By • National Review
A New York State Supreme Court justice has ruled that a new law allowing 800,000 noncitizens to vote in local elections in New York City was unconstitutional. The case will be appealed to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest judicial body, but it’s a promising start.
Justice Ralph Porzio noted that the state’s constitution explicitly says only eligible citizens can vote. That can be changed, but only by a vote of the people in a referendum, a move the hyper “woke” city council didn’t dare to embrace when it passed the law allowing green-card holders and work-visa holders the vote last year. They knew noncitizen voting is unpopular — even radical San Francisco voters gave the idea only 54 percent approval in 2016.
There are few limits on how far the woke Left will go to change the rules of voting. In 2019, a majority of House Democrats voted to lower the federal voting age to 16 years, from 18.
The very notion of noncitizen voting is fraught with peril, especially in a big city such as New York. Few experts believe that, in a place where noncitizen voting is allowed, there would be effective enforcement of laws still barring illegal aliens from voting.
In 2016, New York Board of Elections commissioner Alan Schulkin, a Democrat, was videotaped at a party by Project Veritas confirming the existence of voter fraud and decrying the city’s failure to require voter ID. “Certain neighborhoods in particular, they bus people around to vote,” Schulkin said on the tape. “They put them in a bus and go poll site to poll site.” Schulkin was promptly forced to resign for speaking his mind by then-mayor Bill de Blasio.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, himself the son of Cuban immigrants, has introduced a bill to prohibit federal funding to states and localities that allow foreigners to vote. “It’s ridiculous that states are allowing foreign citizens to vote,” Rubio says. “However, if states and localities do let those who are not U.S. citizens to vote in elections, they shouldn’t get U.S. citizen taxpayer money.”
I am in favor of having people legally living in this country establish ties to the community and have a say in their governance. As Howard Husock, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says, “the right way to bring noncitizens into the electoral process at the federal, state, and local levels is old-fashioned: encourage them to become citizens.” It’s not hard for legal residents to go that route — they must have been in the U.S. for five years, pay some fees, and pass a test, given in English, on U.S. institutions.
What is so unfair about the system we have now? The answer is that it doesn’t suit the blatantly political imperatives of the woke Left, and that is a key reason noncitizen voting must be rejected.
By • The Federalist
Attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana filed a motion for preliminary injunction this week demanding a court stop Big Tech companies from colluding with the federal government to inform their political censorship sprees, after the White House has repeatedly bragged about exploiting its relationships with social media companies to suppress information the Biden administration deems “problematic.”
In the motion, Missouri AG Eric Schmitt and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry argue that the Biden administration, in partnership with Meta (formerly Facebook), Twitter, Google’s YouTube, and other Silicon Valley giants, has taken advantage of Big Tech’s grip on the social media platform market to suppress any speech contrary to their chosen narrative
“Freedom of speech is the very bedrock of this great nation, and needs to be protected and preserved. The federal government’s alleged attempts to collude with social media companies to censor free speech should terrify Missourians and Americans alike,” Schmitt said in a statement. “The federal government must be halted from silencing any more Americans, and this motion for preliminary injunction intends to do just that.”
The fed-inspired decision to “shadow-ban, de-platform, de-monetize, de-boost, restrict content access, and suspend many speakers, both temporarily and permanently,” a press release announcing the motion states, has silenced people “from doctors and scientists, to the owner of a conservative radio show, to everyday Americans who dare to voice their opinion in the public sphere.”
As noted by the state attorneys, it was during the height of the government’s panic over Covid-19 that Big Tech censored the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration who criticized the bureaucrats calling for continuous national lockdowns. The “extensive social-media censorship on multiple platforms” endured by authors such as Dr. Martin Kulldorff and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya came shortly after emails between then-Director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Francis Collins and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci demanding a “quick and devastating … takedown” of the group’s criticism.
The motion follows a complaint from the state attorneys last month against the Biden administration and other federal officials for engaging in “open and explicit censorship programs” such as the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board.”
“Having threatened and cajoled social-media platforms for years to censor viewpoints and speakers disfavored by the Left, senior government officials in the Executive Branch have moved into a phase of open collusion with social-media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social-media platforms under the Orwellian guise of halting so-called ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’” the original petition states.
By • The Federalist
Twitter repeatedly locks the accounts of conservatives who criticize the left’s narrative. When outrage about the Big Tech company’s knack for political censorship bubbles, Twitter occasionally claims it made a mistake. This week, it happened again.
Citing an “error,” Twitter reinstated the account of “Relatable” podcast host Allie Beth Stuckey on Monday night. But that was only after it received backlash for locking the Christian conservative’s account because she criticized Fox News for celebrating a California couple who forced radical transgender ideology on their 14-year-old daughter when she was an infant.
“I’m stunned that Fox News ran a segment celebrating a girl whose parents ‘transitioned’ her into a boy when she was 5 because she apparently told them she was a boy ‘before [she] could talk.’ Absolutely maddening & heartbreaking,” Stuckey’s original tweet stated.
At the time of the suspension, Twitter claimed Stuckey violated its hateful conduct policy.
“You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,” a message from Twitter stated.
It was only after Stuckey appealed and several prominent conservatives including Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon tweeted their disgust at Twitter’s decision that the company decided to reverse course on the commentator’s account.
