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If Canada is going to allow Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to turn a once-free nation into an autocratic police state, then Parliament will have to vote today to allow it. Trudeau wants to make many of his “emergency” powers permanent.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/02/20/democracy-dies-in-canada-trudeau-government-to-make-some-of-their-new-authoritarian-measures-permanent-n1560716

But the emergency powers act he invoked to crush the truckers’ freedom protesters can only hold for seven days unless Parliament votes to extend it, and may the eternal light of shame shine on any member who does.

There have been so many developments and so many outrages just in the past couple of days that I can’t list them all. Here are just a few: The arrests of protesters in Ottawa have continued, although some say they weren’t taken into custody, just driven out of town and released, and many of them returned. This is possibly because they weren’t actually breaking any laws so there wasn’t anything they could be charged with if they were taken to a police station.

It turns out that the elderly lady in a mobility scooter who was trampled by a police horse was an Indigenous People’s leader of full Mohawk heritage. Or as Trudeau would call her, “a white supremacist.”

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/20/heres-more-on-the-ottawa-freedom-convoy-woman-run-over-by-police-with-their-horses-n525440

The government crackdown on rights has gone so far overboard that people are having their bank accounts frozen just because they made donations to the truckers weeks ago before Trudeau even invoked his emergency, creating a new category of retroactive thought crimes.

https://instapundit.com/504817/

Coffee is also apparently insurrectionist. A café owner was reportedly threatened with arrest for serving coffee to truckers. And here’s video of police hitting a woman’s camera and threatening her for the crime of being from Alberta and trying to walk somewhere to buy coffee.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/20/watch-going-for-coffee-is-now-a-crime-in-ottawa-police-may-attack-and-threaten-you-n525362

This protest was never really about vaccine mandates (it’s reported that 90% of the truckers are already vaccinated.) It was certainly not about racism, as most of the truckers are minorities. It was about the heavy hand of the government crushing the people’s rights. If that wasn’t clear to begin with, it certainly should be now.

Instapundit has been doing a good job of rounding up all the latest stories and comments on this dark time in Canada’s history. You can find a lot more here:

https://instapundit.com/504808/

https://instapundit.com/504761/

And David Solway at PJ Media has a stark warning for Canadians titled “Requiem For a Nation.”

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/02/19/requiem-for-a-nation-n1560630

I hope Canadians will read it because as Solway writes, it’s up to them whether events of the next few days miraculously save their Charter of Rights and Freedoms from being “nothing but an irrelevant scrap of parchment,” or whether “Canada has been transformed into a federal caricature” whose “leaders are unaccountable and depraved and the majority of the population, to quote Aristotle, 'are not capable of sufficient rational appreciation of political ends.'”

Finally, here’s a warning for Americans who think they can ignore what’s happening to our neighbor to the north: William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection says that Trudeau is following the same playbook that the left is following here to cement their own tyrannical rule: declare anyone who disagrees with them to be a lower class of “others” who hold “unacceptable views,” and have government collude with big tech, the financial industry and other systems that everyone relies on to shut their opponents out of the means of communication and the basic necessities of life.

It’s working in China, with their surveillance state and “social credit" system. If China’s too far away for Americans to see the dangers and stand up to stop it, then is Ottawa close enough?

Michael Sussmann’s attorneys at Latham & Watkins –- the firm that has also represented the Hillary campaign, Hillary for America, The Clinton Foundation, Marc Elias, the law firm Perkins Coie, and seemingly just about everybody else being looked at by Durham –- have filed two motions this week, one on Monday requesting that Durham’s “Factual Background” on the case be stricken from his motion filed last Friday, and the other yesterday for a dismissal of the charge against Sussmann. In essence, they’re saying, “Our client did NOT LIE! And even if he did, his lie wasn’t material to the overall case, so it’s not actually criminal.” Pretty amusing, really.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/17/breaking-sussmann-attorneys-make-big-move-in-durham-case-n523620

RedState.com says “a closer look at the request shows it to be much more of a desperate heave into the end zone than a play expected to succeed.”

Sussmann’s attorneys call the case “extraordinary prosecutorial overreach” and even say the indictment “fails to state an offense.” They write, “It has long been a crime to make a false statement to the government. But the law criminalizes only false statements that are material --- false statements that matter because they can actually affect a specific decision of the government.” False statements about “ancillary matters” are “immaterial and cannot give rise to criminal liability.”

Amazingly, they’re telling Durham that Sussmann was visiting the FBI and the CIA just to give “tips” (actually the fake Alfa Bank story) and that the fact he was working for --- and billing --- the Clinton campaign was immaterial. “Allowing this case to go forward would criminalize ordinary conduct,” the motion says, “raise First Amendment concerns, dissuade honest citizens from coming forward with tips, and chill the advocacy of lawyers who interact with the government.” Oh, goodness, surely the special counsel wouldn’t want to criminalize ordinary conduct, like peddling a fake story to federal investigators and lying to them about why!

It sure looks like a last-ditch effort to us. This is what you use when you don’t have anything else.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/17/michael-sussmanns-motion-to-dismiss-is-a-flaming-pile-of-garbage-n523722

As for trying to get the case dismissed, RedState points out that it’s the defense’s job to try to do that. They predictably came up with a way, but one that’s not compelling. “The existence of this motion does not in any way serve as evidence that Durham’s case against Sussmann is specious,” ‘Bonchie’ says. “In fact, a closer look at the filing shows it to be incredibly weak.”

How could Sussmann’s tip about Alfa Bank be “ancillary” to the FBI’s decision to investigate Trump, Russia and Alfa Bank? By presenting himself as a tipster, not a Clinton campaign lawyer –- which involved lying in answer to a direct question –- he made himself and his allegations seem more credible. And that would be, or at least should be, extremely material to the FBI’s decision on whether to open an investigation.

As RedState reminds us, Michael Flynn’s so-called “lie” to the FBI “did not appear to be material about much of anything,” and George Papadopoulos’s simple mix-up of dates didn’t, either, yet both of them were prosecuted. Those examples set the bar very low for a statement being “material.”

Sussmann’s attorneys also argued that Durham had used false and irrelevant allegations “plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.” Apparently, Durham was expecting these arguments to be made.

RedState cautioned that left-leaning “legal analysts” should wait until Durham has had a chance to respond before rushing to praise the defense’s motion to dismiss.

At the time of this writing, we’re still waiting on that response, but news broke Thursday evening about his no-nonsense response to the motion Sussmann’s attorneys filed earlier, the one to strike Durham’s “Factual Background” on the case.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/durham-no-basis-strike-factual-background-filing-denies-intent-politicize-sussmann-case

“This court should deny the defendant’s motion,” Durham said. “If third parties or the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the government’s motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the government’s inclusion of this information...Moreover, any potential prejudice or jury taint arising from such media attention can effectively and appropriately be addressed through the voir dire process during jury selection.”

We would add that this is the job of attorneys for both sides during jury selection. There will be plenty of media attention knocking the Durham investigation --- arguably much more than we’ll see that's positive --- so doesn’t that “taint” the jury pool as well?

Sussmann’s motion on Monday said that Durham’s allegations in the “Background Information” section of his filing last Friday, such as Rodney Joffe’s use of a “special arrangement” to obtain data from otherwise highly secure email servers for the President’s office, should be stricken. But Durham, in his response on Thursday, confidently defended his use of those details:

“The government included two paragraphs of limited additional factual detail in its motion for valid and straightforward reasons,” he wrote. “First, those paragraphs reflect conduct that is intertwined with, and part of, events that are central to proving the defendant’s alleged criminal conduct. Second, government included these paragraphs to apprise the court of the factual basis for one of the potential conflicts described in the government’s motion, namely that a member of the defense team was working for the Executive Office of the President of the United States during relevant events that involved the EOP [Executive Office of the President].”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/durham-insists-snooping-evidence-valid-for-case-and-media-misinterpretations-dont-undermine-facts

Even with the explanation from Durham, Margot Cleveland wondered aloud on Thursday why he was being so forthcoming about certain facts in the case. “Why is Durham telling us this?” she asked. She said that if he had a nefarious reason, he would have done as the Mueller team did and leak selectively to friendly outlets. But Durham hasn’t been leaking at all.

She postulated that by putting some details of what he has in these motions, he “might prompt cooperation in a way that plea negotiations can’t.” Or perhaps he’s trying to make somebody nervous and incriminate himself. Or he hopes that by showing some of his cards, he’s making it “politically impossible” for the Biden administration to shut him down.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/16/explosive-allegations-protect-durham-probe-being-s/

Or he’s trying to rattle the government by showing he’s a step ahead, as with IG Horowitz’ office after it failed to turn over cell phone evidence. Or he’s trying to keep “we the people” informed. Or it’s all of the above.

The DC Circuit Court generally looks with disfavor on motions to strike, she said, so it doesn’t look good for Sussmann’s defense on that. On the other hand, “How the court will rule is anyone’s guess at this point, but we will likely see a counter from Special Counsel Durham’s office first –- and maybe a few more hints on what is to come as well.”

Whenever we find ourselves generally on the same track with Margot Cleveland, we know we as non-lawyers are doing a pretty good job of sorting all this out. Read her analysis, and your legal IQ will go up about 50 points.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/17/special-counsel-john-durham-is-opening-up-about-his-spygate-investigation-but-why/

And something fall-down-funny she noticed: Sussmann’s lawyers actually cite Peter Strzok!

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/17/one-part-of-michael-sussmanns-motion-to-dismiss-will-have-you-laughing-out-loud-n523955

Those of us old enough to recall the Reagan era (pardon me while I take a moment to remember it…Oh, well, back to 2022) will recall the famous “misery index.” Invented by economist Arthur Okun, Reagan used it to convince Americans to choose him over Jimmy Carter. It was a combination of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, the two together serving as a gauge of how miserable people felt with prices rising even while work was hard to find.

Well, last month under Biden, the misery index reached 11.5%, the highest in a decade, even higher than in the early days of the pandemic.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/polling/biden-misery-index-rise-americans-pessimistic-about-countrys-future

But I bet I know what you’re thinking: 11.5% seems awfully low, considering the widespread misery this Administration has created. Well, there are a few reasons for that. One is that it doesn’t include the many other ways the Democrats are spreading misery, like with open borders, skyrocketing crime rates and their never-ending assaults on personal freedom and individual rights. Another is that the unemployment rate is only 4%. But it seems much higher (and honestly is) because that stat only includes people who are actively looking for work, and not those who are living off government largesse. Also, unemployment claims “unexpectedly” jumped last week:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/jobless-claims-coronavirus-pandemic-feb-12-2022

The third factor is that the bigger portion of the misery index, inflation, might be a high 7.5% (with no ceiling in sight), but that’s still a really lowball estimate. Boston columnist and radio host Howie Carr did a deep dive into how inflation is really affecting everyday Americans.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/02/16/howie-carr-biden-inflation-a-pain-at-the-pump-grocery-store/

It’s not just a “high-class problem,” as Biden’s smug chief of staff dismissively described it. Carr quotes many listeners who shared their horror stories about both inflation and the supply chain shortages, from having to drive from store to store searching for cat food as if on a treasure hunt, to a man who put $25 worth of gas in his truck and it didn’t even cut off the “low fuel” light.

Carr also points out that the government inflation figure is kept artificially low by not including two of our biggest necessities: food and fuel. He consulted a website called shadowstats.com that computes inflation using the more honest pre-1980 formula. Under that, current inflation is actually 15.63%, the highest since 1947. That was so long ago that Joe Biden was only five years old.

Even accepting the artificially-low 4% unemployment rate, that would put the current misery index at nearly 20%. Yes, that feels a lot more accurate to me. Incidentally, the misery index hit a high under Jimmy Carter of 21.9%, but if anyone can break that record, I have faith that Biden can.

Project Veritas just released a new undercover expose video, this time on the FDA’s role in promoting COVID vaccines.

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/fda-executive-officer-on-hidden-camera-reveals-future-covid-policy-biden/

In the hidden camera footage, FDA executive officer Christopher Cole is shown saying that “from everything he’s heard,” it’s not probable but certain that the FDA will announce a policy that everyone must get annual COVID-19 shots forever, even toddlers. He said, “It hasn’t been formally announced yet ’cause they don’t want to rile everyone up.”

Referring to pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, Cole said, “It’ll be (a) recurring fountain of revenue. It might not be that much initially, but...if they can get every person required at an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company.”

Cole said, “The drug companies, the food companies, the vaccine companies, they pay us hundreds of millions of dollars a year to hire and keep the reviewers to approve their products. If they [Big Pharma] can get every person required at [to get] an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company.”

Cole admitted that “all the tests aren’t there” to prove safety or show the longterm effects of the vaccines, especially on children. When asked if there’s really an emergency requiring an Emergency Use Authorization to vaccinate children, he replied, “They’re all approved under an emergency just because it’s not as impactful as some of the other approvals” (i.e., it’s easier to get around regulations because the only standard is that it be more beneficial than harmful.) He predicted it would be a gradual thing, starting with schools mandating it.

James O’Keefe of Project Veritas said a part two of the expose is coming. For their part, the FDA released a statement saying, “The person purportedly in the video does not work on vaccine matters and does not represent the views of the FDA.”

Sure, he sounds completely out of the loop.

Project Veritas Expose Update

UPDATE: Project Veritas has released Part Two of its latest undercover video expose featuring FDA Executive Officer Christopher Cole.

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/fda-executive-officer-exposes-close-ties-between-agency-and-pharmaceutical/

In this segment, he talks about how the FDA is dependent on the “hundreds of millions of dollars a year” that drug, food and vaccine companies pay them in user fees “to hire and keep the reviewers to approve their products.” He also discusses the disincentives for people in government to blow the whistle on corruption and how no other office will want to hire you, whether what you did was right or wrong.

You can also read the FDA’s official response at that link. I won’t bother to quote it since you can read it for yourself, or just guess and you’ll probably be right.

There are a number of investigations being launched into what Black Lives Matter has been doing with the approximately $90 million that was showered on them in the past couple of years by terrified white liberals and the corporations they run. Now, we know what they’re doing with $100,000 of it. They used it to pay the (shockingly low) bail of BLM activist Quintez Brown, who is charged with attempted murder for allegedly firing a shot at a Jewish Louisville mayoral candidate who’s running against a black candidate.

Here's some background on the shooting and the suspect. 

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/02/blm-supporting-gun-control-activist-arrested-for-attempted-murder-of-louisville-mayoral-candidate/

As Redstate.com points out, the Washington Post mustered no outrage for BLM using donor funds to bail out an alleged would-be murderer, but they have time to call up and dox people from a hacked list of GiveSendGo donors and harass them about donating to support the Canadian truckers’ peaceful freedom protest. At this point, I can’t imagine using WaPo for anything other than bird cage liner. If your birds will deign to poop on it. 

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/16/black-lives-matter-further-debases-itself-in-kentucky-n523283

That piece also points out that the investigations of BLM’s finances are all on the state level. The Biden “Justice” Department can’t seem to find a thing worth looking into, just as they ignore Antifa and police who kill Trump supporters. Keep all of this in mind when you vote in November.

Yesterday, we promised to delve deeper into the law firm Latham & Watkins LLP, which represents Michael Sussmann and was the reason for Special Counsel John Durham’s filing last week. The matter of Sussmann’s representation hasn’t received much attention yet, but needs to.

Durham was notifying the judge of potential conflicts of interest generated by Latham, as the firm represents an amazing array of others who might be called as witnesses or possibly indicted. This firm happens to have previously represented both Perkins Coie and Marc Elias in the Durham investigation. As Durham alleges, Latham “likely possesses confidential knowledge about Perkins Coie’s role in, and views concerning, Sussmann’s past activities.”

Latham also represents both the Clinton campaign and Hillary for America. What are the odds?

Interestingly, one of the partners at Latham is...(drum roll, please)...Liz Cheney’s husband, Philip Perry.

https://newarkdailytimes.com/2022/02/13/liz-cheneys-husband-is-partner-at-latham-watkins-which-works-on-behalf-of-companies/

Jake Sullivan, who appears to be the odd man out –- not represented by Latham but by attorney Brian Stekloff of Wilkinson Stekloff in DC –- is not currently under indictment but might have lied under oath to the House Intel Committee, at the very least.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/latest-durham-revelations-put-bidens-national-security

Let’s look back at what Latham was doing for the Democrat Party in December of 2020. As Jerry Dunleavy reported for the Washington Examiner, “The Democratic National Committee’s legal team, bolstered by Obama’s White House lawyers, moved to dismiss a lawsuit from onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, arguing the ‘gist’ of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s controversial dossier was true.”

The attorneys argued that the “allegedly defamatory statements” against Page were “substantially true” and “are capable of an innocent construction.” I have a question: do attorneys really get to lie with such impunity and still not get disbarred? Answer: Yes! At least these lawyers do.

But here’s where it gets more interesting. Quoting from Dunleavy’s piece: “The DNC legal team, comprised of five lawyers from Latham & Watkins, including lead counsel Terra Reynolds, former Obama deputy White House counsel Nicholas McQuaid, and former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, claimed, “The statements at issue in this case are not merely susceptible of an innocent construction –- they relate to business and political contacts that Page himself indisputably cultivated in Russia.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/obama-white-house-lawyers-fight-carter-pages-dnc-lawsuit-by-defending-gist-of-steele-dossier

Aside from the fact that Page’s lawsuit states that he had never met with those contacts and that IG Horowitz had already noted the lack of evidence that he did, do you notice anything in particular about the above paragraph? The legal team from Latham & Watkins defending the DNC includes two big-time members of Obama’s own team.

In fact, Kathryn Ruemmler was Obama’s longest-serving White House counsel and has been known for years in DC circles as his “fixer.” She’s the one Obama praised for her ability to “see around corners.”

So, now we’ve got Hillary Clinton and her machine being investigated by the special counsel, and most are being represented by the law firm that employed Obama’s “fixer” as a top attorney. Ruemmler had even been mentioned as a possible successor to Eric Holder when he stepped down as Obama’s attorney general, but she withdrew her name from consideration, saying her close friendship with Obama might make the confirmation process “difficult.”

Here’s a look back at Ruemmler from 2014, as profiled by Latham & Watkins. She has a long history with the Clintons, too, serving as associate White House counsel to Bill Clinton, where she was busy “defending the White House against independent counsel and congressional investigations.”

https://www.lw.com/news/kathryn-ruemmler-to-rejoin-latham-05202014

Sidney Powell has had her eye on Ruemmler for a long time. This piece from 2018 places Obama’s “fixer” among the female “triumverate” surrounding him: Ruemmler, Lisa Monaco and Susan Rice.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/03/01/reunited-and-it-feels-so-swampy-obamas-three-muses-reappear-in-muellers-trump-investigation/

Ruemmler and Monaco go back to the Enron case, working under Andrew Weissmann, all three of whom were implicated in prosecutorial misconduct, as Powell detailed in her book LICENSE TO LIE. Ruemmler hid exculpatory evidence in that case, and almost all the convictions were overturned.

