In 1949, this definition of "terrorism" could be found on page 1346 of
Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of the English Language.

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1970, page 911.

Additional pages on similar subjects:

The incident at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021
Attorney General Merrick Garland
Zero Tolerance
The Invasion of the Food Police
The War vs. Liberty and Freedom
Gun Control
Pork Barrel Politics
Carnivore & Echelon
Hate Crime Laws
The Proposed National ID Card

Note:  There is also a page about the January 6 incident at the US Capitol, located here

Trump Should Immediately Stop Federal Agencies From Hiding Documents By Needlessly Marking Them Classified.  According to Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, who introduced a bipartisan "Classification Reform for Transparency Act" last July, the U.S. government spends $18 billion every year classifying information.  "Over-classification," they argue, "undermines national security by limiting information sharing between federal agencies," as in the notorious intelligence failures before 9/11.  American taxpayers, we might add, fork over billions every year in order to help their government hide information from them.  Like so many now-encrusted practices in Washington, the classification monster is of dubious constitutional provenance, born of the metastasizing of the U.S. security apparatus during the Cold War.  Just as foreign military interventions denied taxpayers a genuine "peace dividend" after the fall of the USSR in 1991, the intelligence agencies created to oppose the Soviet threat, instead of disbanding after its disappearance, spread their tentacles ever wider.

The President Needs Less Power.  Decades ago, Congress unconstitutionally yielded its legislative power to federal agencies (the executive branch).  Congress passes enabling statutes that create the agencies that then formulate their own regulations over the economy and our lives.  The agencies are now the lawmakers.  That DHS spent its budget on immigrants while leaving insufficient amounts for American hurricane victims in 2024 is but one example.  Commentators could not agree on what money had been spent and on whom.  Only painstaking investigation might reveal the truth, while the other agencies continue to burn out of control.  It is hard to determine or agree upon even so basic an item as the total number of federal agencies that exist.  This bloat is compounded by the recent trend of presidents to operate the federal government by executive order instead of through the legislative process.  The unpopular electric vehicle mandates, with far-reaching consequences, constitute one such example.

May the Force be With Us.  The movement from an administrative state to the sort of republic the Founders envisioned, should be easier as a result of recent Supreme Court cases reining in an out-of-control unelected federal work force.  This week even the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in on the issue in Marin Audubon Society v. FAA, in which it held that the Council on Environmental Quality lacked any authority to prescribe the content of environmental impact statements, something it had been doing since 1978.  Think!  For over four decades this agency has been deciding when such statements are necessary (each of which cost thousands and thousands of dollars to prepare) and what they must contain while acting with no legal authority to do so.  With regard to all federal agency action, every project's organizers and their counsels have been complying without the Court's challenging by examining the National Environmental Policy Act to determine if the Council even had jurisdiction.  Had they done so, they would have easily discovered the Council had appropriated to itself powers it did not have.

The lie of DOJ independence.  The election of Donald Trump has set off panic in the Harris/Biden government.  Denizens of the FBI and DOJ, particularly upper-level apparatchiks, are reportedly seeking fast, pre-January 20, exits.  Why would powerful, selfless public servants, people whose only concern is for the rule of law and equal justice under the law, people who honor their oaths to honor and defend the Constitution and who live to protect Americans from actual criminals and real threats to national security, flee as from a pestilence at the looming second term of Trump?  Because a great many of them aren't selfless public servants.  Far too many are political thugs who have dishonored the traditions of their agencies, abandoned the Constitution, abused their power, and committed innumerable violations of law as they willingly, gleefully pursued the political enemies of Democrats/socialists/communists (D/s/cs) and the Deep State.

FBI raids home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan.  The FBI on Wednesday morning raided the New York City apartment of Shayne Coplan, the founder and CEO of Polymarket, Axios has learned from multiple sources. [...] Polymarket is one of the most active prediction betting markets, gaining mainstream attention during the recent presidential election. [...] "This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election," a Polymarket spokesperson tells Axios. "Polymarket is a fully transparent prediction market that helps everyday people better understand the events that matter most to them, including elections."

FBI seizes Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's phone and computer after he predicted Trump win.  The FBI has seized the CEO of Polymarket's phone and electronics after the election-betting platform successfully forecast Donald Trump's win.  Shayne Coplan, 26, was targeted at his Soho home during a dawn raid on Wednesday, sources told the New York Post.  The insider blasted the seizure as 'grand political theater at its worst'.  'They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things.  Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons,' the source said.  Coplan was reportedly not arrested or given a reason for the raid, but it is thought to be linked to his accurate predictions which outsmarted traditional polls.

The Editor says...
Is outsmarting traditional polls a crime?  Is skepticism a crime?  Is it a crime to distrust a liar?

Trump's 10-Part Plan to Dismantle the Deep State.  President-elect Donald Trump announced his plans to completely dismantle the Deep State and return the power to the American people.  Trump wasted no time between defeating failed Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris and getting to work on fulfilling his promises before he called for a crackdown on the district of corruption.  In arguably one of the most critical first announcements Trump has made as president-elect, he vowed to immediately reissue the 2020 executive order to restore the president's authority to remove "rogue bureaucrats aggressively."  Second, Trump said he would fire all of the corrupt individuals in the country's national security and intelligence organization so that bureaucrats would no longer be able to target and persecute conservatives and Christians.  "The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled," Trump declared.  Third, the incoming 47th president said he would reform FISA courts, and fourth, to expose the abuses of power done so by the left.

Unsolicited Advice for the Left.  [Scroll down]  To the people who authorized the raid on P'Nut the Squirrel:  P'Nut did not die in vain!  I'm telling you that the Big Government drones who assassinated poor P'Nut only made the Resistance grow stronger.  If they could do it to a defenseless woodland creature, or a successful Manhattan billionaire, for that matter, they could do it to you.  The electorate took note and voted accordingly.

Judge Throws The Book At 69-Year-Old Tina Peters For Minor Infraction Because She Believes The 2020 Election Was Stolen.  Tina Peters served as the elected county clerk for Mesa County, Colorado, where she oversaw that county's elections.  She ardently believes President Donald Trump was the victim of election theft in 2020.  In an effort to discover how this could have happened, Peters teamed up with individuals associated with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, also a believer that Trump had the election stolen from him.  Tina Peters' opponents falsely alleged she illegally colluded with Lindell's associate, Conan Hayes, to steal and misuse the ID badge of a Mesa County employee named Gerald Wood to access the county's election system and to save a copy of the hard drive before a new system was installed.  Indeed, Democrat Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Democrat Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser colluded to bring a 10-count indictment against Peters.  Griswold and Weiser are two highly partisan Democrat activists who led the failed effort to throw Trump off the Colorado ballot, leading to a ruling that got reversed 9-0 by the Supreme Court.  The two seized the opportunity to up their own political profiles by deploying Robert Shapiro, first attorney general for Special Prosecutions, and Janet Drake, a senior assistant attorney general in the Special Prosecutions Unit, which reports directly to the Colorado attorney general, to spearhead the effort to overcharge and railroad Peters.

Escape from Psychopathocracy.  In my state of New York last week, the DEC authorities sent a swat team to seize a man and woman's pet squirrel and raccoon and then killed the animals.  Why?  Because they could.  How is that different from the DOJ swatting and seizing a grandmother for walking through the US capitol building and then stuffing her in prison for the rest of her natural life on misdemeanor charges?  It's not different.  They are both demonstrations of deliberate cruelty — and that's why the squirrel story resonated so widely around the country.  You know exactly what it says:  we can take whatever is dear to you... your pets... your livelihood... your freedom... your life.

Win It For Peanut and Fred.  Some stories take on a life of their own, and Peanut the Squirrel's and Fred the Raccoon's certainly did that. [...] [W]e all understand that the government raiding a home to murder a squirrel is WRONG in so many ways.  The event is the grain of sand around which the pearl of understanding grows.  People get this story:  a Karen who was jealous that a squirrel had more Instagram followers than she calls the authorities, the authorities use a technicality to raid an animal shelter/home (300 rescue animals are housed on the farm) funded by donations driven by Peanut the Squirrel videos, four judges and countless bureaucrats mobilize to turn a home upside down to kidnap the squirrel, and then they kill it.  That's government abuse in a nutshell, as it were. [...] Peanut, for instance, lost his mom to a car that ran her over.  He was rescued as a baby and raised by this family.  He brought joy to them and to millions.  He wasn't hurting anybody.  He didn't have and never would get rabies.  Yet the government officials, prompted by a vile, jealous woman, killed him.  Why?  Because they could.  They didn't care that no actual good would be done by their actions.  They had a rule on their side, and used it to do real harm.

Biden-Harris DOJ Weaponizes Hundred-Year-Old Anti-KKK Law Against Conservatives.  A law originally intended to protect black voters in the late 19th century is now a "powerful weapon" for the Biden administration to target its political opponents, one legal expert told the Caller.  The law is often wielded by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) to target pro-lifers protesting abortion clinics, the Daily Caller first reported.  Last year, the Conspiracy Against Rights charge was levied against Douglass Mackey for a 2016 social media post and former President Donald Trump over January 6.  "I was not aware of the Biden-Harris DOJ's abuse of this harsh conspiracy against rights statute in these other contexts, but I am not surprised," Stephen Crampton, Senior Counsel with the Thomas More Society, told the Caller in a statement.

Two Brave IRS Whistleblowers Reveal How Their Lives Changed After Exposing 2020 Election Interference.  Catherine Herridge is one of the only fair former mainstream media journalists that exist today.  The recently fired host from CBS News sat down with two IRS whistleblowers to discuss how the government agency used its power to influence the outcome of the 2020 election and how the whistleblowers are being punished for standing up to what many would call a government crime syndicate.  The interview with Herridge, which first appeared on "X" and was re-tweeted by "X" owner Elon Musk, reveals documents proving how the IRS targets conservatives and helps to hide evidence for Democrats.  In the first clip, Herridge shows a letter from the IRS thanking agents for their "commitment to the mission which culminated in a great conviction" after Hunter Biden's guilty plea. "What you're saying is that within the IRS, there's disparate treatment of American taxpayers?" Herridge asked two brave IRS whistleblowers seated in front of her during a recorded interview.

King Biden and Queen Harris Overrule Supreme Court on Student Debt Forgiveness.  Please recall that when Harris was asked what she would have done differently than Biden, she could not come up with a single thing.  She supports Biden's energy policy to ban gasoline engines, Biden's immigration policy, the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare for All, and student loan forgiveness.  She lied about supporting fracking, backed off that, and now the lie is back on again.

Pennsylvania GOP Committeewoman Taken Away in Handcuffs For Encouraging People to Stay in Line and Vote.  Pennsylvania GOP Committeewoman and RNC delegate Val Biancaniello was taken away in handcuffs for telling voters at a polling place in Delaware County to stay in line and vote.  It is unclear if Biancaniello was booked and charged.  According to Val Biancaniello, the Democrats were discouraging voters from in-person voting on Monday in Delaware County so she encouraged voters to stay in line.  "I was just taken away in handcuffs at the Delaware County, Pennsylvania Government Center for encouraging people to stay in line and vote," Val Biancaniello said.

Watchdog Says Admin Broke Law With 'Entirely Political' Email To Medicare Recipients.  A watchdog group on Friday issued a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, saying an "entirely political" email from the Biden-Harris Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to Medicare recipients should be investigated as a Hatch Act violation.  The complaint cites a report from The Daily Wire about a taxpayer-funded email blast that was sent in September from HHS and praised Vice President Kamala Harris.  The email went to everyone signed up to receive updates on the government's Medicare program, which is used by 66 million people.  It featured a letter from President Joe Biden highlighting the administration's "historic reforms" to the program, attributing the benefits to the work of Harris, the Democratic nominee for President.

Our Third-World Future.  The attempt, earlier this year, by activists in several states to strike Donald Trump from the ballot on the grounds that he was an insurrectionist — despite his never being tried for insurrection in criminal court — is a close parallel to what South Africa's ruling party tried to do to Jacob Zuma's party.  Both of these failed attempts at ballot removal were legally groundless, and they got attempted at all only because of strong emotions about a particular person.  Unfortunately, the Democrat party has gotten much farther in its criminal prosecutions of the former president.  If one is looking for examples of the misrule of law, then Trump's conviction on 34 counts in the New York hush money trial can't be surpassed.

Western governments despise their own citizens.  Thank God our founders were much less tolerant than we are or the past 248 years would have been much different for everyone on earth.  They refused to put up with what they considered an excessive tax on tea, and taxation without representation in general.  We are yet putting up with the forced genital mutilation of our children, the denial of objective truths, the attack on Christianity and tradition, the massive influx of illegal aliens who are "granted" more rights than citizens are, and the attempted incarceration and assassinations of our current government's political enemies.  Oh, and we also have taxation without representation, as most citizens are vehemently opposed to the aforementioned agenda and "policies."  As conservatives, we have no logical alternative but to accept that our own governments detest us.  Like many other truths, this is not an easy pill to swallow.  But it is the truth, and it is therefore necessary that we do so.

It's the Great Reversal, Not the Great Reset.  Everyone senses that the open border policy of the Biden-Harris administration, best described by the U.N. term "replacement migration," has been driven by a kind of unprecedented anti-American wickedness directed at destabilizing the United States through overwhelming our health and education welfare system and bringing on potentially massive election irregularity from a spike in illegal immigrant voting.  On top of that, we have become the number one country in the world in human and child trafficking, criminal gang activity, and seeding our territory for insurrection and direct terrorist attacks — the latter likely to happen leading up to election day or shortly after that.  Then we have the backdrop, accomplished just a few months ago, that gave a veneer of legitimacy to what was, in fact, a coup of Kamala Harris removing and replacing Joe Biden without a single vote — primary or otherwise — being cast.  Banana Republic 2.0.

It's the Great Reversal, Not the Great Reset.  Not only have we experienced unprecedented unconstitutional abuse of government power exercised in response to COVID-19, 2020 election irregularities, and January 6, which has left our country in a state that has more in common with a banana republic than the constitutional republic that has defined us previously for some 230 years.  Recent developments suggest that this could be a prelude to worse to come.

The Three Layers of Culpability.  [Scroll down]  [R]emember that the signal weakness of Julius Caesar was pardoning his enemies.  Since Mr. Trump is best known as a deal-maker, I believe he will seek to make a deal with the blob.  The deal will be for them to cooperate in the prosecution of certain key figures in exchange for not demolishing their agencies altogether.  Some of these people — Garland, Mayorkas, Fauci, Brennan, and Wray, for examples — really do need to do some 'splainin' in front of juries.  That may be sufficient to clarify for history some of the damage the Woke insanity did to our country.  We can't pretend that nothing happened.

Our Current Government Is No Longer Constitutional.  In Washington Goes to War, David Brinkley details how the DC bureaucracy exploded during the war, aided in no small part by FDR's New Deal.  Today, notwithstanding that the Constitution makes the federal government a republic and, in Article IV Section 4, guarantees that each of the 50 states is a republic, in all 51 jurisdictions, the republican form has been eclipsed by the administrative bureaucracy that dominates the federal and state governments.  These administrative bureaucracies are, in effect, a fourth branch of the government in all 51 jurisdictions.  These fourth branches are wholly unelected, hence nullifying self-government.  These fourth branches enact more laws than their corresponding legislative branches and exercise their own powers of prosecution, adjudication, and sentencing.  Because the personnel of these fourth branches are appointed by the corresponding executive branches and their superintendent deep states, these fourth branch personnel exhibit a distinct cyborg persona, which renders them adverse to the human citizens of the states.

About whom is Trump speaking when he references the enemy from within?  The media is having a collective cow over the fact that President Trump said he worries about the "enemies from within" who will pay a price for what they've done to this great nation. [...] Here is a sample of people who Trump refers to as the enemies from within:
  ◦   People who say they want to remake (destroy) America. [...]
  ◦   Antony Blinken, 51 intelligence officials, and the DOJ staff who were willing to lie to intentionally hide the Biden family corruption from the American people.  They clearly didn't care about a free and fair election.
  ◦   Politicians who used IRS bureaucrats to target and silence political opponents, and all the people at the DOJ who didn't care about the abuse of power.
  ◦   All the bureaucrats at the DOJ who were willing to lie to the FISA court so they could illegally spy on their political opponents, and all the bureaucrats who stayed silent on this pure corruption.

Difficult Times Lie Ahead.  2020 was a year of a Presidential election and the powers that strove to regain control of America's political system kept up sustained attacks using the "Covid Crisis" as a weapon.  The reality is that many actions were taken illegitimately.  I remember early on in the "crisis" when orders were being issued almost daily about masks, social distancing, and lockdowns that I kept asking myself and others "Where is this power coming from?".  The truth is that sweeping seizures of power were simply seized.  It was not authorized, just claimed and asserted.  Few people dared to just say NO and those that did suffered consequences.  The deliberate heightening of our fear and desperation was a psychological method to justify authoritarian control.  The "crisis mentality" provided the lever.  We were completely failed by our leaders, our journalists, the judiciary, our politicians, and many others.

The New Patriots.  With the federal government having passed over 88,000 laws and rules just between 1995 and 2016, today, it's almost impossible for the average American to get through a single day, never mind a single year or life, without breaking the law.  In his book Three Felonies A Day:  How the Feds Target the Innocent, civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate suggests that Americans commit three federal felonies daily without even knowing it.  And that doesn't include the countless state and local laws or other authoritarian fictions that tyrants create.  From a different perspective, consider this:  In 1880, 30,000 prisoners were jailed in the United States out of a population of 50 million, for an incarceration rate of .06%.  Today, there are 1.6 million prisoners in a population of 350 million, for an incarceration rate of .45% — and if one counts the additional 3.4 million others in the system via probation and parole, which didn't exist in 1880 — you get a justice system control rate of 1.45%.  Are Americans somehow 25 times more criminalized today than they were 140 years ago, or are there simply more crimes for which they can be convicted?  As any conscious person knows, it's the latter.

The Government Is Almost Certainly Hiding Hurricane Helene Deaths.  [It has been] nearly three weeks.  The death toll has remained relatively steady, with a few people added periodically, which is understandable as bodies are recovered.  But after 19 days no one can say how many people are missing.  This is very odd. [...] With perhaps over 10,000 missing people — We the People do not know the real number.  We fear there is zero chance the death toll is truly so relatively low.  We have seen the pictures.  We know tens of thousands of people did not or could not evacuate.  We know that search and rescue took far too long to reach people.  And we know lots of remote areas were totally wiped out, under 15 feet or more of water.

Correcting Many Usurpations.  The government had it good for a long time.  As long as the people weren't put out, either by an economic collapse, invasion or the fake pandemic, they didn't much mind being ruled by an elitist conglomerate.  All the elitists had to do was stay in their lane, but the idea of control drove them mad and into the arms of the communists who had been waiting for a century to practice their black magic on the population.  So, we have the combination of capitalistic exploitation and communism to cover it up, the worst of both worlds.  This is a critical time, not just for politics, economics, culture and immigration, it's also a critical time for the military.  This is how the world works in a nation solely focused on fueling the coffers of the richest people in the world, who have no particular interest in the American ideal other than to divert as much of the treasury as possible into their own pockets.

The U.S. government [is] now effectively a criminal organization.  [Scroll down]  It is, however, nonetheless true.  Government as mafia.  Turns out, Uncle Sam is a capo, head of an unimaginably vast criminal racket.  Criminal racket definition:  an act of organized crime where one or multiple people or entities attempt to earn recurring gains illegally through a business or businesses.  Big Pharma come to mind?  It is the largest donor to Congress (both parties).  And what is the relationship of the Democrat party to Big Media?  Unions? [...] Think of 'Fast & Furious,' a criminal operation if there ever was one.  Brought to you — and others — by the Obama administration.  Or of the Steele dossier, or 51 top intelligence officials swearing that Hunter's laptop was a Russian PSYOP, or Biden's quid pro quo with Ukraine regarding a certain prosecutor looking into ... malfeasance on the part of the Bidens.  And then, of course, there is election interference.

Our Out-of-Control Federal Law Enforcement Agencies.  In March of this year, Bryan Malinowski, the executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, was killed by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) during a pre-dawn raid of his home.  It was an unwarranted and indefensible killing of a kind that should never, ever happen in a free country like the United States.  Because we have a media that no longer serves in its traditional role as a government watchdog, this incident was not widely reported.  Because too many members of Congress no longer take seriously their responsibility to protect the rights of those who elect them, the ATF has suffered no repercussions.

Could the Hurricane Response be Election Interference?  Election 2024 is weeks away.  Donald Trump still holds a 2-point lead nationally over Kamala Harris according to the latest Rasmussen Reports polling.  J.D. Vance wiped the debate floor with Tim Walz, despite election interference by Vance's pant-suited debate opponents from CBS News. [...] Apparently, there is no money for hurricane victims, especially those in the red portion of western North Carolina.  Would government resources be more readily available if the flooding was in the Research Triangle of far bluer Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill?  Or some other Democrat stronghold?  Rural western North Carolina is home to Hillary Clinton's "deplorables."  Why else would they be left to struggle and die with little government effort?  Is this the latest Democrat ploy at election interference, not stuffing the ballot box but changing the voter mix, increasing Democrat voters via illegal immigration, and decreasing Republican voters by letting them die? [...] What is the circumstantial evidence of hurricane election interference?  It is beyond incompetence, instead a deliberate effort to hamper rescue efforts.

Jack's 'October Surprise' is a Dud.  On Oct. 2, prosecutor Jack Smith filed a 165-page Motion against President Trump that contains nothing new.  The document will be revered by the MSNBC crowd, but those people already plan to vote for Kamala Harris.  The rest of America — MAGA and undecided voters — will see it as more evidence of a corrupt DOJ.  Before we delve into the details, consider this:
  •   By issuing the Motion in October, the DOJ violated its own rule, which precludes the release of information within 60 days of an election, if the information could affect the election.
  •   After waiting three years, this prosecutor released his allegations just 33 days before the election — in time to affect voter preferences, but just late enough to deprive Trump of time for a rebuttal.
  •   For several months, Trump had been subject to a gag order because Smith felt Trump's comments could influence potential witnesses.  Now, however, Smith has decided that it is O.K. to influence potential witnesses — and potential voters.
  •   According to Trump's attorneys, the Motion was issued before Jack fulfilled his obligations to provide all exculpatory evidence to Trump (Brady Rule).
I don't believe the American public will buy what Jack is selling.

The Editor says...
It doesn't matter if the public agrees with the allegations or the methods used by Mr. Smith.  He doesn't care if his accusations are thrown out of court eventually.  His only objective appears to be the obstruction of Trump's success in the November election.

Is The Biden/Harris Regime Sending Blackhawks To Sabotage Relief Efforts In NC?  The people running this country are criminals guilty of crimes against humanity.  They know these areas hardest hit are pro-Trump so they want them to sit in the dark and suffer so they can't get out to vote.  [Video clip]

FAA and the Biden administration proves it is out to destroy SpaceX.  In the past week the FAA proved unequivocally that it is abusing its regulatory powers for political reasons, imposing much harsher regulatory restrictions on SpaceX while allowing other companies much more free rein.  That reality became most evident first with the FAA response to the serious failure of one of the strap-on solid-fueled boosters during the second test launch of ULA's Vulcan rocket on October 4, 2024.  During that launch something went seriously wrong with that booster 38 seconds after launch, involving an explosion and what appeared to be ejection of that booster's nozzle.  Though the launch succeeded in placing its payload into the correct orbit, it required the rocket's main engines to compensate aggressively.  Despite this, the FAA decided no investigation by it was necessary. [...] Instead the FAA decided anything SpaceX launches that doesn't work perfectly poses a serious public safety threat, no matter where or how it happens, and thus has repeatedly grounded SpaceX launches.

Devils Prey On Angels.  The government, especially the federal government, is a bully.  Their bluff and bluster is an illusion that only works on the peaceful and law-abiding, who are inclined to do the reasonable thing and would do so in the absence of any government at all. [...] That is, until they witness for themselves the hostility of their own government, the heartlessness of it, the outright contempt their paid servants exhibit.  It gets worse as they watch, stunned, shamed by their actions.  [T]hey see their fellow citizens martyred in the most horrific ways, stranded on rooftops, children wandering aimless crying out for missing parents, with all rescue flights grounded, as if to starve and dehydrate them out of existence.  Rumors suggest the government wants them dead, to confiscate the land for lithium that abounds there and pure crystal; things needed for battery and chip manufacturing; things that help satisfy their zero-emission narratives required to enslave the people in a power-starved future.  Are they really that evil, their neighbors, their teachers, their fellow citizens?  The answer is in Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, where they've exposed their hatreds and made unwilling martyrs of one's neighbors, friends and family members; treated them like debris to be bulldozed out of the way, with troops frozen on the ground, helicopters sitting idle and those who seek to help threatened and their supplies stolen.  For what purpose, other than to deny life-saving supplies to the stranded?  This is the level of hatred they have for those not willing to accept their version of "democracy" which is spelled "communism."

Slow-Walking Aid to Hurricane-Ravaged Red America Is All Upside for Kamala.  Most of the areas ravaged by Hurricane Helene are filled with Trump voters.  Asheville, North Carolina is a notable exception, but we're four weeks and change away from a consequential presidential election and two weeks away from the start of early voting in these hurricane-hit states of Georgia (October 15), North Carolina (October 17), and Tennessee (October 16).  Two of those states (Georgia and North Carolina) are swing states.  So I ask you... [Advertisement]  What incentive do Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have to get Trump voters back on their feet when getting them back on their feet means they will be able to go out and vote against Kamala?  None.  Oh, you might still be naïve and think:  People are suffering.  Kamala wouldn't withhold aid just to win a few votes!  [The same advertisement again]  What are you, an idiot?  To win a few votes, Joe and Kamala threw the Southern border wide open to fentanyl, killing a record number of Americans and abetting the sex trafficking of countless little kids.  To win a few votes, Joe and Kamala want to nuke the Senate filibuster to make baby-killing a "right."

The Government's Failure to Help After Helene Goes Far Beyond What the Media Is Willing to Tell You.  Another day, another batch of news coming from the people that demonstrates just how much the government has failed the people, especially the victims of Hurricane Helene.  Amid the heartbreak and loss, we've been learning that FEMA has completely used up its budget to the point where there's little to no funds for disaster relief, reportedly because much of the budget was used up helping illegals at the border.  This isn't exactly common knowledge because the media isn't being forthcoming with this information.  In fact, every time I mention this on various accounts, a handful of leftists pop up and tell me I'm spreading lies and that I have no proof.  If you've been watching RedState's coverage, the proof is there.  The reason the media doesn't want to cover this is obvious.  This is one of the biggest government scandals in modern history, and one that makes the Biden-Harris administration look horrific.  This is right before people go to the polls to vote, no less.  The vast majority of the news and updates we're getting come from people on the ground who are having to deal with the effort to help these people directly.

Tuberville on Biden Hurricane Helene Response: 'People Should Be Going to Jail — This Is Treason'.  Friday, during an interview that aired on Mobile, AL radio FM Talk 106.5, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) blasted the Biden-Harris administration for its response to storm-ravaged areas impacted by Hurricane Helene.  The Alabama U.S. Senator said it was criminal how the federal government had allegedly misused disaster relief money to compensate illegal immigrants.

Weaponizing Hurricanes.  The other lesson of Hurricane Helene is that a government that is organized to provide something is also organized to deny something.  That's pervasive through all governments on every level.  The difference in whether they provide something or deny it is in the ideology of the people at the top.  Were this an illegal immigrant camp, the response would have been much different.  What we see from federal government today is the concerted effort to ensure that those at the top of FEMA, or any other entity, is a communist, with a hatred for the American people and the structure of the United States in preserving their rights.

The Architect of the Lawfare Against President Trump.  Today we'd like to introduce you — or possibly re-introduce you — to a man named Norman Eisen.  Eisen, a Brookings senior fellow, Obama's former White House Ethics Czar and Ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the "Velvet Revolution," has been behind the ongoing Lawfare that has targeted Trump throughout his presidency, through the Biden Regime and into the present date.  Eisen, who was also the co-founder of Leftist non-profit CREW or Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, has been one of the key architects of the Lawfare attacks on President Trump and he continues to lead the behind-the-scenes efforts to push ongoing legal actions against Trump to this day.  Eisen played a lead role in the pre- 2020 election war games which just happened to predict a remarkably accurate contested election scenario that ended unfavorably for Trump.  Eisen is also the author of the highly influential color revolution manual, the Democracy Playbook and was one of the primary forces behind the first impeachment of Trump.

Tulsi Gabbard tells Glenn Beck she's suing Biden admin for placing her on terror watch list.  Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said she is filing a lawsuit over being placed on a terror watch list after she criticized Vice President Kamala Harris (D) as being unfit to serve as president.  Gabbard revealed her litigious intent to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on his show Wednesday.  "The Federal Marshal's whistleblowers came forward and exposed the truth and provided evidence about how one day after I criticized Kamala Harris on a televised national interview, talking about how dangerous the consequences would be if she were to serve as president and commander in chief, the very next day, I was placed on a domestic terror watch list called 'Quiet Skies,'" she said.

Biden Admin Uses Taxpayer-Funded Email Blast To Praise Kamala Ahead Of Election.  The Biden-Harris administration on Friday sent a taxpayer-funded email blast to likely millions of Americans that praised Vice President Kamala Harris.  The email from the Department of Health and Human Services went to everyone signed up to receive updates on the government's Medicare program, which is used by 66 million people.  It featured a letter from President Joe Biden highlighting the administration's "historic reforms" to the program, attributing the benefits to the work of Harris, the Democratic nominee for President.  Biden's letter touts the administration "lowering health care costs" for seniors and "save[ing] money for American taxpayers," for example.  It says it's all thanks to Harris, noting that she cast the tie-breaking vote to give Americans these supposed benefits, and that Biden and Harris believe health care should be "a right," a common Democrat talking point on the campaign trail.

Big government is a bully, not a friend — and definitely not a daddy.  And there is no bigger bully than big government.  "Big Education?"  The government funds it.  "Big Pharma?"  The government is in bed with it.  "Big business?"  The government taxes and regulates it.  And is in bed with it, too, in this burgeoning fascist oligarchy birthed by allegedly democracy-loving Democrats (and more than a few establishment Republicans).  "Big Media?"  Nothing but pathetic pajama-boy cheerleaders for Team Democrat.  Big government takes the place of parents.  Takes the place of spouses, especially husbands.  Takes the place of hard work.  And takes the place of God.  Government doesn't like any of the aforementioned, because it can't countenance competition ... that could prevent it from growing still larger.  If parents take care of their children, spouses take care of each other, hard work will eventually pay off, and God can provide meaning, hope and sustenance ... why is a gigantic government necessary?  Answer: it isn't.  And actually gets in the way of a life well-lived.  This is why Democrats and The Deep State hate Trump ... and those who would vote for him.  He — and they — pose a threat to their power over you.

Waging War Against Their Own.  With Democrats and RINOs determined to make fraudulent elections a feature of the republic, it's time for Americans, true Americans, to push back hard.  This is no longer a republic.  The inaction on securing the vote has ensured that fact.  This is not a democracy, either, for the same reason.  They disdain the vote and both sides are desperate to remove the need for one, eliminating the people's voice from the process.  The government, in effect, encourages voting fraud by registering to vote those ineligible to vote through intentional acts.  An "intentional act" can be perceived as failing to adequately vet the eligibility of the voter prior to registering them to vote.  In all cases, any county, state, local or federal official who takes part in such acts is acting under color of law. [...] In this case, the DMV in Texas and other places were allowing illegals to register to vote when they obtained driver's licenses, also illegal, without the appropriate documentation to do so.  Many of these illegals, pushed into our states and cities by a rogue administration in Washington determined to allow them to vote to secure an election by illegal means, had abandoned their passports and other identifying documents to purposely enter the United States with an undetermined record of previous violations of law.  An act for which, alone, should have denied admittance.

Mad to the Max.  If anything like civil war ignites in this country, the sides will not be the political Red and the Blue but the sane and the insane.  Now it happens, unfortunately, that the insane are driving the engine of government.  They have been at war with the people of this land for years, depriving them of livelihoods, stuffing them into prison, breaking the social contract, wrecking the country's relations with the rest of the world, and belaboring the peoples' minds with one insulting absurdity after another.  They comprise a bizarre coalition of the permanent bureaucracy, the Democratic Party, and the news media.  The permanent bureaucracy includes its own machine for making war on citizens: the intel blob, whose tentacles reach into other agencies:  Homeland Security, the State Department, the so-called Justice Department, the Pentagon, the myriad Public Health offices, and the shadowy clique that stands-in for a disabled president in the White House.

The Biden/Harris Legacy.  Regarding the Biden/Harris presidential administration, what will history record?  I suggest that it is likely that the Biden/Harris administration will be recorded as highly corrupt and incompetent. [...] This administration has a long and uninterrupted history of promoting unfounded hate and divisiveness among US Citizens and of targeting its political opponents via lawfare and every other means at its disposal.  Wholesale weaponization of the whole of government against opponents, the likes of which have never been seen before in the USA. [...] And then there are the open border policies, failure to address CCP hostility, and the Fentanyl crisis.  The weaponization of the Intelligence community and corporate media to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the election.  Which in itself constitutes election fraud and theft.  And then there are the horrible energy policy decisions, edicts regarding electric vehicles (and long haul trucks), and failure to keep an eye on the ball and follow through with infrastructure rebuilding proposals.

A Note to the Temporary Oppressors.  [Scroll down]  Let me be clear, anyone in government, or otherwise coerced by it, who seek to silence or punish free speech, free thought or free association are guilty of 18 U.S. Code 241 Conspiracy against rights, which states:  [Text omitted for brevity.]  This is what I think of when I see videos of a sheriff's deputy standing behind two federal agents at a person's door wanting to talk to them about a social media post.  The very act of a police organization, federal, state or local inquiring about an exercise of free speech is by definition intimidation.  Any social media site who censor's an act of free speech is likewise a conspirator.  To me, the response should be to look at the deputy and inquire if he is part of the conspiracy or if he's going to take the offenders into custody as the crime was committed in his presence.  Get names, badge numbers and be willing to file charges on the spot.

Entrepreneur Humiliates FBI When They Come to Intimidate Him — 'Can See the Shame on Their Faces'.  To tell the truth, I don't know a whole lot about Jeremey Kauffman, who is listed as "an American entrepreneur and political activist known for founding and leading the blockchain-based filesharing project LBRY. Kauffman is also known as a vocal supporter and activist within the Free State Project (FSP) and a former board member."  Has he made some statements on Twitter that have upset the always-triggered class?  A search would seem to indicate so, with some calling him a pedophile, although my reading of that interaction leads me to believe that he was just being outlandish in his comments.  So I'll say this:  I'm not endorsing the guy or his viewpoints, but what I can say is that he posted an epic video Monday that showed him absolutely humiliating FBI agents who came to his home to try to intimidate him over what he has to say.  The shame and defeat on the agents' faces seemed to reveal that they knew they were engaging in the weaponization of our law enforcement institutions and not actually working to keep the American public safe.  [Tweet with video clip]

FBI shows up to intimidate resident, ends up leaving with tail tucked between their legs.  The FBI showed up at Jeremy Kauffman's home to intimidate him over some post on social media that he made and Kauffman totally got the better of them.  They never even got to really explain why they were there, no less allowing him to turn his camera off.  Because he refused to talk to them without a full name and they wouldn't give it because he wouldn't turn his camera off.  I'd call it a stalemate but it really wasn't.  Kauffman totally won.  [Tweet with video clip]

Eight Primary Forces That Threaten America Today.  [#1] Power and Incompetence of the Deep State:  The enormous, growing overreach of government to control ordinary citizens and their legislators is the monster of a bloated federal establishment.  Americans are steadily losing influence, and the ability to hold the bureaucracy and individual bureaucrats accountable.  Former Navy Seal Shawn Ryan describes it this way:  One of the biggest problems within the country is the distrust in the United States government... I have zero trust in any government agencies... We have a government that's not functioning right now.  How are you going to gain the trust back of the American people within the government?  [Video clip]

Daddy Government Is Afraid of His Rebellious Children.  Dictatorships, monarchies, and constitutional republics, it seems, all love to turn their rulers into daddy and mommy figures.  Why wouldn't they?  There is a great deal of perceived authority and omniscience ascribed to parents.  Who else could get away with answering, "Why should I do that?" with this one-two punch:  because I'm your mother, and I said so.  That's the kind of power that governments adore.  How come we have to change our doctors and embrace socialized medicine?  Barack:  because I said so.  Why can't we talk about mail-in-ballot fraud and stolen elections?  Pelosi's J6 committee:  because we said so.  Why can't we exercise free speech and engage in vigorous debate?  Disinformation Governance Board:  because we said so.  Why can't we enforce existing immigration law and secure America's borders?  D.C.'s Uniparty and corporate paymasters:  because we said so.  Why should we elect an unlikable and incompetent politician just because she's a woman?  Hillary and Kamala:  because we said so.

Everyone Hates Fascism Except the Government.  Governments invest in the illusion that their power is limitless and that the people have no other choice but to obey.  Whenever common people recognize that they are the ones with inherent power, the government's illusion of control is shattered, the system is upended, and a new era with novel organizing principles arrives.  Seen through this lens, it is easy to understand why governments have a vested interest in stirring up domestic conflict.  A peaceful and well mannered society might engage in respectful debate and start asking serious questions, such as:  why should private central banks be allowed to print money and devalue personal savings?  Why should America be financially squeezed by a bunch of multinational corporations that use cheap labor overseas and bully small businesses into bankruptcy here at home?  Why should foreign investment houses own so much land and property in America when fewer Americans than ever before can afford to own a home?  When government authorities use outside companies to censor Americans' speech and spy on their private activities, do such workarounds really trump the Bill of Rights?

Our Future.  In the current presidential campaign the Democrats' main issue is that Trump is a dictator who will destroy democracy.  This from a Democrat regime that has turned law into a weapon against political candidates such as Trump who is currently fighting four felony indictments and as many civil indictments in the midst of the presidential campaign.  Clearly, the Democrat Department of Justice (sic) and the Democrat New York attorney general are using law to interfere in the election.  All of this is underway while one of the Democrats' indictments of Trump is that he interfered in an election by the way he reported a business expense.  The corrupt Democrat judge presiding over this farce intends to sentence Trump next month.  The double standards are extraordinary and go far beyond mere mudslinging.  We are watching the party in power use the police powers of the state in an effort to control the outcome of an election.  As for the Democrats' commitment to democracy, how strong is this commitment when some of them are saying that they will not accept the election outcome if Trump wins?  Doesn't this make them "January 6 insurrectionists"?

The Secret, sleepy, Service.  In A Secret Service agent's breastfeeding emergency took her away from guarding Trump, my colleague Andrea Widburg brilliantly exposed yet another case of Secret Service (SS) incompetence so egregious it leaves the SS wide open to the accusation they're purposely creating vulnerabilities that will inevitably lead to Donald Trump's assassination.  She also wrote about a female SS agent having a psychotic break while guarding Kamala Harris — perhaps understandable — requiring other agents subdue, handcuff and disarm her.  Apparently, that wasn't the first time that woman had behaved in an alarming manner, but equally apparently, nothing was done.  Widburg also wrote about a female SS agent who taped over a security camera at a beauty salon near a Harris event, the better to hide the SS's breaking and entering of the salon.

Secret Service hints it wasn't behind salon break-in during Kamala Harris campaign event.  The U.S. Secret Service has hinted it was not involved in the break-in of a hair salon during a Kamala Harris campaign event in Massachusetts late last month.  The allegations of Secret Service involvement arose after the salon's owner, Alicia Powers, alleged that agents put duct tape over her security cameras and broke into her building by picking the lock.  Security camera footage shows an individual dressed like a Secret Service agent approaching the door with a roll of tape and observing the locked door and camera before grabbing a nearby chair to put tape over the camera.  [Tweet with video clip]

Kamala Harris Secret Service Detail Break into Business to Use Restroom, Disable Cameras to Hide Their Tracks.  People should become familiar with the THIRD AMENDMENT to the United States Constitution.  It is there for a very specific reason.  ["]Amendment III — No ¹soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.["]  ¹I would argue the armed person protecting the president or vice-president meets the general guidelines for a soldier in peacetime.  The U.S. Secret Service, assigned to the detail of Vice-President Kamala Harris, broke into a private residence in order to avail themselves and their contingents to the bathroom facilities of an American citizen without permission.  The USSS covered the camera with tape, then picked the lock.

Owner says Secret Service on VP Harris's detail 'broke into' her salon, used bathroom and left without locking the door.  Adding to the U.S. Secret Service's accountability issue, a salon owner offered video proof of the vice president's detail breaking into her business to use as their restroom.  "He was telling me that it couldn't have been them; it's not what they do.  They ask for permission."  Days after becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris headed to Pittsfield, Massachusetts for her first fundraising event on July 27.  It was that day, two weeks after a Secret Service failure had nearly cost former President Donald Trump his life, that business owner Alicia Powers said the agency had initially denied covering up their alleged forced entry into her Four One Three Salon.  "I'm the kind of person that would have set up coffee and doughnuts for them had they asked me for permission," she told The Berkshire Eagle.  "Instead," the outlet reported, "they taped over a security camera on the back porch, broke into the salon, helped themselves to the bathroom, ate the mints on the counter and left without tidying up the bathroom or locking the back door on the way out."

The Editor says...
That's exactly the behavior you would expect — from the Gestapo in 1940!

The State Is Not Your Friend!  Big Brother does not care about your safety or security.  Espionage agencies do not care if their shadowy schemes lead to your untimely death.  Central bank gangsters do not care if you lose all your savings in one of their financial bubbles.  Pharmaceutical companies making money hand over fist do not care if you get injured from one of their experimental "vaccines."  (Their government friends gave them legal immunity, after all!)  Defense industry executives selling weapons to both sides of every conflict do not care if you end up as collateral damage.  Politicians who are eager to replace their own citizens with foreign nationals do not care if you are the next casualty of illegal immigration.

A Fly in the Ointment.  We are being abused right now.  There is no Commander in Chief, there just isn't, unless a president can grow six inches overnight or change the shape of his face and ears, the color of his eyes, from what historical evidence exists.  It's not all that important, when it comes down to it, because the lesson learned is that the whole of congress, Democrats and Republicans, the whole Executive branch is willing to go along with the ruse, because they have no respect or sense of duty to the people.  Where that is true, there is no limit to the degradation and defilement they are willing to heap on the masses.  We mean less to them than a group of ants on the periphery of one's lawn, but should that group of ants begin to invade the picnic, there's no hesitation to dump a load of gasoline on the anthill and incinerate them all.

Tulsi Gabbard On Terrorist Watch List?  The Regime Is Getting Jumpy.  Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard may be on the watchlist of a secret domestic surveillance program designed to sniff out potential terrorists.  [Advertisement]  And it may be related, in part, to her willingness to speak out about Vice President Kamala Harris's shortcomings as a leader.  [Advertisement]  Undercover DC is reporting that several Federal Air Marshal whistleblowers have come forward with information showing that Gabbard is enrolled in the TSA's Quiet Skies program which has its own compartmentalized watchlist of suspected terrorists.  [Tweet]  The whistleblowers shared the information with Sonya Labosco who is Executive Director of the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC) after Air Marshals were assigned to Gabbard on July 23, following critical remarks she made in an interview about Harris, Presiden Biden and the National Security State.  [Tweet]  Labosco said that the whistleblowers indicated that, since being placed on the watchlist, Gabbard has had two explosive detection canine teams, a transportation security explosives specialist, a plainclothes TSA supervisor, and three Federal Air Marshals on every flight she boards.

Everybody Knows the Captain Lied.  The dice have been loaded for decades.  The war was over in 1963 when the CIA, on behalf of the Deep State, murdered John F. Kennedy.  The American people (the good guys) lost, and the Deep State won.  They got their war in Vietnam.  They got their Welfare State.  They got guns, butter, a currency unlinked from gold, and the green light to create debt to infinity.  The Deep State has consolidated their power and control over every aspect of our lives in the six decades since they killed JFK.  They have used every crisis they create to abscond with more of our liberties, freedoms, rights and wealth.  In addition to the never-ending wars created around the globe to benefit their military industrial complex, their wars on poverty, drugs, terror, CO2, and covid have enriched them and their lackeys, while exacerbating the very things they declared war upon.  None of these wars are meant to be won.  Keeping the masses in fear and ignorance makes them easier to control.

Kimberly Cheatle gets an F+.  [Scroll down]  As so many have done in congressional hearings over the past year, Cheatle successfully stonewalled every serious question, refusing to provide any details that would illuminate the source of the Secret Service's miscues and failures in Butler, Pa.  No one would have expected anything different.  Her answers came right out of the same playbook so many federal agency directors have used, consisting mostly of "I can't speak to the details of an ongoing investigation" and "I don't have the specifics here, but I'll be happy to get back with you on that." [...] What we have seen over the recent months is evidence of a growing contempt by federal bureaucrats for the congressional committees that are tasked with overseeing their activities.  They refuse to comply or answer questions with impunity, and when they engage in their obvious stonewalling efforts, they do so confident in the knowledge that although they may be embarrassed for a short few hours by stinging questions and accusations in a committee hearing, once it's over, they will return to their plush offices, fat government salaries, and privileged lifestyles, with no consequences to their positions of power or their careers.

Can We Let the Voters Decide — Not the FBI, CIA, DOJ, Lawyers, Prosecutors, and Judges?  When Donald Trump seemed to have a lock on the 2016 Republican primary, the Democratic Party concluded that the people could not be counted on to do the "right thing" of electing the Democratic candidate in waiting Hillary Clinton.  [Advertisement]  What followed were eight long years of extralegal efforts to neuter candidate, then President, then ex-President, and then candidate again, Donald Trump.  [Advertisement]  The nonstop efforts were all justified as "saving democracy" — albeit by nearly destroying it.  [Advertisement]  In 2015-2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign fueled the lie that discredited ex-British spy Christopher Steele had discovered Donald Trump to be a veritable Russian agent.  [Advertisement]  Hillary did not disclose that she had paid Steele — with checks hidden through three paywalls.  The FBI, under Director James Comey, also hired the fraudster.  Yet almost nothing in his "Steele dossier" was true.  The FBI doctored evidence submitted to a FISA court.  Comey leaked to the press confidential documents about his private conversations with President Trump.  [Advertisement]

Four factions vying for control of America.  [Scroll down]  The intelligence agencies have lethal weapons at their disposal, and they operate with impunity when their self-interest is credibly threatened.  It is no mere conspiracy theory to characterize them as the puppeteers of government.  Make no mistake:  the dark state will not tolerate any serious imposition on its power.  None.  What will it do?  Simply, whatever it deems necessary.  If it cannot influence the outcome of an election to serve its interests, it can prevent the election from taking place at all.  To accomplish this, a national emergency can be contrived, whether it is a plague, a war, a spate of terrorist attacks, or any other devious method.

Any Assassination Investigation That Includes Merrick Garland Or Chris Wray Is A Coverup.  [Scroll down]  This is just a cursory recounting of the DOJ's many eager efforts in the last decade to act on behalf of Democrats and against equal justice under U.S. law.  Others include the weaponization of DOJ's inspector general office; repeated refusal to disclose information to Congress about the DOJ spying on Trump's campaign, and Americans in general; repeated lying to secret U.S. intelligence courts to obtain permission to spy on Trump; hiding evidence from Durham's investigation of Spygate; its failure to give defensive briefings to Trump's campaign; its unprosecuted illegal leaking in ways that always help Democrats' and its "dirtying up" and doxxing whistleblowers who report Biden and other Democrat corruption.  Oh yes, and don't forget the DOJ sending people to jail for pro-Trump internet memes.

Merrick Garland Doesn't Go to Prison But Steve Bannon Does.  The Supreme Court rejected Steve Bannon's appeal, and he must report to prison on Monday.  Merrick Garland committed the same crime with a legitimate congressional order that Bannon committed with a rigged, illegitimate J6 panel.  Bannon believed he had executive privilege, but that only works for Democrats.  He wanted it delayed while he appealed the conviction so he could continue campaigning for Donald Trump.  [Tweet]  The one-sentence order, which had no public dissents, keeps Monday's deadline for the former Trump strategist to report to prison in a medium security prison, rejecting Bannon's emergency effort to delay it.

Cast Away Illusions and Prepare for Struggle.  All across the Western world, regimes are converging on the same form of authoritarian managerial technocracy, treating popular sovereignty with disgust and brooking no dissent.  New legislation in Canada proposes life in prison for "hate speech."  Britain already arrests hundreds of people per year for holding the wrong opinions.  Germany's interior minister says right-wingers who "mock the state" will be preemptively ejected from the financial system, have their business licenses revoked, and be banned from traveling.  At the behest of the E.U., Poland's new "centrist" government has cast aside the rule of law in order to arrest political enemies and purge the Right from all institutions.  Some of these countries have written constitutions, others don't — it hardly matters.  What they all share, along with the United States, is a near-identical ruling class of transnational managerial elites who believe they alone possess History's mandate to reengineer society.

It's not fascism when they do it.  See, what you have to remember about your garden-variety leftist is that they don't have a problem with the government dictating what you can and can't do.  It's only bad when someone other than them can do so. [...] Violence from the left is never a step toward fascism because their causes are good.  Nor is their attempt to stifle free speech through restricting gun-related advertising and thus gun-related publications.  Nor is their desire for hate speech restrictions that would inevitably morph into restrictions that go beyond mean words and racial slurs.  The right is so authoritarian, oddly enough, that they want all law-abiding citizens to have the means to resist a tyrannical government, but the left seeks to disarm the populace and their defense is that you can't beat the US military in the first place, so why bother?  And they don't think that sounds the least bit authoritarian.  Because, in their mind, it's not.

Politically selective prosecution.  In reality, prosecutors use all kinds of criteria to determine who gets prosecuted and who doesn't.  Sometimes, that's informed by the DA's politics.  A conservative "tough on crime" type might prosecute someone that a more liberal DA would let walk, for example.  But again, as long as the defendant's politics don't play into things, I don't have an issue with that.  District attorneys are voted on, after all, and people deserve what they vote for.  In Manhattan, however, DA Alvin Bragg isn't trying to be subtle.  He's blatantly allowing his politics to expressly determine who gets prosecuted and who doesn't.  For example, we all know about Trump's prosecution for a crime that makes absolutely no sense.  Bragg distorted the law and likely only got a conviction because of an equally biased judge.  The idea that an internal accounting error, at worst, is fraud was stupid beyond belief.  Then there's the flip side, where now people feel betrayed by Bragg over who he didn't prosecute.

Trump suggests CIA was behind push to stop him releasing JFK assassination files.  Former President Donald Trump spoke about releasing the files surrounding the assassination of President John F Kennedy in a recent podcast appearance, suggesting the CIA had applied pressure to stop some information being released.  Trump appeared on the All-In Podcast on Thursday, hosted by Silicon Valley technology investors, and spoke on an array of topics, from his political rival President Joe Biden and their upcoming debate to suggesting that foreign students should get green cards after they graduate US college.  The former president was also questioned by venture capitalist and podcast host Chamath Palihapitiya over a promise he made during his presidency that he would release files pertaining to the assassination of Kennedy that occurred on November 22, 1963.  [Video clip]

Russia's KGB and Ours.  [Scroll down]  If the Deep State is in fact dominated by the Soviet KGB, now known as the FSB, that would explain a lot.  It would also explain why the Russia-gate hoax against Trump was based on Russian disinformation.  I have come to accept the view of spy catcher James Jesus Angleton, the former CIA counterintelligence chief, who concluded the CIA was hopelessly infiltrated by our enemies.  It turns out so was the FBI, which employed Robert Hanssen as a counter-intelligence agent assigned to catch Soviet/Russian spies, when he was working for the Soviets and the Russians.  When you understand how America's Deep State has become a branch of the KGB, your view of America and the world changes.  You come to better understand the no-war wars of Joe Biden and the failure to back American allies and confront our enemies.  You come to suspect that characters like Hunter Biden were protected for years by federal agencies like the FBI and the IRS because he (and his father) served the interests of American intelligence agencies.  I have been around too long to buy the excuse that federal agencies are just incompetent.

Near Half of Independents Say Biden Uses DOJ To Target Political Enemies.  New polling data suggests a significant portion of the electorate believes the Biden government "...has actively used the Justice Department to investigate political enemies with little or no evidence of actual wrongdoing."  The data is troubling for Joe Biden as it shows a sizeable portion of independent voters — 41 percent — agree that the Biden government has purposefully targeted its political enemies.  Additionally, even one in ten Democrats agree. [...] A large number of independent voters in the Ipsos poll also signaled they believe major figures in the Democratic Party played a part in pushing Bragg to prosecute Trump.  Nearly 40 percent of independent respondents said they believe New York Attorney General Letitia James was involved in pushing Bragg to prosecute.

The Feds Are Itching to J6 Us Again.  The U.S. federal government has done some awful things.  However, intentionally framing American protesters (including grandparents on pensions and self-sacrificing military veterans) as members of some kind of terrorist cell attempting to overthrow the government in order to distract attention from 2020 election fraud is nothing less than evil.  In the years since that staged operation, thousands of innocent Americans have been harassed or arrested for their political beliefs.  Hundreds have been intimidated into accepting plea deals that include multi-year prison sentences.  Families have been ripped apart and left in insurmountable debt.  Too many defendants have taken their own lives to avoid the financial and emotional toll of the government's malicious persecution.  It is atrocious that the U.S. government has inflicted such ruin upon so many Americans engaging in constitutionally protected free speech.  Why is the corrupt "justice" system intent on destroying so many lives?

J6 Inmate Sues DC Jail for Abuse.  A Jan. 6 inmate has sued the Washington DC Department of Corrections after a guard pepper sprayed him for removing his face mask to take medication in a September 2022 incident.  The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court, comes from Jan. 6 inmate Ronald Colton McAbee, who's serving a 70-month prison sentence for allegedly assaulting Capitol Police officers.  McAbee admitted to one count of assault last September and pled not guilty to five others — but was convicted by a DC jury anyway last October.  According to his lawsuit, McAbee was sitting his in his cell on Sept. 5, 2022, when DOC employee Crystal Lancaster allegedly pepper sprayed him for removing his face mask to take medication.  Lancaster allegedly pepper sprayed him even though DC Jail policy required inmates like to remove any face mask while consuming such medication.

Government Raid Seizes $90,000 of Healthy Food Grown by Nourish Cooperative.  There is a lot of fearmongering circulating in mainstream media about the "Avian Influenza".  In parallel to the fearmongering, there has been a large increase in the number of inspections and surveillance.  Creating fear would certainly help better maintain control of the food system, wouldn't it?  On Tuesday, May 28th, our farm co-op was randomly "inspected" (raided), and over $90,000 worth of product was put under "cease and desist" by the state of Michigan, including all raw dairy.  As this is an evolving story, I will share what we know to be true thus far.  Nourish Cooperative is a farm cooperative that my sister, Sarah, and I started with a few other first generation regenerative farmers in September 2023.  After several years of a steadily increasing demand for our farm fresh products (such as our raw milk, sourdough, and "needle-free" grass fed and/or corn- and soy-free meat), we simply could not keep up with the demand ourselves, which led us to create a "cooperative" (co-op) of several small, local regenerative farms.

Unequal Application Of The Law In America Today Isn't Hypocrisy, It's Hierarchy.  Over the weekend, thousands of pro-Hamas protesters, many of them masked and some wearing green Hamas headbands, descended on Washington, D.C., surrounding the White House amid chants calling for a victory of "jihad or martyrdom."  At one point, protesters with tents set up an encampment on the Ellipse, while others defaced and vandalized historic statues, including the Andrew Jackson and Marquis de Lafayette statues in Lafayette Square.  At one point, protesters [...] chased U.S. Park Police and Secret Service out of the square after officers tried to arrest someone, after which the square was completely controlled by the protesters.  No arrests were made.  The day before, on the other side of the country, three teenagers in Spokane, Washington, were arrested on felony charges for driving their scooters over a painted "pride" crosswalk and leaving some tread marks on the mural.  As tempting as it is to call out the hypocrisy here — teenagers hunted down and charged for defacing a pride mural, no punishment at all for a mob of left-wing protesters defacing national monuments — that would miss the point.  This isn't hypocrisy on display, it's hierarchy.

Massive Government Spending Equals Broken Elections.  [Scroll down]  From state legislators to congressmen to senators, money spent by outside interests now plays the dominant role in who represents us.  And if our leaders are beholden to outside donors to get elected, they no longer fear getting voted out of office.  The result is that our government spending is out of control, and much of it is fraudulent, corrupt, wasteful, or unnecessary.  And our elected representatives who vote to choose this wasteful spending continue to be elected.  Open Secrets reports re-election rates of 94.5% for House members and 100% for Senators in 2022!  How can the interests of the taxpayers and voters be honored when the campaigns are financed by those interested in the spending?

The Latest On The Federal War Against Internal Combustion Vehicles.  I'm old enough to remember a time when there were serious environmental concerns with internal combustion engine vehicles. [...] But gradually that all got cleaned up.  Today the bona fide serious environmental concerns about internal combustion engines are far in the past.  But the war to eliminate them — supposedly on environmental grounds — is just ramping up.  The Biden Administration is all in with the plan to get rid of the ICE car.  Why?  It seems to have something to do with the non-existent "climate crisis."  Meanwhile, Congress has passed no legislation authorizing the executive agencies to force ICE vehicles off the market.  Nor is the Administration honest enough to admit that they are engaged in outlawing the vehicles that 90+% of the people drive.  Instead we get massive and thoroughly dishonest regulations effectively forcing the approaching end of the ICE vehicle without ever directly saying so.

Rejecting the Status Quo Is the Only Way to Survive.  Americans want the government out of their lives.  They want a stable monetary currency free from central bank manipulation.  They want to speak freely without being censored online.  They want to build local businesses without forking over profits to regulatory agencies that specialize in producing red tape.  They want to parent their children without worrying that public schools are warping their young minds with indoctrination from the State.  They want the FBI and NSA to stop spying on their communications and financial transactions without warrants or probable cause.  They want Biden to stop issuing "green" executive orders that make everything more expensive.  They want Disney and other child-grooming corporations to stop abusing young kids with their perverse sexual agendas.  They want prosecutors to punish violent criminals and to stop targeting political rivals.  They want the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the World Economic Forum to shut up about most things.  They want a free press committed to challenging government and corporate orthodoxies every day — not a bunch of pretend journalists and progressive poodles who do their masters' bidding.

Should Garland be charged with lying to Congress?  Merrick Garland recently testified before the House Judiciary Committee, and among other things, was "battered" over his decision to keep the recorded interview tapes between Joe Biden and special counsel Robert Hur hidden from the public.  Garland has the audacity to say that no one is above the law, and his Justice department never considers politics in its decisions, but those statements are demonstrably not true. [...] Alejandro Mayorkas has continually lied to Congress[,] and has never been charged.  Anthony Fauci has continually lied to Congress[,] and has never been charged.  Does anyone believe that "politics" aren't part of the decision-making process, as Garland has yet to charge Jim and Hunter Biden for lying to Congress?  The Justice Department has never cared about the Biden family business of taking kickbacks.  Why would they change now?  Former FBI director James Comey listed all the crimes Hillary committed, but let her off so as not to get in the way of her presidential run.  Comey and others continually lied to the FISA court to illegally spy on people surrounding President Trump, and were never charged.  The FBI never charged drug-running terrorists, instead opting to let them off the hook, because Obama ordered them to stand down for the sake of his Iranian nuclear deal.  That is purely a political decision.  The FBI knowingly lied to social media companies, a scheme to censor the information about the "Laptop from Hell" from the public just a month before the November 2020 election, but none of those involved in this coverup were ever charged.  Isn't this election interference?  What about Garland himself?  He clearly is above the law.  He lied to Congress about his involvement with the White House and the National School Boards Association on a coordinated effort to target parents.

America's Corrupt Political Class Should Be Prosecuted, Not Trump.  [W]ith the Trump conviction in New York, we may well have just witnessed the nadir of abuse of prosecutorial discretion.  It's not just that a former president — and the leading contender to be the next president — has been convicted of a felony on dubious and untested charges.  For all of the demands that we respect "rule of law" in the wake of the Trump verdict, it has become patently obvious that prosecuting corruption is not bound by law or principle — it's about gatekeeping.  Those favored by our entrenched institutions get away with it, those who threaten unaccountable power do not.  The Washington establishment has kept its Sauron-like gaze fixed on Trump in the hopes that you won't notice that nearly our entire political class is corrupt in ways that threaten the country far more than paying off a mistress and classifying it as "legal services."  To understand how distorted the system has become, it helps to understand how Trump's various court battles stack up next to his political peers.

Hearts and Minds.  The almost automatic faith the government enjoyed through the Depression, World War II, and the years that followed suffered its first big hit with the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Commission whitewash.  The Vietnam War took its toll, exacerbated by the draft and the treatment of returning soldiers.  Since Vietnam, the government and the ruling class have destroyed sentient Americans' belief in their probity and effectiveness.  Watergate, abandonment of the gold standard, double-digit inflation, Iran-Contra, serial financial crises, the Clintons' scandals, the dot-com bust, 9/11 and the string of disastrous Middle East interventions it kicked off, the Patriot Act, the housing bust, too big to fail, Snowden's revelations, and the rancid legislative maneuvers used to sneak through Obamacare set the table for Trump in 2016.  His election kicked the lose-hearts-and-minds project into overdrive.

Good!
Yellow streak running:  Former FBI deputy chief McCabe says FBI agents are scared of going to jail if Trump is elected.  There's a reason federal agencies used to stay out of politics, but it appears the Obama generation never thought it meant them.  Now we get Andrew McCabe, the fired former FBI deputy director, attempting to whip up sympathy in the press for FBI agents who have turned that agency into the internal security apparatus of the Democrat party. [...] Up until a few years ago, the FBI used to be a studiously non-political organization.  Now they're the willing storm troopers of every instance of legal overreach instituted by Democrats in search of political enemies to punish, draconianly, of course.  This is and should be illegal.

The Editor says...
If you work for the FBI as a socialist Democrat party henchman, you should live in fear of arrest and imprisonment.

Americans remain sour on electric vehicles.  The out-of-touch elites who want us all to give up our gasoline-powered cars also carry a tendency to want to control how the rest of us live our lives.  They want us to abide by their ridiculous edicts:  Buy this type of car.  Use this type of lightbulb.  Eat this kind of food.  Replace your household appliances with what we think you should have.  Their penchant for micromanaging knows no bounds.  I think they have gone too far.  It is one thing to insist that someone use an LED lightbulb rather than an incandescent lightbulb.  In the grand scheme, this is but a small inconvenience.  However, it is quite concerning when those in positions of power demand that we stop driving gasoline-powered cars in favor of unproven, expensive, and unreliable EVs.

Trump the Citizen.  The world continues to be riveted by President Trump's legal cases.  It is easy to sit back and watch it all, and think that this happens only in the gamesmanship of Washington politics.  Unfortunately, what the nation is witnessing happens every day, in some way, all across the country, deliberately, by mistake or mismanagement, from local county circuit courts, all the way up to state supreme courts and beyond, in ways big and small.  (Federal circuit judge Richard Posner, nominated by President Reagan, said he eventually resigned over the way many litigants were treated in the court system.)  The legal machinery of our justice system, combined with detailed rules of procedure, generally keeps a lid on the corruption becoming absolute, or unable to be challenged and corrected.  That's a good thing.  But the dangerous part, as in all human institutions, comes from the people in that system and how the legal machinery can be "hijacked" or taken far off course simply by ideology.

An Out-of-Control Administrative State Turns a Parking Lot into a Mine.  [Scroll down]  But before we get to how the Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) wrested jurisdiction over a parking lot and ludicrously holds on despite legal reversals, let us run through some examples of arbitrary administrative overreach, an enduring problem over the last few decades:
  •   The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) attempted to expand the definition of "waters of the United States" in the Clean Water Act to include wetlands on residential property.  As a result, a landowner in Idaho was prevented from building a modest home on his property for 17 years until the Supreme Court ruled in his favor last year (Sackett v. EPA).
  •   The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) randomly decided that fishing operators should transport, house, and pay the salaries of federal inspectors who accompany them on trips to monitor compliance with fishing rules.  Previously, the NMFS itself bore those costs, as would be reasonable.
  •   The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) weaponized the Antiquities Act to increase the regulatory burden on ranchers and farmers, hinder normal agricultural operations, and seize land.
  •   The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) overstepped its bounds by arbitrarily banning a popular tourist activity — swimming with dolphins — citing disturbances to dolphins and their habitats.

You Might Be Living In A Banana Republic.  Welcome to the brave new world that is the Democrat Party's Divided States of America.  Where the people in power politically weaponize the institutions so dear to the preservation and promotion of representative democracy to hunt down and imprison their political enemies.  Where kangaroo courts led by highly partisan judges host show trials to convict blind justice.  Where Big Tech and corporate media oligarchs tell you what — and what not — to believe about the accusers and the accused.

'Intentional Misfeasance' Makes Show Trial Conviction Ripe For Reversal, Legal Experts Say.  Leftist District Attorney Alvin Bragg's show trial delivered the Democrat Party's dream:  A felony conviction against their most hated political enemy.  The prosecution and the trial also were also littered with legal landmines and "reversible error" that should make former President Donald Trump's looming appeal a slam dunk, legal experts say.  [Advertisement]  Historical and stunning but not surprising to many who have closely followed left-wing lawfare in recent years, the 12 angry Manhattan jurors after two days of deliberations found Trump guilty on all 34 trumped-up felony counts against him.  Judge Juan Merchan has scheduled sentencing for July 11, just four days before the Republican National Convention is slated to begin in Milwaukee, where the GOP is poised to again nominate Trump as its presidential candidate.  He will face President Joe Biden in the rematch of 2020's mess of an election.  Trump also is facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison, depending on the vindictiveness of a New York judicial system that has already proved to be quite vindictive.

Tyranny Is Upon us:  Law and Juries Are Weaponized.  Keep in mind that these are 34 made-up felonies based on how an expense was recorded by accountants and attorneys.  Trump did not record the expense.The expense was recorded according to accounting standards.  Keep in mind that a single accounting reporting charge, a misdemeanor, was magically turned into 34 federal felonies of election violations, if memory serves, the argument being that Trump won the election by misreporting the expense.  There are so many civil and criminal show trials going on against Trump that it is hard to keep track of all the absurdities.  Keep in mind that it is a case without complainants, without harmed parties.  It is a case brought by a prosecutor who can show no party harmed.  What is frightening is that legally this is a case for which there are no legal grounds for bringing it.  Yet, the bar associations, the law schools, the media said nothing.  Getting Trump was so important that law was sacrificed for the purpose.  Trump's demonization made a fair trial impossible, and few jurors can resist using their power against a rich person.

Desperate, Lying Biden May Abuse AI To Pull The Ultimate Race Hoax.  Consider, if you will (even those who have been so conditioned by threat of defamation suit never to speak of it), the possibility that the Biden presidency was built upon a major deception: an intentionally stolen election that relied upon illegal ballot-harvesting, manipulation of voting machines and a hodgepodge of factors involving a vast network of intricate moving pieces, each knowing just a small part in the larger script so as to ensure plausible deniability.  Open your mind, furthermore, to the theoretical premise that Jan. 6 was a false-flag operation intended to derail and deflate the resistance — millions of liberty-loving Americans who witnessed the crime playing out in plain sight while being told their senses were deceiving them and that their own biases and bigotry were the real problem with democracy.  Imagine that the entire lawfare campaign of more than 90 felony charges against former President Donald Trump was little more than a political construct with no legal basis whatsoever, and that those waging this stunning affront on American jurisprudence did so with full awareness of their offense and the implications it may have, but were willing to stake it for their own potential benefit.  And lastly, recognize that everything sandwiched in between these massive conspiracies was a series of smaller lies designed to blunt American voters' sense of moral outrage and indignation as would China's notorious "death by a thousand cuts."

Bearing Witness To The Downfall Of Our Constitutional Republic.  My friends who believe either that what happened to Trump was not such a big deal or that the rule of law is not yet totally corrupted because Trump is likely to prevail on appeal miss the point.  Anarchy at this level in America is outside of any of our experiences. [...] What is it about New York City and the Democrat party, in general, that's got it in for Trump so bad that a politician can run for office on the single pledge that he or she will put Trump in jail, and no one bats an eye?  That's what a rogues gallery of politicians or political appointees espoused, including the New York state Attorney General, the Manhattan District Attorney, and the U.S. Justice Department's number three, who resigned and stepped down to prosecute Trump in New York.  All of us bear stark witness to something never before seen in American political life — the successful use of lawfare in to nullify a political enemy.  How else can you explain the wantonness of New York's attempt to silence its conservative enemies?

The Trump Verdict:  Guilty.  The dirty work of Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller investigation failed, the Fulton County prosecution is stayed pending appeal, and Special Counsel Jack Smith won't get his cases to trial before the November 2024 election.  But they always had New York — the State has made Trump and his company and his family a political target — and District Attorney Alvin Bragg came through with the early indictment.  The target might have been Trump, but the real goal was to influence the 2024 election, no matter the shaky facts and dubious legal theories of the case.  Democracy must be saved even through unlawful and unethical means.  The enemies of society must be hunted, the obstacles to progress must be destroyed.  Even when they're innocent[.]  Especially when they're innocent.

The Merchan Scale.  [Scroll down]  I do want to ask some of the more sophisticated readers of this blog, how they can watch this travesty of justice, this blind hatred for a man so great that every civilized method of justice has been thrown to the winds and they can still believe that this is not a moment when American jurisprudence has been utterly deflated in the minds of the people.  It is a crisis of the judicial system, a moment when the DOJ and the White House have taken part in the vilification of a political rival, who have orchestrated crimes against him in open court and without a single sense of modesty or restraint that the people would not see that as an assault against them personally?  Because that's exactly what has happened.

Judge Merchan's Instruction to the Jury Will Leave Your Jaw on the Floor.  Fox's John Roberts has since issued an update to his original "smorgasbord" interpretation of Judge Merchan's instructions.  He posted, "It is more nuanced than that.  All 12 need unanimity that Trump committed a crime.  But the underlying unlawful means is a smorgasbord they can pick from — and they don't all need to agree on what it was."  [Advertisement]  What this means is that there must still be a unanimous guilty verdict, but the jurors do not have to be unanimous about what the actual offense was.  There are three to choose from, and all 12 jurors don't have to agree, just so long as there are 12 votes overall.  I'm told that's New York law in these cases.  Even with this correction, none of the underlying problems with the case against Trump have changed.  There's still no crime that the prosecution has defined, there's still no magic math that lets two misdemeanors add up to a felony, and there's still no getting around Merchan allowing the prosecution to do almost anything while shackling Trump's defense.

Judge In Trump Case Issues Unbelievable Jury Instructions.  Legal minds are beside themselves at how the judge in the Trump 'hush money' case has instructed jurors to rule — first in what constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley called "the coup de grace instruction," Judge Juan Merchan said that there is no need to agree on what occurred — and can disagree on what the crime was among the charges.  "Merchan just delivered the coup de grace instruction," Turley wrote on X.  "He said that there is no need to agree on what occurred.  They can disagree on what the crime was among the three choices.  Thus, this means that they could split 4-4-4 and he will still treat them as unanimous..."

If Biden Wrecks Trump's Presidential Immunity...  Democrats and their friends on the left are hoping against hope that the Supreme Court rules that Donald J. Trump possesses only limited immunity for his presidential actions and is thus subject to prosecution by the Biden administration as well as local and state prosecutors.  As the ancient adage proclaims, be careful what you wish for. [...] There used to be a "constitutional norm" that immunized ex-presidents from prosecution by their successors.  However, Biden administration agencies, including the DOJ, FBI, and DHS, have decided to ignore this centuries-old constitutional norm and wage widespread and unfettered lawfare against former president Donald J. Trump and his supporters.  In doing so, they have fundamentally changed the rules of political engagement in America.

Justice Department investigated conservative 'Moms for Liberty' in same manner as KKK: Report.  The Justice Department (DOJ) appeared to investigate a conservative parental rights group in the same manner that it investigated the Klu Klux Klan (KKK), according to a news report on Wednesday [5/29/2024].  The DOJ's Community Relations Service monitored the group Mom's for Liberty alongside certain racist emblems, like a noose, the Confederate flag, and a Swastika.  The same tactic was used when monitoring the KKK and the Oath Keepers, according to internal emails obtained by the Daily Wire.  The Community Relations Service says its role is "preventing and responding to community tensions and hate crimes, bias, bullying, and discrimination."  One way it monitored Mom's for Liberty was through NexisLexis and Google alerts.

Tyranny by Any Other Name Still Stinks.  One of the peculiarities of our own time is that so many people remain blind to the totalitarianism growing and spreading around them.  Western governments have seized the authority to tell us what is true and what must be censored as harmful "disinformation."  They openly spy on our phone calls, read our emails, record every Internet search and keyboard click on our computers, and monitor our social media conversations.  They tell us which "politically correct" words we must use and which words are outlawed for inciting "hate."  They have criminalized reading from parts of the Bible or acting with religious conviction.  They insist on manipulating the value of money and rigging markets in ways that confiscate the meager savings of the have-nots and further enrich the well-to-do.  Corporations and government ministers work together to spread the same propaganda.  Mainstream news media operate as compliant mouthpieces for the State.  Banks discriminate against customers due to their personal beliefs.  Companies fire employees for not being sufficiently "woke."  Prosecutors contort statutes into weapons that can be used to punish innocent people for their political speech.

Why do FBI agents so regularly abuse their power?  It isn't just the FBI that abuses its power in what is now known to be the deep state.  So does the DOJ. Merrick Garland is perhaps the most unscrupulous of all.  He should be held in contempt for all sorts of abuses.  As we can all see, the Democrats' use of lawfare to destroy Biden's opponent is obviously illegal and unconstitutional.  Judges Kaplan, Engoran, and Merchan have shown themselves to be extreme partisans, not unbiased jurists.  Whether or not they've each been bought, as in paid off, to blatantly expose their own abuses of power for all to see, the fact is that there has been no justice deployed when it comes to Trump.  The explosion of lawfare that has been launched against Donald Trump has exposed the criminality of the deep state like no other era in U.S. history.

Our Federal Government Needs an Intervention.  The federal government is also prone to mission deviation.  Like commercial organizations, it has also been designed with layered accountability to keep it on course.  Government functionaries are expected to watch each other, and whistleblowers are protected by law.  Inspectors general audit government operations, and can make criminal referrals to the DoJ. The three branches of government hold each other accountable via constitutional authority.  Our elected leadership watches over all of it, and voters watch the elected leadership.  With all that accountability, how did our government reach a point where:
  •   An agency founded to promote clean air and water (EPA) is addressing bovine flatulence?
  •   An organization created to stamp out malaria by spraying mosquitoes (CDC) has dictated an eviction moratorium and is promoting gun control?
  •   A law enforcement bureau (FBI) is instigating crimes to solve them?
  •   An agency intended to gather information about national security threats (CIA) is using foreign intelligence assets to spy on a political party?
Those things and more are happening because our government has managed to break our systems of accountability, allowing radicals and miscreants to run wild.

What has Biden accomplished in his presidency?  Devastation.  Biden and his sycophants in the media sing his praises on a daily basis, pretending he has been an effective president.  In fact, all he has accomplished is desecration on every level. [...] Despite the ruling by the SCOTUS, Biden continues to forgive billions of dollars in unpaid student loans, leaving it to the working people who did not go to college to pay for the deadbeats and wealthy upper middle class borrowers who did.  Biden has no respect for any court that defies his unconstitutional agenda.  The weaponization of the FBI and DOJ that began under Obama has escalated to the point they are tyrannous, third-world agencies of a corrupt regime.  The lawfare they use to persecute Trump is reminiscent of Stalin, Venezuela's Chavez, or Brazil's Lula.  They have mounted Maoist show trials, complete with struggle sessions.  That is what the J6 persecutions and imprisonments are, Maoist.  They mean to break those of us who oppose their anti-American communist goals.

Laredo Journalist Arrested For Questioning Government Officials Turns to Supreme Court.  After a series of court reversals, Laredo-based independent journalist Priscilla Villarreal is seeking to have her case heard before the U.S. Supreme Court following her arrest by Laredo law enforcement.  According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — which is representing Villarreal in her SCOTUS appeal — police hunted her into silence in April of 2017 because they opposed her journalism, which was often critical of local officials.  FIRE also argued that police "dusted off" old statutes never before used against journalists to criminalize her work.  After receiving tips from private citizens and asking a Laredo police officer to verify facts about a high-profile suicide and fatal car accident, two warrants were issued for her arrest.  The statute, FIRE states, makes it a felony to ask government officials for nonpublic information if the requester would benefit from the information provided.  Law enforcement argued that Villarreal would benefit by gaining popularity on social media for publishing the story.

A Worthwhile Reminder When Anyone Talks About Trust in U.S. Government.  This well assembled video is recirculating as a reminder of what took place during the media hype of the COVID-19 alarmism.  It's easy to forget just how crazy and insane the lying and manipulation actually was; this video captures only a small element of the demanded narrative.  When anyone asks a question about why so many Americans no longer trust institutions or U.S. government leadership, the issues within this video serve as a mic drop.  [Video clip]  These same media voices demanded everyone accept the fraud of the Trump-Russia narrative; then these same voices demanded we ignore the truth of the Hunter Biden laptop; then these same voices demanded again that we adhere to their untested vaccine position; and now they demand we pay attention to their narrative around the fraudulent Lawfare cases against President Trump.

The Making of a Banana Republic.  It is a presidential election year and a leading candidate for president of the United States, who also happens to be a former president of the United States, is currently a criminal defendant chained to a dingy courtroom four days of the week — time that he should be spending interacting with voters out on the campaign trail.  That's terrible.  But it's only the beginning.  The daughter of the presiding judge is a professional political operative for the presidential candidate's opposition party, and the candidate himself is subject to an over-inclusive and unconstitutional gag order.  The George Soros-funded district attorney, who campaigned on a platform of prosecuting that candidate, only pressed charges after his own left-wing predecessor opted not to do so due to the frivolous nature of the charges.  One of the Soros-funded DA's subordinates curiously joined his team, just in time to prosecute the candidate, from a high-ranking perch in the Department of Justice that is headed by the candidate's chief political rival.

Jack Smith's Lawfare Scheme Under Scrutiny.  Those who understand the construct of Lawfare understand the purposes and intents.  Lawfare is an outcome of a radical activist pivot point that happened during the Obama administration.  Prior to the Obama-era the radicals tearing down government defended the transparently guilty, their allies and fellow traveling communists.  Those who were arrested for violence the radicals supported, were defended, excused and their activity justified.  After the election of Obama, as noted first by author Jack Cashill, something changed; the radicals reversed their position.  Instead of defending the transparently guilty, the Obama aligned usurpers — now with actual power at their fingertips — began accusing the transparently innocent.  In the "anger games" era of Barack Obama, the radicals began attacking the innocent and using their allies in media as part of the attack narrative.  George Zimmerman, Darren Wilson, the Baltimore-six, etc.  The list is long; we tracked them all with detailed research; however, the theme amid every story was the same.  Isolate, ridicule and marginalize the transparently innocent target and make them appear guilty.

Will the Supreme Court Let This Crisis Go to Waste?  Has the Supreme Court noticed that we've crossed a legal Rubicon?  The Constitution — that thing the Court is supposed to defend — is becoming less relevant by the day because the left has decided that our mutual pact of self-governance doesn't apply to leftists.  They have weaponized our government against us — using it to surveil, silence, harass, and steal from us.  Our own government is even arguing that the Constitution should not be a constraint on its operations — which is precisely what its purpose is.  Are the Supreme Court Justices beginning to realize that we are in crisis?  Two recent cases indicate that they are awakening to that reality.

False-flag Nation.  Recall when Trump started his rallies back in 2016.  Many of them involved some kind of violent fight or violent demonstration, with the media dutifully reporting that these proved the violence inherent in Trump and his backers.  The only problem was these were leftist agitprop actors, and that was clear to most non-Democrat observers even then.  Violence at an Illinois rally prior to that primary had Ted Cruz accusing Donald Trump supporters (likely cementing his loss).  To this day one of the consistent charges against Trump has been his intention to bring violence to our country.  Jussie Smollett tried to add to this farce.  It ended badly.  The Whitmer kidnapping hoax showed the FBI goading and entrapping a few suckers to get involved in this charade.  FBI plants invented the idea and pushed it to happen.  This to once again prove Trump supporters were violent lawbreakers.  The RussiaGate scam was a false flag set up by the Deep State.  These silly charges against Trump were manufactured by his opponents to make him appear guilty.  The Trump Ukraine phone call impeachment came straight from Biden-supporting Democrats.

America:  Goodbye my Country.  According to all available scientific evidence to date, the "Covid vaccine" has killed and destroyed the health of more people than the Covid virus.  The corrupt "authorities" have done their best to cover this up, but as I have reported the coverup has failed.  Still nothing is being done about it.  Nothing can be done as long as Congress is dependent on campaign contributions from corporations.  "Our" representatives are really representatives of those interest groups that fund election campaigns.  Congress reports to them, not to us.  The idiot US Supreme Court actually ruled that corporations had a legitimate Constitutional right to purchase the US government.  This ruling converted a government that represented the people into one that represented the political campaign contributors.

Has Leftist Lawfare Created the Police State Yet?  Could it be that the average non-leftist citizen now feels both powerless and terrified to object to any of these injustices?  They see the brutal treatment meted out to President Trump, his associates, and his legal team, on the one hand, versus the reverence for a president whose family has inexplicably received millions of dollars from foreign sources and for violent protesters who have magically escaped jail time, or of crack-using, tax-dodging Biden family members.  Consider the brazenness and audacity of this administration, including its DOJ, over the last several years.  Their targeted victims have purposely included some of the most credentialed, accomplished, prominent, well-connected, and well-heeled Americans, people such as cabinet members, generals, journalists, and even attorneys of those same victims.  Other victims have been ordinary folk, such as people's friends, family members, parents opposing sexualized curricula at their kids' schools, or peaceful men and women holding up signs near an abortion clinic.

Military Brass Stripped Trump of His Power as Commander-in-Chief on J6.  The Daily Mail reported yesterday that whistleblower Colonel Earl Matthews said army leaders stripped Trump of his authority as commander-in-chief on January 6. He further claimed that they plotted to block orders to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol.  He said they ignored Donald Trump's authority.  Colonel Matthews told the Daily Mail that Mark Milley, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy plotted to disobey any orders handed down by Donald Trump.  They unreasonably assumed that the president would break the law and use the National Guard to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

America's Jenga Tower of Power.  A majority of Americans believe that mail-in ballot fraud tainted the 2020 election, but most state and federal officials continue to pretend the results were aboveboard.  A majority of Americans wish to put an end to mass illegal immigration, but the Department of Homeland (in)Security continues to do nothing to protect our borders from foreign invasion.  A majority of Americans are worried about rising inflation, but the federal government continues to print and spend money and issue costly regulations.  A majority of Americans oppose widespread government surveillance programs that intrude upon their privacy, but elected officials continue to give the Intelligence Blob full access to Americans' most sensitive records and communications, in total disregard for the Constitution's protections against warrantless searches.  A majority of Americans distrust mainstream news sources, but prominent news organizations continue to push ideological propaganda at the expense of truthful and objective reporting.

Swing States Are Using Taxpayer Money To Turn Out Democrat-Leaning Young Voters.  Democrat election officials in Arizona and Nevada are using taxpayer resources to register and turn out Democrat-favorable young voters ahead of the 2024 election.  On Monday, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, announced that his office is partnering with the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge to launch the "Arizona Campus Voting Challenge."  According to an office press release, this allegedly "nonpartisan initiative" is designed to increase voter engagement among students attending accredited universities throughout the state.  Young voters (18-29) broke for Democrat House candidates over Republican ones by a nearly 2-to-1 margin during the 2022 midterms, according to estimates by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.

FTC passes a law.  The Federal Trade Commission passed a law that makes it illegal for a person to agree with his employer not to compete against them when he leaves.  Usually compensation is involved.  These are called noncompete agreements — a contract between two private parties.  Why this is any of the government's business is beyond my powers of comprehension.  The constitutionality of this ban also escapes me.  Congress should make law — not a group of befuddled bureaucrats and a panel of politically appointed pinheads.

Spies are the foundation of the American police state.  Why does any country — particularly a democratic one — require 18 different intelligence agencies?  It doesn't, of course, unless these cells of fetid political surveillance are also working with the growing list of armed security forces in America to rob people of their democratic rights and freedoms.  Nazi Germany only had two intel agencies:  the Abwehr, which was the state's military intelligence arm and the notorious Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, which was the Nazi party's own intelligence agency attached to the SS and under the command of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most evil and ambitious men in the Third Reich.  Yet the U.S. actually brags about having so many intelligence groups that most Americans have lost count.

Does the CIA Run America?  We've all surely had dark thoughts that the CIA is really running the United States, including many media venues.  Maybe that's been true for decades and we just didn't know it.  If so, let's just say that it would explain a tremendous amount of what has otherwise been clouded in secrecy.  How would this be possible?  Knowledge is power while secret knowledge is full control.  Even fake knowledge means power and control, such as we found out in the phony Russiagate investigation early in Trump's term.  They hounded the new administration for years under a completely fake scenario in which Russia somehow got Donald Trump elected.  Yes, that was an intelligence operation all along, one directly designed to overthrow an election, a "color revolution" on our own soil.  How dare an agency not elected by the people, and evading oversight and public accountability, put itself ahead of the Constitution and the rule of law?  It's been going on for many decades as the agencies have gained ever more power, even to the point of forcing a full lockdown of America and even the world under false pretense.

Sharyl Attkisson Confirms Congress Controlled by Feds.  Ever wonder why our supposed Representatives never actually represent us?  Veteran journalist Sharyl Attkisson shares what she's been told about how members of Congress are bribed and blackmailed by federal agents, the same kind of people who plotted to put kiddie porn on her husband's computer when they were threatened by her reporting.  [Video clip]

No, the government is not to be trusted.  Christopher Rufo's book: "America's Cultural Revolution," devotes a significant amount of discussion to how those who work in government, at all levels, "...fortify power and privilege while waging grievous harm which eventually becomes the pretext for domination."  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Sen. Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren shoved down America's throat, expanded its demands and power far beyond the benign intent upon its claimed initial language.  It went from a legislative squeak to an omnipotent roar[.]  And what of the IRS, the FBI, the Department of Education, etc?  I could go on and on as every one of these benign well-intended agencies have morphed into abusive ones, which at times, have threatened our freedoms and even our Bill of Rights.  If you do not believe me, ask FISA judges how they were exploited by the FBI.  No, if you're here from the government, you are not here to help me.  Lamentably, you are not to be trusted.  You can be terribly harmful and often are.

The DMV as an Allegory of American Decadence.  I suppose that nearly every adult (I'll come back to that "nearly") has his own DMV story.  The endless lines, the surly clerks, the insufferable atmosphere of bureaucratic imperiousness. [...] I can think of plenty of people who are going to have trouble coming up with the requisite slate of verification when it comes time to review their driver's license.  Do you know anyone over the age of about 20 who still has his Social Security card?  So how about the stay-at-home mom who doesn't have her Social Security card and also doesn't have a W2 or 1009 form?  What then?  Another thing.  While I was frittering away that summer morning at the DMV, I wondered about all those important people in Washington whom our tax dollars support.  Do you suppose that Joe or Jill — er, Dr. Jill — Biden stands in line to get his or her license renewed?  How about your congressman or senator?  How about other members of the nomenklatura that run the country, that is, that run your life (which is not quite the same thing as running the country)?  Do you suppose that a Supreme Court justice, say, or a cabinet member, or a senior aide to any member of the political elite, do you suppose any of them wait in line for hours and then find they are insufficiently credentialed to deserve a "verified" license?

The Editor says...
Politicians, cabinet secretaries, billionaires, and judges (above a certain level) don't need a license to drive, because somebody else drives for them.  They aren't bothered by the high price of gasoline or groceries because someone else buys those things for them.

'Conspiracy Theories' Aren't Theoretical Anymore.  There is nothing demented or delusional about believing our government would willingly facilitate the murder of a political threat.  The actions of the DoJ in conjunction with the legislation proposed by the Democrats makes that perfectly clear.  The plot to place Donald Trump at the tender mercies of a prison's "genpop" is not the only evidence of government criminal conspiracy.  The ATF really did traffic guns to Mexican drug cartels to promote gun-control legislation.  One federal agent and countless civilians were killed with those guns.  The DoJ sought to remove a duly elected President — even to the point of the Deputy Attorney General offering to "wear a wire" to record conversations with the President (with cabinet support).  The FBI really did set up some useful idiots to advanced their domestic terrorist narrative (the Governor Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping).  It was a classic entrapment scheme in which federal assets planned the crime, and hapless stooges stepped in the trap.  All this is changing our worldview and is causing us to observe our government with a new level of skepticism.

James O'Keefe to Drop Bombshell Undercover Video Exposing Intel Officials.  James O'Keefe on Saturday said O'Keefe Media Group (OMG) will be publishing undercover video of intel officials.  "If I publish the video @OKeefeMedia has of these intel guys, you all better have my back," James O'Keefe said on X.  [Tweet]  Earlier Saturday James O'Keefe said elected officials are "afraid" of the intel community because they can use personal stuff as blackmail.  "It's time to expose the intel community on video," O'Keefe said.  "Elected officials are afraid of them because they could use personal stuff as blackmail."  "Do not run for office unless you're willing to lay down your life for your country.  Do not run if fear is in your vocabulary," he added.  [Tweet]

Biden Weaponizes the Federal Government for His Own Reelection Campaign.  President Joe Biden has taken every part of the federal government and transformed it into his personal reelection machine, creating a hyper-partisan election apparatus out of supposedly neutral federal agencies.  And American taxpayers pay for all of it.  [Advertisement]  Just since the beginning of April, several explosive revelations have surfaced that show the extent to which Joe Biden has weaponized the federal government in election matters.  This should come as no surprise, as the administration continues to unfairly weaponize the federal courts against January 6 defendants, and state and federal courts maliciously prosecute Donald Trump, his rival in the presidential election.  [Advertisement]  The plan is as brazen as it is comprehensive, proving the Biden administration doesn't want a fair election in 2024.  [Advertisement]  A non-governmental agency (NGO) that receives taxpayer money — and also lobbies the federal government — encourages illegal immigrants to vote for Biden once they get established in the United States.