“Just got word from @conservmillen that she’s been locked out for hateful conduct,” Dillon said. “It seems they’ll keep this up until everyone remaining on the platform either agrees with them or censors themselves.”
Stuckey may have won her appeal but Twitter has repeatedly used its sweeping “hateful conduct policy” to deplatform conservatives and even one popular satire account for affirming the realities of the sexes. That’s something even possible Twitter-buyer Elon Musk has noticed.
The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson was indefinitely banned by Twitter in March after he tweeted that Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, is obviously a man despite the corporate media, Big Tech, and the Biden administration’s insistence that he is a “trans woman.” Despite appealing numerous times, Davidson still is not allowed back on Twitter unless he bends a knee to Twitter and deletes his original tweet.
Davidson’s suspension occurred shortly after Twitter locked down the Babylon Bee account for calling a male a man. Similarly, Twitter suspended Babylon Bee Editor-in-Chief Kyle Mann for tweeting a joke about Twitter’s subjective user policies. Turning Point USA Founder and President Charlie Kirk and Libs of Tik Tok also suffered suspensions for contradicting the prevailing leftist narrative.
Leaked messages from what appears to be an internal Twitter conversation over Slack show that Twitter employees purposefully target Libs of Tik Tok because they don’t like that the anonymous creator exposes what gender-bending, Trump-hating, racist, groomer leftists have already revealed about themselves online.
Those suspensions were nothing new for Twitter, though. The company’s history of targeting anyone who harms their preferred narrative™ — such as President Donald Trump, Canadian truckers, doctors and scientists discussing the origins of Covid-19, and the New York Post — indicates that Twitter suppressing dissenters is no accident.
Twitter, the platform guilty of election interference, targets conservatives, plain and simple. And any claims the Big Tech company makes of “error” are just a front for their demonstrated goal of silencing influential conservative ideas online.
By • Newsweek
There are a lot of folks who like to watch the NFL on TV. Maybe not as many as there were before the whole kneeling thing started, but it’s still a big number. And many of those probably find it irritating to no end when one of the commentators says something like—and it’s almost inevitable that they will—”It’s all going to come down to which team can put the most points on the board.”
For the people who, like me, make a living writing about politics and elections, the onset of primary season produces for us the same kind of annoyance. It’s maddening when someone who is presented as an expert on the ins and outs of the electoral process says, as you can safely bet someone eventually will, that “it’s all going to come down to turnout.”
There are times when there is a real urge to smack some of these analysts in the face. This is what comes from eliminating high school civics programs and news organizations deciding that those who at one time or another covered local government are now well-suited to explain how and why politicians get elected.
The 2016 presidential election is a perfect example of this phenomenon in practice. Many of the nation’s top political reporters, as well as those in the middle and many of the bottom-feeders, missed what was going on. They bought into the spin that Hillary Clinton‘s election was inevitable. As such, they regarded the October 2016 leak of an audiotape in which Donald Trump could, to put it gently, be heard speaking unflatteringly about women, as a death blow.
Admittedly, in many races and almost any other year, it probably would have been. But the choice between Clinton and Trump was unlike any presented to the voters in some time.
It takes experience in the electoral process to generate the level of sophistication regarding the many nuances in American politics. It takes more than subject-matter expertise to get it right. So many of my colleagues missed it so totally that I—who saw Trump’s chances of getting to the White House growing while Clinton’s were contracting, even after the release of the infamous audiotape—was either onto something or had simply become a cheerleader for whichever candidate the GOP chose to nominate.
The reason I bring this all up is that I now see it happening again. The dominant political media’s obsession with Trump, the candidates he’s endorsed and whether or not they’re winning contested GOP primaries is only a small part of the 2022 midterm election story.
It’s a popular subject because it’s easy to cover and people seem interested in it. It doesn’t, however, tell us much about where the GOP is headed or what’s now happening among the Democrats. The next election, as much as the mainstream media won’t like it, isn’t going to be a referendum on Trump. It’s going to be about President Joe Biden and how the Democrats have run the country for the last two years, even though—and this is something else that’s been overlooked—the GOP is in charge of more states now than at almost any time in history.
The Biden presidency is failing. At least that’s the perception people have. His approval rating, which started in the low- to mid-60s when he took office, has now sunk below 40. That’s not good for him, and it’s not good for his party. Democrats are getting the blame for things that are happening as a result of policies Biden has put in place, as well as for things harmful to the interests of the United States over which he has no direct control. That’s created a positive political environment for the GOP, which has amassed a nearly double-digit lead on the crucial polling question of which party voters want to control Congress after the next election.
How people feel, and why, is what ties all this together. The environment drives turnout and, right now, GOP voters are energized and engaged. A Rasmussen Reports national survey released May 26 found that of the 79% of likely voters who are excited to vote in the midterm election, Republicans led Democrats by an eight-point margin. Among those who said they were “very excited” (49 percent) to vote this fall, the GOP lead grows to 16 points. “These findings are consistent with the generic congressional ballot,” the polling firm said, “where Republicans held a nine-point lead last week.”
