neo-Axis leaders believe that the timing will never be better for a basic re-ordering of the global order. That new order will naturally reflect non-Western interests and dismiss any weaker set of values.  

Ukraine is already one major stake in this game, Taiwan is surely next while NATO’s newly-minted Baltic states might not be far off. When measured against the potential stakes, who cares if Russian logistical problems persist, if they lose a few tanks or if they sacrifice a few more generals trying to recapture the morale of their troops? As my friend LTG Jim Dubik wrote recently, “Like other raw realists, Putin has no intention of stopping with Ukraine…Raw realists (like him) take what they can, when they can, until someone stops them.” https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/thehill.com/opinion/national-security/596614-the-world-after-the-war-in-ukraine-who-or-what-will-stop-putin?amp

I am also a realist of sorts, one who cherishes memories of the West Point faculty but now wonders how far the fault lines extend when five cadets are hospitalized after taking fentanyl-laced cocaine while on spring break. To say nothing of that loser who belatedly forfeited his commission only after posting a selfie that argued, “Communism will win.”  It is also frustrating to see other losers with stars on the shoulders of their World War II knock-off uniforms, who have either forgotten or never learned the harsh lessons of real war.

They now confront an opponent who will shrug off small shortcomings to focus on the larger objective- using traditional Russian reliance on massed troops and massed firepower to compel the enemy’s total compliance or complete obliteration. He will not be stopped by the mindless half-measures or the bloodless counter-moves now passing for “deterrence.”

During a three-decade career, Colonel Allard advanced from draftee to the West Point faculty and Dean of the National War College. The author of four books, he was also an on-air military analyst for the networks of NBC News.

 

Sunday Standard

Good morning! Here are the top stories from this week that I think you will want to read. Topics include:

  • Elon Musk Speaks Out
  • Wisconsin special counsel: nursing home election fraud
  • Durham responds masterfully to Sussmann's lawyers
  • UKRAINE MAILBAG: Here's what we know
  • The Price of Gas Skyrockets
  • Biden bans Russian oil imports

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee


DAILY BIBLE VERSE

When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

Psalm 56:3

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Elon Musk Speaks Out

Lately, Tesla and Starlink billionaire Elon Musk has been showing more common sense and leadership than we’re getting from our own White House. He stood up for increasing American oil production (even though he sells electric cars), and in less than a day, he provided satellite access and equipment for Ukraine to get back onto the Internet. But now, he’s drawing the line at what he sees as doing the same thing Russia is doing.

https://www.westernjournal.com/governments-pressure-elon-musk-turn-assets-russia-tells-bring-gun-next-time/


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Putin signed a new law barring Russian news outlets from reporting on his war on Ukraine. In response, many governments (but not Ukraine’s, oddly) are pressuring media and Internet companies such as Starlink to ban Russian news outlets as propaganda. He tweeted, “We will not do so unless at gunpoint. Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.” He added, “And also my sympathies to the great people of Russia, who do not want this.”

I understand the impulse to ban Russian media outlets when we know they’re being forced to censor themselves and air Putin’s propaganda. But if we are aware of that in advance, wouldn’t it be useful for us to know what they’re telling their own people, so we know what we have to counter? Also, you never know when some brave journalist is going to slip in some helpful real information or make a stand that the world should see.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-news-walks-crackdown-media

In America, the Founders gave us free speech and freedom of the press because they trusted the people to have enough sense to know when they were hearing garbage ideas and argue them down and reject them. When the government starts deciding whose ideas are incorrect and unworthy of being spoken, that’s the slippery slope to tyranny.

We were already sliding that way as it is. Letting our government use Russia as an excuse to outright ban certain media outlets from the public square would only move us further down the well-known path of all fanatics, who eventually become what they once claimed to hate.

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Wisconsin special counsel: nursing home election fraud

Special counsels can be appointed at the state level, too, and it appears that one in Wisconsin has found evidence to confirm widespread election fraud.

The Wisconsin Assembly appointed Special Counsel Michael Gableman, a retired State Supreme Court justice, to investigate concerns about the 2020 election, and on Tuesday, his office issued its second interim report, which runs 150 pages. In Chapter 7, it confirms the conclusion of the Racine County Sheriff’s Office last fall that fraud occurred at Wisconsin nursing homes.

https://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/22/brandtjen/media/1552/osc-second-interim-report.pdf

It was the sheriff’s investigation that led to this broader one. Sheriff Christopher Schmaling held a press conference last October 28 at which lead investigator Michael Luell presented their findings. (Note that this hour-long press conference got mostly crickets from national media.) Luell explained that under Wisconsin election law, local municipalities must dispatch two special voting deputies, or SVDs, to residential care facilities to supervise the voting. These officials are tasked with personally delivering ballots to residents and witnessing the voting process. Under law, only a relative or an SVD may assist a resident with the voting process. Once the resident has voted, the SVD seals the ballot envelope and delivers it to the elections clerk.

This sounds like a great plan to preserve the chain of custody and discourage undue influence. Unfortunately, the sheriff’s investigation found that the Ridgewood Care Center in Racine violated every one of those requirements. Amazingly, the blame for this can be traced back to the Wisconsin Election Commission, whose members had allegedly taken it upon themselves to tell municipalities not to use the SVD system and to instead just mail ballots to residents. Such a directive would be illegal.

So it was up to staffers to help residents complete their ballots, and according to the sheriff, they “helped” them, all right --- improperly completing sections of the ballots, mishandling ballots and failing to secure them, and going beyond just reading the ballots to actively discussing the elections and candidates. In legal parlance, that is a no-no.

As Sheriff Schmaling said during his press conference, his investigation had covered only the Ridgewood Care Center, when Racine County was home to 11 such facilities, and Racine County is just one of 72 counties. “There are literally hundreds and hundreds of these facilities throughout the state of Wisconsin,” he said. “We would be foolish to think for a moment that this integrity issue, this violation of the statute, occurred to just this small group of people at one care facility in one county in the entire state.”

Several days after their press conference, the Sheriff’s Office announced that they had forwarded their conclusions to District Attorney Patricia Hanson, recommending that five members of the Wisconsin Election Commission be charged with election fraud, including two felony counts. (Only one member was not cited.) Margot Cleveland has details on the specific charges in her report for The Federalist.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/03/wisconsin-special-counsel-finds-widespread-election-fraud-in-2020-nursing-homes/

You can probably guess what happened next, which is to say nothing –- no charges were filed. After several months, DA Hanson concluded that she “lacked jurisdiction” and had no authority to prosecute the commissioners because they don’t live in Racine County and didn’t issue the “allegedly illegal directive doing away with SVD.” So, we're confused, as the sheriff's investigation had concluded they did do that.

And after deciding not to charge the commissioners, Hanson couldn’t very well charge the staff at the nursing homes, could she? She reasoned it this way: “[I]t would be unfair for me to expect these health care professionals would better understand the election law in Wisconsin than the Wisconsin Election Commission.” Never mind that she should have had higher expectations for the WEC; after lowering the bar for them, she was able to lower it even farther for the nursing home staff. Case dismissed!

Here’s some of the fallout as reported by a local news outlet, just a few days before the special counsel dropped his report.

https://journaltimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/four-wis-prosecutors-considering-whether-to-file-charges-against-elections-commissioners/article_b928849a-965f-512a-920c-62f9527b0844.html

Fortunately it didn’t end with that DA, and we now have an eye-opening special counsel report. This would not have happened without the sheriff’s investigation, which had stemmed from a complaint by some individual about potential violations at just one nursing home. Moral: one person speaking up CAN make a difference.

And now, the special counsel apparently has the goods. “Rampant fraud and abuse occurred statewide at Wisconsin’s nursing homes and other residential care facilities,” his report says.

This conclusion came after his investigation of more than 90 nursing homes in five different counties. We’re talking about blatant violations of the election code by nursing home staff and administrators, such as illegal handling of absentee ballots, illegal assistance in marking ballots, illegally “witnessing” the voting, and possible forgery. According to the report, the fraud and abuse resulted ultimately from the unlawful acts of the WEC’s members and staff, because on June 24, 2020, they did issue that directive to mail the ballots to the nursing homes and just follow the rules for regular absentee voting by mail.

The special counsel found “improbably high voting rates” at nursing homes. He was even able to determine that some of the filled-out ballots did not reflect the intent of the nursing home residents. He found suspected forgeries of signatures and votes by people who had been judged incompetent and could not legally vote. He found votes "cast" by people who were unaware of their surroundings and didn’t even know what year it was.

The WEC had tried to use COVID to justify what it had done, saying they didn’t want seniors ”disenfranchised.” Special Counsel Gableman was stern in his assessment of that: “In no way was WEC’s mandating illegal activity a ‘solution’ to ‘disenfranchisement’ and to suggest that WEC’s actions were a good faith effort at doing so ignores the facts and the law.” He went on to point out that the problems he had found, resulting from their directive, WERE examples of disenfranchisement.

Gableman said that to get the full picture of the significance of the fraud, “a state-wide, complete audit of all absentee votes from all facilities” required to use the SVD system is necessary.

In the 2020 election, Wisconsin went for Biden by a margin of just 20,682 votes. Since about 92,000 people reside in Wisconsin nursing homes, the findings of this investigation cast “doubt on the election result” according to the special counsel report. The Wisconsin State Assembly might authorize Gableman to expand his audit, but that’s not official at this writing. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul called the sheriff’s original investigation a “publicity stunt” and is highly unlikely to do anything with this one. That seems like a great reason for voters to show up in droves this fall and boot him out of office.

Incidentally, the report has chapters dealing with other issues in Wisconsin that we’ve discussed before, such as the infusion of money from Mark Zuckerberg and the Center for Tech and Civic Life, and potential violations of law concerning ballot security at dropboxes. Look for social media to flag discussions of this report as heretical and news outlets to trash it (Politico and BuzzFeed already have), even though it’s the product of a special counsel investigation and contains, presumably, facts.

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Durham responds masterfully to Sussmann's lawyers

Say what you will about former Attorney General Bill Barr…

https://www.abc4.com/news/national/trump-rips-barr-in-letter-to-nbcs-lester-holt/

...but he deserves credit for his fantastic pick of John Durham as special counsel to investigate the origins of the phony “Trump/Russia” probe. For a long time, we all wondered what he could possibly be doing, as months and months went by without any news. But now it’s easy to understand why the case is taking so long. There’s much more to it than anyone imagined at the outset.

In his latest court filing, made Friday to counter Michael Sussmann’s attorneys’ most recent motions, Durham has shown that he'd make a great archer, as he aims right at the target and hits a rhetorical bull’s-eye. Here’s a link to the whole 16-page document.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638.44.0_6.pdf

Recall that Sussmann, conveniently the attorney for both the Hillary Clinton campaign and Rodney Joffe (Tech Executive – 1), has been charged with lying to the FBI by failing to disclose that he was acting on behalf of legal clients. He maintained that he had brought the (fake) Alfa Bank story to the FBI simply out of his sense of patriotic duty, as a concerned citizen. A couple of weeks ago, in their motion to dismiss that charge, Sussmann’s attorneys said --- try not to laugh --- that their client hadn’t lied, but that even if he HAD lied, the lie was not material to the case and was protected by the First Amendment besides, so, come on, judge, just let it go.

Durham, in his response to the First Amendment argument, took aim and said, “Far from finding himself in the vulnerable position of an ordinary person whose speech is likely to be chilled, the defendant --- a sophisticated and well-connected lawyer --- chose to bring politically-charged allegations to the FBI’s chief legal officer [James Baker] at the height of an election season.