By the way, guess where Lisa Monaco is now? No, she’s not at Latham. But she’s got the DOJ covered, as she is second in command there. Since April 21, 2021, she’s been Merrick Garland’s deputy attorney general. And we wonder why only Republicans are ever held accountable.

Also, guess who Nicholas McQuaid is? This colleague of Hunter Biden's defense attorney Christopher Clark moved from Latham to the DOJ the day Biden took office, named as acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. Sen. Chuck Grassley noticed...

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/on-day-one-biden-installed-law-partner-of-sons-defense-lawyer-at-doj-criminal-division

As for Ruemmler, she’s been back and forth over the years between the White House and Latham. After just weeks of being back at Latham, she was defending...(another drum roll, please)...the Clinton Foundation.

She’s not currently at Latham or the White House. She’s Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel at Goldman Sachs, after joining in 2020 as a partner. It's not known if she’s taking any role in the defense of Durham’s targets.

On Monday, Sussmann’s defense filed a six-page response to Durham’s filing of last Friday, formally waiving Sussmann’s potential conflicts of interest. (No doubt the others being represented by Latham will do this same.) It complains loudly about Durham’s tactic of using “speaking indictments” to include allegations they don’t consider relevant to the charged offense (that is, lying to the FBI), saying the media coverage he’s generating might “taint the jury pool.”

Considering most media are hardly even covering the story, at least so far, that concern might be a tad overblown. But Margot Cleveland does see that changing as the media gradually start covering it. Her analysis of this new filing by Sussmann’s attorneys is a must-read.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/15/what-we-learned-from-michael-sussmanns-response-to-the-spygate-special-counsel/

Attorneys' characterization of Durham’s filing as “inflammatory” and “political” gives Democrats all the excuse they need not to even look at his allegations.

Cleveland’s previous analysis, made after Durham’s filing but before Sussmann’s attorneys responded, asks some good questions. In light of our general topic today, legal representation, note in particular #5-8. Especially #8: “Why the swamp is so swampy.”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/14/8-more-intrigues-inside-the-latest-special-counsel-filings/

You can bet the various defendants represented by Latham will, like Sussmann, waive any concerns about conflict of interest. If one does, they all will. Then the court has the option of accepting those waivers or not.

When a real reporter for the U.K. Daily Mail actually did a journalist’s job and dared to ask Hillary about Durham’s filing, she walked by saying nothing. I assume her attorneys have advised her not to comment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1KhulzSdgs

……………………………….

Finally...

LAUGH OF THE DAY

Here’s an especially hilarious excerpt from the piece by The New York Times’ national security and legal policy correspondent Charlie Savage on why not to bother covering the Durham story:

“[Durham’s narratives] tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time --- raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims.”

Duh, we’re just too stooo-pid, and it’s haaaaaard! We’d love to ask Margot Cleveland what she thinks about this! Here’s what Spencer Brown at Townhall had to say…

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/02/15/oh-so-this-is-why-the-new-york-times-didnt-cover-this-weeks-durham-bombshell-n2603300

Let's play 'Did You Know?'

February 16, 2022

Did you know that Jake Sullivan’s wife is reportedly a top adviser for Attorney General Merrick Garland in the Department of "Justice"? According to POLITICO, Maggie Goodlander not only clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer but also for Garland when he was on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. (A story in the New Hampshire Bar News says she found it “really painful” and “an abdication of duty” that the Senate didn’t take up Garland’s nomination for Supreme Court.) With Biden's election and Garland's appointment, she became his counsel in the attorney general’s office, where she now works.

Jake Sullivan, as you definitely know, works in the White House as Biden’s national security adviser and also played a huge role in the spread of the fake Trump-Russia story. He hasn’t been indicted at this point, but at the very least could be called as a witness.

Goodlander must recuse herself immediately from anything involving the Durham investigation. Washington, DC, is so incestuous, this is no doubt just one of many conflicts of interest that will emerge before Durham is done.

As a side note, during President Trump’s impeachment trial, she served as counsel for the HouseReason #10,398 To Homeschool Your Kids: Judiciary Committee and House Managers, trying to help them get Trump convicted and removed from office. Her husband must have been so proud.

But do you see the problem? It's not a good look, even for this DOJ.

POLITICO could have used a chart to show all the relationships among Jake Sullivan, his family members, and other DC players.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2021/06/02/the-other-sullivan-s-493091

Trudeau cracks down

February 16, 2022

You have to hand it to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He finally found a way to stop people from comparing him to Fidel Castro. Now, they’re comparing him to Benito Mussolini.

Trudeau, who has proven himself to be a genuinely terrible leader, has slandered the peaceful trucker protesters, threatened them and had them arrested rather than simply agreeing to meet with them and listening. Here’s a recap of how his arrogance, intransigence and incompetence have led to the point where he’s not only created this crisis in Canada but inspired revolts around the world.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/justin-trudeau-trucker-protest-canada-david-marcus

Now, Trudeau has “gone nuclear” as many put it by invoking the seldom-used Emergencies Act, which is basically the Canadian version of martial law. Again, against peaceful protesters who are simply demanding that the government stop violating their rights and respect their freedom.

In a bizarre press conference, Trudeau described the move as “reasonable” and “proportionate,” as he and his deputy prime minister ominously described how truckers who protest the government may be subject to fines, imprisonment without due process, losing their insurance and more. They’re also expanding terrorist financing laws to allow for accounts to be frozen and seized without court order, including for people who merely support or raise funds to help the protesters.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/14/trudeau-officially-enacts-autocratic-emergency-powers-gives-surreal-press-conference-n522319

This is the type of extreme measure that’s meant to be invoked only when a situation “seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it.” That sounds more like when BLM and Antifa supporters were rioting, looting, setting fires and destroying property. Trudeau’s response to that was to take a knee with them.

While some civil rights groups that are unworthy of the name approved Trudeau’s dictatorial move, calling it "responsible" and "a good strategy," others condemned it and called it a slippery slope into government overreach. News flash, guys: declaring martial law against peaceful freedom protesters isn’t a “slippery slope into government overreach.” It’s a deep dive into the belly of the authoritarian beast.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/canadian-civil-liberties-groups-respond-to-trudeau-invoking-emergencies-act

Many of the truckers say they refuse to be intimidated and will not give up. Although "giving up" might be the best strategy. I would not be surprised if their next move would be to give him what he wants: instead of blocking the streets, they could take their trucks home...and keep them there. Keep them there until their disgraceful PM realizes that truckers are a lot more important to society than male models with Stalin-sized egos. They might let him and all the leftist elitists around him find out how much power they really have when nobody’s delivering their food or heating oil or hair gel to them.

Related: Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, imagines how an American President who supported American ideals and Constitutional rights would respond to Trudeau’s crackdown on citizens, if we had one of those.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/robert-spencer/2022/02/14/if-we-had-a-real-president-heres-how-he-or-she-would-react-to-trudeaus-war-on-canadians-freedom-n1559227

From Substack reader C. M. Cobb:

Looks like the White House servers were not hacked but rather Joffe was given access. By whom? I think that person plus the receiver of the info should be worried.

This just happens to be what we were planning on addressing next --- the “sensitive arrangement” that enabled Rodney Joffe, former Senior Vice President of Neustar, to infiltrate the White House computer servers.

(Note: speaking of Neustar, it was acquired in December, 2021, by TransUnion for $3.1 billion. No small potatoes.)

Take a look at the wording of Durham’s report: Joffe “had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP [Executive Office of the President] as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS [domain name system] resolution services to the EOP.” They “exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about President Trump.”

This is what spies do. To do it, they either have to have inside help or else successfully compromise someone, likely through some combination of blackmail and/or threats. In other words, the “sensitive arrangement” might have been a matter of friendly cooperation within an anti-Trump cabal, or possibly was “an offer you can’t refuse.” How Joffe managed to achieve this very underhanded “sensitive arrangement” is no doubt under investigation.

The CIA was also involved. As Jerry Dunleavy reported this weekend for the Washington Examiner, “Durham said Friday that Sussmann, at a meeting in February, 2017, [EDITORIAL NOTE: AFTER TRUMP WAS IN THE WHITE HOUSE] ‘provided an updated set of allegations –- including the Russian Bank – 1 data and additional allegations relating to Trump’ to another U.S. government agency dubbed ‘Agency – 2,’ which is reportedly the CIA.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/durham-says-democrat-allied-tech-executive-spied-on-trumps-white-house-office

During his CIA meeting, Sussmann allegedly “provided data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by these entities of internet protocol addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider,” claiming that this showed “Trump and/or his associates” were using “rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.” Durham said this claim was “highly misleading or outright false” and explained why.

According to Durham, the so-called “sensitive arrangement” with Joffe started in July of 2016. (Crossfire Hurricane was opened at the end of July.) Kash Patel, lead investigator for Devin Nunes’ House Intelligence Committee, did use the word “hack” to describe what was done: “Per the pleading, the government will also show that Joffe, af the direction of Sussmann/Elias and the Clinton campaign, exploited proprietary data, to hack Trump Tower and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB), which Sussmann later relayed to U.S. agencies in the hopes of having them launch investigations of President Trump.”

As Tucker Carlson reported Monday, Joffe, a pro-Hillary activist from South Africa who assembled a team of cyber researchers from Georgia Tech, said in emails that he wanted Hillary to win because she “had promised him a job as a top cybersecurity officer in the U.S. government.” Durham said Joffe “tasked those researchers to mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia.”

Here’s a link to Tucker's monologue, worthwhile especially for the clip between Trump and Hillary during their 2016 debate. In a way that seems ridiculous in light of current revelations, she plays it to the hilt: “It’s pretty clear...that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants you to do, and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race.”

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6297536905001#sp=show-clips

Brother. Let’s see, who was it who “encouraged espionage”? Hint: not Trump. And it’s hard to imagine this REAL espionage wasn’t done without the knowledge and direction of Hillary Clinton. Here she was talking about the so-called espionage against the DNC, the “hacking” of their servers, but we know even that was made up. There’s still no evidence Russia did that.

As politicized as the intel community is, two recent appointees as Director of National Intelligence were definitely not part of the swamp: Ric Grenell and John Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe says there's “enough evidence” to bring charges against “quite a few” people associated with the origin of the bogus Trump-Russia investigation. Ratcliffe himself even informed Durham that Clinton’s lawyers might have hacked Trump’s servers to fabricate a story that distracted from her own email scandal. And Obama and Biden both knew, Ratcliffe told FOX NEWS’ Bill Hemmer on Monday, because then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed them on it.

https://republicbrief.com/ex-director-of-national-intelligence-says-theres-enough-evidence-to-indict-multiple-people-in-trump-russia-probe/

An update from FOX NEWS is consistent, saying more people are cooperating and going before Durham’s grand jury than has previously been reported.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/durham-probe-accelerated-more-people-cooperating-coming-before-grand-jury

Lee Smith, author of THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT, also appeared on Tucker’s show, saying, “...The idea that the Oval Office and other important offices in the White House were under surveillance by political operatives is extraordinary. It’s shocking --- and I’m talking to people who were investigating this on the Hill for several years, and they’re shocked.” We’re finally starting to understand the scope and depravity of this operation, he said, and “it’s terrible for the country.”

So, what was the impetus for Durham’s filing last Friday? He was asking the presiding judge to inquire into potential conflicts of interest arising from Sussmann’s representation by the law firm Latham & Watkins, as these could be relevant at trial. Latham has previously represented both Sussmann and Perkins Coie over issues Durham said might become relevant, and also “maintained professional and/or personal relationships with individuals who could be witnesses in these proceedings.” (Sussmann has reportedly waived any concern.) More on this law firm to come.

Finally, Margot Cleveland at The Federalist has perhaps the definitive breakdown –- for now –- of what Durham might have in store for those guilty of a spying and frame-up operation against Trump. Again, John Ratcliffe and Ric Grenell, both former Directors of National Intelligence, knew what the Democrats were up to and apparently helped point Durham in the right direction. Grenell tweeted that “some Democrats knew” about the plan for Joffe to monitor Trump’s White House internet and “let it go.”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/14/special-counsel-democrats-framed-and-spied-on-trump-while-he-was-president/

Ratcliffe announced in October, after Sussmann was indicted, that he’d provided Durham with almost 1,000 pages of materials. He said then that Sussmann’s indictment was “the tip of the iceberg.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/john-ratcliffe-intelligence-documents-john-durham-charges

Other than the New York Post and some conservative sites (like this one!), hardly anyone is covering what Rep. Elise Stefanik calls “the biggest criminal political corruption story of our lifetime.” (We’d love to be flies on the wall during their editorial meetings!) Asked about this, K. T. McFarland said that “it’s because all the other media was in on the con...They don’t want to have to be called before a grand jury and have to say where they got the fake story and why they continue to peddle it.”

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kyle-drennen/2022/02/14/nets-silent-clinton-spying-trump-cover-skating-scandal-instead

We did find a report from NBC, downplaying the story's significance and ending with a hilarious statement from Joffe’s spokesperson, calling him “apolitical.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/tech-exec-used-access-white-house-computers-look-dirt-trump-says-speci-rcna16123

Better: The Daily Caller tells it without the unintentional humor.:

https://dailycaller.com/2022/02/14/trump-clinton-fbi-russia-collusion-durham/

“We’ve never seen anything like this in American history,” said Mark Levin in the intro to his Sunday night show, referring to the 'collusion’ among the Obama/Biden administrations, the Hillary campaign/DNC, and Mark Elias/Michael Sussmann/Perkins Coie and the creators of the fake Steele “dossier,” all to push the Trump-Russia narrative and repeated coup attempts against President Trump. “THAT’S the insurrection.” he said. “That’s what took place --- the effort to overthrow an elected President of the United States.”

Durham’s latest filing in the Michael Sussmann case, released Friday night, goes to a place that even we hadn’t even anticipated --- a place where Hillary’s people didn’t just spy on Trump the candidate. Most shocking of all, Durham says he has evidence to show they continued to spy on him after he became President, by way of “Tech Executive -1,” Rodney Jaffe, and his hacking of the President’s internet servers. (!!!) If we didn’t predict Durham would find this, it was only because we didn’t realize it was possible. If the President’s internet server, at that ultimate level of classification, is hackable, then who knows where our most sensitive national security information ended up?

Quoting from Durham: “The Government’s evidence at trial will also establish that among the Internet data Tech Executive – 1 and his associates exploited was domain name system (“DNS”) Internet traffic pertaining to (i) a particular healthcare provider, (ii) Trump Tower, (iii) DONALD TRUMP’S CENTRAL PARK WEST APARTMENT BUILDING, and (iv) THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (‘EOP’) [emphasis ours].”

According to the report, Jaffe “had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP.” They “exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.”

In a sane world, this story would be THE headline from every news outlet. It’s hardly possible even to describe how earth-shaking it is. As the story in RedState says, “This blows Watergate out of the water and makes it look like child’s play. Only in the current hyper-partisan environment, where Democrats can literally get away with anything, is this not a major political scandal. Here you have associates of Hillary Clinton, and allies of the law firm she was contracting to get dirt on Trump, using government channels to spy on him. And not just during the campaign, but after he became President.”

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/12/john-durham-drops-a-shock-and-awe-filing-about-spying-on-donald-trump-n521239

Recall the way Trump was ridiculed for claiming Trump Tower was spied on. Well, it WAS, by Hillary’s people, and now Durham says he can show it was even worse –- they spied on his personal residence, and even after he became President, they spied on the White House. FOX News took viewers down memory lane on Sunday, also reminding us that one of the conspiratorial liars, Jake Sullivan, is currently working in the Biden White House.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1oESBHPv8Y

Byron York says this newest revelation proves Trump was right. In fact, one has to wonder if Trump might not have had an insider all along who advised him of what was happening. SOMEBODY told him.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Sunday morning that this new Durham filing shows the spying on Trump was “worse than we thought, as it showed the government was working with Hillary’s campaign. “We’ve never seen anything like that in history.”

https://amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/13/jim-jordan-durham-filing-shows-spying-trump-was-wo/

Kash Patel, former chief investigator of the Trump-Russia probe for the House Intel Committee, said the filing “definitively shows that the Hillary Clinton campaign directly funded and ordered its lawyers at Perkins Coie to orchestrate a criminal enterprise to fabricate a connection between President Trump and Russia.” Legal Insurrection has a comprehensive overview of the Durham filing, highly recommended reading.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/02/durham-court-filing-hillarys-campaign-spied-on-trump-tower-trump-apartment-bldg-white-house-internet-traffic/

“Dilbert” creator and author Scott Adams, in his podcast “Coffee with Scott Adams,” addressed this on Sunday. “It looks like the campaign was definitely involved,” he said, “in something that looks like an insurrection.” I like his choice of words here: insurrection. “Now, keep in mind,” he said, “this wasn’t an FBI investigation, right? This was some lawyers who had some access to some technology guys who had some access to some data. This is about the most illegal thing you’ve ever heard of.”

And it happened to him after he was not just a candidate –- which was bad enough –- but the sitting President. Of all the things we’ve ever heard about that were said to be “worse than Watergate,” he said, this is the first one that really has been worse than Watergate!

Adams pointed out something we’ve noted before: that Jake Sullivan, who worked for Hillary and now is President Bien’s national security adviser, was deeply involved in this scheme. So was Marc Elias, who was, and is, busy trying to cook elections with new rules and redistricting, state-by-state, with the stated purpose of electing more Democrats.

“Basically, everything that was your worst imagination of what was happening seems to be coming true,” he said. He agreed with what we’ve been saying for years, that everything Democrats accuse Republicans of doing is what they, the Democrats, are doing. If you want to know what they’re up to, your first clue is the fake stories they tell about the GOP.

Adams had checked CNN’s home page and, sure enough, the story wasn’t there, not even a little bit. Same with MSNBC. They’d tossed that file down the memory hole. And Democrats get away with this, because their audience watches only them. As if Democrats would ever tune in to Fox News to find out what’s going on!

So, what DID CNN talk about Sunday morning? Main story on their home page: More on Joe Rogan and the n-word, with an opinion piece linking the fact that Rogan’s still on the air with the January 6 insurrection, saying both of these things tear at the fabric of our country. Not kidding.

(NOTE: For an update, we looked at the CNN home page late Sunday night. The Durham story still was not there, but we did learn that Team Fluff had won the Puppy Bowl.)

“They’re ‘disappearing’ a gigantic story, successfully...It’s mind-boggling,” Adams said, describing the scandal as “a Hillary Clinton insurrection against the government.”