King Deep State Sits on a Stolen Throne.  Our First Amendment forbids Congress from restricting an individual's free speech, but that hasn't stopped King Deep State from conspiring with Big Tech to silence every voice deemed offensive to the realm.  Our Fourth Amendment forbids nosy officials from poking around in Americans' private records and communications without first securing particularized warrants establishing probable cause that a crime has been committed, but that hasn't stopped King Deep State from rummaging through our emails, text messages, and bank statements or eavesdropping on our intimate phone conversations in the name of "national security."  Our Second Amendment forbids the government from infringing the people's right to keep and bear arms, but that hasn't stopped King Deep State from restricting gun purchases, tracking gun owners, and disarming those he doesn't like.

Dysfunctional and Dangerous.  The government wants control over the people, because the people would not allow them to do what they are doing right now.  Some 70% of the people want to close the border.  Some 60% believe the 2020 election was problematic.  Another 70% believe that the government should be cutting spending to stave off inflation.  If this were a democracy, those three issues would be the sole focus of the government.  What is the focus of the U.S. Government?  Funding for Ukraine, funding for Israel.  Why?  To secure their borders.  Even while the whole government praises "democracy" they have no intention of doing anything democratic.

NPR CEO: You Better Believe I Partnered With Gov't to Suppress 'Misinformation' About Pandemic, Elections.  I think we've discovered the qualifications that got Katherine Maher hired to run Government Radio. [...] She acknowledges that COVID-19 was a "novel virus" (true), "which by definition means we know nothing about it in real time" (also true).  Maher also admits that we were "trying to figure it out as the pandemic went along" (also very true).  And in the midst of all this uncertainty and ignorance even in the so-called expert circles, Maher's first instinct was to suppress debate and discussion in favor of the government line.  Not coincidentally, that was also the first instinct of Maher's predecessor at NPR, John Lansing.  And it was the first instinct for almost all of the national media in the US, too — to act as an arm of government to suppress debate at the very time we needed it most.  Maher, Lansing, and other media and Big Tech executives involved in this Big Brother syndicate essentially froze that ignorance in place rather than allow for debate and dissent to test the policies and declarations of bureaucrats.  Maher and others of her ilk aren't trying to inform Americans.  They're trying to trap them in ignorance and indoctrinate them in Bureauspeak.  That's not free speech.  That's fascism, definitionally, as a combine of government and centralized corporate power enforcing the whims of the ruling elite.

The Intel Agencies of Government Are Fully Weaponized.  In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.  What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system.  This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.  Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01.  DHS came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed.  When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition. [...] The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution.  Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.

Can America Survive if the Guilty Are Left Unpunished?  When I say a reckoning is necessary, I am not condoning violence.  But history has shown us that if humans don't pay a price for their crimes, violence will likely become that last resort.  I hope it never comes to that.  We as a nation are well beyond asking questions like, "Why are MAGA grannies getting busted for a peaceful 10-minute walk in the Capitol, but Antifa and BLM were allowed to burn the nation with near impunity?"  Then there was that whole censoring-Americans-on-social-media thing, when the CIA, FBI, and other governmental agencies convinced social media companies to shut down people who dared challenge the notion that COVID vaccines and masks made a difference.  We sat still as eight Trump associates were sentenced to prison (not to mention the DOJ's maniacal efforts to send Trump as well).  Yet, the Biden Crime Family still hasn't been charged despite the overwhelming evidence of bribery and influence peddling against them. [...] We sat still as eight Trump associates were sentenced to prison (not to mention the DOJ's maniacal efforts to send Trump as well).  Yet, the Biden Crime Family still hasn't been charged despite the overwhelming evidence of bribery and influence peddling against them.

Ex CIA/FBI Agent Caught On Undercover Cam Admitting They Set Up People Including Alex Jones To Take All His Money.  Gavin O'Blennis worked for the FBI, followed by Homeland Security, and now works for the CIA.  O'Blennis spoke to an undercover reporter about his employers' involvement with Alex Jones and his legal battles and that the FBI "did what [they] wanted" with him and "took his money away" and "chopped his legs off."  He later clarified that the goal was to "pretty much" bankrupt him and that although the FBI was after him "hardcore" he is no longer on their radar because he is "broke."  "We did what we wanted and took his money away.  We shut him up for a while," O'Blennis said.  [Video clip]

Democrats Slip and Accidentally Confirm the Campaign Is All About Throwing Trump in Prison.  Oops.  Democrats just said the quiet part out loud about their lawfare campaign against Donald Trump, his lawyers, associates, and former aides leading to the 2024 presidential election.  Since Democrats and their fellow travelers in the Department of "Justice" first pushed the cascade of questionable cases, the political left continues to maintain that Trump is just a bad guy who did bad things leading up to, during, and after the 2020 presidential election.  All stories, comments, and the like assume that Donald Trump has done something horrible and should be thrown in jail.  Orange Man bad.  Sure, the forces going after Trump worked with the Biden Administration to coordinate at least some of these cases, but these cases had to take jerry-rigged convolutions to get us to where we are right now.

Biden Admin Issues Rule To Thwart Trump Ability To Fire Biden Executive Branch Holdovers If He Wins.  One of the things that frustrated me about Trump's (first?) term was his seeming complete indifference to #TheResistance that manifested before he even took office.  Unelected bureaucrats working in the ridiculously invasive executive branch's many agencies, publicly declared war on him, and he ... well, he did nothing.  Until the final year of his presidency when he seemed to finally take aim at the problem in his own branch of government — we can call it the deep state, the resistance, the entrenched bureaucrats who oversee far too much policy in America and who are, apparently, answerable to no one.  Not the voter, not the president.  So then-president Trump launched Schedule F in late October 2020, a new rule that would allow the sitting and duly-elected president to have a say in who ran and worked in his own (overly large, sprawling, and ridiculously intrusive) branch of the federal government.

Chanel Rion on Ashley Biden Diary Investigation:  The SDNY Is Biden's Personal Gestapo.  The Department of Injustice is playing cleanup for the Biden family of perverts, and you are paying for it.  Case in point, on April 3, 2024, the DOJ asked a Southern district of New York, Judge, to sentence a single mother of two, Aimee Harris, to 10 months in prison for having found first daughter, Ashley Biden's diary, in a Florida halfway house.  Immediately after this announcement, I noticed something strange.  The news media, dutifully parroted the DOJ's exact language from their press release, describing the situation and labeling the woman who found the diary as the Diary Thief, describing it as a "diary thief", referring to it as "a stolen diary."  To be clear, this is not a story about some perverted diary of another drug addict Biden family member.  This is a much bigger and more disturbing trend.  The DOJ and the Southern District of New York have this habit of it, of going after the people who expose the crimes, not the people who commit them.

Vectoring Dangerously.  [Scroll down]  While all that is churning things up, the next round of Trump trials are set to kick off in Alvin Bragg's New York and Fani Willis's Fulton County (Atlanta), GA.  Both cases have publicly wrecked themselves.  In the New York case, you have the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, Loren Merchan, 37, a Democratic Party consultant who has multi-million-dollar contracts with Rep. Adam Schiff, the nation's leading RussiaGate hoaxer, and working partner of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, a chief witness in the matter of a hush-money payment made to porn-star Stormy Daniels (hush money, you might note, not being illegal).  Any political motivation to see in that cast of characters?  And that is apart from the sheer bullshit nature of the case, as packaged for Mr. Bragg by US Attorney Matthew Colangelo, who was swapped out of the Main DOJ HQ in Blobville to the office of Soros-connected DA Bragg in Manhattan specifically to engineer a political prosecution.

Emergencies: on the misuse of government powers.  We find that the more advantages emergency constitutions confer to the executive, the higher the number of people killed as a consequence of a natural disaster, controlling for its severity.  As this is an unexpected result, we discuss a number of potential explanations, the most plausible being that governments use natural disasters as a pretext to enhance their power.  Furthermore, the easier it is to call a state of emergency, the larger the negative effects on basic human rights.  Interestingly, presidential democracies are better able to cope with natural disasters than parliamentary ones in terms of lives saved, whereas autocracies do significantly worse in the sense that empowerment rights seriously suffer in the aftermath of a disaster.

Partisan Intelligence Activism Will Reemerge in 2024.  U.S. intelligence personnel likely will resume the activism they prominently displayed in 2016-2021 as the presidential campaign season deepens.  They then were driven by ideology and special interests, which now are stronger.  Many of the former senior intelligence officers then critical of Donald Trump have badly damaged their credibility, so new politicizers with new messages may emerge, especially after July, when Trump presumably will be formally renominated.  The agencies themselves, as matters of policy, will not be activist.  The culprits will be former intelligence officers with deeply partisan views, who have few restrictions on their public activities, and current employees who leak.  Agency leaders do not directly control these activities, but some past and current leaders established policies that continue to strongly encourage tendencies toward political activism.

DOJ engaged in conflicts of interest, helping Hunter Biden defense, whistleblower's attorney claims.  An attorney for one of the two IRS whistleblowers who alleged a Justice Department cover-up in the tax investigation of Hunter Biden accused Attorney General Merrick Garland Thursday of allowing conflicts of interests that have led to alleged retaliation against his clients — and prosecutors aiding the president's son in criminal cases.  In a letter obtained by The [New York] Post, Empower Oversight president Tristan Leavitt demanded Garland "put a stop" to any retaliation against the IRS agents and eliminate conflicts of interest related to cases involving the first son.  "On issues related to the whistleblowers, Department attorneys and Hunter Biden's attorneys are simply not adversarial in these cases," Leavitt said.  "They are acting as if they are on the same side."

Blue-city prosecutors and their lynch mobs.  This week, 47-year-old Kimberly Zapata learned that she may spend years in prison for exposing weaknesses in Wisconsin's election system.  Zapata was the deputy director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, and she saw a major vulnerability in the system: anyone in Wisconsin could easily obtain military absentee ballots — real ones — simply by requesting them.  And once people acquired those ballots, they could use them without satisfying the normal ID requirements.  How easy was it to get military ballots?  To get three nice new ones, Zapata merely went to the public website ("My Vote Wisconsin") and entered three phony names, three made-up Social Security numbers, and a phony mailing address.  Zapata did not need to use any special passwords or equipment.  It is obvious that Zapata wasn't trying to alter election results.

Bureaucrats Control the Show.  Bureaus and agencies administer the laws and regulations passed by Congress.  They also administer executive orders issued by the President.  They were created out of necessity.  No one man or woman can effectively oversee the daily control necessary to ensure the laws and rules are carried out.  The people that manage these departments are not elected.  They have been hired based on experience or favoritism.  They have been appointed based on nepotism or party affiliation.  In most cases the actual controlling management have been on the job for a long period of time.  They are skilled at managing and manipulating the established system as well as maintaining a protective shield against political climate change.  They know which way the wind blows.  As a result of the embedded bureaucratic structure, elected officials such as congressmen, governors, mayors, and even presidents are at the mercy of those who run and control these bureaus and agencies.

The FBI's Otherwise Illegal Activity.  [Scroll down]  The U.S. government document is entitled "The Attorney General's Guidelines on Federal Bureau of Investigation Undercover Operations."  Those guidelines importantly mention that FBI operations might involve local police or "local law enforcement agency working under the direction and control of the FBI."  Additionally, the guidelines mention that the FBI is apparently allowed to secretly own and operate businesses and corporations, make "untrue representations" of other peoples' actions, and engage "in activity having a significant effect on or constituting a significant intrusion into the legitimate operation of a Federal, state, or local governmental entity."  Does the FBI "engage in activity having a significant effect on" juries, U.S. Congress, the presidency, or the Supreme Court?  Does the FBI engage "in activity having a significant effect on or constituting a significant intrusion into the legitimate" national and local elections?  The FBI guidelines apparently also suggest employees and cooperators might "supply falsely sworn testimony or false documentation in any legal or administrative proceeding" and the FBI and others might commit "otherwise illegal activity," apparently including "violence or physical injury to individuals or a significant risk of financial loss."  Those guidelines on FBI operations seem to imply that there are many people in cities throughout America employed as secret government operatives who present themselves as everyday citizens but might actually be participating in schemes or "mitigating opportunities."

Trump's Third Act has begun.  The gears of the machine have become visible.  We can all see the FBI is rotten and the DOJ is weaponized.  We know the border is open intentionally.  We know the cartels are working with our government.  We know our elections are DESIGNED to not be auditable and there's only one reason for it.  We can see Biden is not in charge.  We know the Ukraine war was always about its energy resources and who gets to own them.  We know our rising debt is ruinous.  We know our experts are liars.  We know our pharma and food industries are poisoning us.  We know our government is racist.  We know the corporate media is essentially owned by Democrats who are controlled by intelligence entities and they are actively brainwashing the population.

Fairness for Trump?  Former President Donald Trump has just days to come up with a bond, a nearly half-billion-dollar bond, to ensure that he will pay the outrageously excessive judgment against him in the lawsuit filed by New York's Democratic attorney general, Letitia James.  Nailing Trump has been a longtime goal for James — in her campaign for state attorney general, she pledged to "bring him down."  Now, with the help of a compliant judge — in New York, Trump did not have the right to a jury trial — James is threatening to confiscate Trump's assets before he is even able to appeal the verdict against him.  It's happening because under New York law, James can force Trump to put up the whole judgment, $454 million, before he can appeal.  And if Trump doesn't produce the cash or secure a bond for the money, James can seize his assets and sell them off.  That is all before an appeals court can review the highly questionable proceeding against Trump.

What Was the CIA Doing at the January 6 Riot?  It was like old home week for the alphabet agencies at their reunion at the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.  In addition to all kinds of feds, assets, narcs, PCs, informants, and other characters from the Department of Defense, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, ATF, and the Department of Justice, you can add CIA to the party.  What were they doing there?  What a fantastic question.  Judicial Watch sued in federal court to uncover January 6 documents relating to "records and communications regarding shots being fired inside the U.S. Capitol, as well as requests for Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Special Response Team assistance on January 6, 2021."  Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch wondered what the agency, which is not allowed to operate domestically, was doing there.  ["]Why didn't the Pelosi January 6 commission, as corrupt as it was, not disclose the CIA involvement?  What were they used for?  Were they investigating foreign intelligence operations?  Were they investigating American citizens?  What else have they done related to January 6?["]  Judicial Watch received ATF documents showing that the CIA had multiple operators there that day.

Biden Now Publicly Engaging in Election Interference, 100 Percent Impossible to Deny.  President Joe Biden can attempt to deny that he has now publicly engaged in election interference, but no thinking American voter is going to buy that argument.  Of course, he was only following in the footsteps of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who in a Senate floor speech on Thursday said that it was time for new elections in Israel.  "As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me:  The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7," Schumer said, referring to the attack by Hamas that targeted and killed hundred of Israeli civilians and took hundreds more captive, according to The Hill.  "The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past," he added.

New America:  Guilty Until Further Notice.  Americans might wrongly think the law enforcement phrase "potential threat" or "risk to the public" only refers to the jihadist or gangster.  Many are probably familiar with the House of Representatives discussing how the FBI uses FBI employees and cooperators as a weapon against Americans; this was described as the FBI's weaponization of law enforcement.  What many might not know is who the FBI described as "potential" threats, or "potential domestic terrorists."  The House of Representatives reported that:  ["][T]he FBI singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists.["]

DOJ Keeps Plan Secret for Biden's Election Executive Order.  The Biden Justice Department continues to claim presidential privilege to block release of its strategic plan to turn out the vote, although at least two other federal agencies have made their plans public.  In defending a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, the Justice Department is keeping under wraps its plans to implement President Joe Biden's 2021 executive order, under which most federal agencies are required to develop a strategic plan for increasing voter participation in elections.  The plaintiff in that case, the Foundation for Government Accountability, contends that privilege claim is undermined by two federal agencies releasing their plans to implement Biden's Executive Order 14019, which he signed in March 2021.  Notably, the U.S. Trade Representative, an agency that is part of the Executive Office of the President, made its plan public through a public records request, as The Daily Signal reported last week.

Judge Rules Corporate Transparency Act Unconstitutional.  Feds Enforce It Anyway.  Show of hands:  Does anyone have a small business that survived the COVID-19 lockdowns?  How about the nation's crime spike?  Inflation?  For those of you who may still have your hands up, get ready for yet another piece of aggravating news that may or may not affect you.  It may not, but it probably will.  If you have an LLC, it most definitely will.  Without much fanfare or even notice, on January 1, 2024, the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) went into effect.  Depending on your business, you have until January 1, 2025, to file the pertinent data about your business in a Beneficial Ownership Information report with the Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCen.  The report lets the government know who owns or controls your company. [...] Are you outraged?  As the old saying goes, you ain't seen nothin' yet.  A judge has ruled that the CTA is unconstitutional.  Despite that, the government is going to go ahead and enforce it.

The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  A new book has been published entitled: "The Final Analysis:  Forensic Analysis of the JFK Autopsy X-Rays Proves Two Headshots from the Right Front and One from the Rear" by David W. Mantik M.D., Ph.D and Jerome R. Corsi Ph.D. Dr. Mantik has a PhD in physics and is an radiation oncologist.  At the heart of this book is a re-analysis of the original radiographs from JFK's autopsy.  The re-evaluation of the original forensic evidence of President John F. Kennedy Assassination using modern pathologic techniques should send shock waves through the world. [...] This book exposes how our government had to have murdered a US president in cold blood (who else could have done it?), lied to the American people about the assassination and then the USG created a massive cover-up story, which included framing an innocent man for the murder and most likely ordered his execution.  For over sixty years, our government has not only covered up this murder, they created an alternate reality of facts that have been presented as truth to the entire world.  This may be the first concrete example of psywar on the American people.  Being conducted by multiple agencies and may even be in collusion with one or more of the following US presidents.  This is truly a rogue government.

The Five FUBARs.  [#3]  A third FUBAR is the lawfare campaign of the Democratic Party and its regime in power against the citizens of this land.  This folder includes overt and obvious political prosecutions by DA's and AG's who make election promises to "go after" individuals without such niceties as probable cause.  It includes the gigantic new scaffold of inter-agency censorship and propaganda.  It includes the psychopathic struggle sessions mandated by "diversity and inclusion" policy.  It includes election-rigging directed by the likes of Marc Elias and Norm Eisen, getting states to fiddle laws on voter ID and mail-in ballots.  It includes the political protection of rogue groups ranging from looter flash-mobs to Antifa anarchists who bust up things and people and burn buildings down.  It includes state officials who peremptorily kick candidates off the ballot.  It includes a nakedly biased judiciary, and especially the use of the DC federal district court to punish people extralegally, unjustly, extravagantly, and cruelly.  In short, lawfare is the complete perversion of law, and we-the-people are entreated by reprobate officials such as Merrick Garland and Letitia James to accept it.

Democrats Promise Fraud and Insurrection.  [Scroll down]  We all know the true fight happens when they try to delay the election, or they wind up losing the election, despite all of their efforts.  If they lose, they have promised to settle it in the House of Representatives, refusing to certify the election.  The very same thing they called an insurrection.  The very mention of it should bring those charges.  In fact, were I to offer counsel to anyone running for office, I would have them say to their opponent that "Your party has promised to engage in insurrection if Trump wins, that, by your own definition, is insurrection.  It is a threat to democracy and so are you."

Obama's Third Term — Going For Four.  The United States of America has become the laughingstock of the world, with Joe Biden playing the role of our "president" in this macabre stage production put on by the Luciferian Globalists. [...] Anyone who truly thinks he won the 2020 election honestly and fairly is under the greatest of delusions.  Prior to that election, Biden himself openly stated, "We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."  And he didn't even campaign.  His "rallies" consisted of a dozen people, sitting alone in chairs placed in circles, six feet apart.  Meanwhile, his opponent had tens of thousands of people, all eager to see and hear Trump speak, wherever he went.  No — regardless of what the "fact checkers" will tell you, and regardless of our lawless "justice system," the 2020 election was absolutely and clearly rigged.  A stolen election.  And do you remember the recounts?  Republican election observers were banned from those — sheets of cardboard covering the windows while the so-called "recounts" took place.  It was all a tragic joke, yet allowed to happen... and now we have countless patriots in prison or dead because they simply took part in a "redress of grievances" on January 6... held for months and years without charges; forced into fake plea deals; driven to suicide by the unrelenting persecution of the Feds — just for being patriots who believe in the rule of law.

Biden Regime Ratchets Up Its Authoritarianism With Arrest Of Blaze Investigative Reporter.  Democrats' targeting of political opponents entered its next phase Friday, when the FBI arrested Blaze Media investigative reporter Steve Baker over covering the Jan. 6, 2021, demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol.  "This is the most humiliated I've ever been in my life," Baker told independent reporter Breanna Morello following his release.  My arrest "is for things I said. ... That's what they're after; they're [trying] to suppress our speech."  As The Federalist reported, federal authorities informed Baker and his legal team on Tuesday of a signed warrant for his arrest and instructed him to self-surrender for "alleged J6 crimes" in Dallas, Texas, on Friday morning.  Baker has been at the forefront of reporting on the more questionable aspects of the Jan. 6 demonstrations.  While told he was being charged with "non-violent misdemeanors," federal authorities declined to disclose to Baker or his lawyers what specific crimes underlie the arrest.  According to Blaze News, the feds refused to reveal the charges ahead of Friday's arrest because "they believe[d] Baker [would] post them on social media."  The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees individuals accused of a crime a right to "be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation."

New York Opens a Back Door to Communism.  During her campaign, New York attorney general Letitia James made the Lavrentiy Beria pledge to find a crime and "get Donald Trump."  It turns out she's a woman of her word.  James used a 1956 law (Section 63[12] of New York's Executive Law) to sue Donald Trump.  The law was created to enable the state to sue companies for profiting from fraudulent business practices.  Until now, it has never been used where there are no damages (i.e., nobody was hurt).  But as we know, legal traditions are expendable if they get in the way of a leftist's objectives. [...] As businesses flee New York, will the standard of living in the state improve or decline?  As the business climate deteriorates, will the appetite for the state taking of assets increase or be sated?  As property and capital are diverted to government consumption rather than wealth generation, what will New York look like in 50 years?

Fox News [is] rejecting WH pressure to change reporting on alleged Biden family corruption.  Fox News is rejecting pressure from the White House to retract stories about alleged Biden family corruption in the aftermath of the FBI's arrest of a former informant.  In a letter from Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House, the regime demanded that the conservative news network take down its reporting about Alexander Smirnov's allegations that then-Vice President Joe Biden was involved in a foreign bribery scheme with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings which employed his son Hunter in a highly paid position despite his lack of industry experience.  Smirnov, the source identified in the FD-1023 document that has been a component of House Republicans' probe into the president and his family, was indicted by special counsel David Weiss last month and has subsequently been arrested, a conveniently timed development that has led to Biden's allies claiming that the president has been cleared of wrongdoing.

My Friend Steve Baker Was Arrested.  As many of you know by now, The Blaze's journalist Steve Baker was arrested yesterday by the FBI, put in handcuffs, leg irons, and paraded before a magistrate who read off charges of ... wait for it ... four misdemeanors.  Four [...] misdemeanors.  Charges, not convictions, mind you.  Nonetheless:  Leg irons.  Handcuffs.  Hours in a jail cell.  The message is clear: you dare go against the government narrative, this could be you. [...] He was ordered to show up in a tee shirt, shorts and flip-flops.  Baker instead went FULL White Collar[.] [...] For the record, Baker was only hired by The Blaze months ago, yet has rapidly become the star of the platform due to his groundbreaking January 6-related reporting, and his striking command of the facts and meticulous on air persona.  He was featured wall-to-wall on the network today.  Glenn Beck even came out late in the afternoon, unusual for a Friday, to issue a scathing statement on the platform and social media in support of his new star quarterback.

Is Trump's Mega-Fine Unconstitutional?  Although the Eighth Amendment is not explicitly limited to criminal cases, its three subjects — bail, fines and punishments — all relate generally to criminal cases.  Trump's fine was imposed in what was denominated a civil case.  But it was not a traditional civil case between private parties, because no private parties were allegedly damaged by Trump.  It was a case brought by the State of New York, which would receive the fine.  Moreover, the fine was intended to deter the kind of conduct of which Trump was accused.  These factors make the fine seem closer to the usual attributes of a public criminal case than of a private civil case.  A functional analysis of the fine in this case could well conclude that it is really criminal in nature and should be covered by the Eighth Amendment.  Trump's lawyers will certainly argue at this point, though they are unlikely to succeed on the initial appeal.  They will then almost certainly seek certiorari, a review by the Supreme Court of the United States, by alleging a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The Pig Trap.  [Scroll down]  I can't help but think about the Founders, and what they would think about current events and the state of the republic they left to their heirs. [...] What would they think of the government reading, and oftentimes copying and warehousing, every single letter of their correspondence, their diaries, their conversations, their most private and intimate of communications?  What would they think of government agents standing on rooftops and street corners, monitoring and documenting the comings and goings of every citizen every day of his life, whom they speak with and associate with, and what they purchase and from whom?  What would they think about their government spying on journalists, town criers, and pamphleteers, and swearing out false oaths to judges to have them surveilled?  What would they think about government tax agents given specific orders to harass, intimidate, penalize, and obstruct any person who speaks for peaceful, legislative reform of the government or is critical of the government, even demanding that they document the content of their prayers?

With The Trump Verdict, Is New York City Bringing Down Its Financial House?  I feel sorry for President Trump, his family, his colleagues and coworkers, and all who depend on his various enterprises for their livelihood.  The seven-count New York City fraud lawsuit has been a years-long mess.  But The City may well have brought about its own demise in its blinkered pursuit of one man. [...] I would hazard a guess that Attorney General Leticia James and Judge Arthur Engoron have done more to drive away investors, thus damaging NYC's reputation as one of the world's preeminent financial centers, than all the crooked businessmen in the City's history.  They are obviously ignorant of Econ 101, which is that business draws business.  Trump has been a mighty draw.  His persecution is now an even mightier red flag.  The City needs the Trump businesses.  Unless this travesty can be righted, it is not apparent that Trump needs the City.

Engoron's decision against Trump amounts to an unconstitutional bill of attainder.  Unless the people I'm talking to are lawyers or professional historians, I've discovered that mentioning the words "bill of attainder" receives, at best, blank looks and, at worst, an irritated request for more information, typically of the form "what [...] is that?"  Even lawyers often get a distant look as they struggle to remember the details of a concept that dates back to the 14th century.  Yet so common was the bill of attainder in British history in pre-modern times that it was a fairly normal way of dealing with the rebellious — or, indeed, just those whom the authorities found uncongenial.  And so much did the Founding Fathers dislike its use that they deemed it important enough to have its own mention in the Constitution, which expressly forbids it under Article I, Section 9, Clause 3: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."  But what is this strange creature?

Politicized Prosecutions Are A Warning Shot Across The Bow For All Americans.  New York Gov. Kathy Hochul knows she has spooked her state's business community.  That's why she went on a talk show last week to calm their very legitimate fears that they would be next.  If former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted and fined hundreds of millions of dollars for a common business practice, who is safe?  Hochul said New Yorkers are generally "honest people, and they're not trying to hide their assets and they're following the rules... This judge determined that Donald Trump did not follow the rules."  Hence the $355 million fine levied by the court.  But the truth is Trump engaged in a common business practice for developers.  As "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary noted in a Fox News interview, "Forget about Trump, every single real estate developer everywhere on Earth does this.  They always talk about their asset being worth a lot, and the bank says no.  That's just the way it is."  The broader effect of such politicized prosecutions is clear — Americans are increasingly convinced we live in a nation with a two-tiered justice system.

If A President Can Have His Money And Property Snatched By His Political Opposition, This Isn't A Free Country.  Voters in a few months are supposed to cast a ballot for their preferred presidential candidate.  Meanwhile, we just watched one of our major political parties attempt to literally bankrupt the likely nominee of the other, and seize his property.  Whatever you want to say of America anymore, it can't possibly be called free and our elections aren't anything close to fair.  A Democrat judge linked up with a Democrat district attorney in New York last week, ruling that Donald Trump, who earned more votes in 2020 than any sitting president in history, pay the city about half a billion dollars in penalties and fines, plus forego his right to conduct business or borrow money in the entire state.  The pretext for the obscenity is that Trump in his years as a real estate developer routinely defrauded lenders by inflating the value of his assets, a hideous crime that resulted in his victims' insolvency and buried by insurmountable debt.  Wait, that's not right.  Let me check my notes.  Sorry, what actually happened is that the banks who took the risk of financing Trump's ventures raked in fistfulls of profits and continued chasing him to continue their lucrative partnerships.  In other words, the parties "wronged" by Trump got richer.  With each passing day, nearly $100,000 in interest is tacked onto the sentence and the D.A., Letitia "peek-a-boo" James (as Trump calls her for hilarious yet unknown reasons), has gone so far as to threaten state seizure of the former president's marquee real estate properties should he fail to pay the sum.

Blue Laws for Red Citizens.  There are eerie commonalities in all these five court cases involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal special counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.  One, they are either unapologetically left-wing or associated with liberal causes.  They filed their legal writs in big-city, left-wing America — Atlanta, New York, Washington — where liberal judges and jury pools predominate in a manner not characteristic of the country at large.  Two, they are overtly political.  Bragg, James, and Willis have either campaigned for office or raised campaign funds by promising to get or even destroy Donald Trump.  Carroll's suit was funded by left-wing billionaire Reid Hoffman.  Smith sued to rush his court schedule in hopes of putting Trump on trial before the November election.  Three, there would not be any of these cases had Donald Trump not run for the presidency or not been a conservative.

USDA Colludes With Left-Wing Group to Turn Out Voters Under Biden Order, Documents Reveal.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture is working with a left-wing advocacy group to boost voter turnout as part of President Joe Biden's executive order directing federal agencies to get involved in elections.  The USDA worked directly with Demos, a New York-based group that helped draft Biden's Executive Order 14019, according to records obtained by The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project.  Biden signed his order on agencies and voter registration in March 2021.  On Aug. 9, 2021, Demos' Adam Lioz emailed USDA officials, many in the office of Secretary Tom Vilsack, under the subject line: "Demos Meeting on Voting Rights EO."

The Military Junta Called "The Democracy".  On Saturday night I watched Tucker Carlson's interview with Michael Benz, the link sent to me by a reader, and found out that I have, like many others, been a warrior against a military junta that has taken over our government. [...] I have, for a long time, tried to make the distinction to my readers that being an American was different from being a citizen of the United States of America.  The land is America, the governing body is the United States.  The interview detailed a timeline of events that have led to a military coup waged by a specific group of actors in the intelligence community (IC) and the DOD, placing our destinies and the destiny of America in the hands of a greater international community including the WEF and the UN with sympathetic actors in the EU for assistance.  When these compromised politicians speak of "the democracy" they are speaking of this cabal who through manipulation of social media are able to inspire or put down color revolutions in any nation in the world and after 2016, Trump's election, they began to utilize those same means of overthrowing governments here in the United States and have effectively altered the outcome of elections, both here and abroad.  A lot of people had to know of this cabal or be threatened by it in order for NONE of the evidence of election interference to be heard in court, or given any credibility.

Our Non-Representative Congress.  The voting numbers of the Congress show that we no longer have a representative democracy.  Nor are we Republicans and Democrats.  We are Nationalists and Globalists.  Based on their voting, the Globalist Party consists of 69 percent of the Senate and 65 percent of the House.  Constituents, however, voted for 49 percent of the Senate and 51 percent of the House.  Had their representatives voted as their constituents wanted, Biden policies would have been stopped.  The fact that these policies have not been stopped has not only disappointed but angered an increasing number of legitimate voters.  Why do these elected officials betray their constituents?  The answer lies in money.  Voters for senators and representatives all come from a particular state.  However, on average, in-state contributions to House members amount to 60 percent of their totals and out-of-state contributions amount to 40 percent.  In the Senate, on average, in-state contributions are 34 percent and out-of-state contributions are 66 percent.

The End of Democracy: "What I'm Describing is Military Rule".  If you wish to understand how democracy ended in the United States and the European Union, please watch this interview with Tucker Carlson and Mike Benz.  It is full of the most stunning revelations that I have heard in a very long time. [...] Honestly, it is critical that this video be seen by as many people as possible.  So, please share this video interview and transcript. [...] [W]hat Mike Benz is describing is functionally a silent coup by the US Military and the Deep State.  And yes, Barack Obama's fingerprints are all over this.

Federal Reserve records massive losses, makes up fictitious value called 'deferred assets' to compensate.  Maybe the problem with all of the government can be summarized by what the Federal Reserve is doing.  The Federal Reserve lost $114.3 billion in 2023 and doesn't seem to care.  Maybe that is why the federal government has run up $34 trillion in debt, while they pretend government programs are paid for.  They don't care.  They can always print more money.  So what does the Federal Reserve do on its books when it has this massive loss?  It just books a fictitious asset and fictitious equity.  It cooks the books.  It has no justification to claim it has money coming but does it anyway.  It just assumes it will make money in the future.  It certainly is not based on generally accepted accounting principles.  How many other fictitious assets are on the books at the Federal Reserve or other government agencies to intentionally mislead the public?  If a company were to book a fictitious asset to pretend they had more equity than they do, they would be charged with fraud.

What Trump's 'Retribution' Really Means.  Joe Biden has presided over a blatant, unconstitutionally weaponized government.  His former (and likely current) boss, Barack Hussein Obama, began this tactic of American politicking by allowing his FBI to spy on an incoming president, which Hillary Clinton and her campaign masterminded.  Nancy Pelosi willfully failed to secure proper security measures in the lead up to January 6, prioritizing optics instead, which has led to the unconstitutional denial of due process for many Americans.  This was followed by an obviously biased January 6th Select Committee, which was recently revealed to have operated in a less than ethical manner.  When you consider all of this, and too much more to mention, it is no surprise that they are hammering the retribution talking point, trying to convince the America that any instance of them finally being held accountable for their own conduct would undoubtedly be a product of a dictatorial regime.  The irony.

The Corrupt Republican Democrat 'Uni-Party' is Implementing Cloward-Piven Communism.  The intentional overload by the communists in regards to the social safety nets set up in the past by local, state and the federal government in states like New York and California is now inflicting catastrophic damage on these once prosperous free market economies.  The rampant approved illegal drug use by local and state governments, the acceptance of laziness, free unconstitutional handouts to illegal immigrants using tax payer dollars and the economic destruction forced upon citizens who can no longer afford rent and the basic needs for day to day living is an intentional attack on our free market capitalist economy.  The Communist Democrat/Republican Uni-Party are complying with the Cloward-Piven strategy to destroy our nation from within.  [Video clip]  They are Intentionally overloading the welfare system and inflicting economic pressure via out of control inflation which is pushing the middle class into poverty.  These unconstitutional economic policies are forcing Americans onto government dependence which is an attempt to bankrupt our country.

Joe Biden eyes emissions crackdowns, media warns he is 'ignoring industry warnings' of financial collapse.  Today, Joe Biden is cracking down on manufacturing, but I bet he doesn't have the scientific data to give credibility to the new policies, but he doesn't care.  He is bending over for the green pushers. [...] I bet they also can't come up with scientific data that shows that CO2, a clean, non-polluting gas, at 420 PPM in the atmosphere, is any more dangerous than it was in the late 1800s, at 280 PPM. It's what makes plants and trees grow, and that is good.  Yet, we are spending massive amounts of money burying carbon.  There certainly is no data that shows that the 50% rise in CO2 over the last 150 years has anything to do with temperatures since they have risen and fallen for periods of time while CO2 was rising.  Last week he was cracking down on natural gas, which is a very clean form of energy.  The push for electric cars will also not change the climate, but it will surely make the poor and middle classes poorer and more restricted.  Something everyone should notice about all these regulations is that Biden never goes through Congress to inflict on America his radical agenda; the legislative process of the founding fathers is just too cumbersome for Biden.  The executive branch is also trying to enact a new natural gas tax, even though the Constitution says only the legislative branch can impose taxes.

CVFC: A Secret Illegal Immigrant Housing Operation to Populate The US.  The United Nations has been funding and coordinating the complex international trafficking operation of millions of Illegal Immigrants arriving in South America, and traveling north thru the Darien Gap, then thru Mexico, and finally to the United States.  Barrack Hussein Obama has been supporting the UN coordinated invasion of the US; the invasion has effectively eliminated the security of the US Constitutional Republic.  Illegal Aliens invading the United States are replacing the 300,000 of America's youth murdered over the last three years by smuggled Communist Chinese Fentanyl from Mexico, and the 1.1 million Americans who have died from the Covid experimental shots.  The Illegal Immigration Housing Plan is being coordinated by Barack Hussein Obama, and the communist Democrats.  It is designed to "permanently" change the demographics of the United States forever.  The Illegal Immigration Housing Plan is designed to eliminate the Patriotic character of the US Constitutional Republic in major cities and replace voting American Citizen in those cities with Illegal Aliens who have absolutely no loyalty to the United States; they in fact are hostile toward the United States and will be involved in the overthrow of the government of the United States.  In 2023 Fiscal Year, over 3 million Illegal Aliens from 161 countries walked into the US and were released into the US interior.  Customs and Border Protection stated that in the same Fiscal Year, 564 Terrorists listed on the FBI Terror Watch List were captured at both the Southern and Northern Borders.

Hell Must Be Empty.  Forget "two-tiered justice."  This is just plain old evil disguised as politics.  Only in a nation under attack from demonic forces would J6 political hostages be imprisoned for exercising their First Amendment rights at the U.S. Capitol when a congressional staffer can make gay porn videos in a Senate hearing room without any risk of ever being charged for a crime.  Only in a nation suffering from the widespread proliferation of evil would the Department of (in)Justice seek decades-long prison sentences for peacefully protesting Americans who dare to speak out against abortion, while federal agents routinely look the other way as "unknown assailants" vandalize and firebomb the buildings of Christian churches, pro-life organizations, and politically conservative groups.  Only in a nation whose government chooses to embrace evil and reject godliness could a Christian veteran be charged for the "hate crime" of destroying a demonic shrine celebrating Satan.  When adherence to moral conscience is criminalized and the protection of flagrant sin becomes government's chief concern, there can be no doubt that evil has risen from the shadows and seized control of the State.

Dr. David Martin:  Yes, We Are Being Distracted By Design.  I have appreciated quite a bit of the exposing that Dr. David Martin has done going behind the scenes during the CONvid-1984.  In a recent interview, he brought up the subject of distractions and how they are keeping the people looking anywhere and everywhere except where the crime occurred.  While I can see his point, the issue of 5G, for instance, comes up right off the bat and the difference that I see is that while the Department of Defense sold the frequency to others, the reality is that it was not used on the public.  Yes, it's been around for a while, but never in a major rollout to consumers.  Martin also points out that there have been a number of distractions, all by design, to keep us looking and not bringing forth justice.

Oregon GOP state senators who staged walkout over abortion can't run for reelection, high court says.  The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that 10 Republican state senators are ineligible to run for reelection after they participated in a quorum-denying walkout for six weeks last year to stall legislation on abortion, transgender treatments and firearms.  The high court decided in favor of Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, who had disqualified the senators from running for office again after voters approved a measure in 2022 to amend the state constitution to ban lawmakers with more than 10 unexcused absences from running again.  The measure to prevent walkouts passed after GOP lawmakers staged other walkouts from the Legislature in 2019, 2020 and 2021.  Five of the 10 Republican state senators, Tim Knopp, Daniel Bonham, Suzanne Weber, Dennis Linthicum and Lynn Findle, had filed a lawsuit against the secretary of state over the decision.

Oregon Supreme Court Blocks 10 Republicans From Running for Reelection.  Ten Republican senators in Oregon cannot run for reelection, the state's top court ruled on Feb. 1.  The court found that the senators are banned from running for reelection under a constitutional amendment approved in 2022.  The amendment, Ballot Measure 113, states that lawmakers who miss at least 10 legislative days without an excuse cannot seek reelection.  The ruling upheld a decision from Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, a Democrat.  Ms. Griffin-Valade said in 2023 that the senators, under the measure, could not try for another term.

The Editor says...
Why not let the voters decide who can have another term in office?

Does Quebec Have A Canadian Version Of The Bastille To House Justin Trudeau?  Canada's Boy Prime Minister broke that country's highest law when he applied the Emergency Powers Act to crack down on truckers' Freedom Convoy to protest his authoritarian pandemic policies.  He also committed grand larceny when he seized protestors' bank accounts.  Why is he not on trial for criminal and civil offenses?  In a "landmark" ruling last week, a federal court judge ruled that Justin Trudeau's "government unconstitutionally and unjustifiably invoked the Emergencies Act in response to ongoing Freedom Convoy blockades" two years ago, the National Post reports.  Justice Richard Mosley also noted that the invoking of the act "does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency, and intelligibility."

The FBI must be wiped clean, or wiped out, on Day One of the next Repubican administration.  Should Donald Trump become president in 2024 and the acts to make major changes within the federal executive bureaucracy, cleaning house from top to bottom with major firings and layoffs (something he should have done in his first administration and failed to do), without question the first agency he must attack mercilessly is the FBI.  There are numerous documented examples in the past decade where the FBI has been weaponized against conservatives and Republicans, investigating, harassing, and even arresting people because they held beliefs that opposed the agenda of the Democratic Party.  In some cases the individuals attacked were simply religious Christians who opposed abortion.  In other cases the victims were ordinary Americans who simply made public their support of Trump.  Nor were just everyday Americans attacked.  The FBI has arrested Republican candidates for office.  Its officials have altered evidence to justify illegal seach warrants against Republicans.  Its management also targeted and framed Trump officials it did not like.  Officials there also abused the FISA court, submitting error-filled applications that were used to get warrants to spy on Americans.  It redacted information to hide its misbehavior, claiming dishonestly that the redactions were for national security reasons.  This list is only a very small selection of the many such stories reported in the past decade.

Canada's elite colluded against the Freedom Convoy truckers.  Last week, Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley found that the Canadian government overstepped legal bounds in going after the truckers, writing, "I conclude that there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable."  It's worse than that.  Recent independent journalism has demonstrated this "unreasonable" decision wasn't simply an honest mistake.  It was the product of a deliberate campaign of deception and denigration the government organized with help from its media allies.  Leaks, often misleading, characterized the truckers as extremists.  Media reported these, and nonprofit groups repeated the message.  The government-funded nongovernmental organization (got that?) the Canadian Anti-Hate Network identified the feds' opposition as extremists and possible terrorists, which the government then used as "independent" support for its actions.  None of this should come as a surprise.  Here in the United States we've seen a similar phenomenon.  And European governments have been rolling out a similar script to deal with those who complain about unrestricted immigration and farmers' protests against "green" policies designed to shut them down.

Breaking The Iron Triangle of Elite Hate.  With the decision, handed down by a federal judge, that Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act illegally, to end the truckers' protest in Ottawa and at border crossings in Ontario and Alberta, Canada's ruling elite has given up.  They cannot continue the fiction any longer.  To illustrate how ridiculous Canada's public life is, the findings by the RCMP and government were entirely driven by a government-funded Non-Governmental Organization, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, or CAHN.  The group was used in a perfect illustration of the Iron Triangle of government and bureaucratic action.  The government funds an anti-hate group, which immediately identifies opposition to the government, labels it as hate, feeds it to the police which proceeds to investigate.  The astroturfed outfit accused a podcaster of being a "white supremacist" and an "accelerationist."  The RCMP then provided CAHN's "evidence" to legislators who then fed it to the subsidized media.

Why is no one wondering how the Trump trials have such idiotic jurors?  [Scroll down]  A jury consultant's job is to research, as closely as possible, each prospective juror by any means necessary so that the defense can select the persons who may be most disposed to find their client not guilty.  Of course, prosecutors hire jury consultants as well to determine who among the pool will be likely to find the person on trial guilty.  On its face, this seems to be an obviously unethical practice; depending on who got the most jurors of their choosing is likely to win.  How can this be legal, one might ask.  It probably should not be, but one thing is clear:  Juries are rarely a "jury of one's peers" anymore.  They are carefully and deceptively chosen.  We can be certain that jury consultants were hired to select the people who would sit in judgment of President Trump for each of the numerous trials to which he has been so unfairly subjected.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like 1776.  After decades of unconstitutional encroachment on the Rights of both American citizens and individual states, this true Constitutional crisis has now come to a head at the Texas border; where the Biden administration is actively sabotaging the state of Texas' effort to protect its own border from an invasion sanctioned and facilitated by the federal government.  The escalating conflict between Texas Governor Abbott and President Biden is a manifestation and microcosm of a larger war brewing between a lawless and unconstitutional federal government and the American people.  The Biden regime, in particular, has been completely unaccountable.  But their arrogance and underestimation of the will of the American people will hopefully lead to their downfall.  With the aid of a symbiotic and propagandistic media machine, this Administration and the federal government at large commit crimes with impunity.  Governor Abbott's battle is the American people's battle.  His stance against the Biden Administration is cheered by tens of millions of Americans — and thus far a coalition of 24 Republican Governors who wish, and even demand, that the federal government be put in its place.  All who support Texas Governor Abbott are hopeful the state of Texas and Abbott can do what they themselves have believed to be beyond their own powers: taking on the federal Government.

You Can't Defend 'Democracy' And The Administrative State.  The government shows up at your business and demands you pay the salaries of the regulators who lord over you.  If you refuse, you'll be ruined.  You have little recourse.  You've never even voted on the policy because no law implementing it exists.  Bureaucrats in D.C. cooked up the idea, and a political appointee signed off on it.  That's what Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, a case brought by New England fishermen against Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, is all about.  It may finally end or weaken Chevron deference, which refers to a 1984 decision that inadvertently empowered the administrative state to take wide-ranging, illiberal powers over American economic life.  I mean, the case of the fishermen is basically a modern reenactment of "taxation without representation."

Court Declares Justin Trudeau's Sweeping Actions To Suppress Trucker Protests Were Illegal.  A federal court in Canada has ruled that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's use of the Emergencies Act against protesters in 2022 was unconstitutional, according to a judicial review released on Tuesday.  Trudeau utilized the Emergencies Act to stop truckers from protesting against the Canadian government's COVID-19 lockdown restrictions and vaccine mandates.  Trudeau's use of the act was not legal and "not justified," Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley wrote in the decision, according to the Canadian Constitutional Foundation (CCF).  "I conclude there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable," Mosley wrote in his decision.  "The decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility — and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration."

Americans Are Fighting For Control Of Federal Powers That Shouldn't Exist.  It's no secret that politics in the United States is growing increasingly acrimonious — to the point that a 2022 poll found 43% of Americans think a civil war is a least somewhat likely in the next decade.  But here's what few people realize:  The intensity of our division springs from a federal government operating far beyond the limits of the Constitution — fueling a fight for control over powers that were never supposed to exist at the national level. [...] To rattle off just a random fistful of the federal government's unauthorized undertakings and entities — brace yourself — there is zero constitutional authority for the Social Security, Medicare, federal drug prohibitions, the Small Business Administration, crop subsidies, the Department of Labor, automotive fuel efficiency standards, climate regulations, the Federal Reserve, union regulation, housing subsidies, the Department of Agriculture, workplace regulations, the Department of Education, federal student loans, the Food and Drug Administration, food stamps, unemployment insurance or light bulb regulations.

An Amish Farmer's Food Rights Battle.  The January 4th raid on Amish farmer Amos Miller's Pennsylvania establishment, reflects a growing tension between government regulation of food safety and liberty-minded individualists distrusting industrial food production.  Pennsylvania State Police secured Miller's farming premises for search by the state's Department of Agriculture for "illegal raw milk and raw milk products, including eggnog," following reported cases of E. coli in New York and Michigan, allegedly linked to Miller's products. [...] [Attorney David] Berg argues that the right to purchase food directly from a farmer, sans mandatory government inspection, is a fundamental right.  The federal government has failed to halt atrazine, glyphosate, neonicotinoids, and other chemicals, and subsidizes corn (and thus high-fructose corn syrup) and other questionable foods.  More recently, public trust has been compromised by dubious claims about the "safety and effectiveness" of certain medications that proved to be neither.

Ohio Official's Arrest After She Criticized Sheriff at Public Meeting a Free Speech Violation, Judge Orders Damages.  On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the constitutional rights of an Ohio elected official were violated when she was arrested for criticizing the sheriff at a public meeting, AP reported.  U.S. District Judge J. Philip Calabrese ruled that the arrest violated the First Amendment.  Niki Frenchko, the sole Republican on the three-member Trumbull County Board of Commissioners, was arrested during a commissioners' meeting on July 7, 2022.  She was charged under a contentious Ohio law that criminalizes actions or speech intended to "prevent or disrupt a lawful meeting."

Momentum is destroying America, but that can be reversed with strategic leadership.  Big Government momentum started with the New Deal, which began in 1933 and marks the beginning of the federal government avalanche affecting our lives from 'the cradle to the grave.'  When World War Two occurred, the flag of patriotism was planted at the front of that avalanche, while the Korean War spawned the birth of the 'Military Industrial Complex.'  America's "conservatives" were now in on the ride!  The Johnson administration, recognizing that Democrat party was the more logical ally of Big Government, added to the avalanche in a massive way with the Great Society legislation enacted in 1964 and 1965.  Even a so-called "conservative" president like Nixon sped up the avalanche with the creation of the EPA in 1970.  Not to cede this catastrophe to the Republicans, Jimmy Carter created the DOE in 1979, thus ensuring future generations would be instructed in what to think!

Who Are We?  [Scroll down]  Border patrol agents are complicit in this betrayal.  They execute the lies put forth by the Biden Administration, pretending that invaders are refugees, accepting lies as the truth and extending the graces of the hard-working American people to them as if it's their money to give, their accommodations to provide.  Maine recently built a housing development solely for these illegals, but they could not manage the same for our veterans.  Ask yourselves, you Americans, who have worked hard and provided the blessings of this land, fought for it, lived on without the comfort of one or both parents due to war, famine or disease, why have these politicians not gone to the same extents for the veterans?  Why are they so desperate to garner the favor of these invaders?  The easy answer is for votes.  These same politicians can make it possible for them to vote, to displace you not only from your land, but your voice.

The Deepest Part of the Swamp [is] The FBI.  Some say the FBI became political, but the FBI was always political, to a point.  Every president tries to use the bureau for their political aims.  After all, the Department of Justice serves at the pleasure of the president as part of the Executive Branch.  Maybe not such a good idea.  What is not well understood is that the FBI makes assumptions, and one of their principal assumptions is that the people, or the electorate, for the most part, will make the wisest possible choice as to who leads the country.  It was a demonstration of trust in our representative republic.  The elections of 2012, 2016, and 2020 changed everything.

A Democratic Republic can only survive if the representatives and citizenry are moral and ethical.  The DOJ has been weaponized to go after Trump by legal procedures and the impeachment proceedings against Trump were a Democrat charade.  Biden has made many unconstitutional executive orders, and there is the possibility that he has used political privilege with family connections to enrich himself.  It appears that not enough laws exist to quickly and ethically prosecute and convict executive branch corruption, or government corruption in general, and not enough elected officials willing to stand against it.  Unfortunately, we have an imperfect Constitution, an imperfect legislative branch, an imperfect executive branch, and an imperfect judicial branch.  Separation of powers of the three branches of government only work relatively well with moral or ethical leadership.  Take away the moral or ethical part and the government quickly transforms into a political mess or chaos.  Making a law governing every move made by government is mission impossible.

The FBI — the Dog That Turned on Its Master.  [Scroll down]  Now we're witnessing firsthand what an out-of-control watchdog is capable of.  Agents are violating our rights by colluding with social media to censor our freedom of speech, targeting Catholics for their religious observance, and investigating parents as domestic terrorists.  They're openly using police state intimidation tactics to conduct armed raids against the elderly (Roger Stone), nonviolent defendants (Mark Hauck), and even journalists (James O'Keefe).  There are so many instances of bad behavior that it's impossible to cover all of them in the space of this article.  A partial list includes Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Atlanta Olympics bombing, the Olympic gymnastics scandal, the Midyear review, Crossfire Hurricane, and on and on.  In 2023, Director Christopher Wray was called before Congress to account for his vicious pack of attack dogs prowling the streets with impunity.  Wray simply
  •   Lied, as he did with his Seth Rich testimony;
  •   Obfuscated with "I don't know" or "part of an ongoing investigation"; or
  •   Ducked questioning entirely by leaving for vacation.
His behavior was the alpha dog, snarling at his owner, and daring him to take a swing with the rolled-up newspaper.  It was a stark demonstration that our "watchdog" has learned that disobedience to its master is of no consequence.

'If You're a Hammer...'  From 2009 to the end of 2022, federal agencies imposed a total of 49,315 rules and regulations on the American people, averaging 3,522 new rules per year!  It's apparently not just the ATF or FBI that have run amok [...] Regardless of your political philosophy, that is far too many rules and regulations from government.  The Founders established our nation based on free markets, individual liberty, and limited government — government today is clearly not limited, and both individual liberty and free markets are suffering because of it.  As of December 2022, there were 2.95 million Americans working for the federal government.  Understand, I'm not blaming them; they're just doing their jobs.  If you're a bureaucrat, making rules is what you do.  But a lot fewer federal employees would mean a lot less government encroachment on our lives.

Enemies of the Administrative State.  Amid allegations from conservative lawmakers and activists that Washington, D.C.'s most powerful agencies have been weaponized against their critics, one organization has not only played a key role in helping marshal evidence of such malfeasance, but found itself at the center of an emerging government targeting scandal that would seem to only further substantiate the claims of administrative state critics.  That organization is Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research.  It has represented whistleblowers at the heart of some of the most consequential and contentious congressional investigations in recent years, touching on matters ranging from the impeachment inquiry into President Biden, to alleged FBI inflation of the domestic terror threat.  In a perhaps telling response to these efforts, the nonprofits' whistleblowing clients have faced not only alleged reprisals from their government employers but also condemnation from Democrats in Congress and skepticism from media outlets that have often uncritically supported whistleblowers.

The Government's Use of Controlled Chaos to Maintain Power.  For years now, the government has been pushing us to the brink of a national nervous breakdown.  This breakdown — triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment), a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing corruption, the government's alienation from its populace, and an economy that has much of the population struggling to get by — has manifested itself in the polarized, manipulated mayhem, madness and tyranny that is life in the American police state today.  Why is the Deep State engineering this societal madness?  What's in it for the government?  What is playing out before us is a chilling lesson in social engineering that keeps the populace fixated on circus politics and conveniently timed spectacles, distracted from focusing too closely on the government's power grabs, and incapable of standing united in defense of our freedoms.  It's not conspiratorial.  It's a power play.

Use the Colorado Precedent.  [Scroll down]  The communists have already opened the door to it.  Since Colorado took Trump's name off the ballot (I know that hasn't happened just yet) without a criminal conviction that has exhausted all appeals, who have twice tried to get him thrown out of office with flimsy accusations rather than evidence and since Joe Biden suffers from extraordinary evidence showing that he should be removed from office for bribery, treason and fraud, he should be removed from the ballot in every state that can use the Colorado precedent to remove a person from the ballot for suspicion of a crime.  Politically, the purpose would not be to remove Biden from consideration, but to force the Supreme Court to rule in America's favor and let us vote for who we want.

Secession Without Secession.  [Scroll down]  It's a trend that has been taking place in New York, San Francisco and any other "sanctuary cities" where they separate themselves from United States laws they don't like, even when they find their separation is a burden too difficult to bear and seek financial aid from the rest of us to make it bearable.  This is the insanity that has gripped the United States after several internal coups against the rule of law and replace it with the rule of power that we see playing out everywhere in the US today.  January 6th protesters are charged with insurrection, but leftist/communist/Muslims take over the capitol during session and a few arrests take place, but nothing like the dragnet set out by the FBI for J6ers.  That's the rule of power.  Any attempt to restore the rule of law, such as vacating the chair when McCarthy betrayed the whole Republican Party, is met with incredible pressure and the corruption of whoever is finally selected as the Speaker of the House.  But that's just under Republican control.  This never happens under Democrat control, because they are the ones behind the coups, who benefit from the rule of power.

Obama Created The Intelligence Agencies' Leftist Agendas.  During his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump faced more than Hillary Clinton.  A book by a former CIA officer who also worked in other intelligence agencies reported that "leftist political policies implemented under former President Barack Obama" waged political warfare against then-candidate Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election.  The Washington Times covered the book, "Neutering the CIA: Why U.S. Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences," published in July 2023. Former intelligence officer John Gentry reported how the leftist-trained intelligence agencies attempted to skew the election results toward Clinton and how that behavior was a danger to the future of the U.S.  Gentry's claim should not be surprising as reports about intelligence agencies trying to trip up the Trump campaign even through his administration.  Trump even claimed his campaign was being spied on by the Obama team.  Of course, the mainstream media made fun of Trump's claim and refused to investigate, but those who took the time to investigate the claim found Trump was being truthful.

Who's actually running the government?  During Sen. Dianne Feinstein's incapacity, we learned that her office was running as usual.  So was Sen. Fetterman's office.  Staffers went on issuing press releases, taking positions and co-sponsoring bills on their behalf.  ["]Senator Feinstein just introduced the Women's Health Protection Act of 2023 to mandate abortion nationwide while outlawing state restrictions on late-term abortion when babies can feel pain... but Feinstein isn't really introducing or sponsoring bills, her staffers, who announced her retirement without her knowing about it, are legislating in her name.["] This is routine.  Our government isn't run by elected officials.  And sometimes the elected officials aren't even there.

The Empire Strikes Musk.  The Establishment turned on Elon Musk in 2022.  First, Musk started making noise about freedom of speech.  Then Musk, a lifelong Democrat, announced that he would be voting Republican.  Then he bought Twitter and revealed just how corrupt the social media companies were, and how deeply involved Western governments have been in suppressing speech.  If you go back through the news over the past two years, you will see a steady stream of threats made by US and European government officials — elected and administrative — towards Musk.  They made it very clear that he either gets on board with their agenda or the West's governments would destroy him.

FISA Fast Forward.  The Senate does not hold hearings to determine whether an appointee is qualified for the FISA court.  SCOTUS operates in public, with rulings and opinions endlessly analyzed.  FISA operates in secret, with no lawyers present to represent those being surveilled.  And so on.  The extension of warrantless surveillance under FISA greenlights more covert operations against Americans and empowers more felonies from FBI lawyers like Kevin Clinesmith, who even got his law license restored.  Square that with the FBI motto of "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity."  The biggest booster of the FISA surge is the "intelligence community."

Our Institutions Have Betrayed Our Trust.  The assassination of John F. Kennedy is a moment burned into the memories of everyone over 65 who knows the answer to the question, "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?"  The prestigious Warren Commission was set up when the "lone assassin" was killed as he was being transferred.  All opposing views were universally dismissed as "conspiracy theories" for the next 60 years and records and evidence was sealed.  Recently multiple new reports have emerged disputing the "single bullet theory," which opens the horrifying possibility that there was an organized conspiracy to kill the president of the United States.  The modern-day question is "Where were you when you first heard of COVID-19?"

Why Our Legal System is Collapsing.  Thrasymachus observed that there is no justice, for it will always be defined as the self-interest of those in power.  Just look at the people imprisoned for being escorted into the Capitol Building on January 6th.  It was orchestrated and instigated by the Deep State so that they could try to use the 14th Amendment to prevent Trump from ever holding office again.  They rigged the 2020 election, and that is something the CIA has done in other countries all the time, and the former head of the CIA has admitted doing so on FOX News.  I was asked to invest $10 billion into Russia for the 2000 election to be rigged to take over Russia.

Testimony before Congress shows 1984 is here, and Obama started it.  Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, two honest men who worked on the Twitter Files, exposing how the government collaborated with Twitter to affect the 2020 election, testified before the House today.  What they said should terrify you.  Beginning in January 2017, under then-president Obama's direction, the government instituted a social media manipulation system intended to game the 2020 election through censorship and controlled information (which, to my mind, amounts to misinformation).  It was unconstitutional, but it worked.  And now, using the vehicle of the corrupt criminal action against Trump, the government is bypassing manipulating information and is planning to target ordinary Americans.

Dem AG Unveils Indictment Against Republican Election Officials Who Pushed For Hand-Counting Ballots.  Arizona's Democratic attorney general announced today that a grand jury has decided to indict two election officials for conspiring to delay the certification of votes in their county over their desire to hand-count all election day and early ballots.  Peggy Judd and Terry Crosby, Republican county supervisors from Cochise County, were indicted by the state of Arizona on Nov. 29 on counts of conspiracy and interference with an election.  Judd and Crosby wanted to hand count ballots in their county, citing their distrust of voting machines, and delayed the certification of their county's election results over those concerns.

Trad Catholic Family Dragged Out of Home at Gunpoint, Locked in Van After FBI 'Goaded' Teen to Post Offensive Memes, Dad Says.  A traditional Catholic family was allegedly "dragged out of their home at gunpoint, handcuffed and locked in a van" earlier this year after the FBI "goaded" their 15-year-old son to post "offensive memes" online.  The teen, a volunteer firefighter and altar boy, was then hospitalized on mental health pretenses, according to his father, Jeremiah Rufini.  The FBI's aggressive "investigation" only resulted in a misdemeanor conviction against the boy for breach of peace, but financially devastated the family with substantial legal expenses.  The FBI targeted the boy as part of a sting operation catfishing traditionalist Catholic teenagers with "extreme political content," Rufini explained in the family's GiveSendGo crowdfunding site.

The FBI is really good at solving problems that it caused, and capturing villains that it created.

Where's America's Conor McGregor?  Western governments around the globe, bastions of free speech and liberty, towers of diversity of thought and dedicated to truth have been compromised by a globalist sect determined to destroy the unification, the coalescing behind these values that has taken place over a couple of centuries.  These governments that rose on the power of these simple principles have rejected the will of the people, first with their responses to the pandemic, which I contend were tests of how far they could go before encountering violence.  Second, they allowed unrestricted immigration from third-world nations, mostly Islamic.  Another test as to these nation's religious dedication, another fail.  Third, they forced an untested, deadly vaccine on the populace through police-enforced mandates.  Fourth, to thwart the expression of the people against such measures they rigged elections, not just in the U.S., but other nations as well.

Why Governments Have Replaced God with Global Warming.  An adept government will never solve a problem unless it has a new problem prepackaged and ready to mass-produce for the public.  That's why Joe Biden didn't mind bungling America's exit from Afghanistan when he and other Obama administration alumni were already working on the next forever-war in Ukraine for the upcoming spring.  That's why the CDC and other government scientists owned and operated by the pharmaceutical industry never batted an eye when their miracle elixir COVID "vaccines" proved to be neither safe nor effective — because there is always some new exotic disease ready to be released from a Chinese bio-lab tucked away in an abandoned California factory that will require billions in taxpayer funds, too.  Any government worth its salt has an endless supply of boogeymen and a limited supply of expensive solutions that coincidentally require total citizen compliance.

How the left infiltrates through government.  Governments don't create; they govern.  If not held in check, governments overpower.  Every tyrant used his nation's government to come to power.  There can be no greater argument for our constitutional republic, and every citizen thereof, to demand that our government adhere to the Constitution as written.  Contrast this philosophy of destruction through control with America as she was conceived.  The founders rebelled against the same type of overpowering tyranny that Marx, Hitler, Mao, Wilson, and Obama visualized: the British king.  They created three documents to create a nation based on the premise of the sanctity of the individual.  They saw a federal government as a necessary evil and proceeded to lay in restrictions on government power.  It's called the Constitution.

DOJ, FBI and Congress team up for legal mischief.  Americans count on the Department of Justice and the FBI to uphold the law of the land.  In this topsy-turvy era, though, the shifty behavior of these agencies is making it hard to tell the good guys from the bad.  Recent news reports outline the depth of the misconduct.  According to a Nov. 8 letter from Senate Republicans to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department "engaged in a campaign of covert surveillance" targeting congressional staff members.  Signed by Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, the missive cited a Freedom of Information Act request from Empower Oversight, a whistleblower support organization, that turned up evidence the department subpoenaed private phone and email records from House and Senate staff members who were attempting to unravel the 2018 Russian collusion hoax that dogged Donald Trump's presidency.

'In the Old America, This Would Provoke an Uprising'.  No stranger to hypocrisy, Hillary Clinton set a breathtaking new standard with her denunciation of convicted meme jokester Douglass Mackey. [...] Mackey's crime was to pass along a meme he found online titled, "Save Time, Avoid the Line."  This meme, said Hillary, who knows something about election subversion, "went from speech to action meant to subvert the election."  Graced with a picture of a smiling Hillary, the meme then directed readers to text their vote to a given number.  Try as hard as they might, prosecutors could not find not a single one of the "thousands of people" Hillary claimed to have been affected by this transparent joke.  "He was one of the main people running memes against me in 2016," said Hillary.  Mackey was no such thing.  A 27-year-old Middlebury College grad living in New York City at the time, Mackey was an unconnected and unpaid Trump-supporter.  He tweeted under the handle "Ricky Vaughn," the Charlie Sheen "Wild Thing" character in the baseball comedy Major League.  Although Mackey did not take himself seriously, the Biden DOJ obviously did.  Seven days after the 2021 inauguration, more than four years after the purported crime, ten law enforcement officers, four of them FBI, made an unannounced 7 A.M. visit at his residence and led Mackey away in handcuffs.  It was not until his arraignment that he had the slightest idea what he was being accused of doing.

Are the feds targeting Eric Adams because he criticized Joe Biden?  Seizing Mayor Adams' phones and tablet on the street in public is the latest sign the feds aren't simply investigating him:  They're out to inflict maximum embarrassment in a political vendetta, presumably in retribution for the noise he's made about President Biden's disastrous border policies.  The mayor is easy to find, 24/7/365:  What reason to ambush him publicly event except to humiliate him?  And why else make sure his No. 1 press enemy, The New York Times, gets the story first?  Mind you, this follows the opening raid in this investigation — which stormed the home of his top fund-raiser while Adams was in the air en route to Washington to press Biden on his failure to help the city bear the multibillion-dollar cost of caring for the illegal migrants the prez is waving into the country.  That one leaked to the Times first, too.  And sources told The Post that timing was also intentional; the feds denied it — but of course they would.

Piercing the halo of the FBI special agent.  FBI special agents risk their lives doing important national security work; praise them for that if you like.  But it's also true that they follow orders from their superiors, just like other federal employees.  They are not praiseworthy — and certainly don't get credit for "tremendous integrity and objectivity" — carrying out orders on, and knowing and keeping quiet about, so many FBI actions or inactions biased against conservatives such as the Trump-Russia collusion plot; suppression of Hunter Biden's laptop; targeting MAGA followers, attendees of the traditional Catholic Mass, and soccer moms protesting to the school board; and possible J6 incitement and entrapment.

How Democrats steal our constitutional rights.  If you're reading this post, I'm betting that you're aware of the Twitter files, which revealed that the Deep State was working closely with Big Tech to censor content about Russiagate, COVID, the vaccinations, and Biden family corruption.  Therefore, I won't rehash that.  However, if you haven't seen Tucker Carlson's most recent interview, this one with Douglass Mackey, you don't know that the administration is also using its police powers to silence political speech.  Douglass Mackey is the man who posted a joke on Twitter telling people to text their votes for Hillary.  It was a joke identical to posts that Democrats were putting up regarding voting for Trump.  However, unlike the Democrats, Mackey was hunted down.  Seven days into the Biden administration, he was on the receiving end of an FBI raid and staring at 11 years in prison for election interference.  The fact that there was no evidence that anyone, even a Democrat, was stupid enough to take his joke seriously was irrelevant.

Senate Republicans Launch Investigation Into Justice Department for Spying on Congressional Staffers.  Every time we think we're done with the Justice Department's Spygate and Russia collusion controversy, it pulls us back in.  It appears that at this point, we are the political versions of Michael Corleone, who can't seem to escape what is one of the most egregious scandals in American political history.  Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are reportedly delving deeper into allegations that the Justice Department conducted a number of covert surveillance operations on congressional staffers during the period when the agency was embroiled in the Trump-Russia investigation hoax.

DOJ Spied on GOP Staffers Probing the Origins of the Russia Collusion Hoax.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) obtained private communications and other personal records of multiple Republican House and Senate staffers who were investigating the department's role in the origins of the Russia collusion hoax, according to former senior Trump administration official Kash Patel.  A recently-revealed subpoena shows that the DOJ sought the records for not only Patel when he was an investigator for then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), but also those of Jason Foster, who was at the time chief investigative counsel to then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (I-IA) and was also looking into the DOJ's role in the hoax.

Consequences of American Communism.  We have been witness to, and uncomprehendingly struggle to understand, how deeply communist the nation's government has become, but the evidence is there.  It ignored a massively corrupted presidential election that installed someone who staffed the government, all with the aid of senators, with a treasonous bunch of radicals pursuing an agenda of national suicide.  No one has enforced the laws, not during the election, not where immigration is concerned, not by enforcing the limitations of regulation and the power of bureaucracies.  The United States truly was a nation of laws and when the laws were broken, it simply broke the nation rather than the law breakers.

The Rise of Jacobin Justice.  In this last decade, Jacobin justice has been unleashed on everyone from school board protesters to local police to a former president of the United States.  Much of it flows directly from the DOJ, but state and local prosecutors have been keen to launch witch hunts of their own.  In doing so, they have corrupted evidence, rigged juries, allowed fear to dictate outcomes, and abandoned all traditional notions of equality before the law.

Americans Are Essential — Not Their Government.  [Scroll down]  The Fascist Bureau of Intimidation and Department of (in)Justice commit crimes against the American people but face no consequences.  The Department of Homeland Security has no interest in securing the homeland.  The federal bureaucracy's primary work product is disinformation, and its primary skill is accusing everyone outside of its Borg Collective of spreading disinformation.  The same apparatchiks who take a knee in solidarity with Antifa and Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists have spent three years destroying families for protesting at the U.S. Capitol.  The same conmen who framed Donald Trump as a Russian spy now frame the presumptive Republican nominee as a common criminal.  The same misanthropes who have drowned this country in debt, drugs, illegal aliens, and violent crime pretend to care about Americans' health, security, and prosperity.  They do not.  They despise this country.  They despise its foundations in liberty.  They despise its history.  They despise its heroes.  They despise what its people have accomplished in the past and could so easily accomplish in the future, if only given the chance.

It's almost like there's a conspiracy against Trump.  The moment that Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the outlines of a conspiracy began.  Obama, Biden, their staff, Democrat lifers in the DOJ, FBI, CIA, the Pentagon, the establishment media, woke billionaires and the Democrat party, foremost among them House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, shaped a plan to wreck his presidency and cheat to defeat him in 2020. [...] Dr. Anthony Fauci's Wuhan virus coincidently escaped the lab.  Aware, and against Trump, the CCP permitted thousands of infected passengers to enter the U.S. where it created a pandemic.  Anticipating it and seemingly prepared for it, the Democrat party exploited it to create a seismic, unprecedented distortion in public policies around economy-killing lockdowns, and in voting rules, increasing unverifiable ballots by previously unheard of multiples.  It coordinated with its champions in social, print and network media to censor and suppress [embarrassing] information about its own candidate and his depraved family.

Democrats' Campaign To Disbar John Eastman Is Designed To Criminalize Republican Election Challenges.  After having his phone seized by the FBI, enduring harassment from House Democrats' J6 Committee, and getting indicted by a corrupt Fulton County district attorney, constitutional scholar John Eastman has once again found himself the target of Democrats' crusade to weaponize the legal system against their political opponents.  Over the past several weeks, prosecutors representing the State Bar of California (SBC) have been working in state court to strip Eastman of his ability to practice law and, effectively, destroy his livelihood.  In January, the SBC announced it was charging Eastman for advising former President Donald Trump over the latter's legal challenges to the 2020 election results.  This announcement came nearly a year after the agency revealed it had been investigating Eastman for potential "violation[s] of California law and ethics rules governing attorneys."

The Late Hour of Our Republic.  The end of the United States has already been accomplished, it's just a matter now of how it unfolds.  Those in the Executive branch of government have already committed the ultimate treason, the violation of the borders, the destruction of the nation's security.  Our enemies have been gifted an open drawbridge to the castle and our enemies have stampeded in.  The nation's people now must confront those enemies with the spears of their own soldiers at their backs.  Every act of treason has been perpetrated upon the nation.  Oaths of office have been disregarded in favor of financial consideration.  The military has been left to languish in the arms of mocking social equity.  The Treasury has been looted by debts racked up by mindless spending.  Munitions have been discontinued.  Military vehicles and armaments given to terrorists.  If there is in the history of the world any more complete and comprehensive treason than this, I have not heard of it.

Dinesh D'Souza's 'Police State' — You Will Not Look at Government the Same Way After Seeing This Film.  My husband and I went to see this movie on Monday night.  I was encouraged by the fact that almost every seat in the theatre was filled — more people to get the word out.  D'Souza is joined in the general narration of the film by fellow conservative commentator Dan Bongino.  As a former New York City police officer and later as a Secret Service agent during the Bush 43 and Obama administrations, Bongino's experience lends much credibility to the many examples of how government agencies, like the FBI, whose chief duties have traditionally been law enforcement, have now become heavily involved in domestic surveillance.  The movie asks the essential question of how we got here, and maybe even more importantly, who is responsible for it?

Dinesh D'Souza's Police State: I was literally shaking.  It's a familiar trope:  The agitated young "transgender" person claims that being "misgendered" left him or her "literally shaking."  I've always seen that as a sign of a tragically weak human being.  However, last night, while watching Dinesh D'Souza's Police State, I found myself literally shaking, too.  Maybe I'm pathetically weak, or maybe that movie triggered such a strong "fight or flight" response in me that, sitting there in my seat, unable to react to either instinct, all I could do was tremble.  Why is the movie so powerful?  Because using a combination of reenactments, interviews, news footage, police body cams, and individuals' security cameras, D'Souza has compellingly put together things we already know about America in 2023 but don't want to admit:  We have in place a government that is loyal, not to the people but to the government itself.

The Police State Of America:  Biden-Regime Imprisons Man For Meme Mocking Democrats.  Rigging elections in the Police State of America ... you know, Zuckerbucks, false Russia-bounties story, "intelligence community" telling us Hunter's laptop is "Russia-disinformation" and Big-tech and the Regime-media then censoring the laptop, "ballot-harvesting," voting-by-mail, etc., etc., etc., is actually "fortifying" democracy.  Mocking rigged elections, in contrast, is a crime against democracy.  But just keep pretending America is the "greatest country on the face of the earth," that the GOP is ever going to do something about the two-tiered system of justice designed to maintain UniParty control, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  [Tweets]

The Biden administration punishes speech and thought crimes.  If our government does not respect the Constitution, we have no constitution.  If the government refuses to stand behind the principles of free speech, the right to free assembly, the right to petition the government, the right to a speedy trial, etc., those rights don't exist.  Instead, we simply have rule down the barrel of a gun:  a gun held only in government hands.  I thought of that when I read about Doug Mackey, sent to federal prison for seven months because he insulted Hillary voters, and Ryan Kelley, given an extra-long prison sentence on a misdemeanor because he didn't grovel sufficiently before his J6 hanging judge.  Briefly, in the lead-up to the 2016 election, Douglas Mackey sent out some silly memes telling Hillary voters to vote by text.  Only a moron would believe that.  There's no evidence that his memes had any effect whatsoever, other than saying that he thought Hillary voters were morons.  Moreover, what he did wasn't original.  Others have done it, too, including leftists.  Nevertheless, the moment Biden entered the White House, the DOJ came after Mackey.

Government Gangsters:  How the Deep State Imperils National Security.  Like most Americans, Kash Patel grew up believing that the country was run as a democracy, with a government that honors the will of the people and is accountable to them.  It was only much later, as an attorney and then as a senior advisor to former president Donald Trump, that he encountered — and confronted — what has come to be called the Deep State, people at the highest levels of government, business, and culture who subvert democracy to serve their own ends.  In his recent book Government Gangsters:  The Deep State, The Truth and the Battle for our Democracy, Patel describes the Deep State in broad terms as the politicization of core American institutions and the federal government.  More specifically, this oligarchy includes elected leaders, journalists, business leaders, and NGOs with leftist ideologies.  But its most entrenched and active arm comprises "members of the unelected federal bureaucracy who think they have the right to rule America, not Congress or the president."

He's Going to Prison for Twitter Trolling.  That's Not Justice.  It took an FBI investigation, a three-week trial, and lots of taxpayer dollars, but the government finally got what it wanted this week:  A Florida man is heading to federal prison for disseminating trollish memes during the 2016 election season that prosecutors alleged "deprive[d] people of their constitutional right to vote."  In the months leading up to Election Day, Douglass Mackey, an erstwhile far-right social media influencer, posted a series of photos on his Twitter profile — which had about 58,000 followers under the name "Ricky Vaughn" — encouraging Hillary Clinton — supporters to cast their votes by phone.  That obviously didn't go so well for the people who fell for it.  But however you feel about Mackey's obnoxious brand of politics and feeble attempt at comedy, the case became about a lot more than him, raising questions about protected speech, overcriminalization, and a politicized Department of Justice.

Close the Border.  The American people, at least the reader, has to start getting tough.  Those in the government are not your enemies, because they don't even give you the respect of being a human being. [...] They are doing nothing to guarantee the safety and effectiveness of medicine or food.  They are doing nothing to secure the border.  They are doing nothing to limit spending that has spun out of control to a point where another banking crisis is guaranteed, another depression, or worse, is inevitable.  They are doing nothing to secure elections, probably the most important aspect of how the government is authorized to do anything.  They are doing nothing to enforce the laws or to keep criminals off the streets.  They are doing nothing to stop or limit the flow of fentanyl into our neighborhoods, costing up to 100,000 lives per year.  The flow of illegals across the border is nothing less than a biological attack with all of the different diseases these people carry, diseases they are accustomed to, in some cases, but the people of North America are not.  If it affects the American citizen, they refuse to do anything to make it better.

An Old Man Looks at America.  [Scroll down]  Were the CIA, FBI, and Justice Dept. always this corrupt?  Perhaps.  (I'm a born cynic.)  But at least, in the past, they tried to cover up their shenanigans by publicly apologizing, instituting reforms, and promising to do better.  You could sleep at night and possibly dream that those agencies were on your side.  Now, woe to him who offends the Deep State!  Trump-supporters, the pro-lifers, Latin Mass-loving Catholics, those who question either the '20 election (see bad joke, voting) or the historically awful government response to COVID-19 — all are domestic terrorists spreading misinformation, committing stochastic violence, and the #1 threat to America, according to the FBI and the odious Merrick Garland, our height- and ethics-challenged attorney general.  Worst of all, the above-named agencies don't even attempt to hide their treachery.  They laugh in your face as they continue trying to destroy Donald Trump for nigh unto nine years now.  They'll break down your door and jail you for trying to protect an unborn baby.  They'll gladly sue or audit you to death if you have the wrong political views.  Don't take my word for it; ask Mike Lindell.

The Brink of Lexington.  [Scroll down]  In less than a month, weeks actually, the debt rose from $33 trillion to $33.5 trillion.  Where did that $500 billion come from?  Where was it hiding?  In what corner of the building was it sequestered waiting for a chance to be acknowledged?  That is astonishing, but it isn't the problem.  Not knowing where it came from or why it was dumped into the debt out of nowhere is.  No news networks mentioned it, no tweets went out to acknowledge it.  Half a trillion dollars of debt just appeared on the ledger overnight. [...] As an example, since the debt ceiling deal went through, the deficit is now $1.5 trillion, but it was promised that it would not exceed $1 trillion.  It's now on its way to $2 trillion and that or greater amounts will be sustained forever, because so much of the deal McCarthy made allowed for the creation of new programs and entitlements (like paying up to $4,400 per illegal immigrant family) that will never go away, not without a counter-revolution.  We are here, because they already effected a revolution.  To get away from this reckless spending, there will have to be a counter-revolution.  None of this is reversible, no matter who is in office or what party they represent.

Biden Evades The Constitution By Letting Failed Nominees Be De Facto Agency Heads.  Biden's first failed nominee is Deputy Secretary of Labor Julie Su.  Controversial from the beginning, Su proved too much so for confirmation to the Department of Labor's top spot.  On Feb. 28, President Biden announced: "It is my honor to nominate Julie Su to be our country's next Secretary of Labor.  Julie has spent her life fighting to make sure that everyone has a fair shot. ... I respectfully ask the Senate to take up this nomination quickly so that we can finish the job for America's workers."  The Senate did, and then it said no — specifically Sen. Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Sinema, I-Ariz., though there's no telling how many more would have joined them, because in July, the administration threw in the towel on Su's nomination, but they refuse to give up Su.  So for over two months, Su has been in place as acting labor secretary.  The administration shows no sign of nominating anyone else, regardless of her Senate rejection.  So although Su got her "fair shot," the administration will plow ahead just the same.

If We the People Were Actually in Charge.  Perhaps no greater delusion stubbornly persists from one generation to the next than the idea that governments can be trusted.  Sure, they conduct their affairs in secret, spy on their own people, and arm themselves to the teeth — but, by all means, trust them as you would a dear relative.  Sure, they steal from productive citizens, manipulate markets, and swell their bureaucratic armies with ever-growing taxes — but, by all means, trust them as you would a close business associate.  Sure, they impose their beliefs on our culture, ban the public expression of unfavored religions, and interpose their agents between parents and children — but, by all means, trust them as you might a pastor, rabbi, or priest.  Even after the global wars, genocides, engineered famines, and kill squads that made the last century the most barbaric in human history, it is exceedingly common to hear Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others from the Church of Big Government mock ordinary citizens for not putting absolute faith in government institutions.

Jonathan Turley Says New York AG 'Hell Bent' On Destroying Trump's Companies.  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Friday that Democratic Attorney General Letitia James of New York was "hell bent" on destroying former President Donald Trump's business empire.  New York Judge Arthur F. Engoron issued a ruling finding that Trump's business was guilty of committing fraud Sept. 26, ordering Trump's business licenses to be rescinded and seeking to dissolve Trump's businesses, but the dissolution was placed on hold by an appeals court judge Friday.  Trump has spoken out against the trial, calling it a "sham" and calling for Engoron to be disbarred.  [Video clip]  "Those employees don't really have a representative in court for their interest and there is also this question of just overkill," Turley told "Ingraham Angle" guest host Kayleigh McEnany.  "You know, there is evidence of overvaluing and undervaluing assets in this case.  That has long been a problem in real estate."

Biden Regime's SEC Sues Elon Musk in Their Baseless "Investigation" Over His Perfectly Lawful Purchase of X/Twitter.  Is the Biden regime looking for a way to somehow reverse Elon Musk's perfectly lawful purchase of X (formerly Twitter)?  Today's developing story reads as a fit of revenge.  Jim Hoft previously reported, the SEC has been baselessly investigating Musk's purchase of X/Twitter since 2022.  Now they are suing him and Musk is not happy.  CNBC reported that the Regime's SEC has sued Musk because they subpoenaed him in September to show up in a San Francisco court and testify regarding his perfectly lawful purchase of X/Twitter.  He did not show up likely assuming it was a trap.

The Profit Incentives Driving the American Police State.  While the overt and costly signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government are all around us — warrantless surveillance of Americans' private phone and email conversations by the FBI, NSA, etc.; SWAT team raids of Americans' homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that collect and disseminate data on Americans' private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling — you rarely hear anything about them from the politicians, the corporations or the news media.  So what's behind the blackout of real news?

The Pentagon's Lack Of Loyalty To President Trump.  During the Trump presidency, Pentagon officials refused to follow orders, substituting their own policies over the constitutionally ordained authority of their Commander in Chief.  We know that officials lied about troop strength in Syria, attempted to undermine and kill the peace initiative with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and refused to call out the military to quell civil unrest during the George Floyd riots.  This is gross insubordination.  James Jeffrey, who was a deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush, US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey under President Obama, and US special representative for Syria engagement under Trump, admitted to just some of the games the Pentagon was playing.  After the 2020 election, he revealed that the Pentagon routinely misled President Trump into believing that the troop count in Syria was substantially lower than it was: [...]

They Are That Evil.  The border is not secure, despite the fact that the constitution promises us a republican form of government and protection against invasion.  We have neither.  The constitution provides for the president to faithfully execute the laws passed by congress.  None of that is happening; he's making laws with Executive Orders, preventing laws from being enforced and even when the Supreme Court orders him to enforce the laws, he refuses.  Biden presides over a rogue government as few of his secretaries are following their charters and in most cases are acting in opposition to their charters.  The people know this, too.  For what purpose is there a congress and a judicial branch if they can and are systematically thwarted by a president who refuses to accept any limitations on his power?  Who flaunts the law and the legal means of holding him and his administration accountable?  The only way this is possible is with a wealth of media outlets and former officials who provide the political cover for it, who treat these actions as normal and acceptable.

COVID vaccine mandates have severely damaged trust in US military leaders.  [Scroll down]  Below are three of the most public examples of betrayal that led to the current lack of trust and credibility.
  •   The Global War on Terror was fought for more than two decades with no clear strategic objectives or victory criteria.  More than 7,000 service members paid with their lives for a war with no path to victory.  No military leaders were held accountable.
  •   The withdrawal from Afghanistan was an embarrassing debacle in which senior military leaders did not properly plan the withdrawal nor prioritize American interests or American lives.  Ultimately, 13 service members died unnecessarily during the withdrawal, and our leaders left over $7 billion worth of military equipment to our adversaries.  No military leaders were held accountable.
  •   Military leaders broke the law and violated the constitutional rights of individual service members during the implementation of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.  Ultimately, over 8,400 service members were involuntarily discharged, many with severe charges of misconduct on their records and many with Other Than Honorable (OTH) service characterizations.  No military leaders were held accountable.

Two-Punch.  The people we elect to Congress don't want to be accountable for specifically authorizing spending on the blob's multitudinous pet projects.  So, they depend on multi-thousand-page omnibus bills nobody can ever scrutinize, and continuing resolution dodges to postpone any necessarily painful action on a budget.  Therefore, a dissenting coterie in the House proposes to play hard-ball over de-funding the blob, that is, a government shutdown of unknown duration, until gaslight is replaced by sunlight.  The blob itself sends out a frantic S.O.S.  Don't let these white supremacist, "far-right" MAGA nut-jobs drag us out of the comfortable warm, moist darkness we thrive in — perfect conditions for continued blob growth!

Societal Looters.  [Scroll down]  The question then is, what is the greater wrong?  Is it more wrong to act without all of the facts, without being absolutely sure in our hearts that we know the truth, if our actions intercede in child trafficking?  What if our actions, even if arrived at through flawed reasoning, prevent the invasion of our nation; the rape of innocent women and children; the hundreds of thousands of drug deaths related to fentanyl?  Is it more wrong to rid ourselves of this government if it leads to chaos and death if allowing it to continue only leads to chaos and death?  At present there literally is no difference in outcome, but one path, the continued path of this corrupt and evil government can only lead to destruction while ridding ourselves of it holds the promise of renewal and order after a period of chaos and death.  Their intent is known, demonstrated over and over.  The purpose of the government as it is, is to put the burden of costs on the backs of the poorest, hardest-working and most miserable of us to provide jets and yachts to their selves and their cronies.  They are, as I have stated many times, merely looting the treasury of our tax dollars.

What can you do if the government declares you dead?  This probably sounds like one of those "funny" stories that wind up in various skits, but it's something that actually happens and can have serious results.  What happens to a U.S. citizen if the government declares them to be legally dead while they are still alive and well?  The results can be incredibly damaging if the situation isn't corrected promptly.  In the case of Madeline-Michelle Carthen of St.  Louis, Missouri, she learned that making that correction can be daunting or perhaps impossible.  In 2007, while preparing for an overseas internship, she learned that her social security number had been added to a federal database of deceased persons.  Her life has essentially been a nightmare ever since, despite endless efforts to prove that she is, in fact, still alive.

Slouching Towards 1984.  Sadly, in the U.S. both political parties have contributed to the growth of the surveillance and controlling state.  Here are some examples:
  •   The PATRIOT Act permitted increased government surveillance over individuals in response to an unprecedented terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland.
  •   Joe Biden tried but failed to institute a Disinformation Governance Board.  His administration also pressured social media companies to restrict access to posts it deemed untruthful or otherwise harmful. [...]
  •   Various levels of government mandated mask wearing and vaccinations as well as mandatory business closures that created increased dependency on government largesse.
  •   Leftist high-density gatherings were encouraged during Covid's peak while conservative gatherings were prohibited for reasons of public safety.
  •   Particular scientific theories are deemed settled, while scientists with opposing views are defunded and ridiculed despite having ample evidence backing up their claims. [...]

New York Judge Rules Without Trial, Jury or Verdict, That President Trump Must Dissolve All Business Interests in State.  This is John Galt level government targeting.  A New York State judge has arbitrarily ruled, no trial — no jury, that President Trump overvalued his real estate holdings in New York, which means he paid too much in taxes, in order to secure financing and loans.  All the banks and lenders did their own due diligence on the financing.  All operational loans and business loans were paid back.  There were no defaults or banking interests adversely impacted.  There are no victims of what the State calls "fraud," yet the judge is ruling the Trump organization must dissolve all business interests in the state and exit within 10 days.  New York Attorney General Latisha James campaigned for office with promises to target the Trump Organization and Donald Trump himself.  This is malicious lawfare in the extreme.

Ken Paxton's salary was CUT OFF even though the law forbade it.  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was acquitted by the Texas Senate on Saturday on 16 articles of impeachment, and Sara Gonzales is thrilled.  "What a sight to behold, our elected attorney general sitting in his office with the sign behind him," Gonzales tells Paxton.  While Paxton is thrilled to be back as well, he admits that it's been anything but easy — and his detractors were working overtime to make sure they got him while he was down.  "I lost all my resources, I had no campaign money left, because we'd been through a moratorium during session.  I spent all my money during the campaign to win, so they knew they had me at a disadvantage," he tells Gonzales.

Did Soros 'Republicans' make it ILLEGAL for Texas AG Ken Paxton to prosecute voter fraud?  Ken Paxton was acquitted by the Texas Senate on Saturday on 16 articles of impeachment, and some are not so happy about it.  A recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece written by the outlet's entire editorial board states, "Mr. Paxton's defenders are spinning that he was saved by a populist national conservative groundswell to put an end to the 'Bush era' in Texas.  What a joke."  "The acquittal," the piece continues, "may not play out so well for Texas Republicans in the longer run.  A federal investigation into Mr. Paxton is continuing amid reports that a grand jury has been impaneled."  "I've been investigated ever since the day I walked into this office," Paxton tells Glenn Beck.  "I have no doubt that the Biden administration would love to find some way — they've been working on it for years to get rid of me, and part of that process was the impeachment."