“He then chose to lie about the clients who were behind those allegations. Using such rare access to the halls of power for the purposes of political deceit is hardly the type of speech that the Founders intended to protect. The Court should therefore reject defendant’s invitation to expand the scope of the First Amendment to protect such conduct.”

Is that not great?

As for whether his (false) statements to the FBI were material to the case, Durham was spot-on again. Imagine how things might have gone if Sussmann had been honest about his true connections, given their implied motivations. His ties to the Clinton campaign could --- at least SHOULD --- have had tremendous bearing. As Durham put it:

“Had the defendant truthfully informed the FBI General Counsel that he was providing the information on behalf of one or more clients, as opposed to merely acting as a ‘good citizen,’ the FBI General Counsel and other FBI personnel might have asked a multitude of additional questions material to the case initiation process.”

It’s hard to imagine information more material to the case than this. As Durham said, the lie was capable of “influencing both the FBI’s decision to initiate an investigation and its subsequent conduct of that investigation.”

Knowledge of these attorney-client relationships, he said, “would have shed critical light on the origins of the allegations at issue.” It goes without saying that this would certainly not have been in the interest of Sussmann’s clients, Hillary Clinton and a man trying in an underhanded way to help get her elected. Sussmann's charade was completely in their interest.

“Given the temporal proximity to the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Durham said, “the FBI also might have taken any number of different steps in initiating, delaying, or declining the initiation of this matter had it known at the time that the defendant was providing information on behalf of the Clinton campaign and a technology executive at a private company.”

Sussmann’s attorneys had also moved to strike the “Factual Background” in Durham’s charge –- the part that went into detail about Sussmann’s ties with Clinton and Joffe as part of the larger picture. They said Durham had included that part “to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.” We'd thought their attempt to strike that section seemed like a well-we-gotta-try-something move, as they ended up calling MORE attention to it.

Durham made it clear that there was no basis to strike any part of that motion, as the factual background was “central” to proving the allegation of Sussmann’s criminal conduct. He also said that some of it was necessary for explaining the conflicts of interest that were the point of his earlier filing about various people of interest (Sussmann included) being defended by the same law firm, Latham & Watkins.

Margot Cleveland has another great article about the filings in Durham’s case, this one saying he “demolished” the attempt to get Sussmann’s charges dropped.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/07/5-new-special-counsel-arguments-against-a-russia-hoaxers-attempt-to-escape/

Cleveland offers her usual superb analysis, making points seen nowhere else. She offers five “key takeaways” from Durham’s filing:

1. On the issue of materiality, Durham states what the correct standard for that is, stressing that it refers to the “potential,” as opposed to the actual, effects of the lie. And even using the defense attorneys’ very narrow standard, Sussmann’s alleged “misrepresentation” (lie) is still material because it could have influenced the FBI’s decision-making.

Cleveland says denial of the defendant’s motion to dismiss is “inevitable” and that Durham refuted “six ways to Sunday” the claim that Sussmann's lie was not material. It plainly was, he said, “because it misled the General Counsel about, among other things, the critical fact that the defendant was disseminating highly explosive allegations about a then-Presidential candidate on behalf of two specific clients, one of which was the opposing Presidential campaign.” Doesn't get much plainer than that.

2. Durham destroyed the Democrats’ talking point that the FBI already knew Sussmann was an attorney for the DNC. Sussmann had held himself out as a cybersecurity and national security attorney, “not an election lawyer or political consultant,” Durham wrote. So when Sussmann had denied any client relationships, he had made it seem that he was not there in a political capacity, when he was.

3. Durham countered the defense’s argument that Joffe’s status as “a long-standing respected FBI source” made Sussmann’s failure to disclose representing him immaterial. This one is a bit “in the weeds” but really interesting, so if you’re following these arguments closely, do read Cleveland’s piece.

4. Durham countered another defense argument that's also a talking point, the one saying that Trump was not the target because data brought by Sussmann was from before he was President. The special counsel made it clear that this is a distinction without a difference, as Trump clearly was the target.

5. Finally, Durham had some fun with the defense’s assertion that the charge against their client “risks valuable First Amendment speech,” calling a comparison they'd made “absurd.” Sussmann, he said, “as a former government attorney and prosecutor...was well aware that the law required him to honest and forthright when communicating with the FBI.”

I wonder --- is that even possible when furthering the interests of Hillary Clinton?

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UKRAINE MAILBAG: Here's what we know

Putin's invasion of Ukraine has sparked letters touching on stories that are going around. Here are two...

From John K:

“Mike, a history lesson is in order here. Didn't USSR, now Russia, help in [email protected] the Nazis? Some pundits are saying that Russia is now invading European lands. How did that happen? We don't have history on the History channel or Wikipedia. This land was never European land but as I recall it was part of Russia before we sorted that out. The fake new Republic of the World, or as they say the New world Order promulgated by the Sorosbrand and "Progressive Liberals," is or is coming soon to a theatre near you. The play is just starting, so take your seat. I want to sit next to you.”

From Fiorella W:

“I hear many conflicting stories about Putin's real motive. One source says that the U.S. has established 11 biolabs in Ukraine and Putin has taken 7 out... And then, of course, there is the whole Biden family continuing corruption with the puppet regime. What should we believe?

Thanks to you both, and to all who have written. Yes, Soviet Russia did fight against Hitler, after Germany invaded Russia in June, 1941.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/invasion-of-the-soviet-union-june-1941

Technically, the Soviets became our allies when we entered the war. That’s why, with the way people tend to think in “either/or” terms, alliances ever since have been framed in that way. You checked a box: 1) pro-Nazi, or 2) pro-Russia. Later on, it became 1) pro-Russia, or 2) pro-China. The truth: NONE of them deserve our support.

Eastern Europe was carved up in 1945 at the Yalta Conference –- led by FDR (very ill at the time), British Prime Minister Churchill and Soviet Premier Stalin. They were then looking at terms to induce the Soviets to enter the war in the Pacific. Because of that, and also because Russia had done much in recent days to drive back the Germans, Stalin was seen to have an advantage at the talks.

Stalin refused to relinquish Poland but said he’d permit free elections. Same with Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. At that time, Soviet Russia was an "ally," but that was exposed as a sham when, in 1945, the U.S.S.R. made it clear they’d be clamping down on Poland and not allowing political freedom at all. Our former “ally” controlled those Eastern European nations and also East Berlin, which they shockingly encased behind a wall topped with barbed wire and snipers. In March 1946, Churchill gave his speech saying an “iron curtain” had descended upon Eastern Europe, marking the start of the Cold War.

Since then, the U.S.S.R. has fallen and Russia’s borders have changed. But we see from this snippet of history that distinctions between so-called “Russian territory” and “Eastern Europe” are likely lost on Vladimir Putin.

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/yalta-conference

To say Ukraine was once “part of Russia” echoes Putin’s propaganda campaign but ignores the naked, horrific aggression he committed. Some have even said that since Ukraine has corruption, the altruistic Mr. Putin was trying to right a wrong by invading. As if Russia doesn’t have corruption? I have hardly ever heard anything crazier: that Putin is trying to “save” Ukraine from corruption by bombing the daylights out of it. Couldn’t he have just...made a phone call or something?

I say that facetiously to set up a point: that when Trump tried to address corruption through a phone call, he got impeached. Putin wouldn’t have such worries.

Then there’s the story about biolabs. We don’t know --- it’s hard enough finding out about biolabs in China and talking about those freely --- but even if this is real and NOT Russian disinformation, invading Ukraine and killing thousands of innocent people is not an acceptable response. Sounds like a pretext to us. It works well as propaganda, though, because after what we’ve learned about the World Health Organization, it’s believable. But it doesn’t justify Putin’s invasion. Here’s a good write-up by Kyle Becker.

https://beckernews.com/3-russian-ministry-of-defense-claims-it-has-evidence-of-u-s-funded-bioweapons-labs-in-ukraine-44303/

We do know that Putin is a sociopath because operatives have killed many of his critics, defectors, and others besides. From the Homeland Security News Wire in 2020: “...Putin has adopted a milder version of Stalin’s tactics of random killings in order to instill a generalized sense of fear and insecurity in the Russian elite.” They provide a list of murders.

https://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20200825-putin-s-victims-a-long-list-getting-longer

We’ve long known that Putin is a KGB thug, but there are loathsome factions in the U.S. that avoid criticism of him. Bizarrely, President Biden even has Putin involved in the negotiations for a new “Iran deal,” which we know would lead to Iran becoming a nuclear power. Mark Levin had a great show on this and related matters Sunday night.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6299850695001#sp=show-clips

We’ve heard some particularly inane observations, such as that Ukrainian President Zelensky shouldn’t be believed "because he was an actor.” Well, Ronald Reagan was an actor, and he was about as trustworthy as it gets. That doesn’t mean Zelensky is trustworthy, just that the observation is stupid. Putin undeniably is a thug, and Zelensky understandably wants our help with a no-fly zone, but we must anticipate the perhaps-literal fallout. To reject this step does not make one pro-Putin in any way, just pro-using-your-brain.

Trump’s political enemies call him pro-Putin because he’s flattered Vlad now and them, calling him “smart” and such. They fail to understand that this move in itself was smart –- played to discourage Putin from cozying up to China. (Too late now, it seems.) Critics play checkers when they should be playing chess.

Here are more debunked stories...

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/02/28/pro-ukraine-propaganda-floods-social-media/

And here’s a fabulous more-recent Ukraine history lesson, a “premium” article by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke for The Epoch Times. Highly recommended...

https://www.theepochtimes.com/before-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-a-decade-of-destabilization_4316990.html/?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

(Note that The National Pulse, just for offering facts, feels the need to run a disclaimer: “For the avoidance of doubt, The National Pulse is against wars of aggression, and is not supported financially by any government or entity acting on behalf of a government or foreign interest...”)

As for George Soros, yes, his influence in Ukraine has been huge, starting in 1989, just before the fall of the Soviet Union. He’s been pushing for Ukraine to enter the E.U. We highly recommend Matt Palumbo’s book about him, THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN, in which Ukraine gets its own fascinating chapter, with names you’ll recognize from Trump’s first impeachment and even the Steele “dossier.” That country’s full of the kind of secrets you’d expect from a pro-Obama, pro-Hillary crowd.

There are so many unknowns. As we said Saturday, this really is “the first draft of history.” It’s a shame we can’t trust what our own government tells us. Scott Adams, bestselling author and “Dilbert” creator,” called the situation “a big black box that we can’t see into.”

Even so, there's one truth we should agree on: that unprovoked aggression is always wrong. For everything else you might read or hear about this war, ask yourself two questions: 1) Has this person generally been right before, and 2) How can this person possibly KNOW what he’s saying is true?

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The Price of Gas Skyrockets

The price of gas has skyrocketed across America, up 40 cents a gallon in a week in many places. And at one Los Angeles station, regular was $6.99, with premium at $7.29 a gallon.

https://www.westernjournal.com/gas-sits-just-one-cent-away-7-days-record-price-jumps/

It may seem shocking, but this is precisely what the “green” left has long hoped for. For years, they’ve had a dream that if they can just make gas expensive enough, like $8 a gallon, that would cause the public to demand electric cars and mass transit. And somehow, without cheap oil, gas or coal, or any new nuclear power plants (because those are also bad for nostalgic reasons, even though they’re now much safer than they used to be and don’t emit CO2), we’ll magically have breakthroughs in “green” energy that will allow breezes and sunbeams to generate enough power to not only sustain our society and economy, but to charge tens of millions of new electric vehicles.