The challenge for those writing about elections is to figure out why that is. To be blunt, they need to set aside their personal biases—left and right—long enough to get in touch with what the American voter is thinking, while also abandoning their propensity to judge whether those thoughts are “right” or “wrong.” Only then will they be able to report competently on the contest for control of Congress this fall.
Drug importation is always presented as a way to reduce costs, but the truth is it is the wrong solution and will have the costly impact of endangering drug safety and creating a huge counterfeit medication problem.
“Safe” importation of medications is an oxymoron. It may sound good and it may sound like a cost saver, but it’s actually very risky. For example, the reality is that many drugs labeled as “Canadian” and thus assumed to be safe, are usually counterfeit or tainted medications that come from third world countries. In some cases, the medications are simply ineffective and have no value as medication. But if you need medication and think you’re getting the needed medication at a lower cost, but you’re actually getting what amounts to a placebo, your health is at risk and you’re not saving any money at all. In fact, you’re wasting money. You might as well eat chalk and burn cash. It would provide the same benefit.
And in other cases, the medications are not merely ineffective, they are actually tainted and do great harm. For years, healthcare policy analysts and health safety experts have produced a cacophony of powerful objections to importation based on worries about safety and pricing. Even many government reports make it clear that drug importation is a risky business and that there are better ways to keep costs in check. The health, legal and economic dangers posed by drug importation makes it dangerous public policy.
This isn’t just our opinion, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office carefully reviewed Senator Bernie Sander’s proposal for drug importation in 2017 and determined that it would have minimal to no impact on federal expenditures.
Additionally, drug “importation” would actually import Canada’s price-controlled, government-run healthcare system and kill off the incentives to develop new medicines. If we hope to find the next generation of cures and treatments to many of the terrible diseases that have plagued mankind for millennia, then we need to encourage innovation, investment and research — not stifle it.
Simply stated, drug importation may have a certain rhetorical appeal, but when the shiny stylistic glitter is wiped away, it becomes clear that the proposal is dangerous and potentially deadly for American patients. Paying a lower cost for so-called medications that aren’t medications or in some cases are poisonous, is not a cost savings.
Plus it will stifle and hamstring future innovation and development of new medications. None of that is a good idea, and none of that will help American’s stay healthy or end up reducing healthcare costs.
Drug importation is a bad and risky idea. It keeps getting recycled and some pretend that it isn’t a completely discredited idea. It is time to stop recycling failed ideas that pose real risks to Americans. It is time to look to encourage innovation and research.
King Solomon was quoted in Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” As in King Solomon’s time, these days truth does not matter. As a result of hate-driven and ideologically distorted narratives, politicians like President Putin and his like-minded fellow despots do not allow themselves to be bothered or confused by facts. Accordingly, in the dark jungle of fake realities Russia the aggressor has been turned counterintuitively into the victim of Ukrainian belligerence. The old rules of fabricated evidence are back in play again.
Historically, wars have always been ruthlessly destructive affairs. Since their outcomes always having been either winning or losing, monarchs and political leaders more frequently than not have ended up as vulnerable, even lamentable players, in the murderous calculus of local, regional as well as global politics. In the main, such warrior politicians have not been subject to checks and balances. As self-appointed narcissistic guardians of the presumed national interests, they could have invoked emergency powers, and thus free themselves from man-made laws as well as moral constraints. Existing in this God-like penumbra of despotic powers they have unfailingly led their nations and the world into historic catastrophes.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the President of the Russian Federation by the grace of his subjects’ lack of political culture and common sense, has accomplished the time tested Russian feat of gradually downgrading his reign from a benevolent autocrat to a despotic bungler. While celebrating his “Special Military Operation” cum illegal military invasion of the sovereign state of Ukraine, his over two decades old antediluvian despotism has been writhing in its death pangs. Now, almost a hundred days after his failed war on Ukraine and counting, President Putin has already made himself a laughingstock across the globe. His abysmal performance during the May 9th celebrations displayed a slightly deranged person, who has gotten buried up to his neck in his self-generated mis-and-disinformation lies. Indeed, no politician worth his pound of integrity has any confidence in and respect for him. The events following February 24, 2022, have proven that President Putin is neither a smart political and military strategist, nor even a good tactician and soldier, but simply a below average gambler, an individual with no persona who oscillates from one vile extreme to the other without any reason, a man no sane person could fear as an enemy, and who deserves no serious consideration.
Putin’s Russia presents a far greater threat to the peace and stability of Europe and the rest of the world than even China or Iran. With his childish propaganda of Denazification, for which he cited among other fake evidences the Jewish and originally only Russian speaking President Volodymir Zelenskyy, President Putin’s dezinformacija campaign has been nothing but the ephemeral creation of his KGB-ideology poisoned sick mind. Thus, contrary to his intentions, his military offensive and his accompanying official Russian Nationality ideology have collapsed, preserving only a political abyss, which has begun swallowing up the Russian nation.