Communism, Fascism, Globalism — What's the Difference?  At the end of the day, we are talking about a system of government in which centralized power belongs to a small group of elites who use their control over economic, military, and intelligence-collecting institutions to rule over everyone else.  Whether it is a government run by Mussolini, a king, the self-described "proletariat," or an international cabal of central banks and corporations — it is a dictatorship all the same. [...] Administrators, bureaucrats, and political leaders love to talk about "democracy" because doing so buttresses their pretense that the people are actually in control.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  It is the "ruling class" that hoards power, and the more any elite member speaks of "democracy," the more certain you can be that the elites are actively betraying the overall will of the people.

Biden Lays a Booby Trap for a Republican President.  The Biden administration is setting a booby trap in case a Republican wins the presidency in 2024.  On Friday, the White House unveiled a proposed rule that would make it even harder than in the past for an incoming Republican president to wrestle control of the left-leaning federal bureaucracy and actually implement the conservative policies promised to voters.  Of the 2.2 million federal civil workers, only 4,000 are presidential appointees.  The rest stay in their jobs, from one administration to the next, protected by rules that make it nearly impossible to discipline or replace them.  They overwhelmingly favor the Left.  A staggering 95% of unionized federal employees who donate to political candidates give to Democrats, according to Open Secrets.  Only a tiny 5% support Republicans.  Some federal workers in high positions slow-walk or even derail a Republican president's agenda — and get away with it.  Why bother to vote if the left-leaning deep state stays in charge no matter who wins the presidency?

The Biden administration wants to make it hard to fire career bureaucrats.  The Democrat party's strength exists primarily in its control over the federal workforce, most of whom are Democrat party loyalists.  Trump promised in 2016 to pare down the Deep State but failed.  Instead, it pared him down.  Now, Republican candidates are again promising to cut back on the federal workforce, with Vivek Ramaswamy believing that he can fire whole departments and agencies.  Naturally, that mindset represents a huge threat to the Democrats, so it's being reported that the Biden administration is trying to create rules to prevent any future Republican from destroying the Deep State bureaucracy.

Tony Buzbee Discusses Background of Sham Impeachment Effort Against AG Ken Paxton.  Do not let it escape your notice that not a single professional Republican entity has stood up to show their support for Texas AG Ken Paxton or congratulate him on the clear and decisive impeachment victory against the corrupt UniParty system in the Lone Star state.  Not a word from The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), or any other professional Republican group.  Instead, only President Donald Trump and the overwhelming majority of the MAGA base have stood strong with Paxton — before, during and after the smear campaign to remove him.  Keep this BIG UGLY data point in mind.  On the federal side, with Obama-Biden flooding the border with illegal aliens, Ken Paxton was considered a threat from both the White House and the Texas Governor, Greg Abbott.  [Video clip]

American Pravda:  The White House tells the newspapers what to publish and what to omit.
White House Sending Letter to News Outlets Urging them to 'Ramp Up' Scrutiny of GOP Over Impeachment Inquiry.  The White House intends to urge the top executives of several mainstream news outlets to "ramp up" their scrutiny of House Republicans one day after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, according to a draft letter obtained by CNN.  "It's time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies," Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel's Office, wrote in the draft letter, which is expected to be sent on Wednesday.  The letter does not include the list of media organizations, although a separate White House official reportedly said it will be sent to CNN, the New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News, and other outlets.

From Trump On Down, Democrats Are Silencing The Opposition.  We Americans must understand that the cabal can and will use mob rule, lawfare, and bureaucratic fiats to effect its agenda, even when doing so is clearly politically motivated, invalid and unconstitutional, with the process itself often intended to ensure that political opponents yield to the cabal's force.  Nothing will stop them.  If you are an outspoken journalist, the IRS will be sent to your home.  If you are a concerned citizen who shows up to silently protest one of the cabal's pet missions, you will be arrested.  If you speak up at a school board meeting because your daughter was sexually assaulted by a transgendered assailant, you might be tackled and cuffed.  If a given school actually tries to remove damaging wokism from its system all together, the feds will investigate it for civil rights violations.  If you produce effective conservative messaging for Google and YouTube (which together control some 90% of worldwide internet searches), the courts won't stop Google and YouTube from restricting or banning you entirely.

Fulton County DA Accused of Burying Evidence That Could Derail Trump RICO Case.  Sidney Powell's defense attorney in the Fulton County, Georgia, RICO case regarding an alleged effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state accused county prosecutors Thursday of withholding exculpatory evidence in violation of the law.  Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee also made a key ruling in the case severing Powell's and pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro's cases from those of former President Donald Trump and the 16 other defendants, CNN reported.  Both Powell, a former Trump campaign attorney, and Chesebro sought a speedy trial, consistent with their Sixth Amendment right, while Trump and the other defendants want the case slowed down to better prepare their defenses.

Now Biden Wants to Deny Your Consumer's Choice in Water Heaters.  President Joe Biden's proposed energy efficiency standards for water heaters, released July 21 by the Energy Department, not only would raise the cost of water heaters for consumers but take certain products off the market.  One popular tankless natural gas water heater, made by Rinnai in Griffin, Georgia, would have to be discontinued.  The public has until Sept. 26 to file comments.  Beginning in 2029, the Energy Department's proposed regulation would set government standards for all types of water heaters, including gas-fired, oil-fired, electric, and instantaneous tankless water heaters.  The proposed rule would raise standards disproportionately for tankless, gas-fired water heaters to over 91% efficiency.  Trouble is, achieving this level of efficiency with noncondensing technology is impossible to do.

Likely!  Not certainly, just likely?
Biden Administration Likely Violated First Amendment with Social-Media Censorship, Appeals Court Rules.  A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment by pressuring social-media platforms to censor posts about Covid-19 and elections.  The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling says that the White House likely "coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences."  The panel of three judges found that the administration "significantly encouraged the platforms' decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment."  A lower court previously placed restrictions on the Biden administration's communications with social-media platforms; those restrictions applied to a number of government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department, Homeland Security, and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Levin: The Democrat Party's fetish for the 14th Amendment is a vile attack on our elections.  The modern Democrat Party has an unhealthy fetish for the 14th Amendment, one of the three post-Civil War constitutional amendments.  Democrats are constantly and relentlessly trying to rewrite it to accommodate their political ends.  A few months ago, Joe Biden and his party insisted that Section 4 of the 14th Amendment granted the president power to unilaterally increase the debt ceiling, which would destroy Congress's sole power under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to tax, spend, and borrow.  Of course, Section 4 of the 14th Amendment does no such thing, and there is nothing in the history of the amendment that supports such an interpretation.

The Weaponized Left Is Completely Out of Control.  In 2009 and 2010, conservatives and small-government Americans from across the country came together in protest of President Barack Obama's big spending projects and plan to upend the U.S. healthcare system through Obamacare.  They were opposed to this fundamental transformation of the country and decided to exercise their First Amendment rights by peacefully organizing against it.  The Tea Party was born.  The Obama administration didn't like the opposition, especially ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, and used the IRS to silence everyday Americans with phone calls, harassment and threats of imprisonment.  "The fact that officials at the IRS wielded their power to target certain Americans for their political views is both outrageous and contrary to our nation's values.  Our government is supposed to work for all Americans, not for a particular partisan agenda.  As a result of the IRS' targeting, conservative groups were singled out across the nation, resulting in lengthy paperwork requirements, overly burdensome information requests, and lengthy, unwarranted delays in their applications," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said in a 2013 statement when Republicans were investigating the matter.  That was just the beginning.  Fast forward to the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, and the left has supercharged their efforts by criminalizing the contesting of elections.  Not for Democrats but for Republicans, with the Department of Justice and local prosecutors leading the charge.

Fani Willis Possesses Evidence Exonerating Georgia's Alternate Electors.  Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis possesses evidence that exonerates several Republicans she's targeting in her legal crusade against former President Donald Trump and other Republicans for their lawful contesting of Georgia's flawed 2020 election.  In her Aug. 14 indictment, Willis alleged the existence of Republican electors for Trump constituted an unlawful "conspiracy" to overturn the Peach State's 2020 election results.  Among those charged for partaking in this so-called "conspiracy" are David Shafer, one of Georgia's 2020 Republican electors, and Ray Smith, who served as one of Trump's lawyers at the time of the contest.  Specifically, Willis claimed Shafer and the other alternate electors "unlawfully falsely held themselves out" as Georgia's "duly elected and qualified" presidential electors.  She further insisted these electors — with Smith's assistance — intentionally attempted to "mislead" figures such as then-Vice President Mike Pence and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger "into believing that they actually were such officers."  However, among the documents Willis obtained during her years-long investigation of Republicans was a meeting transcript refuting her allegations.

31 Years After Ruby Ridge, the FBI Is Still Killing Americans with Impunity.  As Republicans and Democrats waste time and political capital focusing on how the FBI treats Donald Trump or Hunter Biden, four men in the last three weeks have been shot to death by the FBI, three of them in questionable pre-dawn raids.  Two of the men were white and right-wing, one was an Arab, and another was a black suspected for a string of robberies.  In a typical FBI related raid leading up to a shooting, federal agents make painstaking efforts to destroy any visible cameras on a targeted property, seldom wear body cameras, and refuse to inform family members why they felt they had to shoot their loved one or what they were suspected of.  In some cases, the FBI will even refuse to confirm their involvement in a killing.  In these controversial shoots, the Bureau has the laughable ability to investigate itself, which predictably, means that they rule every killing as justified.  The FBI then cordons off the scene and bans the family from entering their own residence for days as staff is dispatched to collect evidence, providing them ample opportunity to tamper with or eliminate any evidence of malfeasance or error.  In virtually every case, an agent who shoots a suspect in a contentious encounter is granted the informal right to forever remain anonymous by both the media and government officials — a perk not extended to local police officers in similar circumstances.  If public outrage begins to grow, unrelated videos and information intended to characterize the person who was shot as a dangerous menace suddenly leaks to the press even as the FBI publicly keeps its lips sealed.  The way these incidents unfold is akin to how death squads or assassins operate rather than a legitimate law enforcement agency subject to civilian oversight.

The game is afoot.  [Scroll down]  But in all their scheming and plotting, they forgot one of the basic axioms of politics:  avoid the boomerang.  The boomerang in this case being there are not only blue states with double digit IQ fascists running things, there are also red states, where inner cities are not broken, where mayors allow their district attorneys to prosecute criminals and whose attorneys general actually know the law and follow it.  They don't invent and project crimes on their opponents.  They don't corrupt the federal government to imprison political opponents.  And they don't cry RICO when the true RICO crime boss is one of their own — blatantly and shamelessly using his political position as president as a global piggy bank.

Using the Dictator's — and the Mafia's — Playbook.  There are two ways to best understand the current Democrat Party.  The first way is to think of any dictatorship in the last 100 years (Cuba, Soviet Union, North Korea, China, Russia, and most Islamic countries are examples).  The second way is to view the Dems as the organized criminal enterprise they have become.  Biden, Hillary, Obama, et al. are totalitarians/authoritarians that operate as organized criminals raking in millions of dollars very much like the mafia dons and mafia families of the 1920s-1970s.  First, think of the above listed dictators and how they operate.  The mission of an authoritarian regime is to remain in power.  To do so, they must control the institutions of power.  In no particular order, because each is equally important, you must control the media and press, the legal system, law enforcement, the universities, and the bureaucracy.  With control of those institutions, you rule any country.

Save the Rule of Law By Destroying It?  Americans ask themselves questions whose answers are never given.  Why are all these Trump prosecutors leftwing or with Democratic connections?  Would any of the 90 something indictments for "crimes" of years past have been lodged against a citizen Trump who had retired from politics?  Why are these indictments of alleged wrongdoing of years ago now in summer 2023 suddenly both being synchronized in leftwing jurisdictions of New York, Washington, Miami, and Atlanta with the beginning of the 2024 election cycle?  Are any of the indictments against Trump also applicable to others?  Alvin Bragg's charge of campaign finance violations (Hillary Clinton, 2016)?  Jack Smith's allegations of encouraging mass civil unrest (Kamala Harris, 2020)?  Illegally removing and possessing classified federal documents (Joe Biden 2009-2022)?  Letitia James's lawsuit alleging financial irregularities and fraud (Al Sharpton 2009-2014)?  Fani Willis's claim that Trump was seeking to sabotage the constitutional duties of state electors (Martin Sheen, and an array of B-list Hollywood actors, 2016) and colluding to interfere with an election (Fani Willis 2003-4)?

This Political Prosecution Scheme Is Going To Backfire Hard.  Yuck it up, you morons who think it's cool to try to frame political opponents because your mug shots are coming soon enough.  And maybe not just mugshots.  You've genuinely screwed yourselves.  You can't control what you have unleashed.  And you're celebrating.  You shouldn't. [...] And you ought to hope it's only mug shots.  I hope it's only mug shots, not for your sake, but for my country's sake.  You've screwed up my country, and it's not clear that the wounds you caused are not mortal.  This is now a country where we lock up political opponents.  I just want to get that out there again, and I want you to understand what has changed.  This is now a country where we lock up political opponents.  And it's inevitable that very soon, you're going to realize that you are some people's political opponents too.

Steve Bannon Outlines National American Destiny as Attached to Trump Destiny.  Steve Bannon did an excellent monologue today [8/25/2023] outlining how President Donald Trump is one of only three people who have the destiny of the nation attached to their own destiny.  Together with President Abraham Lincoln and President George Washington, the destiny of our constitutional Republic as intrinsically tied to President Donald Trump.  [Video clip]

Emails Reveal Manipulated Biden Wikipedia Entries.  A new report revealed Wikipedia's permissive role in the concerted effort to protect President Joe Biden by blocking Americans from reading politically-negative information tied to his embattled son.  According to data entries reviewed by independent journalist Lee Fang, Wikipedia allowed special consultants "hired" by Hunter Biden to manipulate the "Hunter Biden" page with "stealth edits."  Wikipedia, a site funded by leftist billionaire George Soros, seemingly stood idly by as entries tying Hunter to damning bribery scandals were edited "without any fingerprints."  As reported by Fang, Hunter ordered FTI Consulting, a crisis management public relations firm, in 2014 to help him and his dad save face by keeping Americans from accessing the Bidens' ties to shady business dealings on Wikipedia.

The Deliberate Destruction of Post-War Generations.  This is the third in an August series about the loose association of monsters trying to affect one world government, or fascism with a smiley face.  In this essay, I draw together the evidence that from the 60's on, their goal was to break the children of three generations, (ending with gender reassignment surgery), destroy their minds, stunt their futures, ruin their families, attempt to persuade them that having children was bad, and that growth, prosperity and self-government was impossible, even destructive.  From the Kennedy assassination onwards, a series of horrifying events was engineered to destabilize American culture and confidence.  From military and hospital laboratories all over the US and Canada, psychiatrists ran experiments and devised actions to set community groups against each other, deliberately destroying civic peace.  The environmental movement was created in these labs and seminar rooms, as was second wave feminism.  All of it was anti-human, meant to draw down the population, and ensure that the rest were docile to the point of submission.  Operation Paperclip, Operation Bluebird, Operation Mockingbird, MKUltra were and continue to be real, heavily funded, and weaponized against us.

The Democrats are Certain They Will Never be Held Accountable for the Trump Indictments and Biden Cover-Up.  Never in the 235 years since the ratification of the Constitution has an administration premeditatively and blatantly prosecuted, on specious and conjecturable charges, the titular leader of the opposition party and leading candidate for president.  And doing so while overtly flaunting their egregious actions to protect and cover-up for the incumbent president who has been exposed as potentially complicit in massive bribery and fraud.  In any previous election cycle, these overt and unabashed actions would have been the death knell for the incumbent president's campaign and his party.  Yet the Democrats are blatantly unconcerned, supremely confident that they will prevail in 2024 regardless of who they nominate.

Biden Declares War On Your Appliances.  President Biden's unelected bureaucrats were never going to stop at taking away your light bulbs.  Your gas stove is next, followed by your dishwasher and your water heater — then finally your car.  And it's not members of Congress who are doing this, so you can't vote them out of office.  This isn't conjecture.  This year the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation have announced proposed rules that would force you to give up your current appliances and cars.  Additional regulations to pressure companies not to fund American energy have come from the Council on Environmental Quality, the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The FDA can't be sued for providing false or dishonest information.  The gist of a current court case that you've likely never heard of, is that three heroic doctors are suing the FDA about the loss of their jobs, about their careers being derailed, about the loss of their reputation — all because their professional, scientific opinion as to what was in the best interest of their patients, was different than the political agenda of the FDA.  What is at stake here could not be more significant, and it applies across the board to EVERY federal agency.  The question is:  do federal agencies have the unsupervised right to replace Science with political science?  Put another way:  can they act dishonestly, incompetently, etc. with essentially no meaningful consequences?

FDA Admits Guidance on Ivermectin was Illegal, Invokes 'Sovereign Immunity' for Misleading Statements.  This Substack has chronicled the illegal war on PSYOP-19 early treatment therapies by the very perpetrators of the "pandemic," and their associated criminal mandates.  It is no surprise that the most vilified early treatment repurposed drug Ivermectin has also been by far the most effective: [...] The reason that the captured FDA along with their partners-in-crime the CDC, WHO, UN, WEF, CFR, DoD, Pentagon, CIA, the illegitimate Federal government, Rockefeller and Gates "nonprofits," et al. have targeted Ivermectin is threefold:  it is exceptionally effective as an early C-19 treatment, mass administration would have resulted in plummeting global (turbo) cancer rates, and this wonder drug attenuates and reverses the slow kill bioweapon DEATHVAX damage.  A landmark lawsuit filed against the FDA by doctors Mary Talley Bowden, Paul Marik, and Robert Apter was heard in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday [8/8/2023].  Part of this lawsuit against the FDA was specific to fraudulent and illicit claims made by the agency against Ivermectin.

Americans are Not Fooled:  Two Thirds of Americans Believe 2020 Election was Rigged, The Feds Incited Jan 6, and the Bidens are a Crime Family.  Two out of three Americans are awake and not woke.  They see that truth behind the many lies from the Democrats and their corrupt media and Big Tech.  In April, a poll at Rasmussen Reports reported that two-thirds of Americans suspect that the Feds incited the Jan 6 riots.  This poll was before the former head of the Capitol Police spoke with Tucker Carlson and shared that Jan 6 was all a setup to get President Trump.  In May, a poll by Rasmussen Reports found that 62% of Americans believed that the 2020 Election was stolen.  This number has grown over time.  Also in May, a super majority of Americans per a Rasmussen poll showed that they believed the Biden gang's crimes related to foreign influence peddling were a big deal.

Introducing Contempt of Public.  We have all heard about contempt of court and contempt of Congress.  They are offenses for which one may be fined or jailed.  But what about contempt of public?  What's the penalty for that?  I don't know that you will find contempt of public in the statute books.  If not I offer up the phrase free and for nothing to the bureaucrats who look after such things.  I think it should be added to our vocabulary if not to our code of laws.  It names a grievous assault on the community.  By making a travesty of the rules and institutions that undergird our social life, contempt of public threatens to undermine that essential if often hard-to-define societal lubricant:  trust.

The Weaponization of Justice.  Jack Smith, with a long history of partisan conduct, is the prosecuting attorney in the case in the District of Columbia charging Trump with disinformation regarding the 2020 election, a confection of dubious legal basis.  This week, the parties argued before District Court judge Tanya Chutkin the prosecution's right to muzzle Trump during his campaign as he and his team poison public opinion and a potential jury pool with leaks and accusations of wrongdoing.  Judge Chutkin has a history of sentencing J6 defendants to longer sentences than even the prosecution requested.  She warned counsel for Trump that politics had no place in her courtroom, but in at least one transcribed exchange with one of those defendants she tipped her hand, expressing her view that it was wrong that Trump was not yet jailed:  [Transcript]

Evil Never Takes a Holiday.  There is a reason the permanent Deep State now resorts to sham trials, censorship, and political persecution:  it no longer has the time to pretend to respect free speech or the rule of law.  A century of slow but steady marching toward a Marxist technocratic super-state has given way to overt public harassment, coercion, and easily recognizable propaganda.  The left's deceptive veil has been lifted, and tyranny now has a face in all those politicians who openly support punishing dissent and constructing a modern-day Ministry of (dis)Information.  The petty totalitarians have moved from a marathon's pace to a sprint not because the finish line is just ahead, but because too many ordinary people have begun to figure out what is going on around them.

Biden's crime family is all of DC.  Joe Biden himself bragged five years ago about withholding aid to get the prosecutor fired.  Here's the video.  Republicans did nothing about Biden admitting to doing what RINOs and other Democrats falsely accused Trump of doing.  Nothing has come out of Biden storing classified secrets in his garage.  There is no way Joe will be impeached or Hunter will do any jail time because if they go down, all of Washington will go with them.  Washington protects its own because they fear if one goes to jail, he will bring them all down.  Hillary said she would bring DC down with her.  Guess what?  She never was indicted even though she forwarded state secrets via email to foreign donors to her fake charity when she was secretary of state.

Federal Indictment of Donald Trump Is Weaponization of American Political System.  The indictment of former President Donald Trump by special counsel Jack Smith — with the full approval of Attorney General Merrick Garland — is an attack on the American political system and fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment to freely discuss, debate, and contest serious election and political issues.  It represents the ultimate weaponization of the Justice Department, a transformation started by President Barack Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, and completed by Garland, to take out a viable political opponent of Garland's boss and political patron, President Joe Biden.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Trump is charged with four felony counts under three federal statutes — 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1512, and 241 — for supposedly conspiring to defraud the U.S., obstruct an official proceeding, and suppress the right of Americans to vote.  Why?  Because he "spread lies" questioning the outcome of the 2020 election by claiming "that he had actually won," according to the indictment, thus creating a "national atmosphere of mistrust and anger" and "erod[ing] public faith in the administration of the election."  That's the kind of language you would normally see in an editorial from The New York Times, not in a criminal indictment.  It is an opinion, not an actual rendition of facts.

A Florida Trial and a D.C. Grand Jury for Trump.  The elites may have to hold one of their show trials in Florida, but the grand jury had to be in D.C.  ["]Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday asked the Justice Department to explain its use of an out-of-state grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago case.  While the Mar-a-Lago case is being handled out of her Fort Pierce, Fla., courtroom, much of the grand jury work ahead of the indictment was conducted through a Washington, D.C., grand jury.["]  A D.C. grand jury is an obvious rubber stamp for political prosecutors.  A D.C. grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, as long as it was a Republican.  That's why the real show is in Washington D.C.  Going down to Florida is a bit inconvenient because it's one of those provinces of the empire.

Was COVID response a coup by the intelligence community?  Michael Senger wrote a piece this weekend arguing that the response to COVID-19 was devised by the intelligence community to perform what amounted to a coup.  You can see his point.  The IC has been deeply involved in both the censorship regime and the spread of sketchy information that was pushed out.  It helped monitor the flow of information, the implementation of draconian policies that limited people's liberties, and infiltrated social media companies and search engines to manipulate public perception and acceptance of hitherto unheard-of policies that fundamentally altered Western Culture.  Senger's thesis hinges on the notion that the Western response, after initially rejecting the absurd Chinese response to COVID that was only possible in a totalitarian society, reversed course in February/March 2020. The IC was deeply involved in the discussions regarding the response, and there clearly was a campaign to pretty up China's involvement in and response to COVID.

Conservative groups sue Biden for new plan to forgive $39 billion in student loans.  President Joe Biden has again been accused of abusing his power with his bid to wipe $39 billion in student loan debt.  Conservative groups are suing the Biden administration and demanded a federal court block the new income-driven repayment plans.  The White House had to draft new proposals to forgive student loan debts after the Supreme Court struck down his plan weeks ago.

Democrats Are Dancing the Totalitarian Two-Step.  [Scroll down]  Matt Margolis provided a timeline suggesting that indictments are dropped against Biden's political opponent whenever Biden or his family are implicated in another scandal.  This convenient distraction is actually election interference, what Trump is accused of in the most recent indictment.  The party in power has arrested and wants to imprison its political opposition, banana republic-style.  The same day that the FBI released bribery allegations against Joe Biden, Trump was indicted over supposed mishandling of classified documents.  When Hunter Biden's plea deal fell apart, the next day Special Counsel Jack Smith added a superseding indictment in the classified documents case.  Then right on schedule, the day after Devon Archer confirmed Hunter Biden's foreign influence-peddling with Father Joe's knowledge and participation, Smith indicted Trump for challenging the 2020 presidential election results, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.  What Biden's DOJ is doing is out of the totalitarianism playbook, eliminating political opposition, outlawing opposition to the state and pushing its claims through state-controlled media.

Throw All the Bums Out.  I don't think the federal government will exist in its current form much longer.  The reason is simple:  if Marxist globalists get their way, then sovereign U.S. powers will continue to be unlawfully delegated to the U.N., the WHO, and other international monstrosities until some Obama-type tyrant is ruling over us all from Turtle Bay or a stately castle outside Brussels.  If freedom-minded people succeed in reining in the federal government and reimposing the Constitution's limited delegation of powers, then the monstrosity that is already with us will radically diminish or disappear.  Either the current beast lording it over us will transform into something even more menacing, or it will be sapped of its blood-thirst for unconstitutional overreach and brought to heel. [...] If we were still abiding by the Constitution, then 99% of today's federal government would be chucked to the bottom of the Potomac.

Biden Is Turning U.S. into Putin's Russia with Trump Indictments.  Last week, the country's main opposition leader was hit with a new prosecution that could see him serve an effective life sentence in prison.  The charges were vague, and political in nature.  He was accused of inciting extremism and encouraging other people to break the law.  He is being railroaded through a judicial system that is deferential to the government.  He cannot appeal to public opinion in his own defense:  the country's media are hostile to him, and he has been censored on most platforms in any case.  The country in question was not the United States, but Russia.  The opposition leader was not Donald Trump, but Aleksey Navalny.  Yet increasingly, it is difficult to tell the difference between the two, at least when it comes to the administration of justice.

Joe Biden's DOJ: Where Justice Goes to Die.  The Department of Justice should be honest and call itself Biden Campaign Headquarters.  As a fearsome whiff of East Germany wafts through its windows, this Cabinet agency persecutes Donald Trump, the president's chief political rival, and keeps the heat off of the Bidens.  Regardless, temperatures are hotter than July.  Special counsel Jack Smith's four-count indictment du jour, unveiled Tuesday, aims to jail Trump for using First Amendment-protected free speech to challenge the validity of the 2020 election.  Never mind that Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, and countless other Democrats challenged the validity of the 2016 election.  They called Trump illegitimate and, for three years, screamed the knowingly false claim that he won only with Vladimir Putin's help.  When will Smith indict these Democrats?  Never.

A Country Descending into Madness.  [Scroll down]  Make no mistake: today's voluntarily enslaved press adores totalitarianism just as much as the totalitarians in office do.  I do not like the current state of our nation.  Our government spies on us without cause.  The administrative bureaucracy enforces regulatory edicts without any constitutional authority or consent from the people.  Heavily armed federal agencies intimidate Americans with the threat of physical violence.  The corrupt Department of (in)Justice continues to wage legal warfare against the ruling regime's political enemies.  These are all forms of tyranny that America's Founders risked their lives to reject.  Such injustices will not stand.  I am glad to be alive during this moment in history — when ordinary people have a chance to rectify past abuses and set America back upon a righteous course.  Our adversaries talk about a "Great Reset" that will launch the United States and other Western nations into a new era of technocratic State control over citizens.

Indicting Trump for 'knowingly false statements' about election sets US on dangerous path.  Special counsel Jack Smith made history on Tuesday [8/1/2023].  It wasn't just the federal indictment of a former president.  Smith already did that in June with the indictment of Donald Trump on charges that he mishandled classified documents.  No, Smith and his team have made history in the worst way by attempting to fully criminalize disinformation by seeking the incarceration for a politician on false claims made during and after an election.  The hatred for Trump is so all-encompassing that legal experts on the political left have ignored the chilling implications of this indictment.  This complaint is based largely on statements that are protected under the First Amendment.  It would eviscerate free speech and could allow the government to arrest those who are accused of spreading disinformation in elections.

The Merging of Intent — Community Organizing and Main Justice.  Until the era of Barack Obama and Eric Holder, the efforts of the community activists were to excuse and absolve the transparently guilty.  It was only when Barack Obama and Eric Holder moved into office that things changed; the inflection point was achieved.  What we now consider the weaponization of the DOJ is actually the outcome of Main Justice merging with community activism.  Instead of the long-standing method of absolving the transparently guilty, the justice system was repurposed to accuse the transparently innocent.  Only one voice noticed the changed activity as it was taking place and called my attention to it, that voice was author Jack Cashill.

DOJ Indictment Of Trump Is A Declaration Of War Against American Voters.  On Tuesday, President Joe Biden's Justice Department took the unprecedented step of indicting former President Donald Trump — Biden's chief rival in the upcoming 2024 election — for repeatedly expressing his opinion that the last election was stolen, rigged, and unfair.  It's an opinion millions of Americans share, and to which they are unquestionably entitled thanks to the First Amendment.  That includes Trump, who has said repeatedly (and recently) that the 2020 election was stolen.  He'll probably keep saying it until his dying day, and he has every right to do so.  The idea that our Justice Department can indict someone, especially the sitting president's main political rival, over speech that's protected by the First Amendment is simply insane.  It puts us firmly into banana republic territory, where tinpot dictators jail their political opponents ahead of election day to ensure their "reelection."  Simply put, this indictment is nothing more than a declaration of war against American voters and their constitutional right to free speech.

The Trump Indictment Criminalizes Political Dissent.  The serial indictments and investigations of former President Trump are meant to rig the 2024 presidential election, but the latest indictment is unique in rigging even its aftermath.  Previous indictments of the former president had broken all sorts of new legal ground by turning misdemeanors into felonies and deciding that the statute of limitations is just a suggestion, but the Jan 6 indictment by Democrat special counsel Jack Smith criminalizes election challenges.  Or at least election challenges against Democrats.  And along with that, all political dissent.  The Jan 6 indictment contends that Trump's election challenges were a crime.  What does this latest indictment offer that the previous indictments did not?  This one is designed to intimidate any Republicans who might seek to challenge the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Nothing Says Guilt Quite Like These DOJ Cleanup Efforts.  Nothing highlights a guilty intent quite like Main Justice backtracking to tell the judge their prior request was really, double dog swear, not intended to intimidate a congressional witness just a few hours before the testimony. [...] We all know what this is.  The weaponization of the DOJ is the #1 topic of national discussion; even when they pretend not to notice the weaponization of the justice system is the #1 topic of national discussion.  Main Justice, a network of affiliated Lawfare minds, runs in an echo-chamber of ideological group think.  There's no one in the room to say, 'hey guys, um, hold up — this looks like weaponization, targeting and witness intimidation', because they really are weaponizing, targeting and intimidating witnesses.

DOJ's Dirty Deeds.  It has been a week of scandalous doings on Attorney General Merrick Garland's watch.  Congress seems paralyzed to intervene with more than hearings, and so far, only federal district court Judge Maryellen Noreika has tried.  As I explain, it's questionable whether her conduct will prevent the Justice Department from exonerating Hunter Biden from laundering what may be as much as $50 million in bribes from countries, including China, Ukraine, and Romania, into his family's pockets.  Through Jack Smith it has corralled President Trump's valet and the Mar-a-Largo maintenance worker into the ridiculous documents case.  Finally, it dropped another case against crypto scammer Sam Bankman-Fried, who contributed as much as $90 million dollars of ill-gotten funds almost entirely to Democratic candidates and their action committees.

It's time to prosecute the prosecutors.  The farther we drift from the constitutional rule in this country, the less shocking the shocking will become. [...] Imagine Ronald Reagan prosecuting Walter Mondale, or George H.W. Bush prosecuting Bill Clinton, or Bill Clinton prosecuting Bob Dole.  The shocking thought of such foolishness would never have been tolerated by the American people.  But no more.  Once the shock value wears off, and once the wide gates of banana republicanism are thrown open, there's no turning back.  How ironic that Putin-obsessed Democrats are acting just like him.

Maskless churchgoer settles lawsuit over 2020 arrest, calls liberalism a 'modern-day cult'.  Idaho resident Gabriel Rench was awarded a hefty settlement for his 2020 arrest during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Rench spoke out about his case Monday and argued his arrest was the result of liberalism and cancel culture.  Rench was arrested in September 2020 along with two other churchgoers for not wearing masks to an outdoor worship service.  The three brought the lawsuit forward the following year, alleging their First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated.  The city of Moscow ultimately agreed to settle for $300,000.

Professors urge Biden to defy 'mistaken' rulings by 'MAGA' Supreme Court justices.  President Biden should find ways to defy the rulings of "MAGA justices" for their "gravely mistaken" constitutional interpretations, university professors urged in a letter on Wednesday.  Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet and San Francisco State University political scientist Aaron Belkin penned "An Open Letter to the Biden Administration on Popular Constitutionalism" to respond to what Biden has called "not a normal court" following high-profile cases.  "We urge President Biden to restrain MAGA justices immediately by announcing that if and when they issue rulings that are based on gravely mistaken interpretations of the Constitution that undermine our most fundamental commitments, the Administration will be guided by its own constitutional interpretations," they wrote.

Hemingway: DOJ Playing With Fire Trying To "Literally Imprison" The President's Top Political Rival.  "The Federalist" senior editor Mollie Hemingway, during an appearance Sunday on FNC's "Media Buzz, drives home the point that with the indictment of Donald Trump on federal charges over the January 6 riot, the Department of Justice is "working to literally imprison the top political opponent of the current president" over an issue of political speech.  She said Trump not being allowed to "do what everybody else was always allowed to do, which is protest election results and challenge election results" is "very dangerous."  "To criminalize that act, something the Democrats have done every single election since Reagan... The Department of Justice is acting in a very reckless fashion, and a competent media would be accurately talking about that, what a problem it poses to the very existence of our republic."

Michigan Charges 16 People — Average Age 69 — for Believing Trump Won.  Sixteen Republicans in Michigan — including former state co-chairwoman Meshawn Maddock — are being prosecuted by Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel for putting themselves forward as alternative electors after the 2020 election results were contested.  AG Nessel accuses the would-be electors — who average out at 69 years old between them — of having "undermined the public's faith in the integrity of our elections," and has hit each of them with eight felonies, among them forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery, and election law forgery.  Several of the charges carry prison terms of up to 14 years.  "Undoubtedly, there will be those who claim these charges are political in nature, but where there is overwhelming evidence of guilt in respect to multiple crimes, the most political act I could engage in as a prosecutor would be to take no action at all," the Democrat claimed.

Boston mayor under fire after sending list of critics and protesters to police.  Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, is facing criticism for "Nixonian tactics" after her administration admitted to creating a list of her most vocal critics and providing it to local authorities.  "The list was made in response to a request from the Boston Police Department after the Mayor had been harassed and physically intimidated by individuals for several months outside her home, at city functions such as the annual neighborhood parks coffee hours, and at other public events," Wu spokesman Ricardo Patron said in a statement to the Boston Herald.  The acknowledgment by the administration that it had compiled the document came after the list was uncovered in an email obtained through a public records request by Wu's opponents, the outlet noted.

Biden Waves His Magic Wand and Makes $39 Billion in Student Loan Debt Disappear.  With a disinterested flick of his magic wand, Biden has been able to make $39 billion in student loan debt disappear.  How can he do this, you might ask?  Like all magic tricks, it's a big secret.  But we know how he didn't do it:  He didn't ask Congress to pass a bill forgiving the debt.  That sort of thing is only important to old fuddy-duddy conservatives who think when the Supreme Court says the president can't forgive $400 billion in student loan debt, they mean it.  The Biden administration imposed a moratorium on the repayment of student loan debt in March 2021.  But that doesn't mean that the borrowers weren't paying back the money.  Biden used more magic to make all those monthly payments disappear.

Veteran feds cry foul on White House cocaine probe: 'This is a cover-up'.  The conclusion of an 11-day Secret Service probe that failed to find which White House staff member or visitor left cocaine in the West Wing looks like a whitewash, former federal investigators told The [New York] Post Thursday.  "This is a cover-up.  How can they say they have no leads?" one ex-agent said.  "It is a restricted area and they have a log book, you don't have to be Columbo to figure out who was there.  "Suppose it was anthrax," the same person raged.  "Would they have the same answer?"  "We have a tale of two countries," another former fed said.  "They identified hundreds of people who were in the Capitol building on Jan. 6 after an extensive investigation, but they don't know who left something in an 8 x 10 room in the White House?"  The Secret Service concluded its inquiry Thursday without identifying a suspect, citing "a lack of physical evidence" after FBI forensic testing yielded no fingerprints and insufficient DNA evidence.

Secret Service sacrificing its reputation to protect drug offender in the White House.  Another formerly revered federal agency joins in disgrace the politicized FBI, IRS, and Department of Justice.  The Secret Service took just 11 days to close its investigation of the class A illegal drug, cocaine, found in the White House with a figurative shrug of the shoulders and a mumbled "I dunno."  Following a classified briefing for members of Congress, the federal protective agency issued an official statement claiming:  ["]There was no surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area.  Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered.  At this time, the Secret Service's investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence.["] This does not pass the giggle test.  Taking only 11 days to investigate a very serious matter like this and then closing the investigation without interrogating and drug testing the very limited number of people who could have left anything in the locker in question bespeaks a desire to avoid finding the culprit.  Considering the vast ongoing effort to identify anyone who could have approached the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the lack of curiosity, paucity of resources employed, and the speed in wrapping up the investigation with no suspect, there is no other conclusion than a cover up is likely underway.

Two-Tiered 'Justice' Intended to Incite Rebellion.  The Department of (in)Justice and federal law enforcement routinely look the other way whenever Antifa and Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists rough up citizens and destroy small businesses.  Then a bunch of patriotic Americans without criminal records show up at the U.S. Capitol to protest the fraudulent 2020 election, and the Stasi FBI immediately labels every grandparent and veteran within miles an "insurrectionist."  While Soros-aligned prosecutors award the left's paramilitary brigades with accolades instead of incarcerations, the Feds have dragged J6 protesters through unfair criminal proceedings, inflicted unnecessary suffering, and forced political prisoners to languish without bail.  When political prisoners finally do face trial, the government hides potentially exonerating video evidence and records under fabricated claims of "national security," prosecutors flippantly throw around terms like "treason" and "rebellion" in front of juries, and partisan judges are all too willing to hand down excessive sentences as an unconscionable form of political revenge.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Utopia.  The Left craftily calculated that they could use our beloved institutions against us.  In their view, all things are simply tools for the advancement of the agenda.  Why not repurpose education for indoctrination, commerce for control, entertainment for reprogramming?  Well, in all candor, our institutions, beloved or not, are nothing more than tools.  Now they are broken tools, after being employed in a manner never intended.  There are only two options for a broken tool, mend it or cast it away.  DEI is quickly becoming a pariah term in the world of investing.  The people have spoken, to Bud Light, to Target, to NASCAR, to the NFL, and others.  We will see if they listen.  Citizens are voting with their feet, loading up U-Hauls to flee California, Oregon, New York, and Illinois.  The value of university degrees which aren't STEM-related is dissipating like the morning dew.  Incensed parents are wearily retaking school boards, to shoulder a task thought safely in competent hands.  The alphabet agencies are currently sprouting whistleblowers like flowers in spring, telling tales of the two tiers of "justice."  Each institution will be reformed or written off, depending upon degree of damage and cost of repair.

Mark Levin Goes Nuclear: 'We Must Break the Back of the DOJ!'  In his weekly show on Fox, "Life, Liberty, and Levin," Mark Levin opened his show this Sunday [7/9/2023] breathing fire in his monologue.  Levin started by calling the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland a rogue operation, controlled by the Democrat party and the radical left.  By the time he got to the first commercial break, one could almost see smoke wafting in the studio.  Levin's anger at the weaponization of the federal government under Biden and Garland has clearly caused him grave concern for the future of the republic.  "If we don't BREAK THE BACK of the Department of Justice," he declared, "it will destroy this country!"

Grassley highlighted the numerous ways Delaware Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf appeared to have obstructed the investigation into Hunter Biden's potentially criminal business activities.  A Delaware assistant U.S. attorney was briefed in October 2020 that a confidential human source (CHS) had reported Hunter and Joe Biden each received $5 million in bribes, Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed Sunday in a letter to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.  A source familiar with that briefing has now confirmed to The Federalist that the Pittsburgh office told the Delaware office the CHS's reporting appeared credible and merited further investigation.  That added detail increases the significance of Grassley's Sunday letter and his question to Weiss about whether his deputy thwarted the investigation.  "On October 23, 2020, Justice Department and FBI Special Agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office briefed Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, one of your top prosecutors, and FBI Special Agents from the Baltimore Field Office with respect to the contents of the FBI-generated FD-1023 alleging a criminal bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden," Grassley's letter said.  "What steps have the Justice Department and FBI taken to investigate the allegations?" the Iowa senator asked before noting his concerns about Wolf's involvement.

Comer Accuses DOJ of High Level 'Cover Up,' Vows Accountability.  House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., vowed to hold the U.S. Department of Justice accountable in an alleged high-level cover-up that may have protected the Biden family from feeling the sting of equal justice.  In an interview on Fox News, Comer spoke about IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley's allegation that his team was hindered from investigating Hunter Biden and that DOJ prosecutors directed them to avoid asking questions about the "Big Guy."  Rep. Comer explained, "It's another example of the Department of Justice meddling to have a cover-up.  This is a cover-up of public corruption at the highest level.  And if you go back to when we bought the general counsel for the National Archives in for a transcribed interview in the House Oversight Committee, they said the DOJ told them to stand down."

The Traitor Class.  What America is up against is unlike anything we have ever encountered or experienced.  It has the potential of being more bloody than the Civil War and more threatening than both world wars.  But now we face an army of traitors... a traitor class, domestic enemies working behind the scenes in shadow.  They are dividing our country, destroying our freedom, our democratic republic, our sovereignty, our Judeo Christian values, our morality, the family unit, our culture, even our monuments to American heroes.  They are spending us into oblivion as Cloward and Piven envisioned.  The traitors are accomplishing this because they are getting no opposition.  A lot of people are confused.  They think it is just politics.  It is not just politics.  The Left is planning to deliver The United States to the New World Order in the next very few years and they are on schedule.  They are globalists, more loyal to their political party and to globalism than they are to their country.  They number in the many hundreds, maybe thousands.  They have taken over the Executive Branch, the Justice Department, certainly the FBI.  Half of the Senate and half of the House.  Almost the entire school system is teaching values contrary to our culture and religion

A New America: Only After Liberals Break Everything.  All of a sudden, I am reading a bunch of attacks on the administrative state.  [Examples omitted for brevity.]  Okay. so what is prompting this?  The glorious failure of the administrative state during COVID, you think? [...] The only way that conservatives get a chance to fix things is after our present rulers actually break America.  And there is another thing that I can mention, as an unashamed sexist, because I never expect to apply for a job again.  It is Women.  I noticed, from the start of the late COVID crisis, that women were all aboard masking and lockdowns and social distancing and vaccinations in a New York minute.  Why?  Because women expect to be protected, and when some manly government shows up and gins up a COVID Pandemic and announces: do what we say or everyone will die, women instinctively do what they are told, and are glad to do so.  Because they expect to be protected.  So I declare that nothing will change until America breaks, and not just for white working-class men as at present, but for women and especially educated liberal women.  Then, and only then will we get regime change, and the chance to staff the bureaucracy with our own guys, and then write the history.

Four Ways the Deep State Betrays Americans.  Do you think it is an accident that the Deep State has worked so hard to protect the Biden family from prosecution when the Chinese bought Joe long ago?  Do you think it is a coincidence that the Deep State is trying to put President Trump in prison for the rest of his days, when he has been the lone voice on the national stage calling for American independence from reliance upon foreign dictators?  Could the Deep State make it any more obvious that it works against Americans' interests and for the interests of World Economic Forum scum such as Klaus Schwab, George Soros, Bill Gates, and all the other anti-American, Marxist globalists?  For all intents and purposes, the Uniparty occupying D.C. is a wholly owned and operated corporate subsidiary of the communist Chinese.

"Blatant Political Corruption": The Rot In America's Democracy Explained In Under 1000 Words.  Over the last several weeks and months, a deluge of [embarrassing] breadcrumbs have been revealed by various whistleblowers, congressional investigators, and investigative reporters, the entirety of which has been a shotgun blast of information overload.  When put together, they paint a picture of such shocking corruption, that one can only conclude that the period we've lived through, between the 2020 US election, the funding, origins, and coverup of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the overt corruption of the Biden family, one can only conclude that we're living through one of the worst, if not the worst, periods of political scandals and institutional rot in American history.

The Left destroys people.  Cancel culture, doxxing, deplatforming, and shadow banning are all synonyms for left-wing character destruction, an updated electronic form of Trostkyization and Lavrentiy Beria-style "show me the man and I'll show you the crime" persecutions.  Anyone who strays — a Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Matt Taibbi, or an Elon Musk — will be targeted by the woke bureaucracies, libeled in the media, and ostracized by the popular culture.  The message is one of deterrence:  stay properly left and you are accorded the James Comey/Andrew McCabe/James Clapper/John Brennan/Anthony Fauci/Hunter Biden/2020 rioters exemptions from legal accountability for lying under oath, rank profiteering, or abject violent rioting.  Swerve improperly rightward, and you will be vaporized by the long arm of the politicized law.

Why is the Clinton Special Counsel Delaying Start of Trump Trial?  Usually trying to delay a trial is done to give your side more time to prepare.  Jack Smith, the Clinton-linked special counsel targeting Trump, is strangely asking for a significant delay on behalf of Trump's people. [...] Why is Smith filing motions on behalf of the defense?  If Trump's legal team wants to delay the case, they're capable of asking to do so.  And Smith's arguments perhaps provide them with grounds for doing so.  What's strange is the red team asking for a delay on behalf of the blue team.  It's a safe bet that Smith's concerns that Trump's lawyers have the time they need are not the real story.  Smith rushed to indict Trump, but now he wants to slow down.  Pushing the trial to December will, along with inevitable further delays, will take the trial into the primary season[,] as it's intended to do.  This isn't about winning the case, it's about, much as with Russiagate, keeping the case in the public eye.

'Someone's got to go to prison'.  When will any of these low-down thugs who have a grip on our nation go to prison?  Probably never.  They lie with impunity and most of the Republicans in Congress are such squishes that the few that lobby for justice get nowhere when they try to make a Democrat pay for his or her crime.  We do have a two-tiered system of justice, and everyone knows it.  In this administration's view, patriots and good Samaritans must go to prison, not drug dealers, car-jackers, shoplifters, murderers or pedophiles.  To our now far, far Marxist left, those folks are victims of white supremacy and must be spared the inconveniences of abiding by the rule of law.  Sadly, there are too many Soros-seated judges who go along with the pro-criminal, anti-victim agenda of the left.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud.  Government heavy-handedness should never be mistaken as a demonstration of enduring strength, but rather as a telltale sign that the State is weakening.  Central bank digital currencies, automated fact-checking, "vaccine" passports, social credit scores — these are the actions of governments in fear of losing their control.  Healthy, respected, self-sustaining institutions do not construct digital prisons, treat citizens like cattle, or use heavily armed revenue agents as shock troops for intimidation.  Like a star expanding into a red giant before finally shrinking into a white dwarf, dying political powers expand into totalitarian monstrosities before their despotic bluster wanes.  In between monster and minion, it is normal citizens who drain the State's powers and reclaim them as their own.

Resistance.  It's obvious to a great many that the legislature exists only to funnel tax dollars into the pockets of their political allies for which they are endowed with great sums come election time.  In this way they do not represent the people, but their donors and the whole of the government is corrupt.  I don't expect this declaration or designation to mean very much to people while they can still go along to get along.  This post is more to point the way, to establish the understanding of our situation once the banking failures take place, or the war is brought to our shores through their mismanagement of forces and budgets that have been designed for no other purpose than to provide generals with subsequent employment.  It's a wholesale betrayal we're enduring: betrayal of our military leadership, of our legislative bodies, the medical profession, the teaching profession, but more specifically and more intentionally the economic system.

Hunter Biden's plea deal is proof Democrats are 'The Untouchables' in Joe's America.  Santa Claus is more real than the integrity of the FBI and Justice Department under Joe Biden.  Friend and family discounts have never been so obvious — and odious.  For the other side of the coin, see the FBI's tracking of parents who dared to criticize progressive school boards, and agents who were willing to carry out an armed visit to the home of an anti-abortion protester.  Traditional Catholics also were singled out for undercover surveillance.  Then there's the history-making takedown of Donald Trump, which gives rise to the most poignant phrase of the day — a two-tiered system of justice.  That's another way of saying there is no justice system.  For the word "justice" implies fairness and impartiality for all comers before the law.  Those requirements are absent when the guilty son of the sitting president gets the equivalent of jaywalking citations for a life lived notoriously outside the law and the leader of the opposition party gets buried in a felony landslide.

Rule by Decree: The Emergency State's Plot to Override the Constitution.  We have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency.  Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.  COVID-19, for example, served as the driving force behind what Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch characterized as "the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country."  In a statement attached to the Supreme Court's ruling in Arizona v.  Mayorkas, a case that challenged whether the government could continue to use it pandemic powers even after declaring the public health emergency over, Gorsuch provided a catalog of the many ways in which the government used COVID-19 to massively overreach its authority and suppress civil liberties: [...]

Previous Target of DOJ's Trump Legal Hit Squad Alleges Witness Payoff Scheme.  Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the current investigation into and indictment of Donald Trump.  But as USA Today reported, Smith "built [his] reputation" in his previous role overseeing the prosecution of former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.).  And according to Renzi himself, in exclusive comments to PJ Media, there's evidence tying Smith to illegal wiretaps, jury influencing, payoffs for false testimony, and other highly questionable behavior.  The newly published allegations led Donald Trump to call Smith "deranged."

Beyond a Banana Republic.  As radio personality Jesse Kelly remarks on Twitter, there are two ways to view what is happening with Donald Trump right now:  ["]Either you see what's happening to Trump as being about Trump or you see it being about a weaponized government planning to make any opposition a crime.  Only one of those views is correct.  You don't have to be a Trump fan to see it's the latter.["]  For most Americans who've paid the slightest bit of attention these past years, that's an obvious statement.  But as George Orwell said of his own time, we've "sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."  That particular phrase derives from a 1939 review of the book Power: A Social Analysis (1938), by Bertrand Russell.  What makes his observations interesting, and why it serves as another example of Orwell's prescience, is how precisely his commentary reflects what we are witnessing at this moment.

Tearing Apart the Governing Consensus.  We hear a lot about the loss of "institutional legitimacy" these days.  One of the great ironies attendant on that loss is a revolution in sentiment among many — but by no means all — people who think of themselves as conservative.  Hitherto, such people would have been staunch supporters of those institutions that, traditionally, had represented the rule of law, the continuity of our culture, etc.  Nowadays, they look with a jaundiced eye upon once-respected institutions like the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, and the rest of the national security/surveillance apparat.  How could it be otherwise?  Recent revelations that scores if not hundreds of figures from that world had insinuated themselves into media, social and otherwise, to push a partisan agenda must give us pause.

The real reason the left is persecuting Trump.  The number-one rule for understanding the fascist far left is that they will always accuse the pro-freedom right of what they are doing.  And they take charges of hypocrisy as indications of success in this endeavor. [...] What better way of making people mad than continually going after the people from the pro-freedom right while they laud the far left?  How many times do they have to repeat the cliché "no one is above the law" when anyone with common sense knows that doesn't apply to the anti-liberty left side of the aisle?  Would it shock anyone to find out later that they were just saying that to provoke the pro-freedom right?  The nation's socialist media spent a stunning 291 Minutes on Trump Indictment, 0 Seconds on Biden Burisma Bribery on June 8, demonstrating that they no longer care about objectivity, much less if Biden is "above the law."  If that doesn't infuriate the fair-minded, nothing will.

6 Reasons DOJ's 'Get Trump' Documents Case Is Seriously Flawed.  [#3] Walt Nauta and DOJ Misconduct:  Far and away the most troubling side story to emerge from this saga so far are the allegations made by Trump aide and co-defendant Walt Nauta's lawyer last week.  You may have missed it if you blinked.  Not surprisingly, the corporate media have mostly buried this one.  Nauta's lawyer, Stanley Woodward, alleged in a court filing that during a meeting with prosecutors about his client's case, the head of the Counterintelligence Section of DOJ's National Security Division Jay Bratt "suggested Woodward's judicial application [for a DC Superior Court judgeship] might be considered more favorably if he and his client cooperated against Trump."  If true, and I find it hard to believe that Woodward just made the whole thing up, this is wild misconduct.  Truly wild.  It could undermine the entire case against both Trump and Nauta.  It could end careers at DOJ if fairly investigated.  Woodward is a highly accomplished lawyer.  He spent a decade at Akin Gump, a top law firm, clerked on the D.C. Circuit, and has very substantial experience in government investigations.  This is not some fly-by-night TV lawyer.  He is a legal heavyweight, and he is leveling an extremely serious allegation of misconduct against a senior official at DOJ.

Trump is Charged Under a Law Meant to Suppress Political Opposition.  A year after the start of WWI, President Woodrow Wilson addressed his message to Congress and warned that the "gravest threats against our national peace and safety" did not come from "other governments", but from "within our own borders".  "Citizens of the United States," Wilson continued, "born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life."  Wilson, a notorious racist and a supporter of the KKK who had contempt for a wide variety of other peoples, likely had German immigrants, but not just them, in mind when he called for what would become the Espionage Act so that "we may be purged of their corrupt distempers."  "I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt with," Wilson concluded.  While there were indeed pro-German terrorist conspiracies in those days, including the Black Tom bombing which damaged the Statue of Liberty and a plot to infect the country's horses, the Espionage Act of 1917 went far beyond prosecuting criminal activities.  Wilson had sought, but not received, the power to censor the press, he did get the power to censor the mail.

Indict Walt Nauta?  Why Not the Biggest Liars First?  Walt Nauta is a 10-year-Navy veteran and served as an aide to former President Trump both in and out of office.  Special Counsel Jack Smith has now indicted him for allegedly "making false statements in interviews with the FBI."  The indictment's subtext is that Nauta refused to cooperate with, and turn state's evidence to, the special counsel in its efforts to convict the former president.  But why stop the indictments with a man who loyally served and followed the orders of the former president of the United States, was a Navy veteran, and a hard-working immigrant from Guam?  Are there not far bigger fish to fry to remind Americans that justice is blind?

Biden, progressives and the perpetual-emergency presidency.  Progressive lawmakers are once again calling on President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency, which would give him sweeping new executive powers to do pretty much whatever he wants.  It is just one more example of how progressives, who are constantly lecturing the country about the threats to democracy, are eager to ignore the democratically elected members of Congress — and the U.S. Constitution — in order to get their way.  According to Bloomberg, "An emergency declaration by President Joe Biden would unlock sweeping executive powers, including blocking crude oil exports and placing other limits on fossil fuels."  The catalyst for the latest climate-emergency demand was Canadian wildfire smoke that settled on much of the northeast, including New York City and Washington, D.C.  But progressives don't really need a catalyst — they just use that to get more media attention.  They have been calling on Biden to declare a climate emergency for at least a year.

Biden admin turned American democracy into Pakistani fascism.  With former President Donald Trump criminally indicted, America, once the beacon of democracy, has crossed the Rubicon.  With the administration's weaponization of our now dual system of justice under President Biden, our nation is headed straight to Pakistani fascist hell.  The parallels between former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Mr. Trump are indeed frightening.  Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Khan ran as a populist economic nationalist.  Victorious, Mr. Khan immediately came under attack from deep state elements in the Pakistani government, including a powerful military — and he was ousted in April 2022.  Fearful Mr. Khan might rise again in the next election, Pakistan's equivalent of America's FBI arrested Mr. Khan on trumped-up charges.  Even after being set free by Pakistan's Supreme Court, Mr. Khan is now "legally" forbidden to run for president — the same goal of the current Trump witch hunts.

Former Head of FBI J6 Pipe Bomb Investigation Comes Clean With Stunning Admission: "I Don't Want Any Conspiracy Theories, Right?".  We recently reported on the remarkable fact that former senior FBI official Steven D'Antuono voluntarily submitted himself before the judiciary committee and raised powerful objections to the Mar a Lago raid that serves as the basis of the sham indictment of President Trump.  We reported that the most remarkable part of this story is not the objections themselves, but Steven D'Antuono's identity — indeed, D'Antuono has long been a subject of Revolver News' reporting as the man who oversaw the investigation into the infamous entrapment operation known as the Michigan Kidnapping plot and the equally bogus investigation into the so-called January 6 pipe bombs.  Finally, we said that we haven't heard the last from Mr. D'Antuono.  Now, we are in a position to reveal that Mar-a-Lago is not the only subject matter D'Antuono discussed with the committee, and that Revolver News' Darren Beattie worked with Congressman Thomas Massie to produce questions concerning the pipe bomb investigation for D'Antuono to answer.  A letter recently published by Jim Jordan alludes to some of the stunning results of this interrogation.

Steven D'Antuono: The FBI's Hatchet Man.  Defense attorneys representing two men recently convicted for conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 are seeking a new federal trial for their clients amid claims of jury and judicial misconduct.  (The men, Adam Fox and Barry Croft were found guilty in August in a second trial; a jury in April failed to reach a verdict on them.  Two co-defendants were acquitted after jurors concluded the men had been entrapped by the FBI.)  A separate state trial for three other men accused of participating in the scheme is now underway in Jackson, Michigan.  The ongoing legal drama is a reminder of the handiwork of Steven D'Antuono, former head of the Detroit FBI field office, which was primarily responsible for hatching and executing the Whitmer fednapping hoax.  Supervising and undercover agents working out of that Detroit office and its satellite branches managed the day-to-day details of the wide-ranging operation such as handling the main FBI informant, Dan Chappel, who was compensated at least $60,000 in cash and personal items paid by the FBI for luring the men into the trap.

The CIA Is Begging Congress to Please Keep Spying on U.S. Citizens Legal.  High-level officials from the CIA, FBI, and NSA are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, asking Congress to continue allowing the agency to spy on the communications of US citizens.  They are urging Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — one of the nation's most hotly contested government surveillance programs.  Intelligence agencies have long cited the powerful 2008 FISA provision as an invaluable tool to effectively combat global terrorism, but critics, including an increasing number of lawmakers from both parties, say those same agencies have morphed the provision into an unchecked, warrantless domestic spying tool.  The provision is set to expire at the end of this year.  Federal agents urged lawmakers to reauthorize 702 without adding new reforms that could potentially slow down or impair operators' access to intelligence.

US Intel Is Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens.  Wired reports that the United States government has been secretly amassing a large amount of sensitive and intimate information on its own citizens.  A group of senior advisers informed April Haines, the DNI, more than a year ago that they are accumulating data on the most minute details of Americans' lives.  In late 2021 Haines told her advisers to untangle a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and you, US intelligence community members, reports Wired.

Report: Intelligence Agencies Buying 'Sensitive and Intimate' Data of American Citizens.  Arecently-declassified report alleges that multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have been actively "flouting the law" by gathering massive collections of "sensitive and intimate" data on American citizens.  According to the New York Post, the claims were made in a report to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines, which was only recently declassified and is now being amplified by watchdog groups and privacy advocates.  The report details a loophole that has allowed intelligence agencies, including the FBI, DHS, and NSA, to simply buy large troves of cell phone data for tracking purposes without needing a warrant.  If the information was paid for, the report notes, then it is technically considered "publicly available."  The government only needs to ask for a warrant if they are asking to access a cell phone's location, and thus would raise Fourth Amendment concerns necessitating a judge's approval.

When are enough Americans going to realize our government is a criminal enterprise?  How corrupt is our Department of Justice?  In order to take Trump off the board, they have indicted President Trump on a long list of made-up, fabricated crimes regarding the documents confiscated in that misguided, illegitimate raid on Mar-A-Lago.  These charges are ludicrous, and a decent judge would and may well toss them.  The thoroughly corrupt Jack Smith has chosen to ignore all the precedents that should apply.  Tapes stored in Clinton's sock drawer?  Legal.  Sandy Berger stole docs from the National Archives?  Slap on the wrist.  Biden's many hundreds of documents and Pence's possession of "classified" docs?  Ignored by the DOJ.  Comey's disingenuous decision to give Hillary a pass for her oh-so-many and far more serious crimes got a pass.  So terrified of the most pro-America president since Reagan, the left has gone to extreme and illegal lengths to destroy the best President since Reagan. Biden's two years in office have brought the US to the brink of an abyss.  This indictment of Trump only proves the unfairness of our two-tiered system of justice.

After The Last Seven Years, No One Believes The DOJ Is Acting In Good Faith.  Mollie Hemingway: ["]The larger context here is so important.  I do think people would have be enwilling to hear from the Department of Justice that they need to indict their top political opponent, and hear that in good faith, if we had not experienced what we have from the past six years from this Department of Justice.  We have a Department of Justice that had Hillary Clinton, who was never president and will never be a president, mishandling classified information and they invented a new legal standard to simply to let her go.  We have all the paperwork disputes with President Obama, and President Clinton, we have thefts of documents from the National Archives by a Clinton associate, and nothing has happened to those people.  We have the Russia-gate collusion-hoax in which the Department of Justice invented and participated in a Democrat-invented conspiracy theory see to say Donald Trump was a traitor.  This week, we learned that Joe Biden was credibly accused by a very serious whistleblower of a $ million bribery scheme and the FBI worked to cover it up.["]

Mark Levin: Out Of Control DOJ Has "Destroyed The Next Election".  By now, you've heard a lot about this.  This is the indictment, the various charges against President Trump.  It is 49 pages long.  There are 38 charges, 37 involving President Trump, the one against Walt Nauta, who's a Navy vet, and an aide to President Trump is in here in order to try and pressure him to turn on Donald Trump.  That's why they put it in here.  Now, some people are very impressed by this.  I'm very troubled by this.  Thirty-seven counts against the former president and the leading Republican nominee right now for the Republican nomination for president, 31 having to deal with document retention.  Why would you pile on 31 counts when it could be one count, or three counts or five counts?  [Video clip]

Mrs. Obama — we're looking for the Fast & Furious files.  We've crossed two dangerous lines in the last year.  First, the FBI showed up at Mr. Trump's home looking for files.  Second, a Special Counsel followed up with an indictment about those files.  Why hadn't this happened before?  Maybe it's because the people who came before us were smart enough to know that political passions go both ways. [...] Before Trump, no one would have dared consider that.  After Trump, anything can happen and probably will.  This is why I believe that this indictment against President Trump is going to backfire.  Yes, Trump, like Biden, made mistakes.  However, an indictment is over the top.  This is to going to blow up in their faces.

The playbook is always the same for most of the media and other Democrats.  They target political opponents they want to destroy, whether it is Sarah Palin, Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Thomas, Ron DeSantis, or Donald Trump.  They relentlessly set out to destroy them, whatever they have to do.  They will even create fictitious stories like Russian collusion, without evidence, and then repeat the fake stories for years and have endless investigations based on nothing.  Destroying the target in the minds of the public is all they care about because their goal is to maintain power and infect the country with radical leftist policies to expand government power and control of the people.  It also helps tremendously when so many government bureaucrats seek to destroy the same people.  The endless investigations and criminal proceedings have nothing to do with applying laws equally.  Instead, they weaponize the Justice Department, or IRS, or DHS, or CFPB, or EPA to destroy people whose policies they don't like.  The truth is irrelevant when they set out to destroy someone.

One Nation, Two Sets of Laws.  When Barack Obama announced that he was unilaterally legalizing millions of illegal aliens while further opening the border, he described it as using "discretion about whom to prosecute".  In the years since, pro-crime prosecutors have virtually dismantled the justice system in some jurisdictions by using their "discretion" not to prosecute thieves, drug dealers and violent criminals.  Some prosecutors announced that they wouldn't prosecute rioters and looters, others that they would stop prosecuting prostitution, public urination or thefts of under $1,000.  In the decade since Obama announced his exercise in prosecutorial discretion, the country has been overrun with criminals and illegal aliens who benefited from that "discretion".  But prosecutorial discretion, like most leftist policies, works both ways.

Presidential Power Is Surging And Making Congress Obsolete.  Since President Washington issued the first executive order directing the heads of executive departments to submit reports about their operations, virtually every President has issued executive orders.  The sheer number and wide-ranging scope of executive orders, however, has grown immensely under recent presidents and continues to expand with President Biden.  They represent the "usurpations" of power that Madison feared.  [James] Madison issued only a single executive order in eight years as president while modern presidents each have issued hundreds.  Indeed, reflecting this presidential arrogance, then President Obama boldly declared, "We can't wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job.  Where they won't act, I will."  Executive orders are directives issued by the President with the force and effect of law.  There is, however, no mention of executive orders in the Constitution.  Rather, this presidential authority is implied from the Constitution, which vests executive power in the President, or as expressly or impliedly granted by Congress through statutes.

Who's Destroying Civic Norms Again?  Trump?  [Scroll down]  At this point, anybody not being attacked or politically persecuted should be presumed as secretly working for some shady enterprise hostile to the best interest of the United States.  Yet somehow special counsel Jack Smith has the temerity to stand before the American people, announce the federal government's continuing crusade to keep President Trump from office, and shamelessly declare, "We have one set of laws in this country."  Right.  What he really means is, "The Deep State controls America, and if you mess with those gangsters, we'll lock you up and throw away the key."  Jack Smith — like Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, so many inspectors general who ignore crimes under their purview, and too many partisan political operatives posing as judges — is just another thug enforcer sent out to protect the ruling regime.  Well done, Jack!  Collect your thirty pieces of silver and career advancement as your reward!

Dershowitz: Dems Who Opposed 'Dangerous' and 'Unconstitutional' Espionage Act Now 'Rooting for it to Be Applied Broadly'.  On Friday's broadcast of Newsmax TV's "The Record," Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz commented on the indictment against former President Donald Trump and the Espionage Act charges contained in the indictment by saying that the Espionage Act "is one of the most dangerous and unconstitutional statutes ever passed" that was passed with the intent to jail dissidents.  And that for several decades, "every liberal, every progressive, every Democrat I know was against this statute" but now they are "all rooting for it to be applied broadly to conduct that has nothing to do with espionage" and didn't put national security at risk.

Biden's DOJ attempts to take out the GOP frontrunner.  The inevitability has finally been realized (if reports are true): Donald Trump has been indicted by the Biden DOJ. [...] After years and years of prosecutorial and investigative abuses and crimes, the Department of Justice has finally indicted Trump.  In doing so, the DOJ has inserted itself into the 2024 presidential election, again disenfranchising millions of voters.  It's a sad day for the country and a sobering day for those who wish for the equal administration of justice.  This story is still developing.  The New York Times states there are seven counts; we expect these to concern various provisions of the Espionage Act (18 USC 793), such as the dissemination of national security information and the unauthorized retention of national security documents.  We understand that the indictment has been filed in the Federal District Court in Miami.  Quick analysis: this is a comparatively good venue for Trump, given the support he has in Florida and in the Miami community.  It is much better than DC, where Trump would face unfavorable judges and a Democrat jury pool.

Russiagate: The Scandal That Became Business as Usual.  Special Counsel John Durham may have issued his final report last month, but the Russiagate scandal is far from over.  This is not because there is no more to learn about the years-long effort by the Democratic Party, the FBI, CIA, and major news outlets to advance the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump teamed with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election.  Rather it's because Russiagate never ended.  Unlike political scandals of the past — from the XYZ Affair to Watergate and Iran-Contra — it is not a discrete set of events with a beginning, middle, and end.  Instead, it has become a form of governing in which the entrenched forces of the Washington bureaucracy punish their enemies, protect their friends and interfere in elections with impunity.  A continuous thread connects the schemes to deny the results of the 2016 election, to cover up the Biden family's influence-peddling schemes during the 2020 election, and the ongoing effort to tar President Biden's opponents as extremists or racists.  Ironically, all of this is especially dangerous because it is out in the open.  The profound misdeeds are not hidden in the dark web; they are part of the public record.

Biden's DOJ Tried to Bribe Attorney for Trump's Valet in Exchange for Testimony Against Trump.  On Thursday The Guardian reported that Joe Biden's DOJ attempted to bribe the attorney for Trump valet driver in exchange for testimony against Donald Trump.  Clearly, this is an illegal act and it should threaten the case against President Trump.  The only criminal act in this entire case is the actions by the Biden DOJ!

Hawley rips judicial nominee for arguing religious Americans more likely to spread COVID.  Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said he won't vote for one of President Joe Biden's judicial nominees Wednesday due to arguments she made that religious Americans were more likely to spread COVID-19.  Loren AliKhan, Biden's nominee for United States District Judge for the District of Columbia, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday [6/7/2023] but was confronted by Hawley about her previous arguments regarding religious discrimination.  Hawley asked if AliKhan believed it was wrong to discriminate against religious communities and questioned her previous comments about the COVID-19 pandemic.  "Do you think it's wrong to discriminate on the basis of religious faith?" Hawley asked.  "Absolutely," AliKhan said.  "Then why did you argue that religious services and religious people pose a greater risk of infection than people gathered to argue for defunding the police," Hawley replied.

Churches MUST NOT criticize the government!  Elections have been stolen.  Our borders are wide open.  Innocent Americans are in Gulags.  Our bureaucracies have been weaponized.  A show trial is underway for a former U.S President.  Free speech has been silenced.  Courts and prosecutors are corrupted.  The age Orwell predicted is upon us.  We face a new type of war.  The FBI has signaled in the clearest possible manner it does not care what the people or their elected representatives think.  It will do what it pleases, [the consequences notwithstanding.]  The recently released Durham report paints a graphic picture of an agency out of control.  The FBI did not blunder into an investigation of Donald Trump, his campaign, and his associates.  The FBI undertook to deliberately destroy Trump and those around him including General Flynn.  The FBI took unto itself the power to decide who could be President.  The FBI no longer answers to the elected representatives of the American people, nor does it care what they think.  It did not get sloppy.  It did not make some errors in judgment.  Its leaders decided that they were entitled to do whatever they chose and to ignore our laws, our traditions, and the judgment of the nation's citizens.

What State Harassment and Institutional Terror in Woke America Looks Like.  A federal court ruling likely to drop this month should provide a good indication as to whether America still has a fully functioning First World justice system.  The case, involving an investigation from New York Attorney General Letitia James into the supposed mismanagement of controversial news outlet VDare.com, has received zero media coverage so far, despite it being as crude, brutish, and nakedly political as James' other lawfare campaigns (notably against former President Trump and the NRA).  In fact, it's arguably worse, as it was clearly designed to dox VDare's writers and volunteers and bankrupt the tiny outlet out of existence.  In a recent column about James' investigation, VDare founder and editor Peter Brimelow recounts with frustration the increasing difficulty his outlet has had in spreading its advocacy of "immigration patriotism" over the years.  This includes being blocked by social media and payment processors, potential advertisers being subjected to Anti-Defamation League-style intimidation campaigns, and even lawyers and accountants being unwilling to help the group publicly.

How Not to Become a Sociopath: The "Rest of America" and the Role of Joy.  Since 2020, we have witnessed charming, well-educated, "civilized" people all around us — especially from what my husband calls (as others do) "the laptop class" — reveal, during 'lockdowns" and medical tyranny — a side that is, bare teeth and all, nakedly sadistic.  Now, as our stunned society slowly tries to set itself upright from having wallowed for nearly three years in an irrational, animalistic seizure of hatred and cruelty — as it struggles to settle its hat and to brush the dust and mire of the gutter off of its suit, and to straighten its necktie — few indeed from that group want to glance back at the Lord of the Flies-type scenes of savagery that these "civilized" people cheered on.  But we who were targeted know what happened and cannot forget it.  We click, sometimes ruminatively, on compilations in social media of "respectable" politicians, comedians, talk show hosts, and thought leaders, avidly stating that they wished we would just die, that we should be denied medical care, that we should be locked indoors forever, lose our jobs, and so on.  We — the targeted — must reckon with the traumatizing fact that we were on the receiving end of cruelty which the perpetrators seemed really to enjoy.

Judge in Missouri v Biden ain't buying what the government's shoveling.  The Missouri v Biden lawsuit sprang from underhanded censorship dealings the Biden administration began with the social media companies almost the second they ascended to the throne.  Everyone from COVID lockdown, vax and masking critics to scientists who had conflicting data in their hands, and just wanted to present it to the public — such as the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration — were driven from view, pilloried from the public square, many times hounded out of their jobs and livelihoods their long established, spotless professional reputations were in tatters.  All to promote the government's approved narrative, their chosen treatments, and favored pharmaceutical partners.  There were no allowances made for First Amendment Rights in their dogged pursuit of complete control of the information flow.  Posts, memes, papers and tweets that were contrary to that goal, even if correct were flagged as "disinformation," and smothered or completely removed, and the author blocked from whatever the site was after said "infraction" were theatrically deemed either enough or so serious action must be taken to protect the public.

Time to abolish the FBI.  That the FBI exists means you and I live in a post-constitutional America.  The FBI has to be done away with.  To find our way back to the republic of liberty the Founders gave us, we must dismantle the Leviathan headquartered in Washington, D.C. The FBI has corrupted our political system and our system of justice.  The Department of Education has ruined American education — once a shining example to the world — and done so in a remarkably brief time.  The CDC imposed a brutal COVID absolutism that violated our rights and destroyed countless small businesses.  The list goes on and on.  Every Progressive innovation brings ruin.  Their fatal flaw: concentration of power by design.

How corrupt is the DOJ? This corrupt.  The Department of Justice under the Biden Administration has become nothing but a tool of the regime.  Actually, the Justice Department under both Obama and Trump was already a corrupt organization, and by the regime, I don't mean the elected officials in office, but the permanent government that has come to be characterized as the "Deep State."  The Deep State isn't a cabal, per se.  They aren't gathering a (now marijuana) smoke-filled room plotting the downfall of America.  Rather, they are a bunch of high-level bureaucrats who believe that they have the wisdom and the power to run the country, all the way down to what you are allowed and not allowed to say.  They are America's nomenklatura.  The Elite run things regardless of who is in power, although they work hard to make sure that Democrats are in power since that party is happier to expand the money and power the nomenklatura have.  The DOJ is at the top of the heap because they control the levers of coercive power, although you may have noticed that even the IRS and EPA now have heavily armed agents to bully citizens.

Rep. Jim Jordan: DHS Weaponizing Tax Dollars Is 'Really Scary,' But 'Frankly Consistent'.  Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) weighed in on an explosive MRC report on Fox Business, calling the MRC's discovery that the Department of Homeland Security funded anti-terrorism efforts targeting Americans "really scary," but "consistent."  Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo brought up findings from a new Media Research Center report.  "[MRC] obtained documents that show that the Department of Homeland Security is using a program meant to fight terrorists and they're likening groups like the Heritage Foundation, MAGA, Fox News, the RNC and they're comparing all of those to Nazis."  Jordan responded saying that the revelation is "really scary," but "frankly, consistent," with the seemingly non-stop reports of government corruption and weaponization. "This is now this pattern, this mindset that I think exists in way too many of the top people in these federal agencies," he said.

ATF: Amend or Abolish?  The Biden administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 increases funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) 7.4 percent, to $1.9 billion, in order to "expand multijurisdictional gun trafficking strike forces with additional personnel, increase regulation of the firearms industry, and implement the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act."  Reading that, I'm reminded of James Madison's musings in The Federalist No. 46, regarding his disbelief that Americans would ever allow tyranny to take hold here, much less continue to fund it once it developed.

The Left Has Pushed the Envelope.  The Left is waging a full-fledged cultural revolution against traditional America.  And the Maoist results are often as absurd as they are terrifying.  Special-counsel John Durham just issued his final report on wrongdoing within the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Justice.  The summary confirms that our premier investigatory and intelligence agencies interfered in the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.  Directors and high-ranking FBI officials lied under oath.  They misled Congress.  They altered court documents and deceived federal judges.  The FBI hired a foreign national to gather dirt on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign — while he was being paid by the rival Hillary Clinton campaign.  The FBI contracted Twitter to suppress news stories.  It kept the Hunter Biden laptop under wraps, even as former intelligence officials flat out lied it was likely "Russian disinformation."  That was a blatant effort to aid the 2020 Biden campaign.  The IRS just conceded whistleblowers were correct and the agency fired its entire multi-year audit team responsible for investigating Hunter Biden's purported tax irregularities.  The agency claimed it was ordered to do so by the Department of Justice, headed by Biden's appointee Merrick Garland.

North Carolina's governor, who sent his own kid to private school, just issued a state of emergency over Republicans pushing school choice.  This is an emergency!  People with lower incomes in North Carolina, particularly people of color, may soon be able to enroll in private schools soon, ruining the party for the rich kids!!  Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper seriously thinks this is an emergency[.]  [Tweet]  The North Carolina House just passed a school voucher bill that would more than double the funding for school vouchers, opening opportunities for kids to get out of failing public schools.  School voucher programs give money to students instead of school systems and allow students who otherwise couldn't afford it access to private schools.  Democrats, of course, oppose this because they want kids in government schools because they're Democrat propaganda machines and activist training grounds.  They don't want poor kids to become less dependent on the government.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declares 'state of emergency' over school choice bill.  Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a "state of emergency" on Monday [5/22/2023] in an attempt to stop a school choice bill from passing the state legislature.  Cooper released a video announcement where he declared a state of emergency, arguing that the state of public education is "no less important" than other emergencies.  "It's time to declare a State of Emergency for public education in North Carolina.  There's no Executive Order like with a hurricane or the pandemic, but it's no less important," Cooper stated.

The Editor says...
The three-year Covid "emergency" worked so well, it's now a tool that will be used whenever the socialits meet insurmountable political resistance.  An impending political defeat in the legislature is not an emergency.  Moreover, any adverse developments in the public schools have taken place over the last several years.

After Covid: Twelve Challenges for a Shattered World.  [Scroll down]  It is no longer possible to discern which is the hand and which is the glove: government or big business.  This is true for every department in government, including the war machine which operates at the behest of the munitions manufacturers.  The SEC is run by the securities industry.  The Department of Labor is captured by the labor unions.  HUD is captive of the housing developers.  The Department of Agriculture rules at the behest of large agriculture interests while blocking access to markets for local farmers and ranchers.  And so on.  Have we yet come to terms with this on the left or right?  Have libertarians grappled with this?  I suspect not.  This reality has massively reshuffled the political layout.  We have completely left the clarity of the 1980s and entered into a new world of grave complexity and corruption at all levels.

DOJ Opted Not to Prosecute Radical U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Despite Inspector General's Referral.  President Joe Biden's Department of Justice (DOJ) opted not to prosecute U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Rachael Rollins after the Office of the Inspector General determined that she lied under oath and referred its allegation to the DOJ.  The OIG released the results of an investigation into Rollins, who the Heritage Foundation notes was previously backed by left-wing billionaire George Soros, on multiple fronts on Wednesday, finding that she allegedly attempted to influence the Suffolk County District Attorney's race last year and subsequently lied under oath during an investigation into the matter.  Although the watchdog referred their findings to the Department of Justice, it opted not to pursue prosecution.

Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch says the use of emergency powers during COVID harmed civil liberties.  Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch called the emergency powers that were used during the COVID-19 pandemic a mass intrusion of civil liberties earlier this week.  "Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.  Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale," Gorsuch wrote in a statement.  The statement was attached to a case that the Supreme Court dismissed as moot earlier this week that sought to keep Title 42 in place.  Title 42 allowed the U.S. to quickly deport asylum-seekers to contain the spread of COVID, but it was ended earlier this month.  Gorsuch has been a frequent critic of how government officials during the pandemic used laws granting expanded executive authority during emergencies, arguing that COVID was unjustifiably being used as a pretext.

Durham Report Is [Bad], So Where Are All The Indictments?  Just for the record, this is far worse than Watergate.  And that ended Richard Nixon's presidency, even though he neither planned nor approved of the break-ins against the Democratic Party offices in the famed Watergate Hotel.  What will the perpetrators of this crime get?  The FBI launched its now-infamous "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation of alleged Russian "influence" on the Trump campaign in July 2016. The premise for the investigation was a "dossier" of information from former British spy Christopher Steele that implicated Donald Trump and several of his supporters as being improperly influenced by Russia's government.  The only problem:  The dossier was found to be false, "misinformation" of the worst kind, but nonetheless reported as the "truth" by nearly all mainstream media outlets.

The Union Is Not a Suicide Pact.  Now that Mr. Durham has gotten around to confirming what most of us have known for nearly seven years — namely, that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Brennan, Jim Comey, James Clapper, and the State-aligned press corps doing the Intelligence Community's bidding all conspired to push the fraudulent Russian collusion narrative in an attempt to take down a duly elected president — there are quite a few people calling for the FBI to be either reformed or disbanded.  Surprisingly, some of these people now calling for the FBI's demolition are even elected officials.  My response is simple: that should be just the beginning.  The federal government is rotten to its core.  By the terms of the U.S. Constitution, it has accumulated powers and authorities far beyond anything enumerated and vested to it.  It funds a massive administrative state that should not exist.

How Corrupt Is Our Current Situation?  It's Worse Than Most Can Fathom.  Everything that preceded the 2020 federal election was a complex system of control by a network of ideologues, federal agencies, allies in the private sector, financial stakeholders and corrupt interests all working toward a common goal.  There's no need to go through the background of how the election was manipulated and how the government and private sector, specifically social media, worked to influence the 2020 outcome because you have all seen it.  Whether it was local election officials working to control outcomes, federal agencies working to support them (CISA, FBI, DHS), financial interests working to fund them (Zuckerberg et al), or social media platforms controlling the visible content and discussion (Twitter Files, Google, Facebook etc.), the objective was all the same.  It was a massive one-sided operation against the freewill of the American voter.

By The Standards Democrats Applied To Trump, Joe Biden Is A Traitor.  The Biden administration is also ignoring South American drug cartels' highly profitable war on the U.S. border.  That war is boosted by the same Chinese government whose officials also reportedly bought Biden family influence.  Funny how foreign payouts seem to manifest everywhere the United States is bleeding out.  It's farcical for Republicans to demand that the Biden-corrupted Department of Justice investigate the president of the party on whose behalf they've been repeatedly ignoring congressional oversight, protecting corrupt politicians, raiding opposition party leaders' homes, leaving opposition court justices' homes surrounded, and endlessly leaking lies to media outlets.  It's the height of political wankery to complain for TV about rogue federal agencies Republicans ridiculously keep pretending have any legitimacy and agreeing to fund. [...] All I'm asking is for Republicans to apply to the Bidens the same alleged standards Democrats cynically brandished against Trump.  It's not that complicated.  Here are a few ideas in the right direction that could be refined by congressional lawyers:  Tell Democrats no votes for any federal judicial nominees until the U.S. Department of "Justice" enforces federal law against the agitators menacing the homes of U.S. Supreme Court justices.  Defunding every department, grant, and personnel member involved in suppressing Americans' speech as "misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation" is now a non-negotiable precondition for voting on any federal spending bill.

Alvin Bragg didn't trust a grand jury to indict Daniel Penny for the death of Jordan Neely.  In New York City, everybody but the richest few percent rides the subway, and they know how bad things have gotten in the wake Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg treating arrests as inequitable since African Americans are disproportionately arrested.  Jordan Neely died in a hospital after being subdued by Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny with the help of two other passengers (who have not been charged).  Neely "avoid[ed] prison for allegedly slugging a 67-year-old woman in November 2021 during a psychotic episode" by agreeing to a plea deal.  Despite a record of more than forty previous arrests, he was allowed to roam the streets, though he was to stay at Harbor House, where he could receive services.  When he left there, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Biben signed a warrant for his arrest on February 23.  Perhaps because police officers realize that arresting any black person can cause enormous career grief, Neely evaded arrest, even while riding subways and being visible on the streets.  The justice system, in other words, completely failed to protect the public from a deranged, violent man.  So, when riding the subway on May first and threatening passengers with violence, and assaulting some by throwing trash, it was only Daniel Penny who first took action to protect himself and fellow passengers.

The Staggering Flaws of the Biden Family.  Good government should be non-partisan, competent, and trustworthy.  (It hasn't been for a long time.)  Democrat partisans overwhelmingly populate the vast majority of government departments, and no Republican administration has been able to put a dent in that political slant.  Constant leaks have become the story instead of relaying the accomplishments of Republican presidents.  Democrats don't have to use overt bias to enforce a progressive liberal bureaucracy to do their bidding; instead, they step aside and watch a parade of bias and salacious leaks flow endlessly to a media too willing to use unnamed sources.  President Trump faced an average of two leaks a day in his first 100 days, and to this day, virtually no one was punished in any government agency, including agency heads, for any leaks to reporters.

Feds Started A Dangerous Game With Hunter Biden's Laptop, But GOP Lawmakers Can Finish It.  The interim report of the House Intelligence Committee and Weaponization Subcommittee released Wednesday established extensive coordination between the Biden campaign and those behind the statement signed by 51 former intelligence officials that painted the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation.  More explosive, however, is the fact, first reported on Tuesday by The Federalist, that a Central Intelligence Agency employee solicited a former CIA officer to sign the statement.  Yet there is still much more to unravel to expose the breadth and depth of the info op painting the infamous laptop as Russian disinformation and the government actors involved.  Here are five threads that will lead to the truth.  [#1] Subpoena All 51 Signatories:  As its title stated, the House's report focused on "How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters."  While the October 2020 letter signed by the former intelligence officials is only part of the scandal, it's a solid entry point to learning the identity of many of those involved.

Build Back Borderless, Bankrupt, and Broken.  The federal government is a malicious enterprise that routinely treats Americans as second-class citizens.  It prosecutes foreign wars in their name without their consent.  It sends their jobs overseas, shutters their factory towns, and bankrupts their futures in exchange for cheap imported trinkets and shoulder-patting promises of "progress."  It ignores the cries of Americans in pain and their desire for political change and instead locks up those who earnestly protest.  Yet of all the ways the U.S. government betrays American citizens, its utter disregard for border security and decades-long criminal operation to flood the country with illegal aliens is the most contemptible because the same government saboteurs who aid and abet vile crimes then turn around to scold Americans who object to the resulting destruction as being "racist."  For the federal government to intentionally harm Americans and then shame them for noticing is enough to make a sane person wonder who the real enemy is.

FBI Used Congressional Staff as Confidential Informants and Human Assets to Build Case Against Congressman George Santos.  Congressman George Santos was indicted on thirteen counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying on financial disclosure forms during his short period in Congress.  He was taken into custody Wednesday in New York.  By most accounts and even his own words, Santos is a generally sketchy person, and I doubt there will be too many defenders of his character or the issues at stake.  However, [...] It was not that long ago when the EXECUTIVE branch, using confidential human sources to investigate the LEGISLATIVE branch, would have been a matter of incredible controversy reserved for only the most serious of criminal possibilities.  An FBI informant penetrating the congressional office to relay information back to the FBI is quite remarkable.  However, it appears we are in an era of justice administration where anything is just flippantly asserted inside the mechanisms of government.  In the big picture, beyond the selfish issues of George Santos, when we consider the Fourth Branch of Government operating to protect itself against sunlight and scrutiny, this example of the FBI operating in the shadows of congress should start to make everyone uncomfortable.

The Government Is Funding Trainings Intended to Target Conservative Americans.  Today [5/8/2023], America First Legal (AFL) released documents obtained from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that reveal shocking internal documents from the Office of Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) regarding so-called domestic terrorism.  An internal memo dated January 29, 2021, just eight days after Joe Biden was sworn in as President, reveals a "Choose Your Own Adventure" game-like memo for individuals to make "real-life decisions" based on "radicalization" scenarios with various fictitious characters.  The scenarios describe political viewpoints like opinions on abortion and expanded government.

American Despotism.  Many neoliberals aspired to a global aristocracy, magnificent men and women flipping quarters to grateful peasants.  Oligarchs brokered the outsourcing of U.S. industry in return for financial control under the dollar, even as they engineered technologies for a new information age.  But today's globalist American empire is a kleptocracy filled with princelings of the political and corporate elite who inherited — and now drain — the wealthiest and most powerful empire in history.  It consolidates market share and outsources its technologies to foreign companies for its private benefit.  It despotically introduces a permanent state of exception to the law to rule in its own interests.  In fear of the subjects off whom it feeds, it assigns legal identities to groups to determine their privileges.  In this civil war between Western whites, the kleptocrats claim science's authority to subdue the populace, and they enlist an identity politics priesthood to stoke racial hatred against middle-class whites, who suffer indignities, humiliations, and loyalty tests.

Biden Unleashes The Regulatory Kraken — And There's No Land In Sight.  In the span of a few weeks, the Biden administration has proposed regulations that would effectively ban gas stoves, force a massive shift to electric cars, sharply raise the cost of dishwashers, increase loan costs for frugal borrowers, regulate puddles as "navigable waters," and limit hunting and fishing across the country.  It will soon release a proposed rule targeting power plants with hugely expensive carbon capture mandates.  This is just the tip of the spear.  As the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Clyde Wayne Crews put it recently, "President Biden is leading an unprecedented expansion of the administrative state.  In two years, his administration has imposed 517 regulatory actions with some $318 billion in total costs."  The newest attack on freedom, Biden's dishwasher regulation, would require new machines to use 27% less power and 34% less water, making already barely functioning dishwashers virtually useless.

The Hellscape of the Administrative State Functionary.  Let's be clear here, they created that debt, for promising to solve problems and then not solving them.  Everything they do fails.  Their media is only working because they censor and subsidize, but every week, another propaganda outfit bites the dust.  That's why they are miserable. [...] Our new class of monster reductionists, who get all their prestige and money from delimiting the lives of others, have been living under a tsunami of threat ever since Trump and Brexit, or as it is known, "the worst decisions ever made".  This requires that all future elections be stolen.  It is impressive how lockstep they remain.

Is the Bureau of Land Management Breaking The Law Again?  Since the federal government no longer operates as three separate branches with the legislative branch assigned to creating laws, the Executive Branch and unconstitutional administrative rulemaking process now create laws that Americans are subjected to without any congressional involvement.  Quite notorious are rules that are written under the Department of Interior (DOI).  Given that the federal government now operates in bed with corporations and non-government organizations (NGO), many of the rules are created for the benefit of those groups and not us.  The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and its buddy corporations and environmental groups have been busy creating a new "rule" that will economically benefit the BLM, serve the ideology of environmental groups, and help the corporate world advance renewable energy projects.  Not only are the Executive Branch and DOI handing over "public" land to corporations for renewable energy projects, but with BLM's full participation, this proposed rule also advances the White House 30x30 agenda, a goal of conserving 30% of land by 2030.  It is the rewriting of a regulatory framework that will put public land under the 30x30 classification for land conservation.  30x30 isn't even a federal law passed by Congress, it is a dictate from the White House that meets an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) goal, a United Nations participant.  That alone should negate any participation in 30x30, or through illegal rulings by the BLM.