I didn’t say it made any sense; I said it was a longtime leftist dream. But it’s a nightmare for working Americans and consumers. Of course, there are things we could do right now to fix it, but President Biden refuses.

Last week, I suggested that Republicans in Congress introduce a real emergency bill to fast track the reinstatement of America’s energy independence that was killed by Biden’s executive orders in the name of his “climate change emergency.” I noted then that even if Biden were still stubborn enough to veto it in the face of the Russian oil crunch and skyrocketing gas prices, maybe enough Democrats would be terrified of their reelection prospects to vote for the bill and to override Biden’s veto.

Well, on Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz did pretty much what I suggested, introducing what he calls the “Energy Freedom Act.”

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2022/03/05/ted-cruz-rolls-out-energy-freedom-act-as-bidens-energy-dependent-chickens-come-home-to-roost-n531835

It would fast-track making America energy-independent again by…well, basically going back to what Trump did that made America energy-independent before Biden bumbled into office. It also contains a sop to the left in the form of “generally speeding up solar, wind, and geothermal development.”

I have a feeling Sen. Joe Manchin would back it. As one of that very endangered species, a DC Democrat with common sense, he’s already talking about how fast and easy it would be to get American oil flowing and gas prices back down, if the government would just take its foot off the necks of energy producers.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/06/manchin-makes-biden-look-silly-with-common-sense-on-russia-n532522

But do enough Democrats in the House and Senate sense electoral Armageddon in those $7 gas prices to vote for common sense and (probably have to) override a Biden veto? I believe in miracles, but that’s harder for me to believe. On the other hand, with November elections growing closer, and the prospect of gas being even higher by then, maybe the wisdom of Samuel Johnson will prevail among a veto-proof majority of Congress members. He’s the one who wrote:

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”


America The Beautiful

God's creation is all around us. To learn more about Acadia National Park National Park, visit its website here.


Biden bans Russian oil imports

As expected, on Tuesday, President Biden announced that he would end US imports of Russian oil. It’s assumed he didn’t want to, since he’s let it go on all through the buildup to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and past the first two weeks of shocking carnage. But after even Nancy Pelosi agreed with Ted Cruz (one of the signs of the Apocalypse) that Congress should act and cut off Russian oil, Biden reportedly asked Pelosi to delay Monday’s scheduled House vote so that he could jump out in front of the parade and pretend to be leading it.

https://www.westernjournal.com/joe-biden-can-beat-putin-transforming-economy-run-56000-electric-cars/

In the speech, Biden warned Americans that gas prices, which shot up even further beyond previous records on Tuesday, would go up even more because of the cutoff of Russian oil. But apparently, his plan is to replace Russian oil with banana oil, because he dispensed so much of it in his speech as he attempted to convince Americans that “Russia is responsible” for a gallon of gas costing more than a Burger King Whopper (I chose that because there were plenty of whoppers in the speech, too.)

The first thing that caught my ear was Biden's carefully-constructed phrase “Putin’s price hikes,” laid on with all the subtlety of a 10-year-old boy standing by a broken vase and pointing at the cat. As the media would say, “Republicans pounced” on that. Jorge Bonilla tweeted a couple of charts, the first one having already gone viral, showing how the price of gas has been climbing since the day Biden took office, with the recent “Ukraine war” spike representing only a fraction of the increase.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/08/ted-cruz-busts-bidens-latest-sorry-excuse-n533490

The second chart was the same, except it went back even further and showed that the rise in gas prices actually began right after Election Night, when oil futures investors realized that Biden would be replacing Trump. Trump had made energy independence and low gas prices a priority, while Biden had campaigned on destroying our domestic fossil fuel industry in the name of fighting “climate change.” No wonder Trump sent out a message in response that consisted of nothing but the headline about record gas prices, and one sentence: “Do you miss me yet?”

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/08/trump-nails-biden-to-the-wall-with-just-five-words-n533335

But that was hardly the end of the Biden jaw-droppers. I guess he thinks we can save energy by returning to gas lighting, which is the only way to explain lines like this:

“First, it’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. It’s simply not true.” Except it simply is true. Thanks to his policies, US oil and gas production are down by more than a million gallons a day. Again, that was actually one of his campaign promises, to kill the fossil fuel industry, and he started doing it with executive orders on his first day in office.

He also tried to blame the oil companies, saying they had 9,000 permits to drill and it was their decision not to use them to produce oil. An industry spokesman replied that that reflects a “fundamental misunderstanding” of how the industry works, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Not only are government drilling leases down by about 75%, but a lease doesn’t even mean there’s oil on the land. There’s a long process of development to explore and start pumping the oil, and Biden has not only cut the number of leases but added lots more regulations to hamstring that process even more.

Here’s a former Keystone Pipeline worker who urges Americans not to buy this blame-shifting and reminds us that they tried to warn everyone what was coming. Hey, join the club, pal!

https://www.foxnews.com/us/former-keystone-pipeline-worker-says-us-energy-crisis-is-result-of-bidens-policies-we-tried-to-warn-you

Toni Williams at the Victory Girls blog also has a good rundown of the many lies packed into that one speech.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/joe-bidens-dirty-lies-about-u-s-energy-production/

And Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com did a good fact-check as well.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/03/09/biden-claimed-his-climate-agenda-isnt-hurting-domestic-oil-production-here-are-the-facts-n2604276

But to me, the biggest tip-off that we are dealing with people who are completely out of touch with the reality of the pain they’re causing for working Americans was that both Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg actually suggested that the solution to high gas prices was for everyone to buy electric cars.

https://www.westernjournal.com/buttigieg-buy-55000-electric-car-dont-worry-gas-prices-anymore/

The average price of an EV is over $56,000; there’s a long waiting list to obtain one just with the demand that exists now; and even if every American could afford and obtain one, they’ve still never answered where we’re going to get the power required to charge them all. It’s as if they think regular cars run on bad, dirty gas but the fuel for electric cars comes out of a wall socket directly from Heaven.

With that argument, Biden, Buttigieg and their house jester Stephen Colbert are all competing for the title of the Marie Antoinette of the 21st century: “So the peasants can’t afford gas? Well, let them buy Teslas!”

https://nypost.com/2022/03/08/stephen-colbert-blasted-for-saying-hes-willing-to-pay-more-for-gas/


I Just Wanted to Say:

Thank you for reading the Sunday Standard.


For more news, visit my website here.


About that Florida Bill

March 10, 2022

If you pay any attention to liberal media outlets or celebrities (and I don’t recommend it, it’s bad for your brain and your digestion), you’ve no doubt heard them fulminating against what they call Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Some Florida Senate Democrats even tweeted a video of them all shouting, “Gay!” together, proving that they don’t even know about things that it’s their job to know about.

Megan Fox at PJ Media has an explanation of what this bill really is, and why it’s a “stupid lie” to claim that it bans teachers from saying the word “gay.” What it does is prohibit schools from imposing inappropriate sexual lessons (it doesn’t even specify gay or straight) on young children without parents’ knowledge or consent.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2022/03/08/florida-democrats-continue-the-stupid-lie-that-republicans-dont-want-anyone-to-say-gay-n1564614

At the heart of the issue isn’t right-wing “hatred” of gays and transsexuals but the question of who is ultimately responsible for the raising of children: parents or schools. Ms Fox offers some shocking examples of how some teachers and school administrators have not only abused public trust but done so in open contempt of parents’ rights, which is why many thought this bill necessary.

It’s a long article, but read it all the way to the end, where she gets into the unconscionable damage that has been done to young people by the movement to confuse adolescents about their gender and then convince them to take hormones and undergo surgery that can cause irreversible physical and emotional harm. And watch the video of the “trans” teen who is trying to “detransition” after realizing she had been misled and disfigured because of other people’s political agendas when what she’d really needed was therapy.

It will make you want to scream at the top of your lungs, too, but not like those juvenile Florida Democrats.

As expected, on Tuesday, President Biden announced that he would end US imports of Russian oil. It’s assumed he didn’t want to, since he’s let it go on all through the buildup to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and past the first two weeks of shocking carnage. But after even Nancy Pelosi agreed with Ted Cruz (one of the signs of the Apocalypse) that Congress should act and cut off Russian oil, Biden reportedly asked Pelosi to delay Monday’s scheduled House vote so that he could jump out in front of the parade and pretend to be leading it.

https://www.westernjournal.com/joe-biden-can-beat-putin-transforming-economy-run-56000-electric-cars/

In the speech, Biden warned Americans that gas prices, which shot up even further beyond previous records on Tuesday, would go up even more because of the cutoff of Russian oil. But apparently, his plan is to replace Russian oil with banana oil, because he dispensed so much of it in his speech as he attempted to convince Americans that “Russia is responsible” for a gallon of gas costing more than a Burger King Whopper (I chose that because there were plenty of whoppers in the speech, too.)

The first thing that caught my ear was Biden's carefully-constructed phrase “Putin’s price hikes,” laid on with all the subtlety of a 10-year-old boy standing by a broken vase and pointing at the cat. As the media would say, “Republicans pounced” on that. Jorge Bonilla tweeted a couple of charts, the first one having already gone viral, showing how the price of gas has been climbing since the day Biden took office, with the recent “Ukraine war” spike representing only a fraction of the increase.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/08/ted-cruz-busts-bidens-latest-sorry-excuse-n533490

The second chart was the same, except it went back even further and showed that the rise in gas prices actually began right after Election Night, when oil futures investors realized that Biden would be replacing Trump. Trump had made energy independence and low gas prices a priority, while Biden had campaigned on destroying our domestic fossil fuel industry in the name of fighting “climate change.” No wonder Trump sent out a message in response that consisted of nothing but the headline about record gas prices, and one sentence: “Do you miss me yet?”

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/08/trump-nails-biden-to-the-wall-with-just-five-words-n533335

But that was hardly the end of the Biden jaw-droppers. I guess he thinks we can save energy by returning to gas lighting, which is the only way to explain lines like this:

“First, it’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. It’s simply not true.” Except it simply is true. Thanks to his policies, US oil and gas production are down by more than a million gallons a day. Again, that was actually one of his campaign promises, to kill the fossil fuel industry, and he started doing it with executive orders on his first day in office.

He also tried to blame the oil companies, saying they had 9,000 permits to drill and it was their decision not to use them to produce oil. An industry spokesman replied that that reflects a “fundamental misunderstanding” of how the industry works, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Not only are government drilling leases down by about 75%, but a lease doesn’t even mean there’s oil on the land. There’s a long process of development to explore and start pumping the oil, and Biden has not only cut the number of leases but added lots more regulations to hamstring that process even more.

Here’s a former Keystone Pipeline worker who urges Americans not to buy this blame-shifting and reminds us that they tried to warn everyone what was coming. Hey, join the club, pal!

https://www.foxnews.com/us/former-keystone-pipeline-worker-says-us-energy-crisis-is-result-of-bidens-policies-we-tried-to-warn-you

Toni Williams at the Victory Girls blog also has a good rundown of the many lies packed into that one speech.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/joe-bidens-dirty-lies-about-u-s-energy-production/

And Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com did a good fact-check as well.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/03/09/biden-claimed-his-climate-agenda-isnt-hurting-domestic-oil-production-here-are-the-facts-n2604276

But to me, the biggest tip-off that we are dealing with people who are completely out of touch with the reality of the pain they’re causing for working Americans was that both Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg actually suggested that the solution to high gas prices was for everyone to buy electric cars.

https://www.westernjournal.com/buttigieg-buy-55000-electric-car-dont-worry-gas-prices-anymore/

The average price of an EV is over $56,000; there’s a long waiting list to obtain one just with the demand that exists now; and even if every American could afford and obtain one, they’ve still never answered where we’re going to get the power required to charge them all. It’s as if they think regular cars run on bad, dirty gas but the fuel for electric cars comes out of a wall socket directly from Heaven.