As a palate-cleanser after that sad observation about the state of “journalism,” I’d like to leave you with an incredible piece of in-depth investigative reporting that explains just what “The Swamp” is, how it came to be, and how our government is now structured to incorporate what is essentially the fourth branch of government --- the “Intelligence Branch” --- which appears to be running the show. They’re not even accountable to the President, as they choose what intelligence to share with the White House. Please, when you can, make some time to take all of this in. It might be the biggest wake-up call for our country that I have ever read.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/02/12/the-surveillance-and-political-spying-operations-highlighted-by-john-durham-are-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/

Finally, don't miss the best video commentary from the weekend on what Hillary's campaign did, from Steve Hilton on "The Next Revolution."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN9IsEw5y4U

“Crackpipe-gate”

February 16, 2022

“Crackpipe-gate” (as it’s facetiously been dubbed) has taken another twist or three. You’ll remember that the Washington Free Beacon reported that $30 million allocated by the Biden Administration was going to include “smoking kits” to make smoking crack and other illicit substances more sanitary for addicts, and that the kits include crack pipes. The White House denied that it was supplying free crack pipes. 

Now, the Washington Post reports that the Free Beacon reporter who wrote the story said the HHS spokesperson did not specifically say that the kits would include crack pipes, but he did confirm that the kits were for smoking crack, and based on what’s included in such kits around the country, they reported that the government would be funding crack pipes.

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2022/02/12/crackpipegate-just-got-a-lot-more-interesting-and-confusing-n521410

That's a point for the White House's side. But even WaPo admitted that it’s unclear what HHS’ intentions were, since the story ran before the kits were created.

Now, here’s another twist: Jeff Charles at Redstate.com reports that Biden is under fire now for denying that he plans to give out free crack pipes (and no, not from his son Hunter.) A nonprofit group called the Drug Policy Alliance that seeks “alternatives to strict laws” in aiding addicts, is angry because it was under the impression that the Administration did intend to include crack pipes in the kits. A spokesman fumed, “It would seem pointless to distribute these kits without” pipes, which “are the main part of the smoking kit to prevent the transmission of disease.”

(Although I feel I should mention that they are the main part of transmitting crack, which is arguably worse than disease.)

And another twist: The Free Beacon fired back that the HHS spokesman told them that they do “not specify what is in the kits, leaving that detail to program participants at the local level.” And we know some local programs have given out free crack pipes.

As to the question of whether Biden’s HHS planned to give away taxpayer-funded crack pipes to addicts, it’s not clear whether they did or didn’t. There don’t seem to be any strong denials, though, that they wanted to give away syringes. So either way, they’re using our tax money to help addicts keep using crack and heroin in the name of “compassion and public health.” I don’t think they understand what either of those terms means.

Must-Read Essay

February 16, 2022

Historian Robert Zimmerman explains what the now-worldwide freedom protests are really about by taking us on a look back through the past two years and all the lies – not honest mistakes, but lies – that politicians and health officials told the public in order to exploit the COVID-19 virus to increase their own power and take away people's freedom.

https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-lie-that-was-covid-2/

In short, they’re not just protests to demand an end to draconian COVID measures, or even just to demand the people’s freedoms and rights back, but a demand to stop the lies and bring back government that the people can trust. The problem, of course, is that once a public official squanders the public trust, it’s nearly impossible to earn it back. Usually, that’s dealt with by replacing the individuals at the polls, but in this case, they’ve also managed to destroy public trust in the system itself and even in the elections. It’s going to take an overwhelming turnout at the polls to ensure the public trusts the results, and then the winners are going to have to clean house from top to bottom.

That’s why I wrote before that earning back the public’s trust is going to be a Herculean task, specifically referring to Hercules having to clean out the Augean Stables. So much manure had built up that Hercules had to divert a river to flush it all away. We might have to do that with the Potomac.

Inflation Explained

February 16, 2022

On Sunday, Nancy Pelosi raised eyebrows (not her own, of course) by claiming that we have runaway inflation because the Biden economy is just so darn good. She said the Biden rescue plan put money in people’s pockets, and "The fact that people have jobs always contributes to an increase in inflation. And that's a good thing. But inflation is not good, you know, we have to contain it."

At this link, former Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow offers her a helpful remedial lesson in what “inflation” is and what actually causes it.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/kudlow-root-cause-inflation

In a nutshell: Inflation is caused by too many dollars chasing too few products, which drives up prices. It’s not caused by the current unemployment rate, which is artificially low because it only counts people who are actively looking for a job.

When people are working, they’re creating more products. But when the government is printing a lot of dollars that didn’t exist before and giving them to people to sit home and not work, there are fewer products. There are also fewer products when you have an Administration that allows a supply chain crisis to go on and on and never solve it, or that declares war on the domestic fossil fuel industry. You know, like we have now.

In short, it’s caused by Biden and the Democrats in Congress creating too many dollars and ensuring that they are chasing too few products. So if you want to bring down inflation, you either have to convince the Democrats to reverse all their cherished failed policies, or you have to kick them out of office. Guess which one would be easier?

Note: Troy Nehls is pictured here in the blue shirt on Jan. 6.

In an update to the U.S. Capitol Police story, Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas accused USCP Chief Tom Manger on Tuesday of telling “a bold-faced lie” when he said Nehls was never being investigated. As you know, Nehls is accusing them of illegally entering his office on two separate days last November, photographing the notes on his whiteboard (yes, SPYING) and later questioning a staff member about that content.

As Nehls alleged, “The Capitol Police Intelligence Division investigated my office illegally and one of my staffers caught them in the act” He said they proceeded to take photos of “confidential legislative products protected by the Speech and Debate clause enshrined in the Constitution, Article 1 Section 6.” He says he personally told the chief what was wrong about this and is quite unsatisfied with the responses he got to his concerns. In fact, he got the distinct impression that it was he who was considered the ‘threat.’

https://thepostmillennial.com/rep-troy-nehls-pushes-back-at-capitol-police-chief-denies-investigation

The USCP Inspector General has announced an internal investigation of the Capitol Police and their surveillance practices. The USCP maintains that Nehls’ door was wide open and that they were doing their duty when they checked things out. Chief Manger said, “The United States Capitol Police is sworn to protect Members of Congress. If a Member’s office is left open and unsecured, without anyone inside the office, USCP officers are directed to document that and secure the office to ensure no one can wander in and steal or do anything else nefarious.”

Well, that all sounds fine as far as it goes –- assuming the door WAS left open (we have their word, but so far nothing else) --- but it does not explain why they photographed the whiteboard or why, two days later, investigators disguised as construction workers stopped by and started questioning a lone staffer about what was written on it. It fails to address that at all.

A spokesperson for Rep. Nehls offered some food for thought: “Imagine leaving your front door open and police enter your private home, take pictures of the inside, and then open a criminal investigation based on those pictures.”

“How can Chief Manger issue a statement, and fail to mention the photograph that was illegally taken,” she asked. Here is Rep. Nehls’ full press release.

https://nehls.house.gov/posts/rep-nehls-reveals-he-was-targeted-in-malicious-capitol-police-criminal-investigation?oRef=ncl_amplify

House Republicans are now calling on Speaker Pelosi and Chairwoman on House Administration Zoe Lofgren, also a Democrat from California, to investigate the USCP surveillance activities, noting the constitutional issues they raise. (Question for House GOP: Do any of you trust Nancy Pelosi to set up a real investigation, especially when that would involve being investigated herself?)

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/09/capitol-police-issue-an-unbelievable-statement-after-accusations-of-spying-on-congress-n519831

Also, Nehls says that he and 26 of his House Republican colleagues have written to Chief Manger demanding that the USCP preserve all of their records related to any investigative activity involving any legislators or their staff members. This isn’t the first time Nehls has written to Chief Manger…

https://www.redvoicemedia.com/2021/10/texas-representative-asks-dc-police-chief-doj-to-make-ashli-babbitt-shooting-documents-public/

That’s right, it was Nehls who wrote to Chief Manger in October of last year, asking for a more thorough investigation into Ashli Babbitt’s death and requesting public disclosure of related documents. He said at that time he had personally reviewed all materials available relating to January 6. “Based on my extensive law enforcement experience,” he wrote, “I see nothing that could have possibly justified the use of lethal force against Ms. Babbitt…It is simply implausible that a single unarmed individual crawling through a broken window could have presented a serious life and death threat to LT Byrd or Members of Congress.”

He even said in the letter that it had been suggested by other USCP officers that the investigation into Byrd was dropped “because of his position and other political considerations.” Whew, one can see that IF the Capitol Police WERE going to spy on a member of Congress, it likely would be Nehls.

https://www.redvoicemedia.com/2021/10/texas-representative-asks-dc-police-chief-doj-to-make-ashli-babbitt-shooting-documents-public/

Rep. Nehls appeared with Laura Ingraham on her FOX News show Wednesday night, after Ingraham played a video clip of Speaker Nancy Pelosi denying she had any authority over the Capitol Police. “I have no power over the Capitol Police --- does anybody not know that?” she asked rhetorically with a broad smile. “Capitol Police have responded to that gentleman’s [Nehls’] allegation, and that stands as what it is. But I have no power over the police.”

Nehls was not surprised that Pelosi said nothing nice about him, as he’s been a vocal critic. Prior to his election to Congress, he worked in law enforcement for 30 years –- 8 years as a sheriff –- and he accuses the USPC intelligence division of having “all of the material” ahead of the Capitol Hill rally that would have told them to be on guard against potentially disruptive extremist groups who were coming to the Capitol on January 6.

“January 6 should’ve never happened,” he has said repeatedly. “The Capitol Police had the intelligence; they didn’t share it.” He told Ingraham that as someone who himself has conducted investigations, he continues to be quite vocal, specifically about Ashli Babbitt’s death and the “way too quick” dismissal of charges against her shooter, Lt. Michael Byrd. Apparently his letter last fall got no results.

With his lengthy and impressive law enforcement background, Nehls seems like someone who would’ve been an asset on Pelosi’s “Special Committee” to look into January 6. Yet she refused to seat hm.

“...She doesn’t want me talking about January 6,” he said, “because I think, in the end, she had a role to play.”

Snopes.com attempted to debunk the story that the Biden HHS will advance "racial equity" with grants to “help” drug addicts by providing them with new crack pipes. They branded the story “Mostly False,” calling it a “grossly misleading and reductive presentation of what was a real substance harm reduction grant.”

https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/02/09/snopes-com-beclowns-itself-again-with-another-true-but-false-fact-check-of-bidens-free-crack-pipe-program-n519571

What was their problem with it? Well…the grants cover more than crack pipes! The smoking kits are just one of 20 things funded by it (but they are funded.) They're also providing “rubber mouthpieces for glass pipes, in order to prevent burns and cuts; brass screens, in order to filter out potentially harmful contaminants or debris; as well as disinfectant wipes.” And among the non-crack pipe-related funding, there are “syringe services programs.” Finally, “the purpose of the program was to reduce harm and the risk of infection among drug users, not to advance racial equity, although that was a secondary consideration.”

So, they’re not MERELY providing new crack pipes, they’re also doing other things, including helping make your old crack pipe safer! Plus, for those who are too concerned about their health to smoke, there are free needles! And “promoting racial equity” was not the SOLE reason for giving our free drug paraphernalia – although it was a reason. Well, then, that’s completely different!

By the way, our write-up of this story clearly said that the funding was for “’smoking kits’ which will INCLUDE new, sanitary pipes” as well as “clean syringes.” Some of the sources Snopes.com singled out as purveyors of falsehoods also included that apparently crucial “context.” We also mentioned that some blue cities had abandoned such programs after discovering they only enabled worse drug addiction. Our point was that public funds should be spent on helping people get off drugs, not enabling them to smoke crack and shoot heroin “more safely.” I don't care how much tax money is budgeted toward free crack pipes. None of it should be! Whoever came up with this must've been smoking crack. 

It appears to me that this story was rated “Mostly False” because it contained “misinformation,” which the left has now redefined to mean “true stuff that we’d prefer people not talk about.”

America has a sin problem

February 10, 2022

Racism is a symptom, not the source. It’s the effect, but not the cause. It’s the manifestation of evil, but not the root of evil. We hear about racism everyday as if it’s the reason for all conflicts in our country. But America doesn’t have a skin problem—we have a SIN problem. And racism is based on a Satanic lie of the real essence of ALL sin—pride. The notion that some people think they are just better than others. And when one thinks he or she is better, that person believes they shouldn’t have to be held to the same standards. Political division is also fueled by pride—those who believe their ideas and their policies and the people they support are just better. And the result is that different standards are applied. The reason that Rosa Parks was told to sit in the back of the bus was that the arrogant pride of some people who didn’t think she was as good as they were. The reason that a teenager named Clarence Henderson risked his life to sit at a lunch counter at a Woolworth in North Carolina was because some people didn’t think he deserved to be seated at the same lunch counter because they didn’t think he was good as they were. The reason that 9 young high school students had to be escorted to Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957 was due to some in the community not believing those kids were as smart and capable as their kids were. All of those things were racist. They were all evil and sinful. But all were because of the real sin of pride. It showed itself as racism; it was rooted in pride.

Whenever there is a double standard, it’s the same root sin as racism. If the Governor of CA orders the citizens to wear a mask in public but he takes his off at a football game, it’s his pride in thinking he’s just better than you. If members of Congress demand to get the transcript of a phone call between President Trump and the President of Ukraine and actually impeach the President because of what was said in the call, but the same members of Congress don’t demand public disclosure of a phone call between President Biden and the President of Ukraine this week, it’s because they believe their side is just better than your side. If a podcast host like Joe Rogan gets crucified for allowing highly competent scientists to say lockdowns and masks don’t work and is called out for spewing medical misinformation, even after the CDC releases a report that actually says the same thing, it’s not misinformation people are going crazy over—they just think the people they listen to are better than the people you listen to. If protesters in many major cities burn police stations, loot and firebomb private businesses and beat up innocent people on the streets yet politicians defend them as “mostly peaceful” but when protesters go to the US Capitol and protest, they are insurrectionists doing more harm than 9-11, Pearl Harbor, or the Civil War, they aren’t really that crazy to believe that—they just think the protesters they support are better than those they don’t. If Hillary, Joe Biden, Stacey Abrams and others can question the integrity of an election and claim it was rigged, but Donald Trump is permanently banned from Twitter and FB for saying it, it’s just another example of the arrogant pride that some folks think their armpits don’t stink—but yours do. Like racism, it’s a symptom of deadly and dangerous pride. It’s not political—it’s a spiritual sickness. But we will never correct it if we misdiagnose it and fail to see it for what it really is—selfish arrogance of pride that is willing to put a different standard on you than on themselves because they actually believe they are better than you!

The Democrats’ efforts to intimidate Sen. Joe Manchin into toeing the party line not only haven’t worked, they seem to have made him even more independent, maybe because polls show that he’s by far the most popular Democrat in West Virginia. Now, it’s as if he’s just deliberately rubbing their noses in it for fun by endorsing the reelection of a Republican colleague.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/06/manchin-is-going-to-tick-off-more-dems-big-time-with-his-latest-remarks-n518288

Manchin said it doesn’t matter if he’s a Democrat and they’re Republicans, they’re “good people,” “they’ve been my dear friends, we get a lot accomplished and I think the country has fared better with us working together than not.” So “why in the world wouldn’t I want to work with them and continue to work with them?”

Sure, it’s Alaska’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whom even a lot of Republicans would like to replace, hence all her conservative primary challengers. Still, when you’re trying to ram a leftist agenda down America’s throats with a 50-50 tie, having a fellow Democrat act like a bipartisan statesman and endorse any Republican’s reelection has got to feel like your party’s symbol the donkey just kicked you in a sensitive area.

You’d think the following monologue was something out of a conservative documentary about law and order in the America of 2022, but it’s not. Try 1952. It was spoken by William Holden, playing a jaded reporter 70 years ago in a crime drama called THE TURNING POINT, when an investigation into a criminal syndicate is on the verge of collapse:

“They’ll dig into the record and find out that all this time and all this money produced absolutely nothing --- that the sacred investigation was a complete flop. From then on, they’ll play political hopscotch. A committee will be appointed to investigate the investigation. And in due time, they’ll return with a comprehensive report that’ll be promptly filed and forgotten. And in the meantime, the people will wind up right where they were, at the mercy of the hoodlums.

“...But something occurs to me. Even allowing for the apathy of the people, and their lack of integrity, and their occasional lack of intelligence, that’s the fact that they all want desperately to believe in --- a certain majesty of the law. And for people like us, like you and me, the greatest crime in law is the lack of faith in the law. And that’s when we join hands with the hoodlums. If they can convince us of the uselessness of knocking out crime, the difficulty, the fact that personal sacrifices may be too great, then we might as well hand over the city, and the state and the nation, too, to the [hoodlums], and let them run it for us.”

I can’t tell you how many letters I’ve received expressing that same lack of faith. Our system of justice has become so politicized that few believe anyone on the left will be brought to justice, as we see those on the right hounded mercilessly and personally destroyed. Millions of Americans are convinced that our country really has been handed over to the hoodlums and that it’s useless to even try to get back on the right track. Their despair is the worst tragedy of all.

So, how did we get to this point? It certainly didn’t just happen. Billionaire donors such as George Soros have been working hard getting soft-on-crime DAs elected in major American cities. And now that they are there, some of them are nurturing the next wave of of law enforcement lefties at such policy “think tanks” as the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Hells Kitchen, NYC.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/05/manhattan-college-think-tank-is-ground-zero-for-woke-das/

Since 2016, this college has been home to the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution, which works with controversial –- I prefer the word “failed” –- DAs such as Kim Foxx in Chicago, George Gascon in Los Angeles, and Chesa Boudin in San Francisco to reshape how up-and-coming prosecutors around the country think about crime and punishment. It was co-launched by former Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance --- you know, the prosecutor who has been trying for years to “find” something on Donald Trump. So, is HE soft on crime? Maybe in terms of racial equity, but not when it comes to political adversaries.

As the NYP reports, “The Institute’s symposiums and issue papers hold forth on topics such as race, officer-involved deaths and bail reform –- all in a concerted effort to change the role of the prosecutor to be more proactive and less punitive.”

Their declaration, “Vision for the Modern Prosecutor,” says that “no one should be defined by their bad conduct alone.” I wonder what factors besides bad conduct should be used in court to prosecute cases and if Lady Justice is now expected to take off her blindfold to assess these. Should she look at what party or political candidates one supports? How one feels about vaccination and masking? What zip code one lives in? What race one is?

According to their position papers, they strive to charge accused criminals with fewer crimes and, if possible, keep them out of jail entirely. They even recommend that offenders not be called “offenders,” but instead something that respects their “humanity.”