Biden DOJ 'Actively' Tried to 'Dissuade' Marshals From Enforcing the Law to Protect Supreme Court Justices, Senators Say.  Republicans are accusing the Department of Justice of "actively" seeking to "dissuade" the U.S. Marshals Service from enforcing 18 USC 1507 to protect the Supreme Court justices.  In a May 3 letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama, Tom Cotton of Iowa, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Mike Lee of Utah reveal that they have obtained "post orders" dated May 19, 2022, that claim "USMS is not in a position to enforce" federal and state law.  "This is the exact kind of thing from the Biden DOJ that continues to cause people across Alabama and America to fear that there is a two-tiered system of justice in our country," Britt said in an emailed statement to The Daily Signal.  "The simple fact of the matter is that the Administration agreed with the protestors' politics and willfully chose not to enforce the law."  The U.S. Marshals Service should not engage protesters "unless they attempt to enter private property," the post orders said, according to the senators.

Position Reversed Again — Nashville Police Refuse to Release Transgender Audrey Hale Christian Murder Manifesto.  Long-time readers of CTH research will remember a very specific agency inside government, the Dept of Justice Community Relations Service (DOJ-CRS).  This little-known, quasi legislatively authorized, Eric Holder weaponized, silo inside the justice system operates to control information that would be deemed 'adverse to the peace and tranquility interests of the nation.'  In non-pretending terms, the DOJ-CRS controls any information in the criminal justice system that doesn't fit the agenda of the radical communists and left-wing activists within it.  The CRS controlled the George Zimmerman case.  The CRS controlled the Darren Wilson case (Ferguson).  The CRS controlled the Baltimore-Six case.  The CRS controlled the Stephen Paddock case (Las Vegas).  There are many more.  The CRS, also known colloquially as the "peacekeepers" can reach into any system of justice, local, state, federal, including courts, judges, trials and law enforcement agencies, and control the information that is at the center of their topic, charge or investigation.  The CRS is an omnipotent smaller agency, with incredible power within the Dept of Justice, that has full control over anything they identify as needed to retain the "domestic tranquility," including instructions to federal and state judges.  Almost no one knows about the CRS, and no one is permitted to talk about their true mission.

Nashville Police Reverse Course on Releasing Shooter's Manifesto, Citing Pending Litigation.  The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) has reversed course from a previous statement to The Epoch Times, when the agency said the so-called manifesto and writings of Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale would be released to the public soon.  The department cited the advice of legal counsel amid litigation filed this week for those same documents to be released.  The Epoch Times contacted MNPD on May 3, but officials would not comment, citing the pending litigation.  The story regarding MNPD readying the documents for public release was published April 27.  On May 1, the Tennessee Firearms Association (TFA) filed a lawsuit against MNPD over a previously denied public records request for the Hale documents to be released.

Trans Massacre Manifesto [is] Still a Mystery.  "The investigation has advanced to the point that writings from the Covenant shooter are now being reviewed for public release and that process is underway and will take a little time."  That was a spokesman for the Metro Nashville Police Department speaking to the New York Post last Thursday.  That day marked one month since Audrey Hale, a woman who thought she was a man, murdered Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Mike Hill, 61, William Kinney, 9, Katherine Koonce, 60, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Hallie Scruggs, 9, at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.  Nashville police "could not give a firm date when the writings would be released."  Shortly after the murders, Nashville city councilman Robert Swope told reporters "the manifesto is going to be released.  It's just a matter of when."  In the meantime, the FBI is reportedly "processing" the material.  "It's really not even a manifesto," according to Nashville city council member Courtney Johnson. "It's diaries of a mentally ill person."  The councilwoman, a real-estate agent, did not explain how she was qualified to diagnose Audrey Hale, who carefully planned the attack for months.  "What I was told is, her manifesto was a blueprint on total destruction, and it was so, so detailed at the level of what she had planned."

The Crazy Contours of the Crazier 2024 Election.  A Jacobin crowd, whose agenda does not poll 50 percent on any issue, is now running the country.  Joe Biden is its ancient, happy-face emoji.  It has managed in two years to wreck the border, destroy energy autonomy, fuel racial tensions, create an entirely new cause of the aggrieved "transgender community," tank the economy, spike crime, and put America into rapid decline abroad beneath the Biden façade — and call it all "progress."  The wherewithal in lieu of popular support came from huge amounts of tech and corporate cash, and the fealty of most of our cultural institutions, from Silicon Valley and the media to the corporate boardroom, academia, K-12, professional sports, entertainment, and the weaponization of the federal bureaucracy including the FBI, Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, and IRS.  In other words, for the Left having no president at all certainly has its advantages.  No one in the Oval Office is warning the socialists, "You guys are crazy and will cost me the election if you keep it up!"  Instead, with no one in charge, everyone is in charge.

Chairman Jim Jordan Subpoenas CDC and Other Agencies After Allegations of Government Censorship.  Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has issued subpoenas to officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC).  The chairman hopes to obtain documents and communications related to the Committee's investigation into allegations of federal government coercion and collusion with private companies and third-party groups to censor speech.  Recent public reporting, including The Twitter Files, has revealed the extent to which the federal government has exerted pressure and collaborated with Big Tech and other intermediaries to suppress certain viewpoints, a practice that violates the First Amendment principles.

'Too Big to Fail' Is Too Big Period.  A recent Gallup poll found that public confidence in our institutions is collapsing.  The only institutions that still garner majority confidence are the military and small businesses.  Nearly three quarters of Americans have lost confidence in government, big business, academia, and the media (among others).  The vast majority of our institutions are failing.  They aren't failing to survive.  They're failing to meet our expectations — which means they're failing to satisfy their reason for being. [...] Government hasn't lost our confidence because it isn't doing enough.  It has lost our confidence because it's doing too much.  Regulation, surveillance, oversight, and bureaucratic burden all work to restrict our freedoms.

Matt Taibbi rips media silence after Dem threat: 'Can you imagine' if GOP threatened to jail CNN's Jim Acosta?  Independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who was threatened with jail time by a top Democrat on Capitol Hill over testimony he gave about his reporting on the Twitter Files, feels the media would have lost its minds if Republicans did the same to CNN's Jim Acosta.  "Can you imagine if something like this had happened in the Trump years?  If Republicans had threatened someone like Jim Acosta with five years in prison over a minor error?  That he didn't even make in testimony before Congress?  You would have had every human rights organization on earth complaining about it but not a peep from my so-called colleagues in mainstream media," Taibbi said Monday on "FOX & Friends."  "It doesn't matter what journalist it is, they should be upset about it because it could be them next," Taibbi added.

Emerging Consensus On The Blinken Hoax?  Yesterday I wrote that the real question regarding Deep State Mike Morrell's testimony that throws Little Tony Blinken under the bus — blames him for the patent hoax claim that the Hunter laptop is a Russian disinformation op — is whether Morrell spilled the beans with Deep State blessing.  The letter that Morrell orchestrated was an obvious hoax.  The only question was who perpetrated the hoax — was it independent action by the Deep State, or ... what?  Morrell confirms that it was Deep State action at the direct behest of the Zhou campaign, through Blinken.

The Marriage of the Media and the Security State.  t is now all too obvious that the corporate media colluded with corrupt elements of the security state to alter the outcomes of two presidential elections.  Their first foray into election interference failed because, in 2016, they underestimated the power of social media and allowed Donald Trump to speak directly to the voters.  They fixed that problem in 2020 by convincing Facebook and Twitter to censor legitimate news stories while disseminating disinformation.  And it is no coincidence that former Obama and current Biden administration officials were involved in both interference schemes.  One such official, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, testified before Congress last week that he facilitated the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal at the request of then-Biden campaign advisor Antony Blinken.

Biden, Blinken Orchestrated Letter to Undermine Hunter Biden Laptop Story Ahead of 2020 Election.  President Joe Biden allegedly promoted a debunked letter from 51 former intelligence officials that was put into plan by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to falsely undermine a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop as supposed Russian disinformation. [...] Earlier this week, former CIA Director Michael Morell testified that Blinken, a then a Biden campaign adviser, contacted a former CIA official and "set in motion" the false statement debunking the Post's story as "Russian disinformation."  Weeks before the 2020 election, dozens of ex-national security officials signed a letter claiming that Hunter's laptop had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) sent a letter to Blinken on Thursday to notify him that the lawmakers are conducting oversight of the situation.

Former Intel Officials Who Signed The Infamous Hunter Biden Laptop Letter Landed Jobs In The Biden Admin.  After Biden campaign officials coordinated a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officers casting doubt about the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop before the 2020 presidential election, several signatories ended up with roles in the president's administration.  Former Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Morrell testified to the House Judiciary Committee that then-Biden senior adviser and current Secretary of State Tony Blinken contacted him and "triggered" the creation of the letter.  Former CIA chief of staff Jeremy Bash, who signed the letter, put Morrell in touch with Biden campaign Chairman Steve Richetti, who thanked him for orchestrating it; Biden later appointed Bash to the President's Intelligence Advisory Board in 2022.

Getting Off the Roller Coaster to Bondage.  It's not as if the ruling class's "cult of expertise" provides any comfort.  We have a president who long ago lost his marbles, a vice president who succeeded in the political profession by excelling in the oldest one, a secretary of defense committed to promoting men in dresses, a health bureaucracy pumping citizens full of experimental drugs, a Treasury Department endlessly printing money, a Commerce Department prioritizing inflation-inducing "green" windmills over real economic growth, a homeland security chief dedicated to keeping the nation insecure, and a national police force that treats half the country as "domestic enemies."  It's almost as if whoever installed these yahoos into the highest positions of authority wanted obvious "fall guys" for when everything, well, falls down.

NYPD employee relations boss Lisa White drives workers away with 'crazy stuff': sources.  The NYPD commissioner in charge of employee relations is having a difficult time — with her employee relations.  More than 10 cops working under Deputy Commissioner Lisa White — who's in charge of officer morale in the 35,000 uniformed member force — have either transferred or asked to be transferred out of her office because of her off-the-wall shenanigans, including claiming there are ghosts in her office and that workers are bugging her phone, police sources told The [New York] Post.  The final straw for one of them, a detective assigned to drive her in a department-assigned Ford SUV, came when White, 61, ordered the cop to turn on the lights and sirens because she was late for work.  When the detective refused, White ordered her out, hopped into the driver's seat and took over, barreling from her Crown Heights apartment to One Police Plaza in lower Manhattan like a bat out of hell, the sources said.

Did a 21-year-old air guardsman expose Biden's violation of the War Powers Act?  Last week, the mainstream media gleefully reported the arrest of a low-ranking, 21-year-old Air National Guardsman from Massachusetts named Jack Teixeira, who apparently, on an internet chat site, divulged state secrets in violation of the Espionage Act and embarrassed the Biden administration. [...] Among the information spilled are revelations of the Biden administration spying on friends and foes alike.  But bigger questions surround this case, hot-potato questions the media won't touch, with the hottest being this: Do the Teixeira revelations expose a violation of the War Powers Act by Biden?  But most disturbing, are claims of United States Special Forces inside the red-hot Ukrainian war zone, months after Biden boasted there will be "no boots on the ground," a boast perhaps as credible as his blathering that "if you take the vax, you won't get COVID."  If United States Special Forces advisors are on the ground, in the midst of a kinetic war, supporting Ukraine's military against Russia, not only do Americans have a right to know, as major wars have been ignited by the slightest of hair triggers, but a larger question must now be examined:  Has Joe Biden violated the War Powers Act?

Harriet Hageman Blasts Spy Letter Discrediting Hunter Biden Laptop Story: 'Coverup Was Starting'.  Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) told Breitbart News Saturday that the 2020 spy letter allegedly organized by the Biden campaign to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story was the beginning of the coverup.  "When this came out in October [of 2020], anybody with a lick of sense out in the rest of the United States knew number one, that the letter from the 51 so-called intelligence officials was wrong.  We knew it," Hageman said.  On Thursday, news broke that former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell testified to Republican investigators that current Secretary of State Antony Blinken — formerly a Biden campaign official — had contacted Morell regarding the New York Post's Hunter laptop story, which "set in motion the events that led to the issuance of a public statement" by 51 former intelligence officials who discredited the story as Russian disinformation.

Hunter Biden laptop letter was the real disinformation all along.  The dishonor of our intelligence community, and most of the media, is now complete.  It turns out the "51 intel experts" letter implying Hunter Biden's 100% authentic laptop was a Russian fake, and the ensuing efforts to kill Post reporting on it, were the actual disinfo operation.  Veteran spook and former acting CIA Director Mike Morrell masterminded it, as he swore under oath, to "help Vice President Biden ... because I wanted him to win the election" — at the behest of campaign flunky (now Secretary of State) Antony Blinken.  And Morell plainly also did it in hopes a victorious Biden would hand him the top CIA job.  Not only was there no intricate Russian plot, there was never any evidence suggesting one — only a Biden campaign conspiracy to bury the truth under a tissue of lies.

Spy letter about Hunter Biden shows how Dems are undermining democracy.  In the closing address at last month's Summit for Democracy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken piously proclaimed, "As President Biden has said, democracy doesn't happen by accident.  "It requires constant effort."  Or in the case of the 2020 election, it required deceiving American voters.  The House Judiciary Committee revealed that Blinken, then a top Biden adviser, orchestrated the letter from 51 top intelligence officials claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop was nothing but a Russian disinformation campaign.  Blinken contacted former acting CIA chief Mike Morell, who swayed scores of other former top officials — including three ex-CIA chiefs — to sign that letter to debunk the biggest threat to the Biden presidential campaign.

The Biden administration's attack on free speech.  There are two things to remember.  First, America is not at war with Russia.  Congress has not declared war against Russia, nor has the Biden administration pretended that it has.  Russia may be a geopolitical enemy, but it's not a wartime enemy.  Second, as Tucker and Glenn Greenwald discussed, violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act have routinely been treated as minor problems, with fines as the primary punishment.  For the government to go after penny-ante black socialist organizations that are saying exactly what others who oppose the war have been saying represents an escalation against speech unseen in modern America.  It has the smell of a totalitarian political regime cracking down on speech that offends it.  This is especially true when you consider the leeway the administration gives to Chinese control over speech, via TikTok.  China, after all, is another geopolitical opponent.  It's also revolting when you consider the information coming out about the Biden family's profiting from China, Ukraine, and other countries at America's expense.

Two Top Republicans Say Blinken Should Be Impeached Over Biden Laptop Role, Good Luck Making That Happen.  Former CIA Director Mike Morell has told the House Judiciary Committee that it was Secretary of State Antony (with no "h") Blinken who, while acting as a senior campaign adviser for Joe Biden, enlisted him to organize the letter from former intelligence officials labeling the material from Hunter Biden's laptop Russian dezinformatsiya.  According to an exclusive in the New York Post, Morell had no intention of writing a letter or soliciting others to either write or sign a letter plainly lying about Hunter Biden's laptop until Blinken put the thought in his minds. [...] This is a significant revelation from several standpoints.  First and foremost, it shows that the Biden campaign did not believe Hunter's laptop was a Russian plant.  Second, it shows the people who signed the letter were bad-faith actors who knew the Russian disinformation story was bogus but set about to deceive the American people for political purposes.  As an aside, the lack of qualms by any of the signers indicates that they were used to lying to America to push their own agenda; this is something the next GOP president should keep in mind.  Most concerning is that the prime mover behind the story, Antony Blinken, was made Secretary of State.

House Judiciary Committee Releases Evidence of U.S. Intelligence Community Conducting Domestic Political Disinformation Campaign.  The House Judiciary Committee has released evidence, gained from a transcribed interview with former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell, showing a coordinated plan by former and current Intelligence Community officials (both parties) to work with the political campaign of Joe Biden in order to influence the 2020 election outcome.  Within the transcribed interview, Mike Morell admits to receiving a phone call from current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, with a request to create disinformation and protect Joe Biden from scrutiny over the Hunter Biden laptop revelations.  Morell then coordinated with 50 intelligence officials to fabricate a claim that Russians had created the Biden laptop story as a disinformation campaign.  The reality was that Morell organized the U.S. intelligence community to create disinformation on behalf of Joe Biden.

Two key Republicans call for Secretary of State Blinken to resign over Hunter Biden revelations.  Two high-profile Republicans who have probed the Biden family scandal are calling on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to resign or face impeachment over allegations he helped trigger an intelligence community letter during the 2020 election that falsely portrayed Hunter Biden's laptop contents as Russian disinformation.  The rebukes of Blinken by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) came after the release Thursday night of testimony from former CIA chief Michael Morell that Blinken had spurred him to organize the now-infamous October 2020 letter to benefit the Biden campaign.  Morell testified he agreed to do so because Blinken reached out to him and he wanted to influence the election in Joe Biden's favor.  "This, in my opinion, probably disqualifies him to serve as the Secretary of State," Biggs told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview Friday on the John Solomon Reports podcast.  "And I know people keep saying, 'Andy, you want to impeach everybody?' Well, you know, Tony Blinken probably should be impeached, just like [Homeland Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas should be impeached.

50 ways to protect our Joe?  Remember that letter that hit the front pages about Russia disinformation and the Hunter Biden laptop?  It was signed by 50 intelligence experts and now we are learning that it was a bit fishy.  Could it be that the whole thing was set up to find 50 to protect the presidential candidate before the second debate? [...] The issue here is that a letter was signed giving credibility to Biden's message that the whole thing was disinformation.  That smells bad and every one of the 50 should be brought before the Congress to explain their signature.

State Department Dodges Questions on Blinken Discrediting Hunter Biden Laptop Story Ahead of 2020.  The State Department refused to comment on whether Secretary of State Antony Blinken disputed Republicans' assertions that as a senior adviser to the 2020 Biden presidential campaign he was involved in recruiting former intelligence officials in an effort to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the election.  When asked specifically if Blinken disputed the accuracy of the assertions and if he planned to comply with Republican lawmakers' request for more information, State Department Deputy Press Secretary Vedant Patel responded, "That is not a State Department issue, so I don't have a comment for you on that."

Of Course Democrats Are Threatening to Imprison Matt Taibbi Over a Typo.  The Twitter Files have been rankling a lot of feathers on the left since they began months ago.  The revelations that have come from these releases have exposed all kinds of malfeasance on the part of Big Tech leaders and the government.  It can be no surprise, then, that the authoritarian left would seek to punish those involved in the exposure of the government's efforts to suppress dissenting voices on the internet.  This is why Democrats are threatening to use the power of the state to punish journalist Matt Taibbi, who was instrumental in distributing the information found behind the scenes at Twitter.  Del.  Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), a ranking member of the Weaponization subcommittee, has threatened to have Taibbi arrested and thrown in a cage for supposedly committing perjury.  According to RedState's Nick Arama, Plaskett "sent a letter to Taibbi accusing him of committing perjury during his testimony because he supposedly made an error referring to the CISA (the government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) when he meant to refer to the CIS (the Center for Internet Security)."

Top Dem Threatens Matt Taibbi With Jail in Despicable Move, Proving the Very Point He Was Making.  During a Congressional hearing about the Twitter Files and the government's involvement in the censorship of speech on Twitter, Democrats were doing all they could to attack and try to smear the journalists who were involved in the reporting including an independent journalist, Matt Taibbi.  Not only did they smear the Twitter Files reporters, but they also tried to find out their sources.  So much for freedom of the press.  Then Taibbi found out that on that same day, the IRS showed up on his doorstep.  That's chilling when you have to have such concerns about the government being weaponized against you because the Democrats don't like that you're challenging their control or calling out their narrative.  But that's not all.  They're still trying to come after Taibbi — they're threatening him with jail time now because of his testimony before Congress.  Del.  Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) is the ranking member of the Weaponization Subcommittee.  She was involved in the attack on Taibbi during the hearing; she tried to get his sources and smeared him as a "so-called journalist".

Appeals Court Grants Bragg's Request to Temporarily Freeze House Subpeona.  The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on April 20 issued a temporary administrative hold on the return date of the House Judiciary Committee's congressional subpoena to Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office.  Pomerantz investigated former President Donald Trump's finances before leaving Bragg's office in February 2022 in protest of Bragg's initial unwillingness to bring an indictment against Trump.  Bragg then brought the indictment against Trump in late March, prompting Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to initiate a probe into what Jordan calls a "politically motivated" prosecution against a former president.  Jordan subpoenaed Pomerantz to seek his testimony.  In response, Bragg sued the House Judiciary Committee and Pomerantz to prevent Pomerantz from testifying.  The appeals court's April 20 order temporarily froze a lower court's ruling on April 19 that declined Bragg's request to block Pomerantz from testifying to Congress.

Bragg's Obsession To Pin A Crime On Trump Deserves Disbarment And More.  The consensus — even among Democrats who despise Donald Trump — is that Alvin Bragg has made a colossal mess of things.  Recently, the Manhattan District Attorney compounded one legal blunder with another.  This should surprise no one.  Bragg is the kind of guy who could screw up a free lunch.  Incompetence is his métier.  In his brief tenure as DA, he has managed to increase the number of criminals terrorizing the streets of New York City by refusing to prosecute many of them or dropping serious felonies to petty misdemeanors.  Innocent victims of the rampant crime fume and rage against Bragg, while prosecutors in his charge have abandoned ship.  Like the crazed captain in Moby Dick, Bragg is obsessed with harpooning Trump, his white whale.  In the DA's twisted mind, all evil in the world is personified by the former president.

The Unfortunate Partisanship of the Prosecutor's Office.  Prosecutors should not carry partisan labels.  We didn't really need a Trump indictment to assert that point.  There's never been any rationale to affix party labels to elections for any administrative or enforcement role.  Whether it's secretary of state races, county clerk contests, or elections for local sheriffs or prosecutors, a person's party affiliation should have nothing to do with their application of the law.  Moreover, when partisanship influences law enforcement, and the perception of it, it undermines faith in the criminal justice system — with unfortunate consequences.  Indicting Trump brings this issue into stark relief.  Whether or not one views the New York County attorney's indictment of Trump as being politically motivated apparently depends on the party affiliation of the person being asked.

Judge Denies Bragg's Attempt to Stop Subpoena, Dealing Win to Jordan.  Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) will get to question a former prosecutor of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office after a judge ruled Wednesday that a subpoena Jordan issued to the prosecutor was enforceable.  U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil wrote that the subpoena, which Jordan sent to Mark Pomerantz two weeks ago, had a "valid legislative purpose."  "It is not the role of the federal judiciary to dictate what legislation Congress may consider or how it should conduct its deliberations in that connection," Vyskocil wrote.  "Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition.  No one is above the law."

The Editor says...
Ri-i-i-ight.  No one is above the law, except Hillary Clinton, Barack H. Obama, Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, the mystery man who broke Jeffrey Epstein's neck, 30 million illegal aliens, and Sam Brinton. [1]  [2]  [3]  [4]  [5]  [6]  [7]  [8]  [9]  [10]  [11]  [12]  [13]  [14]  [15]  [16]

IRS pays a visit to Matt Taibbi on same day he testifies before Congress on government abuses.  [Scroll down]  This is how police states work.  Oh, sure, they will say it's just a coincidence that they sent an agent to Taibbi's home, but they'll have to explain themselves better than that.  They've already gotten away with Lois Lerner and her shady tactics against Tea Party groups, they must have more agents just like her in that agency, willing to act on ideological motives to silence government critics.  Who are they taking orders from?  In the Lerner case, it was likely the White House.  And why do they think they can get away with this, against an opposition-led Congress, no less?  Is this what Joe Biden's $80 billion monster funding of the IRS has brought us?  Is this what it was about?  If I recall correctly, John Hinderaker at Power Line speculated that newly beefed up IRS, far from targeting billionaires as Biden promoted to win the bill's congressional passage, would use the new cash infusion to target conservatives and other inconvenient people.  Looks like they did, and Hinderaker was right on the money.

Fat, Stupid, and Diverse.  [Alvin] Bragg — who badly wants to carve up Donald J. Trump, but won't — was boosted into office in November 2021 in yet another spasm of virtue signaling by the Rotted Apple's smart set, and whose campaign was lubed by dollars from George Soros to the aptly named "Color of Change PAC."  Bragg is another swell diversity hire.  They abound in America's deteriorating cities.  And not incidentally — in fact, importantly — he's a Soros and establishment sock puppet.  In going after Trump — and as of this writing, flailing conspicuously in his gambit — he's paying his dues to the Man.  Diversity hire's only requirement is doing the Man's bidding.  Alvin is trying.  Bragg is a Happy Meal for the "diversity, inclusion, and equity" crowd.  Nothing brings bigger smiles to their faces than foisting unintelligent, untalented, poorly skilled "of color" or gender box checks on mostly "of color" Democrat-ruined urban communities around the country.

The FBI's Work in Mass Shootings Is Not Pretty.  Former FBI director James Comey was in charge of finding what — and who — led up to some renowned, rather horrific mass shootings, which included Sandy Hook (2012), San Bernardino (2015), and Las Vegas (2017). [...] The FBI's continued failure to decipher key signals in mass shootings seems to point to a deliberate effort to cover for the billion-dollar behavioral health industry, which manages to obtain millions of dollars in state and federal funding after every single one of these mass murders.  Critical evidence that most shooters have been found to be on a cocktail of psychiatric drugs magically disappears from the FBI investigations and findings. [...] The bottom line is that the FBI enjoys a level of secrecy on so many levels.  With this level of power, the Bureau has the ability to conceal toxicology reports and mental health treatment records that are pertinent to finding the actual common denominator that drive these "mission-oriented killings."  Why does the FBI not disclose each shooter's history of long-term mental health treatment?  Is it because the public would question these treatments and possibly choose alternatives?

Government Isn't the Victim; It's the Perpetrator.  Around the country, almost every problem Americans endure is a result of Big Government action or inaction.  Government overspending and central bank money-printing have crushed the value of ordinary Americans' income and savings.  The Intelligence Community's use of the PATRIOT Act and other unconstitutional tools to violate Americans' Fourth Amendment rights against warrantless searches has not only eliminated privacy, but also made every citizen a suspect.  The Biden administration's choice to leave America's borders wide open has exacerbated crime, drug addiction, and identity theft while breaking city budgets and local communities.  Washington, D.C.'s endless bureaucratic rule-making touches every part of every American's life.  What products can be bought and sold?  What can a citizen do on or with his private property?  What speech should be censored because the government judges its content "hateful" or unacceptably contrary to the bureaucracy's official point of view?  While Congress never stops passing laws, agencies never stop exponentially compounding those laws with new standards, rules, and regulations that micromanage everything Americans do.

This is an 'Us vs Them' Conflict — And There are More of Us Than Them.  In many ways, We The People are in an abusive relationship with government.  If you do not agree with the agenda as it is controlled by a small a powerful self-described elitist class, then we become the problem.  The division is not determined by our definitions, the conniving and corrupt administrators of the system are the ones creating the division we are accused of perpetrating.  However, there is no division in a social context as clear as the division between the working class and the investment class rulers who consider themselves above such arbitrary labels.  When you peel the issues down to their essential core, what you will always find, always find, is the money of the thing.  The created system of control is maintained through economics, and any America-First policy that threatens to close the divide between the 'haves and have-nots' is viewed against their interests.  This is the essential core of the opposition we face.

Trump could be in more danger than you think.  One of the things I often have to remind people about, including lawyers who should know better, is that each state has its own unique laws and procedures.  What is no big deal in most places may be a fiasco in another.  For Donald Trump, the upcoming New York "falsifying business records" charge he may be facing would be laughed out of court almost everywhere, as no money was stolen and no harm to anyone seems to have been done.  Unfortunately for him, he is stuck in the Empire State.  And as unfair as it sounds, I think Mr. Trump is in some real trouble.  The plan the Manhattan D.A. has is to convict him on a trivial offense, then hope a vindictive judge will throw the book at him.  This happens all the time to suspected mafiosi in New York courts, and it may be what's going on here.

It was not a mistake: A video reminding us to not allow a way out for the perpetrators.  [Video clip]  We will soon see institutions and governments admitting they were wrong about the vaccines and Covid measures.  People will learn the truth by increments.  Slowly, they will admit mistakes were made.  Alongside the video above, we must not take those admissions as being a victory.  The issue is not that those of us who reasoned that the vaxx was a bad idea and Covid was not as advertised, but that the governments had no right to do what they did EVEN IF THEY WERE RIGHT.  So there must be no satisfaction in their admission that they were wrong and we skeptics are correct.  Because this will just give permission to use the same illegal-now-legal methods for the next pseudo-crisis.  'They were wrong about the last thing but this time...'.  In a way, from a certain point of view it would almost be better if we were wrong[,] because the state was STILL WRONG to take away all our rights no matter how things were.  At least then we would be arguing the real issue.  But we were right about it all.  Yet we must remember the point.  That the state must never have or take the power it did to do the things to us it did do.

Donald Trump, Regime Foe.  The funniest thing I have read in, well, at least the last several hours, comes from Manhattan's George Soros-funded affirmative-action district attorney, Alvin Bragg.  Responding to the uproar that greeted Donald Trump's all-caps Truth Social warning that he would be "arrested" on Tuesday, Bragg sent 'round a memo to his staff informing them, and the world, that "This office is full of the finest public servants in the country."  The comedy didn't end there, however.  "I am committed to maintaining a safe work environment where everyone is able to continue to serve the public with the same diligence and professionalism [!] that make this institution so renowned.  In the meantime, as with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly ..."  What a card!  And, yes, that's my emphasis but his credulity-breaking bluster.  "Evenly and fairly," forsooth.  Everyone knows that Alvin Bragg does not apply the law at all evenly or fairly.

Soros-Funded DA Alvin Bragg [was] Caught Hiding Nearly 600 Pages of Exculpatory Evidence from NY Grand Jury in Trump Case.  Attorney Robert Costello, the former legal adviser to Michael Cohen, spoke to Tucker Carlson on Monday night after he testified to the Manhattan Grand Jury investigating President Donald Trump.  Costello told the FOX News audience that he testified for two hours in front of Alvin Bragg's Manhattan Grand Jury.  Robert Costello told Tucker Carlson, "I spoke to the jury for two hours... It was clear to me the Manhattan Grand Jury did not want to get to the truth."

Manhattan DA Behind Trump Indictment Responds to GOP With the Self-awareness of a Brick.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the Democrat attempting to arrest Donald Trump on charges related to the hush money he paid to Stormy Daniels, has responded to the GOP after Republicans began organizing a Judicial Committee hearing around the lawyer.  According to Fox News, a spokesperson for Bragg spoke with Fox News Digital, saying that his office will not be intimidated by the GOP. Hilariously, the response from Bragg's office is about as hypocritical as it gets: [...] Bragg is currently attempting to turn what even other Democrats acknowledge is a misdemeanor into a felony.  The likelihood of that happening is slim, and many Democrats fear that this weak attempt to arrest Trump will only strengthen his standing among Republican and Independent voters.  Their fears are likely to come true.

Stop the Administrative State by Using the Administrative Procedures Act.  Where is the coordinated national-level Republican counterattack against Joe Biden's myriad leftwing executive orders and presidential memoranda?  Where is the Republican National Committee?  Where is the national Republican communication strategy, including daily press conferences, that exposes the unconstitutional actions being pursued by the Biden administration?  As noted in the Federal Register, Joe Biden signed 77 executive orders in 2021 and 27 in 2022.  He has also signed out 77 total presidential memoranda to date, as well as dozens of presidential determinations and administrative orders.  Executive orders are official presidential directives that generally have the force of law.  They are intended to direct actions within federal agencies (the "Executive Branch" of the federal government).  All executive orders are supposed to identify whether the order is based on the constitutionally granted powers or those delegated to a president by Congress.  They are subject to legal review, and federal courts can cancel those determined to be unconstitutional — or which violate existing federal law.  Congress can also revoke an executive order through passage of superseding legislation.  Presidential memoranda are similar in purpose and intent but are not required to be reported in the Federal Register nor are they required to include a justification of presidential authority, as noted [elsew]here.

Alvin Bragg's End Run Around the Constitution.  We've endured four years of Mueller's failed "Russiagate" hoax, two failed, politically-driven impeachment trials from radical House Democrats in Congress driven by Nancy Pelosi, not to mention the highly-partisan "January 6" Committee that failed to call a single witness adverse to their pre-cooked "it-was-an-insurrection" narrative, and a host of other Trump-related political prosecutions.  But now, this weekend's announcement from President Trump that he expects to be indicted on Tuesday in Manhattan forecasts the most radical tactic yet that the Democrats will use to block Trump's return to power: lawfare with unfounded charges in the criminal courts.  Let's be clear.  The feds have already declined to prosecute anything surrounding Trump's civil settlement with Stormy Daniels.  Perhaps that is because confidentiality clauses are part of millions of civil settlements in lawsuits around the country every day.  I've seen hundreds in my own career as a civil litigator.  In other words, nothing to see here.

Turns Out all You Need is 38,000 Demons to Destroy the World.  The brutalism of government during the last three years was anomalous in western democracies.  First of all, it was irrational, it contravened common sense, which almost everyone possesses, and it destroyed millions of household economies and small businesses.  It impoverished and starved a billion people in the developing world.  It killed the old, brutally, refusing them affection in their last days.  It divided us and is still dividing us.  The virus was engineered by the government and paid for by the people it was unleashed upon.  And then the fiends forced injections upon anyone with a job and a family to feed, via relentless propaganda, where it too contravened basic reason (acquired immunity, tiny effect on people under 70), and then the shot started to kill.  And the deaths were ignored, records hidden, and the press was quiescent.  Who did this?  This wasn't normal government behavior. [...] Who drew up the plan, instituted it in every country, bullied every citizenry, devised the advertising, instituted the protocols?  What operation has that level of power, of discipline?

Who's Running America?  Last week the Senate Democrat majority was hospitalized with Senator John Fetterman dispatched to a psych ward and Senator Dianne Feinstein, who doesn't seem to know where she is, hospitalized for shingles. [...] The New York Times claims that Senator Fetterman "runs his Senate operation" from a psych ward.  Photos have been released of him vaguely looking at pieces of paper.  No satirist could have come up with a bleaker metaphor for the country than that one of the Senate's deciding votes has been hospitalized in a psych ward for his own safety, but is still running everything.  The paper tells us that, "since Mr. Fetterman checked in to the hospital, he has co-sponsored a bipartisan bill designed to help prevent future train derailment disasters, opened new district offices across Pennsylvania and hired four new staff members.  On Wednesday, Mr. Fetterman sent a letter to the agriculture secretary."  With productivity like that, maybe we should stick all of Congress in a mental institution.  Fetterman was so badly off that couldn't feed himself in a city filled with eateries, but is now in a position to write legislation that will change the country.

House Democrats anoint 'so-called' member of Congress to sabotage hearings, trash whistleblowers.  Now that Democrats are in the minority in the House and unable to abuse their power as easily as they have for the last two years, they are resorting to shameless lies to sabotage oversight hearings and trash whistleblowers and other inconvenient witnesses.  As queen of this disinformation operation, they have anointed a little-known Democrat named Stacey Plaskett, who is not even a full-fledged member of Congress.  Plaskett's favorite adjective is "so-called," which is ironic since she is a so-called member of Congress.  She does not have voting rights as the "at-large" delegate for the US Virgin Islands.  Yet she is a ranking member of the Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government, the first time a nonvoting delegate has occupied such a lofty post.

Mark Kelly Wastes No Time Revealing Himself to Be a Nightmare.  I left California five years ago for a variety of reasons, the politics there being a big part of what made me cut out after more than two decades. [...] Nine months after I returned, Kyrsten Sinema was elected to the Senate.  Arizona hadn't had a Democrat there in over 20 years.  That was an adjustment.  Things got worse when Mark "I'M AN ASTRONAUT!" Kelly was elected to fill the remainder of the late John McCain's term.  I consoled myself with the fact that it was only for two years and that we could sweep him out of office during the 2022 midterms.  Yeah, about that.  Kelly was able to sneak into a full term by essentially hiding under Kyrsten Sinema's skirts for the first two years, doing nothing to call attention to himself.  Conservatives here knew that there was a gun-grabbing nightmare just waiting to bust out if he was given six years.  Well, his first move wasn't against the Second Amendment; it was even creepier.

NOAA and BOEM; Ignorance is Bliss.  For about twenty years the Natural Resources Defense Council [NRDC] engaged the US Navy in a legal battle over the effects of the Navy's use of Mid Frequency Sonar in training exercises and its impact on marine mammals and other creatures, with one case even reaching the US Supreme court.  While there are many different aspects of NRDC's legal actions, the results of the litigation have produced an enormous amount of scientific data and research regarding the effects of underwater sound on marine creatures, with an emphasis on Sonar and marine mammals.  They forced the Navy to admit that their use of sonar had resulted in the unintentional mass strandings of many different marine Mammals in a dozen different instances around the world, primarily involving Beaked whales, that are classified as being low to mid frequency cetaceans.  These mammals communicate, navigate and feed using low to mid frequency sounds.

Liberating Ourselves from Dystopia.  I have no interest in this kind of future, but the first step to liberating ourselves from certain dystopia is understanding and accepting that the government is always lying.  It does not consider telling the truth a civic or moral duty; rather, it believes in disseminating "narratives" that are most beneficial to its own grip on power.  Those who advance farthest in government are not honest people, and their trickle-down dishonesty corrupts everyone around them.  In politics and war, the lowest common denominator tends to win out.  There is a race to the bottom in which ruthless violence and abject immorality succeed while honor and principle are rejected. [...] When President Kennedy urged Americans during his Inaugural Address to "ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country," he was "defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger." Today's politicians demand that Americans do what they say and have made government our maximum danger.

The John Fetterman Situation Just Got Much Weirder.  Despite a "recovery" from the stroke that is clearly going in the wrong direction, talk of Fetterman resigning has been dismissed as ableism. [...] The New York Times wrote a full spread actually suggesting that it is normal for a senator to co-sponsor legislation that he's not even aware of.  That's the best defense they could come up with for a guy who not only can't perform the duties of his office, but can't even hold a conversation with someone.  The entire point of electing a representative is that they make decisions in the interests of their constituents.  In all my time covering politics, I have never once heard of a Senate staff co-sponsoring legislation for their boss without his or her knowledge.  That's so insane and contrary to the electoral system as to be scandalous all on its own.  We aren't supposed to be a government run by staff proxies.

FBI May Have Used FISA To Spy On The Congressman Overseeing FISA, Whose Renewal Is 'Top Legislative Priority' For Biden.  The FBI may have abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to spy on the very congressman tasked with overseeing FISA, according to revelations at a congressional hearing Thursday.  Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said at a committee hearing that he has reason to believe that he is the unnamed congressman who, a recently declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) admitted, FBI agents wrongfully conducted a search on.  LaHood is leading a working group tasked with oversight and renewal of Section 702 of FISA, Fox News reported.  Last month, President Joe Biden asked Congress to reauthorize FISA provisions, calling it a "top legislative priority."  "I want to make clear the FBI's inappropriate querying of a duly elected member of Congress is egregious and a violation not only that degrades the trust in FISA, but is viewed as a threat to the separation of powers," LaHood said at the hearing, according to Fox.  "I have had the opportunity to review the classified summary of this violation, and it is my opinion that the member of Congress that was wrongfully queried multiple times solely by his name was in fact me," he said.

Prevent Federal Overreach by Empowering the States.  Our federal government is out of control.  That fact is no longer even debatable.  Numerous groups are looking for ways to remedy that situation before it's too late.  One such group is the Convention of States movement.  They're working to bring our government to heel by using Article V of the Constitution to implement amendments for
  •   fiscal accountability,
  •   term limits, and
  •   constraints on government overreach.
There are numerous straightforward ideas to achieve fiscal accountability and term limits.  However, that "constraining government overreach" one is tricky.  What is overreach?  How can it be prevented in a legally enforceable way?  I have a modest proposal.  There is no greater form of government overreach than federal officials using the power of their offices to violate our Constitutionally protected rights.  Fortunately, there's already a statute that criminalizes such actions.

Shellenberger on Censorship: It's No Longer a Slippery Slope.  Shellenberger: "Seeing this censorship industry go from, well, we're just fighting ISIS to well, we're just fighting Russian disinformation bots to well, now we need to fight domestic misinformation, which is just saying we need to fight against people who are saying things we disagree with online, that's all that means.  And I — I mean, it's not a slippery slope.  It's an immediate leap into a terrifying mechanism that I — we only see in totalitarian societies of attempting to gain control over what the social media platforms are allow — are allowing."  [Video clip]

Michael Shellenberger Outlines Deep State Psychological Operations Being Conducted Against Americans.  After his review of the Twitter Files, Michael Shellenberger is beginning to take a big picture approach to each of the discoveries.  Shellenberger, appears on Tucker Carlson tonight to discuss how in the big picture the U.S. government is conducting psychological warfare against domestic citizens through the auspices of Twitter and likely other social media platforms.  He's not wrong, we've been calling it out in real time.  [Video clip]

Weaponized FTC Demands Twitter Hand Over Journalists' Work.  The FTC, led by Democrats, sent twelve letters to Twitter and its lawyers since Mr. Musk took over on October 27.  Mr. Musk told Twitter employees in November the company would do whatever it takes to follow both the letter and the spirit of the FTC order, the [Wall Street] Journal reported at the time.  The FTC also seeks to depose Mr. Musk in connection with the probe.  The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee obtained the so-called demand letters, which published excerpts of them Tuesday in a staff report about the FTC's investigation.  According to the Journal, the letters indicate Twitter responded to the FTC but that the agency, as of late January, felt the company was engaging in a "troubling pattern of ongoing delay" that raises "serious concerns about its compliance."  The Judiciary panel's report, the first by a new subcommittee examining what Republicans call the "weaponization" of federal agencies, accused the FTC of overstepping its authority at the urging of progressive groups unhappy with Mr. Musk's acquisition of the company.  "There is no logical reason, for example, why the FTC needs to know the identities of journalists engaging with Twitter," the report said.

Life Among the Ruins.  Need we say anything about the lack of efficacy or morality of the Department of Justice, FBI, or CIA?  Or rather is there anything the FBI will not do?  Doctor court evidence?  Hire Twitter to suppress the news?  Monitor parents at school board meetings?  Allow directors to lie under oath or "misremember" before Congress?  Swiping clean subpoenaed phones?  Hiring fakers to compile dirt on a presidential candidate — and then using that known smear to hoodwink a judge to allow spying on Americans?  Suppressing evidence on a laptop to warp an election?  Raiding an ex-president's home with a SWAT-like team?  Spying on Catholics in mass?  Storming a home full of children of a man accused of a politically incorrect misdemeanor?

Americans need this Amendment more than ever right now.  The need for America to re-affirm the First Amendment and its principles has once again been underscored by the recent findings coming out about the origins and impact of the coronavirus.  The most important problem we have as a society is not misinformation but the suppression of non-conforming opinions that often (but not always) turn out to be true.  Americans sense this already.  They are concerned about what tech companies have been doing to censor content, with 61% of voters in a recent Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll believing that the government and tech companies worked together to enforce political censorship.

Just how unjust is our system of justice?  The CIA and FBI have turned away from investigating foreign threats (like China) and against law-abiding Americans, especially conservative and/or Christian Americans.  Turns out the Church Committee did not effectively reform those institutions as promised.  The FBI/DOJ/CIA/DNC complex robbed Trump of his 2020 victory because he was and remains a threat to their personal wealth and power.  Now our blighted and corrupt administration is fighting a proxy war with Russia over the national security of their eastern border which is insignificant to America.  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says this is the most important issue on the planet?  China is our most dangerous adversary, not Russia.

Schumer Threatens Fox, Says He Has 'Right' To Tell Them 'What to Do'.  We've seen that Democrats don't seem to understand some of the basic principles of the Constitution.  Or perhaps, more accurately, don't seem to care about complying with it.  We've also seen that they don't understand that Joe Biden isn't king.  He doesn't get to declare, by unilateral fiat, the cancellation of student debt.  That's not within his Constitutional power, no matter what Democratic politicians may think.  But they wanted to do it to pay off their base for their votes.  So, they threw a tantrum on the steps of the Supreme Court.  All they understand is that they should get to do what they want to hold onto their control.  We saw another serious Constitutional problem again — with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, as he spoke to CNN and MSNBC over the last day.  Listen as Schumer tells CNN's John Berman that he thinks they have a "right" to tell Fox News what to do.  [Tweet]

Has Someone Taken Over Fetterman's Office Because He Can't Do What Was Just Announced.  What is going on at Sen. John Fetterman's (D-PA) office?  I ask because the senator, who hospitalized and under medical observation, is apparently joining legislative efforts and co-signing legislation.  Someone the people of Pennsylvania didn't elect is acting in Fetterman's capacity.  It's not shocking that Democrats are pushing a new framework to enhance train safety after the horrific derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which could devolve into an environmental fiasco.  What is eyebrow-raising is Fetterman saying he's joined this effort while being sidelined for possibly a month due to clinical depression.  And if you ask his staff on Twitter about it, they reportedly block you. [...] Who is running the office and signing off on lawmaking efforts?  Because it's not John right now.  We have an unelected imposter serving the Keystone State, and that's a scandal.

Fetterman Is Sponsoring Bills, Signing Legislation from a Psych Ward Now.  No one knows how John Fetterman is, and the last report we had was from a conservative journalist John Cardillo who heard Mr. Fetterman is essentially brain-dead in the medical sense.  We know that Sen. Fetterman is locked away in a psych ward for severe depression and other issues and couldn't be doing what they say he is doing.  Somehow, he sponsors bills, writes letters, and conducts Senate business from his locked psych ward.  So, we just let people run government policies and sponsor bills from psych wards now?  He could be terminally brain-dead, and how would we know?

Injustice of the Court.  I was encouraged to look at sacrifice for my nation as the highest honor.  I saluted the flag, got choked up at the sound of the national anthem.  Now, I have to ask what purpose would my sacrifice serve?  Would it be to keep Hunter's diary a secret?  Would it be to hide all the crimes of pedophilia among our representatives, senators, presidents and judges?  Would my sacrifice be to see drag queens in Kindergarten?  Would it be to keep political prisoners of the current regime?  Would it be to fund extortion and brutality of parents concerned about their children and the schools they go to?  The problem that has been created is that as a patriotic son of the founding ideals, I would have to fight against all of that, against the crooked institutions of today.  I could not, in good conscience fight to sustain this treason.  It's a paradox created by their lies and deceit that I could not fight for the government of my nation, but am forced to try and bring it to heel, to bring it back under control.

Twitter Coordinated with Intel Agencies.  Over the course of some 15 "Twitter Files" exposés, independent journalists also revealed the tech giant worked closely with intelligence agencies, resulting in the censorship of more speech.  As Matt Taibbi put it:  ["]The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government — from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.["]  "Requests poured in from FBI offices all over the country, day after day, hour after hour: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Baltimore," Taibbi wrote, with Twitter "taking requests from every conceivable government agency, from state officials in Wyoming, Georgia, Minnesota, Connecticut, California, and others to the NSA, FBI, DHS, DOD, DOJ, and many others."  And although Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, could only share Twitter's internal communications, that material showed the CIA — referred to under the euphemism "Other Government Agencies" in the emails — "ended up sharing intelligence through the FBI and FITF [Foreign Influence Task Force] not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo!, Twitch, Cloudfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia."

A Partisan Judge's Parting Rampage.  Efforts to uncover election irregularities or lawfully object to the outcome are under criminal investigation resulting in the unprecedented weaponization of legal and judicial authority conducted by unaccountable prosecutors and judges.  Enabling this farce in the nation's capital is Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the D.C.  District Court.  A former Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill, Howell was appointed to the bench by Barack Obama in 2010 and elevated to chief judge in 2016.  Since then, Howell has steered the government's yearslong effort to put Trump in handcuffs.  She managed the grand jury proceedings for Special Counsel Robert Mueller and is currently overseeing the Justice Department's latest iteration of its "Get Trump" campaign — a sweeping investigation into alleged attempts to "overturn" the 2020 election.  Her latest broadside is aimed at Representative Scott Perry (R-Pa.).  FBI agents, acting at the direction of the rogue Washington Field Office, stole Perry's cell phone on August 9, 2022, the day after the same office executed an armed raid at Mar-a-Lago.  Perry was traveling with his family in New Jersey at the time when agents seized his phone, copied its contents, and returned the device.

Biden Unites the Feds with DEI.  How are we to understand the Biden administration's executive order to go full DEI for the whole federal government?  I mean, if we need to purge the federal government from stem to stern of systemic racism and enforce diversity, equity, and inclusion, the federal government must be a veritable hornet's nest of racism, sexism, homophobia, and hate.  Otherwise we wouldn't need a whole-of-government effort to stamp it out.  And, of course, we are talking about Democrats.  No Republican has had a shot at a Fed job for a generation.  But how can this be?  Our liberal friends have been running the federal government, man and boy — and now gender non-binary — for not less than 90 years, at least since FDR was inaugurated and cranked up the federal government to ramming speed with a ton of new liberal programs.  Our liberal friends have run a race program — fighting systemic racism! — for the last 55 years, from quotas to Affirmative Action to Diversity to Reparations.  And that's not enough?

Five Lessons from Three Years of Authoritarianism.  Three years ago few of us knew the impending storm that was brewing; one that would upend the very fabric of global democracy, destroy whole communities, businesses and families and cause a vast number of children and adolescents to become unmoored and disengage from society, among many other deleterious outcomes.  Perhaps most chilling of all has been the sinister turn in those three years of what was once seemingly a force for good, "public health;" which changed into a punitive and authoritarian entity that wilfully engages in iatrogenesis and the disenfranchisement of those skeptical of the medical-industrial complex through widespread and draconian vaccine mandates.  In retrospect, America in February of 2020 seems like a libertarian, innocent age compared to our current one.  We did not live under the shadow of possible nuclear holocaust.  Everyday life was devoid of the nanny-state elements of our current age.  Many of us had gone through life never quite knowing what the destructive power of a government run amok looked like.  Now we know.

DoD politicization scandal expands: Files on two more House Republicans leaked to Dem oppo-research group.  [Scroll down] This raises serious questions about politicization of the federal bureaucracy, and especially at the DoD, which is supposed to be scrupulously non-partisan.  Even more generally, though, the use of confidential federal files in political campaigns calls into question the entire usefulness of civil-service status, which is supposed to keep the federal bureaucracy non-partisan.  That almost seems quaint at this point, given the clear partisan tilt of the public employee unions that represent most of the 2 million-plus federal employees, but the exploitation of access to confidential materials for partisan electoral advantage utterly eviscerates the argument for the civil-service protections now in place that restrict accountability.

How A Texas Lawsuit Over Proxy Voting Could Nuke Biden's Entire $1.7 Trillion Spending Spree.  Joe Biden's Dec. 29 signing of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 was invalid because the House never actually passed the omnibus spending bill the president purportedly signed into law.  At least, that's what Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claims in a little-noticed lawsuit he filed last week against the Biden administration.  If a court agrees, the taxpayer-funded $1.7 trillion federal spending spree — and every other aspect of that bill — could be rendered void.  While the "if" in that sentence does some heavy lifting, it is not because Paxton's lawsuit is weak on either the facts or the law.  On the contrary, his complaint in Paxton v. Department of Justice makes a seemingly unassailable case that the House of Representatives lacked the constitutionally mandated quorum to pass the appropriations act.  Nonetheless, the enormity of a court striking an omnibus spending bill may leave the judicial branch shrinking from its constitutional duty.

Biden decides to give the WHO authority over U.S. sovereignty.  The World Health Organization, a subsidiary of the United Nations run by a team of bureaucrats in Geneva, soon could have the power to dictate lockdowns, vaccination mandates, social distancing and much more in the United States.  Even surveillance of citizens.  A new report from the Epoch Times explains Joe Biden is getting ready to sign the U.S. up to a "legally binding" deal that would give international politicians authority to make decisions for America during a pandemic.  And he's maneuvering so it won't require approval by the U.S Senate.

I've Been Down A Deep Rabbit Hole This Morning.  [One piece of the puzzle:]  Did you know the CDC, after 17 years, decided to update the profile of Vinyl Chloride?  11 Days before the train crash.  [Another piece:]  The Biden administration is preparing to sign up the United States to a "legally binding" accord with the World Health Organization (WHO) that would give this Geneva-based UN subsidiary the authority to dictate America's policies during a pandemic.

Religious pro-lifers prevented from viewing Bill of Rights because National Archives forbids free speech.  They're coming for you next:  Students and parents and others who had just attended the January 20, 2023 March for Life event in Washington were told by numerous National Archives security officials that day that they must remove or cover any pro-life shirts, jackets, hats, or buttons or they would be ejected from the museum. [...] This same intolerance was also done to other pro-life individuals attempting to view the Bill of Rights, by numerous different security guards in different locations at the museum.  All were threatened with eviction if they did not cover or remove the shirts, jackets, or hats that had pro-life statements on them.  In one case a group of 30-40 students were ordered by several guards to remove their pro-life shirts[.]

State Department Funded Foreign Think Tank Working To Censor Americans.  The U.S. State Department funds and partners with a U.K.-based think tank that collaborates with online platforms to censor perceived mis- and disinformation.  The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is a British nongovernmental organization that styles itself as a research group working in partnership with several online platforms to combat extremism, hate and disinformation.  However, the organization frequently classifies typical conservative discourse and journalism as hate and/or disinformation and has received funding from the U.S. government.  The State Department awarded the organization a grant in September 2021 to "advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda" in Europe and the U.K. after it won the U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge.  The event, which was held in collaboration with the "U.S. Embassy Paris, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) [and] the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)," was also won by the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), an organization which reportedly seeks to demonetize conservative news sites.

State Dept Operative and USAID Administrator Samantha Power is in Hungary, Seeding Another Color Revolution — Deep State Ukraine 2.0.  Hungary has been in the crosshairs of the Biden/Obama administration ever since Prime Minister Viktor Orban refused to align with the WEF Western Democracies in their quest for regime change in Russia.  As the NATO led western alliance assembled to use Ukraine as a proxy war against Russia, Hungarian Prime Minister Orban would not join.  In early April 2022, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was overwhelmingly reelected, despite the massive efforts against him by the European Union, western and euro-centric multinational globalists.  As a result of the victory, Brussels was furious at the Hungarian people.

The American Legal System Is Becoming An Instrument Of Injustice.  America once was a nation of laws, real laws that protected life, liberty, and property.  Now, though, the laws are immoral in both purpose and effect.  For example:  The DOJ enforces search warrants against political enemies with excessive but legal force.  These personal enemies are arrested in the most publicly embarrassing manner possible.  A pro-life activist is arrested in his home using massed, armed federal police and accused of violating a law that a state court concluded was not violated.  The jury acquitted him. [...] The IRS uses financial force to coerce compliance just within the bounds of the law.  And when politics call, the IRS will illegally punish opponents, as it did with Tea Party groups.  The TSA and Homeland Security push the limits of legality with No-Fly lists and searches in the name of safety.  The law is specifically designed to protect this plunder of liberty. [...] It never ends.  The persecution of Masterpiece Bakery, gas stove bans, EV mandates, drag queen story hours, teaching CRT, ESG scores, creative ballot collection, and unenforced borders all stretch the bounds of legality under perverted law.  The law that is supposed to protect life, liberty, and property is used to take them away.  The persecution under the law pushes to the edge of legality and quite often past it.  The elites designed the limits under which they operate.  They chose the limits purposefully to use them to excess.

[The] Secret Service [is being] accused of a 'cover-up'.  The Secret Service has been accused of a 'cover-up' over its alleged involvement in a police investigation when Hunter Biden's lover dumped his gun in a trash can near a school in 2018.  Judicial Watch, a justice watchdog nonprofit, announced on Friday that it received 487 pages of Secret Service (USSS) records over the incident, and says the documents cast further doubt over the agency's claims that it was not involved.  Hunter's lover and brother's widow, Hallie Biden, left his .38 handgun at the top of a trash can at Jansens supermarket in Wilmington, Delaware in October 2018, sparking a police probe.

The Stench of Fascism Is Suffocating our Democracy.  ... but nobody wants to talk about it.  We sanitize our language so that classified documents strewn over unsecured garages and centers of Chinese influence are talked about as though it's a matter of carelessness and not design.  The indisputable brute fact is this:  our commander-in-chief and his family have made themselves wealthy by taking bribes from foreign powers, chief among them our mortal enemy Communist China.  Nobody seems to be asking, but how exactly were the inexplicable decisions to turn Afghanistan over to China and the Taliban made, and what American interest was served by this?  In classic fascist fashion, the Biden administration has suborned the intelligence community and the Department of Justice to censor and harass its political opponents.  These include school parents and Capitol trespassers whom it libels and imprisons as "domestic terrorists" and (unarmed) "insurrectionists."  In typical fascist moves, it has suborned corporate America into spying on its political opponents with the goal of cancelling them and silencing their opinions.  Just this week AT&T shut down the fastest growing and fourth largest cable news network, Newsmax TV, depriving 13 million viewers of access to its reporting.  This attack on the First Amendment came on the heels of Twitter's exposure of the way the FBI had put its platform on the federal payroll and dictated its censorship of tweets that could have changed the results of the last presidential election.  The same fascistic arrangement was made with other tech social media giants like Facebook.

Will Jordan's Subcommittee Be Able to Achieve What the 'Church Committee' Couldn't?  Important and laudable as it was at the time (1975), we must conclude that the Senate's vaunted "Church Committee," under Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), ultimately failed in its mission to reform the CIA, FBI, IRS, and the National Security Agency (NSA) anywhere near permanently. [...] I hesitate to use Wikipedia, given its reflexive bias, but its summary of what the Church group found seems accurate:  "The most shocking revelations of the committee include Operation MKULTRA involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control; COINTELPRO involving the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil-rights organizations; Family Jewels, a CIA program to covertly assassinate foreign leaders; Operation Mockingbird as a systematic propaganda campaign with domestic and foreign journalists operating as CIA assets and dozens of US news organizations providing cover for CIA activity.  "It also unearthed Project SHAMROCK, in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA (while officially confirming the existence of this signals intelligence agency to the public for the first time)."  Does any of this sound familiar?  More exactly, what part of this doesn't sound familiar?

Arizona Regime Is Investigating Kari Lake For Exposing Election Fraud.  The newly selected regime heading up Arizona's top statewide offices is now targeting Kari Lake with potential felony charges for speaking out against the rigged election in Arizona.  Questionably elected Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a former lawyer for Mexican drug cartels, sent out a new letter on Monday, asking questionably elected Attorney General Kris Mayes to "investigate and take appropriate enforcement action against Kari Lake" for sounding the alarm about the stolen 2022 Election.

The CIA and Intelligence Community are Very Worried About the House Subcommittee on Federal Government Weaponization.  The website Just Security, author former CIA operative Douglas Johnson, is very concerned about the House Subcommittee on Federal Government Weaponization.  The concern is clouded under the auspices of fearing politicization by questioning the intelligence community about weaponized government.  The article is a mainstream bureaucratic outlook where the professional intelligence apparatus views themselves as beyond being accountable to the elected public officials, specifically the House members of the committee.  The permanent unelected officials have a self-perception above the reach of the elected officials.  In essence, there is no public accountability model within their view of their operation.  There can only be concealment, secret briefings, darkness and 'trust us' type reviews of their authorities.  It's quite a remarkable thing to read.

Who does Represtative Maria Salazar represent?  When a citizen is elected to Congress, they are conferred the title of "representative," with each "representative" elected to a two-year term "serving the people of their specific congressional district."  So it was disconcerting to hear Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican from Florida's 27th district, address the recently concluded World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, in her official congressional capacity and declare that she "represents" the millions of migrants presently inside the sovereign borders of this nation illegally.  Speaking as part of a bipartisan panel discussing "the reshaped legislative landscape in the United States as it relates to domestic and foreign policy," the crux of her remarks to the attendees was that she wanted to give "dignity" to illegal migrants that are living inside the United States."

Keywords: Slow walking, stonewalling, obstruction of Congress.
Biden Treasury Department Uses Comical Excuse to Block House Request for Hunter's Bank Records.  Almost as bad as the Biden administration's manipulation of federal agencies to do the bidding of the Biden Family Business is the blatant way they do it.  Comical?  Yes, in a way.  Unacceptable, for which there should be consequences?  You betcha.  Will it ever happen?  I seriously doubt it.  In Team Biden's latest example of a "conflict of interest," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has "delayed" (blocked, at least temporarily) a House Republican request for information on Biden family financial transactions that may have been marked as suspicious, reports The Hill, saying it must first determine whether the disclosure of the records is consistent with "longstanding Executive Branch interests."

Our lawsuit uncovers more shocking evidence Team Biden used Big Tech to censor.  The First Amendment is the bedrock of American liberty.  Our citizens have the right, if not civic duty, to engage in open, dynamic discourse, and no government has the right to limit, suppress, censor or otherwise control it.  Yet as we dig deeper into discovery in our Big Tech censorship case — Missouri and Louisiana v. Biden — we uncover ever-more truly appalling abuses of power that President Joe Biden's director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, admitted come from "the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the" White House.  Such evidence proves the Biden administration is leveraging its power to coerce social-media companies to suppress the speech of thousands, if not millions, of Americans who disagree with its political narratives.  Naturally, the First Amendment prohibits censorship.  Yet the Biden team has worked to circumvent this fundamental constitutional protection by inducing, threatening and colluding with private companies to suppress speech.  It's illegal; but when Big Government enters into such a conspiracy with Big Business to violate your rights, it's also known by another name:  fascism.

To Save America, Repeal the 19th Amendment.  With Jacinda Ardern's welcome exit from the ranks of world political leaders, leaving a shambles of constitutional freedom and human rights in her wake, now is perhaps an opportune time to reconsider the passage of the 19th amendment in American politics as part of our ongoing series of "To Save America" modest proposals advocating repeal of the most destructive tamperings with the original Constitution. [...] To take Ardern as an example, her reaction to a single case of the imaginary disease known as "Covid-19" was quintessentially female and maternal: she immediately shut down her entire country, then instituted a breathtaking regime of ruthless totalitarianism involving lockdowns and forcible "vaccinations."  (She had previously displayed these same panicky instincts in the wake of the 2019 mosque shootings, when she almost instantly imposed a draconian anti-gun policy nationwide.)  In other words, she acted according to stereotype, her policies not the product of calm thinking and reasoned judgment but of inflamed emotions absent any rational thought.  After which she walked away from the chaos complaining of burnout.

The American intelligence community has no accountability — so how can it keep us safe?  The revelation that President Biden had stacks of classified documents stashed in his garage — alongside jugs of anti-freeze and piles of cleaning rags — comes as little surprise.  For several years I have been working on a new book, "SpyFail," that examines the collapse of the country's counterintelligence and security operations.  And by far, no administration has had a more disastrous record than those of Barack Obama and Biden.  For years, insiders at the hyper-secret National Security Agency were able to walk out the door with more than half a billion pages of documents classified higher than top secret, some dealing with nuclear weapons and many of which ended up in Russia.  And that was after the supposed crackdown following the million or so documents removed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, also on Obama and Biden's watch.  Still another NSA insider was able to steal nearly all of the agency's highly dangerous cyberweapons — the tech equivalent of loose nukes — and put them up for auction on the internet in 2016.  Eventually, the weapons ended up in Russia and North Korea, where they were used to cause a worldwide cyber pandemic that shut down hospitals and medical facilities all over the world, including in the US, thus turning our own weapons against us.

From student loans to masks, why does Biden want to keep us in a perpetual 'emergency'?  We've made it to 2023, nearly three years since the pandemic hit the United States in full force.  The virus is less deadly, we have effective vaccines and life is pretty much back to normal for most of us.  If you're President Joe Biden, however, the COVID-19 "emergency" is still front and center.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't think Biden actually believes we are still in a state of emergency.  He admitted as much in September when he declared the pandemic was "over."  Yet the president and his administration have enjoyed the extra powers that have accompanied the national emergency declaration.  And they are working hard to cling to this authority, which has granted the executive branch broader control over our lives.

You Must Assume That All Information Put Out By Our Government Is Corrupt.  Throughout the agencies of our federal government, an important function is to issue data and information about the state of the country.  These data cover a vast array of topics such as population, demographics, income and poverty, the state of the economy, the GDP, employment and unemployment, activities of foreign adversaries, weather and climate, energy production and use, and much, much more.  The Congress and states use this information in making important public policy decisions, and the people use it to make decisions for their everyday lives.  Not the least of those decisions is how to vote.  So is the information issued by the government basically honest and reliable for important decisions?  Or, instead, is the output of official information cynically manipulated and corrupted by a government interested mainly in perpetuating and increasing its own power?  And given that the federal bureaucracy is 90+% Democrat in political orientation, to what extent does that bureaucracy manipulate the information it issues to further the election of Democrats?  The evidence of data manipulation in favor of Democrats is so pervasive that we have to assume that essentially all information put out by the government is corrupt.

The Empress Wears No Clothes.  Catherine E. Lhamon is the current Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR).  Despite the unassuming title, her position wields enormous power.  The Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, at her sole discretion, can cut off federal funding (and has threatened to do so) from any recipient educational institution she deems unwoke or patriarchal.  Lhamon once quipped about how she enjoys carrying the "big stick of the federal government" to further her agenda.  Lhamon is best known for abusing her authority to create an illiberal ecosystem of administrative law during the Obama administration, eviscerating due-process protections for students accused of sexual harassment.

Like Paul Revere, a Massachusetts Republican Sends Warning.  [Scroll down] How do progressives govern?  During the COVID debacle, we got a good look at progressive blue state governors and then a progressive president in action.  They govern like absolute monarchs, decreeing mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and destructive lockdowns.  They abusively utilize 'emergency powers' that have no end date.  They impose unconstitutional executive orders that bypass legislative approval.  Elon Musk has done the country a great service by releasing the 'Twitter Files'.  We now know that the FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ (among other agencies) have been corrupted by installing progressive leadership.  These agencies are now weaponized against conservatives.  They are now used to defend progressives and their policies.  They have co-opted all mainstream news media and big tech, preventing accurate information from getting to the people.  They've worked to silence conservative voices, suppressing all opposition.  Even the White House is in on it.

America's Animal Farm.  [Scroll down] It is not American for an unelected bureaucracy to create rules out of thin air and enforce them upon the people through agency prerogative and regulation.  It is not American for presidents to legislate through executive order.  It is not American for congresses to conduct show trials against American citizens or to demand that tech companies censor points of view.  It is not American for courts to scribble over the Constitution whenever expedient.  It is not American for the Department of (in)Justice to persecute citizens for their political beliefs or for the FBI to act as a lethal enforcer against the regime's political enemies.  It is not American for there to be so many criminal statutes that no American could possibly know them all, let alone confidently act without fear of sanction.  It is not American for there to be so many government agencies and divisions that no American could capably draw a diagram listing their roles and functions.  It is not American for the government to champion its secular religion over the moral tenets of Americans' spiritual faiths.  It is not American for the government to ignore the will of its citizens and subvert immigration law by leaving its borders unprotected and wide open.  It is not American for an amorphous Intelligence Community to spy on American citizens with neither warrant nor probable cause.  It is not American for the news media to be so co-opted by the State that they almost universally support the government's talking points — no matter how ludicrous and unsupported — while taking aim at dissenting citizens' debate.

Over this weekend, a lot of very important legal happenings have occurred.  [Thread reader]  Last term, a case came before the US Supreme Court, where West Virginia sued the EPA for egregious changes to the clean air act that essentially rewrote the law with much tougher restrictions.  This was done at the Biden admin's direction to directly target the WV Coal industry.  In West Virginia v EPA, the crux of the matter was Exec Branch Agencies abusing Chevron Deference legal standard to exceed their regulatory authority to essentially rewrite laws for political reasons, by changing their regulatory definitions & rules.  In deciding WV v EPA, SCOTUS ruled that EPA exceeded its authority & that chevron deference DOES NOT permit an agency to make rule changes that effectly modifies existing laws or would create new law.  The Supreme Court ruled that in drastically changing the clean air act standards to punish coal & oil industries, the EPA was rewriting the law, which only congress can do.

Liberal media is trying to protect the FBI from hard questions about illegal surveillance.  Besides addressing the crisis at the southern border, there is no more urgent matter for the new Republican House majority to direct its attention to than the conversion of the federal government into a progressive cudgel against civil rights.  And there is nothing less surprising than the media-Democrat complex's determination to strangle the probe in its cradle.  In the left's playbook, everything is either about race or Donald Trump — if not both.  So as night follows day, with House Republicans poised to establish a much needed Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Democrats and their press accomplices are framing the panel as an adjunct of the 2024 Trump presidential campaign.  They can't be allowed to get away with that.  To make sure they don't, Republicans must take pains not to help.  That means going about it carefully, methodically and in a way that makes clear the weaponization's victims are the American people, not a sinking pol who is unpopular with a solid majority of the American people.

Let's Find Out What The Democrats Have Been Up To.  The 15-round vote to finally elect a speaker of the House was, we were told by the political left, an embarrassment and evidence that the Republicans are untrustworthy.  It was in reality our system in action and it produced at least two important outcomes, both of which will cause discomfort for the Democrats and their communications wing known as the mainstream media.  Over the weekend, we learned that in order for Rep. Kevin McCarthy to earn their votes, the 20 holdout GOP lawmakers got a promise from the California moderate that two special investigative panels would be created.  One would look into "the origins of the COVID-19 virus," the other at the "weaponization" of federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Justice Department and FBI, Just The News reported.  The panels will be select subcommittees, one in the House Judiciary Committee, the other in the House Oversight Committee.  As important as both of those subcommittees will be, there is great need for more probes.  There are decades of Democratic corruption and malfeasance that need to be exposed to the public, untangled and then removed.

Journalist Paul Sperry Has More to Say, as Adam Schiff Starts Acting Nervous.  Journalist Paul Sperry is not going quietly into the night — as we reported, he's been calling out the effort by Rep. Adam Schiff's office to silence him, to get him suspended from Twitter as well as to shut down his reporting about things that Schiff didn't want to be exposed. [...] Then Sperry laid out the timeline of events that led to his suspension and you can see how even though they initially said "no," he was banned shortly after the Schiff people demanded it, and after they upped the game using Jan. 6 and potential "violence" as some sort of justification.  [Tweet]  This is every danger to freedom of speech right there and this is how they were misusing Jan. 6 to shut down speech that exposed them.  That alone is shameful, but as we see from what Schiff has done in the past, he has no shame.  Sperry has indicated that he is looking into what legal options he has regarding what happened and against Schiff.  As we noted, if he does that, he could get all kinds of things in discovery that could open up what Schiff's office had been doing.  But Congress also should be taking action against Schiff for what he did and now that the Republicans have taken over, they can.

Nancy Mace Declares She Is a Purple Republican Who Is "On The Fence Right Now" About Supporting House Rule Changes.  The true enemy of a constitutional republic are the Mitch McConnell's and Nancy Mace's of the professional political class who build systems to undermine the will of the people under the pretense of representing them.  These are the abusers, the professional abusers, the psychologically Machiavellian and inherently evil people within the system of power who operate on false pretense.  They are smiley-faced fascists and liars, period.

Nancy Pelosi calls House Democrats 'The greatest collection of intellect, integrity, and imagination assembled.  Just when one thinks one has heard everything, one is proven wrong.  Outgoing speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently wrote her last "Dear Colleague" letter to her Democrat co-conspirators/comrades.  In this missive, she stated, "During the 117th Congress, President Biden and Congressional Democrats have put forth a shining vision of justice for all.  Together, we have worked tirelessly to infuse this value into our legislative efforts.  We can all take immense pride in our achievements toward that goal, which is making a real difference in the lives of the American people."  Justice?  For all?  Tell that to all those still rotting in prison, without conviction or charge, for strolling through the People's House on January 6, 2021.  Tell that to those who were snatched from their homes in the wee hours of the morning by armed feds when a simple summons to appear would have sufficed.  Tell that to all those whose jobs were considered unessential.  Tell that to all those in the military who were discharged because they wouldn't accept an experimental substance into their bodies.  Tell that to all those who have lost loved ones to violent crime, rates of which skyrocketed in the past two years due to Democrat policies — or to those who have lost loved ones to fentanyl because Democrats absolutely refuse to police our southern border.  And tell it to America's rapidly dwindling middle class, beset by historic inflation, supply chain problems, and rising taxes.

How Is The Uniparty Destroying America?  Let Me Count The Ways.  We are seeing the foundations laid for a revolution.  Whether that revolution is peaceful or violent remains to be seen.  In virtually every society, over time, a few elites accumulate most of the power.  Those elites, in turn, run the nation as their personal fiefdom, where they utilize the machinery of the state to enrich themselves, accumulate more power, and use trifles to appease the exponentially larger population of serfs whom they rule.  This reality applies to monarchies, Communist tyrannies, "democracies," theocracies, and even, as we're coming to discover, republics.  It doesn't have anything to do with economics either, as it occurs in capitalist states, socialist states, Communist states, and mercantile states.  The only difference is how long it takes for the structure to collapse.  It took the Roman Republic 500 years to collapse, the French monarchy 1,000 years, the Soviet Union 70 years, and the EU is shaky after just 30 years.  Closer to home, the American Republic finds itself on a precipice of collapse after less than 250 years.  We're seeing it unfold right in front of us.

Rebellion Against the People.  While it's important to justify one's position, to provide proof and evidence of crimes, betrayals and treason, I believe we're past the discovery phase and need to move on to the resolution.  What more do we need to know than the CIA has been involved in some of the most treacherous acts committed against the republic, that they've had their hands in the dirtiest of business?  What more do we need to know than the FBI has worked with social media companies to install a worthless, feckless president, perpetrating a treasonous coup in the guise of an election?  All of this, while recently verified, was information we had long since accepted as true.  Such villainous acts were known in 1992 when Vicki Weaver was shot down by a government sniper while holding her infant at Ruby Ridge.  Does that not speak of the inhumanity with which the government views all of us with dissenting views, those who will not simply obey every outrageous law or dictate?  To domestic enemies, patriots are scum.  This is a division between the people and those entrusted with power that cannot be ignored without the absolute destruction of the republic in all but name.  That is the current state of the union and has been, I would venture, since 1963.

CDC colluded with gun-grabbing groups to "cook the numbers" on defensive use of firearms.  Let's face facts, shall we?  It has become painfully clear that the American people can no longer trust a word that comes out of "official" Washington, DC.  From the FBI to the CIA, the White House to the CDC, it's clear that whatever sewage emanates from the swamp must be taken with a giant grain of salt mixed with an even bigger dose of suspicion and skepticism.  The latest example comes to us courtesy of the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), which reported last month that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which we found during the COVID situation has as much credibility as the National Enquirer, "cooked the books" so to speak when it comes to defensive use of firearms.

2022, Perhaps the Apex Year for an Era of Pretending.  History provides reference points, and prolonged pretending never ends up in a good place.  So, there is room for optimism on a couple of points.  First, there is more support than ever for the 'burn it all down' approach.  Whereby we keep the basic U.S. Constitution in place and shred every other institution created that has nothing whatsoever to do with it.  This includes both the DNC and RNC wings of the UniParty apparatus.  I mean, really, at the core of it, what do we have to lose?  Why not just get rid of the dysfunctional systems that abuse us.  Second, in a weird way, we are in a rare space where we can feel the history around us.  Normally we would have to look in retrospect at the events as they unfolded to recognize the inflection point historians would use — not now.  We can look around us right now and have full confidence the most influential voice in the next two decades will be the man, woman or entity that starts openly and publicly calling out this ridiculous pretending.

Government by Gimmick Won't Last.  We are right now in an interim period that might best be called a kind of government by gimmick.  Nothing our "leaders" say is bound by much truth.  Three years of pandemic lockdowns, forced experimental injections, government-sanctioned censorship, and other unconstitutional COVID-1984 measures were moronically justified as necessary because government health bureaucrats and politicians were acting at the "speed of science."  What kind of nonsense is that?  When has real science ever been anything but methodical and slow?  Yet that authoritarian policy directive has justified three years of reckless tyranny across the West, and too many minds squeezed by Marxism's weeds simply complied.  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security habitually lies about America's borders being "secure," even though illegal immigration has never been worse, and so long as corporate media parrot government lies, reality is ridiculously distorted.  Climate change, which is an immutable planetary phenomenon, has been transformed into irrefutable proof that centralized government authority must intervene in all economic activity — the exact policy objective, coincidentally enough, that forms the foundations of Marxist power.  When Elon Musk's recent "Twitter Files" release confirmed that the FBI has been actively directing policies of censorship and speech punishment against the American people, the lawless law enforcement agency accused anybody with eyes and brain sufficient to comprehend the Bureau's constitutional betrayals of being "conspiracy theorists" pushing "misinformation."  Why should federal police confess to crimes when only they, not the people, have the power to make arrests?

Strange Deep State Bedfellows.  Victor Davis Hanson's recent mordant comments about the degree to which the FBI will go to influence elections and its shameless defense of this interference caused me to think about the surveillance state's endgame.  These somber thoughts came, not incidentally, after I had immersed myself in reading about the possible (perhaps likely) CIA involvement in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  As Jim Douglass shows in JFK and the Unspeakable, a work to which Tucker Carlson recently referred in discussing the unwillingness of the Biden Administration to release CIA documents related to the assassination, the Warren Report released in 1964 to explain the killing in Dallas was a cover-up.  Kennedy, it seems, was concerned about the CIA's largely uncontrolled exercise of power and planned to rein it in or possibly even dismantle it.  Plentiful hints lead to the conclusion that the agency knew of the planned assassination and then worked to cover up evidence about its origin and participants.

The Globalist Uniparty Murdered the American Constitutional Republic.  The U.S. government is a corrupt, one-party authoritarian state controlled by a Globalist Uniparty of Democrats and Republicans, who steal from the American people on behalf of rich and powerful multinational interests and use the federal bureaucracy, particularly the national security agencies, to suppress dissent and deny individual rights guaranteed under the Constitution.  The American Constitutional Republic died in Arizona from yet another stolen election, the kill shot being administered by Maricopa County Super Court Judge Peter Thompson, who just dismissed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's lawsuit despite overwhelming evidence of election law violations and malicious intent.  The Globalist Uniparty has been injecting lethal poison into the body politic of the American Constitutional Republic ever since the American people defied Globalist Uniparty dictates and practiced actual democracy by electing Donald Trump as President.  Recognizing that democracy was a existential threat to its survival and its iron grip control of the U.S. government, the Globalist Uniparty did everything in its power, to not only undermine the Trump Presidency, but took measures to ensure that the American people would never again pose a threat to its absolute power.

The Omnibus Spending Bill Scam.  The Pew Research Center explains what's supposed to happen:  Per the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, the Senate and House Budget bills are supposed to be voted on by April 15 each year.  They are supposed to pass a series of separate bills funding various federal agencies/activities (e.g., for the past decade, the number of spending bills has been 12, one for each subcommittee of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, such as Agriculture, Defense, Labor, et al).  If those bills aren't passed by September 30 (end of fiscal year), then Congress uses Continuing Resolutions (CRs) to temporarily fund the government.  If Congress followed its own process, they would avoid this annual "crisis" of having to vote on a bill that nobody has read except the handful of "leaders" like Schumer and his minions, or McConnell and his.  But that's exactly the point, isn't it?  This avoids the open debate needed for each of those appropriations bills, where each would have to stand or fail on its own merits, and our representatives would have to defend their votes to their constituents... you know, how it's supposed to be.  Instead, all those bills are packed into an "omnibus spending bill" that is presented the week before Christmas, usually with only a day (or maybe just hours) for the members to read the bill.  But a flurry of earmarks are doled out to senators and congressmen to secure the necessary votes, then the monstrosity of pork, waste, and woke madness is voted on.

Omnibus Fraud.  The nefarious $1.7 trillion Omnibus spending bill was passed by progressives in both parties.  This bill funds bigger government for fiscal year 2023 through September.  The bad news is that progressives seized on an initiative to eviscerate the incoming Republican House majority for half of their term.  The good news is this bill should not stand because it is unconstitutional.  The best news will be when something is done about that.  The House has authority to initiate spending under the Origination Clause of our Constitution which is Article 1, Section 7, Clause 1.  This clause gives power to the House of Representatives to originate revenue bills and supply government.  Obviously, it is a power revolving in time, coincidental with terms of office.  The House, being elected politicians closest to the people because of their short term of office, has authority and responsibility to tailor government spending to best match the will of voters.  The 117th United States Congress has exceeded their authority past their term limit by usurping the authority of the 118th Congress.  Once the 117th Congress has been succeeded in the New Year, they no longer meet, they no longer legislate, they are history.  The same is true of their bills becoming laws.  Constitutionally, this means appropriations bills can't extend past their time in office.  Otherwise, they are legislating extra officium.

Don't Buy What Democrats Are Selling as Reality.  Under their new pseudo-reality, the Democrats would have us believe there is equal justice under the law, while the truth is that conservative Americans are regularly charged, convicted, and sentenced to maximum penalties.  Conversely, Democrats like the great majority of BLM and Antifa rioters go scot-free after committing felonious crimes.  Democrats like Hunter Biden are not prosecuted at all in the face of overwhelming evidence of significant criminal wrongdoing.  There is no longer equal justice under the law in our country.  It is now an unequal, two-tiered justice system.

How the FBI Used Twitter to Lie to You.  The FBI we know is a creation of Hollywood.  From the beginning, J. Edgar Hoover sought to insert the bureau into movies and TV shows, to portray the agency as grounded in American values, and special agents as righteous competence personified. [...] This image of the FBI fails to highlight an important fact.  The FBI is allowed to lie to you.  They can lie to acquire information or encourage a confession. [...] But the most remarkable thing about the agency is that Theodore Roosevelt created the FBI via executive order after Congress refused his request to create a national police agency.  Now that agency, born in defiance of congressmen who saw no constitutional place for a national police force, is staffed by people who think it's their right to use any means they can find or develop, to override the constitutional procedure for choosing our president.

The pandemic is over, but laziness lasts a lifetime.
The 226 lawmakers who used Pelosi's proxy policy to skip $1.7T spending bill vote.  They shaped the future of America's long-term spending from the comfort of their La-Z-Boy recliners.  More than half the members of the House of Representatives called out sick Friday when the lower chamber passed the massive $1.7 trillion spending bill — instead opting to take advantage of the widely-abused COVID-era proxy voting system.  A bipartisan group of 226 congressional lawmakers filed proxy letters with the House clerk before Friday's vote, giving notice that they will designate a colleague to vote in their place.  The pandemic-era policy allowing lawmakers to choose a representative to vote in their stead was instituted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in 2020, ostensibly as a temporary measure to reduce the health risks associated with COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic.

From 'Free Speech' to Elon Musk.  Today, as evident by the treatment of Elon Musk's recent disclosures at Twitter, we have seen the entire Left do a complete 180 regarding Free speech government secrecy and collusions with big business.  Many people who may have been around back in the 60s and 70s, may be confused on this whole Elon Musk/Twitter kerfuffle. [...] What changes have we seen in such people, the ones who proclaimed to stand for integrity and an open governance since those turbulent days?  They have in fact done a compete 180 having turned themselves into a Nixon on steroids like clone of secrecy, vengeance, and retribution.  They have kept information from the public.  They have used the FBI, CIA, and IRS as well as highly partisan congressional "investigations," to punish and go after their enemies.  They have turned fair law into "lawfare."  They told Facebook, Twitter, and Google what information was to be held from the American people.  Those in charge within the high-tech Industry dutifully obeyed state orders and coordinated their efforts with the FBI.  The Left was now revealing its true beliefs:  the people have no right to such information, but only to the information approved by the government authorities who they now control.

House GOP to Investigate Biden's Secretive Order on Voting.  The House's new Republican majority is poised to investigate the Biden administration's secretive, all-of-government effort to get out the vote.  President Joe Biden's executive order of March 2021 calls for every federal agency, in partnership with private organizations, to "consider ways to expand citizens' opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process."  With some exceptions, most federal agencies haven't provided records on implementation of Biden's executive order after requests for public records were made by Congress, news organizations, and government watchdog groups.  In October, the Justice Department invoked "presidential privilege" to shield related documents.  "Our federal agencies should never be utilized for partisan, political purposes," Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., a member of the House Administration Committee, told The Daily Signal in a statement.

The Jan. 6 Committee's Referral Is Unconstitutional.  The Jan. 6 Committee has voted to refer former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution.  This referral violates both the letter and spirit of the Constitution for at least two reasons.  First, Article 1 of the Constitution grants Congress "all legislative powers" and only "legislative powers."  Under our system of separation of powers, the power to prosecute lies exclusively with the executive branch through the justice department.  Congress has no authority to refer specific individuals for prosecution.  It is beyond the scope of its constitutional authority.  Second, Congress is specifically denied the power to pass any "bill of attainder."  Prior to America's independence, the British parliament enacted such bills that prosecuted named individuals.  Our Constitution prohibited Congress from prosecuting named individuals.  The power of Congress is limited to passing laws of general application that can be applied to specific individuals only by the justice department and a grand jury.  A congressional committee officially voting to refer a named individual for prosecution violates the spirit of the explicit prohibition against congressional bills of attainder.

To Mitigate Risks to the DOJ and FBI Narrative, Special Counsel Lead Andrew Weissmann Snooped on Congress.  In order to present an accurate record of events, it is important to remain focused on specifics.  During the period from May, 2017, through April of 2019, Main Justice in Washington DC was split into two divisions.  In one division there was the Special Counsel Robert Mueller team in control of everything related to DOJ and FBI activity around the 2016 election, with emphasis on the Trump-Russia headlines.  This division handled 100% of everything that was sucking up the oxygen in Washington DC.  Andrew Weissmann was in charge of this division.  In the second division, there was everything else the DOJ was doing, which is to say not much.  Attorney General Jeff Sessions was heading this division.

Fifth Circuit rejects Biden admin's "nearly unlimited authority" claims, blocks vaccine mandate.  Joe Biden's executive orders continue to die on the appellate-court vine, especially in the Fifth Circuit.  Late yesterday, a 2-1 decision kept an injunction in place against Biden's order that all federal contractors get COVID vaccines to enter their workplaces.  It's the latest pandemic mandate struck down by the courts, and a common theme runs through all of these decisions.  Courts aren't buying an imperial presidency untethered from explicit congressional grants of authority: [...] By the way, the court never does get to one of the core issues in this mandate — the fact that the extant vaccines neither stop transmission nor uptake.  They do have a demonstrated positive effect in minimizing acute and severe cases of COVID, but that's not the issue in workplace vaccine requirements.  The only reason to impose such an order would be to stop transmission of an infectious disease, which none of the vaccines actually do.  The only effect is personal and individual, and so the choice should be personal as well — just as with the tobacco analogy the Fifth Circuit wisely uses for demonstration.  The administration is fighting a battle they will lose on multiple fronts, in other words.

DOJ snooped on House Intelligence Committee investigators during Russia probe, subpoenas show.  In an extraordinary intrusion on congressional oversight, the Justice Department used grand jury subpoenas to secretly obtain the personal email and phone data of at least two top House Intelligence Committee investigators back in November 2017 just as they and their boss, then-Chairman Devin Nunes, were assembling bombshell evidence of FBI abuses in the Russia collusion probe, Just the News has learned.  The subpoenas, obtained by Just the News, show the DOJ demanded that Google turn over personal email and phone data from the two senior staffers on Nov. 20, 2017 and that responsive materials were to be returned to DOJ by Dec. 5, 2017.  The subpoenas were delivered during a critical time frame in the committee's effort to expose the Donald Trump-Russia collusion investigation as having been driven by an uncorroborated political opposition dossier funded by Hillary Clinton.  Nunes' committee was locked at the time in a bitter struggle to force the FBI and DOJ to turn over records to the committee.

Why Just Mayorkas?  Leave it to Republicans to fall short, either from nearsightedness, timidity, or both.  Case in point, Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas.  Twenty House conservatives, led by the quixotic speaker-aspirant Andy Biggs (R-AZ), are calling for Mayorkas' impeachment.  Their intentions are good, but their call is a little like calling for the arrest of Bonnie Parker but letting Clyde Barrow and his gang run free.  Bonnie was nothing without Clyde. [...] It's these elites who must stand accused in the court of public opinion of crimes against the American people... who lend not just their assent to the debauching of the southern border and, since January 2021, the ensuing deluge of an estimated 5.5 million illegals into the country, but whose voices, dollars, and institutional heft weigh heavily in this unprecedented assault on the nation's integrity, security, and welfare.  But, of course, it's outside the scope of the soon-to-be House Republican majority to pursue that extra-governmental supporting cast.

Has American Democracy Been a Hallucination for Nearly 60 Years?  Call it a democracy, call it a democratic republic, call it a constitutional republic, call it anything you want — it doesn't really matter what America is if there is truth to what Tucker Carlson was reporting the other night via a source who had "direct knowledge" of still-hidden documents concerning the Kennedy assassination, implicating the CIA.  If indeed the CIA was in any way involved in the assassination of JFK on Nov. 22, 1963, then anything that has happened in the public sphere in our country since that day has basically been a hallucination created by an intelligence agency far deeper than most of us — certainly me, since I was never much given to conspiracy theories — ever imagined. [...] That former CIA director Mike Pompeo declined to appear on Carlson's show to discuss this is not insignificant.  We all know about 51 intelligence officials — John Brennan and others who fallaciously claimed two years ago the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.  They have to have known otherwise.  Now this?

10 Steps to Save America.  Americans distrust the "swamp," administrative state, or deep state.  Call what you will, the Washington nexus of bureaucracies, media, and lobbyists has created a huge, unelected permanent army of auditors, regulators, investigators, and punishers, all mostly exempt from audit and accountability and without fear of their elected overseers.  The easiest solution is to break up concentrations of power.  Transfer out of Washington, in this age of zoom and telecommunications, major cabinet departments like Health and Human Services, Energy, or Agriculture into the hinterland.  Restore the idea that lying to Congress, feigning amnesia, or pleading ignorance under oath to Congress or federal investigators or in depositions is a prosecutable felony with jail time.

Biden-trafficked Minors Provide Child Labor to U.S. Factories.  This isn't the first time PJ Media has reported on the sad fates of the human beings trafficked into our country by cynical globalist-socialists, and it won't be the last.  Still, it's particularly disheartening when minor children, placed in peril by the Biden administration's extralegal immigration and national transformation machine, are taken advantage of.