With that argument, Biden, Buttigieg and their house jester Stephen Colbert are all competing for the title of the Marie Antoinette of the 21st century: “So the peasants can’t afford gas? Well, let them buy Teslas!”

https://nypost.com/2022/03/08/stephen-colbert-blasted-for-saying-hes-willing-to-pay-more-for-gas/

Extremely Depressing Poll

March 10, 2022

We have enough depressing news without people thinking up more, but Quinnipiac University released a new poll that I find extremely depressing. I think it shows how effective our schools have been at indoctrinating people to hate their country and disrespect traditional American ideals.

The poll was inspired by the brave Ukrainians who are refusing to surrender or flee and instead risking their lives to stay and fight to defend their homeland from superior Russian forces. It asked Americans, if the USA were invaded like Ukraine was, would they flee or stay and fight? At least a majority said they would fight, but it’s a pitifully small majority of 55%. 38% would run away, and I guess the rest couldn’t decide.

https://www.westernjournal.com/poll-democrats-flee-us-invaded-republicans-stay-fight/

It’s sad to think that this is what’s become of a people whose heritage includes George Washington at Valley Forge, the defenders of the Alamo, and the soldiers, sailors and airmen who saved the world twice in the 20th century.

For the record, 68% of Republicans would stay and fight, while only 25% would flee (I’m guessing those are the Beltway Republicans who like to start wars and send other people’s kids to fight them.) Among Independents, 57% would fight and 36% would flee. Only among Democrats would a majority run away rather than defend America with the skedaddlers outnumbering the patriots by 52-40 percent.

Therefore, I have a suggestion: Republican campaign ads should start referring to the millions of illegal immigrants pouring across Biden’s open borders as an “invasion.” Maybe that would scare the 52% of Democrats who think America’s not worth defending into fleeing to Sweden or wherever. Then those of us who are still here could start repairing the damage they’ve caused.

Probably the surest way to tell when someone doesn’t have a good argument for their point of view is when they’re terrified of letting anyone hear the opposing point of view. In a free marketplace of ideas, people who are confident in their views have no fear of having to defend them. Only those who can’t defend their views want to shut down debate.

This explains why the left – the people who believe in proven disasters like socialism, big government, high taxes, open borders, racial divisiveness, gender confusion, defunding police, releasing criminals, and eliminating oil and gas before having a viable alternative – are so desperate to silence their opponents by banning them from the media and the Internet. And here’s the latest example that has them frothing at the mouth, courtesy of Mike LaChance at Legal Insurrection.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/new-conservative-spanish-language-network-has-democrats-and-media-in-a-panic/

Tuesday, Americano, the nation’s first Spanish-language conservative network, debuted on satellite radio, and top Democrats are positively wetting themselves over the thought of Hispanic audiences hearing conservative views without having them spun by leftist reporters. Of course, they claim this is because they’re worried Hispanics will be the victims of “disinformation,” their current euphemism for “information that disproves what we believe.”

Americano founder and CEO Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo fired back that the network isn’t airing “disinformation” or “misinformation,” it’s airing views leftists don’t want Hispanics to hear. He said, “They’re scared. And they should be. Democrats took Hispanics for granted for too long, and no one thought to create a home for us in conservative media. There is an appetite for this. You see it on social media. You see it in elections.”

You certainly saw it in last week’s Texas primaries, where GOP turnout in largely Hispanic border counties was up by as much as 160+ percent. That was before Americano launched, so they obviously weren’t “victimized” by conservative “disinformation.” What moved them was that they saw with their own eyes the results of Biden’s pro-criminal, open border policies.

Besides, as Spencer Brown at Townhall points out, they were blithely unconcerned about all the anti-Trump disinformation like the Russia collusion hoax that was relentlessly promoted for four years by Spanish outlets like Univision.

Those of us who used to read the front page of the newspaper, back when it was a literal paper and not a lighted screen with type that moved around, remember what it was like to find interesting juxtapositions of the headlines that in themselves told a story. Maybe in the upper right, there would be a headline like “Scores Killed in Weekend Murder Rampage,” while off to the left, it would say “Drop in Tourism Mystifies City Leaders”

I had a similar experience yesterday, scanning the news aggregator site The Liberty Daily.

The huge story at that moment, in big type right in the middle, was “PROJECT VERITAS: PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING NY TIMES JOURNALIST ADMITS JAN. 6 WAS ‘NO BIG DEAL.’”

Nearby, in the small typeface above the big headline, was this: “DOJ Offers 70- to 87-Month Prison Sentence to American Patriot Photographed with Feet Up in Nancy Pelosi’s Office.”

Farther down was this: “Guy Reffitt, First Political Prisoner to Stand Trial in Mostly Peaceful Protest on Jan. 6, Found Guilty by Democrat D.C. Jury.”

Then this: “Shocking Statement by January 6 Daughter Called by DOJ Political Prosecution: I Never Felt Threatened by My Dad --- The DOJ Wanted Me to Say That!’” Nothing says “politics in 2022” better than all these January 6 stories appearing onscreen together.

Let’s go first to the Project Veritas story. James O’Keefe really has done it again. As J. D. Rucker reports, Project Veritas managed to get undercover video that enables us to watch NYT National Security Correspondent Matthew Rosenberg “spill the beans over drinks.” Pretty amazing, and this is just Part 1. The language gets a little rough, as one might expect from a journalist talking up his work over double scotches, but it’s bleeped.

https://thelibertydaily.com/project-veritas-pulitzer-prize-winning-ny-times-journalist-admits-jan-6-was-no-big-deal/

“I’m so over it,” he says of January 6 with a chuckle. “The left’s overreaction to it, in some places, was way over the top.”

We already knew that corporate media, in their zeal to paint President Trump as evil and unhinged, was milking the January 6 Capitol Hill story for all it’s worth. And Rosenberg’s reporting was very much a part of that. But we see that his own opinion was the opposite. He was supposed to be “traumatized,” he said, but nobody on the NYT staff –- at least the seasoned reporters –- thought they were in any danger. “We were just having fun!” he said. The newbies in their twenties, he said, the “little dweebs,” did not share his cavalier attitude, and he wanted to tell them to just “man up.” He said he wanted to be “like, dude, come on, like, you were not in any danger.” (Editorial note: true, people weren’t in any danger –- unless they were on that stair landing where Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed.)

“They were making too big a deal,” Rosenberg said. “They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.” On the other hand, he said, “There were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capitol.” (To his credit, he did actually report that.)

As Rosenberg told his companion at the table, he is an investigative reporter who usually tackles longer-term stories as opposed to single events. The implication: that he’d have a “nose” that might be able to sniff out informants. In fact, he says in the video that because acting CIA and NSA (National Security Agency) personnel can’t talk to the media, he dug into this by talking to former officials who didn’t have to fear the dreaded annual polygraph. So he was aware of the government infiltration.

Being a reporter for the NYT, though, it’s no surprise that he said the left’s overreaction gave “the lunatics on the right” ammunition to say, “Oh, well, nothing happened here.” (For the record: Not being lunatics, we never said that nothing happened. And what DID happen never should have, as the political and personal repercussions for many people touched by this story have been staggering. But it was not an attempt to overthrow the government, nor anything close to the way it’s been portrayed.)

When asked if he’d talked to people who had been arrested, he said their lawyers generally advise them not to talk to journalists. “No good can come of it,” he said. But according to O’Keefe, some of those incarcerated after January 6 have indeed made their voices heard, not to NYT reporters (smart!) but to Project Veritas, about the stunning lack of due process they’ve received, which stems largely from the “overreaction,” as Rosenberg put it, from the media and politicians on the left.

Now, let’s move on to the other January 6 stories:

Richard ‘Bigo’ Barnett, the Arkansas man who was photographed with his feet up at Nancy Pelosi’s desk, has rejected the offer of a guilty plea in exchange for a prison sentence of between 70 to 87 months. That’s for a PLEA, from someone with no criminal record. So he’ll be taking his chances at trial in the fall and, if found guilty, could be in prison for the rest of his life, as he is 61.

This story also highlights the recent suicide of another defendant, Matthew Perna, 37, which we reported last week.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/doj-offers-70-to-87-month-prison-sentence-for-man-photographed-with-feet-up-in-nancy-pelosis-office

Next, we have Guy Reffitt, who went to trial before a DC jury and on Friday was quickly found guilty on all five counts. He’s the first January 6 defendant to stand trial, and this outcome doesn’t bode well for the others. As Julie Kelly points out in American Greatness, it’s hard to get a fair trial in a city that voted nearly 94 percent for Joe Biden in 2020. Afterwards, a juror told CBS News that the case was “simple” and there was “not a dissenting voice in the jury.”

He’d already been incarcerated since his arrest in January, 2021, and could face 20 years in prison for each count of obstruction. He’ll be sentenced in June.

He never entered the Capitol building that day.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/08/first-january-6-defendant-to-face-trial-found-guilty-by-d-c-jury/

Finally, there’s the story of how, during Reffitt’s trial, the DOJ called his teenage son to testify against him, as their narrative included allegations that Reffitt had physically threatened his kids about going to the FBI.

Prosecutors had convinced Reffitt’s son to secretly record him at home for eight days before turning him over to the FBI. They had intended to call his younger sister to the stand as well but changed their minds, and the reason seems clear. Outside the courthouse, she said, “I never felt threatened by my father...It hurts me so much that they are saying that.”

She had wanted to be called to the stand to DEFEND her dad, but Reffitt’s court-appointed attorney never called a single witness. This is a shocking story and a must-read.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/never-felt-threatened-dad-doj-wanted-say-must-read-shocking-statement-january-6th-daughter-called-doj-prosecution/

So, we have the big-deal NYT reporter, someone who furthered the left’s January 6 narrative while saying in private that it was really overblown, and then we have a heartbreaking travesty of “justice” like this. Matthew Rosenberg should have to sit through all these trials.

This is today’s Fox News link for the latest bulletins on the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-3-8-2022

Some of the top stories from the past 24 hours: President Biden has FINALLY been pressured into ending US imports of Russian oil, but at this writing it’s unknown whether he’ll take his foot off the neck of America’s oil producers or try to replace it with oil from OPEC or (God forbid) Iran (which would spike gas prices even higher), or just rely on sunshine, windmills and wishes (which would send gas prices to the moon.)

Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy said some of the responsibility for deaths in Ukraine falls on nations that refused to impose a no-fly zone. The UN estimated that over 2 million people have fled Ukraine. US officials estimate that more than 3,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, which is about 1 out of every 300 Russian military members. Ukraine officials claim that Russian forces are shelling a humanitarian corridor established to allow evacuees to leave safely.