A fix point in this Putin-generated madness is the President of Ukraine, Volodymir Zelenskyy. His narrative has been straightforward and uncompromising. A “Putinic” peace would preserve the evolving status quo in its most dangerous form. Therefore, it is unacceptable. Russia must withdraw from all the territories it has occupied since 2014, including the Crimea. Thus, the dismemberment of Ukraine is out of the question. For the sake of its present and future security, Ukraine, like Finland and Sweden, must join the European Union and NATO. The burdens of reconstruction must be borne to the fullest by Russia that has illegally invaded his country. The heinous war crimes committed by the Russian military must be investigated by the international community and the guilty must be punished. In the ultimate reckoning with Russia’s crimes, all governments and all international organizations must work along the well-established principles of international law and all the relevant bilateral and multilateral agreements. Among those principles, two are the most important. The principle that occupying territory does not create sovereignty will help to restore order and stability throughout the European continent. The other major principle is that political opposition must always be peaceful and not aggressive.
Thus, in the present situation, the Ukrainian President is one of the few politicians who understands that Russia, with its ephemeral victories and paradoxical wars which will never end will only accomplish the complete destruction of itself. By chasing the mirage of a superpower and by threatening the entire European system, Putin’s Russia is signing its own death sentence into its unattainable ambitions. Prevented from realizing that the unrealistic expansion of Russia will definitely end in a strategic cul-de-sac and the continuation of each war will only mean the beginning of new preparations for a greater one, President Putin’s dream of a restoration of the Empire will perish because he cannot comprehend that civilized states must renounce in their relations with other states the exclusive use of violence. Otherwise, Russia’s cruel games of political insanity will isolate it from the rest of the world forever.
Sen Paul’s plan will balance the budget & reduce inflationary pressures while allowing government to focus on top priorities — like national security our our nation’s defense.
. . .
Washington, DC – June 2, 2022 — George Landrith, president of Frontiers of Freedom, released the following statement on U.S. Senator Rand Paul’s “Six Penny Plan”:
Senator Rand Paul has long been a champion of balancing the federal budget and protecting the American taxpayer. Senator Paul has a plan that will balance the budget in five years.
Interestingly, if Congress had voted for Senator Paul’s plan five year ago, we would not be suffering runaway inflation, economic downturns and slowdowns, or severe shortages and empty shelves at the store. And we’d be celebrating a balanced budget too!
If Senator Paul’s original plan had been accepted, no cuts would have been required. The budget could have been balanced simply by holding spending steady for five years. After lost time through inaction, small cuts of 1 penny for every dollars spent were required. Now because of even more inaction and more out of control spending, the plan would require spending cuts of 6 pennies for every dollars spent.
If we wait even longer to take action, we will suffer more inflation, larger and larger deficits and more economic instability. And then it will take much larger cuts to get things back on track. So now is the time to act before the problem becomes so large that it cannot practically be fixed.
Senator Paul’s proposal doesn’t touch Social Security, but it reduces federal spending by $16 trillion over 10 years compared to the baseline. That means Social Security will be more secure. It also means that the the federal government will be able focus on its top priorities — which must always include national security and defense.
One of the risks we have seen from runaway spending is that properly funding our defense and national security needs is increasingly difficult. To be blunt, when our budget is spiraling out of control, our ability to provide a robust defense is hampered. And our adversaries can use our financial troubles to weaken us. So Senator Paul’s proposal to get us back to a balanced budget will ultimately make America stronger and safer and better able to defend itself.
Let’s hope that enough Senators see the merits of getting our federal budget under control so that in future years, the economy can grow, and taxpayers are not saddled with a staggering and stifling debt load and the federal government can focus on its most fundamental and important priorities.
. . .
More details about Sen. Rand Paul’s Six Penny Plan can be found <HERE>.
By • American Liberty
What do we think about America in these troubling times? One of my political mentors taught me to look at her as “a great country, filled with good people who sometimes do amazing things.”
It’s an apt description, even now. It’s one of the first things I thought of when I heard how an off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent grabbed a borrowed shotgun and rushed to Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas to help rescue people in need as soon as he heard there was trouble.
“With (the) assistance of two officers, who provided cover, and another two who escorted the terrified students from the school,” wrote Jessica Schladebeck for the New York Daily News, Jacob Albarado “helped evacuate dozens of kids, including his daughter, Jayda. The pair shared a quick hug upon their reunion” before going on to help others get to safety.
That’s what I want to think about. Not the 19 dead children and the two teachers and the other casualties that occurred that day. For, as much as America’s greatness still resides within us, manifesting itself when it is most needed, we must likewise acknowledge there are bad people among us who sometimes do evil things.
Mankind, for lack of a better word, is imperfect. It’s not clear why that’s so difficult for people to accept. Everyone knows what James Madison wrote in The Federalist papers about there being no need for government “If men were angels.” What many people don’t recall is what followed.
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
As Madison would no doubt agree, one of those “auxiliary precautions” is the constitutional guarantee that “the people’s right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” which, even though the United States Supreme Court recently affirmed that right applies to individuals, is once again under attack in the aftermath of the tragedy in Uvalde.
The liberal response is predictable. Without knowing much, they are calling for tougher gun control laws including the prohibition on the sale and possession of certain types of firearms. They’re not interested in knowing why the security protocols press reports have said were in place failed or even what they were and why the police waited so long after the shooter was in the school before they moved in. Instead, they started playing politics, even before the families of the victims had time to bury their dead. Democrat Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, Texas’s pseudo-Latinx wannabe governor, used the shooting as an opportunity to engage in a face-to-face confrontation with the state’s actual governor, Republican Greg Abbott as he and members of law enforcement were busy explaining what had happened.