DHS Redacted Critical Details About 'Anti-Disinformation' Activities: Sens. Grassley, Hawley.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has neglected to provide in full certain disclosures requested by members of the U.S. Senate relating to the department's growing role in "counter-disinformation" activities, and this failure is particularly egregious in light of the co-equal roles of the executive and legislative branches of the government, two senators have charged in a Dec. 15 letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.  Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) charge the DHS with ignoring or downplaying their "serious concerns" about the DHS's "growing counter-disinformation efforts" as conveyed previously in a letter of June 7, which formally requested "information necessary to inform our congressional oversight of DHS activities."

Grassley, Hawley slam DHS for redactions of disinfo docs: 'The people's business ought to be public'.  Two Republican senators this week slammed the Department of Homeland Security for what they said were overzealous redaction decisions pursuant to an oversight request made by the senators themselves.  In their letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley criticized the department for its response to a request for documentation the two lodged in June of this year.  Of the two responses the senators received, they wrote, one "did not answer any of the ten questions" they originally posed, while the other consisted of "two documents already in the public domain" and "500 pages of material, approximately half of which are mostly or entirely redacted."  "We remind you that the oversight letters we send to the Executive Branch are signed in our capacity as sitting members of Congress, a separate and co-equal branch of government," the senators wrote.

Biden Justice Department's Vanita Gupta admits to targeting pro-lifers as payback for Supreme Court ruling on Roe.  The Department of Justice's associate attorney general, Vanita Gupta, the number three offical at that agency, loudly vowed at her confirmation hearing to serve an an impartial, non-partisan official, following revelations of a string of vile tweets directed at Republicans. [...] One such example of her 26 scalps is the case of Mark Houck, a pro-life rosary-sayer who got into an altercation with a clinic "escort" in front of an abortion clinic, after the latter began shouting at and intimidating and violating the space of his 12 year-old son.  It happened several years ago, and even Pennsylvania's woke prosecutors declined to prosecute the case because it was so flimsy.  But Vanita Gupta, enraged at the decision on Roe, had a partisan agenda, and instead of prosecute the leftist clinic escort who got in the child's face (turns out he had quite a previous rap sheet), which also would have been applicable under the FACE act, she sent in the SWAT team with 15 squad cars to haul Houck away in front of his terrified kids.

The Democrats' Slow Motion Insurrection.  The Jan. 6 Capitol ruckus is not one of our country's greatest moments.  But if the objective of a few of the protesters was to overthrow the federal government, they planned and executed poorly.  The same can't be said of the Democrats.  Their mostly bloodless coup to suspend constitutional limits and seize unchallenged power has been thoroughly calculated and expertly executed.  For decades Democrats at all levels have been moving the U.S. from the civil society it was designed to be to the political (that is, coercive) society they want to be in control of.  They have waged outright war on the first, second and 10th amendments to the Constitution; robbed us of our economic liberty through punitive taxation and strangling regulation; created environmental policies that have made innocent men criminals for making use of their own property and taken that property whenever possible; and destroyed independence by fostering more dependence on the state.  They spend other people's money as if it were, well, other people's money and there is therefore no governor on their actions.  "The Democrat Party has a long history of ignoring the Constitution when it impedes their government-expansionist objectives.  Which is nigh constantly — as the Constitution is a government-limiting document," says Seton Motley, president of Less Government, who cites some of the more egregious examples in a Heartland Institute essay.

The 'election interference' that Democrats favor.  Our intelligence apparatus — or "the deep state," in former President Donald Trump's words — has meddled in two presidential elections acting on behalf of the Democratic Party.  Instead of reporting on it, the mainstream media have served as willing pawns of these bureaucratic actors to amplify misinformation.  Congress has done nothing about it.  And no one in any federal agency has been held accountable.  How can this happen in a country that prides itself on its "free and fair" elections?  Elon Musk's "Twitter Files," which have been released by independent journalists in a series of tweets, shed light on how pervasively corrupt America's intelligence agencies are — especially when it comes to favoring one political party over another.

DOJ Official Admits Targeting Pro-Lifers Is Response to Overturn of Roe.  The Justice Department has been targeting pro-life activists through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act as a response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, according to Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta.  Gupta delivered remarks at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division's 65th Anniversary earlier this month.  The associate attorney general described the overturn of Roe v. Wade as a "devastating blow to women throughout the country" that took away "the constitutional right to abortion" and increased "the urgency" of the DOJ's work — including the "enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services."

Controlling the Department of Justice.  The unabashed political persecution and unconscionable years of pre-trial incarceration for some January 6th protestors in direct violation of the Sixth Amendment.  The near-psychotic obsession to indict and convict Donald Trump of any specious federal crime.  The admission by the FBI that they instructed social media companies prior to the 2020 election to censor stories unfavorable to Joe Biden.  These actions, among many others over the years, have confirmed that the Department of Justice is teeming with politicized prosecutors and a federal police force that is allied with one political party and is browbeating the citizenry on their behalf.  No Republican president or Congress will succeed in stopping this nation's relentless march toward one-party tyranny as long as the Department of Justice, which has been systematically weaponized since its formation in 1870, continues to exist as part of the Executive Branch.  The Founders of this nation would never have agreed to the creation of the Department of Justice.  They were extraordinarily skeptical of a large federal government and adamantly opposed to a federal law enforcement role.  Except for treason, the concept of federal crimes was not even mentioned in the Constitution.

The United States of Fascist America.  [Scroll down]  Take for example the recent Twitter File revelations.  The federal government took control of big tech and social media giants to control free speech and dissent.  It was more than simply the Biden campaign pressuring Twitter.  The FBI had weekly meetings with social media corporations to warn them of "Russian interference" or "hack and leak operations," which they knew very well were nothing of the sort.  And despite denials, Biden administration officials may still be meeting with media executives.  Who is on President Biden's guest list during the many weeks he is at one of his Delaware vacation homes?  The result was social media suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which would have likely altered the 2020 presidential election outcome.  Specifically, "16% of Biden voters would have voted differently if Hunter Biden laptop story was not suppressed by media, big tech."  In an election decided by about 50,000 votes in a few swing districts, this was obvious election interference.  And it wasn't only the FBI, but also the Department of Homeland Security.

McCarthy vows subpoenas for 51 intel-agents who signed letter saying Hunter laptop story was Russian collusion.  House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said that as Speaker of the House, he would issue subpoenas for the 51 intelligence officials who signed a letter weeks before the 2020 election claiming the Hunter Biden laptop story looked like Russian disinformation.  During a Fox interview over the weekend, McCarthy - who will likely become the lower chamber's next leader - said Republicans, under his leadership, will 'bring the (the intelligence agents) before committee' and ask them 'why did they lie to the American public?'  'Those 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was all wrong - was Russia collusion - many of them have a security clearance,' he said.

Sellin: If Corrupt Tyrants Intend to Govern Illegitimately, Then Stand Up Against the Tyrants.  Despite clear maladministration, if not intentional voter suppression and fraud, the Maricopa County, Arizona Board of Supervisors is expected to soon certify the 2022 Election results.  This will likely take place this morning.  Corruption in government is a solvable problem, but not without free and fair elections.  So, what do you do when rigged elections won't let citizens "vote out" a corrupt tyrannical political aristocracy?

2020: The Year the Ruling Class Took Control.  Manipulation is the key word when it comes to the Democrats.  Calls to pack the Supreme Court and the Senate, eliminate the filibuster, and change the way the Electoral College works all point to the fact the Democrats and the Left never rest in their nonstop efforts to manipulate the political and judicial systems to their advantage.  In a way, they really are geniuses in identifying ways to manipulate the system.  They're not always successful, but they're always trying, and for now they've succeeded in changing the way elections work in many states by making mail-in voting, ballot drop boxes, and ballot harvesting legal.  Democrats can get away with these ongoing shenanigans, especially the coverup of the coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story, is because nearly every major institution in the country is controlled by progressives in positions of authority at those institutions, most in the corporate mainstream media.

WSJ: Musk's Twitter files shows real "disinformation" threat is America's former intel leaders.  Point of order:  Didn't we learn that in 2013 when James Clapper perjured himself before Congress?  And didn't we learn that the American media enthusiastically facilitated that disinformation potential by hiring Clapper and former FBI executive Andrew McCabe after getting fired for lying to investigators?  Among dozens of others?  We did indeed, but the editors of the Wall Street Journal want to underscore that point in the release of Twitter's files on the Hunter Biden laptop story.  They also note the media's complicity in promoting this "disinformation," even in the face of independent corroboration.

Rogue Virginia ABC Sends Police to Enforce COVID Lockdown.  Virginia has a famous Republican Governor, Glenn Youngkin, who has made his opposition to arbitrary COVID-19 mandates clear.  But his predecessor, Democrat Governor Ralph Northam, although out of office for ten months, apparently still calls the shots at the Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control Board.  He does so through board members he appointed.  Indeed, every one of them, including Board Chair Maria J. K. Everett and Board CEO Travis Hill, are rogue agents bent on enforcing Northam's infamous Executive Order 72 even after it was withdrawn in May of 2021.  For the current members of the Virginia ABC Board, elections appear to be irrelevant.  So long as the Board members have the power to contradict one of Governor Youngkin's key policy positions, they appear intent on doing so.  And so it is that in all their fulsome Democrat glory, they authorized a police raid the early morning of December 2 against an honest, hard-working veteran who owns one of Fredericksburg, Virginia's most popular restaurants, Gourmeltz.  That owner, Matt Strickland, is a prominent Republican, a popular prospective candidate for the Virginia State Senate, and a party opponent of the Board members.

Justin Trudeau praises China's anti-COVID lockdown protestors — but not Canada's truckers.  How's this for hypocrisy?  At a time when celebrities, tech barons, and the White House are laying low about the gargantuan anti-COVID lockdown protests spreading throughout China, Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is loudly virtue-signalling:  [Tweet]  Trudeau, recall, just last February employed pepper spray, tow trucks, bank account freezes, Bitcoin seizures, child removals from homes, and arrests of protest leaders to end a Canadian truck strike for the exact same group of causes — vaxx mandates and continuous lockdowns, through unprecedented tactics that could only rival what the ChiCom goons and their "big whites" beating protestors into "health" are doing now.

London mayor to impose daily fines on motorists.  Sadiq Khan, current Mayor of London and WEF member, is set to impose £12.50 daily fines to all motorists who enter or commute through the greater city of London.  The Mayor has announced that the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) will be expanded across all London boroughs from August 2023, as per the Greater London Authority website.  London commuters and residents who drive 'non-compliant' vehicles will be dinged daily.  Khan described the decision as "one of the toughest decisions" he's taken as mayor, but insisted millions from the bustling city will benefit from the cleaner air.  The Ultra Low Emission Zone, or ULEZ for short, was introduced in 2019 as a means to ensure that vehicles meet emission standards set for the city, lest their drivers pay a daily surcharge.  Though pollution levels have decreased since the introduction of ULEZ, Khan claims that there is still "far too much toxic air pollution permanently damaging the health of young Londoners and leading to thousands of early deaths every year."

The Editor says...
Is the air in London really that bad, or is this just a way to skim money from nearly everybody?  This decree might be about control, or money, or electric cars, but I doubt if it's really about air quality.

Ohio Cops Decide First Amendment Doesn't Exist, Arrest Newspaper Editor For Committing Journalism.  Ohio cops just can't seem to get their head around First Amendment protections.  A case hopefully en route to a Supreme Court review involves Parma, Ohio cops who decided it was completely legal to arrest a town resident for creating a clearly satirical Facebook page that suggested the Parma PD was offering free abortions in a roaming van and promoting a "pedophile reform" event.  In another case, a cop temporarily managed to obtain an injunction forbidding people from publishing his name while he sued several Cincinnati residents for libel for suggesting he might be a racist.  That cop's name is Ryan Olthaus and he has a long history of use of force complaints.  And, in yet another case, a woman was arrested by Ohio cops for repeating a false rumor that a gun had been found at a school.  She did not originate the rumor.  She just repeated it.  And for that, she was sentenced to 180 days in jail and stripped of access to social media sites for a year.

Apple Turned Off Protest Communication Tool Right Before Anti-Lockdown Uprising in China.  As it mulls kicking Elon Musk's Twitter off the app store, it has now been revealed that Apple restricted the use of AirDrop in China, a move that harmed the organizational efforts of demonstrators protesting against the CCP's lockdowns.  Over the past week, multiple major cities across China have seen massive protests against lockdowns, with the normally compliant Chinese exploding into rage in response to their government's 'zero COVID' policy.  Much of the unrest blew up in response to an incident in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi, where at least 10 people, some say up to 40, were killed during an apartment fire because lockdown rules stopped residents from fleeing the burning building.  Most of the city's residents have been prevented from leaving their homes for over 100 days as a result of the draconian rules, which are still in place nearly three years after the pandemic began.  With Beijing now trying to contain what some are calling the most serious mass uprising since Tiananmen Square, Apple is apparently helping them to crush dissent.

The Bureaucracy's Democrat Majority Made America a One-Party Government.  When former President Trump, Gov. DeSantis, and Senator Ted Cruz, among others, endorsed rolling back the power of bureaucrats and their administrative state, Democrats panicked.  Senator Dianne Feinstein and Hillary's former running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, introduced a countermeasure which they called, "Preventing a Patronage System Act" according to Kaine, to "protect the merit-based hiring system for our federal workforce".  Media editorialists claimed that making it easier to get rid of federal employees would bring back patronage or the spoils system.  The problem is that patronage never left.  We have spent generations living under a permanent patronage system.  The spoils system, as bad as it was, kept one party from permanently packing its supporters into the government.  Removing it just meant that the Democrats have permanently packed the federal bureaucracy.  That's how America became a one-party government at the federal level in Washington D.C.  Politicians of both parties come and go, but it's the Democrat bureaucrats who call the shots.

Language warning!
Four nefariously managed events meant to harm us.  [#2] Government's war on its own citizens.  I'd date this for the sake of simplicity to the DOJ's and FBI's campaign to defenestrate Donald Trump starting in 2016 for the crime of winning an election.  What began as the Russia collusion prank morphed into RussiaGate, another [self-protection] extravaganza in which public officialdom gave itself blanket permission to lie about everything it was doing.  The likes of James Comey, Andrew McCabe and Barack Obama's girl squad in the White House — to name just a few of many participants — also managed to hook in the mainstream news media under the supposition that they were the good guys fighting a disgusting, [...] supervillain, which disposed the news media to go along with all the FBI and DOJ lies, and also stranded the media in an endless loop of [self-protection] they are still locked into.  Bottom line:  all involved came to recognize that there was no accountability for their wicked deeds and lying about them, and that became an all-purpose license for everyone in public life to lie about everything and anything ever after — including Dr. Fauci and his colleagues, who watched RussiaGate roll out for four years before the debut of Covid-19.  This license to act wrongfully and lie about it extends, by the way, to the epic election mischief carried out programmatically by the Democratic Party's Lawfare arm in 2020 and 2022, and the installation of a fake president.

From a Time When Communism Was Taught Right.  We have seen social media platforms ban freedom of speech.  We have seen certain journalists excluded from press conferences in Arizona and then watched the journalists be herded off government property by deputy sheriffs.  Later, these same journalists were tracked by flying drones like what we have seen the Chinese Communist Party employ against its COVID-19 dissidents.  The American news media frequently slant or omit the true news of the day.  The American viewer has been fed a steady diet of propaganda.  We have seen false stories about "Russia, Russia, Russia"; the "Big Lie"; and "J6."  Peaceful American citizens, including many veterans who fought to protect our rights, are being held in the District of Columbia jail in terrible conditions and without being formally charged.  Over two years have passed, and many still have not had a speedy trial.

Turns out Joe Biden was the shadowy hand behind Justin Trudeau's tyrannical acts against Canadian truckers.  When Justin Trudeau shut down Canada's spectacular 3,000-strong convoy of "freedom" truckers opposed to Canada's COVID vaccine mandates, most were appalled at the tyrannical steps taken to stop it.  After all, the country was Canada, not Cuba.  Son-of-Castro invoked Canada's "Emergencies Act," on "Freedom Convoy 2022," on February 14, freezing trucker bank accounts, imprisoning their leaders, shutting down a GoFundMe account for truckers, banning travel to the protests, which had attracted 15,000 people, hauling off and termininating parental rights of truckers to their own children, and expropriating their trucks.  All that, over a peaceful trucker protest over a vaccine mandate.  We know it was outrageous.  We know it was something Castro would do.  But now as Trudeau is called to Canada's parliament to testify about what [...] he thought it was doing, word has gotten out about who was really calling the shots on this lunacy.

Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland have shown themselves to be petty dictators.  Up until the Liberal politicians showed up, the Emergencies Act (EA) hearings were going quite well.  I know, you are shocked to hear that when politicians show up things go awry.  In the first few weeks, it was mainly participants of the Freedom Convoy and law enforcement officials who took the stand.  As was expected, the participants were an earnest, albeit motley crew of normal Canucks who simply attested to their participation in the event based on the principles of personal liberty.  For their part, the law enforcement officials were easy enough to listen to.  Canadian police are well trained in keeping their cool, and they answered the questions they were asked with short replies, keeping things to a simple "yes" or "no" for the most part.  But, as the Liberal Party hacks have entered the arena, we have now witnessed the insane mental gymnastics that seemingly constitute the "logic" that emanates from the top-brass.  It has been revealing, however, especially after watching Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and the prime minister himself, Justin Trudeau.

Hard Truths and Radical Possibilities.  As a treatise on constitutional government, The Federalist is and will always be a classic work of political science, with many enduring insights.  But in terms of supplying a guide to how our federal government works, The Federalist has become the owner's manual to a car that no longer runs, or was stolen long ago.  What Publius describes about the functions of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches — as well as the countervailing powers of the states — has almost no connection with current reality.  Congress doesn't write, the executive does not enforce, and the judiciary does not interpret the laws.  Power and wealth have become massively centralized in Washington, D.C. Federalism, judicial review, executive authority, the legislative process, appropriations — none of this remains operational in a way James Madison would recognize.  And now, the country's most powerful corporations are in active collusion with the federal security apparatus to enforce the regime's authority.  That's practically the definition of fascism.

Are You Freer than You Were Two Years Ago?  U.S. federal spending (excluding Social Security and Post Office expense) in 1901 was $588 million; it remained at approximately this level until 1917 and especially 1919, when the overhang of wartime spending drove it to $5.13 billion.  Spending cooled under the Republican administrations of Harding and Coolidge but exploded under FDR to a height of $44 billion in 1945.  One might expect that wartime number to decline, but by 1970, it was $159 billion.  It first reached one trillion in 1995 and is $6.27 trillion in 2022.  As these figure show, federal government spending has grown by a factor of nearly 11,000 over the past 120 years, and it continues growing exponentially.  There is only one possible outcome:  government consumption of nearly all income and control of nearly all economic and personal activity.  That is the definition of what Jefferson called "despotism" and what, in our time, is called totalitarianism.  Despotism can be reversed only by a concerted effort to cut government spending substantially at the federal and state levels, but this seems unlikely.

Are You Freer than You Were Two Years Ago?  Make no mistake:  it is despotism that we face in Biden's proposal to double the size of the IRS; in the political weaponization of the FBI, CIA, and DOJ; in the amassing of information by technology giants; in the corporate surrender to woke ideologies; in the takeover of schools by progressive activists; in the proliferation of "hate speech" laws; in the self-censorship that so many Americans practice to appease political correctness; and in the influence of media on our thinking.  We live in an age of fear and conformity, and those who are weak have become enslaved and have willingly relinquished their freedom to the powerful forces of government, media, "expert" opinion, and corporate venality.  The practical effects of this despotism can be seen everywhere.  Rising taxes are used to transfer more and more of an individual's earnings to government, where it is used with little accountability to enrich those who support ever greater government spending and who make campaign donations to ensure this happens.

Fraudulent, Illegal, Unconstitutional, Unconscionable, And False: A Short Tour Of Government In Action.  All governments are bad — always necessary, often useful, occasionally better than most, rarely genuinely helpful to all, but still bad.  From Athens to Zaire, from commune to kingdom, from democracy to dictatorship, when people come together to form a society there will always be those who take advantage, who prey, who scheme, who profit from their position.  Every government ever has violated its own laws, flouted its own rules, changed long-standing practices for immediate gain, side-stepped its foundational concepts and strictures, dismissed societal codes of conduct, and ignored the basic ethical standards of humanity.  Here in the United States — which actually has one of the best governmental systems and surely the best foundational governmental theory — we are not immune to these issues.

Free America: We're already dealing with a fascist regime.  Republicans were talking about inflation, which is important, and the border, which is also important.  But where were the Republicans calling attention to the fact that this is a fascist administration that's against our fundamental freedoms?  This is an administration that is trying to foreclose on legitimate political discourse.  This is an administration that is consciously aping the institution of authoritarian totalitarian regimes in recent historical memory.  Yet no one even mentioned it.  Nonetheless, it's very clear.  They have sicced the FBI on parents protesting at school board meetings.  They keep saying white supremacists are the biggest terror threat that the nation faces, despite the fact that we see very few incidents of white supremacist terror.  What they mean is that MAGA Republicans are white supremacists, and they are going to take away the franchise from those white supremacists and destroy them utterly.  The plan may not work.  One of the reasons why we have had mass migration into the United States was because the Democrats assumed that Hispanics would be completely on board with them, and would give them a reliable voting majority for the foreseeable future.  That has all fallen apart.  And it will continue to fall apart.

Ctrl+Alt+Delete the Totalitarian State.  There are three government narratives pushed today that are not real:  (1) fraud-free elections, (2) a looming climate apocalypse, and (3) a COVID health emergency requiring total government control.  If you see through only one, then you're not looking hard enough.  Or as Bill Engvall might say, "If you now believe COVID is mostly a hoax but are still terrified of global warming, here's your sign."  Conversely, if you do see through them, you're likely being censored for expressing those points of view.  Here's our impasse: when governments claim to have a monopoly on truth, then citizens are expected to accept preposterous fantasies, no matter how much opposing evidence they might see.  The narrative is absolute.  Dissent is forbidden.  Total obedience is the objective.  Last century, free Westerners understood these features as telltale signs of totalitarianism.  Today, much less free Westerners have been taught to embrace — without scrutiny or wisdom — the government's fairy tales as part of our required, if not sacred, deference to the bureaucratic State's cult of expertise.

Is Your Body the Legal Property of Big Pharma?  [Video clip]  In the video above, Glenn Beck interviews investigative journalist Whitney Webb about her book, "One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein," Parts 1 and 2.  These books provide the necessary framework to understand not just Jeffrey Epstein's geopolitical role and function, but also, more broadly, the deep connections between the U.S. intelligence community and organized crime.  The political corruption we see today grew out of this unholy alliance, which has led to blackmail and bribery being two key strategies by which the wealthy self-described "elites" maintain power and influence from behind the scenes. [...] Epstein's pedophilia and sexual blackmail enterprise was a central cog in this network of corruption for decades.  He was also involved in many other questionable and/or criminal enterprises, including financial crimes, but he wasn't necessarily at the top level in any of them.  Webb describes him more as a middle-management-type of character, carrying out orders from higher-ups, including U.S. intelligence.  Overall, these "higher-ups" are people who favor globalism and global governance, and who don't want the United States to have a monopoly on power.  This is part of why the power of the U.S. is now being dismantled before our eyes, but the undermining and infiltration have been going on for decades.

It's Time to Speak the Truth About Ukraine.  Joe Biden, the military-industrial-congressional complex, State Department neocons, the War Party comprised of all Democrats and many corporate Republicans, and Western globalist elites have the United States and NATO in a Ukrainian proxy war against Russia.  The warmongers are obsessed with destroying Russia.  To achieve it, they are determined to fight to the last Ukrainian.  In eight months, Congress has wasted $69 billion of American taxpayer money to fund their proxy war.  That's about $8 billion more than Russia's entire annual military budget.  And to the delight of the American arms industry, there is no end in sight.  Biden is soon expected to request another $50 billion.  Meanwhile, Biden and Congress have betrayed the American people — doing next to nothing to solve the crises of inflation, self-inflicted shortages of fuel and food, an invasion of five-and-a-half million illegal aliens, out-of-control violent crime, and a fentanyl epidemic imported from China and Mexico that is killing 100,000 Americans every year.

Key Takeaways from the FBI Whistleblowers Report.  On November 4, 2022, the Republican staff of the House Judiciary Committee published a report based primarily on whistleblower testimony, describing how the FBI and the Justice Department have become politically weaponized against conservatives. [...] I think we can draw several obvious conclusions from the report.
  [#1]   The FBI and the Justice Department have become hopelessly politically corrupted against conservatives.  The corruption is particularly dangerous because the FBI and the Justice Department have such enormous power.  They can destroy just about anyone they target because they essentially have unlimited resources.  They almost destroyed President Trump and General Flynn.  Think what happens when they come after someone with far fewer resources to fight back.
  [#2]   The scope of the corruption is so great and has lasted for such a long time that Christopher Wray and Merrick Garland had to know about it.  If they knew about it and did nothing to stop it, then they approved it.
  [#3]   The FBI simply cannot be trusted, and anyone who is being questioned by them must use extreme caution.  As the prominent attorney Harmeet Dhillon has recommended, "never speak to the FBI without your attorney present, and never speak to the FBI without making an audio or video recording of the entire conversation."

Humpty Dumpty's government of no consent.  You may say we still have the U.S. Constitution and the consent of the governed through popular elections.  Perhaps we do on the formal surface of things.  Perhaps we do on parchment and paper.  Yet, below the surface and between the lines, America's Humpty Dumpty elite sit on high and make the U.S. Constitution and the "consent of the governed" mean just what they choose it to mean — neither more nor less.  I know I personally have never given my consent for most of what our supposed democracy does every day.  I have never consented to most U.S. government programs (programs often conceived decades before my own conception), yet the government persists in charging me taxes for their administration.  Even when the government doesn't break my bank directly through taxation, it takes out debts in my name and sees fit to counterfeit more and more currency by means of its monopoly on the production of money.

Biden Says He's 'Making Sure' Trump Will Not Become President Again.  Old Joe Biden, the ostensible president of the United States, on Wednesday held one of his Potemkin press conferences before the gathering of sycophants and propagandists known as the White House press corps.  When a reporter said that Trump's movement was "still very strong," Biden laughed derisively and said, "Oh yeah?"  He added, "Well, we just have to demonstrate that he will not take power by — if we — if he does run.  I'm making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next President again."  How can he make sure of that?  He didn't say, and of course the sycophants didn't ask.

Prepare for even more abuses of power.  Joe Biden has been a serial power abuser.  He has sent the FBI against his political opponents.  He has, in the student loan forgiveness program, implemented a policy he acknowledges is unconstitutional, and he has used his power as head of the administrative state to threaten his political opponents.  In his post-election news conference he explicitly put a target on the back of one of his political enemies:  Elon Musk.  When asked about whether Musk is a national security threat — an absurdity if there ever was one — Biden laughed and said it would be worth looking at.  "There's a lot of ways."  [Tweet]

The Democrats Told Us Who They Were When They Locked Us Down.  The Democrats and their media accomplices keep telling us the Republicans are the fascists and autocrats hungry for power.  But just the opposite is true.  The Democrats themselves made it clear during the pandemic that they are the party of authoritarianism.  In the spring of 2020, this country went into a lockdown.  As Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute has noted, government officials canceled public worship services, segregated the large cities, abolished in-person education, foisted masks on all the kids, destroyed millions of businesses, and censored speech "so that we could barely discover facts."  They shut down concerts, imposed limits on house parties, scrapped weddings and funerals, locked the elderly into their homes and blocked visitation, ended dentistry, and imposed travel restrictions across state borders, says Tucker.  Some officials, however, saw that the rules were oppressive and restored liberty in their states.  None of them are Democrats.

House Republicans release a scathing report alleging politicization of the DOJ and the FBI.  On Friday [11/4/2022], the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released 1050 page report detailing the claims made by myriad whistleblowers at the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the abuse of power and politicization of the nation's foremost law enforcement authority.  They called it "the first comprehensive accounting of the FBI's problems to date, which undermine the FBI's fundamental law-enforcement mission."  The following are the key details of the report.  The report states that Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray are willing participants in the Biden Administration's weaponization and politicization of law enforcement[.]  The whistleblowers describe the FBI's D.C. leadership as "rotted at its core," with a "systemic culture of unaccountability," and full of "rampant corruption, manipulation, and abuse" and that "the problem lies not with the majority of front-line agents who serve our country, but with the FBI's politicized bureaucracy."

Democrats Declared War on Democracy Through COVID Tyranny.  Some of us were sounding the alarms on COVID tyranny when it was first starting.  Lockdown policies were never about saving lives but a test to see how many liberties and rights the government could take away without much pushback by the population.  Fear is the main path tyrants take in trying to strip freedom from their citizens.  Scare citizens enough and they will enslave themselves to whatever dictates the dear savior will come up with.  This is replaying itself as we approach the November 8 election.  Democrats destroyed entire families through their COVID lockdown policies which eliminated businesses, put stress on homes, and harmed the intellectual development of children.  Those are years that will be hard to recover, if at all.  COVID tyrants are hoping Americans forget their debacle in handling the pandemic and the tyranny that so many experienced because of it.  Families were unable to visit loved ones.  Churches were shut down, some never to reopen.  Businesses, once staples and pillars of the community, suddenly vanished and are now vacant and rotting with overgrown weeds and mold.

Using Emergency Alert System to Remind People to Vote is a Bad Idea.  President Joe Biden and actor Jason Bateman debated the best way to encourage Americans to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.  On the Wednesday edition of the SmartLess podcast, Biden sat down with hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett to discuss his career and current state of the country. [...] The actor would clarify that the alert would not advocate for either party but serve as a helpful reminder ahead of Election Day.  "Could I ask you to commit to consider over the next few days using your unique power as president to utilize the emergency alert system?" Bateman asked.

Desperate Netflix Star Urges Biden to Activate Emergency Alert System to Encourage People to Vote Democrat.  [Scroll down] First, Republican voters aren't a monolithic group of mindless people who universally believe the 2020 presidential election was "rigged" or "stolen."  Moreover, I suspect a sizeable percentage of objective Republicans don't believe substantive proof has been presented to support the claim, but feel pressured to say they do, fearing retribution from "you know who" and his unchangeable loyalists.  Second, Bateman's "This is what they're saying that their plan is" is a nonsensical [pack of lies].  Bateman did acknowledge the purpose of the Emergency Alert System, but then played the Democrats' go-to "existential threat" card:  ["]It's usually for the weather or killers or kidnapping, whatever.  But I don't think it's an exaggeration to categorize this as, as a light crisis, an existential threat.["]  He then argued that a simple 20-second card flashing on the screen would be enough to encourage voters to "get out and let their voices be heard" (vote Democrat and save the Republic).

The Editor says...
This sounds like a "trial balloon."  The use of the Emergency Alert System for purely political purposes is a revolting misuse of a system that is in place to warn the general public about impending danger — usually tornado warnings.  (EAS is the latest version of CONELRAD, which was a system that was set up in 1951 to warn of incoming enemy invasions or missiles.)  EAS messages can't be muted or ignored on your TV or your cell phone.  (When I'm President, all that will change!)  If a politician had suggested this idea, it would have been politically costly to him and his party.  But if a celebrity brings it up, and for whatever reason there isn't widespread outrage, then the politicians can pick up the ball and run with it.  To anyone with common sense, the election of Republicans — the ones who can overcome Democrat election fraud — is not an emergency.  The poorly-educated leftists act like this whole country is a big toy that the President can play with in any way he chooses.

How the government hid the truth behind Hunter Biden's laptop.  The more we find out about the collusion that has been going on among the Biden administration, the security agencies and Big Tech, the more alarming it is — and the more unrepentant they are.  The latest bombshell from the Intercept, based on communications unveiled in the federal lawsuit Missouri v.  Biden, shows that the Department of Homeland Security has been having monthly meetings with Facebook and Twitter to pressure them to censor social media posts about topics such as the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of COVID vaccines, racial justice and US support for the war in Ukraine — in other words, anything that could be detrimental to public support for the Biden administration.  We already know that the FBI was involved in efforts to censor and bury information that might have harmed Joe Biden's candidacy back in 2020, including The Post's exclusive about Hunter Biden's laptop in October 2020. That amounted to election interference, which prevented the American people from doing the necessary due diligence on one of the two candidates for president.  So successful was the strategy that the Biden administration appears to have expanded it.

RCMP top cop considered using military troops disguised as Mounties at Freedom Convoy.  An ongoing inquiry into the merit of the Trudeau government invoking the Emergencies Act has now shown just how far the Trudeau government and certain allied elements are willing to go.  Despite the Canadian government's insistence that the military would not be deployed during the Freedom Convoy protests, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Commissioner Thomas Carrique and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Commissioner Brenda Lucki discussed Lucki's clandestine plan to have military troops disguised as Mounties — an underhanded method to manage a protest that was peaceful to begin with.  Trudeau was so mortified by the protests and desperate to shut them down that he lied about police requesting that he invoke the Emergency Measures Act.

True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht, former board member Arrested for not outing informant.  True the Vote leaders Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were taken into custody by US Marshalls on Monday for refusing to identify a confidential informant to a judge.  Federal Judge Kenneth Hoyt found both of them in contempt of court after they declined to out the informant, according to independent journalist Ivory Hecker. [...] The judge ordered that Engelbrecht and Phillips be held in custody for at least 24 hours or until they give up the informant, according to The Post Millennial.

Catherine Englebrecht and Gregg Phillips [have been] Put in Jail for Refusing to Outline Sources Who Revealed Konnech U.S. Election Data Transfer to China.  True the Vote founder Catherine Englebrecht and election data security analyst, Gregg Phillips, have been held in contempt of court and placed in jail for failing to outline the participants in a 2020 hotel discussion that revealed the Konnech election data compromise that was transmitted to Chinese networks.  On October 4th, the CEO of Konnech — a company specializing in proprietary PollChief software to manage election workers — was arrested.  Konnech Corporation Chief Executive Officer Eugene Yu was arrested for exploiting access to U.S. election data, including election worker information, and transferring the files to China.  The information that led to Yu's arrest was the information given to the FBI and first revealed to Englebrecht and Phillips.  However, the Konnech corporation filed a civil lawsuit against Englebrecht and Phillips claiming defamation.  A Texas federal judge allowed the civil lawsuit to continue despite the arrest of Eugene Yu.

The City of Charlottesville's new online speech restrictions for employees is likely unconstitutional.  The City of Charlottesville passed a new policy for city workers that prohibits them from commenting, offline and online, about a wide range of topics.  The policy is a potential violation of employees' First Amendment free speech rights.  The policy was passed in response to how the city handled Allen Groat, an analyst for the fire and police department, for his involvement in the January 6 2021 riot at the US Capitol.  Groat tweeted that he would engage in a "show of force," and posted a photo of himself and former head of the Proud Boys.  [Tweet]  Groat was investigated but was not criminally charged.  Mayor Lloyd Snook said that Groat was not going to be fired because he had not been criminally charged.

DOJ's election plan raises threat of 'selective enforcement' against red states, watchdog warns.  The Justice Department this week outlined the steps it will take on Election Day to ensure a fair election process, but a government watchdog is warning that the plan leaves out critical details that open the door to selective enforcement against red states.  The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) said the lack of detail in the DOJ announcement likely means "selective transparency and selective enforcement, something we've come to expect from the Biden administration's two-tiered approach to justice."  The Justice Department released a summary of its "comprehensive" Election Day plan Wednesday and said it is aimed at ensuring that "all qualified voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots and have their votes counted free of discrimination, intimidation or fraud in the election process.

North America Goes South: The Plan To Dismantle USA.  People are starting to realize that the collapse of the American border is not an accident.  It can't be.  When the vice president of the United States says the border is "secure" at the same time that illegal border crossings have surged to more than a million a year, then one of two things must be true. [...] Unfortunately, there was no way to determine what the Biden administration was up to — until now.  Two weeks ago, we learned that Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken is actively engaged in a campaign to break down all barriers between the United States and Mexico.  In other words, the huge influx of Mexicans and other foreigners across the U.S. border is just the first stage in a globalist effort to blur the lines between not just the United States and Mexico, but also Canada.

No longer a 'two-tiered' system, there is no justice in America.  Now it is easy to see why people have come to believe that the once-vaunted justice system in the US became two-tiered; one for favored elites and one for those the elites loathe.  There are countless examples of this:  peaceful pro-life demonstrators have been raided and charged with serious crimes that they did not commit, while those who fire-bomb pregnancy centers are not even investigated, let alone charged.  Among the hundreds of violent protesters who burned their own cities down in the wake of the George Floyd debacle, few were charged with the crimes they committed and most of those that were had the charges dropped. [...] Now we must face the fact that there is actually no justice to be had in America in 2022.  Trump Derangement Syndrome has led inexorably to what we now see occurring daily in our once great nation:  The proven guilty go free and the innocent have their homes raided by a pack of armed FBI agents who seem to delight in traumatizing law-abiding citizens.

The Civilization That Knew Too Much.  [Scroll down] A generation ago, public perception of the interior of institutions was low-resolution, almost pixellated.  The average person could not know the details of what went on inside religious, law-enforcement, educational, corporate, or scientific organizations, he simply saw them through the lens of reputation.  Reputation can be thought of as a kind of data compression process that reduces a vast and complex reality into what in some cases is a single number.  People relying on indexes like the US News ranking of the Top Ten universities often need know nothing about an organization other than that it is Number X in a particular category.  But it was enough for many.  In that old world, people thought law enforcement mostly upright, churches mostly holy, educators largely trustworthy, journalists largely truthful and Washington occasionally honest, not because they knew the details, but because they accepted the Number.

Former FBI Official Will Testify About White House Pressure to Inflate Domestic Extremism Numbers.  Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee announced on Thursday that they would be calling a former top FBI official to testify before Congress to address claims that the Biden administration pressured agents to label cases as domestic extremism or a white supremacist threat even if they did not meet that criteria in order to match Joe Biden's rhetoric.  Last month, current and former FBI agents came forward claiming the Biden administration has been deliberately exaggerating the danger posed by white supremacists.  According to the whistleblowers, high-ranking FBI officials were pressuring field agents to fabricate domestic terrorism cases and label people as white supremacists in order to "meet internal metrics."  "The demand for white supremacy" coming from FBI brass "vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy," one agent told the Washington Times. "We have more people assigned to investigate white supremacists than we can actually find."

Biden Pressured Democrat Border Mayor Not to Declare Emergency over Illegal Immigration.  President Joe Biden's administration reportedly pressured El Paso, Texas, Mayor Oscar Leeser (D) not to declare a state of emergency over illegal immigration, even as thousands arrive in the small city every few days.  According to an exclusive report from the New York Post, El Paso officials privately and publicly say the Biden administration urged Leeser to hold off on calling a state of emergency over the issue of illegal immigration, which has hit historic levels this year.

DOJ Is Hiding How It's Complying with Biden's Voter Registration Drive, Rep. Norman Says.  Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) is demanding answers from the Department of Justice (DOJ) after the agency refused to release all documents regarding how it intended to implement a 2021 executive order on expanding voter access.  Republicans have opposed this order as an unlawful exercise of federal power over elections.  In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order (EO 14019) directing the head of every federal agency, including the DOJ, to come up with a strategic plan on how to "promote voter registration and voter participation."  Their plans should be submitted to Susan Rice, the president's domestic policy adviser.  The executive order also mandates that these agencies work with "approved" third-party organizations to provide voter registration services on federal agency premises.  Since then, Republican lawmakers have questioned whether the administration has the constitutional and statutory authority to enact such an order.

FBI Whistleblower: Bureau Taking Steps to Ensure that 'Process is the Punishment'.  According to Just The News, FBI Special Agent Steve Friend, who is based out of Florida, said that his security clearance was recently suspended as a result of his whistleblowing efforts, thus leaving him without any pay.  In his formal whistleblower complaint filed to Congress, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (DOJ), Friend claims that the FBI is systematically violating the 6th and 8th Amendment rights of all the prisoners who have been arrested for peacefully protesting at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021.  He also accused the bureau of deliberately inflating the number of alleged acts of "domestic extremism" in the country, in order to make right-wing terrorism seem like a greater threat than it actually is.

Christopher Wray certainly seems to be enjoying the FBI's private jet.  FBI Director Christopher Wray certainly gets around. [...] But then again, he's in charge of the nation's largest federal law enforcement agency, so I'm sure he's got a lot on his plate.  The question surrounding his activities this week, however, has less to do with how often he travels than it does with how he travels.  It seems that Wray has been making very liberal use of the FBI's private jet when he needs to get away from the Beltway.  On at least one occasion he used it to head to his family's vacation home in the Adirondack Mountains.  And another series of trips to the Atlanta area is also under scrutiny.  The problem is that Congress never authorized that jet for personal use.  It's only supposed to be used for counterterrorism purposes.

Eric Swalwell's Spending Report for First Nine Months of Year Is Raising a Lot of Questions.  Rob Pyers is the Research Director for California Target Book, a group that provides information on congressional and state legislative election campaigns in California.  Pyers posted some intriguing information about Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) on Twitter that our friends over at Twitchy picked up.  [Tweets]  "Dem Eric Swalwell, who has submitted the 2nd-highest number of 'I am unable to physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing public health emergency' proxy letters, spent $250K+ on travel & car service in the 1st 9 months of the year," Pyers said.  Let me explain to those who may not know what the "proxy letters" are.  During the pandemic, the House started offering its members the opportunity to have other members vote for them because of the "ongoing public health emergency."  That might have been understandable when people were freaked out initially in the early days of the pandemic, although I don't think they ever should have done it.  But it's been more than two years now, kids.  Joe Biden has declared the pandemic over.  Why is this still on?  It's an excuse for people not to show up to do their job and skip out if they have other things to do.

Biden Regime Calls for North American Union.  Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known by his initials AMLO, recently announced that US Secretary of State Tony Blinken proposed opening all borders between the US, Mexico, and Canada.  President Obrador: "I think that Mr. Blinken spoke about consolidating the region of North America.  And we agree on that."  The plan would open up our borders permanently to the drug cartels running Mexico today.  It is the latest insanity proposed by the Biden regime to permanently destroy the United States.

Absolutely Shameful: Covid Dictators Still Unwilling To Let Go Of Power In Australia.  More than two years of lockdown hell — especially in Melbourne — has taken its toll.  Relationship breakdowns, suicides, drug and alcohol abuse, business collapse, and so on have been the result.  Nobody wants to go through all that again: we are totally fed up with the Big State doing its best to emulate Big Brother.  Thankfully it is more or less over — or so it seems.  But just as a rapacious carnivore wants ever more after having acquired a taste for blood, so too our state leaders have loved the power and control they so easily were able to obtain over the past few years.  They do not want to give it up.  Indeed, they want more!

Arizona AG asks FBI, IRS to investigate election integrity watchdog True the Vote.  Republican Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has asked the IRS and FBI to review the financials of the conservative nonprofit group True The Vote for allegedly raising money on false statements about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.  In a letter obtained Friday by Fox News Digital, Chief Special Agent Reggie Grigsby of the Special Investigations Section for Brnovich's office accused True The Vote (TTV) of repeatedly failing to provide promised information about alleged ballot stuffing and voter fraud to his office while publicly asserting they did so in order to raise funds.

The Democrat Party Is Crumbling.  The Democrats thought they could steal our freedoms away under the guise of COVID-19.  Actually, they did steal them.  Embarrassingly, many Americans were only too happy to lock down, wear the useless Fauci face diaper, and stand on science-free stickers at the grocery store.  You know, to save grandma.  Remember, communism always comes disguised as virtue.  Many of us caught on quickly and recognized that the Democrats were using the Hong Kong Fluey lockdown flapdoodle as a dress rehearsal for communism — and worse.

The federal war on pro-life activists.  The federal government is at war with pro-life activists.  By that I don't mean that Democrat politicians are doing everything they can to extend the so-called "right" to abortion until birth.  That is politics, and for better or worse in the United States political decisions about when life begins and constitutional protections for human beings is afforded to a fetus belong to the states. [...] The federal government is currently exercising powers that legitimately should belong to states, and doing so for the explicit political purpose of intimidating and punishing people for exercising their rights to freely assemble and peacefully protest in favor of saving lives.

How Biden and IRS Unlawfully Expanded Obamacare.  President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that his administration had expanded Obamacare.  Congress didn't legislate the expansion.  The Internal Revenue Service did.  The IRS scrapped an Obama administration regulation that faithfully implemented the Obamacare statute, officially called the Affordable Care Act, which became law in 2010 on a party-line vote.  At issue is whether dependents of a worker with an offer of employer-sponsored coverage can shun that coverage and claim premium tax subsidies for Obamacare policies instead.  The statute and the Obama administration regulation were clear on this point.  Such dependents qualify for tax-subsidized policies only if the cost of self-only employer-sponsored coverage exceeds 9.5% of the worker's household income.  If not, neither the worker nor her dependents could receive Obamacare premium subsidies.

Biden renews COVID "emergency" for another 90 days.  Never let a crisis go to waste, Rahm Emanuel once advised.  Add to that this new axiom:  Never let your emergency powers expire.  As incompetent as Joe Biden might otherwise be, he's proven adept at following both. [...] In his 60 Minutes interview with Scott Pelley less than four weeks ago, Biden walked around the Detroit auto show without a mask, and remarked about how normal it seemed, and how "everybody seems to be in pretty good shape":  [Tweet]  That was just three weeks ago.  What makes this an "emergency" now?  Even with the CDC still reporting correlative data rather than causative, ER visits with COVID diagnoses are near a year-long low and dropping.  Reported cases are bottoming out as well, as are correlated deaths (still no breakout for causation), as are correlated hospital admissions.  Even wastewater surveillance — which would take place regardless of emergency status — shows a decline in prevalence despite the addition of many new sites in the mix.  So why is the pandemic over but not the emergency?  For one thing, Biden still wants emergency cash from Congress.

WSJ: 2,600+ Federal Officials Trade Stock in Companies Their Agencies Oversee — Especially Big Tech.  More than 2,600 federal officials either own or have traded stock in companies their agencies oversee, according to a damning report by the Wall Street Journal.  The report also found that officials frequently traded stock in companies shortly before their agencies announced enforcement actions that affected the price of those companies.  At the Department of Defense for example, some officials held stock in Chinese companies that the U.S. was considering blacklisting.

Wife Supremacy.  Monica P. Medina is the new "Special Envoy for Biodiversity and Water Resources," the State Department recently announced, without noting that Medina is also the wife of Ron Klain, chief of staff to Joe Biden.  The Washington Post story, headlined, "In a first, U.S. appoints a diplomat for plants and animals," also failed to note the Klain connection.  This sort of nepotism, coupled with media malpractice, has surrounded Joe Biden for a long time. "Ambassador Cathy Russell has been a trusted and indispensable advisor to Jill and me for nearly 30 years," Biden announced last December, as the UN chose Russell to be executive director of UNICEF.  As Biden proclaimed, Russell had served as "Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel.  She sat on the Advisory Board of the Biden-Harris Transition Team and served as Vice Chair of the Biden-Harris Campaign."

November Surprise?  Case-in-point: the John Durham Special Counsel Investigation on the origin of the RussiaGate fraud.  It now apparently terminates in the prosecution of the tiniest minnow (Igor Danchenko) in that vast inland sea of corruption.  Some of the figures who carried out the perfidious seditions of RussiaGate are still employed in the Department of Justice and the FBI, and to this day are active in the continued cover-up of the crimes committed to overthrow President Trump, notably: Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and others.  Mr. Durham is supposedly among the highest officers of the federal courts charged with enforcing a very particular region of criminality.  His staff must be marinated in evidence of the RussiaGate misdeeds — reams of which have been independently documented in the public record, ranging from (just for example) the nefarious activities of figures like Nellie Ohr, wife of DOJ higher-up Bruce Ohr, working as go-between with Christopher Steele and the FBI, to the spectacular failures of Judge James Boasberg and his FISA court, not to mention the well-known machinations of Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Dana Boente, James Baker, Andrew Weissmann, Jeannie Rhee, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Robert Mueller, and other top officials who worked sedulously against the public interest.  All these remain apparently off-the-hook for their sketchy activities.

A massive indictment of the Democrat party.  The U.S. Constitution, by limiting federal power, is designed to protect the individual citizen from external coercion. [...] By supporting big government at the expense of the individual, Democrats threaten to transform America into a totalitarian nightmare.  President Biden has declared that the "most lethal elements" in our society are political conservatives.  In true Stalinist fashion, the DoJ, the FBI, and the media are being weaponized to go after Biden's political opponents.  Armed FBI agents raided the homes of Roger Stone, James O'Keefe, Paul Manafort, and dozens of other Trump-supporters, to say nothing of the raid on Mar-a-Lago.  "The FBI is now an organization solely focused on destroying the domestic enemies of the Democratic Party," said radio host Jesse Kelly.  The implication is that if you distrust Biden's government, you are considered a terrorist and must be hunted down.  Democrats will not hesitate to deprive you of your basic rights if it suits their purpose.  In their war on free speech, Democrats have attempted to silence anyone who denies global warming, criticizes Islamic terrorism, advocates a stronger military, or questions the validity of the 2020 election.

National Archives Scraps 'Transparency' Mission When It Comes to Trump Documents.  The Biden administration has turned what should be the most transparent of government agencies, the National Archives and Records Administration, into one of the least transparent agencies — rivaling even the FBI.  Established in 1934, the National Archives has a mission to identify, protect, preserve, and make publicly available all historically valuable records.  But the National Archives has become politicized by the Biden administration and no longer provides transparency in public records.  Jodi Foor, the National Archives' deputy Freedom of Information Act officer, would not answer a FOIA request from The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project for records related to the FBI's raid on former President Donald Trump's Florida home within the statutory timeline.  This inaction forced The Heritage Foundation to sue to get a response to our request.

Outsourced censorship: Feds used private entity to target millions of social posts in 2020.  A consortium of four private groups worked with the departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and State to censor massive numbers of social media posts they considered misinformation during the 2020 election, and its members then got rewarded with millions of federal dollars from the Biden administration afterwards, according to interviews and documents obtained by Just the News.  The Election Integrity Partnership is back in action again for the 2022 midterm elections, raising concerns among civil libertarians that a chilling new form of public-private partnership to evade the First Amendment's prohibition of government censorship may be expanding.  The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika.  It set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland's Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State's Global Engagement Center to file "tickets" requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.

How authorities are invoking crises to exercise unprecedented power.  Days after the 2008 election, Rahm Emanuel famously issued what's known today as Rahm's rule.  "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Emanuel, then chief of staff to President-elect Barack Obama. "And what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."  Emanuel argued the 2008 financial crisis afforded the Obama administration a window to promptly address problems that had previously been deferred indefinitely pending the long-term ripening of political consensus.  Fourteen years later, Emanuel's now-famous phrase on crises has become standard practice in Washington, D.C., as officials in power regularly use what they deem "emergencies" — from viral pandemics to purported threats to democracy — to push controversial measures and restrictions on civil liberties that otherwise might fail due to pushback.  This trend was recently highlighted by President Biden declaring the COVID-19 pandemic over while still maintaining the national emergency declaration on the pandemic as his administration used COVID-19 to justify major executive action.

Liberty Wept.  In Federalist 45, Madison noted that the powers delegated by the Constitution to the federal government were "few and defined." Those powers, he said, pertained mostly to "external objects" like war, peace, and foreign commerce.  Somehow, neither climate change nor transgender bathrooms nor "unlawful acts of hate" — the latest wheeze from the executive branch — made the cut when Madison was enumerating the powers of the federal government.  He did, however, have a lot to say about the powers delegated to the individual states.  Those powers, he said, were "numerous and indefinite," extending to "all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."  Is that still the case?

DC Bar Does Democrats' Dirty Work By Tarring Opponents Right Before Midterms.  In an unprecedented move, the D.C. Bar opened an investigation into a former top Justice Department lawyer for advice he gave former President Donald Trump, with documents indicating a Democrat senator prompted the probe.  The timing of the procedures, and the complicity between elected officials and the bar, suggest a concerted attempt to create an October surprise.  Even more troubling than this election interference, however, is how dangerous the threat of punishing executive-branch attorneys for providing a legal opinion is to the country.  The Democrats' ploy also risks irreparably cementing America's partisan divide in the governance of our great country.

Thanks for nothing, John Durham.  [Scroll down] FBI directors Comey, Mueller, and Wray are all sitting down to a nice dinner about now, not a care in the world.  Even though they tried mightily to take down a sitting, duly elected president.  Proven liars and co-conspirators like Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page are probably smiling at this moment as they review their bank statements.  Vile trolls like the CIA's John Brennan and James Clapper, although furiously promoting every rumor, falsehood, and slander under the sun against Pres.  Trump, are no doubt busy scheduling their next high-paying TV gigs.  Barry and Hillary, undoubtedly the prime movers of those seditious and anti-American plots, are surely relaxing in their luxe mansions at this very moment, contemplating their next lucrative podcast or appearance.  All the Democrat pols, their billionaire donors, Big Tech, and our mendacious left-wing media, haven't a care in the world.  They conspired to remove one of the most effective presidents in my lifetime, and they know they've gotten away with it.

Radical DOJ Lawyer Kristen Clarke Targeted Pro-Life Dad and Other Conservatives.  Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) warned us about Kristen Clarke.  Cruz called the radical lawyer "completely unfit to serve," but serve she does as the Biden Administration's chief of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice (DOJ).  Her department is where equal justice now goes to die.  Clarke considers her calling in Biden's Justice Department one of score-settling for past decisions, holding contemporaries responsible for historical injustices, and chasing ghosts of the past.  She greenlit the federal case against Mark Houck, a Pennsylvania Catholic pro-life author, whose seven children screamed for mercy for their "best friend," their dad, as an estimated 20-25 FBI agents trained their rifles on him after beating on the family's door at seven in the morning last Friday.  According to LifeSiteNews, Houck was already aware that the Feds were after him and had offered to come in and talk with them.  But gun-toting agents dragged him out and took him to a federal facility.

Inflation, Shutdowns, and Trending Authoritarianism — Yes, They Are Connected.  Inflation has been summed up as "too much money chasing too few goods."  Some contend that the recent uptick in price inflation is the result of an expansion of the money supply, and they date the start of that expansion back to the Spring of 2020.  That's when the Federal Reserve began pumping trillions of newly-minted Fed dollars into the economy.  The Fed's money printing continued into 2022.  Our current inflation, it would then seem, might just be due to "too much money."  If you recall, the reason for the Fed's massive money-printing was the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic.  The trillions in new money were for the government shutdowns of the economy.  Keep in mind that it was the states that shut down the economy, not the federal government.  No government can deny people their ability to make a living without giving them the means to survive.  Unlike the federal government, the states don't have a central bank that can create money.  But with the $2.2 trillion Cares Act, Congress rode to the rescue and accommodated the states with the money to pay for their shutdowns.  So, the states shut down their economies, Congress backstopped the states, and the Fed provided the money.

Pritzker Suffocates Free Speech.  Should any powerful elected official in America use his influence to have an opposition newspaper canceled?  Is it allowable for a president or governor to have such a paper literally taken out of print?  Well, it happened.  In Illinois.  At least temporarily.  This sad episode in the heartland speaks to a larger dangerous trend in America.  Increasingly, the permanent political class and corporate elites cooperate to suppress our rights of free speech and a free press.  For example, the Biden White House directly intervened with Big Tech to censor voices like Alex Berenson.  What was the online "crime" of this former New York Times reporter?  Well, Berenson dared to document reasons for skepticism regarding the experimental vaccines produced by Big Pharma that were forced upon millions of Americans via government, employment, and educational mandates.

Analysis: Nord Stream Pipelines Sabotaged, and Only One Country Benefits.  Three deep-water explosions destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea on Monday.  While the MSM and governments reported "leaks" in the pipelines following sudden pressure drops to zero, Swedish seismologists knew better. [...] First, the US became the number one exporter of liquified natural gas to Europe once Russia cut off the flow.  German dependence on US LNG is a carrot to keep German in the sanction alliance.  With winter approaching and German unrest on the rise, the State Department would have been concerned the Germans would go wobbly, reduce sanctions, cut off arms to Ukraine, and beg Putin for energy.  The loss of the Nord Stream pipelines eliminates that path to renewed gas imports to Germany.  Second, the Biden family has long been tangled up in natural gas and Ukraine.  Hunter Biden was on the board of Ukraine's largest natural gas company — a position that provided Ukrainian oligarchs with access to Joe Biden.  Hunter, who has no experience in energy, made millions from the deal, and Ukraine got a bought-and-paid-for President of the United States.  Third, the Democrat Biden needs to stanch the popularity bleeding that threatens to kill Democrat control of Congress come November.  So, only the United States has a compelling reason to destroy Europe's energy lifeline from Russia.  Only the United States has both the means and the motive.

The Pandemic was a Grand Rehearsal for the Great Reset.  Fear is the key to obtaining compliance.  And by obtaining mass compliance during the pandemic, the global elite — operating through political leaders, international bodies, NGOs, and a vast network of "experts" and bureaucrats — audaciously tested ground for the Great Reset.  "Populations have overwhelmingly shown a willingness to make sacrifices," said Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF).  "The changes we have seen in response to COVID-19 prove that a reset of our economic and social foundations is possible."  In his new book The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown, Marc Morano lays bare how "15 days to slow the spread" was actually "15 days to begin your conditioning to accept a new level of tyranny."  He shows how the agenda was set decades before the pandemic and was given momentum during the post-9/11 War on Terror.  The signs of long preparation for the Great Reset are now quite evident.

Why The FBI's Raid On A Christian Family Is Its Most Dangerous Abuse Yet.  This isn't easy for conservatives to understand.  Most of us, by disposition, respect hierarchy.  A father at the head of the family, a boss at the head of a company, a president at the head of a country, a pope at the head of a church, and so on.  So it's natural for us to imagine that everyone looks at the world this way.  That's one reason why when we see some new left-wing front open up in the culture war, we try to find the hidden hand controlling it — the George Soros, or the Michael Bloomberg, or Joe Biden.  But most of the time, the left doesn't think this way.  More importantly, the left doesn't act this way.  This phenomenon of ground-up left-wing governance can be seen all around us.  It's happening in corporate America, where far from leading the charge, left-wing CEOs increasingly find themselves held captive to radical employees.  It's true in the federal government, too.

Is DeSantis next on the SWAT list?  Democrat Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Homeland Security committee, sent a letter to the knucklehead Biden appointed as Secretary of Homeland Security, demanding that the department investigate Republican Governor Ron DeSantis over the deportation of illegal aliens to Martha's Vineyard.  This is the latest effort by Democrats to use the Fascist Bureau of Intimidation to criminalize political dissent.  They spied on Trump when he was a candidate.  They turned a peaceful protest at the National Mall into a Fake Insurrection by opening the heavy Capitol doors to protesters.  They confiscated the cellphones of dozens of Trump officials.  They SWAT-ed a pro-lifer for a year-old local charge that was dismissed by the courts.  And of course, they raided Mar-a-Lago over what amounts to an overdue library book that may not have been the library's to begin with.  The excesses of the FBI should force Republicans to end its power to arrest, surveil or execute warrants because the FBI has abused each privilege.  The constitutionality of this agency is at best vague.  Thompson clearly wants the FBI to SWAT DeSantis.

'The most outrageous intimidation effort in history': Mark Levin's electoral deep dive.  In this video, Mark Levin broke down key details that he described as the "most outrageous intimidation effort in history."  Mark covered:
  •   A U.S. attorney's Office in Washington D.C. that issues subpoenas like lollipops on Republican offices
  •   Crushing the Constitution and shredding attorney-client privilege
  •   Casting a broad net trying to get Trump Republicans and Republican state legislatures caught up in a massive criminal conspiracy
While much of the political attention seems to focus on "fake electors," Mark turned to the Constitution to see what the law states about the role of the state legislature's the electoral process, the proper process, and why it could seem to folks that perhaps maybe Democrats either do not understand the law or they are deliberately deceiving the American people ... theoretically, of course.  [Video clip]

There is raw evil in the top levels of power in the USA, using federal agencies to terrify America's best citizens.  [Scroll down] Many FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security and other law enforcement and intelligence agents, other civil servants and military personnel — who still have a conscience, and we should assume most do — have to be encouraged to NEVER participate in any way in these on-going, unconstitutional, criminal actions against the people.  We don't just need them to not obey these unjust orders: we need them to actively help us save the United States from those who are obviously committed to destroying it from within.

All It Takes Is One Hero.  [Scroll down] [M]illions of people are only now awakening to the mounting dangers around them and are left terrified by what they finally see.  Why now?  Perhaps it was the unprecedented COVID lockdowns and school closures that ruined livelihoods and educations. [...] Perhaps it was the ballooning recognition that State-funded schools indoctrinate young students with leftist curricula dipped in racism, sexual libertinism, and outright Marxism.  Perhaps it was the growing disparity between how the IRS, EPA, DOJ, and FBI treat left-leaning political allies and how they treat their conservative opponents.  Perhaps it was the abominable two-tiered criminal justice system giving Black Lives Matter and Antifa foot soldiers slaps on the wrist for years while hunting down J6 political protesters as "domestic terrorists" and abandoning them in due process — free purgatories without trial or prospect of bail.  Perhaps it was the increasingly suffocating blanket of government-directed censorship stifling debate, subverting free speech, and justifying politically animated professional punishments and firings.

New Details In The Biden DOJ Targeting Of Pro-Life Activist, Father Of Seven Mark Houck.  New details are emerging in the Department of Justice targeting of a pro-life activist and Catholic father of seven who was arrested at his home in Pennsylvania on Friday.  Some 25 armed FBI agents in 15 vehicles raided the residence of Mark Houck, who leads a nonprofit group that provides sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics in Philadelphia, over an incident last year involving his then-12-year-old son at a Planned Parenthood abortion facility, the family says.  Houck protected his son from an aggressive Planned Parenthood escort harassing the 12-year-old, Pennsylvania pro-life activist Ashley Garecht told The Daily Wire, noting that the case was dismissed by a federal court in Philadelphia when the escort tried to press charges.

The time has come to reform the FBI.  Friday mornings are usually the cheeriest time of the week, just hours away from the weekend.  Alas for pro-life advocate, Mark Houck, and his family, last Friday was anything but joyous.  At 7 a.m., the father of seven was awakened by a SWAT team of heavily armed FBI agents.  Mark's wife, Ryan-Marie, said she pleaded with the FBI agents to be calm, owing to the presence of the couple's seven young children.  Alas, those pleas fell on deaf ears. [...] The FBI agents said they were there to arrest Mark.  When Ryan-Marie asked for their warrant, "they said that they were going to take him whether they had a warrant or not."  When Ryan-Marie protested, saying: "you can't just come to a person's house and kidnap them at gunpoint," the FBI agreed to get the warrant from one of their vehicles.

Did the FBI Finally Go Too Far?  On reading about the Saturday arrest of pro-life activist Mark Houck, I thought the author at this alternative site had to be exaggerating.  It struck me as beyond belief that two dozen or so armed FBI agents would swarm the house of a Catholic father of seven, rifles drawn, and arrest him in front of his weeping children for anything short of murder.  I have had to recalibrate my belief system.  The "crime" fell quite a bit short of murder.  On October 13, 2021, Houck brought his 12-year-old son with him for his weekly sidewalk counseling outside of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Philadelphia.  A volunteer escort at the abortion clinic reportedly called Houck's son a "fag" among other insults and threatened him.  Houck pushed the man away from his son, and the man fell.  Houck, the founder of an organization that promotes Christian virtue among men, was not charged with a crime.  However petty the incident, U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, had Houck seized at gunpoint nearly a year later and bragged about the arrest.

In raid on home with seven children, FBI again acts dangerously thuggish.  If the FBI and the Justice Department want critics to stop portraying the bureau as a menace to society, maybe FBI leaders and agents should stop acting like menaces.  Conservative social media is blowing up this weekend about a sickeningly abusive, armed FBI raid on the child-filled home of a pro-life activist in Pennsylvania.  And with good reason.  Once again, the FBI has gone dangerously overboard with an unnecessary show of force.  When faced with orders to participate in such hugely unnecessary armed raids, individual agents should register official protests with their superiors.

Democrats move to criminalize opposition.  A hallmark of banana republics is that those who lose power are apt to wind up in prison, or on the wrong end of a firing squad.  Even more advanced countries, like Israel, sometimes have a regrettable tendency to prosecute former political leaders.  It is hard to think of anything more destructive to a democracy, and yet the Democrats are going down that path.  It seems clear that they intend to bring criminal charges against President Trump over his keeping some White House documents at Mar-a-Lago — a trivial offense, as far as anyone knows.  And that's not all.  The Department of Justice has issued subpoenas to a large number of people who were associated in some way with the Trump campaign or administration.  They generally seek information about efforts to challenge the reported election results in several states. [...] Nearly all of the documents relate to activities that are plainly lawful.  Alleging or denying the existence of fraud in the 2020 election, offering evidence of such fraud or the absence of such fraud, planning to have someone serve as a Trump elector, arguing that the vice president has important constitutional powers in the context of certifying a presidential election, discussing strategies whereby Donald Trump might be found, legally, to have won the 2020 election — these are all legal activities that have long been engaged in by members of both parties.  There are also requests relating to the funding of efforts to contest the 2020 election and for the rally that occurred on January 6, 2021.  These, too, were perfectly legal activities.

DOJ Harasses Citizens for Exercising Their First Amendment Rights.  The Justice Department has hit the Eagle Forum of Alabama with a voluminous subpoena that violates the organization's First Amendment rights to speak freely, engage in the political process, and talk to their elected representatives.  It's an intimidation tactic, pure and simple, and shows just how partisan the department has become.  This out-of-control behavior should scare every citizen and volunteer organization, no matter where they stand on the political or social spectrum.  Eagle Forum is a very small non-profit in Alabama.  It only has one full-time employee and a second, part-time employee.  Virtually all of its work on issues of interest to its members is done by volunteers.

FBI hero paying the price for exposing unjust 'persecution' of conservative Americans.  Bombshell allegations by FBI Special Agent Steve Friend contained in a whistleblower complaint filed late Wednesday with the Department of Justice inspector general reveal a politicized Washington, DC, FBI field office cooking the books to exaggerate the threat of domestic terrorism, and using an "overzealous" January 6 investigation to harass conservative Americans and violate their constitutional rights.  Friend, 37, a respected 12-year veteran of the FBI and a SWAT team member, was suspended Monday, stripped of his gun and badge, and escorted out of the FBI field office in Daytona Beach, Fla., after complaining to his supervisors about the violations.  He was declared absent without leave last month for refusing to participate in SWAT raids that he believed violated FBI policy and were a use of excessive force against Jan. 6 subjects accused of misdemeanor offenses.  This American hero, the father of two small children, has blown up his "dream career" because he could not live with his conscience if he continued to be part of what he sees as the unjust persecution of conservative Americans.

DOJ Internal Misconduct Shrouded in Veil of Secrecy.  Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz was busy this week, releasing three separate reports on Monday alone.  Each detailed misconduct by a different assistant United States attorney:  One finds a federal lawyer trying to use his position to avoid a drunk driving charge; another finds a government attorney getting drunk and physically belligerent at a meeting with foreign officials; the third, and most disturbing, finds an assistant U.S. attorney exposing his genitals "in a public place," and sexually assaulting a "civilian" on a date.  Who were these federal prosecutors?  The summary reports don't say.  A spokesperson for the Office of the Inspector General told RealClearPolitics that it could not release their names.  RCP has filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for their identities.  The Justice Department doesn't hesitate to publicize the names of those it accuses of wrongdoing.  At least when those accused do not work for Justice.

Equal Justice, They Said.  What once distinguished the United States from illiberal regimes following the Orwellian mantra "some are more equal than others" was the hallowed American idea of "equal justice under the law."  The phrase is engraved above the entrance to the United States Supreme Court — an ideal that took centuries to achieve.  Yet it is an ancient concept — what the Greeks called isonomia that distinguished classical democratic Athens from its anti-democratic rivals.  Isonomia later became enshrined as the central criterion of all Western consensual governments.  Does it still exist in Joe Biden's America?  In many ways, no — due both to state and private vendettas as well as state efforts to destroy rather than merely defeat political opponents.  Is the law equally applied at the border?  Ask yourself whether you are more likely to be hounded by the federal government for not being vaccinated if you are a citizen in the U.S. military, or illegally violating federal immigration law as you storm the southern border?  Who needs a passport to leave and enter the United States — a citizen or an illegal alien?

Biden Demands White Supremacy.  FBI whistleblowers — in this case, the term is probably warranted — have come forward to say that the Bureau is pressuring them to come up with "white supremacists" to investigate, in order to advance the Biden administration's agenda: [...] To the best of my knowledge, I have never met a white supremacist, so this doesn't surprise me.  What ought to surprise all of us is that the FBI's politicized hierarchy is so willing to do the corrupt bidding of the Democratic Party.

Why Is the DOJ Trying to Destroy Mike Lindell, the Pillow Guy?  [Scroll down] [Mike] Lindell was tracked down by FBI agents, corralled at a Hardee's of all places, served a subpoena, and ordered to turn over his cell phone. [...] It's impossible to give Merrick Garland's Department of Justice even the slightest benefit of the doubt in this day and age, as they have subpoenaed virtually half the free world and raided former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate on a seemingly endless fishing expedition.  Pillow Guy's story is equally murky; there are a lot of suspicions and dark insinuations thrown about by the FBI, but little in the way of facts that make you go, "oh man! Lindell really crossed the line on that one!"  Without boring the heck out of you, I'll try to sum it up quickly:  Lindell has been an outspoken critic of the 2020 presidential election and has regularly said he believes the outcome was fraudulent.  This would appear to be his worst crime.  But did he breach voting data machines?

Biden Reportedly Pressuring FBI to 'Cook Up' White Supremacy Cases.  The Biden administration has asserted one of the top security threats facing the nation comes from domestic extremists.  Supporting such a claim, however, requires cases, but rank-and-file FBI agents are saying the threat is way overblown.  According to The Washington Times, current and former FBI agents say the bureau is getting pressured to come up with domestic terror cases and find white supremacists in order to meet internal quotas.  "The demand for White supremacy" coming from FBI headquarters "vastly outstrips the supply of White supremacy," said one agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.  "We have more people assigned to investigate White supremacists than we can actually find."  The claim comes as President Biden hosted a United We Stand summit at the White House on Thursday where he announced a new initiative on "hate-motivated violence."

Facebook spied on private messages of Americans who questioned 2020 election.  Facebook has been spying on the private messages and data of American users and reporting them to the FBI if they express anti-government or anti-authority sentiments — or question the 2020 election — according to sources within the Department of Justice.  Under the FBI collaboration operation, somebody at Facebook red-flagged these supposedly subversive private messages over the past 19 months and transmitted them in redacted form to the domestic terrorism operational unit at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, without a subpoena.  "It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause," alleged one of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.  "Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena."

A Time of Evil.  What we have seen the last two years, and especially the last few months can only be explained in one word.  Evil.  For this is a time of evil. [...] Why would Biden refuse to protect our southern border?  Why would Biden knowingly allow in fentanyl, human trafficking, cartels, and terrorists?  Why would Biden allow child predators and unaccompanied minors to cross our borders?  Why would Biden make it very clear to our enemies in China, Iran, and Russia that we will not fight for our borders and we are not a sovereign country?  Why would the occupier of the White House display our weaknesses to friend and foe?  Why would the placeholder of the White House purposely make America weaker militarily and economically?  Why would Biden's FBI and Department of Justice cover up obvious felony crimes on Hunter Biden's laptop, yet search the bedroom of President Trump's teenage son?  Why would the FBI and DoJ ignore the 4th and 5th Amendments in their illegal raid on President Trump's private home?  Why would the FBI/CIA/NSA disregard all precedents, all laws, all tradition, the Constitution, and all common sense in their illegal attacks on President Trump since he came down the golden escalators?  Why has the FBI/CIA/NSA abused and misused the Patriot Act in their attack on Biden's political enemies?  And why has the ACLU remained totally silent and mute as these Third Reich tactics have been used on the American people?  Why has Biden/FBI/Justice Department carried out Stasi police state raids on many of President Trump's closest supporters?

Election Interference: DOJ/FBI Carpet-Bombed Subpoenas An Attempt To Freeze Political Opposition In Runup To Midterms.  In recent days, the U.S. Department of Justice has served upwards of 40 subpoenas on people affiliated with Donald Trump's 2020 campaign, many of whom continue to associate with or support him. [...] Assume, for the sake of argument only, that such subpoenas were proper and necessary to investigate alleged crimes associated with the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot.  That's a big assumption, but it proves the point, which is why now, some 18 months later?  If these subpoenas were so necessary to the investigation, why did DOJ/FBI wait a year and half until we are in the thick of the runup to the midterms?  These subpoenas are a big freeze not only on Trumpworld, but conservative and Republican worlds.  When people know that dozens are being subpoenaed by the feds regarding hundreds of people or entities, people stop talking to each other and engaging in perfectly lawful political activity out of fear that they will be next.  Lawful political communication with the wrong person could find you on the receiving end of a DOJ subpoena and FBI home visit, or as just happend to Mike Lindell and others, being confronted on the street or in public by FBI agents.  It's a way to shut down a political movement without having to arrest, indict, or prosecute anyone.

The Biden Administration Isn't Interested In Governing But In Criminalizing The Opposition.  It is going to be hard to forget the spectacle of President Joe Biden "celebrating" the passage of his woefully-named Inflation Reduction Act while the stock market plummeted in real time, dropping nearly 1,300 points Tuesday while Biden crowed about his great achievement.  The cable news clips were surreal.  There was old man Biden, shaking his fist and shouting at the sky, while in the corner of the screen the Wall Street tracker kept ticking down, stocks plunging in reaction to persistent and worsening inflation.  Even CNN had to interrupt coverage of Biden's remarks to note that the stock market was tanking.  [Tweet]  It takes a special kind of hubris to throw a White House victory party (with boomer icon James Taylor performing "Fire and Rain," no less) for a bill allegedly meant to curb inflation amid the worst inflation in 40 years and the worst day for the stock market since Biden's presidency began. [...] None of it is real.  It is pure theater — a farce.

Student loans and the decline of Social Security.  Last month, the Biden administration announced that it would wipe out an estimated $1 trillion owed to the county.  No vote, nor authorization from Congress.  The money simply appeared as if by magic.  While the administration's decision is limited to student loans, the existence of magic money is apt to cause problems for the broader government.  Specifically, it is likely going to be a problem for Social Security and those who depend upon the program.  In the case of Social Security, the program's finances have deteriorated over decades primarily because Congress has been unable to build any consensus on a suitable mix of higher taxes and benefits reductions.  As difficult as it has been to find that middle ground in the past, compromise will only become more elusive as voters seek to add more magic and less sacrifice.

Attacking the Rule of Law.  One of the most hallowed traditions of the U.S. republic is a commitment to the ideal of the Rule of Law.  Therefore, one of the most dystopic aspects of our current politics is that this ideal is under deliberate attack.  The list of assaults is long and varied.  Consider:
  •   Biden's cancelation of student loan debt and the EPA rule recently struck down by the Supreme Court, both of which are instances of the habitual efforts of the Executive to seize upon supposed statutory ambiguities to claim vast powers never contemplated by Congress, and to use this to transfer resources to favored constituencies.
  •   The treatment of the January 6 defendants, who are being deprived of constitutional rights; subjected to harsh punishments for trivial offenses; and railroaded by politically motivated prosecutors, judges, and juries.
In these cases, and in a host of others, it is not believable that the contempt for the Rule of Law is an accident or oversight.

Whistleblower Reveals FBI Labeled Veteran-Led Organization as Domestic Terrorist Group.  A whistleblower revealed the FBI labeled a veteran-led organization as a domestic terrorist group.  Ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee Rep. Jim Jordan (OH) in a letter to FBI Director Wray said a whistleblower came forward and revealed a 'woke' analyst labeled American Contingency, a veteran-led group, a "domestic violent extremism" organization.  The veteran-led group was already cleared by the FBI as a 'non-threat' in 2020, but the woke analyst decided to target the group again.  Rep. Jordan's letter referenced Project Veritas' recent report on the FBI's 'domestic terrorism symbols guide' on 'militia violent extremists.'

Mike Lindell Is Suing the FBI and the Government for Violating His Rights.  Pay Attention.  Mike Lindell wants more than just his phone back.  Following the incident in Minnesota during which agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation blocked his vehicle at a Hardee's drive-through and seized his phone, Lindell made an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room.  He announced that he was filing a lawsuit against the FBI and the government.  You can watch Lindell's conversation with Bannon posted by The Post Millennial below.  [Video clip]

CBP sparks privacy fears after it's revealed that 2,700 of its officers have warrantless access to travelers' confiscated phones.  Thousands of US government officials have unlimited access to as many as 10,000 devices which are seized from travelers moving across the country.  Electronic devices such as cellphones, iPads and laptops taken from those going through airports, seaports and border crossings are being mined for data.  The leader of the Customs and Border Protection told congressional staff that the massive database can be accessed by 2,700 CBP officers without a warrant.  During a briefing, which took place in the summer, officials also said that the data is maintained for 15 years.  It has raised alarms in Congress about what the government is using the information or, with many of the devices taken from people not suspected of any criminal activity.

Facebook Worked With FBI to Spy on Americans Who Questioned 2020 Election.  According to Department of Justice sources, Facebook has been spying on the private messages and data of Americans who questioned the 2020 election results and reporting them to the FBI.  Since the election, Facebook has worked in conjunction with the FBI to report on "subversive" private messages, sending them to the FBI's domestic terrorism operational unit, supposedly in redacted form, a direct violation of Americans' First and Fourth Amendment rights.  "It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause," one of the sources told the New York Post.  "Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena."  According to the Post, "These private messages then have been farmed out as 'leads' to FBI field offices around the country, which subsequently requested subpoenas from the partner US Attorney's Office in their district to officially obtain the private conversations that Facebook already had shown them."

COVID Fascism Fizzles Out in New Zealand.  Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (she/her) held such promise.  In the spring of 2020, the then 39-year-old New Zealand prime minister emerged on the world stage as the COVID drama's anti-Trump.  Ardern was calm, we were told, where Trump was capricious, compassionate where Trump was callous, and disciplined where Trump was improvisational.  She was, in short, the modern major general of the emerging fascist new world order, and the media swooned. [...] After seven weeks into a three-day Lockdown, Ardern finally abandoned her increasingly futile zero-COVID policy, and the virus ran through New Zealand's population in 2021-2022 much as it had done the rest of the world a year earlier.  Despite a vaccination rate of 77 percent and 18 months to prepare for an epidemic, more than one out of three New Zealanders contracted the disease, including Ardern herself.  Nearly 2,000 died.  As the cases mounted, the "swift and decisive" Ardern rotated her nation once more through the various levels of oppression.  To Ardern's seeming surprise, the gratuitous restrictions and mandates caused a major public backlash.

The Regime's 'Operation MAGA Fascist' Gains Ground.  After nearly two years of lies related to the events of January 6, 2021, the regime finally has admitted the truth:  The widening legal dragnet to scoop up Donald Trump, his associates, and his voters has nothing to do with the four-hour disturbance on Capitol Hill that afternoon.  It is, rather, a thus-far successful crusade to criminalize wrongthink about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.  A barrage of subpoenas issued recently by the Department of Justice — U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves' office specifically — against Trump aides is not seeking information about the Capitol protest but personal communications discussing what happened with the election and plans to fight the results. [...] Of course, this is what the January 6 hysteria has always been about.  As the chaos unfolded on January 6, Joe Biden and his apparatchiks immediately denounced believers of the so-called "Big Lie" — the claim the election had been rigged, if not stolen, by powerful interests who wanted nothing more than to defeat Trump — and vowed revenge would come swiftly.

Why FBI Agents Jumped MyPillow's Mike Lindell at a Hardee's Drive-Thru.  Do you sense that the Biden Department of Justice is getting desperate?  The clock is winding down to getting something significant on any of their ludicrous investigations into Donald Trump and his inner circle.  The FBI's August 8 raid adds more pressure to the charged climate since federal agents found nothing supporting the allegations of criminal intent regarding classified materials.  No evidence backs any justification for the raid.  All the documents the FBI seized aren't smoking guns, as the president of the United States has the indisputable authority to declassify any record.  We're not talking about Hillary Clinton, who is guilty of mishandling classified information, transmitting it through an unapproved and unsecured email server, and deleting 33,000 emails under federal subpoena.  With the special master ruling motion made by the Trump team granted by Judge Aileen Cannon and a Justice Department appeal filed — this Mar-a-Lago theater could last several months.  This story has hit the sandbar, and it's beached until further notice.  In the meantime, the Justice Department has issued at least 40 subpoenas relating to its January 6 investigation.

97 members of Congress or their families bought or sold stock that may have been a conflict of interest.  Nearly 100 members of Congress bought or sold financial assets that intersected with the work of the committees they sit on, according to a New York Times report.  Of the 435 House members, 183 traded stocks through themselves or their immediate family members from 2019 to 2021.  At least 97 bought or sold stocks, bonds or other financial assets through themselves or their spouses that directly intersected with their congressional work.  US lawmakers are not yet banned from making any stock trades, though insider trading is illegal for everyone.

DOJ Conceals Records About Biden's Use Of Federal Agencies To Influence Elections.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) is concealing key documents related to President Joe Biden's March 2021 order that directed executive agencies to develop plans for federal interference in state election administration.  On Sept. 8, the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) was scheduled to receive a series of government records from the DOJ that detailed how the agency is complying with Executive Order 14019.  That order mandated all federal departments to "consider ways to expand citizens' opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process."  Among these included the DOJ's 15-page "strategic plan" on how the agency intends to comply with Biden's executive order.  Instead of releasing the documents FGA requested pursuant to federal open records laws, however, the Biden DOJ released only a few records pertaining to the order, most of which were heavily redacted.

Tucker Carlson warns that Biden is actively criminalizing political opposition.  When I started watching Tucker Carlson, one of the things that made him enjoyable was that he always kept a little bit of an ironic distance from what he was covering.  In recent months, though, that has changed.  Tucker's angry, and righteously so.  Monday night's monologue may have been his most fiery yet, because he focused on something we've all seen from the moment Biden swore an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States": as all totalitarian regimes do, Biden is using the instruments of government to persecute his political opponents.  We saw it when Biden and his armed bureaucrats characterized a large protest and an accompanying small riot at the United States Capitol (especially compared to past Democrat and BLM riots) as an "insurrection."  We saw it when they imprisoned those people who had entered the Capitol (many under the impression that they were allowed to be there) and proceeded to hold them without bail, charges, or trial.

Tucker Carlson Discusses the Continued DOJ Targeting of Joe Biden Political Opposition.  During his opening monologue today [9/13/2022], Fox News host Tucker Carlson outlined the history of the Biden administration targeting the democrat political opposition by using the Dept of Justice and FBI.  During one part of the lengthy segment, Carlson outlined the recent subpoenas to people within the MAGA movement.  [Video clip]  The technique most often deployed, is for the DOJ/FBI to claim an anonymous source has provided information against the subpoena target, and therefore the target must prove their innocence against the "sources" claims.  Having received one of these DC subpoenas directly, my experience with the construct leads me to believe the DOJ is just making up the "anonymous sources."  However, if you refuse to participate in the bizarre demand to prove your innocence, the lack of cooperation becomes the Lawfare angle used to entrap the target.  The process is something like this:  It is unlawful to rob banks.  We were told you rob banks.  Prove you do not rob banks or be subject to arrest for being unresponsive.

Mainstream Media Finally Admits: DOJ Subpoenaed Over 40 Trump Associates, Seized Two Top Advisors' Phones.  The Justice Department continues to ramp up its war with former President Donald Trump and his associates, issuing over 40 subpoenas to his associates over the last week and seizing the phones of at least two top advisors.  Many outlets are reporting this as breaking news, but RedState's Nick Arama had already reported a lot of it going as back as far as Friday. [...] The newest revelation is that Federal agents took phones from Boris Epshteyn, an in-house counsel for Trump, and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist for the Trump campaign in 2020.  This intensification of the Department of Justice's battle to get Trump would appear unrelated to the recent raid of the former president's residence, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, and the subsequent, ongoing legal battles regarding the materials seized there.

The FBI's Apex Bureaucracy Is Dangerous.  Here's a truth that tens of millions of Americans understand:  if the sweeping criminal enforcement arm of the federal Leviathan disappeared tomorrow, life for the vast majority of citizens would go unchanged.  It might even improve.  We are spoon-fed this Big Government fallacy from kindergarten on up that absolute chaos lurks behind every corner if not for the protections provided from our beneficent bureaucratic masters who maintain order and peace.  That's absurd propaganda meant to keep Americans conditioned into accepting total government control.  The infantile dependence on government agents for security and survival is a recent phenomenon that does nothing but legitimize limitless State power.

Never Forget the COVID Fascists.  If ever the American government viewed its authority as "absolute," if even individual Americans were under the notion that they were "only to be conceived of in their relation to the State," it was shortly after COVID-19 entered the U.S.  I submit to you that the COVID policies — shutdowns and lockdowns; "stay home, stay safe;" mandatory masking, social distancing, testing, and vaccines; and so on — perpetuated by the American left and those like-minded were the greatest demonstration of fascism the United States has ever known.  In the nearly 250-year history of the U.S., never before has the American government exercised such power over its citizenry as it did in the name of "slowing the spread," "following the science," and the like.  And never before in the history of the U.S. has the exercise of government power been so misinformed and misguided, with such disastrous results.

The DoJ Argues that the Intelligence Community Overrides the Judiciary.  At this point in time I have no regard for the probity or competence of the Intelligence Community and neither, apparently, does Judge Aileen Cannon, who earlier this week ordered the appointment of a Special Master to review those documents seized in the Mar-a-Lago raid, which it claims are classified.  The Department of Justice appears to have been surprised that it has lost credibility and filed a motion seeking a stay on that portion of the order and a Notice of Appeal to the Eleventh Circuit indicating its intention to file an interlocutory appeal.  I don't think the trial judge who issued a very well-considered order will grant the stay.  I don't think the Eleventh Circuit will, either.  I don't think the Eleventh Circuit will even grant an interlocutory appeal on this matter.  I do think all of these pleadings reveal the weakness of the grounds for a search and seizure of materials at the home Donald J. Trump, the overreach of the warrant, and the expansive search itself.  Worse for the DoJ and FBI, I believe their actions amount to a claim that under no circumstances does the judiciary have a right to question anything the Intelligence committee does as long as it makes a claim of "national security."  Such a claim is scary and should be — and I think will be — denied.

Sen. Hawley Shreds Biden for Criminalizing the Political Opposition.  It wasn't just the DOJ and its attempts to boost Biden by raiding Trump that Hannity discussed on his show yesterday, though he did a good job discussing that with Trump's lawyer.  He also had on Sen. Josh Hawley, who ripped into Biden for wielding law enforcement like a political club and attempting to intimidate the political opposition with it.  Speaking on that, Hawley used examples of the criminal chaos spreading around the country to show that Team Biden and the other leftist hacks running things care not about law and order, but rather just about using LEOs to enforce their political agenda and wield power.

New York AG Twists the Knife Into Steve Bannon.  Steve Bannon was arrested on Thursday on money laundering and conspiracy charges stemming from a fundraising scheme to build a wall on the Southern border.  Bannon, who is the self-proclaimed leader of the "MAGA grassroots movement," surrendered himself in New York City to prosecutors following the indictment.  Apparently, New York AG Letecia James wasn't satisfied, though.  Later in the day, after Bannon had turned himself in, he was put in chains and perp walked down a long line of prepositioned media for his arraignment.  [Tweet]

When Must a Good Citizen Become a Dissident?  Is it when the FBI and other Deep State truth-twisters manufacture crises and manipulate elections?  Is it when free speech comes under attack under the guise of State-labeled "misinformation"?  Perhaps it is when the president-in-name-only reads carefully scripted messages (written by those who control his office from the shadows) attacking half the country's citizens as "fascists."  Or when government and media "elites" falsely frame political protest as "insurrection" in order to justify criminal persecution and imprisonment of opponents of the ruling regime.  Or maybe when the endless declaration of fake "emergencies" is used to justify the steady imposition of extraordinary State power over each citizen's livelihood.  Maybe it's when the Intelligence Community operates a massive domestic surveillance network targeting Americans who have committed no crimes.  Maybe it's when secretly collected information mined from supposedly independent social media conglomerates and too-big-to-fail private banks is used to track and trace unsuspecting citizens.  Maybe it's when the value of the U.S. dollar is intentionally chipped away by central bank authorities enabling tax-and-spend legislators to expand institutional power at current and future Americans' expense.  Perhaps it is when the same federal government that insists on fighting wars all over the world in defense of other nations' borders staunchly refuses to protect America's own borders from invasion.

GOP Attorneys General Demand DOJ Reveal Federal Gov't's Communications With Social Media Giants.  The man who may become Missouri's next GOP senator has targeted President Biden's Department of Justice, asking a court to force the DOJ to reveal communications between high-ranking Biden Administration officials and major social media companies.  Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, the GOP senatorial candidate, joined Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry to file a Joint Statement on Discovery Disputes, to ask the Louisiana District Court to force the communications between officials in the White House and Department of State and major social media companies to be revealed.  "Missouri and Louisiana filed a landmark lawsuit back in May that seeks to expose how top Biden Administration officials allegedly colluded with social media companies to censor freedom of speech on a number of topics, including COVID-19.  We won in court in July, and the Court required the Biden Administration to turn over communications between federal officials and social media companies," Schmitt stated.

These Back-Busting Americans Paid For College Themselves And Think You Should, Too.  Upon news that Joe Biden had decided to completely ignore U.S. laws to attempt to force taxpayers to assume the debts of people who chose to attend college, I reached out to Federalist writers for stories of how other Americans paid their own way.  Calling this particular pile of government handouts for the privileged "forgiveness" is just a way to try to hide the fact that it's fundamentally wrong and unfair.  As the Bible says, he who doesn't work shouldn't eat.  He who takes on obligations should pay them.  Taking something without paying for it is stealing.  Forcing other people to work so you can enjoy luxuries is called enslavement.