For those who want to understand more of what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine, Putin’s history and motivations, and what’s likely to happen in the future, Kamil Galeev of the Wilson Center has a series of interesting Twitter threads that take a deep dive into those subjects.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711

You might start with this one, which is very eye-opening. All the “Z’s” you see popping up in Russia do not mean the people support Zelenskyy.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1500495309595725831

Okay, here’s a real “fact-check,” or maybe I should say a punch in the gut with reality: Monday, the average price of a gallon of gas in the US hit a record high of $4.104, surpassing the previous record of $4.103 set in 2008. The best you can say for Biden is that it might not actually be the highest ever when you adjust it for the galloping inflation that’s the only thing he seems interested in fueling.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/u-s-gas-prices-hit-new-record-high

Naturally, the highest price is in deep blue California, where the average price of a gallon of gas is $5.43. That means in many places, it’s much higher, like in the $6 range. And if any alleged “experts” still think Trump’s prediction of even higher prices seems “dubious,” some oil traders are now bracing for oil to hit $200 a barrel by the end of this month.

https://www.westernjournal.com/warning-americans-traders-eye-200-per-oil-barrel-month-report/

Meanwhile, President Biden was finally pressured enough that he will reportedly announce an end to importing Russian oil on Tuesday morning.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-russian-oil-import-ban

But what will he replace it with? Judging by comments from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, buying it from Iran is on the table. He’d rather buy it from terrorists than let Americans pump it. A meme has gone viral that says Biden is scouring the world for any place that has oil other than Texas. That doesn’t even make sense from an environmental standpoint since our oil is much cleaner than Russia’s and doesn’t have to be transported halfway around the world.

Even in liberal Massachusetts, one Springfield man told a reporter that the gas prices made him sick to his stomach, adding, “They’re killing the working man.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/american-brutal-reaction-gas-prices-bidens-america-sick-stomach/

Biden’s fellow Democrats (the former “friend of the working man” Party) are starting to panic and suggest any gimmicks to try to temporarily lower the price of gas before the November elections.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gas-prices-democratic-bloodbath-midterms-republicans

But they’re still unwilling to do what everyone with a brain bigger than a chicken’s knows we have to do: reverse Biden’s idiotic policies and get our pumps and pipelines back online ASAP. Last week, House Republicans introduced a bill to do that, and Democrats voted it down by 221-202.

https://notthebee.com/article/house-democrats-voted-down-a-major-oil-independence-bill-because-they-prefer-renewable-energy-and-someone-needs-to-tell-them-that-you-can-do-both-its-fine-to-do-both

Maybe those $6-a-gallon gas prices will convince them to hold a do-over and get it right this time by passing Ted Cruz’s Energy Freedom Act. Or maybe they think that keeping gas prices sky-high will prevent all those truckers from reaching Washington to protest them. The big question is, how long will they keep on killing the working man before they finally force themselves to admit that Trump was right and unleash America’s energy industries?

Day 12

March 8, 2022

With our usual caveats that we can’t cover breaking news, and that first reports from war zones are often unreliable, here is today’s continuously-updated feed of Ukraine bulletins from Fox News:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-3-7-2022

Among the latest developments as Monday starts day 12 of Russia’s invasion:

Russia claimed it will honor another ceasefire, but Ukraine rejected a proposal to evacuate Ukrainian citizens to Russia and Belarus, the equivalent of evacuating out of the frying pan and into the fire. Ukraine is also calling for a worldwide boycott of Russian products.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy held a Zoom meeting over the weekend with 280 US Congress members. With NATO having rejected his request to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, Zelenskyy pleaded with lawmakers to introduce an oil embargo on Russia and stop buying Russian oil. He also said if the US had started serious sanctions months ago, there wouldn’t have been any war. That must’ve been an uncomfortable phone call for the Biden backers in Congress.

https://www.westernjournal.com/ukrainian-president-zelenskyy-makes-one-request-us-meeting-change-everything/

Visa and Mastercard announced that they will cease all transactions involving Russian banks. But Robert Spencer at PJ Media argues that that will mostly harm ordinary Russians who might oppose Putin’s invasion. It also sets more precedent for financial companies to deplatform people with unapproved views.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/03/06/why-americans-shouldnt-be-happy-that-mastercard-and-visa-have-suspended-russia-operations-n1564206

Nick Arama at Redstate.com notes that Paypal, Payarama and Adobe have also suspended operations in Russia. Yet President Biden continues doing business with Russia, buying their oil instead of pumping our own.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/06/latest-shoe-is-a-big-one-to-drop-on-russia-but-joe-biden-is-still-holding-back-n532341

Meanwhile, China was only too happy to step in and fill the void. Russia will start using China’s UnionPay credit card system instead of Visa and Mastercard.

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-banks-switch-chinese-card-161004241.html

The Chinese foreign minister touted China’s relationship with Russia, calling Moscow China’s “most important strategic partner.” Previous Presidents understood that both powers had to be treated with a mixture of praise/diplomacy and ironfisted restrictions because we wanted each of them kept off-balance and dependent on/afraid of us so they wouldn’t align with each other. Previous Presidents understood that it was better to have an uneasy alliance with each against the other than to have Russia and China team up against us. But previous Presidents weren’t Joe Biden.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/china-russia-most-important-strategic-partner-ukraine-invasion

Say what you will about former Attorney General Bill Barr…

https://www.abc4.com/news/national/trump-rips-barr-in-letter-to-nbcs-lester-holt/

...but he deserves credit for his fantastic pick of John Durham as special counsel to investigate the origins of the phony “Trump/Russia” probe. For a long time, we all wondered what he could possibly be doing, as months and months went by without any news. But now it’s easy to understand why the case is taking so long. There’s much more to it than anyone imagined at the outset.

In his latest court filing, made Friday to counter Michael Sussmann’s attorneys’ most recent motions, Durham has shown that he'd make a great archer, as he aims right at the target and hits a rhetorical bull’s-eye. Here’s a link to the whole 16-page document.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638.44.0_6.pdf

Recall that Sussmann, conveniently the attorney for both the Hillary Clinton campaign and Rodney Joffe (Tech Executive – 1), has been charged with lying to the FBI by failing to disclose that he was acting on behalf of legal clients. He maintained that he had brought the (fake) Alfa Bank story to the FBI simply out of his sense of patriotic duty, as a concerned citizen. A couple of weeks ago, in their motion to dismiss that charge, Sussmann’s attorneys said --- try not to laugh --- that their client hadn’t lied, but that even if he HAD lied, the lie was not material to the case and was protected by the First Amendment besides, so, come on, judge, just let it go.

Durham, in his response to the First Amendment argument, took aim and said, “Far from finding himself in the vulnerable position of an ordinary person whose speech is likely to be chilled, the defendant --- a sophisticated and well-connected lawyer --- chose to bring politically-charged allegations to the FBI’s chief legal officer [James Baker] at the height of an election season.

“He then chose to lie about the clients who were behind those allegations. Using such rare access to the halls of power for the purposes of political deceit is hardly the type of speech that the Founders intended to protect. The Court should therefore reject defendant’s invitation to expand the scope of the First Amendment to protect such conduct.”

Is that not great?

As for whether his (false) statements to the FBI were material to the case, Durham was spot-on again. Imagine how things might have gone if Sussmann had been honest about his true connections, given their implied motivations. His ties to the Clinton campaign could --- at least SHOULD --- have had tremendous bearing. As Durham put it:

“Had the defendant truthfully informed the FBI General Counsel that he was providing the information on behalf of one or more clients, as opposed to merely acting as a ‘good citizen,’ the FBI General Counsel and other FBI personnel might have asked a multitude of additional questions material to the case initiation process.”

It’s hard to imagine information more material to the case than this. As Durham said, the lie was capable of “influencing both the FBI’s decision to initiate an investigation and its subsequent conduct of that investigation.”

Knowledge of these attorney-client relationships, he said, “would have shed critical light on the origins of the allegations at issue.” It goes without saying that this would certainly not have been in the interest of Sussmann’s clients, Hillary Clinton and a man trying in an underhanded way to help get her elected. Sussmann's charade was completely in their interest.

“Given the temporal proximity to the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Durham said, “the FBI also might have taken any number of different steps in initiating, delaying, or declining the initiation of this matter had it known at the time that the defendant was providing information on behalf of the Clinton campaign and a technology executive at a private company.”

Sussmann’s attorneys had also moved to strike the “Factual Background” in Durham’s charge –- the part that went into detail about Sussmann’s ties with Clinton and Joffe as part of the larger picture. They said Durham had included that part “to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.” We'd thought their attempt to strike that section seemed like a well-we-gotta-try-something move, as they ended up calling MORE attention to it.

Durham made it clear that there was no basis to strike any part of that motion, as the factual background was “central” to proving the allegation of Sussmann’s criminal conduct. He also said that some of it was necessary for explaining the conflicts of interest that were the point of his earlier filing about various people of interest (Sussmann included) being defended by the same law firm, Latham & Watkins.

Margot Cleveland has another great article about the filings in Durham’s case, this one saying he “demolished” the attempt to get Sussmann’s charges dropped.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/07/5-new-special-counsel-arguments-against-a-russia-hoaxers-attempt-to-escape/

Cleveland offers her usual superb analysis, making points seen nowhere else. She offers five “key takeaways” from Durham’s filing:

1. On the issue of materiality, Durham states what the correct standard for that is, stressing that it refers to the “potential,” as opposed to the actual, effects of the lie. And even using the defense attorneys’ very narrow standard, Sussmann’s alleged “misrepresentation” (lie) is still material because it could have influenced the FBI’s decision-making.

Cleveland says denial of the defendant’s motion to dismiss is “inevitable” and that Durham refuted “six ways to Sunday” the claim that Sussmann's lie was not material. It plainly was, he said, “because it misled the General Counsel about, among other things, the critical fact that the defendant was disseminating highly explosive allegations about a then-Presidential candidate on behalf of two specific clients, one of which was the opposing Presidential campaign.” Doesn't get much plainer than that.

2. Durham destroyed the Democrats’ talking point that the FBI already knew Sussmann was an attorney for the DNC. Sussmann had held himself out as a cybersecurity and national security attorney, “not an election lawyer or political consultant,” Durham wrote. So when Sussmann had denied any client relationships, he had made it seem that he was not there in a political capacity, when he was.

3. Durham countered the defense’s argument that Joffe’s status as “a long-standing respected FBI source” made Sussmann’s failure to disclose representing him immaterial. This one is a bit “in the weeds” but really interesting, so if you’re following these arguments closely, do read Cleveland’s piece.

4. Durham countered another defense argument that's also a talking point, the one saying that Trump was not the target because data brought by Sussmann was from before he was President. The special counsel made it clear that this is a distinction without a difference, as Trump clearly was the target.

5. Finally, Durham had some fun with the defense’s assertion that the charge against their client “risks valuable First Amendment speech,” calling a comparison they'd made “absurd.” Sussmann, he said, “as a former government attorney and prosecutor...was well aware that the law required him to honest and forthright when communicating with the FBI.”

I wonder --- is that even possible when furthering the interests of Hillary Clinton?

Elon Musk Speaks Out

March 8, 2022

Lately, Tesla and Starlink billionaire Elon Musk has been showing more common sense and leadership than we’re getting from our own White House. He stood up for increasing American oil production (even though he sells electric cars), and in less than a day, he provided satellite access and equipment for Ukraine to get back onto the Internet. But now, he’s drawing the line at what he sees as doing the same thing Russia is doing.

https://www.westernjournal.com/governments-pressure-elon-musk-turn-assets-russia-tells-bring-gun-next-time/


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Putin signed a new law barring Russian news outlets from reporting on his war on Ukraine. In response, many governments (but not Ukraine’s, oddly) are pressuring media and Internet companies such as Starlink to ban Russian news outlets as propaganda. He tweeted, “We will not do so unless at gunpoint. Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.” He added, “And also my sympathies to the great people of Russia, who do not want this.”