O’Rourke may have thought he was “speaking truth to power.” What he really did was show just how little class he has. He’ll probably lose in November by a large margin and all I can say to that is “Good riddance.” But he wasn’t the only liberal to go after guns once again.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) blocked a GOP effort Wednesday to codify the Federal School Safety Clearinghouse, a database of information available at SchoolSafety.gov started during the Trump administration, into law. “Hardening schools would’ve done nothing to prevent this shooting. In fact, there were guards and police officers already at the school yesterday when the shooter showed up,” Schumer said. “More guns won’t protect our children.”
Schumer’s lack of knowledge about school safety and firearms only compounds his ignorance regarding human nature. The United States has spent billions since 9/11 to harden airports and federal buildings and other facilities to protect against the threat of terrorism. If that works, and the amount of money spent doing it suggests people believe it will then logically, additional efforts to harden schools will protect children.
If the issue is finding the root cause, then why aren’t the people demanding “something, anything be done” concerned with why no one stopped the bullying the shooter underwent as a child because he lisped and stuttered? Or how government policies toward the poor and underclass may have exacerbated the difficulties he faced at home growing up? Or how the educational system failed to respond in a meaningful, effective way to what appears to have been the shooter’s obvious mental deterioration? Or how the lockdowns imposed because of COVID that closed the schools may have contributed to it all.
There are lots of questions that should be asked in addition to “How did he get a gun?” It’s too bad there aren’t more people interested in asking them. What we’re getting instead is a long-winded, fruitless crusade against firearms once again launched by people who don’t understand guns and gun culture that won’t change anything.
Instead of looking to the prohibitions for the answers, we should look to the people who own guns and understand their legitimate place in society for the answers. As unsettling as the incident in Uvalde is, the city of Chicago – which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country – is an open-air shooting gallery and home to an ongoing mass shooting that differs from what happened in Texas primarily because the victims are spread out over time and the police, who can’t count on the backing of the politicians who run the city don’t seem to have the resolve to do anything about it.
More than anything else, we need to take a look at how local and state first responders are trained to handle situations like the one at Robb Elementary. Officials in Texas admitted Friday they waited too long before storming the school, a delay that may have made the tragedy worse.
According to The New York Times’ Eileen Sullivan and J. David Goodman, “When specially equipped federal immigration agents arrived at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, the local police at the scene would not allow them to go after the gunman who had opened fire on students inside the school, according to two officials briefed on the situation.” That, in a word, is inexcusable.
America is not, as even some defenders of the gun culture argue, a sick nation. It is a great nation, as my mentor said, full of people who have the courage to face the problem of gun violence head-on rationally, showing appropriate respect for due process, the Second Amendment, and other things that matter. They should be given the chance to do so.
By • Townhall
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Justice in a free country is an important concept. Around the globe, there are countries that still carry-on atrocities to this day – China being one of them with Uyghur concentration camps – and there is no punishment brought down on the ones responsible. In America, when we think about justice, we think about an individual who commits a crime and is later arrested by the authorities. Eventually, they go to court and face punishment from a judge. However, those times are vanishing in front of our eyes.
Over the last four to five years, we have increasingly heard the word “justice” bounced around ad nauseum. Those looking to implement progressive policies and change our government system must find oppression, injustice, brutality, and other forms of maltreatment that do not exist and then create outrage about them.
Implementing change requires radical progressives in positions to enforce leftist policies down to the local school board. After decades of positioning, we are starting to see the fruits of the left’s labor.
Progressives are running schools, universities, media, and government agencies. The left is now remaking the criminal enforcement system. We are starting to see less true justice for victims in the criminal realm and more for political/cultural change. As this begins to happen, there will be limited law and order.
Left-wing activists, lawyers, and judges are redefining the word justice. We hear more about environmental, reproductive, racial, economic, procedural, retributive, distributive, and general social justice. As more far-left district attorneys are elected, less justice is handed down to criminals on behalf of the victim via case dismissals. One of the most glaring examples is in Los Angeles, California.
Current Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon is a prime example of someone who is rewriting traditional justice for progressive policies. Gascon served as the district attorney for the city of San Francisco from 2011 – 2019 before unseating Los Angeles incumbent Jackie Lacey in 2020. Gascon is known for liberal, progressive policies that wrecked the city of San Francisco. Now, we see Gascon’s same policies implemented in the City of Angels, providing more justice to the criminals than victims in a true progressive fashion.
Gascon is not worried about victims in his mission to “modernize” the criminal justice system as the murder rate has increased 20%. The media is covering for him while murders have significantly increased by reporting that crime has declined overall – this is media covering for a fellow leftist. It seems odd that while the news is reporting “an overall decrease in crime,” citizens are attempting to recall Gascon for his inept, out-of-touch idea of criminal justice.
Murder does not rise, while all other crimes decrease. The cause for a drop in crimes is easy to understand. Police officers are responding to fewer crimes because fewer victims are calling, and there is less proactive policing, which is justice for progressives.
Progressive policies do not bring justice- they bring chaos. The word justice is being abused and intended to make others believe that those wrecking the oil industry, burning down cities, blocking highways, redistributing your hard-earned money, and changing the system to a progressive wasteland are in a fight for noble causes. There is nothing virtuous that comes from leftist policies.