Biden's Teetering House of Cards.  Biden has abrogated numerous of our basic liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, the First and Second Amendments to be sure; our speech is censored by big tech, he promises to take our guns.  Migrants are installed in hotels and motels; this seems to violate the Third Amendment.  The raid on Mar-a-Lago certainly violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.  Judges selected for certain trials violate the Fifth Amendment.  In the recent re-trial of the two remaining defendants in the FBI-concocted Whitmer kidnapping case, their defense lawyers were given a time limit and many of the facts that had been revealed in the first trial were not admitted by the judge, a clear violation of their rights.  These two men, chosen by FBI operatives for their potential for manipulation, were found guilty.  Well of course they were; that was the plan but they were set up by the FBI.

Biden can't decide whether or not we're still in a pandemic.  President Joe Biden made a campaign promise to "shut the virus down."  He made this claim repeatedly because his advisers thought he had stumbled into a clever saying about not shutting down the country again.  Now, almost two full years into his term, Biden is using presidential authority he believes he has under the 2003 HEROES Act to suspend student loan payments once again and, on top of that, attempt unilaterally to waive up to $20,000 in Pell Grant student loans or $10,000 in other loans.  It was on March 13, 2020, that President Donald Trump declared a nationwide emergency pursuant to Sec. 501(b) of the Stafford Act, making the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency.  Biden, in abusing this power, is going against his own administration's legal arguments concerning the declaration from earlier this year.

Three Signs We're in a Banana Republic.  In the summer before the 2016 presidential election, FBI Director James Comey publicly articulated Hillary Clinton's criminal culpability for storing classified emails on a private, unsecured server kept in a spare bathroom before declaring imperiously that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring a case against her.  Obama's IRS got caught targeting conservatives for their political beliefs, but the president assured the nation that the obvious scandal revealed "not even a smidgeon of corruption" within his administration.  Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama's self-anointed "wingman," was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over documents relating to the Fast and Furious gun-running conspiracy, yet his Department of Justice unsurprisingly declined to pursue criminal charges.  In contrast, Americans have watched for six years as President Trump and his associates (including Steve Bannon, who was recently convicted for the same crime Eric Holder effortlessly eluded) have been hounded by an irredeemably corrupt DOJ and FBI, malicious state prosecutors, and a petty, Machiavellian Congress running shameless show trials devoid of due process, impartiality, or fairness.

Is Biden even able to bail out student loans?  As almost everyone has heard, Biden announced his plan to spend $360 billion to forgive student loans for up to 43 million Americans.  Groups estimate that the actual cost may be $440 to $600 billion, but who's counting?  Legal experts have reported that although Biden may have some authority to postpone payments, he clearly doesn't have the power to cancel debts. [...] The reaction from many different sides to his plan has been overwhelmingly negative.  People who have already paid off their student loans are angry because they did the right thing and kept to their obligations, and people who didn't get loans, or didn't go to college at all, are even angrier at the idea of paying more taxes to fund doctors, lawyers, and academics who should be able to pay what they owe.  The inflationary aspects of the debt forgiveness mean that the $7,000 Americans are paying extra each year for Biden's high prices will continue to increase, with no end in sight — and this includes the people getting the cash in the first place.

The Lawless Executive.  Biden thinks he can get away with tossing three hundred billion dollars, more or less, on the taxpayer's tab with his "student loan" cancelation order.  He's relying on a post-9/11 law which applies to times of national emergency and attempting to piggyback on the Covid one which was declared in 2020 along with the HEROES act — and of course that "emergency" has not been lifted. [...] I would expect that in any fair hearing this goes up in smoke in the courts.  But — there's a problem:  Standing to sue.  You see, to bring a case before the courts you must have particularized injury.

America Was a Better Place When the FBI Didn't Rig Elections.  Well over a year ago, I wrote in the Briefing that Donald Trump's biggest failure was not doing a thorough housecleaning at the FBI.  No doubt Trump agrees with me, given all that has been going on lately.  Yesterday's news revealed a double-whammy that added more clarity to just how heavy the Bureau's thumb was on the 2020 presidential election scale, and all of it has to do with Joe Biden's sleazebag progeny, Hunter.  It appears that the FBI was working overtime to make sure voters didn't have information about Hunter Biden's cocaine-and-hookers criminal antics.

Zuckerberg Revelation Shows FBI Interfered for Biden in 2020 Election.  Surprise, surprise.  It wasn't the social media platforms alone that censored the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election.  No, the FBI asked Facebook to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election, calling it Russian disinformation.  Indeed, FBI investigators knew the laptop and its disgusting contents were all too real because they'd held possession of the laptop since 2019.  The laptop contained the disgusting details of Hunter's sex and drug life, business dealings, and evidence of big paydays from Ukraine and China — all of which presented a national security risk to the U.S.  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan on Thursday that the FBI put Facebook "on high alert" to, wink, censor the Biden laptop story, wink, before the 2020 election.

Biden [Claims] That the "Emergency" Powers He Has Due to Covid Allow Him to Act As a Tyrant, Apparently Forever.  Note that Biden already declared an end to the covid emergency when he canceled Trump's Remain in Mexico policy, and his CDC just announced that we're effectively back to normal.  But Biden won't formally say the "emergency" is over — so he can continue acting as tyrant when he finds it politically useful to do so. [...] [D]idn't this Republic used to require Congress to pass laws?  Didn't NeverTrump used to caution about the "authoritarian" Trump assuming the powers of a tyrant?  And yet... they're all supportive of this, or silent about it.

How To Tame a Bureaucracy? Get Rid of It.  Any serious effort to end the crisis must deal with the problem of the administrative state and the bureaucratic power thereof.  Without that focus, no reform effort can get anywhere.  That is surely a main takeaway from the trauma of our times.  The solution has to be drastic and it has to work.  The reason is simple:  a free and functioning society cannot coexist with an undemocratic beast like this on the loose, making its own laws and running roughshod over rights and liberties with zero oversight from elected leaders.  Until the administrative state is defanged and disempowered, there will be no representative government and no hope for change.

Dems' war on ex-President Donald Trump is without precedent.  When you cross the Rubicon, there is no going back.  Democrats are getting very close to that fateful moment.  Their dream to indict Donald Trump has turned into determination, putting them on a collision course with history.  No president has ever been prosecuted after leaving office, with even Richard Nixon escaping that infamy after Watergate because of how it would tear America apart.  Yet day by day, the evidence shows Dems have liberated themselves from such concerns and are resolved that this time will be different.  The number and fervor of their army of prosecutors reveal a contagious fever, and it often appears they are competing to be the first to file charges.  Will it be Attorney General Merrick Garland, who approved the raid on Mar-a-Lago and also has a separate investigation of Trump regarding events before and after Jan. 6?  Or will the first shot come from Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney is using a special-purpose grand jury to investigate "election interference" in the state by Trump and his associates after the 2020 election?

The Parasites and the Have-Nots.  In communist societies, people in power act to preserve their best interest and the interests those closest to them, which screws everybody else and gives rise to a bifurcated society of "haves" and "have-nots."  This happens every time socialism/communism is implemented — without exception. [...] The purest form of this in the West today is the U.S.  federal government.  The higher the position, the more its occupant got there as a result of enabling his superiors, benefactors, and family to siphon off as much as they could from the public till.  This has been the case since World War 2, which was the event that precipitated the metastatic expansion of our federal bureaucracy.  After all, who could resist or object to something that was part of the "war effort," even if that something was completely outside the range of authority of the bureaucrat who thought it up?  That's how it was done then and how it's still done today — just like the "temporary expedient" of employer tax withholding, which brings home the bacon and, therefore, has been with us ever since.

Think the FBI Deserves the Benefit of the Doubt?  The presence of Vice President Mike Pence and then-Sen. Kamala Harris at the U.S. Capitol has been the basis for nearly 800 people being charged with at least one count of violating 18 U.S. Code, section 1752, according to Kelly, which indicates that any building or complex hosting the vice president is a restricted area and therefore closed to the public.  "But the Justice Department recently was forced to admit that Harris was not in the building for most of the day on January 6," Kelly reported, highlighting that Harris, at the time, remained a U.S. senator, not vice president.  In the late morning, Harris was moved to the DNC headquarters where a pipe bomb had supposedly been planted.  "Prosecutors have begun amending language in court filings to reflect the fact Harris was not inside the Capitol despite making the assertion in thousands of charging documents," Kelly wrote.

The Justice System Has Gone Beria.  The DOJ's and FBI's recent actions have opened my eyes.  American justice isn't blind.  The system is rigged, no longer along racial (or religious) lines but along political ideology.  The DOJ has a two-tiered justice system — one system that targets and is onerously harsh on Republicans and conservatives while being lax and protective of Democrats and liberals.  This unequal justice has been in place for at least 10 years but has gotten much worse since President Trump's arrival.  A recent survey (last week) by the Trafalgar Group found that 79% of Americans believe we have two tiers of justice — one system for politicians and D.C. insiders and another system for everyone else.  The belief in unequal justice holds true for Democrats (67%), Republicans (88%), and Independents (77%).  Unequal justice is not just in law enforcement, it's everywhere — every major institution is aligned to empower, and keep in power, the Democrat regime.  The entire federal bureaucracy, media, academia, business, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and the military are fully aligned to keep Democrats in power.

The Rule of Law and a Vulnerable Former President.  If by rule of law we mean a principle of governance in which legal standards are clear, are duly enforced by public officials, and are validated and maintained by an impartial and timely judicial system, leading to public trust in fair legal consistency and public order, then we can say that today the rule of law no longer applies, or applies only selectively, in a constitutional republic like the U.S. or a parliamentary democracy like Canada. [...] The U.S. under the Obama and Biden administrations is likely in worse shape than its northern neighbor.  The rule of law has become a figment of the political imagination, a process that has been developing over many administrations but has now reached its nadir.  Those who serve or are affiliated with the political Left, that is, the Democrat party and its outriders, need never fear retribution for crimes, felonies, misdemeanors, or breaches of the Constitution, for ignoring Congressional summonses or destroying potentially incriminating evidence.  Its opponents, on the other hand, have no such immunity or legal redress from arbitrary government-inspired reprisals, vendettas, and raids carried out on the flimsiest of pretexts against its own citizens.  Examples abound, and no savvy individual can be unaware of them.

FBI Raid Warrant Demanded Seizure Of Literally Any Record Trump Ever Saw During 4-Year Presidential Term.  The FBI search warrant authorizing a government raid of former President Donald Trump's Florida residence sought an exhaustive list of any White House records the president ever came in contact with, according to the document obtained by The Federalist.  Outlining the "property to be seized" by the more than 30 agents who rummaged through the former president's Mar-a-Lago mansion, the warrant demanded confiscation of any document Trump ever saw, read, or created for the entirety of his four years as commander-in-chief.  "All physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation" of federal statutes governing records possession, the warrant reads, were to be seized.  Records extended to "Any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021."  In other words, had Trump written something down on a napkin, federal officials were authorized to raid the former president's home and capture it.

The Attempt to Prosecute Donald Trump Is Unleashing More Than Our Political System Can Handle.  With the recent FBI raid on Donald Trump's Florida home, the Democrats and the Biden administration have raised the political stakes to a level from which this country as we have known it may never return.  All one can say to those that are demanding a criminal prosecution of the former president is:  Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.  Although the raid ostensibly was to see if Trump took classified documents from the White House when he left in a chaotic move in January 2021, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy believes the Biden administration was again attempting to find that proverbial "smoking gun" tying Trump to the January 6 Capitol riot.  Whether or not Attorney General Merrick Garland is able to grab the brass ring and prosecute Trump after yet one more fishing expedition is another story, although I doubt that any president has seen as many resources used to investigate him as has Donald Trump, but the Department of Justice has not filed charges yet.  Understand that anyone reading this article has committed a federal crime at some point, perhaps more than once.

Pelosi-Biden's Inflation Bill Passed with 35 Percent of the House Voting Remotely and the CBO Not Finished Scoring Its Impact.  It was a mad rush to pass Biden's "Inflation Reduction Act" and now we know why.  This act from the corrupt and now communist left is named like other bills they manufacture in that it is the opposite of what it claims.  This bill will not reduce inflation and will likely add to it.  The funding will occur by taxing Americans of all classes and increasing the US debt. [...] According to Redstate around 35 percent of those voting, did so remotely.  But the bill charged ahead.  Now you have to wonder what's really in it.

Abuse of the citizenry:  Is it ending or expanding?  It can be validly argued that the present trend toward self-rule was already well underway in 1776, but it never culminated, as would slavery almost ninety years later.  Indeed, after 1865, the idea of self-rule began, in practice, to be reversed, as the powers of the several states gave way to the ever-increasing authority of the victorious central government in Washington, D.C.  That authority is now poised, and this is no exaggeration, at the brink of totalitarian control.  All of this helps to explain the present: the impending climax of that historic struggle is nigh upon us.  The grand experiment in self-government is facing its greatest challenge since (metaphorically speaking) the Battle of Bunker Hill.  As George Washington put it, "the time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves."  Our Founders recognized this struggle, and resolved it — on paper, but their solution soon began to unravel during a series of crises, including the issue of slavery.

FBI, R.I.P?  The FBI interferes with and warps national elections.  It hires complete frauds as informants who are far worse than its targets.  It humiliates or exempts government and elected officials based on their politics.  It violates the civil liberties of individual American citizens.  The FBI's highest officials now routinely mislead Congress.  They have erased or altered court and subpoenaed evidence.  They illegally leak confidential material to the media.  And they have lied under oath to federal investigators.  The agency has become dangerous to Americans and an existential threat to their democracy and rule of law.  The FBI should be dispersing its investigatory responsibilities to other government investigative agencies that have not yet lost the public's trust.

The White House has declared war on its own citizens — and, shockingly, America has never been closer to a police state.  America is spiraling out of control.  From the unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago, to the seizure of a congressman's phone, to our doddering commander-in-chief, who increasingly seems like a man who doesn't have the sense or stamina to serve out his term.  And now, America is on the edge of another political nightmare.  We are less than 100 days away from the election of a new Congress to run the country — while the de facto leader of the Republican base delights in stoking his supporters' darkest suspicions under the shadow of a sincerely suspect investigation.

Secret Service detail blocks off handicap parking for 20 minutes while Kamala Harris' husband Doug Emhoff shops at Whole Foods in Los Angeles.  The Secret Service detail protecting Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff has been spotted blocking access to handicap-designated parking outside a Whole Foods in Los Angeles.  Emhoff was running errands on Wednesday in the Westside neighborhood of Brentwood when his two-vehicle motorcade blocked the accessible parking for about 20 minutes, a witness told DailyMail.com.  As Emhoff did some shopping at Whole Foods, the two black Chevrolet Suburbans bearing Department of Homeland Security plates parked diagonally across a parking space designated for people with disabilities, photos of the incident show.

Stop Assuming the Legitimacy of the Corrupt Establishment's Actions.  [Scroll down]  This was an atrocity, a disgraceful, disgusting, and dangerous escalation of the War on the Normals by our enemies designed to frame Trump and send a message to his supporters that we are second class citizens.  There's no hidden, secret Trump crime that the garbage FBI and the garbage DOJ are investigating.  They spent the last six years trying to frame Donald Trump, but right — this time it's for realsies!  It would only be too perfect if it really was over possessing classified info, which apparently is illegal again now.  Here's the truth — it's all a lie designed to make sure President Trump can never be elected again and finish what he started.  I know it.  You know it.  They know it.  But some Republicans refuse to accept it.  Instead, they still fall for this nonsense, pretending that there's no way a government agency could be politicized and weaponized.

The Federal Government Refuses to Listen.  A mere four years from the 250th anniversary of the thirteen colonies' Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, and much of America now sees history repeating again.  A tyrannical system of government that rules imperiously from its royal city walls has become every bit a threat to human liberty today as it was two and a half centuries ago.  A faceless, unelected, and unaccountable administrative army makes and enforces its own rules and uses its byzantine system of regulation and taxation to intimidate ordinary Americans into compliance and submission.  A nefariously partisan DOJ and FBI hunt political opponents and citizen-dissenters as enemies of the state.  An independent and obscure collection of intelligence agencies use their obscene powers not to keep the United States safe from foreign attacks, but rather to keep the American people under a constant state of surveillance.  With every tool for silencing public debate at its disposal, the United States government seeks to make itself impervious to the will of America's voters.

Schumer Warned In 2017 The FBI Would Have 'Six Ways' Of Getting Back At Trump.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer predicted in 2017 that the intelligence community would have "six ways" to get back at former President Donald Trump after Trump pushed back against allegations of Russian interference in the election.  Trump had tweeted that an intelligence briefing over Russia's alleged interference into the 2016 election had been delayed because the agency needed more time "to build a case," according to The Hill.  The tweet came after authorities said Russia tried to interfere in the election.  "You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you, so even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he's being really dumb to do this," Schumer said to Rachel Maddow while speaking on MSNBC.

The FBI And DOJ Criminalizing Opposition To The Regime Is How The Republic Ends.  This is the core danger of the administrative state:  Its now open propensity to go rogue.  It is apparently hellbent now on turning the United States into a banana republic.  Democrats called Donald Trump a fascist, authoritarian, and wannabe dictator for chants at his rallies of "Lock her up," referring to his opponent Hillary Clinton.  At the time, leftists pointed out that imprisoning, interrogating, investigating, and otherwise using government resources to harass and prosecute one's political opponents was the mark of tyrannical regimes such as Vladimir Putin's and Adolf Hitler.  "Democracies don't lock up political opponents," the Washington Post editorial board told us in 2016.  That is still true when the ones pushing the interrogations, investigations, entrapments into committing felonies, show trials in unusual venues with no cross-examination or due process, early morning home raids, excessive detainment, and asymmetrical punishments are Democrats.  Democrats are trashing republican institutions, expectations, and guarantees for political purposes, most visibly now in their Jan. 6 effort to destroy the lives of protestors largely charged with misdemeanors and to expand Spygate tactics more broadly.

Steve Bannon calls to Scrap the Federal Reserve saying it has 'Usurped' the power of the people.  Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon demanded the end of the Federal Reserve in a rabble-rousing speech to conservatives on Friday night, saying fat cat bankers had taken too much power[.]  Instead he demanded that control of the bank be handed back to the American people and slammed the way it had freely been printing money through the pandemic.  'We don't need to audit the Fed,' said.  'We need to end the Federal Reserve.  'The Federal Reserve has usurped its power and the power of the American people and our elected representatives.'  He laid down a fiery call to arms at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas.

Lessons from Ruby Ridge.  For those too young to remember, it was thirty years ago this month that the DOJ entrapped Randy Weaver for his Christian beliefs, issued a death warrant, killed his dog, son, and wife, and shot Weaver and his friend.  Surely, the DOJ doesn't just execute innocent people.  Yet, as we learned at trial:  ["]He had no propensity to commit crimes.  Never even had a traffic ticket.  Never been charged with a crime of any kind and honorably served his country.["]  While living in Iowa, Weaver learned it was illegal to homeschool his children independently, so he moved his family to a cabin in remote Idaho, Ruby Ridge.  Weaver attended Aryan Nation meetings three times, meeting not far from Ruby Ridge, "to exchange ideas, talk to people, I usually ended up arguing."  That's where Gus Magisano befriended Weaver and tried to involve him in illicit activity.  Weaver refused.  But after three years of coaxing, Weaver finally agreed to make two sawed-off shotguns.  Magisano was a fed.

Trust the Artificial Intelligence Part One.  Even before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, faith in institutions was at an all-time low — and falling.  In 2022, trust in organized religion was more than four times higher than in Congress.  No branch of government was trusted by more than 50% of the public except the military, not even the police.  Yet this loss in institutional trust coincided with unprecedented demands by institutions for a vast increase in power.  These included the power to regulate nearly anything in the name of stopping the climate from changing; the power to redefine society by proclaiming new 'Woke' values; and the power to control mass movement and require mandatory medication to control a pandemic.  Finally, institutions demanded the power to 'check facts' in any speech and 'de-platform' anyone suspected of uttering misinformation, thus insulating themselves against criticism.

A Corrupt and Rigged Government.  Why have so many lost faith in our government to the point that armed rebellion is being considered?  Double standards, that's why.  Americans see them and they're rightfully furious.  They see the despicable treatment afforded President Trump, whose term in office surely seems like the good old days when compared to the turmoil Democrats have unleashed in just a year and a half at the helm.  They watched the press question Trump's mental fitness and acuity while staunchly supporting the corrupt, dried-up turnip currently occupying the Oval Office.  They observed the media constantly demonizing Trump's family and then totally supporting "Dr." Jill and the hapless, hopeless Biden spawn.  They've seen every aspect of the Donald's financial dealings examined with a fine-tooth comb, while the Big Guy (Hunter's nickname for Crusty Joe) gets half of his crack and sex-addled son's ill-gotten millions with impunity.

Presidential emergency powers are a serious problem.  News is coming out that the Occupier in Chief is planning to use emergency powers to promote abortion and to implement the "Build Back Bankrupt" agenda he cannot get through Congress.  The reason both of these cannot pass Congress is because there are not enough stupid people in the Senate to vote for them.  Further, implementation of the Build Back Bankrupt agenda will distress the country to such a point that chaos will ensue, much like what's happened in Sri Lanka over the past months.  First, let's look at emergency powers in the United States.  There are 123 statutory powers that might be available to a president when he declares a national emergency.  An additional thirteen would require a declaration from Congress.  The most recent emergency power law is the National Emergencies Act, enacted in 1976, which ended all previous national emergencies and formalized the powers of the president.  Under this law, repealing an emergency power would take two thirds of both houses of Congress.

Judge Grants Request for Discovery Phase in Social Media Collusion Lawsuit Against Biden Admin.  A federal court has granted a request by Missouri and Louisiana officials to obtain information and documents from top-ranking officials in the Biden administration over its alleged collusion with social media giants in an effort to censor and suppress free speech.  Eric Schmitt, Missouri's Republican attorney general, announced on social media on July 13 that Terry Doughty, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, had ruled in favor of the request for the discovery process.  The ruling paves the way for the attorneys general to collect documents from top-ranking Biden administration officials and social media giants.  In court documents shared by Schmitt, Doughty wrote that there is "good cause" for an expedited preliminary injunction discovery.

Fighting back against COVID and Climate Change tyranny.  The phrase "New World Order" ("NWO") is a loaded term.  For starters, the people who are pushing for a single world government prefer to call it "The Great Reset."  Additionally, NWO sounds like the ultimate conspiracy theory, complete with indivisible dots, imaginary lines, and tin foil hats.  And yet there's no doubt that the self-anointed elites across the world have coalesced around a single vision that involves ending fossil fuel and achieving total control over individuals to "protect" them from COVID.  Still, people across the globe are pushing back and one group has a global vision of what this pushback can look like.  During COVID's first two years, we learned that most First World governments happily embraced tyranny.  Even in the face of mountains of evidence that the lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates did nothing to improve the situation, governments not only didn't stop, but they also dug in deeper, systematically taking away people's rights.

The Transformed United States Government.  The United States in the 1950s transformed into a non-constitutional form of government, where federal departments collectively hold more authority than elected officials.  The transformation broadened in the 1960s and leveled off during the 1990s.  The ability to transition back to three branches of government as defined in the U.S. Constitution is the intent of the growing citizen majority today.  The increasing friction among all involved parties for restoring the constitutional form of government is heating to a flashpoint by way of strife.  Dwight Eisenhower cautioned against this transformation during his farewell speech with his warning of the military-industrial complex growing beyond manageability.

'Intimidate, humiliate, and embarrass': Growing outcry against DOJ strong-arming of Biden critics.  The FBI and the Justice Department are violating civil liberties and using brutish tactics during politically motivated and highly publicized raids and arrests targeting critics of the Biden administration, according to legal experts.  These displays of force, which some observers have claimed are unnecessary and designed to humiliate those arrested and intimidate others, appear to have at least one thing in common:  the person of interest supported former President Donald Trump.  "Law enforcement seems to be using arrest tactics on Trump supporters that are generally reserved for violent and/or fleeing suspects," said Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.  "They do not seem justified in many of these cases."  The most recent case occurred late last month, when federal agents searched the Virginia home of former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, surprising the one-time Trump administration official in the morning.

Obviously feds:
100 Patriot Front white supremacist group members march along Boston's Freedom Trail on July Fourth Weekend to 'reclaim America'.  A large group of white supremacists marched along Boston's Freedom Trail ahead of the Fourth of July in protest that allegedly turned violent.  Patriot Front led nearly 100 members carrying white nationalist flags and shields through the Massachusetts capital on Saturday as part of their efforts to 'reclaim America.'  Video shows the group walking step with a snare drum, with flags and banners in hand, as they made their way to the Old State House and City Hall Plaza.

Who Are the Real Insurrectionists?  [Scroll down]  Former Obama Administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan both lied under oath — without legal consequences — to the Congress.  The FBI itself has descended into a sort of revolutionary police force rather than a disinterested investigative body focusing mostly on intrastate and federal crimes.  The fired former Director James Comey feigned amnesia or ignorance 245 times in his responses under oath to a House committee.  The subsequent interim director Andrew McCabe admittedly lied three times to federal investigators and likely discussed wearing a wire to entrap the president of the United States.  He was never charged with any federal crime.  An FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altered a federal affidavit to warp a FISA court hearing.  Former FBI Director Robert Mueller claimed under oath that he had no idea what the Steele dossier or Fusion GPS was, even though, arguably, they were the goads that prompted his own 22-month-long investigation.

Tyranny through Complexity.  Consider how the government's tyranny through complexity makes answering even the simplest questions quite difficult:
[1] Have you broken any laws today?
[2] How many departments or agencies exert power over you?
[3] Is saving money wise?
[4] What does the Constitution say?
In a society governed by reason and rationality, these four questions should be rudimentary for any citizen.  Instead, they are outrageously vexing.

Seattle Police Justify The "Defund the Police" Movement by Arresting a Preacher for Reading His Bible Too Close to a Gay Pride Event.  I'm going to return to a theme that I've harped on in the past.  Too many conservatives have bought into the "back the blue" nonsense in response to the "defund the police" movement and BLM rioting.  This is misguided.  Police aren't guarantors of freedom; they are the enforcers of the administrative state.  Police unions and cliques of senior police officers are one of the major forces against gun rights.  Time and again, you find the police cheerfully enforcing the most shameful regulations.  During the "pandemic," police in (at least) New York and New Jersey broke up funerals and gatherings in private homes.  They arrested people in empty parks and on deserted beaches.  They arrested people for not wearing masks.  Their record on protecting the First Amendment rights of Christians is similarly checkered.  Dearborn, Michigan, had to pay a substantial settlement because the police arrested Christian preachers outside the venue of a Muslim street fair.

Biden: 'I Don't Count Drunk Driving as a Felony' for Illegal Immigrants.  A recently rediscovered video shows Joe Biden as a 2020 presidential candidate inexplicably declaring, "I don't count drunk driving as a felony," to the astonishment of his stunned interviewers.  To put his statement in context, Biden's baffling declaration of the insignificance of DUI for illegal immigrants came during a VICE news town hall on minority issues.  He was asked about his stance on illegal immigration and deportation of immigrants who have been convicted or charged with felony law-breaking while in the United States.  The Democratic candidate promised listeners that if he was elected to the White House in 2020, he would waste no time issuing an executive order (EO) that would prohibit U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents from deporting any illegal immigrant who had not committed a felony.  In essence, Biden said he would decide the seriousness of a crime, not law enforcement.

The Mighty Gorsuch vs. the Administrative State:  Quotes from West Virginia vs.  EPA.  Dealing with this problem absolutely requires that we get back to fundamentals on what kind of society we want and what is the role of government.  These issues are newly alive, and have come up with a Supreme Court decision in West Virginia vs. Environmental Protection Agency.  The EPA had long imposed an expansive view of its discretion under the Clean Air Act.  The court said no:  the EPA has been acting illegally all along.  This decision echoes a similar federal court decision in Florida concerning the CDC's mask mandate.  The court said the CDC is acting illegally.  Just because the EPA is tasked with certain acts of administration doesn't mean it can do whatever it wants in service of the goal.  "We would not expect the Department of Homeland Security to make trade or foreign policy even though doing so could decrease illegal immigration," said the main opinion.  Clearly we have a problem that cries out for a mighty rethinking of everything.  Just such a statement has been made in the concurring opinion of Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Biden Has Weaponized the FBI and DOJ Against His Political Opponents — The GOP Needs To End It.  On June 23, federal agents stormed the Virginia home of former Department of Justice official and legal scholar Jeffrey Clark in the early morning hours, searching his house and seizing multiple electronic devices in the process.  And on June 27, news broke of the FBI executing a search warrant on June 22 against legal scholar and professor John Eastman for his role in advising the Trump administration on legally contesting the 2020 presidential elections.  (Eastman has filed a motion for return of property, claiming that the federal agent refused to show him their search warrant before seizing his cell phone, as required by the law.)  Clark and Eastman, like tens of millions of other Americans, wanted to determine if voter irregularities may have played a role in the 2020 presidential election.  Clark, as a member of the Justice Department, and Eastman as a Trump advisor, explored legal remedies that involved fielding alternate electors in states with contested elections.  That they should or should not have done this is open to opinion, but it was not at all illegal.

The Invisible Power Controlling the US Government.  I have written extensively on inverted totalitarianism, that being the once nascent, now entrenched form of government that truly controls the levers of federal power in the United States.  This behemoth has turned the USA into a "managed democracy"; a bureaucracy which cannot be held accountable by the elected representatives of the people.  Sometimes called the 4th estate, this monster is also referred to as the "deep state" the civil service, or the administrative state.  Inverted totalitarianism does not have an authoritarian leader, but instead is run by a non-transparent group of bureaucrats.  This unelected, invisible ruling class runs the country from within.  They are easily influenced by corporate interests due to both the lure of powerful jobs after federal employment and the capture of our legislative bodies by the lobbyists serving concealed corporate interests.

The Astonishing Implications of Schedule F.  The administrative state for the better part of a century, and really dating back to the Pendleton Act of 1883, has designed policy, made policy, structured policy, implemented policy, and interpreted policy while operating outside the control of Congress, the president, and the judiciary. [...] From 2020 and onward, the American people got to know this administrative state well.  They ordered us to wear masks.  They deployed their influence to close small businesses and churches.  They limited how many people we could have in our homes.  They festooned our businesses with plexiglass and told everyone to stay six-feet apart.  They demanded two weeks of quarantine when crossing state borders.  They decided which medical procedures were elective and non-elective.  And they finally demanded compliance with vaccine mandates at the penalty of job loss.  None of this was ordered by legislation.  It was all invented on the spot by the permanent staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  We had no idea they had such power.  But they do.  And that same power which allowed those egregious attacks on rights and liberties also belongs to the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Homeland Security, and all the rest.

FBI Raids Target Democrats' Political Foes Instead Of True Criminals.  The only apparent criterion the FBI needs to raid the homes of American citizens is that those citizens have ever supported former President Donald Trump.  Here are the names of some of the political leaders on the right that the FBI has targeted:  Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, James O'Keefe, and Jeff Clark.  The FBI is now also engaging in raids on private homes of elderly Americans who peacefully attended the Capitol protest on Jan. 6, 2020.  Compare this treatment to that of actual criminals affiliated with Democrats, such as Hunter Biden, Andy McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Michael Sussmann.  The latter have seen no personal visit from the FBI since their crimes were committed or exposed.

Supreme Court Decides Suing the Feds is Mission: Impossible.  The Supreme Court recently gave the cold shoulder to an American assaulted by a Border Patrol agent.  No matter what party or ideology you ascribe to, this should set off alarm bells.  Too often, conversations about U.S. border policy are swept up into culture war rhetoric and stick firmly to partisan lines.  This pattern plays directly into the hands of bureaucrats who wish to centralize power, shred the Constitution, and build an apparatus that can ultimately inflict more harm on American citizens than on those attempting to cross the border.  The recent Supreme Court 6-3 ruling in Egbert v. Boule is yet another example of this, as it strikes a blow to U.S. citizens seeking recourse when federal agents behave badly.  While law enforcement officials deserve recognition for choosing a job that can put their life on the line, it is also true that the vast majority of Americans favor recourse for citizens wronged when those officials are negligent in their duties to protect and serve.

A mass exodus from the Democrats' America.  As the Washington Examiner reported this week, the end of the COVID-19 pandemic has done nothing to arrest the trend of people fleeing large cities in liberal coastal states for more pleasant and orderly locales, particularly in the Mountain West and the Sun Belt.  A mixture of unreasonable pandemic restrictions, rising crime, lawlessness, and hostility toward employers has forced this continued urban exodus. [...] It is hardly a coincidence that all 15 of the 15 fastest-growing cities and towns between July 2020 and July 2021 are in states that Republicans govern:  Arizona, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Idaho.  And 14 out of the 15 fastest-declining cities during the same period were in states that Democrats governed at the time.  What towns and cities gaining population generally have in common both before and during COVID-19 is that they live under laws made by Republicans.  What towns and cities losing population have in common is that they live under laws made by Democrats.  Not all Democratic states and cities are equally anti-business, but COVID-19 helped bring out the totalitarian side of many state and city governments, driving away and keeping away many former and prospective residents.

The Pentagon Announces It Will Refuse to Follow Any State Laws Restricting Abortion Access.  The Pentagon has made the announcement that it will refuse to recognize any abortion laws springing from the Supreme Court's decision that there is no guaranteed right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution.  Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III issued a statement on on Friday regarding the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.  "Nothing is more important to me or to this Department than the health and well-being of our Service members, the civilian workforce and DOD families," the Pentagon chief announced.  "I am committed to taking care of our people and ensuring the readiness and resilience of our Force.  The Department is examining this decision closely and evaluating our policies to ensure we continue to provide seamless access to reproductive health care as permitted by federal law."

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Makes Ridiculous Pledge in Response to Roe Ruling.  It comes as no surprise that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has issued a statement all but condemning Friday's overturn of Roe — by pledging that the United States military "be all that it can be" [sarcasm] and will do all it can in support of "seamless access to reproductive health care [on-demand abortion]."  What is a bit of a surprise — Austin's apparent ignorance of federal law — is laughable.  In a statement posted on the Department of Defense website, Austin pledged the U.S. military's "readiness and resilience" to, in effect, "continue to provide access" to abortion.

Lloyd Austin needs to resign as Secretary of Defense.  Since the announcement of the decision in Dobbs on Friday, elected officials and media personalities across the board have been weighing in with their own takes as you would expect.  But one of the last people I would have expected to dive into the public debate was Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.  And yet he somehow made the decision to wade into the Roe v Wade issue up to his hips.  This turned out to be a very poor decision for several reasons, [...] but the question here goes far beyond one retired military officer's personal views.  The spectacle Austin created was simply damaging and Lloyd Austin needs to either resign or be fired, not that Joe Biden will make any such move.

The Editor says...
When was the last time a black employee of the federal government was fired?  As long as Lloyd Austin remains black, he is untouchable.  And he knows it.  He is also immune to criticism.

Five Reasons to Impeach Joe Biden.  [#4] Biden is directing the enforcement branches of the federal government against his political enemies.  Biden believes that "domestic political extremism" is "the most urgent terrorism threat" facing the U.S.  "The Biden administration declared that the 'most lethal elements' of today's domestic terror threat are political conservatives," said Tucker Carlson.  Biden has compared Americans who disagree with him — at least half the country — to racists and terrorists.  Consequently, Biden is empowering the DoJ and FBI to go after Republicans.  "The FBI is now an organization solely focused on destroying the domestic enemies of the Democratic Party," said talk show host Jesse Kelly.  Biden is also enlisting the media in his war against political opponents.  "What Joe Biden is telling media companies to do today is to censor their content so it doesn't contradict his decrees," said Tucker Carlson. "[Biden is calling for] censorship of political opinions.  What you're seeing here is far more dangerous than the domestic terror threat they've been bloviating about.  It contravenes the First Amendment."

Queens DA Melinda Katz uses security detail 'as her personal car service': sources.  Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz used members of her taxpayer-funded security detail to help her move to her new million-dollar digs — potentially running afoul of ethics rules, The [New York] Post has learned.  The borough's top prosecutor was spotted wearing her gold DA's badge on her hip last week as she carried four boxes of belongings to a black Ford Expedition parked outside the Forest Hills house where she's been temporarily living since selling her former childhood home for $1.05 million in February.  She then climbed into the official vehicle and was driven about 1.2 miles by a pair of plainclothes NYPD cops to her new three-bedroom, 2-1/2 bathroom Colonial-style house, which city records show she bought late last month for $1.1 million.  The trip was one of four that The Post saw Katz, 56, and her detail make between her old and new homes Tuesday morning.

Biden May Declare 'National Public Health Emergency' If Roe v Wade Is Overturned.  Joe Biden is considering announcing a "national public health emergency" if Roe v Wade is overturned by the US Supreme Court in the coming days.  This authoritarian move by the Biden regime would allegedly help women in red states obtain abortions despite the court ruling and the laws of the state. [...] Since a draft opinion was leaked last month indicating that the Supreme Court was prepared to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision — an action that would prompt at least 20 states to prohibit or severely curtail access to abortion — abortion rights advocates have been lobbying the White House to take extraordinary steps to mitigate the effect.

The Citizenry's Willingness to Surrender their Freedoms Risks a Potential Dissolution or Civil War.  Over the past two decades, far too many citizens of the United States have willingly surrendered their rights and freedoms and now they are on the cusp of being unrestorable.  This erosion and voluntary forfeiture have empowered the ruling elites/radical left.  Ominous societal conditions have been created that risk national dissolution or a civil war.  Three events in the past twenty-one years have been the primary catalysts that have accelerated and exacerbated this seemingly irreversible outcome.  The first: the reaction to the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001; the second: the election of Barack Obama; and the third: the lockdown and medical tyranny of the Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic.  After the events of September 11, 2001, Congress, with no outcry from the populace and near unanimous agreement from both political parties, passed the Patriot Act and other legislation.  These laws expanded the definition of terrorism and the government's ability to define, at their whim, what "terrorism" is.  Further, the government was granted near unlimited power to combat whatever was defined as "terrorism."  Within less than ten years that power was turned against the American people and new catch phrases began to be used by the ruling class: "white supremacy" and "domestic terrorism".  A new era was spawned which allowed the government to use its newly acquired powers to spy on and intimidate innocent Americans at home and abroad.

Biden threatens oil companies with 'emergency powers' if they don't increase their supply while they've 'tripled' profits.  Joe Biden is calling on seven of the top oil companies to do something to help quell surging gas prices after accusing them of intentionally exacerbating the strain on Americans' pocketbooks after the average price per gallon surpassed $5.00.  The president is sending letters Wednesday to Marathon Petroleum Corp., Valero Energy Corp., ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, Chevron, BP, and Shell to demand action on lowering gas prices at the corporate level and account for the surge.  In a letter to Exxon obtained by Axios, Biden wrote that the difference 'of more than 15% at the pump is the result of the historically high profit margins for refining oil into gasoline, diesel and other refined products.'

Biden Is Threatening Oil Companies With Use of Emergency Powers Against Them.  Joe Biden has tried to blame everyone but himself for inflation and skyrocketing gas prices.  His most common excuse for the rise in gas prices has been that it is "Putin's price hike" because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  But the gas prices were going up long before Putin invaded in February 2022 — they've been going up ever since Joe Biden came into office.  They've doubled since Biden took office and J.P. Morgan analysts are predicting gas may be $6.00 a gallon by August.  It's over $5.00 now and the experts are predicting that it will continue to be a problem.  It's not hard to understand why, given Biden's attack on the fossil fuel industry.  When he ran, he promised that he would push the country to do away with fossil fuels.  [Video clip]  But now, Biden is trying to place the blame on another source — the oil companies.

The Subordinate Citizen.  We have developed entire classes of American elite citizens who are not subject to the enforcement of the law — at least as it is applied to others either less influential or ideologically incorrect.  Federal prosecutors sought to jail Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for six months for not telling the truth to federal agents.  They put another Trump subordinate, George Papadopoulos, in jail for two weeks for lying to federal prosecutors.  Recently the FBI stormed into an airport to arrest former Trump adviser Peter Navarro for contempt of a congressional subpoena.  OK, defying federal law has consequences.  Or does it?  Former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder brazenly defied congressional subpoenas and was found in contempt — a historic first.  Did the FBI ever arrest Holder, much less as he boarded an airplane?  James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, confessed he flat-out lied under oath to a congressional committee.  So did former Central Intelligence Agency chief John Brennan — twice!  Andrew McCabe repeatedly lied to federal investigators as acting director of the FBI.  Were any of them arrested or tried in the manner of Flynn, Papadopoulos, or Navarro?  If not, what then is left of the foundation of U.S. citizenship — universal equal treatment under the law?

Disinformation Panels, Corrupt FBI Activity, Govt Control over Speech in Social Media, The J6 Propaganda Effort, it is One Long Continuum.  The people who created the Fourth Branch of Government used every tool in their arsenal to outlast and remove Donald Trump; then they turned to the one cognitively challenged candidate who would not be a threat to the construct, Joe Biden, and installed him through fraud and mail-in ballots.  Everything is downstream from this construct. [...] Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01.  DHS came along in 2002 and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed.  When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.  The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus.  However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology.

Homeland Security Issues Another Security Bulletin to Drive Narrative.  Are the threats facing America changing that rapidly, or is the administration using the bulletin as a tool for some other purpose?  Timing is everything in life and especially in Washington, D.C.  To help answer this question about why so many Biden administration advisory bulletins coming out of the Department of Homeland Security, one need only look at what else has been happening the past few weeks as we begin the summer, when the left needs voters energized to vote in the November midterms.  Given the very selective threats and priorities included in the bulletin, set against known and suspected terrorists entering the U.S. through the southern border, numerous mass shootings, and violent pro-abortion supporters firebombing pregnancy centers and protesting at conservative Supreme Court justices' homes and churches, the answer clearly appears to be that the Biden administration is using the terrorism bulletin to advance its chosen narrative:  White supremacy is everywhere (the administration chooses to focus).

Gov Of New York Just Announced A New Bill That Would Make 'Hate Speech' Illegal, Whatever That Means.  New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a package of gun reform legislation on Monday [6/6/2022] that will increase the age to buy a rifle to 21, restrict the sale of body armor to specific professions, and revise the state's red flag law.  The gun reforms come less than a month after an 18-year-old gunman allegedly used an AR-15 style rifle to murder 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket in what officials called a racist attack.  "In New York, we are taking bold, strong action.  We're tightening the red flag laws to keep guns away from dangerous people," Hochul said a press conference on Monday.  [Video clip]

Progressive America is the Twilight Zone.  Thanks to our scheming, corrupt elites, we can no longer take what any federal government department or agency says at face value.  Ask Peter Navarro about the gross injustice of Biden's Justice Department.  Michael Sussman walked free from a D.C. court presided over by a Democrat-appointed judge (who cut the defendant slack via admissibility of evidence) and a D.C. jury populated with Democrats, including some Hillary Clinton contributors and one or two with casual connections to the defendant.  The nation's leadership class has destroyed trust in government, and when trust vanishes, we're playing a dangerously unpredictable game loaded with wild cards.

Biden Administration Declare National Emergency for Clean Energy Production.  Joe Biden shut down domestic energy development, cancelled pipelines, cancelled leases, retracted the ability to drill in ANWAR (Alaska), and triggered massive new regulatory approaches from the Commerce, Interior and Energy departments.  The resulting increases in oil, natural gas, gasoline, electricity and energy costs overall — which became fuel on the furnace of inflation, have now created the energy crisis that Joe Biden is declaring a national emergency to solve.  Biden himself has no idea what is happening; he is simply following the instructions of the policy operators who are in control of the administration.  It is the people in the circles of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and the climate change activists within the DC bureaucracy that are executing the nuts-and-bolts shifts.  They tell Biden what to do, and he cluelessly does it.  We are the people who end up paying the price for their effort.

Be aware of major attacks on free speech from Democrats.  Democrats own Washington D.C. and should be in hog heaven.  But as Shakespeare wrote, "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."  Certainly, the Democrats know that, as the country and the world lurch from bad to worse under their aegis, their hold on the country is weakening.  What especially worries them is conservative media's popularity.  Now, Dan Pfeiffer, a former "senior advisor" to Obama, has said it out loud:  Alternative viewpoints are a "problem for democracy."  Expect the Democrats to act to counter that "problem."  Here are three representative news stories showing the Democrats' collapsing control over the political narrative: [...]

Biden [is] finally taking executive action to up domestic energy production — of solar energy.  Whether it be his continued efforts to "deter" Russian President Vladimir Putin after the invasion of Ukraine had already begun or responding to the baby formula shortage after shelves had gone bare, President Joe Biden's reactionary leadership has been putting America last for nearly a year and a half now, and his latest move to ramp up domestic energy production is sure to do the same.  On Monday [6/6/2022], the White House announced that the president will be invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) along with other executive actions to try to combat the overwhelming reality that the Democratic policy initiatives are crippling the American economy.  With the average price for a gallon of gas more than double since Biden was inaugurated and experts warning of rolling blackouts throughout the summer because the energy grid is not suited to meet the expected demand, the president has decided to double down.  The news broke late Sunday that he would be pushing solar projects stalled by a Commerce Department tariff probe and promoting other clean energy projects.

The Sovietization of American Life.  Entire professions have now nearly been lost to radical progressive ideology.  Do we remember those stellar economists who swore at a time of Biden's vast government borrowing, increases in the monetary supply, incentivizing labor non-participation, and supply chain interruptions that there was no threat of inflation?  Were they adherents of ideological "modern monetary theory"?  Did they ignore their own training and experience in fealty to progressive creeds?  What about the Stanford doctors who signed a groupthink letter attacking their former colleague, Dr. Scott Atlas, because he questioned the orthodoxies of Dr. Anthony Fauci and the state bureaucracies — who we now know hid their own involvement with channeling funding to deadly gain-of-function research in Wuhan?  Did they reject his views on empirical grounds and welcome a give-and-take shared inquiry — or simply wish to silence an ideological outlier and advisor to a despised counterrevolutionary?  Or how about the 50 retired intelligence "experts" who swore that Hunter Biden's laptop was not genuine but likely Russian disinformation?  Did they really rely on hundreds of years of collective expertise to adjudicate the laptop or did they simply wish to be rewarded with something comparable to a "Hero of Woke America" award?

Dismantle the D.C. Company Town.  The real issue here is something I have been harping on for the last couple of years:  the issue of the decaying legitimacy of our institutions.  Increasingly, once-respected institutions like the FBI, Congress, the Justice Department, to say nothing of the educational establishment and corporate culture, have lost their claim on the people's allegiance.  That allegiance is not something that can be repaired by diktat.  It is part of the largely unspoken compact that all social institutions require if they are to remain vital.  The decay of that allegiance, and, consequently, the decay of institutional legitimacy has been evolving since at least since "the Sixties," understanding that term more as an existential than a chronological marker.  The neo-puritanism of political correctness and other manifestations of "woke" intolerance hastened that process.  And it is a curious contingency that the advent of Donald Trump as a political force stripped the camouflaging veils off the process.

One Way Government.  Whenever the Left consolidates power and creates a new agency, it is immediately staffed with diehard progressive bureaucrats.  In many cases, it is literally required by law that experts be placed in key positions of authority, who are all but guaranteed to be leftwing zealots.  And the vast majority of this staff does not rotate out or get laid off when a Republican administration or legislature comes to power.  Protected by their status as credentialed experts, the ideological foot soldiers of the bureaucracy stay firmly entrenched in the deep state.  That's why things always seem to sprint left when progressives are in charge and at best grind to a halt when the GOP has its turn at the wheel.

The Mafia Tactic that Brought Down CNN.  [Scroll down]  The right thing to do is always what the State is promoting at the current moment, even when radically incompatible with what the State promoted a day earlier.  So one moment, every American is bound to stay home and Save Lives!  The next moment, Americans are not only permitted, but practically obliged to protest in large numbers against Racial Injustice!  Protesting for any other cause, however, rendered one a depraved "freedumb person."  But "freedom" recovers its status as a foundational moral value (and its traditional spelling) in the context of promoting Ukrainian Freedom!  And so it goes.

Deeper in the Coverup, Early 2018 Andrew Weissmann Instructed Everyone on Special Counsel Team to Wipe Their Cell Phones.  In the aftermath of the late summer 2017 Page/Strzok cell phone text messages, which started to identify the DOJ and FBI targeting operation against Donald Trump, the DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) decided he better look at the communications inside the rest of the Mueller-Weissmann team.  Early in 2018 IG Horowitz asked for all of the special counsel cell phones.  Andrew Weissmann knew there would be trouble, the special counsel operation was at a critical juncture so he instructed the team to wipe them clean, quickly.  Eventually records were released in 2020 showing how the Weissmann/Mueller special counsel team "accidentally" wiped 15 iPhones of all data early in 2018 after the phones were requested by the OIG office for review.  Mueller's lead investigator Andrew Weissmann said he "accidentally" wiped two phones himself; through a lengthy process of entering the wrong passcode several times over a period of three hours; removing data to show his activity during the special counsel.

Biden is trampling on separation of powers — courts should rein him in.  Even as a federal appeals court was ruling that the executive branch may not take the place of an independent judiciary, President Joe Biden was trying to rig the game the other way.  He is playing a dangerous anti-democracy game that must be stopped.  On May 18, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Jarkesy v. Securities and Exchange Commission.  George Jarkesy was accused by the SEC of securities fraud, an SEC administrative law judge, not a real judge but a bureaucrat, found him guilty, and the SEC commissioners affirmed the decision.  Jarkesy was never allowed to present his defense in an actual court of law.  The 5th Circuit ruled that this arrangement violated Jarkesy's right to trial by jury, among other constitutional deficiencies in the system.  And the 5th Circuit is right.  In a speech seven years ago this month, former SEC Chairman Christopher Cox cogently and comprehensively explained why the agency's administrative law system is suspect.  Again, this is a former chairman of the SEC who was saying the agency's powers had grown too great.  "We've seen the development of administrative actions that take the place of trials," Cox said.  "These proceedings bear little resemblance to civil courts and their accustomed rules of civil procedure."

Illinois Gas Station Owners Sue Over Having to Post Democrat Propaganda.  Gas prices are high everywhere.  They've risen so much that several states have suspended their gas tax, while others are considering doing so.  And then there's Illinois.  The Democrat-dominated legislature in Illinois is so magnanimous that they're not suspending their gas tax, but they're delaying increasing it until the end of the year. [...] Not only that but the Democrats also required gas stations to post signs that are "clearly visible" — four by eight inches or larger, with a bold font — reading "As of July 1, 2022, the State of Illinois has suspended the inflation adjustment to the motor fuel tax through December 31, 2022."  No big deal, right?  Well, if a station refuses, the owner faces a fine of $500 a day.  And the signs are clearly meant to be propaganda that screams, "LOOK AT WHAT DEMOCRATS ARE DOING FOR YOU PEONS!"

Drain The Swamp.  The bureaucratic mire in DC is full of predatory beasts, noxious insects, and other unseen hazards.  Directives from the White House are apt to be ignored because there is no one translating those directives into marching orders for the lower floors of government-owned buildings.  This leaves the denizens of departments to their own devices, none of whom are the slightest bit concerned with anything beyond the office water cooler. [...] If the Secretary of Department X decides to go full MAGA, little or nothing will actually happen, since most of his underlings frankly don't [care].  They are protected by Civil Service rules and can't be fired short of the next millennium.  In other words, it's hopeless.  Yes, I know, Donald Trump claims to know what he did wrong and will do things differently next time.  It all sounds good, but so do all the claims from every politician.  After all, they're "fighting for you!"  But actually, they're mostly trying to baffle you [...] so you'll vote for them again.

5th Circuit Slaps Down Joe Biden's SEC, Liberals Promptly Lose Their Minds.  "Everything I don't like is a threat to democracy" has become the new slogan of the Democrat Party, and it was put on display again this week after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals slapped down Joe Biden's SEC.  In a ruling that restored constitutional protections and left Democrats screaming bloody murder, the court found that the SEC does not have the power to internally decide to seize assets from those they feel have committed a crime.  [Tweet]  Some might be asking how the SEC ever gained such power in the first place, where an internal, administrative judge can unilaterally steal people's property.  After all, doesn't the Seventh Amendment guarantee the right to a jury trial?

National School Boards Association Admits to Colluding with Biden Administration on 'Domestic Terrorism' Letter.  The National School Boards Association (NSBA) admitted Friday [5/20/2022] to colluding with senior White House officials to develop a letter asking the federal government to investigate concerned parents speaking at school board meetings as "domestic terrorists."  The admission comes after an internal review, which was prompted by significant backlash to the letter that led Attorney General Merrick Garland to sic the FBI on parents and use "counterterrorism tools" to investigate them.

NBC National Security Analyst:  Hey, Everybody, Trump Supporters Are Just Like 'Violent Jihadists'.  The establishment Left seems determined to tar its opponents as "terrorists."  There's the Jan. 6 Committee, which continues to investigate what the Democrats insist was an "insurrection," despite a complete lack of evidence.  There's the repeated claim (that Biden, Garland, and Christopher Wray, among others, have repeated) that "white supremacists," by which is meant "Trump supporters," are the nation's biggest terror threat.  And now a former FBI counterintelligence official has gone the whole way and likened Trump supporters to "violent jihadists."  Frank Figliuzzi is a national security analyst for NBC News, and would seem to have a fine resume for the job, having served as the assistant FBI director for counterintelligence for nearly a year and a half during the Obama administration.  But like so many Obama/Biden appointees, he seems more interested in playing partisan politics and smearing the administration's opposition as terrorists than in assessing actual threats to national security.

Supreme Court's 9-0 flag-flying decision startles, dismays wokesters in Vermont public schools.  National outrage over George Floyd's death was particularly virulent in super-progressive ("woke") Vermont, where schools widely displayed the BLM flag beside the American flag.  Unconcerned that this was a blatantly illegal government endorsement of an overtly partisan organization, proponents donned the "hear no evil from constitutionalists" earmuffs and prided themselves on agitating their neighbors by violating the Constitution.  Many Vermonters have complained publicly that this is obvious abuse by government, but school officials have stonewalled, gaslighted, and suppressed all efforts to assert this axiomatic constitutional truth.  The state's capital city of Montpelier shamelessly painted BLM on the road in front of the Vermont State House and condemned as racist an effort to display "Liberty and Justice For All" beside it.  This is a cohesive, deliberate drive to eliminate basic constitutional guarantees to be replaced with an anti-constitutional ideology:  the BLM flag is elevated as a superior symbol.

'42 National Emergencies': How The WHO And Globalists Are Gaining Control.  [Video clip only.]

Scottsdale parents who discovered secret dossier compiled to silence their speech announce lawsuit.  Three parents in the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) sued the district, former SUSD governing board President Jann-Michael Greenburg, his father and his father's wife over the maintenance of a "dossier" allegedly aimed at intimidating them into silence after they had criticized Greenburg.  The parents — Amanda Wray, Kimberly Stafford, and Edmond Richard — allege in the Marciopa County Superior Court complaint that the Greenburgs and the district conspired "to silence and punish dissenting voices and frighten away other potential speakers who might dare express an opposing point of view."  Greenburg and his father reportedly kept a dossier on 47 parents who dared to speak out against his policies at school board meetings — a dossier complete with Social Security numbers, background checks, a divorce paper, mortgage documents, trade certifications, and screenshots of Facebook posts.  The lawsuit claims that the defendants "misused District resources and what should have been private, protected parent communications to the District to retaliate against Plaintiffs for their protected speech."

The United States Has Committed Numerous Acts of War Against Russia.  The United States has committed numerous Acts of War against Russia this year.  This is not a value judgment.  I make no claim here about whether the United States has acted wisely, or has acted with justification.  I simply note it.  And the world may now be tumbling into an interlocking cycle of escalation beyond control and foreseeable consequences, just as it did in 1914.  That the United States has committed Acts of War in no way justifies Russia's actions; neither is it to say therefore that World War III and nuclear war have become inevitable, though Russian state media are openly speculating about the real risk of these.  Countries often commit Acts of War against other countries, and no war breaks out when the offended party chooses for whatever reason not to respond.  But they can respond, and that is the point here.

Congressman says watchdog found police entered his office for 'criminal' probe, not open door.  Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls says a forthcoming Inspector General report will show he was "under criminal investigation" when Capitol Police officers entered his Capitol Hill office and began taking photos in November 2021.  In February, Nehls publicly disclosed that Capitol Police had told him he was not the subject to an investigation after the Nov. 20 and 22 incidents in which officers entering his office.  Nehls said Friday [5/6/2022] on the John Solomon Reports podcast that a "full report" from the Capitol Police Inspector General's Office on the matter will be released to him next week after having recently received an "executive summary" of the report.  He alleges that on Nov. 20, a Capitol Police officer entered his office without his knowledge and photographed "confidential legislative products protected by the Speech and Debate clause" of the Constitution," purportedly on a whiteboard.

Why is the White House Bragging About Conducting Military Operations in Ukraine to Kill Russians?  Does Joe Biden intend to take the U.S. into a direct war with Russia?  Perhaps because the only historic way out of a deep economic recession is a war or housing starts?  Perhaps, because they need a bigger distraction from the political impact of their own policies?  Those questions need to be asked and answered quickly, because the White House is about to flip the switch from a "proxy war" into an actual hot war between the United States and Russia.  How do we know?  Because the Biden administration is openly bragging about their specific military operations inside Ukraine that are killing Russians.

Intelligence Community Claims Responsibility for Killing Russian Generals Because It Didn't Happen Unless You Know They Did It.  Over the weekend, an intriguing rumor bubbled up from several sources that Russia's top military officer, General Valery Gerasimov, had been wounded in a Ukrainian artillery strike on a Russian command post in the Izium salient west of Kharkiv.  Gerasimov was at a frontline command post because Russian President Vladimir Putin had shaken up the command structure of his invasion of Ukraine and made Gerasimov the field commander.  There have been contradictory reports on whether Gerasimov was wounded or if he was even in the command post during the artillery strike, but Gerasimov has not been seen in public since the reports.

Is the left agitating for war with Russia so it can cement domestic tyranny?  It has been odd and alarming watching the powers-that-be relentlessly escalate the proxy war our government is waging against Russia.  It's not just that we're sending billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, are calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal and issuing other fightin' words, are training Ukrainian troops, and are trying to effect Moscow's economic destruction.  It's also that, senior American officials have now revealed, via intelligence aid, the U.S. has helped to:
  •   kill Moscow's generals,
  •   down a plane carrying Russian soldiers, and
  •   sink one of Putin's warships.
The kicker:  By revealing this publicly — perhaps as strikingly inappropriate as leaking a Supreme Court draft opinion — Biden administration officials appear to be bragging about these "exploits" and rubbing the Russians' noses in them.  If you wanted to provoke a hot war, this is exactly how you'd do it.

Biden's climate advisor threatens airlines they better comply or 'they're gonna be outta here!'.  White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy openly threatened airlines in true "Godfather" fashion on Friday during a forum at Tufts University, warning that they will no longer exist if they don't follow President Joe Biden's Green New Deal-style rules.  "Who woulda thunk that [airlines would] be all in?" McCarthy remarked.  "But they better be or they're gonna be out of here."  The White House is promoting exceedingly unrealistic policies that claim to increase sustainable jet fuel by three billion gallons and reduce aviation emissions by 20 percent by 2030.  McCarthy boasted that the Biden administration will be issuing over 100 new rules this year to regulate appliances.

The CDC Spied on Americans by Purchasing Location Data for Tens of Millions of Phones.  "I always feel like somebody's watching me," sang Rockwell in his catchy '80s hit.  If you feel the same way, you're probably right.  A Vice Motherboard report published Tuesday claims that the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) bought cell phone data for tens of millions of phones owned by Americans to track compliance with COVID lockdown orders and vaccination efforts.  You know things have jumped the shark when a government organization ostensibly set up to control disease resorts to spying on Americans.

Dick Durbin Mocks Americans, While Schumer Threatens the Supreme Court.  The meltdowns of the Democrats were something to behold on Tuesday over the leaked draft opinion, suggesting that the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v. Wade.  But they were also stoking anger against the Court, threatening and trying to intimidate the justices, and undermine another branch of the government.  Never let Democrats ever argue they're "preserving norms" — all they ever are trying to do is preserve their power, and they don't care what they have to do to hold onto that power.

Do We Draw the Line at a US Ministry of Truth?  The whole farce of setting up an all-powerful Department of Disinformation (whose only purpose will be to spread disinformation) would be downright comical if we were given a moment's rest to laugh in between the Biden regime's outrageous daily attacks on what's left of the Constitution.  The First Amendment — right at the top, so no future tyrants could miss it — is obviously meaningless if government censors must first approve acceptable speech.  By far and without equivocation, the most important speech deserving of protection from the treachery of government overreach is that speech which the government decries as disinformation!  The First Amendment isn't there for the protection of cookie recipes and weather reports (although those are protected, too).  It's there to make sure that when officials in the federal government betray their oaths and seize illegitimate power for themselves, there are opposing voices that can beat those usurpers down with words before violence becomes inevitable.

Fauci's worst soundbite of the pandemic.  Ed flagged this earlier but I want to give it more exposure.  It's an amazing insight into how authoritarian the public health bureaucracy has become during the pandemic.  One could dismiss Fauci's reasoning here by saying, "Look, he's a doctor, not a lawyer.  He's not supposed to know the ins-and-outs of how policy is made."  Okay, well, he's been the head of a federal agency for nearly 40 years.  One would hope that he's picked up a passing acquaintance with the niceties of the process during that time.  Besides, you don't need legal training to grasp the problem with the idea that courts shouldn't have power to review the lawfulness of federal policy provided that it's endorsed by scientists.  All you need is a third-grade-level civics education.  If you made it to the day in class where the teacher explained the three branches of government, congratulations, you're equipped to spot the problem here.  [Tweet]

Americans Don't Like Being Told What to Do.  When we say emphatically, "All men are created equal," there is no boilerplate fine print for us down below qualifying, "Except for corrupt politicians, noble leftovers from the days of medieval feudalism, corporate oligarchs, or communist dictators, all of whom are obviously superior to and entitled to rule over the rest of us in perpetuity."  No siree!  We have about as much use for a permanent ruling class as Dr. Fauci has for an introductory ethics textbook — that is to say, none at all!  Ever since COVID-1984 mania was unleashed (intentionally or unintentionally — maybe time will tell) upon the world, the hypnotic drumbeat emanating from the Davos Druids has been steady:  trust the experts.  Obey.  Mandates will set you free.  None in the media dare call it "reprogramming," but that's clearly what it has been.

US congressman reveals seats on committees are 'literally' bought.  In a video that circulated online on Friday, Alabama Representative Mo Brooks told supporters that an entrenched system of corruption prevents Congress from passing legislation that would benefit the average American.  Brooks said that both parties charge their members $1 million and beyond for chairmanships of committees, and that only those taking donations from lobbyists can afford these seats.  "Special interest groups run Washington, and I don't mean that metaphorically.  I mean literally," Brooks told supporters at an event in March, video footage of which was shared on Friday by conservative pundit Lauren Windsor.  [Tweet]  According to Brooks, lawmakers who want to be chairman of a major committee "have to purchase it."  Either the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) or Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) will charge members of Congress a fee to chair a committee for two years.  The fee varies depending on how important the committee is, but bidding for a top-tier chairmanship starts at $1 million, Brooks claimed.

Michigan's AG Refuses to Enforce Laws She Doesn't Like.  In anticipation of a possible U.S. Supreme Court reversal of Roe v.  Wade, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and the state's radical attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel, have launched a pre-emptive two-pronged attack on the existing state law that criminalizes most abortions.  Last Thursday, Whitmer filed a lawsuit demanding judicial recognition of abortion as a protected right under the Michigan constitution.  The same day, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit to block enforcement of the 1931 law, naming Nessel, in her capacity as attorney general, as defendant.  In transparent coordination with Whitmer and Planned Parenthood, Nessel, the same day, announced in an "impromptu" press conference her refusal to defend against Planned Parenthood's lawsuit.  In a move described as "highly unusual," she also said "she will not even set up a conflict wall in her office to defend the case, not unless or until she is ordered by a court."

One Industry Insider Suggests The U.S. Government Plays A HUGE Role In Twitter.  There aren't a lot of new insights I come across where I sit dumbfounded, but this was one of them.  A huge kudos to Sundance over at Conservative Treehouse for shedding some light on the mostly-unknown world of Big Tech.  As bad as Twitter and the entire tech oligarchy is, it would appear that the situation is worse than even imagned.  Shadow banning of conservatives isn't fair — or legal, if Twitter is indeed the new public square — but things are about to really heat up if Sundance's insights and Elon's recent actions prove meaningful.  In short, Musk either intentionally or unintentionally stumbled upon the fact that Twitter's servers might be, or probably are, owned by several world governments and almost assuredly our own.  The next time you consider the fact that the sitting President of the United States was banned, just imagine THOSE ramifications.

If It Feels Like You're Being Manipulated, It's Because You Are.  If you've got a gut feeling that your rulers are working to control your perception of the war in Ukraine, it is safe to trust that feeling.  If you feel like there's been a concerted effort from the most powerful government and media institutions in the western world to manipulate your understanding of what's going on with this war, it's because that's exactly what has been happening.  If you can't recall ever seeing such intense mass media spin about a war before, it's because you haven't.  If you get the distinct impression that this may be the most aggressively perception-managed and psyop-intensive war in human history, it's because it is.  If it looks like Silicon Valley platforms are controlling the content that people see to give them a perspective on this war that is wildly biased in favor of the US narrative, it's because that is indeed the case.

A regime based on fraud and media collusion.  The unmasking of Dr. Anthony Fauci is the straw that I think will break the back of the camel of an evil cabal.  Everyone in the United States was directly and personally affected by the fraud and cover-up that obscured the origins of COVID-19 in the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, imposed unnecessary lockdowns, and denied effective therapies to those infected with the virus.  It brought home to Americans the untrustworthiness of the ruling class and its media servants that have covered up numerous frauds in recent years:
  •   Fast and Furious: [...]
  •   Benghazi: [...]
  •   Pay to Play by Hillary: [...]
  •   The bathroom server: [...]
  •   Comey's presser:  The FBI director indicted Hillary and then said no intent could be shown.  These charges do not require intent [...]
  •   Bill Clinton met on the Phoenix Airport tarmac with A.G. Lynch just before Comey's exoneration of his wife.
  •   Russiagate never was anything other than a domestic disinformation operation run by the CIA with the FBI doing the grunt work.  Comey, Clapper, and Brennan also lied to Congress.  Hillary had to have an excuse for why she lost.  She was a very poor candidate, and Trump ran circles around her. [...]
The election was a full-court press using COVID as an excuse to illegally allow mail-in ballots with no identity verification on ballots to be cast.  Where is Hunter Biden's laptop that was put in the memory hole in the FBI, that the FBI is apparently not doing anything about?  And there's the issue of Ukraine and China with the big guy, Uncle Joe.  And let's not forget that Eric Swalwell and Hunter Biden were both compromised by Chinese honey traps.  How many others are there?

Illinois Dems' Outrageous Strong Arming Of Small Businesses.  Late on Friday night, when most of us were either sound asleep or out kicking off the weekend with some partying, Democrats at the Illinois statehouse in Springfield were busy trying to save their jobs by bullying owners of gas stations.  In the wee hours of Saturday morning, lawmakers in the Land of Lincoln put forth and passed a controversial and probably unconstitutional bill requiring gas stations to post stickers on their gasoline pumps.  The stickers will laud the efforts of the Democrat-controlled legislature by stating the following; [...]

Texas Land Office eyes Big Tech ad buy on public dime as agency head George P. Bush seeks AG nod.  The Texas General Land Office (GLO) is seeking to use taxpayer money to buy Twitter and Facebook ads touting its work just weeks before Land Commissioner George P. Bush squares off in a primary runoff for state attorney general.  The timing raises questions about whether the ad push is politically motivated and meant to boost Bush's campaign for attorney general on the taxpayers' dime.  Last month, the GLO sought to purchase ads on Twitter and Facebook to promote the agency's activities.  According to the notices of intent for the bids, the purpose is for Twitter and Facebook "to provide strategically placed advertisements for the Texas General Land Office on [their] social media platforms.  These advertisements shall focus on the Texas General Land Office's initiatives and missions.  These advertisements will also have a strategic focus on serving the citizens of the State of Texas by promoting the GLO's programs."

Deep State Operatives Are Lying To Americans And The Press About Intelligence Because They Can.  U.S. deep-state operatives are lying about the legitimacy of sensitive national security intelligence to secure political outcomes.  Under President Joe Biden's direction, intelligence officials have begun a declassifying spree that leverages information "even when the confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn't high" to influence foreign and domestic policy.  The Biden administration is using "rarely definitive" intelligence to deal with foreign threats such as Russia and China.  "The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn't rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance," argues an article penned by Ken Dilanian, NBC's intelligence and national security correspondent, and others.

The Constitution Creates a Republic, not a Democracy.  Leading Democrats advocate rule by their President through executive order without resort to Congress.  They favor elimination of the electoral college as "anti-democratic."  They favor adding to the number of justices on the Supreme Court those preferred by Democrats until they dilute the conservative majority and render the Court reflective of the will of Congress and no longer independent.  They support speech codes on college campuses to eliminate dissenting conservative views.  They support cancel culture and Big Tech censorship as a means of ensuring that voices dissenting from their orthodoxies are suppressed.  They support expansion of administrative state regulation to circumvent Congress so that climate change and social engineering initiatives may proceed at the will of the executive branch beyond the extent palatable to the American people.  In short in the struggle between state power and individual liberty, they favor biased application of state power (supporting it in violation of rights whenever they favor the ends, and opposing it whenever they oppose the ends).

The DOJ is a swamp.  [Thread reader]  Under Obama, the DOJ was fundamentally pushed to the left by Attorney General Eric Holder and then by his successor, Loretta Lynch.  Sally Yates rounded out the Obama appointed DOJ leadership.  Holder came up w/process for doling out settlements from the financial crisis to activist groups.  Holder presided over unlawful investigation of certain members of media.  Under Holder's control, DOJ secretly obtained two months of telephone records of AP reporters & editors.  DOJ also monitored the personal email and phone of Fox News reporter James Rosen.  And it was Holder who refused to prosecute anyone in the IRS targeting of 426 conservative groups during the Obama Administration.  The FBI found Hillary Clinton guilty of essentially every act they investigated.  Despite these findings, Comey cleared Clinton by making a statement that "no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case".  This allowed Loretta Lynch at DOJ to announce the matter closed.

A concerned mother who questioned NY Mayor Adams on toddler mask mandate fired from city job.  A few days ago the New York Post reported that a New York City mom, Daniela Jampel, who works for the New York City Law Department was fired from her job mere hours after she questioned Mayor Eric Adams about his decision not to unmask toddlers.  Jampel worked for the law department for years as assistant corporation counsel.  It all began when Jampel attended a press conference in the City Hall building in Lower Manhattan. [...] Jampel did not personally or physically attack the mayor, and neither did she use foul language.  She did not interrupt the Mayor's remarks.  She spoke only when questions were allowed.  Any mother overcome with concern for the wellbeing of their child will understandably be emotional and that Jampel was.  She did not profit in any way owing to her office, she did not misuse or abuse her power, and she did not reveal any confidential information.  All she did is question authority.

How many saw it coming?  The new elites seem incapable of rules-based debating.  They abide with their possessions and positions and influence and power and pass or cheerlead the issuance of executive orders, passage of law after law, and sign or cheer the signing of resolutions and edicts that disregard the voices of the people[.]  The newest platforms and small media outlets may not be enough to overcome the continuing strong hands of the elite keeping more and more voices of ordinary people hushed or silent, intimidated by the potential to be punished if they step out of line.  Many people owe their employment or receipt of subsidies to not stepping out of line and can see the risk of being put at the end of the line.  Many communities have long waiting lists for subsidized housing.  More and more programs claim to help all but cannot or do not.  The left-leaning subsidy administrators seem to thrive on maintaining a critical mass of the left out.  And the left out cannot imagine that their left-out status is a political tool.

Tucker Carlson reports spying allegations in Congress.  Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported that two members of Congress are being "spied on" by the U.S. intelligence apparatus.  The top-rated cable news personality, who accused the National Security Agency of spying on him last year, made the comment during an interview Friday with Utah GOP Rep. Chris Stewart.  The congressman has introduced legislation to better protect U.S. citizens from domestic surveillance activities.  Carlson said he's "spoken directly to two sitting members of Congress" tasked with overseeing the intelligence community, and he heard they "were being spied on by the intel agencies, and they didn't do anything about it."

The New Authoritarians.  The TV production of Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale premiered on April 26, 2017, and was widely touted in liberal media outlets as a "prescient" "mirror" of the country under Trump.  Journalists warned that the United States was on the precipice of becoming a Gilead-like dystopia where human rights would be nonexistent.  Yet based on the domineering COVID-era behavior of the show's own target audience, The Handmaid's Tale appears to have been less of a warning to viewers and more of a handbook.  Forced and coercive medical procedures, adoption of mandatory new garbs, censorship, and frozen bank accounts were central to the totalitarian state depicted in the novel and the show.  In the end, this program found its real-world parallel not in autocratic moves from the right, but in liberal-approved measures like vaccine mandates, mask requirements of dubious medical value, restrictions on speech, and seizure of protesters' financial assets — all of which were vocally supported by the affluent laptop class.

What the Forever Crises Are Really About.  Thomas Hobbes wrote that people are willing to surrender their liberties to government out of fear.  Fear is what compels us to flee to the foot "of the mortal god" that is the state for the promises of protection and security.  Free us from the danger of harm is the impetus of the slow growth of authoritarian government that becomes totalitarian government over the course of time: government's totalizing control over all aspects of our lives.  And what has the century of perpetual crisis revealed?  Precisely this.  If we consent to the government solution in all these crises, we will be free from the danger and harm that threatens our lives.  So we are inundated by the media and the rhetoric of our politicians with the constant threats which rely on a sense of fear to surrender our liberties.  If we do not, then they employ the fear of social and moral shaming:  how dare you not have compassion for your neighbor or grandma!

The COVID Hall of Shame — So Far.  Not long ago, we trusted our doctors to advise us in our best interest.  They took the Hippocratic Oath.  They worked for us, the patients.  No longer.  Most are now employed by large corporations funded by the government and answer to them, or it.  They are beholden to the powers that issue their paychecks and licenses.  Their convictions are not their own.  They told us COVID-19 is fatal, even to children, knowing it is 98% survivable overall, and dangerous in proportion to age and comorbidities.  They touted mask mandates, knowing they were of little or no value.  They supported wholesale shutdown of schools, small businesses, churches, and community activities, well aware the dangers to mental health and economic well-being were great, and the risk small.  They advocated coerced administration of untried and dangerous vaccines that have shown disastrous consequences: blood clots, heart attacks and strokes among the young and healthy, miscarriages, and an unprecedented number of outright deaths.  The ill-effects will multiply in the future.

The Democrats' radical, undemocratic agenda.  For all their talk about protecting democracy, Democrats sure are proving quick to abandon it by sidelining Congress and pushing President Joe Biden to enact a far-left agenda unilaterally through executive action.  Last week, the Congressional Progressive Caucus released "Recommendations for Executive Action," a six-page document outlining policies that left-wing Democrats failed to persuade even a Democratic-controlled Congress to pass.  They now want Biden to use presidential power alone to implement what has been rejected by the representatives of the wider public.  Can there be a more crystalline example of elitism over equality?

Will the real US President please stand up?  Presidential Impersonator Biden does not have the authority either to choose a question or to answer it without a script.  Jen Psaki does have both of those authorities.  So it is obvious that Psaki is above Biden in the non Biden white house administration.  It is equally obvious the Joe Biden is not the true President of the US.  It is apparent, from his many senior moments, that he does not have the intellectual capacity to be the commander in chief of the US armed forces.  If he cannot fend off a question from a journalist, then neither can he repel a military adversary.  This is the most obvious democratic fraud I have seen in my life and nobody treats it as such.  I am not talking about the vote rigging fraud of the 2020 US election.  I am talking about a hidden president who did not get one vote.  The true President of the United States, whoever he or she is, is the most obvious electoral fraud in the history of democracy.

From 15 Days to Two Years.  In March 2020, once-free citizens around the world surrendered their liberty and livelihoods in a futile attempt to "stop" a virus.  The most technologically advanced civilization in the history of mankind quickly adopted medieval fixes that bordered on quackery, sold by snake oil salesmen in the credentialied class and news media, codified through executive fiat by elected leaders of both parties.  "Just 15 days," we were told on March 16, 2020, "to slow the spread."  Do your part to promote the "common good" — the historical rallying cry of every wannabe despot — or be branded a heartless heretic.  And it worked, far better than the original architects probably anticipated.

For Whom the Horns Honk.  [Scroll down]  During the two and a half weeks before our dispersal, there was a campaign of fear to dissuade new arrivals and the broadcast of threats to persuade truckers to leave. [...] A list of 92,000 donors to the convoy was published in which names, email addresses, and postal codes were circulated online and amplified through the state press. [...] Two crowdfunding platforms were sanctioned, withholding millions of dollars, under the terrorist financing rules.  Canada's financial intelligence agency FinTRAC was given new permanent powers in monitoring online donations.  The personal bank accounts of organizers and donors were frozen; some are still unable to access their funds.  A class action lawsuit was filed seeking CAD $306 million in damages.  The Ottawa Police, with the help of a crisis management firm called Navigator Limited, began issuing menacing statements over their Twitter page, citing their ability to use cellphone location services, drone surveillance, and facial recognition software to identify protestors for "months to come" with the guarantee of criminal and financial charges.  Parents were warned about the imminent removal of their children by child protection services.  The police apprehended supporters caught furnishing supplies.  Several organizers were arrested, some released without charge, while others continue to be detained for petty infractions.  Every scare tactic failed.  Most backfired.  It is unlikely that Canadian financial institutions will recover anytime soon — reputationally, anyway — because the de-banking of political activists is a new market risk that had previously never existed.

States sue Biden admin over FBI surveillance of parents protesting school boards.  Thirteen states have signed on to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking Biden administration records on any FBI surveillance of parents protesting school boards.  Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a former member of Congress, has taken the lead in the lawsuit against President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, citing a failure of U.S. officials to honor FOIA requests.  The Indiana attorney general previously demanded all communications and records relating to the FBI's decision to investigate violent threats against local education officials.  "We just want the facts," Rokita told Fox News Digital.

A School District Spied on Parents and Reported Social Media Activity to Their Employers.  Apparently, we have a school district that spied on parents, compiled a dossier of their social media activity, and reported such activity to the employers of these problematic parents.  And by 'problematic', I mean, they were politically conservative.  This little spy game was conducted by Rochester Schools, which is located outside Detroit.  Elena Dinverno, a parent, filed a lawsuit in 2021.  The Center Square has more, but this operation is straight-up insane.  Dinverno alleges that the school district's harassment led to her employment being terminated.

Rochester Schools collect dossier, call employers on critical parents.  Rochester Community School (RCS) officials were sued for compiling a dossier on parents who commented negatively on the school's virtual learning policy.  One official even called a parent's employer, which possibly resulted in the parent's termination.  Parent Elena Dinverno sued the district in 2021, claiming school officials called her place of work in the fall of 2020, and told her employer Dinverno was part of a group threatening the school district.  She was fired in December 2020.  The Detroit News first reported the story.  A lawsuit filed on May 3, 2021, claims Dinverno advocated on two separate Facebook groups to reopen schools in-person:  "RCS Parents for In-Person Education" and "Conservative Parents for Rochester."  Dinverno asked other parents for video testimony of how virtual school was hurting kids.

Wash. Gov. Jay Inslee Won't Give Up Authoritarian COVID Emergency Powers Because ... Trump.  The Governor of Washington refuses to give up the COVID-19 emergency powers he's clung to for two years despite several appeals by Republicans and, lately, Democrats.  And the reason he refuses to relinquish that extraordinary power is that Donald Trump is living rent-free in his mind.  Republicans and others have demanded he give up his emergency powers and resume regular order with old-fashioned checks and balances.  Even though Democrats dominate both houses, Inslee has refused.

Everything Is Fine.  Some Americans may look north and worry, but they should be reassured.  That can and will never happen here... and it isn't even that bad up there.  Order must be maintained, after all.  No one has a right to block the streets or disrupt traffic.  What might have happened had the trucks prevented emergency vehicles from getting to the scene of some crime or accident?  Granted, that didn't happen, but it might have.  Pointing out the fact that the protesters would likely have just moved — one Canadian police chief called them the most cooperative and reasonable protesters he'd ever encountered — well, that's excusing insurrection.  And pointing out the fact that no one raised this concern about BLM is "whataboutism," which is a rightwing trope.  More to the point, BLM and Antifa have every right to block streets (and to stand cheek-by-jowl in the middle of a pandemic when everyone else is in lockdown) because their cause is noble.  As Mitt Romney helpfully explained, when Antifa beats people and burns cities, that is good, because they are fighting Nazis.  Besides, it's hypocritical to be against BLM looting and burning cities but in favor of truckers blocking streets.  What are you, a hypocrite?

The Plague You Should Be Freaking Out About Is Government Abuse Of Power.  For anyone still naïve, stubborn, or fanatical enough to believe the Covid tyranny we've been suffocating under for the past two years is about a virus, let the events unfolding in Canada disabuse you of that illusion.  Invoking the Emergencies Act to freeze bank accounts, conduct mass arrests of peaceful demonstrators and protest organizers, target reporters and photographers, and establish "red zones" and checkpoints, all in response to a mobilized citizenry that is weary of ineffective, illiberal, and discriminatory Covid restrictions — this all smacks of dictatorship, not democracy.  It certainly has nothing to do with public health. [...] Meanwhile, jurisdictions around the world are hastily rolling back Covid edicts, lamely pointing to the usual fake science.  Behind the scenes, governments understand what their counterparts in places like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and France seem determined to ignore: the people are no longer buying their narrative.

Did Justin Trudeau Just Destroy "Social Credit System" Logic?  [I]t seems that both working class as well as high net worth people really do not like the threat of having their money stolen or frozen by government bureaucrats on a political crusade.  Who would have guessed?  So, what to do when what you previously thought was a safe harbor turns out to be plagued by arbitrary and capricious currents?  Get out of there, pronto.

Are Canadian Banks About to be Massively Sued?  Here's a segment from one of Viva Frei's recent livestreams.  Cutting to the chase, a curious question has arisen:  The Emergencies Act never legally came into effect.  It was being debated by the Canadian Senate when Dear Leader revoked it.  So, before the Act ever came into effect, Canadian banks reportedly took it upon themselves to investigate the bank accounts of private Canadians citizens and then eventually freeze some of them.  [Video clip]  Under what legal legislation did employees at these banks do what they did?  Given that the forthcoming Emergencies Act invocation, which they believed was coming into effect, but never did, have they not, in fact, committed egregious illegal actions punishable by severe fines and possibly prison sentences?

We won't soon forget Trudeau's affair with totalitarianism.  What in the world is going on in Canada?  Just last night, P.M. Trudeau revoked the Emergencies Act that he'd been using since last Monday to crack down on protesters.  But the Parliament had approved those "emergency" measures, as we saw in news reports.  ["]The Emergencies Act was approved in parliament by 185 to 151, with the minority Liberal government getting support from left-leaning New Democrats.  The special measures, announced by Trudeau a week ago, have been deemed unnecessary and an abuse of power by some opposition politicians.["]  Am I the only person who thinks it's insane to do something this large on a purely party vote?  Furthermore, the precedent set is dangerous by allowing authorities to declare certain areas as "no-go zones," allowing police to freeze truckers' personal and corporate bank accounts, and compelling tow truck companies to haul away vehicles.  Also, some of the leaders were denied bail.

Leftists Want To Control Your Money So They Can Control You.  Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the suspension of Canadians' rights last week in his invocation of the Emergencies Act to stop the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa and elsewhere. [...] According to news reports, "credit card processors and fund-raising services will be required to report any blockade-related campaigns to Canada's anti-money laundering agency."  Canadian banks quickly fell in line with the decrees, with Toronto-Dominion Bank freezing two personal bank accounts containing C$1.4 million ($1.1 million) they said was intended to support the truckers.  It bears a striking resemblance to the Biden administration's recent efforts to intensely monitor what goes in and out of Americans' bank accounts.  The president's expected announcement this week of an executive order to explore greater regulation of cryptocurrency is likewise an attempt to stick the state's nose ever deeper into the average citizen's business.

Canada's new dictator condemns authoritarianism.  Canada just demonstrated that, in a technologically sophisticated Western country, it's very easy to become a dictator. [...] On Valentine's Day, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, giving himself complete power because truckers were honking their horns in Ottawa.  At his orders, the entire financial system was used punitively against not just the truckers but against anybody who dared to support them — and mind you, this included making donations to the truckers when there was nothing illegal about doing so.  In addition, Trudeau unleashed police on the truckers and their supporters.  The police reacted enthusiastically, beating peaceful people, trampling an old woman under a horse (and laughing about it), and bullying people whenever and wherever they could.  Then, two days ago, despite the police having brutally stopped the truckers' protest, Canada's leftist-controlled Parliament voted to extend Trudeau's unlimited powers.  They voted mindlessly along straight party lines.

The Gathering Storm in the West.  Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week invoked martial law to arrest and financially destroy truckers on the charge that their largely peaceful protests are "dismantling the Canadian economy" that had already been dismantled for two years under some of the most draconian lockdowns in the world.  The trucker "sect," Trudeau added, is guilty of felonious "unacceptable views."  But his rhetoric still cannot square the circle of demonizing vital workers while conceding he cannot run his country without them.  He has invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in the law's 34-year history, even as the highly infectious Omicron variant wanes after spreading natural immunity and yet proving relatively mild in its effects.  Trudeau has neither science nor good governance on his side, especially given how civil the protests have been.  The truckers, who more or less work in solitary cabs, are better informed about the "science" and are themselves mostly vaccinated.  Whether by accident or intent, the truckers have now become iconic of far larger issues.  Their resistance to government vaccination mandates transcends them.

Decorated Canadian Veteran And Pastor:  Trudeau Has Declared War On His Own People.  [Scroll down]  The convoy began when the Canadian government started enforcing vaccine passports on truckers and others at its border with the United States.  "We prayed to hold those who have done bad, who need to repent and take account for wrongdoing, that they be held accountable for their sins and receive the mercy of God," [Harold] Ristau told The Federalist.  "We prayed that there be no injuries, that no one here would have a hateful thought in our hearts, that our hearts would be filled with love."  Ristau noted that before police closed in on the protesters, the demonstration had a sort of market fair attitude, with bouncy castles for children, soup kitchens for the hungry, and organized cleanups of public property.  When there were complaints about the truckers' noise and local disruptions, they stopped making noise after 6 p.m., local news accounts confirm.  He also witnessed that the truckers kept emergency lanes open during their protest to protect locals.  For his peaceful participation in this public assembly, Ristau has faced criticism and threats from fellow pastors, fellow citizens, the government-run Canadian media, and the government itself.  On Feb. 14, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, which he claims allows the Canadian government to seize the children and property of anyone who attended the protest, without a court order or even proceeding.

Bitcoin Companies' Response to Canada's Request to Freeze Protester Accounts Is Pure Gold.  We've seen a lot of troubling civil liberties questions regarding the Freedom Convoy, particularly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act.  Among the most concerning: banning of protests at the whim of the government, conscripted labor — the government telling tow truck workers that they would be forced to work for the government against the Convoy — and even the freezing of bank accounts for the grievous sin of being involved in a protest against government mandates.  As we reported, you even had Trudeau's deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland laughing about seizing accounts.  She is asked not just about the protesters' accounts being seized but about the accounts of the people who donated to the protesters.  She doesn't give a clear answer about whether the donors' accounts would also be affected.

UN Planes In Ontario, North Bay - Shocked Canadians Believe They Carry The "Green Shirt" Officers In Ottawa.  Who would have thought that Canada would ever be a spark plug for a freedom movement against tyranny?  Everything started when Ottawa's police chief was ousted amid criticism of his inaction against the trucker protests that have paralyzed Canada's capital for over two weeks, while the number of blockades maintained by demonstrators at the U.S. border dropped to just one.  The twin developments came a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked Canada's Emergencies Act and threatened to take tough legal and financial measures to end the unrest in Ottawa and beyond by protesters decrying the country's COVID-19 restrictions and Trudeau's government.  Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly lost his job after failing to move decisively against the bumper-to-bumper demonstration by hundreds of truck drivers according to the mainstream media.  Local sources alleged that he just didn't want to follow orders that would require stomping on Canada's democracy!

The Reason for the Police Violence in Ottawa is Not What You Think.  The black clad army of mercenaries and police brutalizing a peaceful protest in Ottawa this weekend has been planned for years.  It is overkill for a reason.  It is theatre.  It is an othering, a willful flagrant statement on the future of the working class everywhere.  It instructs them:  you will die.  If not now, then sometime in the next ten years.  Your towns will be gutted, your jobs will evaporate, you will scramble for pennies until you fall over dead and your children will have nothing to look forward to.  You are Tutsi, you are Jew, you are Kulak, you are compromador, you are Othered.  You are headed for the slagheap of history.  Fight back and you will be deemed domestic terrorists and encamped indefinitely.  This week, Canada's intelligentsia unmasked themselves as fully on side of this demonic enterprise, competing to hate on the truckers.

More Leftist Insanity:  About That Trampling Horse In Ottawa... Don't Worry, The Horse Is OK.  There has been no series of events more indicative of government tyranny in the name of COVID than what we've seen with the protest by truckers in Canada over the past several weeks.  Truck drivers who spend the vast majority of their workdays isolated in their vehicles were mandated to receive the controversial COVID vaccines, and they objected.  Since then, the movement has increased in intensity and participants are no longer limited to merely truckdrivers.  Arrests have been made, livelihoods have been lost, and bank accounts have been seized.  And for what purpose?  To force folks to receive a vaccination that doesn't stop the spread of an endemic virus.  Never mind that government authoritarians in Canada appear to be succeeding in destroying basic human freedoms of their citizens.  Pay no attention to the legitimate concerns folks may have about receiving the vaccine, it's what the government believes that matters.  And forget about the permanent damage that's been inflicted on so many of our neighbors, there are more important things to worry about.  Like whether or not a horse was injured during a police crackdown last week.

Decision to put Pelosi's metal fence back up ahead of Biden SOTU prompts hilarious scrutiny.  U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) announced that fencing will once again be installed around the Capitol building ahead of President Biden's first State of the Union address, leaving many wondering, "who cares?"  The USCP released a statement on Friday describing how they are working closely with "local, state and federal law enforcement agencies" like the United States Secret Service and D.C. National Guard and they "are aware of plans for a series of truck convoys arriving in Washington, DC around the time" of Biden's address.  Though the Friday statement said that a decision had not been made for the "temporary inner-perimeter fence," Fox News confirmed Sunday that it would be installed.  Despite the suggestion that an American trucker convoy is on its way, the question remains if anyone is interested in the speech.