I understand the impulse to ban Russian media outlets when we know they’re being forced to censor themselves and air Putin’s propaganda. But if we are aware of that in advance, wouldn’t it be useful for us to know what they’re telling their own people, so we know what we have to counter? Also, you never know when some brave journalist is going to slip in some helpful real information or make a stand that the world should see.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-news-walks-crackdown-media

In America, the Founders gave us free speech and freedom of the press because they trusted the people to have enough sense to know when they were hearing garbage ideas and argue them down and reject them. When the government starts deciding whose ideas are incorrect and unworthy of being spoken, that’s the slippery slope to tyranny.

We were already sliding that way as it is. Letting our government use Russia as an excuse to outright ban certain media outlets from the public square would only move us further down the well-known path of all fanatics, who eventually become what they once claimed to hate.

 

Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff!

Today's newsletter includes:

  • Ukraine: Biden Feels the Pressure
  • Durham responds masterfully to Sussmann's lawyers
  • This 2020 Trump claim was fact-checked…it turns out he was right
  • And much more

Thank you again for reading.

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee


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3. Ukraine: Biden Feels the Pressure

This is today’s Fox News link for the latest bulletins on the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-3-8-2022

Some of the top stories from the past 24 hours: President Biden has FINALLY been pressured into ending US imports of Russian oil, but at this writing it’s unknown whether he’ll take his foot off the neck of America’s oil producers or try to replace it with oil from OPEC or (God forbid) Iran (which would spike gas prices even higher), or just rely on sunshine, windmills and wishes (which would send gas prices to the moon.)

Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy said some of the responsibility for deaths in Ukraine falls on nations that refused to impose a no-fly zone. The UN estimated that over 2 million people have fled Ukraine. US officials estimate that more than 3,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, which is about 1 out of every 300 Russian military members. Ukraine officials claim that Russian forces are shelling a humanitarian corridor established to allow evacuees to leave safely.

For those who want to understand more of what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine, Putin’s history and motivations, and what’s likely to happen in the future, Kamil Galeev of the Wilson Center has a series of interesting Twitter threads that take a deep dive into those subjects.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711

You might start with this one, which is very eye-opening. All the “Z’s” you see popping up in Russia do not mean the people support Zelenskyy.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1500495309595725831


4. This 2020 Trump Claim was fact-checked, it turns out he was right

Here’s more proof that when liberal media outlets begin a story with “Experts say…” there’s a very good chance you’re about to get a snow job. If it’s a story about anything Donald Trump said, you can count on it. The self-appointed “fact-checkers” were constantly telling us that Trump was lying about something, according to “experts,” when it later became obvious that he was right. And now, here’s yet another example.

Just before the 2020 election, Trump was speaking at a rally in Grand Rapids, where he was boasting about making America energy-independent for the first time and bringing gas prices down to $2 a gallon or less. He then said, “If Biden got in, you’d be paying $7, $8, $9, then they’d say, ‘Get rid of your car.'”

https://www.westernjournal.com/video-trumps-bold-prediction-2020-comes-true-americans-live-reality-bidens-america/

The Washington Post responded with an “analysis” calling the claim that gas prices would spike under Biden “dubious,” adding, “Experts say those fears are overblown,” and that Biden’s policies could ease tensions with Iran and “result in incrementally lower gas prices.”


5. Durham responds masterfully to Sussmann's lawyers

Say what you will about former Attorney General Bill Barr…

https://www.abc4.com/news/national/trump-rips-barr-in-letter-to-nbcs-lester-holt/

...but he deserves credit for his fantastic pick of John Durham as special counsel to investigate the origins of the phony “Trump/Russia” probe. For a long time, we all wondered what he could possibly be doing, as months and months went by without any news. But now it’s easy to understand why the case is taking so long. There’s much more to it than anyone imagined at the outset.

In his latest court filing, made Friday to counter Michael Sussmann’s attorneys’ most recent motions, Durham has shown that he'd make a great archer, as he aims right at the target and hits a rhetorical bull’s-eye. Here’s a link to the whole 16-page document.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638.44.0_6.pdf

Recall that Sussmann, conveniently the attorney for both the Hillary Clinton campaign and Rodney Joffe (Tech Executive – 1), has been charged with lying to the FBI by failing to disclose that he was acting on behalf of legal clients. He maintained that he had brought the (fake) Alfa Bank story to the FBI simply out of his sense of patriotic duty, as a concerned citizen. A couple of weeks ago, in their motion to dismiss that charge, Sussmann’s attorneys said --- try not to laugh --- that their client hadn’t lied, but that even if he HAD lied, the lie was not material to the case and was protected by the First Amendment besides, so, come on, judge, just let it go.

Durham, in his response to the First Amendment argument, took aim and said, “Far from finding himself in the vulnerable position of an ordinary person whose speech is likely to be chilled, the defendant --- a sophisticated and well-connected lawyer --- chose to bring politically-charged allegations to the FBI’s chief legal officer [James Baker] at the height of an election season.

“He then chose to lie about the clients who were behind those allegations. Using such rare access to the halls of power for the purposes of political deceit is hardly the type of speech that the Founders intended to protect. The Court should therefore reject defendant’s invitation to expand the scope of the First Amendment to protect such conduct.”

Is that not great?

As for whether his (false) statements to the FBI were material to the case, Durham was spot-on again. Imagine how things might have gone if Sussmann had been honest about his true connections, given their implied motivations. His ties to the Clinton campaign could --- at least SHOULD --- have had tremendous bearing. As Durham put it:

“Had the defendant truthfully informed the FBI General Counsel that he was providing the information on behalf of one or more clients, as opposed to merely acting as a ‘good citizen,’ the FBI General Counsel and other FBI personnel might have asked a multitude of additional questions material to the case initiation process.”

It’s hard to imagine information more material to the case than this. As Durham said, the lie was capable of “influencing both the FBI’s decision to initiate an investigation and its subsequent conduct of that investigation.”

Knowledge of these attorney-client relationships, he said, “would have shed critical light on the origins of the allegations at issue.” It goes without saying that this would certainly not have been in the interest of Sussmann’s clients, Hillary Clinton and a man trying in an underhanded way to help get her elected. Sussmann's charade was completely in their interest.

“Given the temporal proximity to the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Durham said, “the FBI also might have taken any number of different steps in initiating, delaying, or declining the initiation of this matter had it known at the time that the defendant was providing information on behalf of the Clinton campaign and a technology executive at a private company.”

Sussmann’s attorneys had also moved to strike the “Factual Background” in Durham’s charge –- the part that went into detail about Sussmann’s ties with Clinton and Joffe as part of the larger picture. They said Durham had included that part “to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.” We'd thought their attempt to strike that section seemed like a well-we-gotta-try-something move, as they ended up calling MORE attention to it.

Durham made it clear that there was no basis to strike any part of that motion, as the factual background was “central” to proving the allegation of Sussmann’s criminal conduct. He also said that some of it was necessary for explaining the conflicts of interest that were the point of his earlier filing about various people of interest (Sussmann included) being defended by the same law firm, Latham & Watkins.

Margot Cleveland has another great article about the filings in Durham’s case, this one saying he “demolished” the attempt to get Sussmann’s charges dropped.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/07/5-new-special-counsel-arguments-against-a-russia-hoaxers-attempt-to-escape/

Cleveland offers her usual superb analysis, making points seen nowhere else. She offers five “key takeaways” from Durham’s filing:

1. On the issue of materiality, Durham states what the correct standard for that is, stressing that it refers to the “potential,” as opposed to the actual, effects of the lie. And even using the defense attorneys’ very narrow standard, Sussmann’s alleged “misrepresentation” (lie) is still material because it could have influenced the FBI’s decision-making.

Cleveland says denial of the defendant’s motion to dismiss is “inevitable” and that Durham refuted “six ways to Sunday” the claim that Sussmann's lie was not material. It plainly was, he said, “because it misled the General Counsel about, among other things, the critical fact that the defendant was disseminating highly explosive allegations about a then-Presidential candidate on behalf of two specific clients, one of which was the opposing Presidential campaign.” Doesn't get much plainer than that.

2. Durham destroyed the Democrats’ talking point that the FBI already knew Sussmann was an attorney for the DNC. Sussmann had held himself out as a cybersecurity and national security attorney, “not an election lawyer or political consultant,” Durham wrote. So when Sussmann had denied any client relationships, he had made it seem that he was not there in a political capacity, when he was.

3. Durham countered the defense’s argument that Joffe’s status as “a long-standing respected FBI source” made Sussmann’s failure to disclose representing him immaterial. This one is a bit “in the weeds” but really interesting, so if you’re following these arguments closely, do read Cleveland’s piece.

4. Durham countered another defense argument that's also a talking point, the one saying that Trump was not the target because data brought by Sussmann was from before he was President. The special counsel made it clear that this is a distinction without a difference, as Trump clearly was the target.

5. Finally, Durham had some fun with the defense’s assertion that the charge against their client “risks valuable First Amendment speech,” calling a comparison they'd made “absurd.” Sussmann, he said, “as a former government attorney and prosecutor...was well aware that the law required him to honest and forthright when communicating with the FBI.”

I wonder --- is that even possible when furthering the interests of Hillary Clinton?


6. Fact: Average $ for a Gallon of Gas Hits Record High

Okay, here’s a real “fact-check,” or maybe I should say a punch in the gut with reality: Monday, the average price of a gallon of gas in the US hit a record high of $4.104, surpassing the previous record of $4.103 set in 2008. The best you can say for Biden is that it might not actually be the highest ever when you adjust it for the galloping inflation that’s the only thing he seems interested in fueling.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/u-s-gas-prices-hit-new-record-high

Naturally, the highest price is in deep blue California, where the average price of a gallon of gas is $5.43. That means in many places, it’s much higher, like in the $6 range. And if any alleged “experts” still think Trump’s prediction of even higher prices seems “dubious,” some oil traders are now bracing for oil to hit $200 a barrel by the end of this month.

https://www.westernjournal.com/warning-americans-traders-eye-200-per-oil-barrel-month-report/

Meanwhile, President Biden was finally pressured enough that he will reportedly announce an end to importing Russian oil on Tuesday morning.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-russian-oil-import-ban

But what will he replace it with? Judging by comments from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, buying it from Iran is on the table. He’d rather buy it from terrorists than let Americans pump it. A meme has gone viral that says Biden is scouring the world for any place that has oil other than Texas. That doesn’t even make sense from an environmental standpoint since our oil is much cleaner than Russia’s and doesn’t have to be transported halfway around the world.

Even in liberal Massachusetts, one Springfield man told a reporter that the gas prices made him sick to his stomach, adding, “They’re killing the working man.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/american-brutal-reaction-gas-prices-bidens-america-sick-stomach/

Biden’s fellow Democrats (the former “friend of the working man” Party) are starting to panic and suggest any gimmicks to try to temporarily lower the price of gas before the November elections.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gas-prices-democratic-bloodbath-midterms-republicans

But they’re still unwilling to do what everyone with a brain bigger than a chicken’s knows we have to do: reverse Biden’s idiotic policies and get our pumps and pipelines back online ASAP. Last week, House Republicans introduced a bill to do that, and Democrats voted it down by 221-202.

https://notthebee.com/article/house-democrats-voted-down-a-major-oil-independence-bill-because-they-prefer-renewable-energy-and-someone-needs-to-tell-them-that-you-can-do-both-its-fine-to-do-both

Maybe those $6-a-gallon gas prices will convince them to hold a do-over and get it right this time by passing Ted Cruz’s Energy Freedom Act. Or maybe they think that keeping gas prices sky-high will prevent all those truckers from reaching Washington to protest them. The big question is, how long will they keep on killing the working man before they finally force themselves to admit that Trump was right and unleash America’s energy industries?