As conservatives, we must be aware of the word games and doublespeak of the left. Leftists have been influential with their messaging for decades, and conservatives have been caught flatfooted. Remember, there is no justice in leftism – only policies that promote a progressive agenda.
America is a land where there should be justice for all. However, it is also a place of opportunity. The idea that people are oppressed is false. Everyone has a choice in this country. They can choose to find their path and be successful, or they can choose to blame others for their plights in life and do nothing.
Justice should be for the victims of a crime, not made-up progressive issues.
The former GOP majority leader shows how the sausage is made.
By • American Spectator
It’s always a temptation when reviewing political books to cite the observation attributed to Bismarck that “Laws are like sausages. It’s best not to see them being made.” It’s so tempting it’s become a cliché. Yet just because it’s trite doesn’t make it true.
In election after election, we’ve seen candidates for high office make promises we presume they intend to keep. Then they go off to Washington, ready to do the right thing, only to find themselves eventually distracted by the perks that come with the job, as we’ve seen time and again on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers and on the nightly news.
One who did manage to stay within the boundaries he set for himself was former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas). First elected in 1984, he quickly became the kind of conservative leader many Republicans had long prayed would come upon the scene.
For many, their first encounter with him came while he was pushing a then-revolutionary idea that would allow the federal government to close unneeded military bases over the opposition of those who represented the districts in which they were located. The Armey Base Closing Bill, which he managed to get passed despite not being a member of the House Armed Services Committee, has been held up ever since as an example that legislators looking to make their mark as serious people would do well to emulate.
It did not take long for Armey to be seen as the conservative standard-bearer on a host of issues related to economics and education. He’s still revered to this day by the nation’s millions of home-schooling families because he stopped an effort by congressional Democrats to regulate their activities. But he is best known for his leadership on economic issues — particularly against the tax increases that George H. W. Bush sought in violation of the “no new taxes” promise he made during the 1988 presidential election.
That, as most people know, proved ruinous to Bush’s hopes for a second term because it turned the Reagan wing of the party against him. White House insiders tried to mitigate the political damage by claiming it was a gambit by then-White House Chief of Staff John Sununu to produce an uptick in federal revenues by forcing the Democrats to sign on to a cut in the tax rate on capital gains. Other said later that it was tied to getting congressional support for the military operation that pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.
What wasn’t, and what no one has ever said until now when Armey does it, is that the tax hike was something long in the works, planned by key Bush aides whose green eyeshades were pulled down too far over their faces to see reality staring back at them.
According to Armey, he was told in 1989 during the period in which 101st Congress was organizing that House Budget Chairman Leon Panetta (D-Calif.) looked him in the eye and told him Bush’s OMB Director-designate “Dick Darman believes that if he can get President Bush a year beyond his ‘read my lips’ declaration, he can get him to agree to raise taxes in a budget deal.”
Leader is not gossipy or salacious, and he doesn’t use his prose to settle scores. That’s what makes Armey’s book so different from the traditional Washington memoir. He has kinder words for some Democrats than those who know him as a fierce partisan might expect. He’s also got some choice words for some of his fellow Republicans, who do not come off at all well. This includes the man who succeeded him as majority leader, Tom DeLay of Texas, who is widely viewed as the principal inside man in the aborted coup against House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Armey, who says to this day says he had no part in the coup, recounts how he was angrily confronted by his fellow Texan after being forced to apologize to the entire Republican Conference. DeLay, he writes, “rushed me, grabbed my coat, and screamed into my face. ‘You rotten SOB! I hate you! And I am going to ruin you, you miserable bastard!’”
There’s a lot for anyone to learn in Leader, whether you want to know how good policy becomes law, how bad economics make bad policy, or how the legislative process really works, told from the perspective of a man who not only participated in it but also led it for almost a decade. As the Republican House floor leader, he had the insider’s view. In his book he shares it, warts and all, candidly and seemingly without reservation, something that in the age of spin and social media happens all too infrequently. Unlike many of his former political colleagues, Armey didn’t write this book to make money. He wrote it to make a point worth making, which, frankly, is why Dick Armey ever does anything.
By • Daily Caller
The left loves to hate on those who speak truths they’d rather not hear. Elon Musk was once their darling until he came out for free speech. Extremists also hate Tucker Carlson, the popular news and opinion host at Fox News, because he has been particularly effective in pointing out the hypocrisy, inconsistency and outright insanity of the far left. They want his show cancelled and him silenced. They’ve even staged protests at Tucker’s home in hopes of intimidating his family. That is how the left works — notice the recent protests at the homes of Supreme Court justices.
Despite all the hate from the left, Tucker Carlson and the ideas he advocates had a very good night this past week in Ohio. One doesn’t have to agree with every opinion expressed by Tucker — he’s expressed literally thousands and thousands of opinions, so it would be normal to have some differences with even like-minded people. But no one can deny that Ohio’s primaries showed that Tucker is on to something big and that conservative, America-first ideas are popular.
Ohio is broadly seen as a bellwether because the state has historically been representative of the nation’s voting patterns in several ways. So what do the Ohio GOP primaries tell us? Twenty-two out of 22 candidates who represented a conservative, America-first political approach won in the primaries. Additionally, GOP voters outnumbered the opposition by 2 to 1 in the US Senate primary. Simply stated, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) approach batted a perfect one thousand and energized voters, proving that the MAGA agenda is far more supported than the Left is willing to admit.