They don’t say it, but this kid-glove treatment seems to apply only to criminals who don’t support Trump, as they apparently believe that anyone who supports Trump possesses no humanity and is, by definition, a QAnon supporter (!) and domestic terrorist.

They do swerve into the truth when their spokesman says, “No one benefits from the conviction of an innocent person.” That’s quite correct, but it’s a huge leap from that to suggest in a paper called “How Prosecutors Can Support a Reimagined Police Response” that law enforcers should celebrate “when prosecutors exonerate someone.”

Another paper, on “Creating a Culture of Racial Equity,” suggests that a hotline be created so that whistleblowers can turn in “internal obstructionists” who aren’t on board with new “woke” policies. We’re seeing more and more of this lately: the government encouraging internal spies to turn people in for even expressing a dissenting opinion.

Take a look at their website, and you’ll see they’re after more than just the big cities. Their next step is to take “restorative justice” to “smaller jurisdictions.”

https://www.prosecution.org

We see from this page that they are receiving help from Microsoft’s Criminal Justice Reform Initiative. Microsoft, really??

https://www.prosecution.org/beyond-big-cities

Under “Race and Prosecution,” they mention “action guides” such as “Creating a Culture of Racial Equity” and “Race and Prosecution,” which was co-authored by Angela J. Davis, recipient of the Soros Senior Justice Fellowship, “for prosecutors seeking to address systemic disproportionality and disparity.”

There’s a primer written in 2020 called “Prosecutorial Culture Change,” in which students are asked what they would do “on day 1” as an elected head prosecutor. On his “day 1,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wrote a memo to his prosecutors instructing them not to seek prison sentences for a long list of criminals and to downgrade felony charges for some armed robbers and drug dealers. Bragg’s chief assistant DA, Meg Reiss, happens to have once been its executive director. And guess who was on its initial advisory panel?

Then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

For details on how this effort has NOT worked, see the NYP story. It seems as though they're working as hard to crank out leftists as the schools have been. But the attempt to avoid punishing those who commit violent crimes and trying instead to to rehabilitate them has been “a significant failure,” according to former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. “I have been very outspoken about my concerns on these so-called progressive DAs,” he said. “Most of the cities now with these violent crimes are the ones with these types of DAs.”

So, really, the same principles apply now that did in 1952. The justice system fails, the hoodlums take over, and the people become convinced it’s hopeless, thinking we might as well hand over the whole nation. But here's the positive side: we can see the mechanism by which this is being accomplished. And if we know what makes the wheels turn, we can dismantle it.

The Big Mistake in Georgia

February 9, 2022

Failed-but-trying-again Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey “I wuz robbed!” Abrams is a big proponent of the usual hardcore Democrat COVID restrictions, like forcing kids to wear masks in school. So she caught a lot of flak over a photo of her visiting a classroom where she posed Gavin Newsom-style: surrounded by kids who were all masked while she wasn’t.

https://redstate.com/beccalower/2022/02/06/stacey-abrams-snaps-back-over-criticism-of-her-mask-free-photo-op-n518295

The criticism must’ve really stung because her campaign angrily fired back with an everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink response that accused her opponents of racism, disrespecting Black History Month, profiting from pharmaceutical stocks, not funding Medicaid enough, and of course, “TRUUUUUUUUMP!!!!”

None of which actually explained why it was okay for her to be in the classroom without a mask but not for all the kids to be without one.

She should try stealing an excuse from the mayor of Los Angeles and claim that since it was only for the photo, she held her breath for 1/125th of a second.

Related: If Stacey Abrams can go around in public without the masks they force on kids, why can’t an entire New York school board?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2022/02/06/n-y-school-board-photographed-unmasked-inside-for-legislative-event-parents-livid-n1556667

Pelosi's Private Jet Habit

February 9, 2022

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi loves to lecture us all about our carbon footprint and how we’re destroying the Earth and causing climate change with our selfish, CO2-creating ways. But according to FEC campaign filings, between October 2020 and December 2021, Pelosi spent over $500,000 on private jets.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-500k-private-jets-moral-obligation-reduce-emissions

This was during a time when she led a 21-member congressional delegation to the UN Climate Change Conference in Scotland (which I bet could’ve been conducted over Zoom.) While there, she piously said of the climate “crisis,” "For me, it's a religious thing…I believe this is God's creation, and we have a moral obligation to be good stewards."

I believe that, too, which is one reason why I travel on commercial airliners that create far less pollution than private jets. Also, I don’t have big piles of money to waste from campaign donors, taxpayers and suspiciously lucky stock investments.

I should also point out that Speaker Pelosi claims to be a good Catholic while fighting any efforts to limit abortion, so her concept of a “religious thing” is likely a lot fuzzier than mine.

Must-Read Article

February 9, 2022

There are a lot of Americans who can’t seem to pull themselves out of 24/7/365 panic mode over COVID-19. They’re ready to call out the Marines on people who are fed up with masks and lockdowns and just want to get back to living their lives. Some are so paralyzed with fear of the disease that they practically refuse to leave home unless they’re wearing one of those old-fashioned deep sea diver outfits. Some critics say they’ve taken their fear of COVID beyond a reasonable health concern into the area of a religion or even a psychosis. To make it even weirder, I’m sure 100% of these people are fully vaxxed and boosted who knows how many times?

By this stage, it might be impossible to reach them with rational arguments, but if you’d like to try, here’s a good source. John Tierney at City Journal writes about a new NIH study of over 1 million vaccinated adults over the past year, including the Delta variant wave. It calculated the actual statistical odds of dying from COVID if you are vaccinated (we will assume that people with natural immunity from prior infection, especially those also vaccinated, are at even less risk.)

https://www.city-journal.org/understanding-the-covid-odds

Nearly 700,000 healthy vaccinated people under 65 got COVID during this period. None required ICU treatment and none died. Among the vaccinated over 65 without underlying medical conditions, only one died. In all there were 36 deaths, “mostly among a small minority of older people with a multitude of comorbidities: the 3 percent of the sample that had at least four risk factors. Among everyone else, a group that included elderly people with one or two chronic conditions (and healthy, younger people, I'd add), there were just eight deaths among more than 1.2 million people, so their risk of dying was about 1 in 150,000.”

Tierney notes that those are about the same odds that you’ll die in a fire or by falling downstairs in any given year. You’re three times more likely to die while riding in a car or being hit while you’re a pedestrian. It’s also about the same odds over your lifetime that you’ll die in an earthquake or by being struck by lightning.

I hope this helps reassure some people that it’s safe to come out of their houses and stop hiding from life. But my fear is that now they’ll be terrified to come out because they might fall downstairs, get run over by a car or be struck by lightning.

O Canada

February 9, 2022

Canadian government officials who have grown more and more authoritarian with their COVID mandates seem to be panicking and hitting the Emergency Tyrant Button over the Truckers’ Freedom Convoy.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/06/ottawa-declares-state-of-emergency-reports-of-police-arresting-truckers-seizing-fuel-n518343

It doesn’t seem to be working, though, as workers around the world have had enough of destructive, ironfisted, rights-crushing lockdowns imposed under the guise of “stopping the spread” of COVID (something that a new study by a Johns Hopkins University researcher found they failed to do.) The Canadian truckers are inspiring similar working class revolts worldwide.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/canadian-style-trucker-protests-spread-world

It’s prompted conservatives to note that there is finally a real, grassroots movement for “workers of the world to unite and throw off their shackles,” and socialists are terrified of it.

The truckers have been talked down to, slandered and targeted with “multiple investigations;” they’ve been called violent, Russian agents, QAnon members, racists and homophobes; and they've been ordered to go home. They tried to tow them away, but the tow truck drivers refused. They considered calling in the Army, but the Army said, “Not our fight.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/02/07/honk-honk-canadian-pm-wont-send-the-army-to-remove-antimandate-truckers-for-a-simple-reason-n2602911

Some of the counter-protesters have reportedly tried false flag operations to discredit the truckers, and one attempted a hoax so laughable that it made Jussie Smollett look competent.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/06/watch-counter-protester-caught-faking-getting-hit-by-freedom-convoy-truck-n518383

Now, they’re being threatened with arrest for peacefully assembling to protest the government. Short of shooting them or throwing them in prison for a year or so while they decide what to charge them with, that’s pretty much the entire leftwing government playbook for dealing with dissent by working people.

By the way, here’s some of the “violent” criminal behavior the left is so worked up about: it includes dancing to “We Are Family,” setting up bouncy houses for kids and holding outdoor church services. I thought liberals wanted all church services to be held outdoors in Canada in February.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/06/ottawa-declares-state-of-emergency-reports-of-police-arresting-truckers-seizing-fuel-n518343

I wonder if any of the elitists who are so angry at these truckers realize how their very privileged lives would quickly devolve if the truckers did all decide to just go home and stay there, instead of delivering goods to the city dwellers who look down on them.


What The Canadian Truckers Stand For:

For those accusing the Canadian Truckers of being white supremacists, QAnon insurrectionists or the whole litany of tired leftist clichés, here’s their statement about what they stand for, direct from their new fundraising page at GiveSendGo. I warn you, this is some pretty scary revolutionary rhetoric:

https://www.westernjournal.com/flashback-years-gofundme-ripped-9-million-peaceful-truckers-actively-promoted-violent-takeover-seattle/

"We are a peaceful country that has helped protect nations across the globe from tyrannical governments who oppressed their people, and now it seems it is happening here...

We are taking our fight to the doorsteps of our Federal Government, and demanding that they cease all mandates against its people. Small businesses are being destroyed, homes are being destroyed and people are being mistreated and denied fundamental necessities to survive. It's our duty as Canadians to put an end to (these) mandates. It is imperative that this happens because if we don't our country will no longer be the country we have come to love. We are doing this for our future Generations and to regain our lives back."

Imagine the effrontery of those peasants, wanting their lives back!


GoFundMe.com Reverses Itself:

After being hit with a storm of outrage and threats of fraud investigations by Sen. Ted Cruz and a couple of red state Governors and Attorneys General, GoFundMe.com reversed itself and decided that donors to the Canadian Truckers’ Convoy will get automatic refunds. The site won’t require them to apply for a refund or send the money to some other charity of the site’s choosing. So for those keeping score, the only act of violence on the part of the truckers is that they helped GoFundMe’s executives shoot themselves in the foot.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/gofundme-backtracks-canadian-trucker-money-fraud-investigation-threat

(Also, an Ottawa city council member deleted his tweet about how he was working on a plan to “legally” confiscate their donations. I’m sure he’s had lots of experience in coming up with ways to legally confiscate other people’s money.)

https://www.foxnews.com/world/canadian-leader-deletes-tweet-saying-hell-target-freedom-trucker-convoys-gofundme-donations

I might be more sympathetic to GoFundMe’s claims about violations of its Terms of Service if the same site didn’t have a history of providing fundraising for various leftist criminals and violent protesters. Here’s a walk down memory lane by way of the prison yard, to revisit some of the fine upstanding leftists that GoFundMe has helped to support.

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2022/02/05/andy-ngo-has-the-thread-of-the-year-showing-gofundme-doesnt-seem-to-take-issue-with-fundraising-for-leftist-occupations/

(Also worth reminding you: Kamala Harris and her staff endorsed and contributed to a fund to bail out Minneapolis rioters who got out of jail and went right back to doing it again.)

To prove that some businesses are actually more interested in fulfilling their mission to serve customers than in kowtowing to leftists, the competing fundraising site GiveSendGo accepted a fundraiser for the Canadian truckers. As of this writing on Monday morning, it had already received over $4.3 million in donations.

https://www.westernjournal.com/gofundme-betrays-freedom-convoy-donors-donations-truckers-new-crowdfunding-site-skyrocket/

In May, the Biden Administration will begin distributing grants to nonprofits and local governments to help make drug use “safer” for addicts.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-admin-to-fund-crack-pipe-distribution-to-advance-racial-equity/

This includes funds to provide “smoking kits” which will include new, sanitary pipes for smoking crack, meth and other “illicit substances.” After all, we want to make sure that when someone is smoking crack, they’re doing it the safe, healthy way. Other government-provided supplies will include clean syringes. This funding is part of the Democrats’ “American Rescue Plan,” which passed the Senate on party lines with Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. It’s being sold as part of the Democrats’ “equity” push, with preference going to drug paraphernalia suppliers who serve the African-American and LGBTQ communities of hard drug addicts.

Some might have a different word for this other than “rescue,” “equity” or “compassion.” A word like “enabler.” That’s the term used in 12-step programs for people who think they’re “helping” addicts but who are actually just helping them to kill themselves. Some might even say that deliberately enabling black and gay addicts to continue smoking crack or meth instead of helping them get off of it is shockingly racist and homophobic. I guess they just don’t understand “equity.”

Similar programs have been tried in blue cities, and some have given up after seeing how they just increased open drug addiction. It’s certainly worked like gangbusters in San Francisco and Seattle. If you’re old enough to remember when “SNL” was funny, they once did a sketch about Democrats mourning Michael Dukakis’ presidential loss in which a Joan Baez impersonator sang sadly about the Democrats’ lost dream: “Free needles for the addicts, free condoms for the kids…” Back then, it was meant to satirize the crazy things Republicans believed Democrats would do if they got into power. Today, Democrats are in power, and that's the official government policy. Moral: Never underestimate how crazy Democrats become when they get a little power.

PS – As I tweeted when I first heard about this story, Presidential relatives have often had an impact on policy. Lady Bird Johnson beautified the highways, Laura Bush promoted literacy, and now Hunter Biden has inspired free government crack pipes.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that we almost never cite The New York Times or the Washington Post as sources for any story we use in my newsletter. And for any story that originated in either of those two publications, even if it happened to be picked up by other news outlets, we’ve applied the “48-hour rule” –- often it’s more like 72 hours –- before reacting to it as serious reporting. There have just been too many stories that turned out to be strategic leaks from the FBI or similarly dicey anonymous sources or that were garbage reported simply because they furthered a preferred narrative.

There’s another reason why these big-deal “papers of record” should not be mistaken for serious journalism, and that’s the hotbed of connections to Democrat politics and administrations they are. One example in the news right now is the promotion of Matea Gold to be the new national editor at WAPO. A month before her promotion, her husband Jonathan Lenzner was promoted as well –- to be the new FBI chief of staff.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/02/01/new_washington_post_national_editor_recuses_herself_from_fbi_coverage_814615.html

Gold is now having to recuse herself from all coverage of the FBI and the Justice Department, including the Durham special counsel investigation, with managing editor Steven Ginsberg overseeing it instead. She also won’t be covering the ongoing January 6 investigation, including the probe led by FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Gosh, what’s left for her to oversee? It’s easy to imagine her taking lots of long lunches and leisurely massages, with Ginsberg doing the work and probably deserving a raise.

According to Paul Sperry’s sources, the conflict of interest posed by Gold’s husband was discussed at a recent staff-wide meeting. Lenzner’s family is “allied politically with the Clintons” and has been for many years. This seems not to have been a problem before –- and why should it be at WAPO? –- but with his new job at the FBI, the spotlight is shining more brightly.

The decision does not reflect on Gold’s objectivity or credibility, according to a WAPO spokesperson. “We have every confidence in Matea’s professionalism and high standards. “She has recused herself from all areas of coverage to avoid even the appearance of partiality.”

So, there was a conflict of interest and she recused herself. Problem solved, right? Well, not so fast. As Paul Sperry points out, considerable damage had already been done. “In her previous role as investigations editor,” he writes, “Gold helped oversee the Post’s coverage of the Russian ‘collusion’ accusations against Trump and his advisers, including former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.”

In other words, she might be recusing herself now that her personal conflict of interest has grown too huge to ignore, but she’s spent years helping perpetuate the Russia Hoax.

Reading WAPO’s own story about Gold’s promotion, one would never know that they’ve had to retract or correct numerous stories about Trump that she oversaw. “For the last four years,” it reads, “Matea has served as the national political enterprise and investigations editor, running some of the Post’s most sensitive stories, including coverage of the Russia investigation, the Ukraine pressure campaign and President Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election results. Reporters and other editors gravitate to Matea for guidance and direction.”

In September 2017, Gold shared a byline on a story that furthered the false claim that President Trump has said there were “fine people” among the white supremacists and neo-Nazis protesting the removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, when he specifically condemned those people.

So, never mind the frequent and serious journalistic errors and outright lies. This editor gets promoted. And other "journalists" look to her for guidance.

As Sperry points out, it’s “not uncommon” –- we’d say it’s actually very common –- for journalists in DC “to be married to government officials, lobbyists and others who influence policy from various vantage points.” But even in that world, Gold’s might be considered an extreme case.

Perhaps you’re old enough to remember the name Terry Lenzner, who was the private investigator Bill Clinton hired to use to dig up dirt on troublesome mistresses and other political threats. It was said at the time that this was done with the knowledge and approval of Hillary, to tamp down the various “bimbo eruptions.” Lenzner founded the firm Investigative Firm International, or IGI. During the Ken Starr investigation, he was brought in to testify about his aggressive investigative work for President Clinton. Terry Lenzner retired in 2015 and has since passed away.

Matea Gold’s husband Jon is the son of Terry Lenzner. After Terry retired, he took over IGI and continued his father’s work. Father and son were both Democrats and Clinton donors, with Jon giving at least $1,700 to Hillary’s 2016 campaign according to FEC records.

So, THIS is the guy Christopher Wray appointed as his chief of staff in December. Goodness, we’re not only learning a lot today about WAPO, but also about Wray’s FBI. And none of it is good.

The FBI made this appointment quietly, avoiding mention of Lenzner’s background with the Clintons or IGI. On their website, they distanced him from it this way: “From 2013 to 2018, Mr. Lenzner led a national risk advisory, corporate investigations and crisis management firm in Washington, including three years as its CEO.”

Recall that other FBI officials were highly sympathetic to Hillary and the Clinton political machine, even those who were supposed to be investigating her such as then-deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, another Clinton crony, generously bankrolled McCabe’s wife in her failed run for the Virginia state legislature. Political conflicts seem to be quite common at the FBI, too.

Sperry reports an interesting side note: IGI was the first investigation firm to launder payments for “opposition research” (dirt) for political campaigns through law firms so that no payments to IGI showed up on FEC disclosures. They did this at least as far back as 1994, for Ted Kennedy. So Hillary was acting in a grand Democrat tradition when she funneled over $1 million to Perkins Coie for the dirt-digging done by Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele.

IGI has multiple connections to the Clintons. Jon’s sister Emily is a Biden donor who sits on IGI’s board. She previously worked in the Clinton White House under George Stephanopoulos and later worked for him at ABC News. (More incest with journalism.)