7. Barr makes news: Defends cops and says he would vote for Trump over the “progressive agenda”

Former Attorney General Bill Barr is making appearances to promote his new book. Naturally, the media are trumpeting anything he says that reflects badly on Donald Trump, and there’s plenty of that. And he made it clear he wouldn’t support Trump for the Republican nomination. But before they start trying to elevate Barr into the next never-Trump CNN regular, I’ll bet the liberal talking heads nearly exploded when Barr said that if Trump were the nominee in 2024, the “progressive” Democrat agenda is such a threat to America that it’s “inconceivable” that he wouldn’t vote for the Republican, whoever it is.

https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/03/07/savannah-guthrie-gets-poleaxed-by-bill-barrs-answer-to-her-question-about-the-2024-election-n533046

It must be hard for those people to hear that after five years of blasting Trump with all they’ve got, even someone who doesn’t like him would say in effect, “But I’d still vote for him if that was the only alternative to the walking dumpster fires you people support.”

Barr also probably won’t make many friends in the media with his defense of cops as not being racists but as simply arresting people who commit crimes.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/liberal-media-scream-lester-holt-fights-truth-that-cops-are-where-crime-is


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Targeting DeSantis

March 8, 2022

Last week, Florida’s legislature passed a law similar to Mississippi’s law that bans abortion after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. The White House immediately went ballistic over this, with strong statements of opposition from both President Biden and Vice President Harris.

https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/03/07/the-biden-harris-attack-on-the-new-florida-abortion-law-shows-how-much-the-left-fears-ron-desantis-n532641

But as that article points out, this is only one of many recent state laws reining in abortion, some of them more severe than Florida’s. So why the immediate harsh reaction to Florida? Redstate's reasonable theory is that they’re scared to death of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is proving to be a tough, effective, very popular leader who could run for President and draw the same supporters as Trump, only without the years of media-amplified negatives.

That’s why you’re hearing so many anti-DeSantis stories (for example, he “yelled” at teenagers to take off their masks – spoiler alert: he didn’t). Expect to hear a lot more attacks on DeSantis and Florida by Democrats, even as many of them are fleeing to Florida to escape the consequences of their own insane policies.

By the way, kudos to VP Harris for at least having the honesty to use the word “abortion” in her statement. Biden continued the usual liberal fuzzy euphemism game of calling it “reproductive health care.” It’s not very healthy for babies, is it?

When we think of people being arrested and then waiting for months without charges being filed, we think of dictatorships and banana republics. So why is it happening here, in the very capital of the United States of America?

https://redstate.com/leslie-mcadoo-gordon/2022/03/08/doj-rushes-obtain-indictment-for-january-6-defendant-to-cure-illegal-detention-n533107

There’s a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo to weed through, but the upshot of that article is that a January 6th defendant, Lucas Denney, was arrested back in December and still had no idea what he was charged with. His attorney filed for the case to be dismissed because under the Speedy Trial Act, prosecutors are required to issue an indictment within 30 days of arrest. Denney had a hearing set for Monday, but the DOJ rushed through a one-count indictment at the last minute and cited various excuses, such as COVID delays.

The judge ruled on a technicality that he couldn’t dismiss the case that day, but if the law means anything anymore (an open question), the charge should be dropped because the DOJ clearly violated the Speedy Trial Act.

However, the judge sharply rebuked the DOJ, saying that if they’ve charged more people over January 6th than they can keep up with, that’s their fault, not the defendants’. He pointed out that they claim these are such important cases because they’re protecting the Constitution, then they violate the defendants’ Constitutional rights in the process of prosecuting them.

But then, that seems to be a recurring theme in all the Democrats’ zealous drum-banging over January 6th: they’re going to save the Constitution and “democracy,” even if they have to trample both of them to death to do it.

As an aside to the story about the Washington Post saying in 2020 that “experts” found Trump’s claim that oil prices would spike under Biden “dubious,” and that prices would more likely be lower, this is a good opportunity to point out one of the many glaring flaws in the methodology of what currently passes for “fact-checking.” And that is the reliance on so-called "expert" opinion as a substitute for objective facts.

There’s a term for that: the “appeal to authority.” It means claiming that something must be true if one “credible” source believes it. It’s one of the most common logical fallacies.

https://www.logicalfallacies.org/appeal-to-authority.html

(I apologize for citing logic, since we now know that’s just a form of white supremacy.)

Many modern “fact-checkers” rely on this, and media and social media outlets use them to censor any questioning of their pronouncements as if they are unassailable fact, handed down from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets. Later, when we discover they were wrong, we’re told, “The science has changed.” But science doesn’t change, we just learn that our original understanding of it was WRONG. And the only way to figure that out is to question authority. Which we’re not allowed to do because that’s known as the “scientific method,” and that’s also now been branded as “white supremacy.”

I’d like to recommend a book that should be required reading for all people who want to declare themselves “fact-checkers.” It’s by Christopher Cerf, and it’s called “The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation.” It’s a history of the many false things that experts once assured us were true, such as that man could never fly, that it would be fatal for a human to travel faster than 30 mph, that there’s no reason any person would ever need a home computer, and many more. And my favorite genius, the Decca Records executive who turned down the Beatles, telling them that guitar groups were on the way out.

Yes, these are the “experts,” the people we now rely on to tell us truths that are so irrefutable that some people want to make trying to refute them illegal. That's why when a "fact-checker" begins with "experts say," I say you should prepare for a snow job. By the way, "experts" assured us years ago that due to global warming, snow would be a thing of the past by now.

Putin's invasion of Ukraine has sparked letters touching on stories that are going around. Here are two...

From John K:

“Mike, a history lesson is in order here. Didn't USSR, now Russia, help in [email protected] the Nazis? Some pundits are saying that Russia is now invading European lands. How did that happen? We don't have history on the History channel or Wikipedia. This land was never European land but as I recall it was part of Russia before we sorted that out. The fake new Republic of the World, or as they say the New world Order promulgated by the Sorosbrand and "Progressive Liberals," is or is coming soon to a theatre near you. The play is just starting, so take your seat. I want to sit next to you.”

From Fiorella W:

“I hear many conflicting stories about Putin's real motive. One source says that the U.S. has established 11 biolabs in Ukraine and Putin has taken 7 out... And then, of course, there is the whole Biden family continuing corruption with the puppet regime. What should we believe?

Thanks to you both, and to all who have written. Yes, Soviet Russia did fight against Hitler, after Germany invaded Russia in June, 1941.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/invasion-of-the-soviet-union-june-1941

Technically, the Soviets became our allies when we entered the war. That’s why, with the way people tend to think in “either/or” terms, alliances ever since have been framed in that way. You checked a box: 1) pro-Nazi, or 2) pro-Russia. Later on, it became 1) pro-Russia, or 2) pro-China. The truth: NONE of them deserve our support.

Eastern Europe was carved up in 1945 at the Yalta Conference –- led by FDR (very ill at the time), British Prime Minister Churchill and Soviet Premier Stalin. They were then looking at terms to induce the Soviets to enter the war in the Pacific. Because of that, and also because Russia had done much in recent days to drive back the Germans, Stalin was seen to have an advantage at the talks.

Stalin refused to relinquish Poland but said he’d permit free elections. Same with Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. At that time, Soviet Russia was an "ally," but that was exposed as a sham when, in 1945, the U.S.S.R. made it clear they’d be clamping down on Poland and not allowing political freedom at all. Our former “ally” controlled those Eastern European nations and also East Berlin, which they shockingly encased behind a wall topped with barbed wire and snipers. In March 1946, Churchill gave his speech saying an “iron curtain” had descended upon Eastern Europe, marking the start of the Cold War.

Since then, the U.S.S.R. has fallen and Russia’s borders have changed. But we see from this snippet of history that distinctions between so-called “Russian territory” and “Eastern Europe” are likely lost on Vladimir Putin.

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/yalta-conference

To say Ukraine was once “part of Russia” echoes Putin’s propaganda campaign but ignores the naked, horrific aggression he committed. Some have even said that since Ukraine has corruption, the altruistic Mr. Putin was trying to right a wrong by invading. As if Russia doesn’t have corruption? I have hardly ever heard anything crazier: that Putin is trying to “save” Ukraine from corruption by bombing the daylights out of it. Couldn’t he have just...made a phone call or something?

I say that facetiously to set up a point: that when Trump tried to address corruption through a phone call, he got impeached. Putin wouldn’t have such worries.

Then there’s the story about biolabs. We don’t know --- it’s hard enough finding out about biolabs in China and talking about those freely --- but even if this is real and NOT Russian disinformation, invading Ukraine and killing thousands of innocent people is not an acceptable response. Sounds like a pretext to us. It works well as propaganda, though, because after what we’ve learned about the World Health Organization, it’s believable. But it doesn’t justify Putin’s invasion. Here’s a good write-up by Kyle Becker.

https://beckernews.com/3-russian-ministry-of-defense-claims-it-has-evidence-of-u-s-funded-bioweapons-labs-in-ukraine-44303/

We do know that Putin is a sociopath because operatives have killed many of his critics, defectors, and others besides. From the Homeland Security News Wire in 2020: “...Putin has adopted a milder version of Stalin’s tactics of random killings in order to instill a generalized sense of fear and insecurity in the Russian elite.” They provide a list of murders.

https://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20200825-putin-s-victims-a-long-list-getting-longer

We’ve long known that Putin is a KGB thug, but there are loathsome factions in the U.S. that avoid criticism of him. Bizarrely, President Biden even has Putin involved in the negotiations for a new “Iran deal,” which we know would lead to Iran becoming a nuclear power. Mark Levin had a great show on this and related matters Sunday night.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6299850695001#sp=show-clips

We’ve heard some particularly inane observations, such as that Ukrainian President Zelensky shouldn’t be believed "because he was an actor.” Well, Ronald Reagan was an actor, and he was about as trustworthy as it gets. That doesn’t mean Zelensky is trustworthy, just that the observation is stupid. Putin undeniably is a thug, and Zelensky understandably wants our help with a no-fly zone, but we must anticipate the perhaps-literal fallout. To reject this step does not make one pro-Putin in any way, just pro-using-your-brain.

Trump’s political enemies call him pro-Putin because he’s flattered Vlad now and them, calling him “smart” and such. They fail to understand that this move in itself was smart –- played to discourage Putin from cozying up to China. (Too late now, it seems.) Critics play checkers when they should be playing chess.

Here are more debunked stories...

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/02/28/pro-ukraine-propaganda-floods-social-media/

And here’s a fabulous more-recent Ukraine history lesson, a “premium” article by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke for The Epoch Times. Highly recommended...

https://www.theepochtimes.com/before-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-a-decade-of-destabilization_4316990.html/?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

(Note that The National Pulse, just for offering facts, feels the need to run a disclaimer: “For the avoidance of doubt, The National Pulse is against wars of aggression, and is not supported financially by any government or entity acting on behalf of a government or foreign interest...”)

As for George Soros, yes, his influence in Ukraine has been huge, starting in 1989, just before the fall of the Soviet Union. He’s been pushing for Ukraine to enter the E.U. We highly recommend Matt Palumbo’s book about him, THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN, in which Ukraine gets its own fascinating chapter, with names you’ll recognize from Trump’s first impeachment and even the Steele “dossier.” That country’s full of the kind of secrets you’d expect from a pro-Obama, pro-Hillary crowd.

There are so many unknowns. As we said Saturday, this really is “the first draft of history.” It’s a shame we can’t trust what our own government tells us. Scott Adams, bestselling author and “Dilbert” creator,” called the situation “a big black box that we can’t see into.”