Tucker was also the first major supporter of J.D. Vance’s Senate candidacy — a political newcomer who easily won the GOP primary. While Vance garnered other endorsements, including Trump’s, most came at the last minute, and Tucker’s early support helped build Vance’s support and credibility. Tucker’s endorsement of Vance not only hit back at the left but also dealt the more establishment, anti-MAGA Republicans in the state who had endorsed more moderate candidates a stinging defeat.
The left continues to contend that a conservative, America first economic and foreign policy doesn’t represent what most Americans think and that while Donald Trump may have been the president from 2017 to 2021, he only won because of the so-called Russian collusion. And as a result, he wasn’t that popular and his MAGA agenda was illegitimate. But Ohio’s GOP recent primary proves the lie of the left’s absurd propaganda.
While President Trump on occasion alienated voters with his brusk no-nonsense manner of speaking, his policies were actually widely supported. The economy was strong, wages were growing, America and its friends were safer and less threatened by totalitarianism and terrorism.
And while some voters may have assumed that the economic boom and safer international climate were just good fortune before the COVID pandemic struck, the last 15 months have provided a sharp contrast to the good times that the MAGA agenda brought. The evidence has been mounting that while Trump may have offended some, his policies benefitted everyone and made the country freer, more prosperous and more secure. Ohio’s primary results — with record turn out and a strong and consistent showing for MAGA oriented candidates — prove that Americans have woken up to the destructive mischief caused by the left.
Virtually every night, Tucker Carlson is exposing the left and showing that they seem more interested in expanding their power and prestige than in helping make America stronger, freer and more prosperous. So we should expect the attacks on MAGA candidates and Tucker to become ever more shrill and intolerant. The extremists on the left are losing the political debate — being beaten on the airwaves and at the ballot box.
These are very difficult times for the extreme left. Tucker Carlson will continue to draw their ire as one of the most articulate proponents of America First principles. Anyone who effectively advocates for American values can expect to be the target of increasingly shrill attacks and demands that these “dangerous people” with “dangerous ideas” must be silenced.
The extreme left sees time-tested truths and basic facts as dangerous to their political aims. And since they cannot win the debate, they hope to silence their opponents. If you disagree with Tucker or with an America First agenda, that’s your right. But it isn’t your right to silence those with whom you disagree.
Those who seek to silence others are admitting the inferiority of their own ideas and their ability to advocate for them. Those the left seeks to silence are typically the most effective and fact-based advocates of conservative principles. So watch who the extremists on the left attack most vociferously and seek to silence, and you will know who is advocating most effectively for making and keeping America strong, prosperous and free. I suspect that Tucker will continue to be one of those at the top of their list.
By • American Liberty
Bureau whistleblowers are claiming that the FBI is using the January 6 riot at the Capitol as a pretext to perform a political purge of agents. This purge targets FBI agents and other employees who simply exercised their constitutionally protected rights and attended the January 6 rally — and committed no crimes.
“The employees did not enter the United States Capitol and have not been charged with any crime” but are allegedly still being fired, said the House Judiciary GOP in a Twitter post on Friday, citing unnamed whistleblowers at the Bureau.
In response to a letter from Republican lawmakers to the FBI Director Christopher Wray — signed by House Judiciary Ranking Member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — the congressmen confirmed reports that the Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s (DOJIG) office is considering investigating whether the FBI revoked the security clearances of agents who simply attended the rally last year.
As most who have worked in federal law enforcement or intelligence know, revoking security clearances makes it impossible to do the job. As the letter notes, “these actions [revoking clearances] mean the FBI has suspended these employees indefinitely.”
On Thursday Fox News noted that:
…the FBI revoked their clearances, citing “Adjudicative Guideline A – Allegiance to the United States. This move appears to follow a Democratic tactic in conflating peaceful protesters on Jan. 6 with those who actively stormed the Capitol in an apparent attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote for President Biden.
Fox News also reported that the DOJIG Michael Horowitz told House Judiciary Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) in a reply letter that his office “will ask the FBI to provide the bases for the security clearance and personnel actions taken against the employees you reference in your letter.”
The IG added: “In making such an assessment, we will also consider information about other employees who believe the FBI has taken administrative actions against them for engaging in protected activities on January 6, 2021.”
While the Hatch Act prohibits FBI and other government employees from engaging in partisan political campaigns or political management, The Epoch Times reported that Friday’s letter noted that despite the Hatch Act:
FBI employees do not give up their rights to engage in political speech activity. We have serious concerns that the FBI appears to be retaliating against employees for engaging in political speech disfavored by FBI leadership.
"Gutfeld!" panelist Tyrus envisions a musical take on Homeland information czar and TikTok variety act Nina Jankowicz — like "singing telegrams when you're canceled for a tweet."
By • Just the News
ove or loathe President Donald Trump, but the 45th commander in chief gave comics all the material they needed.
Now, the Biden administration is serving up a potential bounty of low-hanging new satirical fruit, but so far most comedians aren’t indulging.