The late Brooke Shearer, sister of Clinton crony Cody Shearer, worked for Hillary in the White House and then took an investigative job at IGI. (Makes one wonder what sort of work she did for Hillary.) Brooke was also the wife of Clinton ally Strobe Talbott of the Brookings Institution, which seems to have been up to its eyeballs in the creation and peddling of the Steele “dossier.” Cody Shearer even created his own anti-Trump “dossier.”

Sperry’s piece has even more. One bit of irony is that Gold, with her amazing conflicts of interest that are only now coming to light, participated in a PBS panel on the White House transition in 2016. It was called “Trump Family Criticized for Conflicts of Interest.”

A few months ago, I wrote about my experience with a social media platform that most people might not recognize as Big Tech, as it’s not as humungous as Facebook or Twitter. But it really is big --- worth a couple of billion dollars last time I counted. It’s called Nextdoor. You probably have it in your town. Maybe you’re a member and use it to talk to your neighbors about trash pick-up, car break-ins and missing pets. Especially missing pets.

As I said then, Nextdoor gives the appearance of something local, a way for neighbors to have the online equivalent of over-the-back-fence conversations, like in the “good old days” before social media, but it’s actually a global corporation headquartered in San Francisco and, as you will see, is quite reflective of that mindset. Their “Neighborhood Advisory Board” includes “diverse academics and experts, in the fields of social psychology, equality and civic engagement.”

As I used Nextdoor, I started noticing that when I typed certain words, a screen automatically came up that said “FACTS MATTER...” and lectured me, for example, on using the correct name of the virus: COVID-19. Refer to the Wuhan lab, or China, or concerns about the vaccines, or doubts about mask effectiveness, or anything else that wasn’t sanctioned information (much of which has turned out to be wrong), and your post would be removed. You might even go to “jail” and inexplicably be suspended from Nextdoor for a period of weeks. This happened to me once, and I hadn’t violated their so-called “community standards” even a little bit.

To give an idea, I once typed the word “homeless,” not even in the context of homeless people, and a screen came up telling me to “be kind” in my use of words. Similar screens –- I called them “nanny screens, and ND became “Nanny Dearest” –- would pop up every now and then, quite inappropriately, as I was always kind and always accurate.) Nextdoor was actively trying to “nudge” our use of language and guide the conversation.

It was last October when I wrote for Gov. Huckabee about Nextdoor finally crossing a line. A neighbor I’m calling “Andy” had started posting silly jokes –- very un-PC –- on Nextdoor, just to give people a little something to laugh about during the pandemic. This installment from our archives tells what happened to his fun little project, and also details my research into what Nextdoor actually is...

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=1E82ADEA-40B6-47AB-8425-3D4890AC08B2

So here’s where we pick up our story. Andy formed a private group to post “Daily Laughter” instead of putting it in the General Comments, thinking that since it was something neighbors could choose to join or not join, the higher-ups would leave it alone. And for a while, that seemed to be the case. But a few days ago, one of his editions would not post, though he tried repeatedly.

Andy sent me a PM (private message) asking me to help him figure out if it had posted. I said that, no, I couldn’t see it. And then it occurred to me: something in it was being censored. “Send it to me in a PM,” I said, “and I’ll look at it and see if I can tell what they might have had a problem with.”

So he did. Overall, this edition of “Daily Laughter” seemed typical of what Andy sent out every day. But since I’ve done research on Critical Race Theory, specifically on materials that were used by organizations such as the Salvation Army, I knew there was a list of words and phrases that had been called into question for supposedly having “racial” overtones. One of these, unfortunately, was “black sheep.” It’s not intended to be racist, but that doesn’t mean purveyors of CRT view it as not-racist. Believe me, they can FIND a reason to “blacklist” (oops, there’s another one) just about ANYTHING as racist. From Max Avery at The Liberty Loft...

“The Critical Race Theory proponents assert that virtually anything anyone can imagine is racist. The names of certain animals are racist, music theories and genres can be considered racist in general, and even mathematics can be regarded as racist. According to CRT, racism is “normal” and not an aberration, and its advocates call this “systemic racism,” in which case Critical Race Theory is defined as “a study” of this so-called systemic racism by finding racism in all aspects of western society.”

I know, it’s hard to believe that anyone would consider this term racist. For example, Hunter Biden is definitely the black sheep of his family, but if anyone is an example of privilege, he’s it.

I digress. Anyway, the expression “black sheep” happened to appear in that day’s edition of “Daily Laughter,” with no racial context at all. I told Andy that I might have “cracked the code” –- gotten into these so-called progressives’ heads –- and figured out that this was the “problematic” choice of words in that day’s “Daily Laughter” and the likely reason he hadn’t been able to post. I said, “Let’s conduct a test! Try posting again, without the line containing the words “black sheep.”

He did, and it posted right away.

So Nextdoor really is interfering in the “neighborhood” conversation, sometimes, it seems, in subtle ways. We think we’re just talking to our neighbors, but we’re being monitored --- even, as I see now, in the private groups. (Because of the monitoring and constant threat of “going to jail,” I had already stopped posting in General Comments.) So, now what?

Andy wants to keep posting “Daily Laughter” for his group, and it’s such a nice thing for him to do. He works on this every day. Over 400 people have signed up, and we really like getting these old, corny “dad” jokes, “blonde” jokes,” “Little Johnny” jokes,” “man-walks-into-a-bar” jokes, etc. (I submitted a “How cold is it?” joke for yesterday, in keeping with the ice storm we’re having in Dallas-Ft. Worth: “How cold is it?” “It’s so cold, the local flasher is only describing himself.”)

I hope that made you laugh, because it’s time to get serious now, as the saddest part of this story is Andy’s most recent message to me. I had written him to say how offended I was --- and I’m not easily offended --- that Nextdoor had essentially flagged his content as racist, when I knew he would never post racist content and the members of this group would never want it. He wrote, “I agree. But I guess whatever they want to do. I’m not bowing down, I’m just tired of fighting with them!!! I will tell you one thing, if they put me in jail again, I’m done with Nextdoor!!!”

And that’s what Big Tech is counting on, that we’ll just get tired of fighting with them. They’re waiting a bit longer for us to learn to use the right pronouns and vocabulary and to accept that we can never joke about a long list of things. Well, count me OUT. Humor is my last stand, even it it’s just for the right to tell a “blonde joke.” This is a hill I would die on.

You can read more of Laura’s work here.

Worst President Ever

February 4, 2022

American history education is at such a low point that polls about the best or worst anything “ever” are meaningless. Very few people these days have the foggiest notion of what happened before they came on the scene. It’s why there are so many YouTube videos about the “Worst Movies Ever” that include nothing made before 1995 (they never heard of Ed Wood?) It’s also why polls on the “Worst President Ever” are fairly pointless. How many people these days can honestly say whether Trump or Biden was better or worse at the job than, say, James K. Polk?

But a new Rasmussen poll that shows Biden falling into “Worst President Ever” territory does contain some useful info worth discussing.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/biden-in-worst-president-ever-territory

Respondents were about evenly split on whether Obama was among the best ever, the worst or about average. That seems reasonable and predictable. With Trump, 41% said best, 43% said worst, and only 12% said average, which suggests that his coverage was so partisan and feelings so inflamed that hardly anyone was on the fence. But it was still a pretty even split. However, with Biden, 25% said average, only a diehard partisan 15% said best, and a whopping 54% said “worst.” Even among Democrats, “worst” edged out “best” by 28-27%.

Assessing Biden’s place in history will fall to historians, if there are any unbiased historians left. But you know he’s doing a pretty lousy job when even his own partisan base is more likely to think he’s the worst President ever than the best.

Oh, and for the record, trust me: James K. Polk was a FAR better President than Biden. Polk oversaw bringing Texas and most of the states that are now the western half of the US into the union from Mexico. All Biden’s done is open up the borders of those states.

Trudeau Fail

February 4, 2022

Here is how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded on Twitter to the massive protest by truckers against the vaccine mandates and other regulations that are destroying their livelihoods - a protest enjoying broad public support:

“Today in the House, members of Parliament unanimously condemned the antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia and transphobia that we’ve seen on display in Ottawa over the past number of days. Together, let’s keep working to make Canada more inclusive.”

Wow, you can tell how desperate he is by the fact that he threw the entire kitchen sink of the left’s white supremacy pejoratives at his critics. Usually, they try to parcel out the groundless accusations, but Trudeau is so panicky that he hurled all his worn-out “isms” to see if any of them would stick.

FYI: they didn’t. In fact, take a look at photos of Canada’s truckers and protesters. You’ll note that they’re unlikely “white supremacists,” since most of them are Sikh immigrants from India.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/diaspora/sikhs-who-represent-major-share-of-truckers-protest-against-canadas-vaccine-mandates-as-trudeau-and-his-family-left-their-downtown-ottawa-home-365812

Also from that article: “The increasing number of protesters prompted police to prepare for the possibility of violence. As of now, no injuries or deaths have been reported.” Yes, that’s what an actual “peaceful protest” looks like. You don’t have to overlook any widespread arson to qualify it as “mostly peaceful.”

The only way Trudeau is making Canada more inclusive is that he's bringing so many people together to support the truckers and reject his vacuous woke nonsense.

The good news is that while Trudeau obviously fails to get the message, others can sense which way the wind is blowing, and it’s blowing away from governments seizing more power and trampling on people’s rights with destructive “health emergency” measures that aren't even helping. The premier of Saskatchewan wrote a letter of support for the truckers and set a target date of this month to end vaccination requirements, saying they’re no longer reducing transmission of the Omicron variant. And Quebec’s premier, surprised by the huge public backlash, dropped his plans to tax the unvaccinated.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/02/quebec-dumps-plans-to-tax-unvaccinated/

And it’s not just in Canada: freedom is breaking out all over as public backlash has grown against harsh COVID restrictions that have done little or nothing to reduce COVID deaths.

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2022/02/sweden-to-drop-all-covid-19-restrictions/

https://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/denmark-becomes-first-eu-country-to-lift-all-covid-19-restrictions/article_2dcfc1d3-6fab-59f2-8f1d-a9ea326baee5.html

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/02/virginias-largest-public-universities-drop-vax-mandate-for-students/

Watching Trudeau spew all those empty “isms” and seeing that they no longer intimidate people into silence is one of the best pieces of news that Western civilization has seen in years. If for nothing else, those Canadian truckers have earned a big salute from everyone who cares about freedom of thought and speech, limited government and the rights of the individual.

Finally, some perfect illustrations of what I hope is the last gasp of mindless, unscientific COVID compliance theater by our hypocritical elites, check out this photo courtesy of the Gun Free Zone blog.

https://gunfreezone.net/one-picture-that-captures-the-utter-insanity-of-covid-compliance/

It’s a group of professional cheerleaders posing with basketball legend Magic Johnson. The young gymnasts in peak physical condition (a group at lowest risk from COVID) are all wearing masks. The only one not wearing a mask is the rich and famous 62-year-old overweight retiree who's had HIV for 31 years.

Magic also wasn’t wearing a mask in these photos with COVID lockdown fanatics, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. But then, neither were any of them.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/los-angeles-garcetti-mocked-for-response-to-maskless-picture

At least Garcetti had an excuse: he held his breath for two seconds. Take that, virus!

Must-Read Article

February 4, 2022

Matt Taibbi, the red-pilled former Rolling Stone writer, has a must-read article on Substack about the way Facebook and the “fact-checking” site it often relies on, Lead Stories, use the phrase “missing context” to disparage and discourage the sharing of stories that are “true, but inconvenient.”

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-british-medical-journal-story

The story it centers on was an accurate account of a whistleblower’s accusations about a company that was involved in the trials of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. The author of that story, a meticulous former Congressional researcher, said Lead Stories and Facebook didn’t do a fact-check, they just didn’t like the story and were “checking narrative, not fact.”

What’s frightening about this is that it’s not only being used as an excuse to censor information under the guise of it being “misinformation,” but the current White House occupants not only approve but are encouraging more of it:

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-administration-calls-clamping-joe-rogan-can-done/

The Founders in their wisdom understood that the free exchange of ideas and information was the best way to ensure that good ideas prevail. Anyone espousing bad ideas could be exposed by people freely destroying their arguments. When governments (or in this case, politicized speech platforms doing the bidding of their CEOs or the White House) block that free speech, it doesn’t go away. It just goes underground, where there’s less chance of it being exposed.

“Misinformation” has become a pseudonym for “things we don’t like people talking about,” just as “dangerous misinformation” now means, “things people shouldn't be allowed to talk about." But that all depends on who’s defining “dangerous misinformation.”

Every day, I see the same media outlets who want Joe Rogan silenced giving air time to racial dividers, anti-police campaigners and America-hating socialists, all of whom are spewing what I consider extremely dangerous misinformation, and I can point to the tragic consequences of their policies to prove it. But providing a platform to those spewers of dangerous garbage is MSNBC’s business model.

If these alleged “fact-checkers” have a legitimate reason for disputing a story, then let’s hear it. But first, let’s hear the original story. And let’s all remember that we have a God-given right to free speech and freedom of the press, and the President has no right whatsoever to interfere in that. If Biden faces impeachment over facilitating the breaking of immigration laws thousands of times over, then please throw into the charges that he also unconstitutionally abused his power by leaning on private companies to censor Americans’ right to free speech.

Blame Climate Change

February 4, 2022

Here’s something new to blame inflation on other than Joe Biden and the Democrats’ policies: climate change!

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/02/the-atlantic-forget-president-biden-climate-change-is-causing-inflation/

The Atlantic magazine tries to explain that reasoning, which I’m not even going to bother to recap. Click the link if you want to read it, but here’s a sample quote to show what it's worth: “The surge in dollars can’t explain why gas prices are so high.” Actually, it can. That, plus the fact that immediately upon taking office, Biden launched a war on domestic fossil fuel production, destroying our energy independence and once again reducing us to having to beg OPEC to pump more oil.

But I will toss them one bone: the rampant inflation (which is actually much higher than what’s reflected by the finessed government CPI numbers) has its roots in policies that have been going on since long before Biden took office. This is the result of a long series of terrible decisions by Presidents, Congress and the Federal Reserve. For decades, we’ve been running up debt, printing money, letting the Fed buy up debt, bailing out banks that made bad decisions, running up trade deficits, losing our manufacturing base, paying people to be unproductive, and keeping interest rates ridiculously low to keep the bubble inflated. Now, all those bad decisions are coming to a head.

When President Reagan took office, he faced a similar situation. He and Fed Chair Paul Volker bit the bullet and raised interest rates. The prime rate reached 21.5% and the economy went into recession. The Democrats blamed Reagan to their political advantage. But Reagan knew it was necessary to end stagflation, and it worked: inflation fell from 14.8% to below 3%, setting the stage for the boom of the ‘80s. As Reason used to point out, “You’ll notice they don’t call it ‘Reaganomics’ anymore now that it’s working.”

But politicians like Reagan who are willing to put the good of the nation above their immediate political fortunes are few and far between these days. Now the Fed talks about raising interest rates by a fraction of a point, and the stock market drops by a thousand points. Raising interest rates would mean all of our taxes would go to paying the interest on the massive debt we’ve run up (which just topped $30 trillion this week, not that many media outlets remarked on it.)

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/592362-us-national-debt-tops-30-trillion

We’re left with no easy solutions and precious few hard ones. The one thing you’d think Washington could do is recognize the huge hole we’re in and stop digging. Unfortunately, Biden and the Democrats in Congress want to deal with that hole by printing even more money, buying a steam shovel with it, and digging the hole even deeper (they’ll call it an “infrastructure” project.)

For that, they do deserve blame for the current rising inflation numbers. They lit the fire long ago, it’s smoldered for a long time as nobody did anything about it, and now they’re pouring $4-a-gallon gasoline on it.

Over the past couple of weeks, a story has been developing about a ‘rift” between Special Counsel John Durham and Inspector General Michael Horowitz concerning some evidence that Durham had not received from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Just how important is this evidence, and why is Durham only now finding out about it? What does it mean to the Special Counsel investigation? Thanks to some outstanding reporting, this story is starting to gel, but some questions are unanswered.

The Epoch Times has a detailed new piece by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke; it’s “premium,” so we’ve boiled it down and tried to make a complicated legal morass –- which can certainly happen with two investigations going on at the same time –- a little clearer.

Recall that Horowitz’s report was critical of the FBI but ultimately determined –- to the dismay of many, including me –- that the FBI had actually opened “Crossfire Hurricane” in good faith, with adequate “predication” (justification). Keep in mind that the OIG report was internal, dealing only with employees of the Justice (“Justice”) Department, while Durham’s has broad subpoena power and can bring criminal charges.

In a court filing dated January 25, Durham said Horowitz had failed to turn over to his office a couple of cellphones used by FBI General Counsel James Baker. This evidence was needed in connection with two investigations: the prosecution of Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann and the criminal leak investigation of Baker himself.

According to Durham’s updated filing on January 28, Horowitz’s office then told Durham that “the cellphones likely were discussed” in a conference call that took place almost four years ago, on February 12, 2018. But Durham said he doesn’t recall this discussion. He knew nothing about Horowitz’s possession of Baker’s cellphone until he was briefed by a separate FBI investigative team just a few weeks ago, on January 6.

It doesn’t seem likely the phones were discussed during that conference call, because Horowitz didn’t even get them until February 15, three days after the call, and there’s no record he informed Durham about receiving them. And Horowitz doesn’t remember for sure if he mentioned them, even though Durham was investigating Baker at the time for making “unauthorized disclosures to the media," meaning criminally leaking. One would assume those phones would be pretty important.

https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2019-01-15-JDJ-MM-to-Durham-re-briefing.pdf?platform=hootsuite

It sure looks as though Durham didn’t know about the existence of those phones until Jan. 5, because on that day, he was seeking Baker’s “call log data” from the FBI’s Inspection Division. If he’d known about the phones, would he have needed the logs?

But there’s more of even greater interest in Durham’s January 25 filing. Amazingly, Horowitz also failed to disclose that he and his general counsel had met personally with Sussmann (!) regarding a “cyber matter” in March 2017. He also failed to disclose the identity of a Hillary-connected individual who provided the data to Sussmann that led to that meeting. And this is a big deal --- a huge part of Durham’s case against Sussmann.

Worse, Durham didn’t find this out from Horowitz, but from other sources, including Sussmann’s attorneys, who are entitled to discovery and apparently told him in their discovery meeting on January 20, “Hey, wait a minute, there’s nothing here about our client’s meeting with the OIG.” That material was missing even though Durham’s office had formally requested the OIG provide “all documents, records and information” in their possession regarding Sussmann.

The OIG did turn over some “relevant transcripts of interviews” about Crossfire Hurricane and, on December 17, 2021, a forensic report on the “cyber matter” that Sussmann had reported to the OIG. The “cyber matter” was that one of Sussmann’s clients (apparently “Tech Executive – 1” Rodney Jaffe) “had observed that a specific OIG employee’s computer was ‘seen publicly’ in ‘Internet traffic’ and was connected to a VPN (Virtual Private Network) in a foreign country.”