Capitol perimeter fence erected after January 6 riot will be reinstalled ahead of Biden's State of the Union address on March 1.  The fencing that surrounded the Capitol complex for much of 2021 will be reinstalled next week as Congress prepares to host President Joe Biden for his first State of the Union address on March 1.  U.S. Capitol Police are preparing for truckers protesting the mask and vaccine mandates as the 'Freedom Convoy' heads to Washington, D.C. after demonstrating in Canada for weeks and causing major blockades.  The protesters were able to block the Ambassador Bridge border crossing between Windsor and Detroit as they expressed their distaste with COVID-19 mandates related to mask wearing and compulsory vaccinations.

Another Day Another Canadian Jackboot Thug Trampling A Peaceful Protester With His Horse.  Just another day in baby Fidel's Canada.  Watch as this woman, whose only crime is holding a sign, gets run over by a cop on a horse in Ottawa.  Rebel News got a hold of text messages between Ottawa police and they clearly show great joy and enthusiasm towards abusing peaceful protesters.  In the chat, RCMP Musical Ride member, Andrew Nixon sends a picture of a pint of beer hoping for his chance to abuse protesters:  "Don't kick all of them out until next weeks group gets our turn"  [Video clip]

Biden Declares 'National Emergency' Ahead of Freedom Convoy Heading Towards Washington D.C..  Joe Biden is extending the declaration of a Covid "national emergency" ahead of an expected People's Convoy heading towards Washington D.C.  The move echoes beleaguered Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's invocation of the Emergencies Act to carry out a police crackdown on Freedom Convoy protesters under the color of martial law. [...] The declaration of national emergency comes amid Justin Trudeau's brutal authoritarian crackdown on the peaceful Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, the capitol of Canada.  Police in riot gear with no nametag or unit identification violently suppressed the protest, and arrested over a 100 of the protesters.  Canadian Prime Minister has given the greenlight for the Ottawa Police to compile an "enemies list" to target anyone who was standing up for their basic human rights in the Freedom Convoy protests.

Ottawa: The Charge of the Woke Brigade.  There's a reason why heads of state like the Kaiser and Joe Stalin and Mao Zedong — and even Prime Minister Winston Churchill during WWII — like to dress up in military uniforms.  You'll have noticed that male members of the British Royal Family do the same.  It's because.  So think of poor Justin Trudeau, whose only encounter with warpaint is that blackface photo that we've all sneered about.  What if he could send the Canadian cavalry charging into a crowd of rebels and insurrectionists with sabers drawn and sharpened?  Why, then he could really stand with the great and powerful Oz.  Unfortunately, in another proof of God's existence, all that the fierce masked Canadian Flashmen could manage — I assume they wore traditional cavalry mustaches under their masks — was to knock over a little old lady on a mobility scooter — now identified as an indigenous elder.  Oh dear.

Canada really is turning into a police state before our eyes.  One of the hallmarks of liberty is a reliable legal system.  In totalitarian countries, one of the ways you control people is to keep them perpetually off-balance.  The law and its application are utterly unpredictable.  People become paralyzed and dare not do anything that might offend the regime, lest they get destroyed.  And that's what we're seeing in Canada, where the newly dictatorial government is making no pretense of abiding by the rule of law.  A very specific aspect of the rule of law is that new laws are not applied retroactively.  In a free country, one with a safe, reliable legal system, if it was legal for you to buy a croissant on Monday, the fact that the law changed on Tuesday to make croissants illegal does not mean that the police can come and arrest you for that Monday croissant.  In a police state, of course, the police can arrest you at any time for anything, including engaging in conduct that was legal when you engaged in it.

The Gathering Storm in the West.  Canada is now governed by absurdism, and it is symptomatic of an ailing Western elite.  Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week invoked martial law to arrest and financially destroy truckers on the charge that their largely peaceful protests are "dismantling the Canadian economy" that had already been dismantled for two years under some of the most draconian lockdowns in the world.  The trucker "sect," Trudeau added, is guilty of felonious "unacceptable views."  But his rhetoric still cannot square the circle of demonizing vital workers while conceding he cannot run his country without them.  He has invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in the law's 34-year history, even as the highly infectious Omicron variant wanes after spreading natural immunity and yet proving relatively mild in its effects.  Trudeau has neither science nor good governance on his side, especially given how civil the protests have been.  The truckers, who more or less work in solitary cabs, are better informed about the "science" and are themselves mostly vaccinated.

Member of the European Parliament Gives Amazing Speech Against Trudeau and For Freedom.  Justin Trudeau has a highly inflated opinion of himself, without cause.  But he's about to get ripped apart on Monday in the vote on the Emergencies Act, and over the horrible actions of both his government and the actions of police in Ottawa [elsew]here.  The evisceration which is coming will all be richly and justifiably deserved.  Trudeau has falsely attacked and demonized the Freedom Convoy, in much the same way that Joe Biden has demonized the unvaccinated.  Then with triggering of the Emergencies Act, Trudeau has even taken away their ability to peacefully object to his tyrannical mandates, and penalized them for daring to do so by going after their bank accounts.  But someone who comes from a country that knows something about Communist dictatorships, Romanian Member of the European Parliament Cristian Terhes, had a few things to say about Trudeau and his crackdown on the Freedom Convoy.

Ottawa Police Get Grilled About 'Bicycle' They Claimed Was Thrown.  We reported the story about the man and a woman on a mobility scooter, who were run over by the police with their horses in Ottawa.  The police complained about "misinformation" going out about the incident, including people spreading the rumor that the woman had died.  [Video clip]  So, now the police say they're going to "monitor" journalists and media reports.  And decide what is misinformation?  Just a little more fascism there.  But, while media certainly shouldn't be claiming someone died if they haven't confirmed it, you know what else is true?  Police shouldn't be lying about a bicycle being thrown at a horse, suggesting it precipitated the incident.  Or claiming that no protesters had been hurt, particularly after not only the horse incident, but multiple videos came out of them beating people.

Here's More on the Ottawa Freedom Convoy Woman Run Over by Police With Their Horses.  We brought you the story of the woman who was run over by the police on their horses at the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa.  We wanted to update readers on what happened to her because there had been false rumors about her death, and false statements from the police about the incident that it involved someone throwing a bicycle at the horse.  We saw videos — starting from the moment that they approached the crowd to the woman being knocked to the ground — no bicycle was thrown.  As we noted earlier, the police weren't even able to back up that claim when asked by the CBC about it, even as they decried other reports about the incident being "misinformation."  [Video clip]

Crackdown Sparks Even More Massive Protests Across Canada, Crisis for Trudeau.  The protesters in Ottawa are hoping to make it through the weekend until the Senate convenes.  They want to make it to Monday because the Emergencies Act has to be approved by the Parliament within seven days of it being called for, which was on February 14.  So it has to be approved by tomorrow.  They are hoping that the legislators will not approve it, the police will back off, and the Parliament will address their concerns.  There were still hundreds of protesters out Saturday [2/19/2022] in Ottawa, more even than there were earlier when there was a lot of police action against them.  And some of them may even be the people who were "arrested" earlier.  [Tweets]

The Power of the Powerless Is Real.  Does anyone think the perverse and heavy-handed responses by the American government to the January 6 election protesters is a sign of strength? [...] Western governments are terrified of their people today.  They are terrified of what their people believe, or else they wouldn't feel compelled to criminalize thoughts as "hateful."  They are scared to death of what their people might say to each other, or else they wouldn't engage in mass surveillance and blatant censorship.  They are fearful of free and fair elections, or else they wouldn't work so hard to manipulate and undermine them.  And they are absolutely petrified of a future where cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies free their citizens from the consolidated control imposed by central banks and spendthrift treasuries.

Ottawa's Police Chief Makes a Big Tactical Error.  Things are escalating in Ottawa as the Freedom Convoy protesters continue to fight against Canada's draconian COVID-19 measures.  But while the focus started on the message, it is now firmly on the behavior of the Ottawa Police Department.  As RedState has chronicled, numerous videos of mistreatment and violence perpetrated by police on peaceful protesters have emerged.  Perhaps the most stunning example was the trampling of a disabled woman by officers on horseback.  In response, the police lied, claiming a bike had been thrown at the horses.  That was quickly debunked, showing how valuable it is that people are videoing what's happening.  On Saturday [2/19/2022], Ottawa's chief of police gave a press conference where he dutifully played the role authoritarians assigned to him. [...]

When Fascism Comes To America, It Will Look Like Justin Trudeau's Canada.  If Justin Trudeau had merely removed trucks from blocking a bridge in protest of vaccine mandates, it would be no big deal.  Protesters for various causes routinely get removed from blocking traffic.  But that's not all Justin Trudeau did.  He suspended civil liberties in Canada, targeting peaceful protesters and anyone who supports them.  Not because those supporters committed a crime, but because they supported the political opposition to Trudeau's government.  Trudeau ordered all financial institutions to freeze the assets of his political opposition without court order and with full immunity from liability, and no financial asset was spared.  "The names of both individuals and entities as well as crypto wallets have been shared by the RCMP with financial institutions and accounts have been frozen and more accounts will be frozen."

Time for Trudeau to Concede:  The Truckers Have Won.  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has embarrassed himself and his government with his response to the Freedom Convoy, and however it ends now, there's no way for him to save face.  From the start, Trudeau has dismissed the truckers' concerns and tried to discredit them by claiming they're a fringe minority with "unacceptable views."  Yet, a recent poll suggested that 46% of Canadians have some sympathy with the truckers, even if most disapprove of their methods.  That's higher than Trudeau's own approval rating.  Rather than meeting with the truckers or even considering some concession or compromise, Trudeau fled Parliament Hill and dug his heels in.  Protecting himself from a peaceful democratic protest while doubling down on mandates and restrictions paints a fitting image of the virtue signaling that has characterized his COVID-19 response.  Trudeau should have realized that, regardless of whether he meets the protestors' demands before or after they disband (or are disbanded), their demands will be met in the near future.

Video Evidence So We Never Forget What Happened To The Canadian Truckers.  [Threat reader]  Here is a thread of footage of Tyrant Trudeau's crackdown on the peaceful Freedom Convoy in Ottawa today:  [Numerous video clips.]

'Freedom Convoy' Exposes Canada's Hollow Liberal Universalism.  Canada has seen its third week of so-called trucker protests that mostly have centered on downtown Ottawa, adjacent to Parliament.  Last weekend, authorities ended the blocking of traffic on the Ambassador Bridge connecting Ontario and Michigan.  And now Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the government will use the tools of its Emergencies Act to end truckers' "Freedom Convoy," or so it hopes.  This effort involves dragooning private parties to assist the government in removing trucks, seizing property and accounts without a court order, and using state coercion beyond the formal channels of due process.  This entire situation, obviously, is a rapidly moving one and it could turn against the key players, depending on how events emerge.  Canadian lawmakers created the Emergencies Act for truly harrowing situations of national security, and it seems ill-fitting to what is a large and peaceful protest in the streets of Ottawa.

Why are the police we revere doing the tyrants' bidding?  The outrageous mismanagement of COVID as an instrument of population control will go down as the second worst political crime against the American people in U.S. history.  The first is the Hillary Clinton-conceived Russia hoax.  She and her cohorts belong in prison as do Fauci, Collins, Birx, and all those who pushed unsafe, ineffective injections on the millions of people who believed their lies about COVID.  Each of those bureaucrats abused his position of power over the people and has blood on his hands. [...] So how do we explain the fact that in countries around the world, Australia, the U.K., the U.S., France, Belgium, Austria, and Canada, the police, those who were not fired for refusing the vaccine, have taken the opportunity to act like tyranny's handmaidens rather than protectors of the people, their essential charge, the reason they signed up for the job?  In Canada, a few have sided with the truck drivers' cause, but the rest seem to enjoy the opportunity to roust good, law-abiding, non-violent protesters.

Justin Cracks Down.  The blockades by Canadian truckers that had completely shut down the U.S.-Canada border crossing at Detroit have been cleared by reopening the Ambassador Bridge, and as of Friday, Ottawa police have begun moving against truckers occupying central Ottawa.  Despite these actions on the part of the Canadian government, the truckers comprising the "Freedom Convoy" hold their ground in defiance of threats of a police crackdown as they continue to disrupt other trade routes and cities, occupying the country's capital for a third week.  The members of the Freedom Convoy appear unyielding despite days of warnings from police and the government — risking arrest and having their rigs seized and bank accounts frozen.  Unfortunately for the truckers, the government crackdown began early in the week of February 13th, when the Canadian Prime Minister invoked Canada's Emergencies Act, enabling law enforcement agencies to declare the blockades illegal, tow away their trucks, arrest the drivers and suspend their licenses.

Police horses trample demonstrators at Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa.  Turns out the lasting image of the Freedom Convoy protest at Parliament Hill will not be bouncy castles but that of a woman with a walker being trampled by a police horse.  The violence the Prime Minister has expressed concern about during the three-week protest in Ottawa didn't unfold until Justin Trudeau's Emergencies Act police army was sent in to disperse the crowd.  The three major incidents Friday, under a form of martial law, were grotesque.  Video of Toronto Police Mounted Unit officers charging into the crowd and at least one horse trampling multiple people — including an elderly woman with a walker — was disturbing.  [Video clip]

Woman Trampled By Horse in Canada, and Police Have Gall to Say At Least Nobody Died or Was 'Seriously Injured'.  Each new development from what Canada has become as its government tries to stop peaceful demonstrators who are part of the "Freedom Convoy" protesting COVID restrictions is scarier than before.  In this digital age, there's footage to provide proof, too.  This was the case in the instance of a woman being knocked over and trampled by a police horse on Friday night.  The image and video clip below may be upsetting to some and the video clip contains strong language.  Images also show another man having been trampled, who appears to have been trying to help the woman.

Cryptocurrency expert says US should watch what Canadian government is doing to protesters: 'No one is safe'.  A cryptocurrency expert is sounding the alarm on how the Canadian government is freezing the crypto wallets of Freedom Convoy protesters and said that it's something that can "very realistically" happen in the United States.  In an effort to take action against participants of the Freedom Convoy protests in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on Monday, giving the government power to clear protests by towing vehicles and even more direct measures like freezing personal bank accounts.  Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said during a press conference on Thursday that crypto wallets have been frozen.

Trudeau government to start abducting truckers' pets.  Evil has a new face.  It is the face of an entitled pajama boy and wannabe dictator.  It is a face that once was painted black as part of a costume for an "Arabian Nights" party.  It is the face of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.  Trudeau recently invoked the Emergencies Act, the first time it has ever been utilized, to indiscriminately punish the truckers who constitute the Freedom Convoy.  (In 1988, Canada's existing "War Measures Act" was repealed and replaced by the Emergencies Act, which was to be invoked only during similar security emergencies.)  The act will allow Trudeau to direct that truckers be arrested, their trucks seized, and their bank accounts frozen... all without a warrant.  If a protester is detained for more than eight days, that person's dog or other pet could be taken from him.  The same fate could befall those individuals who could no longer care for their pets because they had their bank accounts frozen due to the Trudeau government's tyrannical and unconstitutional actions.

California Prosecutors Attempt To Ban Exculpatory Evidence From Pro-Life Journalist's Criminal Trial.  California prosecutors in the upcoming criminal trial of David Daleiden, who could face jail time for recording conversations with Planned Parenthood employees about baby body part trafficking, filed a pretrial motion requesting specific evidence be barred from the trial.  Friday afternoon, Daleiden and his legal team filed a response to that motion, arguing that prosecutors are attempting to ban exculpatory evidence that proves his undercover videos were indeed legal.  Attorney General Rob Bonta's office is prosecuting Daleiden as if the charges against him include violating National Abortion Federation (NAF) policies when he recorded conversations at their convention.  Daleiden's counsel argues that NAF's policies and procedures are irrelevant because he was seeking evidence of criminal activity, in accordance with California law.

Watch As Trudeau's Jack Boot Thugs Beat A Freedom Convoy Protester With The Butt Of A Rifle.  A disturbing video shared on social media shows a protester behind a police line repeatedly being smashed with an officer's rifle.  Convoy organizer Benjamin Dichter also told the Toronto Sun "one of drivers had his truck windows smashed by Ottawa Police (with) guns drawn and (he was) dragged out of his vehicle by force."  [Video clip]

Cowardly Canadian Police Target Senior Citizens to Arrest in Freedom Convoy Protests.  As if these police listening to their wannabe dictator can't look anymore pathetic, watch as they throw down senior citizens, including war vets, into the snow while arresting peaceful protesters.  This is tyranny.  This is what life in communist nations look like.  [Video clip]

Canada Goes Tyrannical.  This week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the lightweight, unpopular elected leader of a country with a 93% vaccination rate for those over 60 and a total vaccination rate of 84%, announced that he would invoke the Emergencies Act in order to crack down on the Freedom Convoy — a group of protesters opposed to government vaccination mandates for truckers.  Trudeau breathily announced that invocation of the law was in fact "reasonable and proportionate."  His public safety minister, Marco Mendicino, said that the actions were required thanks to "intimidation, harassment, and expressions of hate."  Why the government would need to invoke emergency powers in order to move some trucks remains beyond understanding; after all, the police had just removed trucks from the Ambassador Bridge, reopening that trade artery with the United States.  Meanwhile, provinces across Canada have already begun alleviating their COVID-19 restrictions, from vaccine passports to masking.

Seven of Canada's 10 provinces now oppose Trudeau's Emergencies Act declaration.  Seven Canadian provinces now oppose an Emergencies Act declaration made Monday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who claims it is needed to stop the peaceful Freedom Convoy protesters in Ottawa.  The Premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec were the first to oppose the extreme measures made by Trudeau.  Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said Monday that his government does "not support the Trudeau government invoking the Emergencies Act."  Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said Monday that he told "Prime Minister Trudeau that Alberta's Government is opposed to the invocation of the federal Emergencies Act."  Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson said Trudeau's declaration of the Emergencies Act was an "unnecessary" thing to do.

'A new low!' Ottawa police reamed for warning dissenters what will happen to their pets.  Ottawa, Ontario, authorities, who already have warned peaceful, anti-COVID-mandate Freedom Convoy protesters to leave the downtown area or face severe penalties, appear to be threatening to hold the dissidents' dogs hostage and then schedule them for a fast-track adoption.  Or maybe something worse. [...] For supporters of anti-mandate demonstrations, which includes many truckers and others who are fully COVID vaccinated, these developments suggest that authoritarian regimes have vitiated police-community relations in the context of civil liberties during the pandemic era.  Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and various European cities are unfortunate examples.

Doxing Day in Canada.  This week, one of the most popular small-donor fundraising sites for the Canadian truckers protesting the COVID vaccine mandates, GiveSendGo, was hacked.  The names of donors were shared with the public.  We know about this mostly because erstwhile news organizations, such as Reuters, have showered attention on the breach as if they were providing a public service.  Indeed, many of the same outlets that refused to report specifics about the Hunter Biden email scoop in 2020 (though the story was obtained in a completely ethical journalistic manner) or share specifics from the Democratic National Committee email hacks in 2016 (illegally obtained, but with high news value) have no compunction highlighting a site that takes aim at ordinary people who have done nothing but engage in political dissent.  In Canada, the doxing has already begun.

Canada Police to Send Names of Trucker Protesters to Financial Institutions.  Canadian banks will receive the names of people involved in "Freedom Convoy" protests that have descended on the nation's capital, a first step in a promised financial crackdown on demonstrators being instituted by the far-left government of Justin Trudeau.  Bloomberg reports the Canadian Bankers Association confirmed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has alerted banks to a list of names and made it available.  The institutions are reportedly still seeking clarity from law enforcement on how to handle the alleged protesters' accounts, according to people familiar with the matter.  But Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said some accounts have already been frozen, the news outlet reported.

Canadian Martial Law:  Trudeau Redux.  [Scroll down]  It's rich that the ethically challenged Justin Trudeau has warned the truckers and their supporters that they were breaking the law and would be punished accordingly.  Early on he asked the army to clear the convoy out but at least for now they have refused to do so.  Of course, they were breaking the law, a law based on emergency powers that had particularly been promulgated to target, control and punish them.  So too had Gandhi and his followers been breaking the law when they went to the sea to make salt.  So too had the legendary freedom riders of the American civil rights movement broken the law when they refused to sit in the back of the bus and insisted on being served at lunch counters.  That's what civil disobedience is all about, breaking unjust Jim Crow type laws, but breaking them in a non-violent, peaceful manner.  As it turns out, recent polls show that the truckers have more support among Canadians than does Trudeau's Liberal Party.

Trudeau Dreams Of Being A Dictator On Camera — This Is The Last Video Trudeau Wants You To See After He Invoked The Emergencies Act.  Justin Trudeau (who is definitely not Fidel Castro's son!) cannot explain the legal basis for invoking the Emergencies Act, but he's got his finance minister out there announcing that banks can freeze your account without a court order anyway if you donate to the truckers.  After Trudeau authorized the Canadian government's use of the Emergencies Act, giving the government much broader powers to deal with anti-vaccine mandate protests in his country, it might be useful to recall that in 2013, asked what country he most admired besides Canada, he selected communist China, even while admitting they had a "basic dictatorship."

Trudeau Authorizes Bank Accounts Frozen for Social Media Posts in Support of Freedom Protests.  The triggering of an official invocation of the Canadian Emergency Measures Act to eliminate protests is stunning.  Using the Emergency Act to target individual citizens in Canada, and their bank accounts, is yet again another level of astonishing. [...] I am carefully reviewing the details of the authorization because according to the public statements by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, they have authorized banks, financial institutions and insurance carriers to suspend the accounts of Canadian citizens based on their social media postings.

Canada Begins Using Military and Armored Police Cars against Seniors to Stop them from Peacefully Protesting for Freedom.  The Canadian government controlled by leftists are doing all they can to stop the peaceful protests from happening.  The same government that allowed BLM to destroy cities across the country due to something that happened in a completely different country is suddenly concerned about protests.  Look as military members and heavily armed police using military vehicles roll in and arrest senior citizens who dared to help the protesters.  [Video clip]

Trudeau Goes Nuclear:  Invokes Never-Before-Used Emergencies Act to Crush Freedom Convoy.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in an unprecedented action, announced on Monday [2/14/2022] that he is invoking the never-before-used Emergencies Act to try and put a stop to the Freedom Convoys that have shut down traffic — and much of the commerce — in Canada.  The truckers, protesting vaccine mandates, have clogged roads, leading to chaos on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.  Among other actions, the Canadian government will freeze the assets of truck owners participating in the protests and suspend their insurance policies.  In addition, the prime minister said that, under the Emergencies Act, the government will have the power to "compel" tow-truck drivers to remove rigs blocking roads, which sounds an awful lot like forced labor, i.e. slavery. [...] The protests were prompted by a requirement that all truckers be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, or quarantine for 14 days, after crossing into Canada from the U.S.

Pelosi's Watergate.  There has been much written lately about the similarity of Watergate and Special Counsel John Durham's revelations about the Clinton campaign and others spying on Donald Trump, both as a candidate and a sitting president.  There is also the entry into the offices of Rep. Troy Nehls by the Capitol Police.  They are under the control of Nancy Pelosi, of whom Rep. Nehls has been critical regarding her so-called J-6 investigation.  The Capitol Police allegedly entered the congressman's office without his knowledge or permission and photographed sensitive documents.  They then allegedly returned a few days later dressed as construction workers and began grilling a staffer about the contents of the illegally photographed documents.  This, of course, rivals Watergate, but it may also open the door for a means of bringing these Gestapo tactics before the public where they belong.  The actions of the Capitol Police may well have violated the rights protected under the provisions of 42 U.S.C. §1983.  It is also conceivable that the civil provisions of the RICO Act could have been triggered.

1984 is Somewhat Here, The Left Has Just Cleverly Disguised Government Control as Private Actors.  Conservatives have sat in paralysis for a good part of the past 25 years now not knowing how to address the left's radical transformation of society that is canceling conservatives and forcing the left's rules on everyone.  Amazon bans our books and only a few people who are ridiculed compare it to George Orwell's 1984.  It's because we think the takeover is being done by private corporations and actors in a free society, so we don't know how to react.  Most of us aren't ready to call it communism or socialism; it doesn't seem to violate the Constitution.  The reality is, while on the surface the new situation may appear to involve private actors, the truth is much more sinister.  And it's been done deliberately this way, in order to sneak it past the scrutiny of half of society that believes in a free society and the Constitution.  We're basically being ruled by a hybrid oligarchy of government and large corporations.

The ruling elites of the western nations are now heading for political suicide.  They seized upon the unknown consequences of the new and fast-spreading Wuhan virus for political gain.  They used it to exceed their constitutional powers — locked down their citizens and demanded compliance with various vaccine mandates and treatment protocols and then clung on to those powers long after the deleterious effect of those mandates exceeded the virus's harm.  Never, to my knowledge, has any country before this quarantined the healthy along with the sick.  Never.  (And I remind you that while locking down the young, the robust, and the otherwise healthy New Yorkers, Governor Andrew Cuomo went so far as to quarantine the stricken with the healthy but most vulnerable elderly — the result was thousands of deaths of oldsters otherwise far less likely to have become infected.)  Never to my knowledge has the public health establishment so ruined its own credibility.  Doubt me?  Look to our own country for a prime and early example:  The CDC endorsing lockdowns while cheering on the BLM protests.

The Surveillance and Political Spying Operations Highlighted by John Durham are the Tip of the Iceberg.  Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; instead, what they did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons only targeted one side of the political continuum.  Together they recalibrated the domestic surveillance capabilities, the internal spying systems, so that only their political opposition would be targeted.  This point is where many people understandably get confused.  In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.  What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system.

The Great International Convoy Fiasco.  [Scroll down]  Now that the "Freedom Convoy" is inspiring similar protests not just in the United States but in France, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, and other places, it's clear every Western leader from Biden to Emmanuel Macron on down wants Trudeau, rather than any of them, to take the political hit that would ensue from any use-of-force resolution to this crisis.  All of these leaders seem equally to be laboring under the delusion that a decisive enough [defeat] in the Great White North will make this all go away.  Until then, there seems to be no plan in any country that doesn't involve tear gas, truncheons, or getting Facebook to blame troll farms in Bangladesh for stirring up the "discord":  [Video clip]

French Riot Police Resort to Gas Attacks, Smashing Windows and Random Beatings of 'Freedom Convoy' Protesters.  Here is a 5 minute compilation Vidmax has put together in order to show France riot police acting like Hitler's goons, the crime you ask?  They dare hold a freedom convoy that is protesting the vaccine mandates as tyrannical overreach of government.  The Macron governments response to that?  Act like Communist China and brutally crackdown on the protesters so they become more irate against the riot police.  [Video clip]

Oligarchy's Response to the Freedom Convoy Bodes Ill for Them.  As I write, Canadian police, many dressed in military garb and supported by armored vehicles and snipers(!), are moving in to enforce several court orders and demands of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and others that the "Freedom Convoy" of Canadian truckers stop blocking the Ambassador Bridge, the major artery between the United States and Canada, and disperse.  Some of the protestors are leaving while many others are standing their ground.  Will the heavy hand of the state succeed in crushing the protest?  In the short term, perhaps. [...] But impotence comes in long-term and short-term varieties.  Long-term, I think [Tucker] Carlson is right.  Officialdom's response to the Freedom Convey is a desperate effort to put the genie of liberty back in the bottle.  Ultimately, it will not work.  But on the way to that failure there will be plenty of opportunities for the coercive power of the state to manifest itself.

We Are All Truckers Now.  As momentum from the Freedom Convoy in Canada mounts and works its way into the US, and similar convoys spring up in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, people are collectively standing up to two years of COVID restrictions, lies, misery, and abuse at the hands of our government masters.  And we owe it all to Canada's truckers. [...] And what's the reaction of the officials both in Canada and the US?  To pressure GoFundMe to cancel the $10 million raised for the Freedom Convoy; freeze out truckers and their children by having police remove their fuel cans in sub-freezing weather; arrest an old man for honking his horn; and starve out truckers and their families by threatening to arrest people who bring them food and drink.  Meanwhile, the Biden administration and Pete Buttigieg plot to find alternate routes around bridges facing long delays because of the truck convoy and the state of Michigan brandishes the possibility of forcibly removing the big rigs and their supporters from the Ambassador Bridge.

They're Coming For You.  You Know That, Right?  [Scroll down]  But the Democrats' destructive war on the country isn't simply limited to COVID.  Last month they tried to take over the way we conduct elections from the states while threatening some of their own party who wouldn't go along.  George Soros-funded Democrat district attorneys refuse to prosecute theft and violence in major American cities.  Homicides are through the roof.  Retail and auto theft is through the roof.  Homeless, drug-addicted zombies lay waste to city streets.  Worse, the Democrats who run these cities have gone to war with and called to defund and strip authority from the police officers that remain the single thin, blue line between anarchy and their residents.  Joe Biden's Department of Justice has conspired to frame Americans for wild, politically motivated schemes.  They currently hold many in federal custody without formal charges related to undefined law breaking on January 6th, 2021.  Two Republican members of Congress have accused the DOJ of going through their constituent mail and interrogating their staff.  They've threatened to deploy resources to school board meetings to keep an eye on parents who get too uppity.  Democrats want a peek into your bank accounts if you have $600 bucks or more.

Is This Proof Capitol Police Lied About Why They Entered Rep. Nehls's Office?  Earlier this week, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger released a statement in response to a complaint from Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), who says the USCP illegally entered his office, took photos, and later interrogated his staff.  According to Manger, "The weekend before Thanksgiving, one of our vigilant officers spotted the Congressman's door was wide open."  As such, Manger said it is the responsibility of the USCP to document the incident and secure the office.  There's just one problem with this explanation:  [Video clip]  As the video above makes clear, the door to Nehls' congressional office suite has an automatic closer on it.  Is it possible the door was propped open by Nehl or his staff?  This is unlikely, as the sign on the door states it is not for public use, but for the member and his staff only.

The United States Government Is "Desperate to Hide the Truth".  How are Americans going to respond when Washington D.C, the Fourth Branch of the security and surveillance state, and all the institutions of the United States government, officially declare that Donald John Trump will not be permitted to run for office? If you have not thought about that question, we had better hurry up and get that conversation front and center.  It's about to happen, and President Trump knows it.

Inspector General Opens Investigation Into U.S. Capitol Police Following Allegations Of Spying On Members Of Congress, Staff.  The inspector general for the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) has opened a formal investigation into whether the law enforcement agency tasked with securing the Capitol has been inappropriately surveilling elected members of Congress, their staff, and visitors to their offices, The Federalist has learned.  The opening of the investigation follows news reports and accusations from lawmakers that USCP has overstepped its bounds as it tries to recover from the January 6 riots that tarnished both the Capitol and the reputation of the law enforcement agency that was supposed to keep it safe.  USCP Chief J. Thomas Manger confirmed the opening of the inspector general investigation in his response to congressional inquiries about USCP police tactics, reported in a January 24 article published by Politico, including surveilling and compiling intelligence dossiers on members of Congress, their staff, and visitors.

Capitol Police Issue an Unbelievable Statement After Accusations of Spying on Congress.  We have previously reported on the troubling stories of the Capitol Police surveilling Republican members of Congress, their staff, and even people with whom they are meeting.  Republicans are now calling on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Chairwoman on House Administration Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) to investigate, noting that this raises serious constitutional concerns. [...] Now, unfortunately, asking Pelosi to look into this is probably not the best idea, because not only can't you believe anything she says, but one has to ask why the Capitol Police were doing this, to begin with — and who might be behind it.  The Capitol Police didn't deny it, they just tried to justify it in a statement as necessary for security reasons.  "The more public information we have, the better we can understand what kind and how much security is necessary," the statement said.  Uh, yeah, no.  None of what they are allegedly doing sounds justifiable by trying to ensure security.

Fuming GOP rep accuses Capitol Police of 'illegally' investigating his office, says staffer 'caught them in the act'.  Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) claimed Tuesday [2/8/2022] that the United States Capitol Police "illegally" entered his office twice during Thanksgiving week while conducting an alleged investigation and one of his staffers caught them in the act.  While the officers were there they reportedly photographed sensitive legislative items according to The Daily Caller.  Nehl characterized the entries as "illegally" executed and unconstitutional.  "Upon discovering a member of my staff, special agents dressed like construction workers began to question him as to the contents of a photograph taken illegally two days earlier," he asserted, adding that Capitol Police "never informed myself or senior-level staff of their investigation."

Fed Scandal Bigger Than Watergate?  Fed Chair Powell — who is supposed to serve in the public interest and avoid even the appearance of conflicts — traded millions in personal stocks and bonds while obstructing required public disclosures about those trades for years.  Yet, the information that has slipped out is [bad].  It shows Powell made trades during the restricted blackout period for pivotal Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings.  This is a shocking revelation and constitutes grave and inexcusable misconduct by a high-ranking U.S. government official.  Moreover, Powell directed policy decisions that directly advantaged his personal bond holdings despite longstanding federal conflicts of interest law, 18 U.S.C. § 208.  And then he apparently told a brazen lie about it to the press by suggesting the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) said his holdings posed no conflict.  FOIA requests confirm that OGE provided no such guidance in writing.

Capitol Police Surveillance Operation Is Really a Full-Blown Spy Operation.  In January, we discussed how the Capitol Police were going to do background checks on certain visitors who visited Congress.  It's the post-January 6 regime.  Is it spying?  They claim that they will only use public information.  The punchline was that they likened these reviews to journalists doing background research.  They may not call it spying, but almost everyone will feel like their privacy has been violated.  It's meant to chill constituents meeting with their elected leaders.  Period.  Now, we find out that this little operation may go way beyond just a simple social media review.  GOP Congressman Troy Nehls (R-TX) had a lengthy Twitter thread about how his office was illegally spied on by the Capitol Police.  They accessed his office when Congress was in recess last year and took photographs of confidential legislative documents illegally.  Days later, Capitol Police officers dressed as construction workers tried to enter his office again but were caught by a member of his staff.  Neither Congressman Nehls nor his senior staff was informed that they were the subjects of an investigation.

Capitol Police Caught Spying in Republican Congressional Office, Investigation Launched.  In late January, news broke of multiple instances of the Capitol Police appearing to spy on Republican congressional members.  Those actions followed the rank politicization of the force that took place after January 6th, including the expansion of its intelligence-gathering mission in areas that are, at best, questionable. [...] While vetting of contacts is not necessarily nefarious, it is supposed to be done out in the open and in conjunction with lawmakers.  Instead, the Capitol Police have instituted a system that remains in shadows, conveniently only seeming to target Republicans.  Another disturbing example of that has emerged via The Federalist, this time involving Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX).  According to a police report filed by a USCP officer, Nehls' office was entered without permission and his work materials were photographed because they appeared "suspicious."

Inspector General Opens Investigation Into U.S. Capitol Police Following Allegations Of Spying On Members Of Congress, Staff.  The inspector general for the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) has opened a formal investigation into whether the law enforcement agency tasked with securing the Capitol has been inappropriately surveilling elected members of Congress, their staff, and visitors to their offices, The Federalist has learned.  The opening of the investigation follows news reports and accusations from lawmakers that USCP has overstepped its bounds as it tries to recover from the January 6 riots that tarnished both the Capitol and the reputation of the law enforcement agency that was supposed to keep it safe.  USCP Chief J. Thomas Manger confirmed the opening of the inspector general investigation in his response to congressional inquiries about USCP police tactics, reported in a January 24 article published by Politico, including surveilling and compiling intelligence dossiers on members of Congress, their staff, and visitors.

Pelosi's Capitol Cops Tried to Sneak Into GOP Congressman's Office Dressed as Construction Workers, Illegally Took Photos of Legislative Documents.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Capitol Police are alleged to have illegally entered the office of Congressman Troy Nehls (R-TX), photographing confidential legislative products and grilling staff, according to reports.  The police — now under formal investigation — stand accused of dressing up as construction workers and attempting another entry just two days later.  The stunning, Watergate-style scandal comes after almost a year of warnings that Speaker Pelosi and Democrats in Congress were politicizing the Capitol Police, using them as a Stasi-style enforcement unit against GOP opponents.  Reports suggest Capitol Police have built intelligence dossiers on those illegally investigated.  The documents photographed, says Nehls, are "protected by the Speech and Debate clause enshrined in the Constitution, Article 1 Section 6".

Justin goes Castro on Canada's truck protestors.  For a while there, the far-left Canadian government contented itself with deplatforming and defunding the striking Canadian truckers who are in Ottawa protesting the country's vaccine mandate.  That didn't work, so now they've gotten worse. [...] Peaceful protests?  Freedom of assembly?  Canada must have some version of these but not with this kind of talk.  Someone taking sides here?  It calls to mind that the bulk of the strike is centered in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, and Canada's prime minister has disappeared, supposedly after a diagnosis of COVID, (a disease which didn't seem to pay much attention to his triple-vaxxing), but has put out hateful dispatches insulting the overwhelmingly peaceful protestors bringing their petitions to the capital as "fringe" and "extremist" and unrepresentative of Canada.

Bannon Accuses the Feds of Snooping on One of His Lawyers in Explosive Court Filing.  Former Breitbart head and Trump advisor Steve Bannon is under investigation by the feds and it looks like his already unenviable situation might be even worse than it looks on its face.  Now, according to a recently filed court document, the very feds that are charging him are also attacking his ability to defend himself by snooping on one of his lawyers.  That document, a motion to compel discovery on the issue of whether his lawyer is, in fact, being spied upon by the government includes numerous shocking claims, which, if true, shine a light on just how far Team Brandon will go to attack political dissidents.

Do You Trust the U.S. Government?  o you trust the U.S. government?  I don't recommend it.  Consider what John Kirby, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said a couple of days ago at a press briefing.  "We believe," Kirby said, that Russia is planning to stage a fake attack by Ukrainian military or intelligence forces against Russian sovereign territory, or against Russian speaking people," in order to justify an invasion of Ukraine.  Kirby had lots of details:  "We believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video, which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment, at the hands of Ukraine or the West." [...] Should we be worried?  Yes.  But not necessarily for the reasons that Kirby and his puppet masters want you to be worried.  The United States is sending troops and arms to aid Ukraine, so of course there needs to be an emergency to justify that action.  John Kirby just outlined a scary scenario.  But inquiring minds want to know:  What's his evidence for this dramatic claim?  That was the burden of the remarkable exchange between State Department spokesman (and former CIA operative) Ned Price and veteran AP reporter Matt Lee.

Victory for Freedom in Some Areas in Canada, but Ottawa Official Has Ominous Words for Truckers.  [Scroll down]  Unfortunately, Justin Trudeau is not one of those with common sense, and some of the officials in Ottawa are — in a word — insane.  The Ottawa city council police board met today.  The chair of the board, Diane Deans, was completely out to lunch, calling it a "threat to democracy" and "nationwide insurrection."  She said it "must end," and she wanted more police force brought to bear, which would not end well.

Is the Coronavirus the Greatest Crime Against Humanity?  China hid the outbreak of Covid-19 from the world for months. [...] Possibly as a reward for their efforts to conceal the true origin of SARS-CoV-2, the scientists who shaped the "natural origins" narrative received over $50 million in NIAD funding in 2020 - 2021.  Remarkably, one of the scientists had told the group of scientists who participated in Fauci's teleconference, "I just can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature."  He recently admitted that he had been advised not to mention the possibility of a lab origin.  As we enter the third year of the pandemic, a cover-up seems more and more certain.  It is entirely plausible that American taxpayers ended up funding a dangerous gain-of-function project in conjunction with the CCP. In the words of Reiner Füllmich, founder of the German Corona Investigative Committee that's suing the CDC, WHO and the World Economic Forum for violating the Nuremberg Code, the corona scandal is "the greatest crime against humanity ever committed."

Justin Trudeau Shows How Manipulative and Pathetic the Global Elites Are.  When thousands of truckers drove toward Ottawa in protest against the vaccine mandates, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described them as "the small fringe minority" holding "unacceptable views."  As the movement gained momentum and the truckers were joined and cheered on by scores of their compatriots objecting to Canada's regime of Covid oppression, Trudeau implied that they were racists and Nazis.  This he added on top of his earlier characterization of those who object to his policies as misogynists, science deniers, purveyors of misinformation, and conspiracy theorists.  By doing this he followed the standard line of the woke elites when dealing with those who do not want to go along with their dehumanizing and exploitative agendas.  Rather than meeting the other side in rational discussion, they simply hurl insults that are void of any substance.  "Racist," "Nazi," "conspiracy theorist," and "misogynist" are their slurs of choice.  It does not matter to them that such characterizations are baseless.  Their wanton abuse of language and truth shows just how pathetic and detached from reality the elitists really are.

Quebec City Canada Officially Proclaims, The Peasants are Revolting.  It really does seem like something out of a modern-day Monty Python skit.  Officials in the city of Quebec City, Canada were fearful the pesky unwashed peasants might make their way to the parliament buildings, so they blocked the passages and sent guards to ensure no one could traverse the ramparts.  Good grief, if the politicians only had a drawbridge, you could be sure they would have pulled it up to keep the peasants away and survive the siege.  In an effort to retain their tenuous grip on power, Canadian officials have become a modern parody of medieval times.

Symbols of Shame.  [Scroll down]  What our government and the sycophantic corporations are asking of us is not only dangerous but totally silly.  It's not like we don't know that these drastic measures do nothing to combat the disease.  It's not like this is still an emergency; emergencies are sudden, require instant, often uninformed decisions.  But it's been two years.  There has never been a two-year emergency — a two-year recovery period, sure, but the predicament is, should be, short-lived and any government worthy of being called a government shouldn't take this long to figure things out.  It's time we called foul on this one.

From 1984 to 2022.  [Scroll down]  In 2022, embattled Americans are beginning to understand the parallels.  America's liberty and prosperity have drawn immigrants from around the world.  When liberty and prosperity were thriving as never before, Governor Andrew Cuomo countered that America was "never that great," but for the political class there was more to it.  From the start, they contend, America was nothing more than a bastion of racist oppression, founded to preserve and expand slavery.  Like the Party's take on capitalism, America had never produced anything of value.  So down came the statues, inscriptions and "anything that might throw light on the past."  As in 1984, America's founding documents are pure crimethink.  Teacher unions now force feed this propaganda in the schools and when parents object, the Department of Justice calls them domestic terrorists.  The January 6 protesters are held without bail and without trial.  Embattled Americans now face shortages of basic goods, surging energy prices, and rampant inflation.

This Is Not America, Part II.  A little more than a year ago, about nine months into the pandemic, we expressed concern about what had become of our country.  Had it become a nation of elitists vs. the rest?  A culture that had given up on itself?  A land of censorship?  A nation in which policies and political orientation are not merely matters of disagreement but causes of internal and irreconcilable turmoil? [...] The pandemic turned out to be the ideal opportunity for the authoritarians and smug self-appointed superiors among us to continue to split us apart, accrue more power unto themselves, marginalize dissenters, force compliance with a narrative of the deranged, crack down on speech, and use fear as a means of control.  No longer does the U.S. reflect the founders' vision of a nation of free people.  It more closely resembles a junior high school, where status is craved, and the unpopular kids are bullied and cast aside.

The Greatest Government Failure in American History.  The tally for how much the federal government spent to combat COVID-19 is now estimated to be $5 trillion.  It is more than the combined costs of World Wars I and II.  The left is celebrating that politicians in Washington saved us.  Really?  From what exactly?  Two years later, it is time for an honest assessment.  Could things have worsened for the country if the government had spent nothing and done nothing?  What would have happened if we had not shut down our businesses?  Our churches, schools and restaurants.  Our parks, basketball courts and playgrounds.  Would the public have made worse decisions regarding protecting its health and the health of its families and its employees than the politicians have made?

Meet the Capitol Police's New Spy Chief.  When most Americans hear the term "Capitol Police," they likely conjure visions of uniformed officers manning metal detectors at the numerous congressional buildings or helping tourists navigate the sprawling Capitol grounds:  a D.C. version of a mall cop.  That imagery, however, is in stark contrast to reality as Democrats have weaponized yet another federal agency to target their political enemies on the Right.  After January 6, 2021, Capitol Police officials announced plans to expand beyond the legislatively authorized purview of the agency and open offices in Florida and California, as well as in other states.  Congress overwhelmingly supported a bill last year to fork over $2.1 billion in new funding to the Capitol Police.  Now flush with cash and immune from any serious public oversight, the agency is returning the favor by spying on dissidents of the Biden regime.  According to Politico, Capitol Police investigators are preparing secret dossiers on lawmakers, congressional staff, donors, and even constituents who visit their representatives in public or in private.

Department of Homeland Security Warns That Domestic Terrorists With Hammers and Power Saws Are Plotting to Destroy the Power Grid.  [The] Department of Homeland Security is a joke.  It exists solely as a jobs program for paranoids specializing in manufacturing [specious] threats while ignoring real ones. [...] According to the FBI toad, domestic violent extremists have two things in common.  They are driven by racial hate... and they are Donald Trump supporters.  These alerts exist for one purpose.  They create a patina of proof for the fear-and-smear campaign the Biden junta is carrying out on its domestic opponents.  Relentlessly tying real people and real patriots who are concerned about the erosion of civil liberties under the illegal and unnecessary Wuhan virus regulations to potential terrorist acts is not only dishonest, it sets a predicate for treating them like terrorists and incarcerating them for long periods of time without any real intention of trying them for a crime... sort of like the January 6 political prisoners.

Congress's 1/6 Committee Claims Absolute Power as it Investigates Citizens With No Judicial Limits.  In its ongoing attempt to investigate and gather information about private U.S. citizens, the Congressional 1/6 Committee is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy.  Indeed, lawyers for the committee have been explicitly arguing that nothing proscribes or limits their authority to obtain data regarding whichever citizens they target and, even more radically, that the checks imposed on the FBI (such as the requirement to obtain judicial authorization for secret subpoenas) do not apply to the committee.  As we have previously reported and as civil liberties groups have warned, there are serious constitutional doubts about the existence of the committee itself.  Under the Constitution and McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases interpreting it, the power to investigate crimes lies with the executive branch, supervised by the judiciary, and not with Congress.  Congress does have the power to conduct investigations, but that power is limited to two narrow categories:  1) when doing so is designed to assist in its law-making duties (e.g., directing executives of oil companies to testify when considering new environmental laws) and 2) in order to exert oversight over the executive branch.  What Congress is barred from doing, as two McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases ruled, is exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens. [...] This abuse of power is not merely abstract.  The Congressional 1/6 Committee has been secretly obtaining private information about American citizens en masse:  telephone records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking transactions.  And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards:  no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any kind.

My Time in the Tank.  With Paul Manafort's explosive new book, Political Prisoner, we finally have a full and honest detailed account of how the U.S. government, the not-so-special Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and particularly the FBI treated anyone and everyone connected to Donald Trump.  The plain truth is they were after him — and would stop at nothing in their quest of subversion.  I would know, because I, too, was in their sights.  Detained at Boston's Logan Airport, the FBI grilled me about the 2016 campaign, specific persons involved, Wikileaks, Roger Stone, Nigel Farage, and Russia.  It was evident that while they had a very thick file on me, and two warrants to confiscate my iPhone and laptop — which meant they had been surveilling me for some time — they knew I knew nothing of real value.  This was an act of intimidation of a patriotic U.S. citizen, one with a former Top Secret and Codeword security clearance, who had held senior positions in the government and served informally and without payment on the Trump presidential election campaign.

Second Democrat, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Arrested within a Day for Speaking Out Against Joe Biden's Failures.  Two Democrats have been arrested within a day of speaking out against wannabe Dictator Joe Biden.  This time black NY Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman.  Bownman was one of the dozen or so leftists Democrats who are staging a hunger strike outfront of the White House against Joe Biden after Biden once again failed to get a bill Democrats need to pass to steal elections indefinitely.  [Video clip]

FBI raid jeopardizes Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar's reelection bid.  House Republicans are spying a surprise opportunity to flip another Democratic-held district after the Laredo, Texas, home and campaign office of Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar were raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Wednesday.  Cuellar, 66, a centrist and frequent target of Republicans and the Left, has been impossible to dislodge since winning a seat in Congress in 2004. But Cuellar could be unexpectedly vulnerable beginning March 1, when he stands for renomination against a liberal challenger in the Democratic primary — or this fall, against a Republican, if it turns out the congressman is the target of a federal investigation and the inquiry extends deep into the election year.

Prominent Democrat, Publicly Critical of Joe Biden Border Policy, Gets a Visit from FBI Jackboots.  The political motives behind this FBI effort are, yet again, brutally transparent.  The FBI are for Joe Biden what the Russian FSB is for Vladimir Putin.  That's what they are.  That's all they are.  That's what they do.  How many dozens of examples does it take before people realize the FBI are criminal enforcers targeting any voices who rise in opposition to the DC system?  Seriously, when is enough, enough?  This should be a bipartisan issue.  Democrat Representative Henry Cuellar represents Texas' 28th Congressional District, which extends to the U.S.- Mexico border, and has been in Congress since 2005.  Cuellar has been very public and very critical of how Joe Biden has collapsed the U.S-Mexico border enforcement.  Suddenly, Cuellar becomes the target of the FBI.

The FBI goes after a Democrat who opposes Biden's border policies.  Ask any Democrat or other leftist whether the FBI was corrupt under J. Edgar Hoover and he or she will eagerly agree.  Hoover, an ardent Republican, not only used the agency to capture genuine criminals, but he also turned it into a spy agency tracking anyone he thought might be a communist.  Now, though, it appears that the FBI, with help from the DOJ, is going Hoover one better, and using all the old powers plus modern technology to investigate and arrest people who fail to support the Biden administration.  The FBI's latest target is Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat, who spoke out against Biden's illegal acts erasing America's southern border.  It's likely that most Americans, and especially most conservative Americans, had no idea who Henry Cuellar was before Biden entered the White House.  However, things changed when Biden issued a series of orders that effectively erased the southern border.

Biden's FBI Gestapo Raid the Home of a Fellow Democrat Days After he Turned on Biden's Border Policies.  More than two dozen FBI agents descended on Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar's Laredo, Texas home on Wednesday, just a day after he spoke out against Biden's border policy failures. [...] Democrats are quickly realizing that fellow Democrats care less about them once they're in power and will do absolutely anything to ensure they stay subservient, even if it means having the FBI raid your house to keep you quiet.  [Video clip]

The authoritarians must be stopped.  Since time immemorial, The Left has been about one thing and one thing only: power.  To wit:  does anybody truly believe those that want to ostracize the unvaccinated, tax them, fine them, take away their livelihoods, and confine them to "camps" really wish to do so out of concern for the unvaccinated?  Or for anybody — or anything — else but their own power?  Is this why people in need of life-saving organ transplants are being sent away if they haven't acquiesced to the jab?  Is this why those that so loudly profess deep concern for their fellow man so often make comments about those with whom they disagree like, "let them die?"  Democrats and "progressives," and authoritarians of all stripes, have imposed their will on the rest of us for two years now, in the form of mask and vaccine mandates.  At times they have told us we can't go to work or leave our homes, have our family over for Christmas, attend church, go to weddings, visit dying relatives, or even allow more than a handful of people to grieve with us at their funerals.

After COVID, Never Again.  Two years ago, how many people would have predicted that tennis's number one ranked player would be banned from competing in Australia and France for refusing to allow their governments to decide what is injected into his body?  How many people would have predicted the construction of internment camps to house citizens who similarly refuse to comply?  How many would have predicted that national leaders of "democratic" countries would demand censorship of dissenting points of view?  How many would have predicted that tech and media companies would eagerly jump at those calls for censorship by actively deleting from the public square any voices contrary to the official narratives sanctioned by those in power?  Whatever threat to human health the China Virus poses, it has been dwarfed by the threats to peace, stability, and freedom caused by two years of government tyranny run amok. [...] All of this leads to a [condemnatory] question:  why have so few people with power stood up during these last two years to call out this COVID-1984 madness for what it is — the greatest and most organized attack on human freedom in nearly a century?

Covid: A Collision of Historical and Scientific Illiteracy.  [Scroll down]  How has the public's willful ignorance been established so easily?  The Covid crimes were carefully practiced beforehand through a series of exercises conducted by governments and corporations since 9/11.  And the operation builds upon elements utilized in all the previous government crimes against humanity.  Here are three primary components.
  [#1]   As has been demonstrated through all of history, the most effective way to dumb down a population is through fear.  Communism, terrorism, WMDs, virus... it all works the same way.  This basic feature of the Covid scare is one of many features and outcomes that it shares with previous psychological operations.
  [#2]   Censorship is another hallmark of authoritarian tyranny and we are seeing it raised to a new level in the media today.  Any doctor or scientist who has spoken out about the obvious lack of scientific scrutiny applied to the Covid scare has been blocked on social media and ignored or smeared on television, radio, and in print.
  [#3]   In America the most useful tool driving willful ignorance has been the narrative behind the phony 2-party system in politics.  The Covid scare works in part because many Americans are easily controlled through the farcical theater of "right-left" identity politics.  Today if you want "the left" to take a position, all that is needed is to frame it as opposition to Trump.  Control of "the right" is just as easy.  This works despite the fact that we are ruled by an oligarchy that does the same things no matter who is in office.

Judge fines cancer patient, 72, for overgrown lawn: 'I'd give jail time if I could'.  A hardline judge has fined and ridiculed a 72-year-old Michigan man with lymphoma, ruling that he "should be ashamed" of being too weak to mow his overgrown lawn.  Burhan Chowdhury of Hamtramck, a community about six miles north of Detroit, admittedly fell behind in yard maintenance after he was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph nodes in 2019.  His overgrown property prompted local officials to subpoena Chowdhury.  In now-viral footage of the Zoom court hearing on Jan. 10, Chowdhury's breathing appeared labored as Judge Alexis G. Krot of the 31st District Court berated him.  "You should be ashamed of yourself," says Krot, in a video shared Jan. 12 on social media, and viewed more than 37,500 times as of Thursday morning.  "If I could give you jail time on this, I would."

The FBI's Broken Relationship with Us.  All large organizations suffer from the occasional presence of bad actors.  The FBI is no exception.  But it managed to retain a good relationship with the public in spite of its flaws, because it was still solving rather than creating crimes.  But something fundamentally changed in the last five years. [...] This would have been the thinking of lunatic conspiracy theorists just a few years ago.  With the targeting of protesting parents and Trump-supporters we've seen in recent years, it is entirely plausible.  The FBI will cease being the "plumbers" (the nickname for Nixon's henchmen) for the Democrats and become the enemy of both parties.  Then either it or America will die.  A free people cannot coexist with a secret police force, using investigations for purposes other than law enforcement.  The contest will be epic.

Wrongly Imprisoned Real Estate Broker Demands Investigation of Ohio Prosecutors.  The Obama administration targeted sole proprietors and small businesses in the real estate industry after the crash of 2008, while letting the big banks off the hook with bailouts.  One of most horrific cases involved Republican real estate broker Tony Viola, who served nine and a half years in prison as a juicy target of Ohio Democratic prosecutor Dan Kasaris.  He was convicted of supposedly tricking banks into offering mortgages with no money down.  But in reality, the banks were knowingly offering those loans — evidence the prosecution withheld from him.  Viola only got out of prison due to an employee of the prosecution, Dawn Pasela, becoming so disgusted with the suppression of evidence showing the banks weren't tricked and other corruption such as missing computers full of evidence that she changed sides, helping Viola conduct a successful appeal pro se from prison.

The Federal Government Has Become Pablo Escobar.  In reflecting upon the crises collectivists and globalists have unleashed on civilization, Brandon Smith over at Alt-Market asks an important question:  "Is there a way to prevent psychopaths from getting into positions of power?"  He rightly sees free societies as being under sustained attack by a collection of narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths who have effectively taken over government and today conspire for "mutual gain" at the expense of those governed, "much like a pack of wolves" hunting and tearing apart their prey.  He sagely notes that our current situation is ironic because the construction of democratic institutions over the last three centuries was intended, among other things, to liberate populations living under daily threats of death and turmoil brought by the rule of royal dynasties genetically predisposed to psychopathy and self-grandeur.  Democratic institutions, in contrast, were supposed to provide strong mechanisms for "weed[ing] out aberrant individuals" through transparent elections.  Looking around today at who runs for office and holds power, though, it would seem that having an "aberrant" personality is more of a requirement than a disqualification.

The real insurrection began on Jan. 5 ... 2017.  Merriam-Webster defines "insurrection" as "an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government."  This being so, the one real insurrection within anyone's memory was hatched on Jan. 5, 2017.  The conspirators met in the White House on that day to plot a quiet coup against President-elect Donald Trump.  Presiding was President Barack Obama.  Joining him was his national security team including all the usual suspects: the FBI's Jim Comey, the CIA's John Brennan, Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Acting Attorney General Sally Yates.  Following the meeting, Obama asked Yates and Comey to stick around along with Rice, his trusted scribe and factotum.  Obama had a reason for singling out Comey and Yates.  Unlike the others, they were staying on in their jobs.

The FTC's rebellion against the judiciary.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) must be held accountable for its open defiance of the Supreme Court's directives.  For decades, the FTC relied on a statute authorizing "permanent injunctions" to obtain monetary fines.  That always seemed strange.  After all, neighboring sections of the law allow the commission to seek limited monetary penalties, while injunctions normally only prevent future action and do not entail an award of any damages.  Yet "disgorgement" awards — the return payment of supposedly illegal gains — became so pervasive that in 2019, for example, courts ordered that $723.2 million be paid to the government in such awards.  The Supreme Court seemingly put that practice to an end in April, in AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC, when it unanimously held that the statute never allowed the "Commission to seek, and a court to award, equitable monetary relief such as restitution or disgorgement."  Disgorgement was just an illegal power grab.

Pastor Artur Pawlowski and his Brother Dawid [have been] Arrested after Peaceful Protest.  Artur Pawlowski, the Pastor of the Cave of Adullam Church in Calgary, Alberta, Canada was swarmed by police and arrested in May 2021 after holding an "illegal" church service on that Saturday.  You may remember Pawlowski was the brave Canadian Christian Pastor who shouted down police officers who interrupted his church service during Holy Week.

Pentagon Issues Guidelines to Crack Down on Domestic and Patriotic "Extremism" Within Military Ranks.  As our nation's greatest enemies build their military might and actively threaten to launch attacks, US Military and Defense leaders are focusing on the important things — mainly, purging the ranks of all dissenters and pushing the Left's radical ideology.  On Monday [12/20/2021], as over 28,000 world-class men and women await their dishonorable discharge for refusing to take the experimental vaccine, the Pentagon issued detailed new guidelines that prohibit service members from engaging in a wide range of activities, citing concerns of increased "domestic violent extremism" within the military over the past few months.

Tapper Calls Out Pelosi's Opposition to Making Congress More Ethical.  Subverting the expectations of some of his critics and going back to how he used to do things, CNN's Jake Tapper spent over eight minutes on Thursday's edition of The Lead going after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for her opposition to measures that would make Congress more ethical and crackdown on insider trading.  He even brought on the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub to take her to task.  Immediately after returning from a commercial break, Tapper announced it was time for a "conflict of interest watch."  He then likely made her fan base unhappy by warning that "Ethics experts" were "sounding the alarm today after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not support a ban on members of Congress and their spouses from trading stocks while in office."  Chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju joined him and noted the Business Insider investigation that found "found that 49 Members of Congress and 182 senior-level congressional staffers" were in direct violation of the 2012 STOCK Act that was passed in an attempt to keep insider trading from occurring.

America Is Much More than Its Government.  An honest politician, as if any existed, would tell you politicians are in the business of creating problems where none exists, so that they can solve them, declare victory, and parade around as heroes.  While they are fast to proclaim poverty, their vocation is entirely about pecuniary gain.  They engage in the kind of insider trading and quid pro quo that would send anybody else in America straight to prison.  Many of them enter office with lint in their pockets, and many retire as millionaires.  Taxpayers, in effect, pay criminals to represent their interests, and to nobody's surprise, the criminals fleece the taxpayers silly and drop new problems at their doorsteps along the way.  It's all grift and gripe for personal glory.

The Rule of Law Has Been Replaced by One Set of Rules for the Left and Another for the Right.  One of the founding ideals of the United States was that the same system of laws would apply to everyone equally.  Two people convicted of the same or similar offense, all things being equal, should receive approximately the same punishment.  It doesn't always work that way; wealth and fame do have a way of making crimes, like murder, go away, but those instances are anomalies.  Over the last four years, though, things have started to come unglued.  The courts willingly cooperated with the obscene persecution of Michael Flynn.  Department of Justice functionary Andrew Weissmann was able to weaponize the judicial apparatus to carry out his personal vendetta against Paul Manafort and President Trump.  Since the summer of 2020, though, it has become blatantly obvious that we have a two-tiered justice system in this country, and your personal politics determines how the courts treat you.

Nancy Pelosi defends members of Congress trading stocks after report said 49 have violated conflict of interest law.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to face blowback for her comments defending lawmakers who trade in stocks even while having access to potentially market-moving information.  'We are a free-market economy.  They should be able to participate in that,' Pelosi responded Wednesday when asked whether Members of Congress and their spouses should be banned from trading individual stocks.  She was responding to questions about a Business Insider report on dozens of lawmakers who have failed to meet requirements of the STOCK Act by failing turn in timely reports on their asset sales and purchases.

Why Nancy Pelosi is wrong about lawmakers trading in stocks.  A few days back, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that lawmakers should not be prevented from trading stocks.  "We are a free market economy.  They should be able to participate in that," Pelosi said.  Her remarks are probably owing to the fact that Pelosi's husband holds stocks and options worth tens of millions of dollars. [...] Pelosi insisted that she had no involvement or prior knowledge of her husband's stock investments.  She also stated that she had no stock on her name.  However, the fact that Pelosi's husband made millions from various big tech firms that she is supposed to regulate, at the very least is a huge conflict of interest.  But Pelosi is not the only one.  Back in April, a study by the Campaign Legal Center discovered that both Republican and Democratic lawmakers bought and sold stocks hundreds of times throughout the coronavirus pandemic.  Many lawmakers had invested in industries whose importance and relevance were elevated owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.  They also sold their stocks from the hospitality industry, restaurants, and other sectors that were adversely affected by the pandemic.

Pelosi On Why Congress Should Be Allowed To Trade Stock After Dozens Broke Law:  We 'Should Be Able To'.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed off questions on Wednesday about why Members of Congress should be allowed to trade stock when a recent report found that dozens allegedly broke insider trading laws.  "Madam Speaker, Insider just completed a five-month investigation finding that 49 Members of Congress and 182 senior Congressional staffers have violated the STOCK Act, the insider trading law," a reporter said.  "I'm wondering if you have any reaction to that." [...] "Why shouldn't they be banned?" the reporter asked.  "Because this is a free market and people — we are a free market economy," Pelosi responded.  "They should be able to participate in that."  Pelosi's husband, investor Paul Pelosi, reportedly trades large volumes of stocks on a regular basis, according to Business Insider.  Pelosi has a net worth of nearly $50 million, according to a separate report from Business Insider.

Congress and top Capitol Hill staff have violated the STOCK Act hundreds of times.  But the consequences are minimal.  Congress has a spotty and inconsistent method for collecting fines from members and top staffers who break a federal law designed to stop insider trading and conflicts of interest, an Insider investigation found.  Insider's investigation of financial disclosures found that 49 members of Congress and at least 182 of the highest-paid Capitol Hill staffers were late in filing their stock trades during 2020 and 2021.  Lawmakers and senior congressional staffers who blow past the deadlines established by the 2012 Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act are supposed to pay a late fee of $200 the first time.  Increasingly higher fines follow if they continue to be late — potentially costing tens of thousands of dollars in extreme cases.  But accountability and transparency are decidedly lacking.

Do Not Doubt Me.  [Scroll down]  So remember:  if you heard it from the head of one of our Deep State alphabet bureaucracies it is most likely not true.  The primary reason these agencies exist anymore is to propagate the Left's Big Lies. e.g.
  •   CDC: COVID
  •   DOJ: January 6 Insurrection
  •   FBI: Russian Collusion
  •   FEMA: Climate Change
  •   IRS: Targeting Political Enemies
The Left will remain in perpetual crisis mode not just because it's good for the Legacy Media's bottom line but because its the truest, shortest path to power and control.

The Account That Posted The Viral Patriot Front Video Yesterday Was Fake Created Days Ago.  This viral video of the Patriot Front marchers from the now-suspended "@SherylLewellen" account, which was created just days ago, had over 1 million views!  [Video clip]  Now, if you saw this video earlier on Twitter, the account might have looked a little different.  And that's because the profile photo used to be of an attractive blonde woman whose bio claimed she was a digital/print journo with a love of avocados:  [Tweets]

"Patriot Front" FEDS Dressed As A "Radical White Supremacy" Group March On Washington DC — Police Helps Them To Get Into Their U-Hauls And Illegally Drive Away.  Raws Alerts, "a fast and accurate nonprofit news outlet" with 31,000 followers, is reporting that a group of 150 to 200 people calling themselves the Patriot Front are currently marching on the National Mall on their way to the US Capitol.  [Tweet with video clip]  A group of alleged white supremacists stormed through downtown Washington, D.C. on Saturday evening, bearing American flags and mildly menacing plastic shields while marching to the beat of a snare drum down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  But after chanting aggressively about their plans to "reclaim America," their intended show of force stalled spectacularly when they lost their ride.  While the group had marched through the city with threatening chants about their plan to "reclaim America," by the end of the night it was not even clear how they intended to reclaim their U-Haul. [...] However more videos surfaced and people accused the alleged hate group of being full of undercover federal agents:  [More tweets]  Watch DC Police direct traffic around a Uhaul so that definitely not Feds the "Patriot Front" can load 30 deep and then totally-not-illegally drive away.  Apparently, this happened with multiple U-Hauls.

A 'Right-Wing' Group Marches on the Capitol — and Leaves a Lot of Questions.  Last night, videos began to circulate of a largely unheard of "right-wing" group called the "Patriot Front" marching in costume toward the US Capitol Building.  Reports put their numbers at around 100-200 people. [...] The entire thing was just weird.  Typically, when these white supremacist groups demonstrate, they make a big deal about it, advertise it, etc. because the entire point is to put eyes on their grotesque ideology.  They also don't typically hide their identities.  In this case, a group of masked individuals show up to march with fake shields and then quickly retreat to box trucks?  It's actually illegal to ride in the back of a truck like that in DC.  Why didn't the USCP give out tickets?  Or arrest anyone?

The Editor says...
This is the worst kind of astroturf.

Domestic Travel Ban for Unvaccinated 'Not Off the Table' Says Psaki.  Even though Biden suspended his vaccine mandate for federal workers to save himself a few approval points, he's nevertheless looking for alternative ways to "force" people to get vaccinated, and a domestic travel ban is one such possibility. [...] However, like his vaccine mandate, a ban on domestic travel is also unconstitutional, as it is guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment.  Unfortunately, the Biden administration doesn't even consider the Constitution as a guideline, let alone a set of rules.

Consequences Needed for Rittenhouse Prosecutors.  Prosecutors, especially those with political ambitions, will latch on to socially popular issues such as fear of witches in the seventeenth century or sex crimes and racially-charged controversies today.  [Examples omitted for brevity.]  If they can do this to Rittenhouse, the Amiraults, Grant Snowden, the Duke Lacrosse players, and countless others, then they can do it to you and me.  This is why there needs to be social consequences for prosecutorial overreach even if the overreach does not violate the ABA's Rules of Professional Conduct.

How Judicial Misbehavior Skates in America.  We have a serious problem within the federal Judiciary in how it protects itself from malfeasance issues when people file judicial misconduct complaints against judges.  The Judicial Conduct and Disability Act allows "[a]ny person alleging that a judge has engaged in conduct prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts" to file a complaint against the judge.  And then when a complaint is filed, everything simply goes out the window in terms of transparency and accountability — and yes, even the ultimate goal of justice, due to built-in rules designed to muzzle the public and prevent an actual meaningful proceeding.  First, there is a law dictating that with a few exceptions, all papers, documents, and records of proceedings relating to judicial misconduct complaints shall be confidential and shall not be disclosed by any person in any proceeding.  In other words, when a person has information about judicial corruption done by a federal judge, once that person files a complaint against that judge, that person cannot make any public statements about the judicial malfeasance.

Lawsuits challenge agency courts that issue ruinous fines, flout separation of powers.  an the U.S. compel a business to pay more than half a million dollars in fines just because a government agency says so?  A lawsuit on behalf of a New Jersey family farm aims to whittle down the powers of administrative courts, whose judges are employed by federal agencies and answer to their leaders, and force the feds to prove their case "in a real court."  Joe and Russell Marino lost five years of challenges before Labor Department employees who acted as "prosecutor, judge and jury," according to the Institute for Justice (IJ), which is representing the brothers and their Sun Valley Orchards.  Trial and appellate administrative law judges (ALJs) upheld $550,000 in fines, most of that based on a "single paperwork violation."  Just $10,000 concerned "actual working conditions," mostly from workers driving farm vehicles without U.S. driver's licenses, IJ said.  The agency classified $200,000 as a penalty and $350,000 as "back wages" that are not actually owed to employees but largely stem from the farm's failure to disclose its "meal plan" on its H-2A visa program application in 2015, when it first sought migrant workers.

Alan Dershowitz's stark warning:  Justice system becoming infected by critical race theory.  lan Dershowitz, the famed law scholar and appellate lawyer, has a stark warning for judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers:  America's justice system is being corrupted by identity politics and critical race theory.  In an interview with Just the News, Dershowitz deplored the growing trend in recent criminal cases toward political agendas supplanting the neutral consideration of evidence and law that has been the lifeblood of U.S. jurisprudence for more than two centuries.  "It's becoming much more responsive, unfortunately, to critical race theory, basically, everything's about race," Dershowitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast in an interview aired this week.  "Everything's about race or politics.["]

California School Presses Kidnapping, Burglary Charges Against a Mom Who Legally Signed Her Child Out of School.  Brittany Sheehan escaped an abusive relationship and played by the rules regarding custody of her daughter and for protection against domestic violence and abuse.  For that, she's being rewarded with criminal charges for kidnapping and burglary after signing her daughter out of school.

Onward Into Darkness.  [Scroll down]  Next was the FBI's invasion of Project Veritas chief James O'Keefe's home in a case involving "Joe Biden's" daughter Ashley Biden's personal diary, which Project Veritas was alleged to be holding, and which supposedly contained some entries about sketchy father-and-daughter showers together.  Bad optics for a floundering president already suspected of being a bit free with his touch, shall we say, around the little ones (not to mention the florid pornographic exploits self-documented by son Hunter).  Instead of defending Mr. O'Keefe's first amendment rights, the legacy news media piled on him as "not a real journalist."  More to the point, though, within hours of the FBI confiscating Mr. O'Keefe's cell phones and other devices, Mr. O'Keefe's private communications with his attorneys turned up in the hands of The New York Times, which published some of the material.  Of course, James O'Keefe is in the middle of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.  And wasn't it a fortuitous coincidence that the newspaper came into possession of their adversary's privileged information?  The thing is (of course), that the info could have only been provided to The Times by one possible source:  the FBI, investigative arm of the DOJ.  Days later, Judge Analisa Torres from the Southern District of New York ordered the FBI to stop extracting data from the phones — as if they hadn't already downloaded every last shred and made a zillion copies.  Where is the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz?  Where is the DOJ's ethics office?  Why has the leaker not been outed and arraigned?

Police arrest two moms opposing mask mandates at Georgia school board meeting.  Two mothers who oppose school mask mandates and the teaching of Critical Race Theory to children have been arrested by police at a school board meeting after one failed to wear a mask and the other was found in possession of a pair of scissors.  The arrests took place Thursday [11/18/2021] at the Gwinnett County Public Schools district headquarters near Atlanta, Georgia, as the two moms were passing through a security checkpoint with metal detectors.

Americans are enduring a Biden reign of terror.  Prisoners with no criminal history are being held without bail or due process in the D.C. jail where they are regularly abused by guards.  Parents who show up at school board meetings to address their concerns about COVID mandates or the CRT curriculum are being tagged as domestic terrorists.  Moms who have become active in election integrity campaigns have had their front doors broken down with battering rams by an FBI SWAT team, their homes searched, their electronics confiscated, all without an explanation or civil attempt to contact their legal representation.  Journalist James O'Keefe of Project Veritas had his home raided by the FBI, his home searched for hours, his personal property confiscated and leaked to the NYT.  Many people who were merely present at the January 6 rally in DC have endured police state tactics.

School Board Calls Police Over Lawyer's Maskless Lollipop Eating.  The Lodi School District official who asked police to respond to an orderly school board meeting earlier this month said police presence would make a board member "feel better."  "We would like to have a Lodi officer up at the district office," Maureen Palmer, administrative assistant to District Administrator Vince Breunig says in a 911 call November 8 to the Columbia County Sheriff's Department.  The audio was obtained by Empower Wisconsin.  "He does not have to come lights and sirens, we just want to have him present at our board meeting the way it's going," Palmer says.  "Is it becoming disorderly?  Do you feel like it might?" the dispatcher asks.  It wasn't, but district officials felt like it could, according to Palmer.  "We would just like his presence here, just come and be present for a while," Palmer added.

How Did Ordinary American People Become Domestic Terrorists in The Eyes of The Deep State.  Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act.  Instead, what Obama and Holder did was to take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum. [...] What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system.  This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.  Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01.  DHS came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed.  When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.

Rand Paul Urges Whistleblowers to Expose Biden Administration Abuses of Civil Liberties.  Sen. Rand Paul sharply criticized the "politicized" FBI and the Department of Justice, calling for more whistleblowers to expose government trampling of American liberties.  "I think anytime someone is breaking the law in government, it's a good idea to hear about it," the Kentucky Republican said in a Thursday interview with The Daily Signal.  "And so, frankly, yes, I think it is a good idea for people to reveal when the government's breaking the rules."  Paul's remarks follow news that the head of the FBI's Criminal and Counterterrorism divisions reportedly ordered agents Oct. 20 to identify threats against school board members and teachers with a "threat tag" — although Attorney General Merrick Garland told lawmakers the next day that the FBI was not using counterintelligence tools to target parents.

The Rittenhouse trial:  Our corporate media and big tech are truly sinister.  Under the radar, several of our law-enforcement and other institutions, like the IRS, were weaponized during the Obama administration.  Obama used the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, the Departments of Education and Agriculture, the FEC and the rest of our alphabet bureaus to torment his administration's opposition in various ways.  Duly weaponized, those institutions took their cues from Obama and Hillary Clinton, a veteran of vicious political opposition, and doubled down to destroy President Trump using the dirtiest tricks in their kit bags.  And now that the wretched Joe Biden is their front man, the snakes who make their nests in those alphabet syndicates no longer feel any need to conduct their shady operations in secret.  Now they carry out their Stalinist machinations right out in the open.  Parents who show up to speak at school board meetings?  Domestic terrorists.  Question the 2020 election results?  Crazed conspiracy theorist.  Be a known Trump supporter in DC on January 6?  Lock them up and throw away the key.  How is it possible that these agencies entrusted to enforce the law and uphold the Constitution are getting away with all this thuggery?

DOJ Inspector General Says Department Must Address Concerns About Politicization.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) must address deepening concerns that it's not insulated from political influence, the agency's watchdog stated in a new report.  The DOJ failed to follow policies and procedures designed to protect it from accusations that it's politicized or partially applying the law in a number of cases, including while investigating Donald Trump's campaign during the 2016 election and in leaks to the media, Inspector General Michael Horowitz noted.  "Numerous national events in the past year have crystalized the urgency for the department to address this challenge in a meaningful way," he wrote, including the discovery that the DOJ under the Trump administration obtained communications to and from members of Congress and accusations that protesters were cleared from Lafayette Square in Washington on June 1, 2020, for political purposes.  Such events "have all raised questions about the department's objectivity and impartiality" and "negatively impacted the perception of the department as a fair administrator of justice," Horowitz said.

FBI's Damage Control on Investigation of Parents Makes Things Even Worse.  We reported yesterday that an FBI whistleblower had leaked some disturbing information to Congress.  The information was an email showing that, contrary to Attorney General Merrick Garland's testimony before Congress that the DOJ/FBI wasn't treating parents objecting to school board actions as "domestic terrorists," their Counterterrorism unit was in fact involved in looking into the issue, and putting "threat tags" on all "investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrations, board members, teachers, and staff."  Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) demanded that Garland answer why this was different from Garland's prior testimony, and asked that he come back before Congress to explain all this.

Whistleblower revealed FBI used counter-terrorism tactics to investigate parents complaining about CRT.  House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy slammed Joe Biden's Justice Department for an 'egregious abuse of power' on Tuesday and demanded Attorney General Merrick Garland testify before Congress about the counterterrorism tactics the FBI is using to investigate parents.  'In an egregious abuse of power with the potential to unfairly track Americans' activities, President Biden's Department of Justice is using FBI criminal and counterterrorism resources to target parents,' McCarthy said in a statement.  'Attorney General Garland must return to Congress to address, under oath, in detail, the discrepancies regarding the directives he issued involving investigating America's parents,' he demanded.

FBI Whistleblower Claims DOJ Used Counterterrorism Tools against Parents in Response to School-Board Memo.  Citing an internal email provided by an FBI whistleblower, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee revealed Tuesday [11/16/2021] that the Bureau has created a system to track threats against school board officials and administrators, and accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of misleading lawmakers when he was asked about the subject during his previous testimony before the committee.  The FBI's "Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions created a threat tag, EDUOFFICIALS, to track instances of related threats," according to the email.  "The purpose of the threat tag is to help scope this threat on a national level and provide an opportunity for comprehensive analysis of the threat picture for effective engagement with law enforcement."  The email was signed by Counterterrorism Division assistant director Timothy Langan, and former Criminal Division assistant director Calvin Shivers, who retired earlier this month.

Rep. Jim Jordan:  Email Shows FBI Using 'Counterterrorism Tools' Against 'Concerned Parents'.  The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee is asking Attorney General Merrick Garland about his October testimony to that same committee, citing a document unearthed by a whistleblower that shows the FBI started using a specific tag to track threats related to schools.  "We are now in receipt of a protected disclosure from a [Justice] Department whistleblower showing that the FBI's counterterrorism division is compiling and categorizing threat assessments related to parents, including a document directing FBI personnel to use a specific 'threat tag' to track potential investigations," writes Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in a Nov. 16 letter to Garland.  "This disclosure provides specific evidence that federal law enforcement operationalized counterterrorism tools at the behest of a left-wing special-interest group against concerned parents," Jordan adds, referring to the National School Boards Association.

DOJ says it will 'vigorously defend' Biden OSHA COVID-19 vaccine mandate in court.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) says it will "vigorously defend" the guidelines laid out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which seek to enforce vaccine requirements on all businesses with 100 employees or more by Jan. 4, 2022.  Following the Friday [11/12/2021] decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a stay on the OSHA order a DOJ spokesperson said the Biden administration would fight back.  "This decision is just the beginning of the process for review of this important OSHA standard," a spokesperson told Fox News.  "The Department will continue to vigorously defend the standard and looks forward to obtaining a definitive resolution following consolidation of all of the pending cases for further review."

Fifth Circuit Slams Zhou Regime's Mandate.  While much of the attention of the nation remains on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, there is good news from the frontline of the battle against the Covid Regime.  The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has reaffirmed it's stay on the Mandate.  Such stays are issued when it appears that the petitioners are likely to succeed on the merits of their case.  In the 21 page opinion — which you can read [elsew]here — the Court explains exactly why they think the petitioners will succeed.  What I've done below is provide excerpts from the opinion, basically from the introduction to the detailed legal analysis.  In this limited selection an overall picture of the reasoning to come is sketched out.  I've deleted most citations for the sake of readability.  I've retained the footnotes (sans citations) on one page because they're substantive to the argument.  The rest of the editing should be pretty obvious pagination.  What's notable, and gratifying, about this opinion is that to my eyes it is dripping with contempt for this regime and its figurehead who fronts for it.  The Court is clearly highly offended at the openly proclaimed intent of the regime to find a "work-around" for, basically, the rule of law as we know it.  Seen in this light — as it should be — this case is fundamentally important to the preservation of a free nation under law.

Arizona School Board Officials Kept Secret Dossier on Dissident Parents and Employed a Private Investigator to Gather Oppo Research on Them.  Over the last six months or so, it has become more and more common to read stories about school boards that have essentially gone to war with the parents of the children in the school system they oversee.  Ground zero of the war zone was Loudoun County, Virginia.  Loudoun County is one of those Virginia counties that used to be reliably Republican but now has been overrun by leftist scum working for federal contractors and the federal government and has turned hard left.  I hope Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott keep this in mind when trying to entice Silicon Valley and Wall Street companies to relocate to their states.  The flashpoint was the efforts by the Loudoun County school board, without any debate or input from parents, to mainstream transgenderism.  Along with this dangerous nonsense, the school board adopted outright racism tarted up in pseudo-academic language, obscured from view as "critical race theory," and imposed by "diversity, inclusion, and equity" mandates, the standard operating philosophy for the county schools.

Arizona school board member had 'dossier' of private information on 'wacko' parents.  The president of the Scottsdale, Arizona, school board had a Google Drive full of private information, including Social Security numbers, of parents who had expressed their opposition to school mask mandates.  The drive, which the Washington Examiner reviewed, contains numerous financial records from several of the parents involved in the group, including mortgage statements, bankruptcy filings, and divorce filings.  Included on those forms are portions of Social Security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers of parents who had expressed opposition to school mask mandates and critical race theory.

Scottsdale Unified Assures Parents Of Privacy In Aftermath Of Secret Dossier Discovery, Parents Call For Greenburg Resignation.  The Scottsdale Unified School District's administration is scrambling to do damage control after a group of mothers discovered Governing Board President Jann-Michael Greenburg had access to a Google Drive full of personal information, documents, and photos of about 47 people, including children.  An email sent out Wednesday evening by the SUSD's Communications Office sought to assure families that their personal and educational data is safe.  However, the district also solely blamed the discovered digital dossier* site on Mark Greenburg, the father of Jann-Michael Greenburg.  The damage control appears to be too little too late for many parents in the Scottsdale Unified School District, including Amy Carney, a mother of six, who is among those calling for Greenburg to step down.

The Rittenhouse case highlights tyrannical prosecutors.  America is suffering from a rash of prosecutors who are petty tyrants bent on fundamentally changing America by nullifying our duly enacted laws.  That is as unconstitutional at the county and state level as it is at the federal level.  Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the conduct of the prosecutors in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.  Prosecutors are part of the executive branch and it is their sworn duty to uphold all laws.  They have no power to nullify laws they don't like, whether it be bail, property crimes, or the laws governing illegal aliens and immigration.  A particularly damaging example of this is occurring in Wisconsin, where the fundamental right to keep and bear arms in self-defense is under attack by an outrageously abusive district attorney's office.

With help from the DOJ, the National Archives enters the political fray.  The Select Committee investigating the events on January 6, when Donald Trump was still president, is asking the White House to produce documents relating to that day.  Trump has filed a motion asking the court to issue a preliminary injunction on the ground that these documents are both private and privileged and should not be produced.  Then, on October 30, 2021, something peculiar happened: the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), acting through the DOJ, filed a brief opposing Trump's motion.  NARA should never have done this, and the court should rightfully ignore it.  "Non-partisan" government entities should not be writing and submitting opposition briefs in politically fraught lawsuits.  Doing so only leads to the further politicization of every aspect of our government. [...] To clarify, NARA has one job:  to be the custodian of records.  Simply put, the statute does not give it any other function.

Purposeful Crisis Keeps Unfolding as Biden's Irrelevant Polling Keeps Collapsing.  We are witnessing a very specific type of electoral frustration caused by officials within a system attempting to stop a communist style fundamental change by taking action within the same system simultaneously collapsing through the actions of the communists. [...] The Obama plan to use Biden as a disposable figure was designed for one specific four year term of maximum damage.  The polling is irrelevant.  Evidence of this purpose is found in the White House telling businesses to continue operating as if the vaccine mandate is legally authorized, despite a court ordered injunction against it.  We are in a post-constitutional system now where the traditional checks and balances are ignored.  This is a very Machiavellian approach being deployed against the American people.

The Pentagon investigates itself, finds no crime.  Fresh off their recent success in fleeing Afghanistan with their tails between their legs, leaving hundreds of Americans and billions of dollars in arms and munitions behind, the Pentagon was in a celebratory mood and decided to drone some ISIS-K terrorists. [...] So, the best and brightest among us decided to rain hellfire on a car in Kabul, reducing the occupants to greasy spots and causing the world to sit up and take notice of America's righteous wrath.  General Mark Milley, the beribboned chairman on the Joint Chiefs, declared the attack a "righteous strike" that probably saved U.S. troops from another terrorist attack.  Like the one at Kabul airport that Milley and his pals in "intelligence" failed to stop.  Sadly, it turns out Gen. Milley and his drone operators were too busy worrying about climate change and white supremacists in the military to properly verify their target.  He and his boys had in fact obliterated a car containing Afghan aid workers and seven children.

One Minute Before Midnight.  No one gets to tell you what your job is worth.  No one gets to tell you what you must allow into your body.  No one gets to tell you that you have no right to interfere with what they wish to "teach" your kids.  Period.  The Founders would alternately laugh and cry at this madness.  No one should be allowed to abridge your right to free speech, to defend yourself, or to believe and worship as you wish, and your conscience dictates.  No faceless, unelected bureaucrat should be allowed to essentially make laws that seriously impact your life.  And no one in power should be able to ignore, overturn or otherwise negate your vote.  (Those who preposterously pretend that there was absolutely no malfeasance in the 2020 presidential election are either complicit, ignorant, hiding behind a wall of deception, or insane.)

Who Eventually Won the Cold War?  Pause for a minute to recall the recent past:  Did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff unlawfully intervene in the chain of command to reroute decisions of nuclear weapon readiness through himself?  Did he really contact his Chinese Communist counterpart to promise him that China would be warned of possible U.S. aggression?  Did the lead medical authority on America's COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, deny under oath the fact that he routed U.S. aid money, through a third party, to the ground-zero Wuhan virology lab to enhance gain-of-function viral research?  Did Attorney General Merrick Garland sic the FBI on parents complaining about critical race theory — on the concocted accusation from a school board group, in part cooked up with White House staffer help, that the parents were likely "domestic terrorists"?  Did we really spend 22 months and $40 million chasing the "Russian collusion" hoax, a myth ginned up by the left-wing media and its enablers in the FBI and CIA?  Does the public really believe our current ministry of information that the "border is closed"?  Or that high gas prices are good?  Or that empty shelves reflect strong demand and will result in a more mature public no longer needing to buy superfluous goods?  Or that spiraling inflation is proof of a strong economy?  Or that the road to the Kabul airport was open to anyone with a U.S. passport who wished to leave?  Or that the accidental U.S. drone killing of a family in Kabul was a "righteous strike"?

Biden and the Democrats are Undermining the Rule of Law.  An intriguing and distressing feature of the Biden administration and congressional Democrats is both having a propensity for law breaking and lawmaking.  They're different sides of the same coin. [...] Now let's take a quick look at Democrats' lawbreaking.  It accelerated in 2016 with Hillary Clinton's collusion with the DoJ, FBI, and CIA, principally, in trying to smear Donald Trump and derail his presidential campaign.  This criminal effort continued and doubled down during Trump's presidency — an effort replete with a special counsel (led by Robert Mueller), relentless harassment, and culminating in two unwarranted impeachments.  Whereas blue America may take smug satisfaction from their politicians conspiring with top federal appointees and bureaucrats to try to destroy a duly elected president, half or better of America took notes.  If the system can be weaponized to attempt to down a blameless president, what says that the feds can't waylay ordinary citizens — like parents whose "crime" is objecting to curriculum at local school board meetings?  Aren't those folk domestic terrorists, Merrick Garland?

Governments Love Inflation, and They Won't Do Anything to Stop It.  No government looking to massively expand its size in the economy and monetize a soaring deficit is going to act against rising prices, despite claiming the opposite.  One of the things that surprises citizens in Argentina or Turkey is that their populist governments always talk about the middle classes and helping the poor, yet inflation still soars, making everyone poorer.  Inflation is the gradual erosion of the purchasing power of the currency.  Governments will always use different excuses to justify inflation:  soaring demand, "supply chain disruptions," or evil corporations' greed.  However, most of the times these are excuses.  Inflation is always a monetary phenomenon.  Prices soar because money supply rises massively above real output and real money demand.

Meet Ray Epps:  The Fed-Protected Provocateur Who Appears To Have Led The Very First 1/6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol.  In a House hearing on Thursday [10/21/2021], Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) questioned AG Merrick Garland about a mysterious man, Ray Epps, instructing protesters to enter the US Capitol building on January 5, and who later shepherded crowds towards the Capitol on January 6.  [Tweet with video clip]  The story of the mystery man, Ray Epps, featured in Rep. Massie's video above is in fact far more shocking than even the good Congressman implies in the hearing.  It's a story so strange, and so scandalous at every turn, that it threatens to shatter the entire official narrative of the "Capitol Breach" and expose yet another dimension of proactive federal involvement in the so-called "insurrection" of January 6th.  If Revolver News's previous reporting points to a proactive role of the federal government in relation to the conspiracy cases against Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, the Ray Epps story that follows suggests a similar, yet more egregious, explicit, direct and immediate degree of federal involvement in the breach of the Capitol itself.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell sold up to $5 million worth of stock options just before Dow Jones tanked last year.  Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock options that he owned just before the stock market tanked last year because the government failed to pass a stimulus measure, it has been reported.  Powell's stock sale was reported just weeks after two top officials with the central bank resigned and a third came under fire for making multi-million dollar stock trades during the COVID-19 pandemic.  He made the stock sales on October 1, 2020 — just as talks between Congress and the Trump White House over a new stimulus package broke down while COVID case counts, deaths, and hospitalizations were spiking, according to Prospect.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Deep State.  Six or seven years ago, "Deep State" was a term you would only see in left-leaning media.  Bill Moyers explored the theme on his site from time to time, and when The Nation asked Edward Snowden about it, he said, "There's definitely a deep state.  Trust me, I've been there."  The "deep state" was on the liberal left's front burner then because a spate of horrendously ugly revelations put it there.  We learned via Snowden that the NSA was collecting the communications of people all around the world in secret (Carollo might want to mark down that congress wasn't informed) in a program the U.S. Court of Appeals just last year declared illegal.  We found out top intelligence officials like CIA chief John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to congress, among other things about the warrantless surveillance program, and got away without perjury charges despite a furious outcry from legislators (another useful factoid for [Ben] Carollo, on the oversight front).  We learned about the CIA's systematic use of torture techniques, ranging from anal feeding to threatening to rape and murder relatives to induced hypothermia, another fun set of pastimes the agency decided not to burden congress with knowledge of.