Biden’s proposed Disinformation Governance Board, an off-shoot of the Homeland Security Department, promises to root out “lies” peddled by Russia, Iran and other global forces. Conservatives pounced on the group’s formation, dubbing it a spiritual cousin to George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth from his dystopian classic, “1984.”
Biden’s group will be led by Nina Jankowicz, a so-called disinformation guru who previously labeled the Hunter Biden laptop story Fake News and sang the praises of Christopher Steele, author of the widely debunked Steele Dossier.
That plus her history of posting goofy TikTok videos of her singing in a Mary Poppins-style falsetto about “misinformation” offer up comic gold.
At least on paper, that is. We’ve yet to see late night TV or “Saturday Night Live” line up to explore the possibilities. Stephen Colbert is laser-focused on the Roe v. Wade debate flowing from the Supreme Court leak earlier this month.
Unwoke comedy insurgents, however, are another story. Paul Crosetti, executive producer of the right-leaning satire series “That Show Tonight,” says his show already has the topics in its sights.
Pulling no punches, a recent “That Show Tonight” parody featured the new board’s “strategist,” Vilhelm Kannepertz, speaking in a Nazi-like accent.
“The no-brainer is comparing the department to past ‘ministries of truth’ regimes,” Crosetti says. “You can see how Jankowicz could easily become a caricature of herself, especially if she spends any amount of time in the public view.”
He doesn’t expect much comedy competition, at least for now, in poking fun at either Jankowicz or the board in general.
“If recent history serves as a guide, mainstream network shows, whether ‘SNL’ or the late-night shows, will steer clear,” he says of those left-leaning outlets.
Comedian Andrew Heaton agrees that Colbert and co. won’t be addressing the board or its antic maitresse anytime soon.
“I’m the sort of person to make fun of this thing, and this is the first I’ve heard of it — I doubt it’s widely known, and probably a secondary issue to Ukraine, Roe v Wade, and of course the eternal ‘the other party is truly evil’ slapfight,” says Heaton, host of podcasts “The Political Orphanage” and “Losers, Pretenders & Scoundrels.”
Political satirist Lou Perez thinks comedians will come around to both the board and Jankowicz.
“A Disinformation Governance Board that openly threatens civil liberties should be a nonpartisan field day for joke slinging,” says Perez, author of the upcoming book, “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy.”
“The question is, which comedians?” asks Perez, who previously satirized both sides of the political aisle via We the Internet TV. “For years, many comedians on the left were afraid to make jokes that could hurt their side. Trump was an existential threat after all … I think this is an opportunity for them to step up and rightfully mock our current president and his administration.”
As for Jankowicz, her social media warblings make her perfect for a Broadway musical parody. “Musical versions of George Orwell’s 1984 have been done already,” he says. “But I imagine Jankowicz’s 2022 would be a lot brighter than ’84. More pop and TikTok, you know. Call Jankowicz ‘Miss Information’ or something cute like that.”
Tyrus, the wrestler-turned-pundit from Fox News’ “Gutfeld!,” sees plenty of satirical fodder in the board and its leader — but fears party discipline may interfere with comic opportunity.
“Unfortunately, [comedians] let division and politics get in the way of a great joke or jokes,” he says. “Tragic.”
Like Perez, Tyrus envisions a musical take on Jankowicz, like “singing telegrams when you’re canceled for a tweet,” he suggests.
Nina Jankowicz says she’s “committed to protecting free speech.” LOL
By • The Washington Free Beacon
When we first heard Alejandro Mayorkas announce a Department of Homeland Security “Disinformation Governance Board,” we thought he was trolling. Then he said Nina Jankowicz, best known as TikTok’s “Mary Poppins of Disinformation,” would head it. LOL, as the kids say. Right out of the gate, Jankowicz trumpeted her “committment [sic] to protecting free speech.”
Apparently Mayorkas is serious, and the administration is rolling out Jankowicz, author of the new book “How to Be a Woman Online,” as a “renowned expert in the field of disinformation.” That’s true, though she’s more a practitioner of the craft than an expert in combating it. Jankowicz condemned the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop as a “Russian influence op” and fanned the bogus claim that the Steele dossier began as a “Republican opposition research project.” These are fine examples of Democrats, as Washington Free Beacon man of the year Matt Yglesias explained in a recent analysis, using the “disinformation” charge as a scapegoat for losing voters.
As for her commitment to unfettered speech, Jankowicz told her friends at National Public Radio last month that she “shudder[s]” to think about a scenario in which “free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms” and bemoaned so-called “awful but lawful content.” The solution? “Law enforcement and our legislatures,” she said, must “do more.”
Mayorkas, meanwhile, is busy tamping down the concerns of proles like us that the Nurse Ratched of disinformation will have any power. “The board does not have any operational authority or capability,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash. “What it will do is gather together best practices of addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries, from the cartels, and disseminate those practices to the operators that have been executing and addressing this threat for years.” Sounds like disinformation to us.
The administration dispenses Orwellian lies on a daily basis. We may be in a recession, but that’s just masking a broader recovery! That $3.5 trillion spending bill actually costs zero dollars! And, per Mayorkas jawboning on another topic on Sunday, the administration has done a fine job managing a ballooning crisis on the southern border.
This is Joe Biden’s nut house. We’re just living in it.