Horowitz told the Special Counsel that this was all he had. Durham provided it to Sussmann’s defense team on December 23, 2021.

Recall that Rodney Jaffe was coordinating with agents of the Clinton campaign to create the outlandish and quickly discredited story about Trump Tower communicating with Alfa Bank, to make it seem as if Trump had been signaling to the Kremlin. Jaffe was working with computer researchers at Georgia Tech to access private information, after which Georgia Tech got a $17 million Pentagon contract to research cybersecurity.

So, big question: who is this mysterious OIG employee? Why was Sussmann briefing Horowitz on this person’s activities? We want to know why Sussmann, who was a private attorney and not with the DOJ, would have been meeting with Horowitz, an internal affairs investigator, in early 2017. This was just a few weeks after pushing derogatory (and false) information about Trump to the CIA. It was also just a couple of months after Horowitz announced he was looking into the FBI’s handling of Crossfire Hurricane.

Regarding those phones of Baker’s, Durham asked the OIG on January 10 to conduct an “additional forensic examination.” On January 26, the day after Durham’s legal filing on the withheld evidence, the OIG finally responded with the forensic reports. But then, in his filing of January 28, Durham disclosed that Horowitz’s office had still MORE phones relating to the criminal leak investigation of Baker. Durham seems to have just found out about these in the past few days.

If you wonder why investigations take so ridiculously long, this one episode should give you some idea. But what a strange turn of events for defense attorneys to be providing the prosecutor with information that surprised him.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/durham-filing-rebuts-inspector-general-horowitzs-claims-on-missing-cellphones-hints-at-growing-rift_

In case you missed Aaron Mate’s very detailed analysis of Durham vs. Horowitz from January 20 and have some time to catch up, here’s the link. The editors at RealClear Investigations sum it up this way: “As he exposes the role of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in false allegations about Trump-Russia collusion, Special Counsel John Durham is sharply challenging FBI apologists who claim dubious vindication from an inspector general’s finding that the Bureau’s probe was launched in good faith, Aaron Mate reports...”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/01/20/the_tension_over_truth_and_consequences_gripping_the_fbis_trump-russia_reckoning_812321.html

Here’s another helpful refresher on Durham’s investigation from a few months ago. You might recognize the byline…

https://stream.org/special-counsel-update-durhams-investigation-is-expansive/

Hunter Biden in the News

February 3, 2022

Does anyone remember the first Trump impeachment, the one over his phone call to the President of Ukraine? That was the one where we found out that Democrats think that a Republican President asking a foreign leader if he’s investigating corruption involving a former Democrat Vice President’s son is an impeachable offense, but that former Vice President being involved in said corruption isn’t in any way a disqualification for being President.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/classified-state-department-email-declared-hunter-biden

Well, a stunning new piece of evidence has surfaced, five years late. John Solomon at JustTheNews.com has obtained an email written on November 22, 2016, by George Kent, a former US Embassy official in Ukraine. Classified “Confidential,” it’s been kept from public view until now.

The email to Kent’s superiors in the State Department said that someone in Washington “needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter's presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine." Solomon writes:

“Kent's email described an intense pressure campaign by advocates for Burisma — including a former U.S. ambassador — to rehabilitate the Ukrainian company's corrupt reputation and to get Ukraine prosecutors to drop their criminal investigations of the company.

Kent even relayed to higher-ups that he had confirmed with Ukrainian prosecutors that Burisma officials had paid a $7 million ‘bribe’ to make one of the cases against the company disappear. The bribe was allegedly paid at a time when Hunter Biden was serving on the Burisma board, a job that landed his firm more than $3 million from the Ukrainian energy company.”

In short, Kent was aware of the shadiness of Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine and how they were undermining efforts to fight corruption, the exact thing Trump was legitimately inquiring about. Yet somehow, even though Kent was one of the Democrats’ star impeachment witnesses, this email and the things he said in it never came up. How curious!

Congressional Republicans and some legal experts were outraged at this revelation. Trump was hit with a ridiculous impeachment charge and wasn’t allowed to have counsel at the depositions, and now we find that there was exculpatory evidence that was hidden from the President and the public.

All I can say is that I hope, and expect, that Joe Biden’s impeachment trial will be much fairer than this.

Ben Ray Lujan

February 3, 2022

New Mexico Democrat Senator Ben Ray Lujan, 49, suffered a stroke and had to undergo surgery to ease swelling in his brain. He’s “resting comfortably” in the hospital, and his office issued a statement saying he’s expected to make a full recovery, but there’s no word on how long he will be out. Our prayers are with him and his family.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/ben-ray-luj-n-49-152851965.html

Of course, in Washington, no human tragedy or problem is so serious that someone won’t view it through the lens of political advantage.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/592391-lujan-stroke-jolts-50-50-senate

Chuck Schumer had scheduled a marathon of votes on Biden nominees this week, and now he's frantically rushing to delay them. If Lujan can’t come to work for a while, there goes Schumer’s ability to force the leftist agenda onto Americans with a 50-50 tie vote plus Kamala Harris. If Lujan is out for too long, then a new Supreme Court Justice might have to wait until after the election and be vetted by the new Senate who will actually represent what the American people want as expressed in the 2022 elections.

It’s cynical but that’s how they think in DC. But if they're thinking Sen. Lujan’s health crisis will affect their hopes of resurrecting the “Build Back Better” spending bill, it makes no difference. Joe Manchin already made it clear this week that the version of that bill that passed the House is “dead.”

Thin Blue Line

February 3, 2022

Tuesday, police officers gathered from far and wide in New York City for the second time in a week, this time to honor Wilbert Mora, the partner of Detective Jason Rivera. Both cops were killed in an ambush by a gunman in Harlem when they answered a domestic disturbance call.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-yorkers-pay-respects-fallen-nypd-officers

Their deaths have been part of a disturbing pattern of rising attacks on police officers across the nation, as leftist DA’s have allowed criminals to take over their cities. Let us all hope and pray that the tragic loss of these officers will galvanize residents to demand action to support police and to recall these “prosecutors” and never allow them within a hundred miles of a seat of power again.

In a very related story, if you like the record-breaking crime waves and murder rates currently destroying American cities due to far-left, criminal-coddling DA’s elected with millions of dollars in PAC funding from socialist billionaire and aspiring Bond villain George Soros, then you’ll be thrilled to hear that Soros just donated another $120,000 to the cause of electing “prosecutors” who are emptying the jails and getting innocent people killed.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/george-soros-120k-pac-prosecutor-races

Moral: Do NOT think that elections for offices like district attorney, or primary elections in one-party areas, are just unimportant local elections that you can safely skip and let other people decide. These days, you need to vote in those local and primary elections as if your life depended on it, because it literally might.

BLM Week of Action

February 3, 2022

This week, schools across the country are launching a “BLM Week of Action.” According to a “starter kit” on BLM’s website, this includes indoctrinating children as young as five with lots of radical left brainwashing. That includes four BLM “demands,” including “counselors, not cops” (because removing cops has made our big cities SO much safer for children, especially children in minority neighborhoods) and 13 BLM “guiding principles,” which include “black villages” and “globalism” (translation: racial segregation and communism.) Also, the "disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics." I imagine that means preventing parents from having any say over what their children are “taught.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schools-across-america-blm-week-action-nuclear-family

Judging from BLM’s actions, I assumed their guiding principles were more along the lines of shaking down white liberal corporate leaders for huge amounts of money which they spend on mansions instead of sharing it with the black communities that have been devastated by the riots and crime waves they encouraged.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/blm-transferred-millions-canadian-charity-buy-mansion-formerly-owned-communist-party

I love the quote in that story about one of BLM’s founders who resigned after spending millions on fancy homes, that she was criticized “for her perceived opulence while claiming to be a Marxist.” But that’s why the only people who love communist governments are the people who run them: that’s where all the money is.

I’m baffled as to why BLM should even have so much influence in schools, considering that Americans’ approval of the group, which soared after the George Floyd killing, soon began plummeting, as this story from last August reminds us.

https://www.westernjournal.com/blm-approval-craters-just-2-dropped-whopping-92-since-2020-peak/

Isn’t it bizarre that when parents protest racist, leftist Critical Race Theory being taught in schools, they’re told they’re crazy, there’s no CRT in schools. And then when schools openly push that divisive, racist propaganda, we’re told we’re domestic terrorists if we want it removed.

I know your kids have already missed a lot of school due to the pandemic, but if their school is observing “BLM Action Week,” it might not be a bad idea to homeschool them for just one more week, and spend that time finding a better school.

In what could be a sign that the RBC rights movement (the Reality-Based Community) is finally starting to gain some traction, USA Swimming released its “Athlete Inclusion, Competitive Equality and Eligibility Policy,” and it actually contains a tiny concession to biological reality.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/lia-thomas-future-usa-swimming-new-policy-penn-teammates-support

There are still vast clouds of gaseous, CYA verbiage about “gender identity and expression,” but to cut to the chase, eligibility to compete will now include two areas of criteria: evidence that the prior physical development of the athlete as a male doesn’t provide an unfair advantage over female competitors, and evidence that the athlete’s testosterone levels have been sufficiently suppressed for at least 36 months before applying.

This was all prompted by UPenn swimmer “Lia” Thomas, who competed as a male for three years before switching to female, where “she” routinely passes female competitors like a speed boat and is mowing down female records by absurd margins. Take a look at the photo in that story, and you’ll see why.

I’m sure this change will come under furious assault by trans activists, but it's really just a welcome baby step toward returning recognition of the most basic biological facts and doesn’t go nearly far enough. For instance, current testosterone levels are only a small part of the advantage males have in sports because boys are exposed to so much testosterone from the womb onward. The changes during puberty give them even more muscle mass, greater upper body strength and other physical advantages that no testosterone suppressant can reverse.

Trans activists prove this by their own arguments. They go to court for the right to administer puberty-blocking drugs on grounds that if someone wants to “transition” to the other sex, it’s harder after puberty because of the irreversible physical changes. But when trans females want to compete in sports against biological females, suddenly, those physical changes during puberty don’t exist anymore.

This story says that Thomas’ teammates “released a joint statement backing their fellow competitor.” Yes, I’m sure they felt they had to because of the Twitter mob/cancel culture/trans activist pressure. But I’ll bet that in private spaces where it's only the girls – if such spaces still exist anymore – they’re high-fiving over this.

I wrote yesterday about a new poll that showed President Biden’s disapproval on some major issues was as high as 69%. I wondered where it could possibly go from there. Well, the latest Rasmussen survey may give us a clue.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-doomed-50-likely-voters-now-support-impeaching-potus/

The survey found that 50% of likely voters now back impeaching Biden for his handling of the border and Afghanistan, with only 45% opposed. Even more shocking, 50% of blacks and even 34% of Democrats want Biden impeached.

I’m sure the media, if they mention this poll at all, will try to spin it as biased and inaccurate. But I think it can more likely be explained by listening to this Biden voter, a longtime Democrat who campaigned hard for Biden and even appeared in a Biden victory video. He’s so furious about how Biden’s governing that he went on Fox News to complain about it. That can’t be good news for the Democrats.

https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-biden-voter-turns-fox-news-drops-brutal-truth-bomb-potus/

And with the recent revelations about the secret air flights of illegal immigrants and that the DOJ has been investigating Hunter Biden’s business ties with China, an incoming GOP Congress could have some actual grounds for impeachment, which would be novel these days.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10460457/DOJ-issued-subpoena-JP-Morgan-Hunter-Bidens-transactions-Bank-China-2019.html

FYI: Even the New York Times (not the Post, the Times!) is finally looking into Hunter’s deals.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/politico-hunter-biden-business-dealings-investigated-new-york-times

One thing I expect this will do, however, is put the kibosh on those rumors of Biden getting Kamala Harris out of his Administration by nominating her to the Supreme Court. If there’s a growing chance of his impeachment, and a majority of Americans demanding it, the thought of her being next in line is probably his best job security.

Infrastructure Talk

February 1, 2022

There was a lot of talk of it being an omen (or at least, ominous) when President Biden flew to Pittsburgh to tout his trillion-dollar-plus “infrastructure” bill, only to have a local bridge collapse that very morning. But you might be able to draw a deeper lesson from this story than just “Biden has really bad luck.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/wake-pa-bridge-collapse-look-4-2-billion-road-repair-fund-found/

Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are using the bridge collapse to attack Republican Sen. Pat Toomey for not voting for the “infrastructure” bill. This overlooks the fact that no money from that bill was budgeted toward fixing that bridge. However, Pennsylvanians pay a lot of taxes and fees to cover road and bridge upkeep, including 57.6 cents on every gallon of gas. But did the Democrats who’ve run Pennsylvania for about 40 years use that vast fund to fix the bridges?

Obviously not, since 40% of the state’s 446 bridges are listed in “poor” condition. However, over the past six years, politicians have dipped into the infrastructure fund for about $4.2 billion to spend on other things, from public art to incentives for Silicon Valley companies to move to Pennsylvania. The Transportation Department spent money on studies of “structural racism,” but that apparently has nothing to do with bridge structures.

The bridge that collapsed was scheduled to have its rusted supports replaced in 2016, but instead, officials just shored it up with cables and diverted the funds to "progressive" pet projects, like bike lanes, green energy programs and lanes for (the countless) self-driving cars.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/01/democrat-incompetence-led-to-pa-bridge-collapse-so-of-course-they-blame-republicans/

No matter what the media tells you, Republicans who voted against the infrastructure bill didn’t do so because they don’t care if bridges collapse. They’d just like to keep the economy from collapsing due to unsustainable debt run up by giant spending bills that only put a fraction of their budgets toward the things they claim to be funding. This is why so few people really believe that if Biden were able to pass his $2 trillion “Build Back Better” bill that more than about 40 bucks would actually go toward building anything, while the rest went into the pockets of Democrat donors and constituencies.

There are only so many times that politicians can pull the “we need a lot of money to fix this problem (that we’ll now spend on something else)” scam before people get wise to it. If you really believe all the taxes you pay for “infrastructure” are going to repair our infrastructure, then I’ve got a bridge in Pittsburgh I’d like to sell you.

Of course, it does

February 1, 2022

This is the kind of conclusion that you’d have to be high not to have figured out for yourself by now, but a new study by Canadian researchers found that smoking pot makes you dumber.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/gwendolynsims/2022/01/31/new-poll-70-say-its-time-to-accept-that-covid-is-here-to-stay-and-move-on-with-our-lives-n1554821

Research found that while “getting stoned” may last for only a few hours, the active ingredient THC can be stored in body fat and gradually released into the bloodstream for months, impairing cognitive abilities long after pot use, even if you use it just once or twice a week. And today’s marijuana has up to six times more THC than during the hippie/stoner era of the ‘60s, so...dumber than hippies!

The abilities most impaired were those of learning from what one hears and remembering things, focusing, paying attention and processing information. There were also smaller reductions in executive functioning, decision making, inhibitory processes and flexibility.

(Anyone who lived through the ‘60s might also add that it can impair your fashion sense and personal hygiene.)

Worse, as Athena Thorne at PJ Media points out at the link, a 2017 study linked today’s super-powerful pot to paranoia, panic attacks, mood swings and other mental problems, particularly among young, frequent users. CBS also reported that since Colorado legalized marijuana, the state has seen a big uptick in pot-related ER visits.

Remember when legalized pot was sold to us on the promise that it was perfectly harmless? A number of blue states fell for that one. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that after they legalized pot and people started suffering from longterm cognitive impairment, their governments just got bluer and bluer?

The UN reports that it has “credible allegations” that despite the Taliban’s promises of a general amnesty, they’ve killed more than 100 former government officials, security force members and Afghans who helped the US (and whom we promised to evacuate) since the Biden Administration allowed the Taliban to retake Afghanistan in August. There are also reports of attacks, intimidation, harassment, arbitrary arrest, ill treatment and killings of human rights defenders and media workers.

It’s astonishing to think that the US media are so politically biased that they’ve tried to suppress this story by pushing Afghanistan to the back burner, even as Americans and our allies continue to be trapped there and fearing for their lives. Now we know that even includes their colleagues in the media. The bias is strong in these people.

As Deanna Fisher at the Victory Girls blog notes, this is all in addition to previous reports of women being killed for trying to work outside the home, and people selling their organs and their children to survive.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/taliban-killing-off-former-us-afghan-allies-says-un/

Ms Fisher is correct that nobody should claim to be surprised by any of this, although our professional “diplomatic” corps will likely try to pretend they are. As she says, President Biden wanted to claim he’d ended the war to score a cheap political victory. But that “cheap” victory is coming at a very high cost indeed.

The one silver lining to the pandemic that comes to mind right now --- yes, there is one! --- is that thanks to their kids having to take classes at home, parents got a big bitter taste of what the schools were dishing up. If kids had just been going off to class as usual, parents might never have known about Critical Race Theory, or CRT. And that’s definitely what teachers would have preferred.

“But we don’t teach CRT!” they insisted once the cat was out of the bag. “Why, this is just ‘Ethnic Studies.’ It’s about celebrating different cultures and having pride! Nobody would be against this unless THEY were racist, and we know YOU’RE not racist...right…?”

But it certainly was CRT, and even some who worked inside the education system didn’t know. It wasn’t until the fall of 2020 that high school English teacher Kali Fontanilla found out what it was. She noticed that her students weren’t doing so well in one of their other classes: “ethnic studies.” She didn’t understand why half of her students were failing this particular class.

This was in Salinas, California, and all the students were Hispanic. Fontanilla herself is of Jamaican ancestry.

As a teacher, Fontanilla was able to go online and look at the lesson plans for the class. She was stunned. “This was like extreme left brainwashing of these kids,” she said. “Critical Race Theory all throughout the lessons, from start to finish. The whole thing.”

She could see that the lesson plans even referenced Critical Race Theory by name.

There was “a whole presentation” on CRT, and the kids were even told to analyze the school through that lens. They learned about the “four I’s of oppression”: institutional, internalized, ideological and interpersonal. I’d say the biggest “I” these kids have to oppress them, at least at school, is INDOCTRINATION. That would be filed under “institutional,” I suppose, referring to any institution of “learning” that teaches this garbage.

As you know, Critical Race Theory is derived from Critical Theory, which was designed by Marxists as a basis for tearing down an existing society and culture and remaking it to their liking. According to CRT, all of society was built on racism, so our systems and institutions –- even our laws –- are inherently racist. And each of us, depending primarily on our skin color but also on “intersections” with certain identity groups, is either privileged (the oppressor) or victimized (the oppressed).

It’s a twisted way of looking at our lives. “The kids don’t even want this stuff,” said Fontanilla.