Even so, there's one truth we should agree on: that unprovoked aggression is always wrong. For everything else you might read or hear about this war, ask yourself two questions: 1) Has this person generally been right before, and 2) How can this person possibly KNOW what he’s saying is true?

The price of gas has skyrocketed across America, up 40 cents a gallon in a week in many places. And at one Los Angeles station, regular was $6.99, with premium at $7.29 a gallon.

https://www.westernjournal.com/gas-sits-just-one-cent-away-7-days-record-price-jumps/

It may seem shocking, but this is precisely what the “green” left has long hoped for. For years, they’ve had a dream that if they can just make gas expensive enough, like $8 a gallon, that would cause the public to demand electric cars and mass transit. And somehow, without cheap oil, gas or coal, or any new nuclear power plants (because those are also bad for nostalgic reasons, even though they’re now much safer than they used to be and don’t emit CO2), we’ll magically have breakthroughs in “green” energy that will allow breezes and sunbeams to generate enough power to not only sustain our society and economy, but to charge tens of millions of new electric vehicles.

I didn’t say it made any sense; I said it was a longtime leftist dream. But it’s a nightmare for working Americans and consumers. Of course, there are things we could do right now to fix it, but President Biden refuses.

Last week, I suggested that Republicans in Congress introduce a real emergency bill to fast track the reinstatement of America’s energy independence that was killed by Biden’s executive orders in the name of his “climate change emergency.” I noted then that even if Biden were still stubborn enough to veto it in the face of the Russian oil crunch and skyrocketing gas prices, maybe enough Democrats would be terrified of their reelection prospects to vote for the bill and to override Biden’s veto.

Well, on Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz did pretty much what I suggested, introducing what he calls the “Energy Freedom Act.”

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2022/03/05/ted-cruz-rolls-out-energy-freedom-act-as-bidens-energy-dependent-chickens-come-home-to-roost-n531835

It would fast-track making America energy-independent again by…well, basically going back to what Trump did that made America energy-independent before Biden bumbled into office. It also contains a sop to the left in the form of “generally speeding up solar, wind, and geothermal development.”

I have a feeling Sen. Joe Manchin would back it. As one of that very endangered species, a DC Democrat with common sense, he’s already talking about how fast and easy it would be to get American oil flowing and gas prices back down, if the government would just take its foot off the necks of energy producers.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/06/manchin-makes-biden-look-silly-with-common-sense-on-russia-n532522

But do enough Democrats in the House and Senate sense electoral Armageddon in those $7 gas prices to vote for common sense and (probably have to) override a Biden veto? I believe in miracles, but that’s harder for me to believe. On the other hand, with November elections growing closer, and the prospect of gas being even higher by then, maybe the wisdom of Samuel Johnson will prevail among a veto-proof majority of Congress members. He’s the one who wrote:

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

As we continue to pray for the people of Ukraine, here’s today’s link to continually-updated news on the Russian invasion:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/zelenskyy-video-cheered-at-pro-ukraine-rallies-across-europe-live-updates

Among the major stories: A U.N. agency estimates that 1.45 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began. Russia denied an accusation that it violated a temporary ceasefire to protect safe humanitarian corridors for evacuees. NATO rejected imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, calling it a “painful decision” but saying that NATO has a responsibility not to escalate the conflict into a wider European war by engaging with Russia in the air or on the ground. Putin said that any no-fly zone imposed by a third party would be viewed as “participation in the armed conflict.”

A reminder that with any fast-breaking news from a war zone, some stories will turn out to be incorrect through honest mistakes and others may be spin or outright propaganda. If journalism is the “first draft of history,” then this is a first draft written under an impossible deadline while bombs are going off, so take everything with a grain of salt until it’s confirmed.

It’s hard to believe that Washington, DC, would have to worry about a fertilizer shortage, but that’s the latest serious threat. Russia produces about 13% of the world’s supply of potash, phosphate and nitrogen for fertilizer. Prices are already rising astronomically, and Russia is reportedly considering withholding exports, which could create worldwide food shortages, if other nations continue their crippling sanctions. All that reliance on imports still looking like a good idea?

https://www.westernjournal.com/russia-strikes-back-western-sanctions-threatens-world-food-supply-heinous-move/

In a dramatic show of defiance, the entire staff of Russia’s Dozhd or TV Rain news channel ended their broadcast by walking off the set in protest of the government crackdown on journalists reporting on the invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-news-walks-crackdown-media

Friday, Putin signed a new law that could fine or jail journalists for up to 15 years for reporting "fake" news about the military and invasion that conflicts with statements from Russian officials. This includes using the words “war” or “invasion” to describe the war and invasion. TV Rain has been accused of "inciting extremism, abusing Russian citizens, causing mass disruption of public calm and safety, and encouraging protests" by reporting on the attack on Ukraine.

I’m grateful we live in a nation with free speech and the Bill of Rights to protect us from out-of-control tyrants who would bully the media into helping silence people under the guise of them spreading “misinformation” that might “cause confusion or sow mistrust” in the government. Thank God that could never happen here.

https://news.yahoo.com/surgeon-general-demands-data-covid-162442216.html

In a related story, CNN announced that it will stop broadcasting in Russia due to the new law making it illegal to air “fake news.” Decide for yourselves whether this is a protest or an admission of guilt.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/03/04/cnn-to-stop-broadcasting-in-russia-and-the-reason-is-hilarious-n1563873

Special counsels can be appointed at the state level, too, and it appears that one in Wisconsin has found evidence to confirm widespread election fraud.

The Wisconsin Assembly appointed Special Counsel Michael Gableman, a retired State Supreme Court justice, to investigate concerns about the 2020 election, and on Tuesday, his office issued its second interim report, which runs 150 pages. In Chapter 7, it confirms the conclusion of the Racine County Sheriff’s Office last fall that fraud occurred at Wisconsin nursing homes.

https://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/22/brandtjen/media/1552/osc-second-interim-report.pdf

It was the sheriff’s investigation that led to this broader one. Sheriff Christopher Schmaling held a press conference last October 28 at which lead investigator Michael Luell presented their findings. (Note that this hour-long press conference got mostly crickets from national media.) Luell explained that under Wisconsin election law, local municipalities must dispatch two special voting deputies, or SVDs, to residential care facilities to supervise the voting. These officials are tasked with personally delivering ballots to residents and witnessing the voting process. Under law, only a relative or an SVD may assist a resident with the voting process. Once the resident has voted, the SVD seals the ballot envelope and delivers it to the elections clerk.

This sounds like a great plan to preserve the chain of custody and discourage undue influence. Unfortunately, the sheriff’s investigation found that the Ridgewood Care Center in Racine violated every one of those requirements. Amazingly, the blame for this can be traced back to the Wisconsin Election Commission, whose members had allegedly taken it upon themselves to tell municipalities not to use the SVD system and to instead just mail ballots to residents. Such a directive would be illegal.

So it was up to staffers to help residents complete their ballots, and according to the sheriff, they “helped” them, all right --- improperly completing sections of the ballots, mishandling ballots and failing to secure them, and going beyond just reading the ballots to actively discussing the elections and candidates. In legal parlance, that is a no-no.

As Sheriff Schmaling said during his press conference, his investigation had covered only the Ridgewood Care Center, when Racine County was home to 11 such facilities, and Racine County is just one of 72 counties. “There are literally hundreds and hundreds of these facilities throughout the state of Wisconsin,” he said. “We would be foolish to think for a moment that this integrity issue, this violation of the statute, occurred to just this small group of people at one care facility in one county in the entire state.”

Several days after their press conference, the Sheriff’s Office announced that they had forwarded their conclusions to District Attorney Patricia Hanson, recommending that five members of the Wisconsin Election Commission be charged with election fraud, including two felony counts. (Only one member was not cited.) Margot Cleveland has details on the specific charges in her report for The Federalist.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/03/wisconsin-special-counsel-finds-widespread-election-fraud-in-2020-nursing-homes/

You can probably guess what happened next, which is to say nothing –- no charges were filed. After several months, DA Hanson concluded that she “lacked jurisdiction” and had no authority to prosecute the commissioners because they don’t live in Racine County and didn’t issue the “allegedly illegal directive doing away with SVD.” So, we're confused, as the sheriff's investigation had concluded they did do that.

And after deciding not to charge the commissioners, Hanson couldn’t very well charge the staff at the nursing homes, could she? She reasoned it this way: “[I]t would be unfair for me to expect these health care professionals would better understand the election law in Wisconsin than the Wisconsin Election Commission.” Never mind that she should have had higher expectations for the WEC; after lowering the bar for them, she was able to lower it even farther for the nursing home staff. Case dismissed!

Here’s some of the fallout as reported by a local news outlet, just a few days before the special counsel dropped his report.

https://journaltimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/four-wis-prosecutors-considering-whether-to-file-charges-against-elections-commissioners/article_b928849a-965f-512a-920c-62f9527b0844.html

Fortunately it didn’t end with that DA, and we now have an eye-opening special counsel report. This would not have happened without the sheriff’s investigation, which had stemmed from a complaint by some individual about potential violations at just one nursing home. Moral: one person speaking up CAN make a difference.

And now, the special counsel apparently has the goods. “Rampant fraud and abuse occurred statewide at Wisconsin’s nursing homes and other residential care facilities,” his report says.

This conclusion came after his investigation of more than 90 nursing homes in five different counties. We’re talking about blatant violations of the election code by nursing home staff and administrators, such as illegal handling of absentee ballots, illegal assistance in marking ballots, illegally “witnessing” the voting, and possible forgery. According to the report, the fraud and abuse resulted ultimately from the unlawful acts of the WEC’s members and staff, because on June 24, 2020, they did issue that directive to mail the ballots to the nursing homes and just follow the rules for regular absentee voting by mail.

The special counsel found “improbably high voting rates” at nursing homes. He was even able to determine that some of the filled-out ballots did not reflect the intent of the nursing home residents. He found suspected forgeries of signatures and votes by people who had been judged incompetent and could not legally vote. He found votes "cast" by people who were unaware of their surroundings and didn’t even know what year it was.

The WEC had tried to use COVID to justify what it had done, saying they didn’t want seniors ”disenfranchised.” Special Counsel Gableman was stern in his assessment of that: “In no way was WEC’s mandating illegal activity a ‘solution’ to ‘disenfranchisement’ and to suggest that WEC’s actions were a good faith effort at doing so ignores the facts and the law.” He went on to point out that the problems he had found, resulting from their directive, WERE examples of disenfranchisement.

Gableman said that to get the full picture of the significance of the fraud, “a state-wide, complete audit of all absentee votes from all facilities” required to use the SVD system is necessary.

In the 2020 election, Wisconsin went for Biden by a margin of just 20,682 votes. Since about 92,000 people reside in Wisconsin nursing homes, the findings of this investigation cast “doubt on the election result” according to the special counsel report. The Wisconsin State Assembly might authorize Gableman to expand his audit, but that’s not official at this writing. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul called the sheriff’s original investigation a “publicity stunt” and is highly unlikely to do anything with this one. That seems like a great reason for voters to show up in droves this fall and boot him out of office.

Incidentally, the report has chapters dealing with other issues in Wisconsin that we’ve discussed before, such as the infusion of money from Mark Zuckerberg and the Center for Tech and Civic Life, and potential violations of law concerning ballot security at dropboxes. Look for social media to flag discussions of this report as heretical and news outlets to trash it (Politico and BuzzFeed already have), even though it’s the product of a special counsel investigation and contains, presumably, facts.