But they get it force-fed in California, because the Democrat-controlled state legislature passed a mandate. Gov. Newsom vetoed the first one, because it was so far out-there that it had come under fire for being strongly anti-capitalist and using jargon like –- get ready –- “cishetereopatriarchy.”

The legislature reworked it and tried again, and Newsom signed that one into law in October of last year. Somebody sure is planning ahead, because the official statewide requirement doesn't go into effect until 2030.

Dan Burns, the superintendent of Salinas Union High School district, denied that the course was “based” on CRT, but called it “one of the frameworks.” That seems like a distinction without a difference, especially when looking at the class syllabus.

The curriculum includes articles such as “Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth," by Tara J. Yosso, a professor of education at UCLA specializing in Critical Race Theory.

Students create something called an “intersectional rainbow” with colored strings representing “gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, beliefs, nationality, age, etc.” “Students will compare and contrast their intersectional rainbows with their peers,” the syllabus says, “while framing their discourse within the intersectionality paradigm as laid out by Kimberle Crenshaw.” According to Vanity Fair magazine, Crenshaw is “the mastermind of Critical Race Theory.”

How about a mock trial in which students accuse various historical persons of being complicit in the genocide of Native Californians and “creating a social justice counter-narrative”?

This might be the topper: a graphic depiction of the “privilege hierarchy” with two white girls at the top –- specifically, George W. Bush’s two daughters, Jenna and Barbara. (I am not kidding.)

Fontanilla doesn’t believe her students, most of whom are learning English as a second language, need to “check their privilege.” I would add that since they ARE learning English as a second language, perhaps they should be spending their class time studying THAT, instead of comparing and contrasting their intersectional rainbows.

Fontanilla got involved, obtaining the lesson plans to back up her claims and writing a letter to the school board about the “ethnic studies” class, and it was read aloud at their meeting last June 22. She got an attorney but says that when the school sent the requested class materials, the slides containing the words “Critical Race Theory” had been omitted.

She says that since she spoke up, she’s been harassed and even threatened with violence, mostly by white liberals. One told her to “have fun being the token black friend to racist conservatives your whole life.”

If that doesn't tell you the mentality we're dealing with, try this: When her letter was greeted with cheers by some of the parents at the school board meeting, the board responded by prohibiting anti-CRT comments at its next gathering.

Moving vans and U-Hauls are leaving California every day.

https://reason.com/2022/01/31/critical-race-theory-taught-in-classroom-california/

It’s dawning on more and more parents just what CRT is and how damaging it is to their kids. On March 14, a new documentary called WHOSE CHILDREN ARE THEY? will open in select theaters, exposing CRT as “a thinly-disguised Marxist tool to divide people, create identity groups and bring down America through disunity.”

The film features two of our favorite experts on this subject, Dr. Carol Swain and Dr. Robert Woodson. I can’t wait –- this movie cannot come out soon enough!  Let's support this at the box office.

This film is not some little fringe project that no one will see. The production has some big names attached to it and is being distributed by Fathom Events, a top film distributor in America and internationally as well, owned by AMC Entertainment, Regal Cinemas and Cinemark Holdings.

For more details, quotes from some of the featured experts, and a video of the trailer, this article is a must-read.

https://cnsnews.com/article/national/michael-w-chapman/new-documentary-exposes-critical-race-theory-radical

Did you know the U.S. Capitol Police have an intelligence unit?

They sure do, and, unknown to almost everyone, they’ve been stepping up their activities. This is yet another “security measure” put in place after January 6 on the pretext that America is under threat from domestic terrorism. POLITICO broke the story after speaking with people familiar with the new policies; they’ve also examined correspondence describing the new approach.

The intel unit is now quietly investigating the backgrounds of people who meet with lawmakers, including their social media accounts. They’re apparently doing the same to Hill staffers. The concept of “civil liberties” becomes more and more nebulous every day.

North Dakota Rep. Kelly Armstrong, a Republican and former criminal defense attorney, compared these new activities to spying. “Whatever they think that sounds like for security,” he said, “it sounds dangerously close --- if not already over the line --- to spying on members of Congress, their staff, their constituents and their supporters. Anybody involved with implementing this without making it known to the actual members of Congress should resign or be fired immediately. And I’m not big on calling for resignations.”

“We need to know everything,” he said. I want to know where it goes, how high it goes, and why all of this exists.”

According to POLITICO, the Capitol Police brought on former Department of Homeland Security official Julie Farnam in the fall of 2020, and she changed a lot of protocols in the weeks leading up to January 6, apparently causing “internal confusion” about priorities. After January 6, she went further, changing the template for what they call Congressional Event Assessments, which are done to anticipate the risks of meetings and events held away from the Capitol. (That would now be all of them, as the Capitol building itself remains closed to visitors.) Farnam is directing her analysts to look very closely at the people who would be meeting both publicly and privately with lawmakers.

If this doesn’t seem like a big deal at first glance, or maybe just something that needs to be done in the name of risk mitigation, let me assure you it gets much worse. The new template tells intel agents to examine the social media of attendees, asking, “...is there anything that may impact the event itself or any of the participants [including not just members of Congress but other attendees]?” And here’s where we really enter a danger zone: Analysts are also supposed to search for information about lawmakers’ opponents and their opponents’ supporters: “List and search all political opponents to see if they or their followers intend to attend or disrupt the event.”

What a great excuse to dig into all kinds of private information on one’s political opponents! Sounds like an idea worthy of Hillary Clinton, and you know I don’t mean that in a complimentary way. Perhaps you’re old enough to recall the mysterious White House staffer Craig Livingstone and the FBI files the First Lady was amassing on political opponents. This sounds like just her style.

It’s outright spying by the Capitol Police. With the pretext of trying to head off danger and disruption, as in the movie MINORITY REPORT, they are delving into people’s private lives. As POLITICO reports: “One Capitol Police official noted that Farnam directed analysts to run ‘background checks’ on people whom lawmakers planned to meet, including donors and associates. When staff were listed as attending these meetings, Capitol Police intelligence analysts also got asked to check the social media accounts of the staffers.”

They were even told to “probe the ownership” of the buildings in which lawmakers held their meetings, sifting through tax and real estate records (!!!). Incredibly, this applies to people’s private homes; they scrutinized one such home used by Florida Sen. Rick Scott for a meeting with donors. The social media accounts of both the homeowner and the attendees were scrutinized, and their foreign contacts were assessed.

Sen. Scott was not pleased. “These reports are incredibly disturbing,” he said through a spokesperson. “It is unthinkable that any government entity would conduct secret investigations to build political dossiers on private Americans. The American people deserve to know what Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi knew and directed, and when. Sen. Scott believes the Senate Rules Committee should immediately investigate.”

Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana was surprised to hear that he and his donors had been similarly scrutinized by the Capitol Police. The department, meanwhile, speaks of this as simply part of their job of protecting people, and they say it’s all coordinated with members of Congress. So why is it that when lawmakers learn the extent of this scrutiny, they are surprised?

Individuals are essentially being spied on, simply for exercising their right to petition members of Congress. Their “protected” speech ends up in police files, even when there is no reason to suspect they’re involved in anything criminal. This is just one more way in which the January 6 Capitol Hill riot has been used as a pretext to violate people’s civil liberties.

Here’s the original story from POLITICO.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/24/capitol-police-social-media-00000948

The story hasn’t received much media attention but continues to percolate. In an update, a group of seven House Republicans sent a letter to the Capitol Police this week demanding answers. Perhaps the biggest question is this: By what authority does the Capitol Police “intel unit” extensively surveil (SPY ON) private citizens? Congress didn’t give it to them.

The letter states, “A decision to expand background checks and intelligence-gathering to a previously unsurveilled group of individuals constitutes a dramatic and troubling expansion of the USCP’s authority.”

A story in The Federalist brings up the resources needed to conduct this type of program, when only three weeks ago, Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger testified to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee about the severe staffing shortages on his security force. What does this say about priorities?

To us, it suggests that the REAL priority among those REALLY in charge of the Capitol Police isn’t security at all, but the ability to spy at will.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/25/exclusive-house-republicans-demand-records-over-capitol-police-surveillance-of-constituents/

LEAVE ME A COMMENT, I READ THEM!


Thanks to Robert S. for this thought-provoking idea...

Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will run for another term of office. I can see her making this announcement so as not to be a lame duck Speaker of the House. But I wonder if there isn't more afoot here. If Pelosi runs for another term, and wins, she can still retire after the first of the year. If she retires, then Governor Newsom, her nephew, would be able to appoint Nancy's replacement. So he would be able to appoint another Pelosi family member to fill the seat. Or maybe himself. Just a wild thought from Texas.

From the Gov.

Thanks for writing, Robert. Gov. Newsom is not technically Nancy Pelosi's nephew, though the two families were once related through marriage. There's no blood tie, but certainly a political one. And it's true that if she retired after being re-elected, he would get to appoint her replacement. That might be another member of the Pelosi family, or someone else entirely.

One benefit of running again is that Pelosi will get to fundraise a giant "war chest," whether she ends up keeping her seat or not. One downside is that as a candidate, she will likely face more scrutiny over the outrageous stock market gains she and her husband have made while she's been in office. It shows in her eyes that she's uncomfortable about being in the hot seat over that, and for good reason. But ego sometimes trumps risk-avoidance. Besides, she'll manage --- because she's doing it "for the children."

....................

Here's a question about Ashli Babbitt from reader Glen G:

I have been supporting Ashli all along. Her getting shot in this manner was dreadfully wrong. But I don't understand the point of this story. Mainly speaks of her trying to stop the process she was in, and then goes through the broken window. How's is that supposed to be understood as good evidence for her?

From the Gov.

Glen, Aaron's point is that his wife was trying to stop the riot, not join in, and that when the situation got to be too intense, she tried to go through the window not to interfere with the election certification process but simply to get to what she thought would be a safer spot. Any evidence of that --- such as the videos, her law enforcement training, and the testimony of those who knew her --- would be considered exculpatory.

One of many reasons why most Americans no longer trust news media outlets is that so many of them make the story not about pursuing the truth but all about them: their beliefs, their political biases, the media reactions to the media reactions to the media reactions. And we got a perfect example of that yesterday.

As the Dow was plunging by a thousand points (thankfully, it did recover by the end of the day) and the world worried about Russia sparking World War III, there was a media frenzy over President Biden’s rude reaction to a question by Fox News’ Peter Doocy. During an event Monday, Doocy attempted to ask Biden if inflation was going to be a major issue in the November elections, and Biden ignored him but was heard on his open mic mocking the question and calling Doocy a “stupid son of a b----.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/thanks-hot-mic-entire-world-hears-biden-curse-fox-reporter-nailed-tough-question/

Granted, this raises legitimate concerns. One of Biden’s big campaign points in attacking Trump was to claim he would always respect the press.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/24/analysis-the-real-biden-peeks-out-from-behind-the-mask-n511984

Trump sparred with the press, but reporters were often just flat-out nasty and harangued and attacked him to his face (I know, because they did it to his spokespersons, too, and I am quite close to one of those.) But Biden scolds and curses reporters just for asking legitimate questions.

It also raised alarm bells with those who worry about Biden’s mental state, as flying into rages is common among elderly people suffering cognitive decline. Biden did later call Doocy to “clear the air” (notice Doocy wouldn’t say he apologized.)

https://www.foxnews.com/media/fox-news-peter-doocy-biden-cleared-the-air

But then, this is the second time in a week that he’s attacked a reporter for asking a reasonable question.

To their credit, Doocy and most people at Fox News laughed off the incident, but the reaction at other outlets was as disturbing as Biden’s own outburst. The same outlets that would have gone ballistic over this “assault on the press” if Trump had said the same thing rushed to downplay or even celebrate Biden’s outburst. For instance, CNN’s Brian Stelter said Biden “deadpanned” the comment, as if it were a witty jest.

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/01/24/cnn-has-received-the-talking-points-president-joe-biden-deadpanned-that-stupid-sob-line-about-peter-doocy/

Stelter also predicted that Fox would turn it into 48 hours of furious outrage, which is what CNN would have done had it been Trump, but the opposite of what Fox did, since conservatives still have a sense of humor.

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/01/24/president-biden-caught-on-hot-mic-calling-fox-news-peter-doocy-a-stupid-son-of-a-btch/

And some liberals went into a fit of rage at the fact that Republicans still have a sense of humor and didn't go into a fit of rage.

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/01/24/media-matters-deputy-director-of-rapid-response-seems-upset-peter-doocy-and-jesse-watters-dont-seem-upset/

So while the jury is still out about what Biden’s profane outbursts against the press say about Biden’s mental processes, the reaction of the media to them makes it very clear what’s going on in their heads, and it ain’t objective journalism.

LEAVE ME A COMMENT, I READ THEM.

Iowa School Choice Week

January 26, 2022

Instapundit has a round-up of stories about Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds declaring this “Iowa School Choice Week” and saying that children belong to their parents, not the government or school boards, and parents have a right to weigh on what they’re being taught. Also, on the unhinged leftwing educationist reaction to those popular, common sense statements.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/499359/

And here’s a perfect example of why parents across the political spectrum are becoming so outraged:

https://redstate.com/alexparker/2022/01/25/oregon-elementary-school-hosts-queer-and-sexuality-alliance-club-for-nine-year-olds-n512220

Under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that out-of-control politicized schools have become that rare issue that’s bringing Republicans and Democrats together in agreement, and costing Democrats a lot of support (ask Virginia Not-Governor Terry McAuliffe.)

I’ve long said that the worst mistake Republicans ever made was letting the left take over the education system. But if there’s any silver lining to the pandemic, it might be that online classes allowed parents to discover to their horror what their kids were being taught, and it’s given a bipartisan jump start to the school choice movement.

https://reason.com/2022/01/24/the-biggest-education-innovation-is-growing-use-of-school-choice/

Another Ukraine blunder

January 26, 2022

Between his attacks on the US oil industry and his boosting of Russian oil, his projecting of weakness and incompetence on the international stage, his evacuation of our Ukrainian Embassy, and his blunder of virtually okaying a “minor incursion” into Ukraine, I thought there couldn’t possibly any more ways in which President Biden could set the stage for an invasion of Ukraine by Russia. But we shouldn't forget Barack Obama’s admonition to “never underestimate Joe’s ability to (bleep) things up.”

How about having your spokesperson announce to the adversary you’re trying to intimidate that “there is no intention or interest or desire by the President to send troops to Ukraine.”

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/25/wh-nailed-for-ineffective-ukrainian-policy-including-hashtag-diplomacy-n512538

Pretty bad bluffing. I’m not a betting man, but if I played poker for money, I would definitely want to play it with Joe Biden.

Apparently, the White House plans to scare Putin into line by launching a Twitter hashtag campaign called “#StandWithUkraine.” If Biden stands with Ukraine, why would he be doing so much to set it up to fall? It's understandable, though, since at this point, Putin would probably be more afraid of a Twitter mob than of Biden.

Also, it turns out we don’t even have a US ambassador in Ukraine to represent us or give us on-the-scene reports because even after more than a year in office, Biden has yet to get around to nominating one.

https://www.westernjournal.com/ukraine-crisis-diplomat-america-needs-nowhere-sight-thanks-joe-biden/

All things considered, I’m not at all surprised that Vladimir Putin has now progressed from ignoring the US to openly threatening us to stay out of his way.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russia-threatens-measures-latest-statement-us-ukraine-negotiations

When asked if Biden had any plans to nominate a Ukraine ambassador, press secretary Jen Psaki had no answer. I’m surprised she didn’t repeat her previous advice that this would be a very good time for everyone to drink a lot of margaritas.

Aaron Babbitt, Ashli Babbitt’s husband, has been on a mission of discovery to piece together the evidence on what really happened inside the Capitol on January 6. As you know, his wife was the only direct casualty of that day’s violence, shot dead by Capitol Hill Police Lt. Michael Byrd as she attempted to climb, unarmed, through a broken-out window in the door to the Speaker’s Lobby. Last week, after viewing video shot by self-appointed “documentarian” John Sullivan, Aaron concluded that Ashli was not even part of the riot –- that, in fact, she had been trying to stop the riot.

After forcing himself to watch and analyze that agonizing video over and over, he concluded that she was crawling through the window to get away from the rowdy crush of people outside the door. With the training she’d had as an officer herself, she knew things were getting out of control, and she wanted to get to safety. Aaron also says she was claustrophobic, severely enough for them to have to leave events because of large packed crowds.

Aaron has since had the opportunity to examine additional video of the riot and shooting, and it shows much more detail, which reinforces his conclusion that his wife had been trying to stop what was happening.

He had already seen that the man who broke the window by punching it and repeatedly hitting it with a riot helmet, identified as Zachary J. Alam, was delayed in his own attempt to crawl through the window when his glasses got knocked and he had to reposition them. The new video shows that Ashli was the one who hit him in the face, after grabbing him in an apparent attempt to stop him.

The video shows that for several minutes before she was shot, Ashli shouted at the rioters to stop vandalizing the Capitol, her face registering great distress. Video also reveals that she was shouting at the police guarding the doors to call for backup. She also shouted at Alam as he was breaking the glass: “Stop it!”

Newly-reviewed video shows Ashli grabbed Alam’s backpack and hit him in the nose with a left hook, knocking his glasses out of position on his face. As Alam reset his glasses, Ashli started to climb through the broken-out window. Of course, that’s when she was shot. Accounts differ as to whether Byrd shouted any warning before he fired; if he did, it might have been impossible for her to hear.

Witnesses think it’s likely that Ashli, in delaying Alam’s scramble through that window, unwittingly saved his life before she lost her own.

Babbitt told The Epoch Times, “As we keep seeing these videos and it’s all coming into play and it’s literally laying out everything I’ve said from day one, that she’s a good person, that she loved this country, she was law enforcement, pro-law enforcement, wasn’t breaking anything, didn’t hurt anybody --- we’re seeing it now.”

Additional video shot by journalist Tayler Hansen has shed even more light on what happened. Amazingly, it shows Ashli yelling at the three officers guarding the door to call for help. When they didn’t, she berated them for their inaction. “You’re a fraud!,” she yelled. “You’re a [expletive] fraud! You’re wrong!”

Some in the crowd started chanting, “Break it down! Break it down!” Ashli yelled, “Stop that!”

Another video, shot from another angle and farther away, shows that Ashli was not the woman who shouted, “Take it down,” as has been erroneously reported.

Aaron knows his wife was no insurrectionist. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he said. “We’re going to get it out there.”

It’s now clear the situation had gone from calm to mayhem in just a few minutes. “I think she just realized she was in a bad spot, something wasn’t right,” he said. “She had her wits about her. The frustration came out when she punched him [Alam] in the face, because he deserved it. He deserved it from a man, not the little woman there in that small hallway.”

The strangest thing to us about this whole scenario is the cops’ inaction. Some had left their post by the door, and the three who remained were just standing there. Aaron doesn’t understand that, either. “He [Alam] deserved it from a cop,” he said, “but none of that was happening. For a former law enforcement person to be seeing this happening is like mass confusion, ‘What is going on here right now?’”

This would have gone against all her training and common sense. Ashli, 35, was a military police officer in the Air Force and National Guard for 14 years, after enlisting at age 17. Ironically, she actually served in the National Guard for the District of Columbia, which DEFENDS THE NATION’S CAPITAL. She was not there to tear it down.

From cameraman Hansen: “She was not a terrorist, she was a vehement supporter of law enforcement who took major issue with those who didn’t do their jobs on January 6th. The family should be heavily compensated by the mainstream media and the government for the propaganda they’ve pushed surrounding Ashli.”

The new information related above comes from a premium story from Joseph Hanneman in The Epoch Times.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ashli-babbitt-punched-rioter-seconds-before-she-was-shot-new-video-shows_4233468.html

According to The Epoch Times, Zachary Alam was arrested on January 30 of last year. This past November, the DOJ issued a “superseding” indictment that charges him with 11 counts, including assaulting, resisting or impeding police with a dangerous weapon; civil disorder; and destruction of government property. He’s due in court in February for a status conference.

Stills show him wearing a MAGA hat under his fur one. He had previously been in jail and refused to turn himself in because he didn’t want to go back.

Here’s more, from a local story out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he hid out.

https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/who-is-the-man-the-fbi-arrested-in-lancaster-county-after-capitol-attack/article_a93f2476-658e-11eb-bd31-9f867241227f.html

We also found a legal document online, a petition for Alam’s release on bond dated June 4, 2021, saying he’d been detained since February 6. (Don’t know if he was released.) So he doesn’t seem to fit the category of those mysterious individuals who encouraged the breach of the Capitol but weren’t detained. So far, we haven’t been able to find out anything about who else he was with that day.

. . . . . .

But as a postscript, we’ll tell you who WAS just sentenced: our friend Brandon Straka, founder of the #WalkAway Movement. Though he did not enter the Capitol that day, he’s been sentenced to three months of home detention and a $5,000 fine. “Even if he didn’t personally engage in violence or property destruction during the riot, Straka encouraged and celebrated the violence of that day,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brittany Reed wrote in a court filing.

Straka’s attorney said they were violating his First Amendment rights and “attempting to make a public spectacle of a prominent Trump-supporting influencer.” As if anyone in our system of justice would ever do that.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/walk-away-founder-brandon-straka-sentenced-to-probation-home-detention

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Question: how does a regime focused on perpetuating and expanding its own power, such as the one currently occupying Washington DC, crush all opposition --- both actual and potential? According to Michael Anton, in his new commentary for American Greatness, it conducts what in national security parlance is a “psy-op,” or psychological operation. This is what seems to be going on right now in our country.

According to Anton, this form of propagandizing is done to demoralize --- THAT sure seems to be happening --- and also “to create other opportunities that otherwise might not present themselves.” For example, to create the opportunity to stop dissent, they first have to criminalize it. And since we supposedly live in a free country, criminalizing dissent poses a problem. This is America, so unless we’re young and brainwashed, we naturally resist attempts to restrict our free speech and persecute us for our politics. So the regime needs a big-time excuse to make that happen.

So, what do Americans hate and fear at least as much as incursions on their freedom? Terrorism. Mob rule. Civil strife. Civil WAR. Ah –- there we are! Americans hate the thought of civil war! In order to rein in political opposition and stifle dissent, an effective plan might be to make Americans extremely concerned about domestic terrorism and, ultimately, civil war.

And since our rulers are leftists, they have to make the perceived threat come from the right.

The main tool a government has for implementing such a propaganda plan is FACT-BASED LIES. It’s a fact that some conservatives truly believe we’re headed down the road to civil war, simply because the country is so divided –- as they say in divorce court, “irreparably broken.” If we’re talking about a violent rebellion, an insurrection, that’s a war that Anton very reasonably explains could not be won. Perhaps an “amicable divorce” as a last resort could be workable if it came to that, rather than give up our freedom, but not civil war, which he likens to “Bambi vs. Godzilla.” Check this out...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s3UogfAGg0

It’s also a fact that a relative handful of people from the right really were involved in the January 6 riot in a way that went beyond walking into the Rotunda and taking selfies. But the threat they posed has been so greatly exaggerated by Congress and the media that many Democrats actually believe a small, unarmed group posed a serious threat to “our democracy” and were seriously trying to take over the government.

Of course, that is ludicrous. But I think we’re starting to see that there is nothing so ludicrous that people won’t believe it if it’s drummed into them by their political masters.

Even though there’s no domestic terrorism going on (at least on the right), the federal government has set up a “domestic terrorism unit” to go in search of it (at least on the right). They’re targeting “those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.” Who are those people? So-called “anti-vaxxers”? The unmasked? Parents opposed to CRT? Those who sign petitions for election audits? Conservative bloggers? Subscribers to the Mike Huckabee newsletter?

Importantly, since there are no acts of domestic terrorism being perpetrated by the right, the government is targeting motives, feelings, ideologies --- what people think, not what they do.

We’re even seeing examples in the media of commentaries that defend the use of this “psy-ops” strategy, in the name of “fighting disinformation.”

https://archive.is/3RaHe

Of course, the problem with this kind of content control is that “disinformation” or “misinformation” is anything the government authority says it is. For example, the story that the Bidens really have been in bed financially with Ukrainians, Russians and Chinese, as revealed on Hunter’s abandoned laptop, was quickly censored as “Russian disinformation” to keep voters from knowing about it right before the 2020 election. And it’s TRUE.

I would add that because of the two-tier “justice” system the left has established, people on their team politically who actually DO commit acts of domestic terrorism and other violent crimes against civil society will be released without bail, if they are dealt with by law enforcement at all.

Lately, the “buzz” being generated is that because of angry Americans on the right --- typically white and rural, and shamefully portrayed as “white supremacists” --- our country is being primed for civil war. To maintain this narrative, the left uses the closest thing it has to that: January 6. (We’ve said all along that the Capitol Hill riot played into the left’s hands so well that if it didn’t happen on its own, they would’ve had to make it happen. More about that tomorrow.) As Anton points out, “The regime is trying to brainwash everyone that January 6 was the equivalent of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. But it’s not working --- three quarters of Americans think is was ‘a protest that went too far’ --- so the regime needs a Plan B.”

Plan B is to create that “buzz,” to talk up domestic strife and impending civil war –- even books are coming out about this –- so that Americans increasingly believe the threat and become frightened. If they’re frightened enough, they’ll start to accept more draconian measures that would normally be unthinkable. I would add that the virus is a great example of this; those who cower in fear of COVID will accept any amount of restriction: lockdowns, vaccine passports, employer mandates, an endless string of booster shots, social isolation, tracking/travel restrictions, censorship, detention or even denial of medical care for the unvaccinated. It’s just a matter of generating enough fear and dread. The same can be done to instill fear in political opponents; in fact, there’s even some overlap, as resistance to COVID mandates is being politicized.

So, if you’ve been hearing more about the threat or even inevitability of civil war lately, it’s not your imagination. And Anton warns that the feds behind this plan WANT you to step out of line --- to do something that they can paint as a prelude to starting a war. That gives them all the excuse they need to respond, with “more censorship, surveillance, no-knock raids, computer and records seizures, asset confiscation, frivolous (but deadly serious) criminal charges, endless pretrial detention, and draconian sentences for misdemeanors and non-crimes.”

So don't play into it. I would recommend thinking of this as a chess game. Our next move has to be "checkmate" at the ballot box.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/18/the-civil-war-psy-op/

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Biden's weakness

January 25, 2022

As I wrote yesterday, Russia smells weakness wafting from the White House, and Vladimir Putin thinks he sees an opening to install a Kremlin-friendly government in Ukraine without having to face much in the way of consequences. Russia has sent over 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian border, and has 140 warships and over 50 aircraft taking part in “naval exercises.” But President Biden held a conference call with NATO leaders, and he claims they’re in “total unanimity” about blocking Russian aggression.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-european-leaders-total-unanimity-call-russia-ukraine

Here’s my question: are they also in total unanimity about how to do that? Or do they just unanimously agree that the US will do most of the heavy lifting to protect Europe?

Biden has put 8,500 US troops on “heightened alert” that they may be sent to Ukraine to deter Russia, and is reportedly considering sending up to 50,000 troops via the UN. But what is NATO sending? Denmark is sending one frigate and four F-16s to Lithuania. The Netherlands is sending two F-35s to Bulgaria. France is vaguely “ready to send forces” to Romania. Spain is sending some ships and “considering” sending jets to Bulgaria, and so on.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/01/24/the-nato-response-to-ukraine-proves-how-right-donald-trump-was-n511686

Meanwhile, Germany, which thanks to Biden is dependent on Russia for energy, is actively blocking weapons shipments to Ukraine.

https://www.westernjournal.com/germany-shocks-alliance-throws-wrench-ukrainian-defense/

As the writer Bonchie at Redstate.com reminds us, Trump tried to force NATO members to step up and start providing more money, troops and resources for their own defense. For that, he was excoriated by the same arrogant “smart diplomacy” crowd that’s now bumbled us to the brink of a military confrontation with Russia -- one for which we will apparently be expected to provide most of the equipment and put our brave service members’ lives on the line.

By the way, those of us back home in the US will also be paying dearly for Biden’s weakness and dumb policy decisions, not only by worrying about our loved ones in harm’s way, but also from the risk of Russian retaliatory cyberattacks…

https://redstate.com/jerrywilson/2022/01/24/american-troops-possibly-en-route-to-europe-to-defend-ukraine-as-dhs-warns-of-possible-russian-cyberattacks-n512090

…and in the form of even higher oil prices. It’s been little reported, but after coming into office on Day One and launching an attack on our domestic oil and gas industries, Biden ramped up the amount of oil the US buys from Russia. As Nick Arama at Redstate.com reports, in May of 2021, Russian oil imports were increased by 23% to 844,000 barrels a day, or 10% of total oil imports for the month. Only Canada supplies us with more imported oil than Russia.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/25/biden-greenlit-russian-agression-but-its-going-to-hit-us-all-right-in-the-wallet-n511566

So if you thought it was crazy that we’ve allowed ourselves to become dependent on China for our medicines, what would you call being dependent for oil on a country that you’re threatening to go to war with?

This potential war could have been avoided if we had strong leadership in the White House. That alone would've been deterrent enough. Failing that, the President should at least be strong enough to tell NATO leaders that while they have our support, they need to fight their own battles to protect Europe. It’s odd that even as liberals are getting rid of cops in American cities, they still think it’s our duty to be the policeman to the world.

Two Reminders

January 25, 2022

Democrats, media propagandists and politicized DOJ agents may hope that their attempts to demonize or even jail people for daring to oppose leftist policies have scared Americans into silence. But there are still plenty who don’t get scared when someone tries to take away their rights. Instead, they get angry and they get loud. And Washington, DC, just got two reminders of that great American character trait.

It was a good weekend for freedom of speech and assembly in DC, first with the March For Life…

https://heavy.com/news/march-for-life-2022-crowd-photos/

and then with Sunday’s “Defeat The Mandates” rally to oppose draconian government vaccination mandates that violate Constitutional rights. Liberal media outlets tried to paint it as a “super-spreader event,” but they already told us that it’s okay to hold mass protest rallies during a pandemic, so their hypocrisy was also on the march.

https://www.westernjournal.com/people-bidens-inauguration-sea-patriots-floods-dc-anti-mandate-rally/

Bonus: watch a liberal “triggered” by the anti-mandate rally have an epic meltdown, screaming about white supremacy and demanding, “Stop invading our territory!” News flash: The nation’s capital is every American’s “territory.”

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/23/watch-memorable-liberal-meltdown-against-dc-anti-mandate-rally-goes-viral-n511424

Both events drew huge crowds, despite the bitter cold. And separate Marches For Life were held in other cities all over America, drawing many more supporters nationwide. That jibes with a recent poll showing that 71% of Americans want more restrictions on abortion, not fewer.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/21/71-percent-of-americans-want-more-restrictions-on-abortion-not-fewer/

As you can see in this article from the Catholic News Agency, a growing number of younger women are starting to turn against all the pro-abortion propaganda they’re deluged with.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250187/march-for-life-2022-a-great-witness-to-the-sanctity-of-human-life

The more we learn about the science of what happens during a baby’s development in the womb, and the more easily available contraceptives are, the more obvious the barbarism of killing babies (or “clumps of cells”) in the womb has become. That’s why the horrific reality of abortion has to be papered over with fuzzy euphemisms like “reproductive choice” or “women’s health care.” Never mind that the child gets no choice; and pro-abortion advocates fight laws to ensure that abortion clinics are medically safe and sanitary, claiming they limit access to “choice.” What choice, the choice to die of an infection or botched operation?

Our “Catholic” President and his Vice President marked the anniversary of Roe v. Wade with a statement reading, "We must ensure that our daughters and granddaughters have the same fundamental rights that their mothers and grandmothers fought for and won on this day, 49 years ago.” And the president of Planned Parenthood said she’s seeing “a level of rage that we could be living in a world six months from now — where our children have fewer rights than we have right now."

Don’t you love the utterly cluelessness of people who lobby for abortion by saying, “But think of the children!” We are thinking of the children, that’s why we oppose killing them.

If it were up to them, their daughters and granddaughters might not even exist because they wouldn’t have the fundamental right to live.

PS – Speaking of pro-abortion propaganda that insults people’s intelligence, check out the new cartoon that tries to accuse pro-life people of pushing a “big government” agenda. As a bonus, this includes a reminder of what would actually happen if Roe v. Wade were overturned, which is that it would go back to local governments, not the federal government. This is almost always wildly misrepresented (yet oddly, nobody seems to get banned from social media for pushing that misinformation.)

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2022/01/23/democrats-target-the-big-government-schemes-of-the-pro-life-movement-n1552145

Things are going so badly under the Biden Administration that his own spokesperson, Jen Psaki, suggested that people just deal with their anger, sadness and frustration by going to a kickboxing class or having a margarita.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/white-house-report-card-when-its-so-bad-only-a-margarita-can-help

I’m a teetotaler, and I don’t think I’ll be taking up kickboxing at this stage of life. So I guess I’ll just deal with my frustration by continuing to report on this Administration and counting the minutes until November, when I hope and pray the elections go the way the latest polls suggest that they will.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/downhill-divisive-americans-sour-nation-s-direction-new-nbc-news-n1287888

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-voters-split-congressional-election

But as you can see in that Fox News poll, the Democrats still have the advantage on several issues, in some cases, inexplicably (people actually think they’re better at “uniting the country”?) As I always remind people, the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day (or whenever election season starts in your state), so don’t get complacent. Work, donate, volunteer, and most importantly, vote!

Although I suspect poll-watching will also be pretty important this year.

PS – Speaking of polls, the latest NBC poll is so bad for the Democrats that even Chuck Todd had to admit that most Americans no longer see President Biden as competent and effective, a good commander-in-chief, or even “easygoing and likable.” That must've been painful for him to report.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2022/01/24/chuck-todd-sounds-alarm-dems-in-shellacking-territory-for-midterms-n2602262

Well, that four-year vacation from American involvement in new foreign wars under Trump was nice while it lasted, wasn’t it?

Unfortunately, too many voters let the media convince them that it was important for foreign leaders to love our President, so the Mean Tweeter had to be replaced with the “moderate” lifelong politician who’s been wrong on every foreign policy issue of the previous 47 years. They failed to realize that one of the biggest omens that America is facing big trouble around the world is if our adversaries just LOOOOVE the choice we made for President.

I want our enemies to fear and respect our President, not chortle with delight at their good fortune in our choice of leaders. Right now, anyone wishing America ill is not just chortling, they’re cackling out loud and licking their chops.

In his big press conference last week, President Biden couldn’t have projected weakness more clearly if he’d borrowed the Bat Signal and emblazoned it across the sky. He’d already let the Taliban take over Afghanistan and dictate the terms of our tragic withdrawal. Iran was threatening America and Israel, and North Korea was testing hypersonic missiles, all with barely a peep from the White House.

And then, Biden stood before the entire world and admitted that he probably wouldn’t do much of anything if Russia made a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. Do you think Vladimir Putin didn’t get that “Go" signal? If Trump had sent such a message, the media would have been ablaze with “Trump is a Russian agent” headlines.

Now, we’re facing the grim consequences of having such incredible weakness in the White House. A report by UK intelligence claims that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine and install a pro-Kremlin leader, which is hardly a “minor incursion.” The White House calls it “deeply concerning,” which I’m sure has Putin quaking in his boots.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russias-purported-plan-to-install-pro-kremlin-leadership-in-ukraine-deeply-concerning-white-house-says

Now, as a consequence of American weakness, the winds of war are starting to blow. Biden’s advisers are reportedly suggesting that he try to clean up his mess by deploying Navy vessels and sending 3,000 to 5,000 of our troops to Eastern Europe. That is, if we have that many left after he forced out all the Trump voters, critics of his Administration, soldiers who think there are only two genders, and those who didn’t want to get vaccinated.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/president-biden-weighing-sending-troops-to-counter-russia

Meanwhile, NATO has to step up to fill the void of American leadership, so they’re sending some fighter jets and ships to Eastern Europe in hopes of deterring Russia.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/uk-to-withdraw-some-staff-from-embassy-in-ukraine-due-to-threat-from-russia

But of course, Putin has a weapon he can hold over NATO that he didn’t have when Trump was in office and America was exporting oil and gas instead of begging OPEC for it. Rallying NATO might not even have been necessary had Biden not only laid out the welcome mat for Russia to invade, but strengthened Putin by greenlighting a Russian oil pipeline while targeting our own domestic energy industry for destruction, leaving European NATO nations at the mercy of Russia for oil.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/ukraine-crisis-highlights-german-dependence-russian-oil

All of this is setting up the game board for yet another costly, deadly foreign war that could have been prevented by simply having a strong US President that our adversaries took seriously. Unfortunately, that appears to be at least three years away. I shudder to think what the state of the world could be by then. In the meantime, China, which has already cracked down on Hong Kong and is threatening Taiwan, will undoubtedly be watching the US response to Russian aggression against Ukraine with great interest.

Sadly, Democrat “leadership” is proving to be a perfect storm of incompetence, weakness and wrongheaded policies. Many people around the world, from our own crime-plagued cities to Afghanistan and possibly soon in Ukraine, are paying the price with the loss of their rights, freedom and lives. I hope you’ll pray for them. And pray that 2024 gets here double quick.