The EPA head shows who's really in charge in America.  When our Founders drafted the Constitution, they were excessively concerned lest one branch of government gain disproportionate power, turning into a tyranny.  The Constitution, therefore, spreads out power among othe Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial Branches, with each institution checking the power of the two others.  However, in the ensuing 240 years, America gained something the Founders never imagined:  an administrative state that, while ostensibly part of the Executive Branch, has also taken on the legislative powers of a lazy Congress that is big on showboating and small on doing the hard work of actually governing.  Most of the rules that burden Americans, whether individually or through their businesses, come from the uncontrolled, permanent, hard-left regulatory state.

The Traits of the Authoritarians Among Us.  There are two irrefutable and intertwined realities of authoritarianism that the citizens of any democratic nation must recognize and understand.  First, any political party that espouses ever greater power for the central government, socialist-centric economic policies and continual erosion of individual freedom is an existential threat to the nation.  Second, the leaders of these political parties and their disciples will lie incessantly and, under no circumstances, will they alter their policies or tactics, as they can never be wrong in their pursuit of unbridled political power.  Perhaps nothing better defines this mindset of infallibility and pathological lying than the deliberate mismanagement of the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic.  Since March of 2020, the governing/professional class and its accomplices in the medical establishment have regurgitated innumerable falsehoods and have been responsible for a variety of catastrophic mistakes.  Not only has there been no acknowledgment that errors were made but they were compounded by abject refusals to change course.

Keywords:  Police state, jackboots, gunpoint, nose rape.
Massachusetts Governor Activates National Guard to Test School Children For Covid.  Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker (R) on Tuesday announced he activated the National Guard to help test school children for Covid.  Baker activated 450 members of the Massachusetts National Guard for two missions:  200 members will support Covid testing in K-12 schools and up to 250 member will be used to offset staffing shortages at the Department of Correction (DOC), the governor's office said. [...] Last month Governor Baker activated the National Guard to take children to school amid a massive shortage of bus drivers.  Up to 250 Guard troops were activated mid-September to fill the shortage.  Dozens of state trooper have also resigned because of Governor Baker's mandatory vaccine mandate.

The Rise of Weak Men is Killing American Innovation and Prosperity.  The Competitive Enterprise Institute estimates that federal regulation alone costs the US almost $2 trillion per year in lost productivity. [...] And it's directly related to regulation.  The Code of Federal Regulations contains every law and rule of the federal government.  In 1938 it was 18,193 pages.  After dropping down to 9,745 pages in 1950 it shot up to 56,720 pages in 1972 and by 2019 it stood at 185,984 pages.  On every one of those pages are rules that govern Americans' lives.  From what goes into their food to the employment conditions of every person who manufactured or transported or sold every single product they buy.  From reporting rules for companies to bank deposit info to what's printed on the side of a can of corn or a box of cereal.  Then there's who you can or must rent your home to, how much energy your computer monitor uses, what you pay for gas and, now, what you have to put into your body.

Officials in all three branches of government [have been] implicated in breaking stock laws.  The Fed revelations caught the attention of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown, who separately called for a ban on Fed officials from owning individual stocks.  Brown's call came with the promise of new legislation which, while not yet published, will presumably focus on the Fed, a quasi-private institution in the federal government that governs US monetary policy, including setting interest rates and managing the money supply.  Senator Warren insisted the Fed take direct action to bar its senior officials from making those kinds of trades.  But history suggests she has much more ambitious reforms in mind.  In the wake of allegations of potential COVID-19 related insider trading by several Senators from both parties, including Richard Burr from North Carolina and Diane Feinstein from California, Warren reintroduced a bill, the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, to capitalize on the political fallout.

'Arrest Me!': Mom Challenges Attorney General's Call for Probing Threats to School Boards.  Rhode Island mom Nicole Solas says she is just one of many parents "with legitimate concerns about our kids' education."  Solas drew national attention earlier this year when her local school board in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, threatened to sue her over public record requests she made to learn what her local school district was teaching students.  The school board ultimately opted against taking legal action against her.  But Solas made headlines again in August when a teachers union, the National Education Association Rhode Island, filed a lawsuit against her over the records requests.  Solas made the requests to determine whether her child would be taught about gender identity and critical race theory ideology, two controversial issues that have led to an increase in parental attendance at school board meetings across the country this year.

American fascism?  [A] broad working definition of fascism can be found by going to the source — Benito Mussolini, the father of 20th-century fascism.  Mussolini said:  "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."  Looking out over the American landscape, isn't this almost exactly what we see today, an unholy marriage between the state and big business?  To understand the scope of this, understand that the state is far more than just elected officials.  It also includes the massive unelected and mostly unaccountable government bureaucracies which are permanently in place.  As for corporations, it includes the mainstream media which could properly be called the corporate media.  In the U.S. today, six media behemoths control a whopping 90% of what Americans read, watch, and listen to.  They are GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Timer-Warner, and CBS.  Other corporate players include the tech companies, the big banks, and international corporations which are too numerous to mention.

Tucker Carlson Outlines How the DOJ-NSD Has Morphed Into a Political Targeting Operation.  Some CTH readers may remember how the DOJ-NSD refused to accept inspector general oversight as led by AG Eric Holder and DAG Sally Yates.  More readers will remember the DOJ-NSD is the epicenter of FISA abuses.  It is the DOJ-NSD where Main Justice can operate in the shadows, because they use the shield of national security; a key strategy of the Fourth Branch of government.  The DOJ-NSD is the targeting center of Main Justice where folks like John Carlin, Mary McCord, Bruce Ohr, Andrew Weissmann, David Laufmann, George Toscas (and later Dana Boente) were operating against the incoming Trump administration and later the Trump presidency.  The DOJ-NSD is where selective Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) violations are used against political enemies like Michael Flynn, while people like the Podesta brothers are ignored.

How is Tucker Carlson still alive?  Let's look at some very recent history.  How about Seth Rich, Vince Foster, and Jeffrey Epstein?  How about the five-year coup against President Trump, from his candidacy through his last days in office?  How about treasonous General Milley telling China he would give them a heads-up if an attack were coming?  How about the bugging and wire-tapping of Trump Tower when Trump was president-elect?  How about the Supreme Court's refusal to hear any 2020 election cases — just plain refused to hear anything?  How about the J-6 MAGA protesters still in jail, in solitary confinement, for trespassing?  What of a China COVID virus that Washington, D.C. unexplainably refuses to say came from China?  What of a vaccine, which really isn't a vaccine, but more of a therapeutic?  How about vaccine mandates that are clearly unconstitutional?  What about the Biden cabal completely leaving open our borders, which violates the U.S. Constitution? [...] Patriots remember how Fox treated President Trump on Election Night and then the next day.  Patriots still do not trust Fox and thus have not returned to Fox.  But the exception on Fox is Tucker.  Without Tucker Carlson, FOX would look a lot like CNN lite.

The Government Is Not Your Friend, No Matter What Politicians Tell You.  The dirty little secret about government is that its purpose is not really to make the lives of citizens better but, rather, to accumulate power at the expense of citizens.  Not sure about that?  Ask yourself, how many government agencies have put themselves out of a job because they succeeded?  There're a few that technology left behind, like the Steamboat Inspection Service; others that served their purpose, like the Defense Homes Corporation; while others were merged into other agencies like the General Land Office, subsumed into the Department of Interior.  In our history, there have been fewer than 100 federal agencies that have actually been shuttered, and most of those existed in the early 20th century to deal with the Depression or the two world wars.

The COVID Caste System.  [Scroll down]  Nowhere, however, is the new American caste system more evident than with COVID-19.  Did you see Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) at the Met Gala?  The publicity focused on her "Tax the Rich" dress, but just as notable was the video, released by Vogue magazine, of AOC in full Cinderella mode, flanked by multiple attendants, straightening her hair, fixing her dress, holding up the long train, adjusting her heels.  They were all masked; she was not.  This was hardly an isolated case.  Shortly before the Met Gala, the Obamas held a massive party to celebrate Barack Obama's 60th birthday.  Again, the guests that included political leaders, business moguls, and Hollywood celebrities were all unmasked.  The chefs, the servers, the valets, and the other staff were all masked.  An upper caste and a lower caste, both playing their roles in Obama's large tent.  Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also just had a birthday, and video showed a small, unventilated room in which Jayapal and her maskless friends all partied together.  It was the same story with San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who violated her own mask mandate while partying at a club.  The Emmys, too, featured clip after clip of unmasked actors, producers, and directors walking the press photo line, and only when they crossed over to the other side could you see all the staff and attendants, masked, of course, taking them back to their seats.

Is America Heading Towards Authoritarianism?  The occupant of the White House is possibly senile and certainly incompetent.  He cluelessly wades from one crisis to another.  It began with the illegal immigration crisis on the Southern border where there was a mass influx of illegal immigrants.  They were then surreptitiously transferred to other states. [...] COVID-19 is being used as an excuse to infringe upon civil liberties, restrict movement, mandate masks, and mandate vaccines.  Employees in government and beyond being compelled to be vaccinated to retain employment.  School children are compelled to wear masks.  Landlords were prevented from the eviction of tenants during the pandemic. [...] There are civilians in jail for the Jan. 6 demonstrations on Capitol Hill with reports that they are in Gitmo-like conditions. [...] To summarize, the governing class now believes that they are the ruling class who own the power.  They look at the public as subjects who need to be permanently controlled.  They see freedom as a luxury they grant to obedient citizens rather than the right of every citizen.  They look at their opposition among the citizenry with disdain as pests who need to be crushed.

Our 'Boy Who Cried Wolf' Government.  A 74-year-old woman lies on her back, writhing in pain and clearly in distress on a blacktop road in Melbourne, Australia.  Two police officers stand over her.  Are they coming to her rescue and bringing her to her feet?  No, they're dousing her with two separate streams of pepper-spray while keeping their free hands on military batons in case the tortured septuagenarian somehow springs up in attack mode to wrestle down the pair of twenty-something jackboots "just following orders."  The woman had been participating in a freedom march against Australia's COVID-1984 insanity, but the government proved that Grandma was no match for goon squad brute force.  Forget chivalry and common sense. [...] You can't scare schoolchildren into wearing face masks for the next ten years in order to "save Granny" while getting caught clubbing and macing Granny in the street.  That contradiction just won't do.  Yet contradictions abound, and normal people are opening their eyes long enough to notice.  That's no good for the powers that be. [...] An avalanche of mendacity and treachery landing on them all at once, and the narrative engineers have real problems on their hands.  You knock Granny on the pavement and nearly kill her for "her own good," however, and the jig is up.

FNC's Melugin:  New FAA Rule Keeps Us from Filming Del Rio Situation with Drone, We've Used It at Border for Seven Months Without Issue.  On Thursday's [9/16/2021] broadcast of the Fox News Channel's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Fox News National Correspondent Bill Melugin reported that the FAA has imposed a temporary flight restriction for the area around the bridge where thousands of migrants are congregating near Del Rio, TX, and as a result, Fox can't use its drone to capture aerial footage of the situation around the bridge.  Melugin also said they've used the drone around the border for seven months and it hasn't been a problem until now.  Melugin said, "We've been using our drone to show everybody these remarkable pictures. ... We just learned that the FAA has put out a temporary flight restriction, a TFR, in the area immediately around the port of entry where that bridge is.  What does that mean?  It means our drone can no longer fly and show those images. [...]"

No Fly Zone:  FAA Shuts Down Fox News Drone Exposing Border Crisis.  In an apparent attempt to cover up the border crisis, the Biden administration has shut down Fox News's ability to fly their drone over the U.S.-Mexico border to report on the border crisis, which swelled in August and again in the last 24 hours.  On Thursday's [9/16/2021] Special Report, national correspondent Bill Melugin showed the over 9,000-person crowd of illegals under the international bridge.  But on Tucker Carlson Tonight, two hours later, he was forced to report that the FAA had issued a temporary flight restriction or TFR over the entire area.  "Stunning footage out of Del Rio, Texas on Thursday.  As our Fox Flight Team drone shows thousands of migrants crammed under the international bridge waiting to be processed after crossing illegally into the United States," he reported on Special Report.

Members of Congress [are] exempt from Biden's vaccine mandate, [but] average Americans [are] expected to comply.  There is one sure way to get around President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate:  Be part of either the legislative or judicial branches of the federal government.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the mandate does not apply to members of the House, according to Newsweek.  "She's saying she cannot force Members to be vaccinated, which is true," a statement from Pelosi's office said.  The New York Times reported that the vaccine edict issued by Biden does not apply to the federal court system either.  The vaccine mandate has triggered howls of protest.  Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York said Biden exceeded his executive authority with the mandate, which relies upon a liberal interpretation of the rule-making powers of the Department of Labor.

Tyrannizing The Common Good.  President Biden has lost patience.  After months of telling Americans that vaccine mandates aren't necessary, Biden announced on Thursday a federal vaccination mandate affecting 100 million Americans.  Not only did he not bother to provide citizens with a coherent rationale, but the rationale he did provide seemed to suggest that the mandate was necessary because vaccinated people need to be protected from unvaccinated people — a rationale that implies that the vaccine being mandated doesn't work!  Biden's patience has worn too thin.  Rather than make a clear case for the necessity of a mandate with his legitimate executive power, constrained by law, Biden has chosen to utilize ideologically aligned corporate power and OSHA safety regulations as political "work-arounds" to achieve by executive dictat that which had proved too difficult: to demonstrate that the mandate is reasonable, legal, and necessary.  As with his remarks this summer on his novel use of the CDC to place a moratorium on evictions — "maybe it's illegal, but it's worth it" — the key to Mr. Biden's political strategy seems to be rooted neither in reason nor justice, but in the sheer will to power in the name of "the common good," immediately revealing how the very notion of the common good can be abused.  Some red-state attorneys general have announced that they intend to use their own powers to resist federal overreach.  Are they then against the common good?  Partisans will answer that question differently.

Open Letter to the Tyrant.  Some of the people may have voted for Joe Biden.  No one voted for mandatory vaccines.  No representative of the people so voted.  It was never put up for a vote.  It was ordered.  That is not America, anymore.  Americans are thus relieved of any obligation to obey.  The time has come to resist.  Not with violence.  With something more powerful.  Refusal.  We will not submit to this.  It is not negotiable.  You have neither the authority nor the right to order people to submit to any medical procedure, to take any drug.  To force people to submit their children for medical procedures and to take drugs of dubious palliative value that are known to cause harm.  We are not livestock, to be ear-tagged and injected at your pleasure.  And America is not a hospital.  The tyrant who now occupies the White House believes he can force his will upon you by threatening to remove your livelihood, using threats of financial ruin applied to employers by his regulatory apparat.

Biden Declares Himself Medical Dictator, Threatens to Nullify States' Rights and Coerce the Entire Population into Taking Deadly Vaccine Jabs Against Their Will.  We should be celebrating this moment of clarity, for Biden's audacious actions have just turned half of America into a powerful new vaccine resistance movement.  As the following map shows, state leaders in about half the states have openly declared their resistance against Biden's authoritarian power grab.  Many states have announced their intent to file lawsuits, and Texas Governor Abbott has already issued an executive order protecting medical choice for Texans. [...] As part of his dictatorial decree, fake president Joe Biden declared that he would remove governors from power if they don't comply with his vaccine mandates.  This is, of course, an act of treason and war against the United States of America, and it opens the window for the white hats in the US military to remove Biden from office and declare his "rule" to be an unconstitutional occupation.  From Biden:  "If they'll not help — if these governors won't help us beat the pandemic, I'll use my power as President to get them out of the way."  Of course, "get them out of the way" means Biden plans to try to arrest and remove the governors, then rule of America as a dictatorial tyrant.

Travis County DA Garza, Austin Acting Police Chief Accused of Retaliation in High-Profile Shooting Case.  Retaliation.  Witness tampering.  Felony criminal conduct.  These charges are being aimed at the man Travis County, Texas, voters elected to prosecute criminals in November 2020.  And the charges stem from one of José Garza's highest-profile and most controversial cases.

Fauci's entire dishonest house of cards just collapsed.  [Scroll down]  Assuming America survives as a democratic republic operating under our Constitution, Americans must take stock of everything they've assumed since the Cold War's end.  Here are some of those lessons:
  •   Cultural Marxism is the road to totalitarianism.
  •   Democrats are fascists under Mussolini's ultimate definition of fascism:  "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
  •   The tech tyrants must be reined in for they are the primary vehicle through which Democrats implement fascism.
  •   The mainstream media, which collaborates with the tech outlets, is another fascism facilitator.  Ditto Hollywood.
  •   Almost all American schools, whether K-12 or colleges and universities, do not educate, they indoctrinate.
  •   Borders matter.
  •   Scientism, which is a form of blind worship, is entirely different from science, which is a methodology using reproducible experiments to prove theories that are never immune to challenges.
  •   Government must be radically downsized to preserve liberty.
And one more thing: Dr. Fauci needs to go to jail for the rest of his life because, through his funding illegal gain-of-function research, followed by his non-stop stream of dangerous lies, he has the blood of hundreds of thousands of Americans on his hands.

Biden Weaponizes Dept. of Education to Become the COVID Mask Gestapo.  They get creepier by the hour.  Seriously, these people need to be rounded up and put in some sort of leper colony for fascists.  They will be free to keep the masks on their enraged faces all they want.  They're empowered by a government that is now in the hands of people who are all too casual about using its might against any citizens who don't agree with them.  I'm not talking about criminals, I'm talking about law-abiding Americans who are merely running afoul of the liberal narrative du jour.  We saw it happen when Barack Obama was president and he sent the IRS after conservative tea party groups.  Now, President Sniffsakid has directed the Dept. of Education — the most useless of all the Cabinet agencies — to legally harass the states that aren't trying to suffocate school children with masks.

Democrats' Jan. 6 subpoena-palooza sets dangerous precedent.  "We have quite an exhaustive list of people.  I won't tell you who they are."  With those words, House Select Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) confirmed that a subpoena storm was about to be unleashed in the investigation of the Jan. 6 riot in Congress.  The targets would include Republican members, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who have already been told to preserve their phone records to be surrendered to the committee.  The Democrats are reportedly trying to prove their prior claims that Republicans conspired or assisted "insurrectionists," even though the FBI reportedly found no evidence of a planned insurrection.  The Democrats' move to investigate members of the opposing party is a dangerous precedent in an institution that has always protected the privacy and confidentiality of phone and office records.

FBI show up at mans property over Facebook group.  [Three video clips]

The Masked Ball of Cowardice.  [Scroll down]  Likewise, in October 2020, the WHO's peer-reviewed bulletin showed COVID-19's overall IFR across all age groups to be about 0.23%.  John Ioannidis, the world's most-cited physician, believes the IFR (infection fatality rate) to be lower and published his own peer-reviewed study showing the overall IFR to be about 0.15%.  But in a poll conducted by the Menzies Research Centre, by June 2021 Australians on average estimated their chance of dying if they contracted the virus to be 38%, an overestimation of more than 160-fold.  For the public to be so egregiously misinformed about their actual risk from COVID-19 renders democratic accountability for lockdown measures impossible.  Even more so because, as a study by Cardiff University demonstrated, the primary factor by which citizens judge the threat of COVID-19 is their own government's decision to employ drastic lockdown measures.  "We found that people judge the severity of the COVID-19 threat based on the fact the government imposed a lockdown — in other words, they thought, 'it must be bad if government's taking such drastic measures.'  We also found that the more they judged the risk in this way, the more they supported lockdown."  The policies thus create a feedback loop in which the measures themselves sow the fear that makes citizens to believe their risk of dying from COVID-19 is hundreds of times greater than it really is, which in turn causes them to support more lockdown measures.

Cook County judge strips mother of parental rights over vaccination status.  A Chicago mother says a Cook County judge has taken away her parental rights after learning that she is not vaccinated against COVID-19.  In what all parties agree is a very unusual and perhaps unprecedented step, a judge at Chicago's Daley Center has stripped Rebecca Firlit of custody because she refuses to get a vaccination shot.

Representative Madison Cawthorn Warned by House Chair Not To Insult Dear Leader.  Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) delivered a very strong speech on the House floor against Joe Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal and the subsequent crisis he has created.  After his remarks, Mr. Cawthorn was warned by the House Chair, not to insult Dear Leader.  [Video clip]

Boosters? I Don't Want Your Stinkin' Boosters!  Our government — the current administration and its president — is now announcing those who took COVID-19 vaccines must take a booster.  But who can trust the opinion of our government — any part of it, all those self-perpetuating enclaves of moribund bureaucrats — given what's going on in Afghanistan?  It's laughable.  It's not just the "gang who couldn't shoot straight."  It's the "gang that shoots its own people" and leaves millions of women to suffer the most brutal oppression on the planet.  Trust them?  That this booster announcement was made now, in the face of the monstrous Afghanistan debacle, is an all-too-transparent attempt to say don't look there, look here — here being, as always, COVID, the ever-ready pandemic that has been used to manipulate and prevent the American people from living anything close to normal lives for going on two years.

The U.S. Government Lied For Two Decades About Afghanistan.  "The Taliban regime is coming to an end," announced President George W. Bush at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on December 12, 2001 — almost twenty years ago today.  Five months later, Bush vowed:  "In the United States of America, the terrorists have chosen a foe unlike they have faced before. ... We will stay until the mission is done."  Four years after that, in August of 2006, Bush announced:  "Al Qaeda and the Taliban lost a coveted base in Afghanistan and they know they will never reclaim it when democracy succeeds. ... The days of the Taliban are over.  The future of Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan."  For two decades, the message Americans heard from their political and military leaders about the country's longest war was the same.  America is winning.  The Taliban is on the verge of permanent obliteration.  The U.S. is fortifying the Afghan security forces, which are close to being able to stand on their own and defend the government and the country. [...] Similar assurances have been given by the U.S. Government and military leadership to the American people since the start of the war.

Is the federal government torturing Brian Kolfage?  Brian Kolfage, an airman who survived losing both legs and an arm in Iraq, started a fundraiser to build a wall on our Southern border.  The project took off, a lot of money flowed in, and the federal government promptly went after Kolfage, accusing him of defrauding those who donated money.  This post is not about Kolfage's guilt or innocence on the charges against him.  It is, instead, about allegations that the government is effectively torturing him by denying him access to a medicine that controls the nerve pain resulting from his leg amputations.  We know that the government has been exceptionally vicious in its prosecution against Kolfage.  It started when based federal agents operating out of the Southern District of New York arrested this family man, who lives in a Florida home with his wife and two young children.  On August 20, 2020, the United States Postal Inspection Service sent 15 people to arrest Kolfage.  Think about that for a moment:  This is a triple amputee in a wheelchair, and they sent 15 armed officers to take him down.  They then dragged Kolfage into a car that was not ADA compliant, leaving behind his wheelchair and his prosthetic limbs.

Family Court Corruption Scandal Explodes in Hollywood.  [Scroll down]  How long can this injustice continue to be completely ignored by the elected bodies whose job it is to check the overreaching power of the judiciary?  Instead of a system of checks and balances, the legislatures have abdicated their checking power to panels of other judges and lawyers, who are all members of the same club of bar associations, and tasked them with the vital job of balancing our government.  It's the definition of the fox guarding the henhouse.

On DOJ's Election-Integrity-Suppression Efforts.  The DOJ would appear to be seeking to dissuade states from doing more audits like Arizona's.  Recent actions rare positively goonish: threatening states if they do independent audits?  Treating the petition of government for redress of grievance (by rallying in support of audits, for example) might be prosecuted as voter intimidation?  That's nuts.

Time to impeach Biden.  After having appointed a special counsel, or in place of it, under 5 U.S. Code §1212 — Powers and functions of the Office of Special Counsel, specifically under (a) (aB), (a3), Congress must act to impeach this president for high crimes and misdemeanors, gross mismanagement, violating the nation's laws, and endangering the public health and safety of citizens. [...] Congress must begin impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden, V.P. Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, and his deputies, who likely have knowledge of the events that squashed investigations into the nation's murderous governors.  The investigations should include the governors, secretaries of state, and attorneys general of New York and Michigan.  Charges include, but are not limited to, obstruction of justice, abuse of authority, abuse of power, abuse of office, covering up criminal activity, conspiracy, and criminal self-dealing.  Considering allegations of potential collusion among these individuals and associates to cover up crimes that resulted in the deaths of citizens, provisions of the RICO Act for fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud shall be attached.  Investigative subpoenas to the staffs of these politicians must be prepared immediately to protect the integrity of the nation's justice and political systems, primarily its national security to protect America's citizens from harm.

America R.I.P..  In my days as a Wall Street Journal editor, I reviewed a book by a historian who said the sack of Rome by barbarians occurred because the Roman citizens feared the terrors of the barbarians less than they feared the terrors of their own government and opened the gates of the city to the barbarians.  With all its talk of domestic terrorists, this seems what Washington fears.  Patriots see Washington as the enemy and are now the danger that Washington faces.  New York Democrats have confiscated Rudy Giuliani's law license because he defended President Trump and presented signed affidavits of electoral fraud in the 2020 election.  New York Democrats are framing Donald Trump by building a false case against Trump's business manager, which will be dropped when Trump's business manager turns false witness against Trump.  535 Trump supporters are rotting in jail despite habeas corpus awaiting their frame ups for being "Trump insurrectionists" and entering Congress under the tutelage of FBI agents pretending to be "insurrectionists."  What real American can support a government this corrupt?  If the moronic zionist neoconservatives who populate the illegitimate Biden Regime get us into a war with Russia or China or even Iran, we are done for.

Texas Rangers May Be Investigating Witness Tampering Allegation Against Travis County's DA in Austin Protest Shooting Case.  On Wednesday, after PJ Media exclusively reported that Austin police detective David Fugitt accused Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza's office of felony witness tampering in the Sgt. Daniel Perry case, a hearing was held in the 147th Criminal District Court.  Fugitt made the allegation in a sworn affidavit.  Sgt. Perry's defense attorneys filed a motion to hold a hearing on Garza's conduct as alleged in Fugitt's affidavit.  In that filing, Perry's defense attorneys say Det.  Fugitt found that Perry shot Foster on the night of July 25, 2020, in self-defense and that Foster "was a criminal killed in commission of a crime."  District Attorney Garza nevertheless took the case to an Austin grand jury, which indicted Perry.  Perry is an Army sergeant serving at Ft. Hood.  Austin is a Democrat stronghold.

A Ministry of Fear Rules America.  In just a few short months since the mysterious elevation of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., inexplicably elected the 46th president of the United States, our country has undergone a stunning rapid devolution from a confident, economic powerhouse to a shabby debtor nation afraid of its own shadow.  The American Ministry of Fear, however, is not located in the Chancellery of the National Socialist German Workers Party in Berlin, but in every petty federal, state, and local bureaucracy, doctor's office, TV news station, big-city newspaper, college and university in the country.  From the start of the COVID-19 manufactured panic, these agents of influence have waged a relentless war on the American psyche.  And now, despite their miniscule majorities in Congress, they rule with an iron fist that brooks no demurral.

Aussie Government Sends Military Helicopter To Chase Away Kids Playing Basketball.  Whenever you think it can't get any worse, it gets much worse.  Australia has deployed hundreds of soldiers to Sydney to help enforce a Covid lockdown.  This is on top of hundreds of police in vehicles and paddy wagons that were filmed Friday getting ready to arrest those Aussies who dare venture outside of their homes or [...] stop and visit each other for a coffee.  [Video clip]

Senate Votes to Advance Unwritten Infrastructure Bill as Biden Hints HR-3684 Will Include Amnesty in Reconciliation Process.  As the nation is distracted by various COVID-centered discussion and media debate amid headlines of forced vaccinations, mask mandates and various other COVID compliance fiats, there is something rather troubling happening in congress.  Earlier today [7/30/2021], the UniParty Senate (Democrats and Republicans) voted to approve cloture on HR-3684 the Senate version of the House infrastructure bill.  The cloture vote now means the bill will be debated and opens the Senate floor for amendments to the bill.  However, this cloture vote is odd because the [...] Senate bill isn't even written yet!

The Military Plays No Part in the Constitution's 'Checks and Balances'.  Recent reports demonstrate a frightening willingness by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and other high-ranking generals to undermine President Trump during the final year of his administration.  These efforts began with some grumbling about the use of the military to enforce law and order during the Black Lives Matter riots of last summer.  They reached a fever pitch during the uncertain period between the election of 2020 and the inauguration of Joe Biden.  Milley expressed contempt for protesters supporting President Trump, comparing them to "Brownshirts" and "Nazis." He described Trump's challenges to election results as a "Reichstag moment."  He even tried to say something profound:  "Everything's going to be OK.  We're going to have a peaceful transfer of power.  We're going to land this plane safely.  This is America.  It's strong.  The institutions are bending, but it won't break."  It is apparent top military officers conceive of the military as a critical part of the Constitution's checks and balances, with a duty to review, rank, or resist the president's orders as they deem appropriate. [...] While Milley and others wrap their power grab in the rhetoric of upholding constitutional principles, a cursory review of the Constitution and the founders' writings shows that this is just a pose.

Nancy Pelosi Orders the Arrest of Those Without Masks and the Capitol Police Play Along.  Throughout the "back the blue" craze of the Trump era, one thing became abundantly clear that largely quelled it — police follow orders.  That includes orders that are patently absurd and violate the basic freedoms of individuals.  Yes, law enforcement officers generally do good work and are to be respected for that, but if you are expecting them to stand up to their authorities to protect the rights of individuals, they are almost always going to disappoint you.  Take that revelation and do with it what you will. [...] Another example of that has emerged within the Capitol of the United States.  Nancy Pelosi has ordered the Capitol Police to arrest people who aren't wearing masks.  [Tweet]  If the USCP weren't such a ridiculously politicized department, they'd scoff at the notion of using manpower to arrest people for not wearing masks, especially when the edict is coming from a purely political place.  There is no science behind the idea of further mask-mandates anywhere.  That's especially true regarding the Capitol Building, where almost every person in attendance is vaccinated and has lasting protection from the effects of COVID.  Pelosi put this mask-mandate back into place for one reason — to poke at Republicans.  No data exists to actually supports the mandating of masks, much less in the Capitol.

Complaint Filed Against Gretchen Whitmer Over Charter Jet Trip to Florida Last March.  The 49th Governor of the State of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, had to know this was coming.  You can't try to sneak away on a chartered jet during a pandemic that you are crying wolf about and expect no one to notice. [...] Now comes word that a group by the name of Michigan Rising Action has filed a complaint with the Michigan Bureau of Elections for a violation of campaign finance laws.

How Intelligent Is Our Intelligence Community, Really?  The Conservative Treehouse began a series on "The Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Community."  That series, along with Tucker Carlson's revelation that the NSA possibly spied on him and at the very least illegally unmasked him, has brought the Intelligence Community center stage.  I usually do not think too much about the various security and intelligence functions of the government, other than to marvel that they have managed to prevent a second 9/11.  In doing a bit of research, however, I have come to realize that the security function of our country is a tangled web of bureaucracy.  Is that really what it takes to protect U.S. citizens, or is this a turf-building and protection operation?

House Republicans accuse Joe Biden of behaving like a 'Cuban dictator' with efforts to control social media spread of public health 'misinformation'.  Joe Biden has been accused of acting like 'a Cuban dictator' in a letter signed by 190 House Republicans, after his administration moved to force tech companies to clamp down on coronavirus misinformation.  A letter to the president was written on Thursday by Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the three top Republicans in the House — Leader Kevin McCarthy, Whip Steve Scalise and Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.  'The federal government's ongoing efforts to pressure private companies to censor speech that it disagrees with is alarming and an affront to the First Amendment,' they wrote, in a letter obtained by Fox News.

Baltimore's attorney attempts, and fails, to get FCC to silence and censor local Fox radio station.  Blacklists are back and the Democrats got 'em!  On May 5, 2021 the office of Baltimore's state attorney, Democrat Marilyn Mosby, filed a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against a local Fox news station, demanding that the FCC censor and shut down the station because it has repeatedly published stories that were critical of Mosby and her policies. [...] The blatent oppressive nature of this demand — in utter violation of the first amendment of the Constitution and all that America has stood for during its first two hundred plus years — should be somewhat shocking, but sadly it has become so common from Democratic Party politicians and many of their supporters in the past five years that it hardly made the news when it happened in early May.  Think about it however.  The office of an elected state's attorney for Baltimore wishes to use the power of government to silence a specific news outlet because that attorney does not like the outlet's news reporting.  Only dictators like Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini would celebrate such actions.  And Americans once in mass would have been horrified, and risen up to get Mosby removed from office immediately.  No more.  Her office's actions barely made the news, which is why I post this story again.

White House Communications Director Admits They're Trying to Censor Conservative News Sites.  During an interview with CNN this week, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield admitted the Biden administration's censorship efforts are specifically targeting conservative news sites for publishing "misinformation."  "You've heard the president speak very aggressively about this.  He understands this is an important piece of the ecosystem but its also the other thing, the president has pointed out and spoke to when he was asked about this yesterday, it is also the responsibility of the people creating the content and again I would go back to, there are conservative news outlets who are creating irresponsible content that's sharing misinformation about the virus," Bedingfield said.

Hunter Biden's Prosecutor Rejected Legal Actions That Would've Revealed Investigation During Election.  Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss decided against taking certain legal actions — like issuing search warrants and grand jury subpoenas — that would have alerted the American public to the fact that then-Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was under federal criminal investigation during the 2020 presidential election campaign.  Politico reports that the investigation reached a point last summer, months before Election Day, where investigators could have made moves that would have ultimately alerted the public to the fact that Joe Biden's son was under criminal investigation, but Weiss decided against that.

Anaheim officials have a very peculiar notion about free speech.  Anaheim, California, home to Disneyland, has an ugly, fantasy view of the First Amendment.  How else can one explain why Anaheim, after boasting about its respect for free speech, canceled an America First rally at which Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz were appearing because of the town's "duty" to oppose speech it doesn't like?  To date, Southern California has been hostile to America First.  On July 9, an American First rally set for an event center in Laguna Hills, at which Gaetz and Greene were to appear, had been canceled.  The news reported that the hotel's general manager wanted to avoid any controversies.

Hunter Biden prosecutor paused investigation before election: report.  The top federal prosecutor in Delaware decided to pause a criminal investigation of Hunter Biden months before the 2020 election to prevent the public from learning about it, according to a report.  US Attorney David Weiss, appointed by former President Donald Trump, decided not to seek search warrants or issue grand jury subpoenas so as not to "alert the public to the existence of the case in the middle of a presidential election," Politico reports.  The prosecutor's office reportedly was torn over whether to continue its probe or pause it due to the election, and Weiss, who remains in his job leading the case, sided with those who wanted to wait.  "To his credit, he listened," an unnamed source told the publication.

Federal Prosecutor Deliberately Delayed Hunter Biden Probe To Shield 2020 Election.  U.S. Department of Justice officials deliberately delayed an investigation into Hunter Biden's potential tax law violations and sketchy overseas business dealings because of the effect it could have on the presidential election, according to a Politico report.  Delaware's U.S. Attorney David Weiss allegedly postponed allowing prosecutors to obtain search warrants and issue grand jury subpoenas last summer, after facing pressure from other officials who feared the investigation's influence on the 2020 presidential election and now-President Joe Biden's campaign.

Michigan Attorney General is Now Using State Police to Go After Those Who Allege Election Fraud in 2020.  Michigan's Attorney General Dana Nessel is once again finding herself at the center of an abuse of power controversy.  Gretchen Whitmer's right-hand woman is deploying the Michigan State Police to assist with finding those who are asserting election fraud in the 2020 election.  "The Michigan Attorney General's office said Thursday it will investigate allegations that people are profiting off of false claims that the November 2020 presidential election was stolen," News Channel 3 reported.  The draconian persecution of political dissidents comes at the behest of the Republican majority state senate, according to the office's announcement.

Georgia SOS Raffensperger Investigating All Key 2020 Election Whistle Blowers.  For the past several months the office of Georgia Secretary of State (SOS) Brad Raffensperger has been quietly investigating whistle blowers who believe they detected potential fraud in the November 2020 election.  That's right.  The Raffensperger's Inspector General office has an active investigation into the key witnesses who testified before the Georgia General Assembly and signed affidavits for the exhibits of the Fulton County ballot inspection lawsuit!  These witnesses swore they detected potentially counterfeit ballots in the Fulton County hand count audit that occurred on November 14th and 15th.  They also observed a variety of other anomalies.  The November 2020 election was certified by December 11th and Raffensperger told the Wall Street Journal on December 12th, 2020 that:  "November's election was the most secure in history.  In Georgia, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and no significant issues with absentee ballots."  Of course, none of that is true.  Reports of many counterfeit mail-in ballots, thousands of missing test ballots, several Dominion voting system malfunctions, numerous missing chain of custody forms, major hand count audit errors and even foreign interference into Georgia county election servers have dominated the news.

Nobody Ever Expects Authoritarian Imposition!  Consider how our D.C. despots, with their stern expressions of disapproval and general sense of entitlement, have responded to 75 million Trump voters who insist on auditing the 2020 election.  Have they done so with transparency, calm reason, compassion for those governed, and steadfast respect for the rule of law?  Nope.  They've decided to defend tyranny in the name of liberty and protect self-government by denying the people their chance to consent.  They've embraced Monty Python levels of absurdity by pretending free people can be free only if the authorities say so.  Questioning the legitimacy of an election is treason! (fear)  To "protect democracy," some people must be imprisoned for their political beliefs! (surprise)  In order to protect freedom, the Intelligence Community must work with Silicon Valley to label defenders of the Bill of Rights as "domestic extremists"!  (ruthless efficiency)  Patriotic Americans are enemies of the state because Antifa and BLM say so!  (fanatical devotion to the woke)

Biden Does Not Need A Domestic "Terrorism" Agenda Unless He Is About To Violate American Rights.  The federal government is a kind of self perpetuating blob; a cannibalistic creature that must continue to feed on the public and the systems around it in order to survive, but it also must create reasons for its existence so that it may go on feeding uninterrupted. [...] There are only two real mandates for the government, only two reasons for its existence in our republic:  To secure America's borders from invasion and to protect the freedoms of the citizenry.  That's it.  It is not the job of the government to compel you to take an experimental and questionable covid vaccine over a virus that 99.7% of people will easily survive.  It is not the job of the government to create artificial "social equity" by favoring one group or ethnicity over another.  It is not the job of the government to spy on millions of Americans because they do not agree with the leftist ideology.  It is not the job of government to make war on the very people it is mandated to protect.  Yet, this is exactly what the government is doing today while its totalitarianism is disguised as "humanitarianism".  In other words, they are essentially arguing that they must make war on the people in order to protect the people from themselves.

The NSA Leaked Details of Their Tucker Carlson Surveillance to Allied Deep State Media.  This is a great example of how the Intelligence Branch of the U.S. government now operates.  Not only did the NSA conduct surveillance of Tucker Carlson's electronic communication, but the NSA also leaked Carlson's emails to allied intelligence media (Axios, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post) who operate as PR firms on behalf of the Intelligence Branch.  [Video clip]

Durkan administration rejected requests to pay for improving Seattle's handling, archiving of officials' texts.  At least twice in recent years, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan's administration rejected budget proposals to improve the city's handling and preservation of text messages, shooting down detailed plans that staff said could help employees comply with state law and save the city from costly penalties for destroying public records.  Now the mayor and other high-ranking officials are embroiled in controversy over months' worth of texts that have been deleted, including messages exchanged during the tumultuous weeks last June when Seattle police tear-gassed racial justice demonstrators and abandoned the city's East Precinct station.  For Seattle's 2019 and 2020 budgets, Durkan's budget office rejected proposals by the city's Finance and Administrative Services and IT departments to fund text-archiving projects, budget records show.

Rudy Giuliani's Law License in Washington Suspended.  A U.S. appeals court ruled on July 7 that Rudy Giuliani can't practice law in Washington, a move that follows the suspension of Giuliani's New York law license two weeks ago.  The order from the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Giuliani, who served as the personal attorney for former President Donald Trump, had his law license revoked for making what the New York Supreme Court described as "false and misleading" statements following the Nov. 3 presidential election.  Giuliani is "suspended from the practice of law in the District of Columbia pending final disposition of this proceeding, effective on the date of entry of this order," the July 7 order states.  The filing cites the suspension of Giuliani's New York law license and says that his Washington license is revoked pending the result of disciplinary proceedings in New York.

After a False Abuse Allegation, Child Services Took This Mom's 3 Children Away.  Patti Krueger is a stay-at-home mom in Decatur, Illinois.  Her husband is a house painter.  The couple's second son, Wyatt, was born in 2017 with severe breathing difficulties.  "He was blue," says Krueger.  Wyatt spent nine days in neonatal intensive care.  Over the next two years his breathing problems necessitated oxygen treatments, tubes in his ears, and four surgeries, according to Krueger.  Some of his treatments were at a nearby hospital in Peoria.  Many hospitals today have a Child Abuse Pediatrician (CAP), a doctor on contract with child protective services.  Their job is to be on the lookout for child abuse, including abuse other doctors may have missed.  While the CAP at this hospital never met Krueger or worked directly with Wyatt, she reviewed his file and accused the mother of Munchausen syndrome by proxy — in other words, causing or faking a child's illness to get attention.  This CAP's report was all it took for Illinois' Department of Child and Family Services to put into place a "safety plan" to remove the Kruegers' kids.  These plans do not require any kind of court order because ostensibly the family "agrees" to it, on pain of potentially having no say over what happens next to their kids.

Noem: Biden Refused to Issue Mount Rushmore Fireworks Permits, Provided no Explanation Why.  During a Thursday [7/1/2021] interview on FNC's "Fox & Friends," South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) revealed that President Joe Biden refused to issue the permits this year for the Mount Rushmore Fourth of July celebration.  Noem said the celebration was brought back by President Donald Trump after President Barack Obama took it away for environmental concerns, and now Biden is canceling it again without providing an explanation.

The Fourth Branch of Government, The Intelligence Branch.  Factually, the modern intelligence apparatus uses checks and balances in their favor.  The checks create silos of proprietary information that works around oversight issues.  That's part of the problem.  Ironically the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the aftermath of 9/11/01 expressly to eliminate the silos of information which they felt led to a domestic terrorist attack that could have been prevented.  The ODNI was created specifically upon the recommendation of the 9/11 commission.  The intent was to create a central hub of intelligence information, inside the executive branch, where the CIA, NSA, DoD, DoS, and DIA could deposit their unique intelligence products and a repository would be created so that domestic intelligence operations, like the DOJ and FBI could access them when needed to analyze threats to the U.S.  This, they hoped, would ensure the obvious flags missed in the 9/11 attacks would not be missed again.  The DNI office created a problem for those who operate in the shadows of proprietary information.

The War on Reality.  On March 13, 2020, the public school district where I teach announced that all classrooms and buildings would be closed for two weeks.  Then two weeks turned into two months, and two months turned into over a full year without in-person instruction. [...] "Public health" and "the safety of our children" came to mean students Zooming from homeless encampments, experiencing severe abuse, regressing academically, falling into depression, going hungry, struggling through catastrophic learning loss, and, in the saddest cases, not making it through the year alive.  Despite consistent evidence that schools were not sites of high transmission for COVID-19, many teachers failed to put aside baseless fears about classroom superspreading and rampant infection.  As a result, many of the most vulnerable children in our society suffered outrageous hardships, while their affluent peers attended private schools in person.  We've all been told that school closures and lockdowns were mandated by science, but what if these mandates were immoral?  What if they were based on a series of lies?  In fact, what if the entire rationale for most restrictions was actually rotten to the core?

Are US Spy Services Monitoring the Opposition's Communications?  Fox News host Tucker Carlson has reported during the last week about a whistleblower who told him that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been monitoring his electronic communications with the intention of leaking them to get his show taken off the air.  While most of the prestige press has dismissed Carlson's claims, the whistleblower may have struck just the tip of the iceberg — it's possible that along with Carlson much of the leadership of the American opposition movement is also under surveillance.  The NSA denied that Carlson is "an intelligence target of the Agency."  It explained on its Twitter account that the "NSA has a foreign intelligence mission.  We target foreign powers to generate insights on foreign activities that may harm the United States.  With limited exceptions ... NSA may not target US citizens without a court order that explicitly authorizes the targeting."  As absurd as it sounds, it's not hard to imagine U.S. officials presenting phony evidence to a secret court to try to show that an American TV star is actually a foreign spy.  They did it when the former host of "Celebrity Apprentice" ran for president in 2016.

Capitol, symbol of democracy, off-limits on Independence Day.  As it has been for nearly 16 months, longer than any time in the nation's history, the U.S. Capitol is closed to most public visitors.  The one-two punch of the coronavirus pandemic that shuttered the Capitol's doors in the spring of 2020 and the deadly insurrection by then-President Donald Trump's supporters on Jan. 6 has left the icon of American democracy unopen to all but a select few.

The Power and Paranoia of the Left.  As of June 2021, the DOJ has charged more than 450 people with taking part in the 01/06/21 Capitol riot.  In D.C., 1,500 inmates have been confined to prison cells 22 hours a day for months.  Most have been placed in maximum security conditions.  Many have not been tried in court.  Biden's repression of the political opposition is unprecedented (with one exception) in American history, as is the Biden regime's systematic contravention of due process and constitutional rights. [...] Neo-Marxist American political culture has used media and social media to neutralize and destroy political opposition in a more effective, flexible manner than could have been achieved solely by the "legal power" of the Deep State and now the federal government.  Police state tactics like FBI home invasions have been widely reported.  The DOJ and FBI publicize these grotesque constitutional violations for the desired effect: general fear and political intimidation.

Cy Vance's Trump case is straight from a banana republic — punish your political enemies.  Donald Trump has long claimed that investigations of him are a partisan "witch hunt." Manhattan DA Cy Vance seems determined to make Trump's point for him by indicting the Trump Organization along with its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.  The 15-count indictment throws a kitchen sink of charges, including grand larceny, conspiracy, scheme to defraud,and tax fraud.  But the whole thing comes down to paying perks to Weisselberg — such as his parking garage fees, tuition for family members and reimbursement of holiday gratuities — and not reporting them as taxable income, or reporting that the wrong Trump entity paid them.  For this they slapped Weisselberg in handcuffs Thursday and paraded him in front of the media — a stage-managed political show trial.

Giuliani's Suspension:  Questionable Statements, But Not by Him.  On motion by an Attorney Grievance Committee, a New York Appellate Court suspended Rudy Giuliani, a member of President Donald Trump's personal legal team, from the practice of law for making supposedly false claims about the 2020 U.S. presidential election.  Most of the public will read headlines and short articles about the foregoing and assume that Giuliani was proven to a court's satisfaction to have knowingly lied.  But upon closer examination of the ruling by the New York appellate court, we see clearly questionable statements — not by Giuliani, but about him.  What was bizarre about this ruling, especially to any experienced lawyer, is that Giuliani was suspended before it was even determined preliminarily that an investigation of him should be opened.  The court disqualified Giuliani on an emergency ad hoc basis, implicating Trump's Sixth Amendment right to counsel and Giuliani's First Amendment right to free speech.

Gov. Lujan Grisham killed 40% of New Mexico small businesses with her lockdowns.  According to the "Economic Recovery Dashboard" on the New Mexico Tourism Department website, embattled Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's harsh lockdown during the pandemic resulted in an economic catastrophe, including the closure of 40% of New Mexico's small businesses, a devastating figure.  The figures show that in the food service and accommodations industry, nearly 60% of small businesses in that sector have been killed by Lujan Grisham's lockdowns.

Trump tears into 'radical left New York prosecutors' who have 'Failed' to find a crime against him and wasted 'millions in taxpayer funds'.  Donald Trump won't be personally charged in the Manhattan district attorney's case against the former president's business organization when the first indictment comes down, his attorney claimed.  Trump, in a lengthy and rambling statement issued on Monday, called the DA's investigation 'a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time' and claimed prosecutors 'failed' to find a crime even as 'millions of dollars of taxpayer funds wasted.'  His words came as an indictment against the business that made his fame and fortune, The Trump Organization, grows closer.

'They Leak, They Lie': Trump Says Opponents Are Committing 'Prosecutorial Misconduct' At 'Levels Rarely Seen Before'.  Former President Donald Trump slammed New York state and city prosecutors in a statement Monday, alleging that prosecutors are "in search of a crime" to charge him with.  Trump made the claim as Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and New York State Attorney General Leticia James continue to weigh criminal charges against top executives from the Trump Organization.  A grand jury was convened in May by Vance's office as part of their criminal probe into the Trump Organization.

Tucker Carlson Announces Whistleblower Confirmed the NSA is Plotting to Leak Info and Get His Show Pulled Off Air.  Tucker Carlson has revealed that a whistleblower told his show that the National Security Agency is spying on him and plotting to leak information in an effort to have him pulled off the air.  Carlson announced the shocking news on Monday evening's episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight.  "The NSA is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off air," Carlson said, admitting that it is a shocking claim and normally he would be skeptical of it, as it is illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens.  However, Carlson explained that the whistleblower even provided details about a story that the show was working on, which someone would only know from looking at his personal texts and emails.

Justice Department's Lawsuit Against Georgia Is Completely Partisan.  The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by new, radical Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, filed a lawsuit on June 25 against Georgia.  The Justice Department claimed the state's recently enacted election reform law, SB 202, violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act because it discriminates against black Georgia voters.  The complaint reads like a press release drafted by the Democratic National Committee instead of a serious lawsuit by an apolitical Justice Department.  Clarke claims the new law has a discriminatory effect and that Georgia legislators "intended to deny or abridge the right of black Georgians to vote."  These claims are without merit and appear to be driven by the Biden administration's disagreements with Georgia's policy choices.  The law does not discriminate under the Voting Rights Act.  For example, contrary to the Justice Department's claim, there is nothing remotely discriminatory about requiring individuals to request an absentee ballot at least 11 days before Election Day instead of the prior deadline of only four days.

Politics by other means?  Giuliani suspension should worry all lawyers.  This week, New York's Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of suspending Rudy Giuliani, former federal prosecutor and counsel to former President Trump, from practicing law. [...] However, the fluid standard applied in Giuliani's case raises serious concerns over how and when such suspensions will be imposed against lawyers in public controversies.  Indeed, the Giuliani standard would seem to implicate a wide array of attorneys who straddle the line of legal and political advocacy.  The 33-page opinion is [...] deeply concerning in its heavy reliance on Giuliani's statements out of court.  While lawyers have been disciplined for out-of-court statements in some cases, this suspension seems primarily a judgment on Giuliani's public advocacy.  The court states that when he uses "his large megaphone, the harm is magnified. ... One only has to look at the ongoing present public discord over the 2020 election, which erupted into violence, insurrection and death on January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, to understand the extent of the damage that can be done when the public is misled by false information about the elections. [...]"

Loudoun County School Board Meeting Goes Full Fascist When Over 200 Parents Confront Them Over Critical Race Theory.  The embattled school board of Virginia's Loudoun County cut off public comment during a fiery meeting Tuesday as residents traded barbs over new transgender policy proposals Tuesday following weeks of protests from district parents opposed to some of the measures, which they have criticized as potential left-wing indoctrination and a violation of parental rights.  The policies affect transgender student rights, privacy and restroom accommodations and would require Loudoun County Public Schools employees to use students' preferred names or pronouns.  An official school board vote on the proposal is not expected until at least Aug. 10.  [Video clip]

Concerned Parents Protesting CRT Arrested After Virginia School Board Meeting Declared Unlawful Assembly.  Parents were arrested while protesting against Critical Race Theory (CRT) and a transgender policy at a Virginia school board meeting Tuesday [6/22/2021].  The meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia abruptly ended after the crowd became too rowdy and was later declared an unlawful assembly, footage posted to Twitter showed.  Two arrests were reportedly made for trespassing after some parents refused to leave.  [Video clip]

Things Explode at School Board Meeting Over CRT, Arrests Are Made.  Things are popping off in Loudon County, VA tonight as the debates over critical race theory and transgender issues in schools heat up.  Over 200 parents signed up to give public comments at a local school board meeting, and things just got crazier from there.  Eventually, an unlawful assembly was declared and several arrests were made. [...] All the crowd did was clap in support of someone's comment.  That's literally the extent of their "eruption," but that was enough for the little tyrants on the school board to shut down the meeting and get the cops involved.

Democrats Are Turning 'Homeland Security' Into A Political Weapon.  When a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence says directly into a camera that fighting terror may now mean arresting members of Congress, the blood sport of politics has been taken to a new and more dangerous level.  Speaking on MSNBC recently, Frank Figliuzzi opined to Chuck Todd that:  "Arresting low-level operatives is merely a speed bump, not a road block.  In order to really tackle terrorism ... and this time domestically ... you've got to attack and dismantle the command-and-control element of the terrorist group, and unfortunately, and I know this is painful to hear ... that may mean people sitting in Congress right now, people in and around the former president."

Malibu Man Fined $4.2 Million Over Disputed Beachfront Gate.  When Warren and Henny Lent bought their Malibu beach house in 2002, it was the realization of a lifelong goal. [...] It was "a dream come true which lasted about two months," Lent says.  That was when the Lents learned, via a casual conversation with a neighbor, that their house had a five-foot-wide public access easement along its eastern side that people could use to get down to the water.  These easements aren't uncommon, and at first, the Lents didn't think much about the fact that their home had one too. [...] Nevertheless, this easement put the Lents on a collision course with one of the most powerful agencies in the state, and one with a history of antagonizing property owners: the California Coastal Commission (CCC).

Never Ever "Cooperate" With a Federal Law Enforcement Agent.  I have said it before and I will say it again.  You never, ever "cooperate" (talk) to any Federal or state law enforcement agent, period.  You also do not cooperate with any but benign and obvious local police requests, on the order of kids breaking into cars in the driveways of your neighborhood.  You may think you are being a good citizen and, maybe, their questions are legitimate and for a worthy purpose.  Maybe.  But you do not know that.  That professional agent may be a good, patriotic American doing noble work, like catching Chinese spies.  Maybe.  But you do not know that.  I have been involved in two extremely serious "investigations" at the Federal level.  I had done nothing at all wrong but one was politically driven (from the White House) and one was driven by ambitious bureaucrats.  In the first instance I got (expensive) legal help before I hanged myself.  If I had not, I would have lost my job at the very least.  In the second my wife and I were being set up for a totally false obstruction of justice charge.

White House encourages July 4 celebrations, except at Mount Rushmore.  South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted out a letter Tuesday from the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs which read in part:  "Thanks to the Biden administration's whole of government pandemic response, the United States has made incredible progress in vaccinating Americans and getting our country back on track [...] On July 4, because of our strong response, America will mark independence from the virus by celebrating with events across the country ...," the letter continued.  "We welcome you to join us by hosting your own events to honor our freedom, salute those who have been serving on the frontlines, and celebrate our progress in fighting this pandemic."  "What a hypocrite," Noem tweeted.  "President @JoeBiden wants 'a summer of freedom' where we 'mark independence from the virus by celebrating with events across the country.' Translation:  fireworks are fine at the White House, but not at Mount Rushmore."

Joe Biden's Most Terrifying Move Is One No One Is Talking About.  Elected officials are often just weak quasi-celebrities with little ability to propagate any real change.  Meanwhile, a determined group of bureaucrats can make regulations, target their political enemies with state power, and generally enact massive societal change — and you won't even know their names.  The Founders never intended for such a corrupt system to become the country's standard procedure, but here we are, and Democrats are keen to take advantage of it.  We saw what the often-called "deep state" was capable of during the Donald Trump era.  Now, Biden is looking to super-size that effort, and it should terrify you.

Gov. Newsom won't lift virus 'state of emergency'.  While California will end most of its coronavirus restrictions on June 15, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday he will not lift the statewide "state of emergency" that gives him broad powers to either suspend or declare new rules and regulations.  California has been under a state of emergency since March 4, 2020.  Since then, Newsom has authorized billions of dollars in emergency spending and issued at least 47 executive orders to alter or suspend 200 state laws and regulations because of the virus, according to a resolution authored by Republican state senators.

Is a "Climate Lockdown" on the horizon?  If and when the powers-that-be decide to move on from their pandemic narrative, lockdowns won't be going anywhere.  Instead it looks like they'll be rebranded as "climate lockdowns", and either enforced or simply held threateningly over the public's head.  At least, according to an article written by an employee of the WHO, and published by a mega-coporate think-tank.  The report, titled "Avoiding a climate lockdown", was written by Mariana Mazzucato, a professor of economics at University College London, and head of something called the Council on the Economics of Health for All, a division of the World Health Organization.  It was first published in October 2020 by Project Syndicate, a non-profit media organization that is (predictably) funded through grants from the Open society Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and many, many others.

Emergency!.  The Covid war is over, but Minnesota Governor Tim Walz carries on the fight.  Tomorrow he will continue his one-man rule of the state by declaring another "emergency."  He will accordingly extend his emergency powers for another 30 days.  Doing the arithmetic, Alpha News reports that this makes it the fifteenth month in a row that Governor Walz has ruled with emergency powers.  The relevant statute limits the circumstances under which the governor is delegated the power to declare an emergency:  "A peacetime declaration of emergency may be declared only when an act of nature, a technological failure or malfunction, a terrorist incident, an industrial accident, a hazardous materials accident, or a civil disturbance endangers life and property and local government resources are inadequate to handle the situation."  The circumstances that might justify the declaration of an emergency have not obtained for a long time, if ever.  The continued "emergency" is utterly lawless.

When the State Comes for Your Kids.  [Scroll down]  Here, for instance, are the powers granted to a 13-year-old child by the state of Washington.  Minors age 13 and up are entitled to admit themselves for inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment without parental consent.  Health insurers are forbidden from disclosing to the insured parents' sensitive medical information of minor children — such as that regarding "gender dysphoria [and] gender affirming care."  Minors aged 13 to 18 can withhold mental health records from parents for "sensitive" conditions, which include both "gender dysphoria" and "gender-affirming care."  Insurers in Washington must cover a wide array of "gender-affirming treatments" from tracheal shaves to double mastectomies.  Put these together, and a seventh grader could be entitled to embark on "gender affirming care" — which may include anything from a provider using the child's name and pronouns to the kid preparing to receive a course of hormones — without her parents' permission, against her parents' wishes, covered by her parents' insurance, and with the parents kept in the dark by insurance companies and medical providers.  Lest you wonder whether there is some madcap elixir polluting the groundwater of Washington State alone, in 2015, Oregon passed a law permitting minors 15 and older to obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries at taxpayers' expense — all without parental consent.

Why Are All the Experts Such Dopes?  We normals are now expected to defer and submit to the commands of unelected functionaries bossing us around for our own good, though this is only good for those said experts and their fellow travelers in the ruling class.  Over about 250 years, America has gone from its leaders being selected on the basis of the divine right of kings to its leaders being selected by on the basis of the divine right of nerds with advanced degrees from Yale.

Are our federal intelligence agencies compromised?  A lot of people have been wondering why, suddenly, the leftist establishment is embracing the idea that COVID came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (which is tied to the Chinese military) after denying the possibility for so long.  The answer may lie in the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency has for months been debriefing a high-level Chinese Communist Party defector — but withheld the information from other agencies until recently because of fears that those agencies are compromised.  In other words, it's a twofer:  China did create and release the virus, and our federal government cannot be trusted.

The New Domestic War on Terror Has Already Begun — Even Without the New Laws Biden Wants.  The Department of Homeland Security on Friday [5/28/2021] issued a new warning bulletin, alerting Americans that domestic extremists may well use violence on the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre.  This was at least the fourth such bulletin issued this year by Homeland Security (DHS) warning of the same danger and, thus far, none of the fears it is trying to instill into the American population has materialized. [...] Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually no specificity.  They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country.

The New Secession Crisis: The Democrats have already left the Union.  The Democrats have already seceded from America's historic conception of nationhood in many respects: [...] THEY have used instruments of the state such as the IRS (under Lois Lerner) the FBI (Russiagate) and the Department of Defense (attacking Tucker Carlson) and numerous other agencies to attack political opponents.  Political allies of President Trump were investigated and prosecuted by the government in ways that were transparently focused on taking down the duly elected president.

Time for a Coalition of Free American States.  Although America's constitutional form of limited government was designed specifically to maximize the liberty of citizens and maximize the power of states at the expense of the federal government, the accumulation of power has flowed only in one direction — away from individual states and individual citizens and toward the national government in D.C.  This phenomenon is so natural throughout history that it was a chief concern of the Founding Fathers themselves.  Thomas Jefferson, a shrewd student of human nature, was blunt:  "Experience hath shewn [sic], that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."  Let's be honest:  the federal government hasn't looked in tip-top shape for a long time, and now it's a train wreck waiting to happen.  It's made up of millions of petty bureaucrats who couldn't care less about "serving the public."

Child Welfare Caught Stealing Social Security Checks From Disabled and Orphaned Foster Kids.  NPR has done an in-depth investigative series exposing a child-welfare money-making scheme that targets children receiving Social Security benefits for the enrichment of social services.  This is a pattern that I've seen repeat during my years investigating CPS/DSS and other child-welfare offices around the country. [...] Not only do they target children who are receiving benefits but in some of the cases I've covered, the employees of the county encouraged the parent to sign up for the benefits while pretending to "help" the family.  Once the benefits are secured, the child welfare agency takes the children — and the Social Security checks — with trumped-up charges like "Munchausen syndrome by proxy" or nebulous charges of "neglect."  This exact scenario happened to a mom in Colorado who must remain anonymous because of pending litigation.

Michigan Prosecutors Determined to Destroy Young Conservative's Entire Life After Posting a "Snowflake" Joke in Private Snapchat Group.  Lucas Gerhard is a 21-year-old man.  Instead of celebrating his graduation from Lake Superior State University in Sault St. Marie, MI, in the criminal justice field and looking for a job in law enforcement, Lucas is locked down in his father's home, wearing an ankle bracelet. [...] The story we are about to tell you is truly one of the most remarkable cases of injustice you will ever read.  It's a story of how easily two intolerant, liberal students, with the help of the police, school administrators, and an overly zealous prosecutor, can cancel the life of a young man, all while trampling on his First and Second Amendment Rights.

What Trump Meant to Millions.  I loved President Trump because he stood up for the ordinary people of America, those who for so long had been kept in cultural servitude by the political elite.  Trump endowed ordinary Americans with a sense of possibilities by returning manufacturing jobs to America, restoring our sovereignty as a nation free of global institutions, and, above all, ending the atmosphere of political correctness that had choked free expression for decades.  Then, when the elite saw everyday Americans rising above their station, it decided to put them back in their servitude by depriving Trump of a second term, by whatever means necessary.  Now the high-paying jobs are disappearing, we are bowing to the UN, IPCC, and WHO once again, and every word that comes out of the White House has to do with "social and racial justice."  The Capitol riot of Jan. 6 gave them an excuse, and now ordinary Americans are back on the cultural plantation.

Scott Atlas:  Lockdowns Not Only a 'Heinous Abuse' of Power, They Also Failed to Protect the Elderly.  The lockdowns implemented to curb the transmission of COVID-19 in the United States and across the globe have not only been a "heinous abuse of power," but they have also failed to protect the elderly and vulnerable, according to former White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Scott Atlas.  In an interview for Epoch TV's "American Thought Leaders," Atlas, a public health policy expert, suggested that the consequences of lockdowns, which he believes have been largely fear-driven, will be felt in the country for decades to come.  "We will have a massive price to pay for what was done in the United States," said Atlas.  "The consequences of the lockdowns have been enormously harmful and they will last for decades after this pandemic is completely finished."

12 Lessons Learned from Covid-19.  [#6] The government will use any crisis to disregard the Constitution.  Freedom of religion, speech, press, or assembly anyone?  How about depriving citizens of life, liberty, or property without due process of law?  [#7] Politicians will use crises to spend money on things that have nothing to do with the instigating event, rewarding their campaign contributors in the process.  Very little of the trillions spent on the Covid "stimulus" packages has went to individuals or Covid-related medical costs.  The vast majority went to big business "bailouts."  [#8] Government should be kept as far away as possible from our health care system as possible.  Have you ever seen such incompetence in simply distributing personal protection equipment and test kits?  Do you think anyone in the private sector could have done it more cheaply and efficiently?  Half the Covid official deaths are related to incompetent governor mandates related to nursing homes.

Biden's Department of Homeland Security Posts $500,000 Grant for Company to Hunt Down 'Extremists' in Law Enforcement.  The Biden administration is posting a reward for anyone who can tell it how to find violent extremists in law enforcement.  The Department of Homeland Security has put $500,000 on the table to fund research projects aimed at determining how violent extremists are infiltrating the police.  "The goal of this solicitation is to contribute to a comprehensive and extensive understanding of insider threats facing domestic law enforcement agencies," the request for proposals posted on grants.gov reads.

California overkill.  The F-15C Eagle, a jet fighter of the U.S. Air Force, can hit speeds of 1,875 mph (Mach 2.4) and boasts a range of 3,450 miles.  With its M-16AI cannon and Sidewinder missiles, the Eagle is designed for air-to-air combat.  But somebody thought the fighter might prove more versatile.  According to the Los Angeles Times, the California National Guard put an F-15C fighter on standby to "buzz" any crowds daring to resist stay-at-home orders at the outset of the pandemic last year.  Four National Guard members, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Times the orders were allegedly handed down orally or through text messages rather than in the official manner.  "We do not use our planes to frighten or intimidate civilians," National Guard Lt. Col. Jonathan Shiroma told the Times, but there was more to the story.

How a confederate flag painted on a rock could cost a mom her kid.  A New York mom is caught between a rock and an appellate court.  The upstate woman has been told she needs to ditch a driveway decoration painted with a confederate flag or risk losing custody of her mixed race child — even though a family court judge didn't consider it to be an issue when it was raised during trial.  "Given that the child is of mixed race, it would seem apparent that the presence of the flag is not in the child's best interests, as the mother must encourage and teach the child to embrace her mixed race identity, rather than thrust her into a world that only makes sense through the tortured lens of cognitive dissonance," judges with the Appellate Division's Third Department in Albany wrote in a ruling released Thursday.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer Reportedly Borrowed A Private Jet For Secret Florida Trip During Lockdown.  A spokesman for Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer confirmed in April that Whitmer flew to Florida while instructing Michiganders to stay home while under COVID-19 lockdown orders.  Now, a new report indicates Whitmer contacted wealthy Detroit businessmen to lend a private plane.  Spokesman Bobby Leddy said the governor traveled on three occasions to Florida to visit her elderly father.  The governor's office claimed taxpayer money was not used for travel.  Deadline Detroit reports Whitmer avoided a private plane fee in the range of $10,000 to $20,000 by asking billionaires to provide a charter.  The jet she took would have allegedly ran her a fee of $40,000, an estimated 25 percent of Whitmer's salary before taxes.

Michigan Gov Sneaked off to Florida in a Billionaires' Jet and No One Seems to Care.  [Michigan] is lagging behind almost all other states around us in the Great Lakes region in how we have been dealing with the COVID-19 situation. [...] Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, for over a year, has beseeched the citizens of the Mitten State to follow the rules she has laid out, and together we will defeat this.  If we just wear our masks and social distance and wear our masks in a car alone, we will whip this thing.  Really, this is based on science — or something that they still will not release.  Oh and don't travel to one of those southern states that her good pal Joe Biden said had "Neanderthal thinking" for deciding to open up their states and ditching the fear-driven drivel of despair.  Unless, of course, it is the Governor going on a secret visit to see her Dad.  In Florida.  On a gaggle of billionaires' jet.  Without alerting Florida authorities as a courtesy to let them know one of the 50 state governors was visiting in case something happened while she was there.  Without having had one of the COVID-19 "vaccine" shots given to her.

Parents Have Had Enough — South Salt Lake City School Board Shuts Down Parents During Meeting.  School boards are where mini-dictators are grown.  Thus the latest exhibit comes from South Salt Lake, Utah and the Granite School District Board of Education meeting.  The board was going to hear proposals of removing the mask mandate for K-12 students.  However, they would only allow one parent to speak during "citizen participation time", a control method for keeping the pesky proles from expressing their opinion of board policy.  After the board allowed a mask advocate from the state to speak, the School board said that's it, no more discussion.  Parents became infuriated, things got ugly.  The board ended the meeting and escaped out the back-door of the building.  [Video clip]

Whitmer Mooches Billionaires' Plane As Father Makes Miraculous Recovery.  When Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was outed last month for a secretive trip to Florida in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, her office claimed Michigan taxpayers did not foot the bill.  What they did not tell us, however, is that Whitmer asked a group of wealthy Detroit businessmen to provide a private plane they share.  Those businessmen have major dealings in and with the state of Michigan.  "We wondered why she reached out to us instead of booking a private charter," said one of the plane's owners, who exchanged his candor for confidentiality.  "You can't tell a governor no.  Who needs that kind of trouble?"

Oligarchy, and Remedies.  What are hundreds of America's biggest corporations doing as they browbeat the public to abolish the requirement of identification for voting?  What are Twitter, Facebook, et al. doing when they prohibit people from sharing facts that are inconvenient to government policy or (and) the Democratic Party?  What did banks do when they turned over to the FBI the records of persons who happened to have traveled to D.C. near January 6?  And what about all those big retail stores — you know, the ones that the government designated "essential," the ones that thrived under the lockdowns — what are they doing when they continue to demand that you wear masks on their property regardless of vaccination?  What are colleges and universities, even K-12 schools doing when they deprive of opportunities young people who do not fit woke profiles?  And what do all of them do when they dismiss complaints that they are violating your Constitutional rights by telling you that they are exercising their own private rights?  Are they simply fronting for the government or, specifically, for the Democratic Party?

Our Quasi-Soviet States of America.  The federal Department of Justice and state-level law enforcement in jurisdictions taken over by the left are lenient with common criminals but savagely oppressive against political protesters when an excuse can be found, or manufactured, to charge them with a crime.  That fate fell on many allies of Trump.  Rudy Giuliani was visited by a gang of FBI agents at 6 A.M. equipped with dubious search warrants.  Vote-stealing activities during the last election were ignored and not even investigated because they helped the left.  In San Francisco, thefts of less than $950 are not prosecuted, giving criminals a free pass to terrorize small businesses and respectable people. [...] Abolishing or neutering the police allows the dregs of society to form political enforcement gangs to terrorize individuals considered political enemies.  These gangs are instruments of the regime but officially are low-level criminals not under the control of the regime.

The Never-ending Hunt for a Trump Crime.  Was this an off-the-book operation by rogue agents?  I mean, if these people feel free to constantly leak to the press sensitive material, how far off the reservation have FBI agents gone?  Or was this shoved under the carpet as a national security matter and the DNI was responsible and kept Barr in the dark?  A mystery of significant importance.  Did they have a FISA warrant to do this?  If so, ever more reason to scrap this monstrosity.  If you are not yet concerned about the FBI's counterintelligence operations, its incompetency and KGB-type operations, you just aren't paying attention.

The Real Reasons Behind the Rudy Giuliani Raid.  Expectations that the FBI was investigating possible crimes documented on Hunter Biden's laptop were laid to rest earlier this week when agents raided the home and office of Rudolph Giuliani, the man who made news of the laptop public.  According to reports, federal investigators are looking for evidence that the former Mayor of New York City violated the foreign agents registration act (FARA) by illegally lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian officials.  But that's just a pretext to search his communications and records to find something with which to take revenge against a man who helped uncover the corruption of America's first family.  The compromising photos, emails, and texts found on Hunter's laptop include accounts of financial arrangements with a Chinese businessman he called the "spy chief of China."  The documents, confirmed by a former Biden associate, implicate other members of the Biden clan, including it seems the president.  And so to hunt Giuliani, the commander-in-chief has deployed federal law enforcement authorities, which have their own reason to retaliate against one of the Department of Justice's most famous former prosecutors.  Giuliani helped thwart the FBI and DOJ's plot to topple an American president.

FBI raid on innocent couple shows lawlessness at Department of Justice.  Wednesday's rogue FBI raid on an innocent couple in Homer is an example of what happens when a lawless and completely illegitimate political party and administration come to power.  The Democrats are utilizing the proven techniques of communism and fascism, and weaponizing federal law enforcement for political purposes.  They are now reaping the fruits of the November's fake election.  Its aftermath spells the end of freedom in America.  It is no longer a threat.  It is here, and none of us are safe.  Paul and Marilyn Hueper went to DC on Jan. 6 to listen to Donald Trump's speech.  Like other Alaskans, they were at the very foot of the stage and in front of a million people in the Washington Mall, but when they were dismissed by Trump to "Peacefully and patriotically protest", they suddenly found themselves at the back of a very long line.  They got lost, they bought a hot dog, they started up the steps, but they never got within a hundred yards of entering the capitol building.

DOJ Targets Journalist Investigating Biden Family Ukraine Scandals.  As part of an investigation into former President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Biden Justice Department is seizing communications between the former mayor and a journalist investigating President Joe Biden's business dealings with Ukraine.  Agents from the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office and the FBI raided the New York residence of Giuliani early Wednesday morning.  The investigation stems from at least a two-year-old probe into potential crimes of federal lobbying laws.  Federal investigators seized Giuliani's electronic devices.  The warrant presented, however, according to Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello, raises questions surrounding the scope and motivation behind the investigation, where prosecutors began issuing subpoenas around the same time of Trump's first impeachment inquiry launched by Democrats centered on conduct in Ukraine in 2019.

Biden's DOJ Plotted Political Stunt Courthouse Arrest of George Floyd Cop.  The Obama DOJ is back and that means pushing black supremacist politics and going after the police.  But even by Obama standards, a political stunt like a courthouse arrest of the cop who was on the scene when George Floyd died of a drug overdose is really something. [...] Arresting Chauvin at the courthouse was a publicity stunt.  Chauvin wasn't going to fly to Brazil even if he were exonerated.  But you just know the Obama DOJ people plotting this had been coordinating with CNN to have the cameras running on the scene.

Not a single person of honor or integrity can survive inside the DC institutions.  [Thread reader]  I still held the belief there were three branches of government, and there were "checks and balances", and there had to be some way for a good person to expose corruption.  He quickly dispatched those beliefs (with examples).  He explained the "checks and balances" I spoke of did exist at a time when there were three branches of government.  However, that time has long passed.  There is only one overarching DC eco-system now.  The three branch concept is gone.  Doesn't exist.  As he explained, the levers of power are all controlled by the same system, and behind that system are positions — not people.  "Positions."  People are evaluated based on their ability to support and protect the system.  Their skill level is what moves them into position.  Position.  Evaluation.  Next Position.  Evaluation.  Etc.  The system more like an institution.  Within the institution there are divisions.  The divisions are what we used to call "branches".  The divisions (branches) are not independent from the institution of DC.  The divisions are operated by people in power who hold positions.  He identified the timeline of this institutional creation as a slow build (over decades), but most visibly increasing in publicity after 9/11/01 and the patriot act.  Once the patriot act made the government responsible for total safety; the previously embedded bad actors took full control.  One office of particular note was the creation of the ODNI.  As he noted the amassing of surveillance power.  [O]nce that Rubicon was crossed, everything after was downstream and unstoppable.  The institution of the total intelligence apparatus now had full control...

Giuliani claims materials seized by FBI are 'exculpatory' evidence.  Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Thursday he "never ever represented any foreign national" after the FBI raided his apartment and seized his electronic devices earlier this week.  Giuliani, who served as former President Donald Trump's personal attorney, has reportedly been eyed by federal authorities over whether he illegally lobbied the previous administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs while searching for damaging information on Trump's political rivals, including President Joe Biden, then the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.  He told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday that seven FBI agents knocked on his door at 6 a.m. on Wednesday serving a warrant for electronics, adding he told federal agents:  "This is extraordinary because I've offered to give these to the government and talk it over them for two years."  "I could have destroyed the evidence years ago," Giuliani said, but he claimed that he didn't because the evidence is "exculpatory" and proves himself, Trump, and "all of us are innocent."

Rudy Giuliani responds to FBI search warrant raid and goes on the offensive.  The highly publicized early morning raid on the apartment and office of Rudy Giuliani, the personal lawyer of the 45th President of the United States, was an outrage.  Thanks to a 10+ minute interview last night on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the nation's highest-rated cable news program, we have a better grasp of the dimensions of the scandalous behavior of the Department of Justice.  [Video clip]  I urge readers to view the entire interview if they did not see it on the broadcast.  It is embedded below.  Keep in mind that before he was Mayor of New York, he was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the very office that is now conducting the investigation targeting him.  He therefore knows the ins and outs of all aspects of federal prosecution, including the execution of search warrants.

The dark night of fascism has finally landed in the United States.  On Wednesday [4/28/2021], Federal agents flashing open-ended warrants conducted a 6 a.m. raid on former New York mayor current Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to seize his electronics.  The ostensible reason was that Giuliani violated a law requiring Americans who represent foreign nationals to register as foreign agents.  This is a law that is enforced only against Republicans close to Trump — and Giuliani is adamant that he's never represented foreign nationals.  The agents ostentatiously refused to seize copies of Hunter Biden's hard drives, which Giuliani possessed, even though they were obvious electronic devices.  Giuliani contends that the hard drives' contents establish not only that Hunter and Joe Biden acted as unregistered foreign agents, but also that Joe Biden and his family took millions in bribes over the years and that Hunter Biden was engaged in child pornography.  Since Giuliani still has the hard drives, perhaps he should make all the information on the drives public. [...] On the evidence available, what's happening to Giuliani looks like typical fascism:  an incoming regime uses unequally applied law and a complete absence of due process to purge all political opposition.

Feds search Giuliani apartment in Ukraine investigation: report.  Federal investigators have executed a search warrant on former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, seizing electronic devices, sources confirmed to Fox News.  The raid on Giuliani, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes as federal authorities were investigating whether he violated the law by lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials in 2019. Giuliani has served as former President Donald Trump's personal attorney on a number of high-profile matters.  According to Giuliani's attorney Robert Costello, seven FBI agents arrived at the apartment at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, and remained for roughly two hours.  The agents seized several electronic devices including laptops and cell phones.

Federal agents raid Rudy Giuliani's NYC apartment.  The moves were tied to an investigation into Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine, according to reports.  A resident of Giuliani's Upper East Side building on East 66th Street said the doorman described greeting the agents at 6 a.m. and letting them pass when they displayed a search warrant.  The raid marked an escalation in the feds' probe of the former mayor, who is being investigated over whether he illegally lobbied former President Donald Trump on behalf of officials and oligarchs in Ukraine, according to the New York Times.  The Ukrainian officials were also reportedly helping Giuliani dig up dirt on Trump's political rivals, including then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Furious Andrew Giuliani slams DOJ's 'political' raids on his father's NYC home and office as part of Ukraine probe.  Rudy Giuliani's son Andrew has accused the Department of Justice of raiding his father's New York apartment and office for political reasons — and claims agents didn't want to take allegedly incriminating evidence involving Hunter Biden.  'Any American, whether you are red or blue, should be extremely disturbed by what happened here today, by the continued politicization,' furious Andrew, 35, told reporters in the Upper East Side on Wednesday [4/28/2021].  'The only piece of evidence that they did not take up there today was the only piece of incriminating evidence that is in there — and it does not belong to my father, it belongs to the current president's son,' he added.

Rudy Giuliani responds to the feds raiding his NYC apartment.  Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday accused federal agents of ignoring copies of Hunter Biden's computer hard drives when they raided his apartment — and blamed the investigation into his dealings in Ukraine on "Trump Derangement Syndrome."  In a statement released by his lawyer, Giuliani said the FBI "steadfastly declined" to take the hard drives when he "offered them on several occasions."  "Keep in mind that the agents could not read the physical hard drives without plugging them in, but they took Mr. Giuliani's word that the hard drives were copies of Hunter Biden's hard drive and did not contain anything pertaining to Mr. Giuliani," the statement said.  "Their reliance on Mr. Giuliani's credibility tells you everything you need to know about this case."

FBI Abused Secretive Surveillance Program, Court Finds.  The FBI continued abusing the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act program, including searching for information on people who had gone to the bureau to report they were victims of a crime, a newly declassified document shows.  One FBI information specialist between April 11, 2019, and July 8, 2019, conducted approximately 124 queries of information obtained through secretive methods under the act, or FISA, which permits warrantless surveillance of foreigners outside of the United States.  The surveillance can and has been used to ultimately obtain information on Americans.  The searches included looking at information for people who had requested to participate in a bureau-run citizens academy, a program for local leaders designed to foster greater understanding of the role of law enforcement, and people who needed to enter the field office the FBI worker was based in to conduct work, such as a repair, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court reported in the newly released document.  In other cases, people who entered the field office, which was not named, to report they were victims of the crime were subjected to the background search.

The Editor says...
As I have said before, when you go to the cops for help, the first thing they investigate is YOU.

The FISA Court is Compromised — Presiding Judge James Boasberg Hires Former DOJ-NSD Head, Mary McCord, as Amici Curiae to Advise The Court.  I hate to write this, but there is just no good way to look at this.  The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, specifically Presiding Judge James Boasberg, has hired former DOJ National Security Division head, Mary McCord, as amici curiae advisor to the court.  The placement was first noted by an announcement from Georgetown Law ICAP.  Presiding Judge James Boasberg, is the decision-maker in the appointment of Amici Curiae to the FISA court.  There is no way, NO WAY, Judge Boasberg does not know Mary McCord was at the epicenter of the fraudulent FISA application used against Carter Page.

Agency underground.  Since last year, the department tasked with overseeing foster care and child welfare in New Mexico has been encrypting and routinely deleting its communications, making much of its work essentially untraceable.  The leadership of the Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) has directed staff to use Signal, a secure communication app, and has set chats to automatically delete.  In contrast to standard text messages or emails — which could be accessed by attorneys, reporters and members of the public under the state's open records laws — messages sent via Signal are all but impossible to retrieve.  Once deleted, virtually no trace of a Signal conversation remains, even on the company's server.  Attorneys and child advocates say the practice likely violates state open-records laws and could hamper any investigation into the department, which has been subject to lawsuits and massive criticism for its management of the foster-care system.

Biden's 100-Day Rampage.  Not since 1932, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first 100 days as president set a benchmark for presidential performance, has any president done so much so quickly as Joe Biden.  In fact, Biden is surpassing Roosevelt significantly in imposing massive damaging changes on America that may not be reversible.  Unlike Roosevelt, Biden isn't only relying on Congress to pass legislation.  Biden is achieving his goals by making international agreements, imposing executive orders and policy decisions, and working hard to undo everything his predecessor did.  Biden will brag about his accomplishments later this week in a speech to a joint session of Congress.  We can expect to hear about his rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and his promise last week to cut U.S. carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030. [...] If we analyze what these "successes" mean to us, our national security, and our economy, it's quite clear that Biden defines success in terms of his ability to diminish our economy and national security.

Gretchen Whitmer and Other Michigan Lunatics Tell 2-Year-Olds To Mask Up.  Starting today across the state of Michigan, two-year-olds at daycare facilities will be required to mask up, thanks to an order from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.  Kids from ages 2 [to] 4 will now be subjected to mask requirements just like the rest of Michigan citizens, according to MDHHS representative Bob Wheaton, who told MLive.com that two-year-olds will be required to wear a mask at a park just like 18-year-old senior in high school.  The new rules will require daycare workers to keep masks on two-year-olds.  One daycare worker told Mid-Michigan Now that she's concerned for the two-year-olds who are learning from teacher facial expressions and expressions from classmates.  "Something might be super exciting and fun, but they can't see that so they don't know how to react," Nicole Bellanger from Lady Di Daycare told the news channel.  Bellanger added that three-year-olds at the facility are speaking less since they started wearing face masks.

Biden Threatens To Cancel 4th Of July If Americans Don't Get "The Jab".  Whoever is writing Joe Biden's material doesn't appear to have a working knowledge of why it is that Americans celebrate the Fourth Of July, or as it is otherwise known Independence Day.  On Wednesday [4/21/2021], the nation's 46th president reiterated his tired threat:  If people don't march down to their local vaccination site and roll up their sleeves, that they would not be able to celebrate July 4th.  Even to get together in "small gatherings" to commemorate the day when our forefathers broke free of the tyranny of a king.  Biden's mass vaccination push has gotten stuck in the mud now that those who were eager to take "the jab" have done so.  That leaves tens of millions of Americans who are understandably wary of being injected with vaccines that were rushed into distribution under emergency use approval.  Without the standard years of clinical and animal trials that show safety and effectiveness long-term.

Roger Stone:  Why Am I Being Treated Differently than Hunter Biden and the Rev. Al Sharpton?  Call it Witch Hunt 3.0 The civil suit for $2 Million (!) in back taxes announced by the Biden Department of Justice against me and my wife when we have neither under-reported income nor hidden any assets and they know we have no assets.  This is a politically motivated harassment fueled by the partisan prosecutors' fury and liberal hysteria over the fact that President Trump saw the clear corruption of my trial and had the strength and the courage to correct this injustice by issuing me a grant of clemency and a full and unconditional pardon.  Now, Robert Mueller, I am not a convicted felon nor did you have any evidence against me as you were forced to admit by the court in the long-hidden sections of your report.  That was Witch Hunt 1.0.  Please recognize the Justice Department filed their civil suit at 6 PM on a Friday with no notice whatsoever to my tax attorneys with whom they have been in regular contact.  This demonstrates the political motivation of these highly contrived charges.  In fact, months of ongoing good-faith negotiations between my tax attorney and the IRS to settle this debt went silent the day after the Inauguration of Joe Biden and after we submitted a MOUNTAIN of updated financial information in ongoing settlement negotiations.  The claim in the lawsuit that the IRS terminated my settlement agreement is false and a fraud upon the Court.  My tax attorney formally informed them when I was simply unable to pay.

Americans Exiled within America.  [Scroll down]  A corrupt voting process has deprived millions of meaningful participation within their republic.  Meanwhile, integrity of citizenship itself is imperiled by the erasure of the nation's boundaries and the granting of privileges to non-citizens.  Second, Americans have been deprived of their property, which has essentially been confiscated by the State in the interest of public "health."  Businesses have been shut down and, when partly opened, managed by bureaucrats who dictate how a business such as a restaurant may be run. [...] But most importantly, like individuals who are removed from their country, exiled Americans have experienced loss of community and communication.  The forced isolation of Americans and the shutdown of nearly all institutions have deprived Americans of supportive communities.  Churches, schools, museums, concert halls, political groups, and even family gatherings such as funerals and weddings have become tightly regulated.  Many communities have either disappeared altogether or retreated into cyberspace.

Meet Kimberly Gardner, the Rogue Prosecutor Whose Policies Are Wreaking Havoc in St. Louis.  Kimberly Gardner, the beleaguered rogue prosecutor (called the "circuit attorney") for the city of St. Louis, Missouri, has made a national name for herself.  Unfortunately, as we demonstrate below, her national reputation comes from her radical pro-criminal, anti-victim policies and a series of high-profile missteps she has made.  Like many other rogue prosecutors around the country, she was swept into office by winning her 2016 election with a wave of money from George Soros and tech billionaire-funded entities, who again contributed heavily to help her win reelection in 2020.

Who Is Freer These Days?  Putin has his enemies jailed, but that's now official policy in America.  In the case of Putin, he does not relish in the torment of his opponents.  There is some hint of shame there.  In America, members of the regime take pleasure in tormenting those who speak out against them.  Take, for example, the case of Alexey Navalny, the CIA-sponsored critic of Putin who is now in jail.  He claims poor treatment at the hands of the government, but he is able to speak to the media about it.  In contrast, there are an unknown number of people in jail right now over the January protests.  One was beaten by guards to the point where he lost sight in one eye.  Unlike with Alexey Navalny, The New York Times and The Washington Post are not demanding Ronald Sandlin be set free.  The great and the good are not calling him a political prisoner, despite the fact he is literally in jail for politics.  The folks who tell us "democracy dies in darkness" are happy that Ronald Sandlin now lives in darkness at the hands of the state.  The political prisoners being held by the Biden regime envy Alexey Navalny.

Due process is no more in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.  [Scroll down]  Due process is the underpinning of the rule of law:  Those in power cannot treat people in an arbitrary and capricious manner.  Instead, there are rules for dealing with problematic situations, whether criminal accusations or workplace wrongdoing, especially in the context of government employment.  Due process is a double-sided shield that, in addition to protecting Americans from those in power, also protects them from the passions of the mob[.]  A man like this, who can stand for the rule of law when the mob is baying for blood, is a treasure and should be cherished.  In a fraught situation, he placed profoundly important principles ahead of any personal feelings he might have had regarding the events that just put his city on the map.  It turned out that the City Council would have liked to cherish him but the members were too frightened to do so.  Immediately after the conference, the Council convened in an emergency session and promptly fired [City Manager Curt] Boganey.  As one council member stated explicitly, the council's decision was made entirely to appease the mob.

Daunte Wright shooting:  Brooklyn Center city manager fired after call for due process for police officer.  Brooklyn Center City Manager Curt Boganey was fired on Monday evening, hours after he publicly disagreed with Mayor Mike Elliott's assertion that the police officer who fatally shot a Black man in the Minneapolis suburb should be immediately fired in response to the incident.  "Effective immediately our city manager has been relieved of his duties, and the deputy city manager will be assuming his duties moving forward," Elliott wrote on Twitter.  "I will continue to work my hardest to ensure good leadership at all levels of our city government."

California city erects fence outside COVID mandate-defying restaurant.  A California city erected a fence outside a restaurant that has repeatedly flouted coronavirus health orders, a report said.  The fencing was put up Saturday outside Tinhorn Flats Saloon & Grill in Burbank after a court ordered the establishment's electricity be shut off, according to an NBC Los Angeles report.  The eatery has racked up nearly $50,000 in fines since the start of the pandemic for violating public health orders, allowing outdoor dining at a time when the practice was banned by the county, according to the Los Angeles Times.  A judge on Friday ruled the restaurant cannot reopen without new permits.  The city had previously placed sandbags outside the business in a bid to keep it closed.

January 6 Is the New Russiagate Lie.  The manufactured deception about the events of January 6 quickly is approaching Russiagate levels.  The formula is familiar:  Find a catchy phrase — in this case it's "insurrection" instead of "collusion" — then fertilize the information ecosystem with the term and watch it grow like a weed.  Get political leaders including former presidents and top lawmakers of both parties to use the description, giving it immediate legitimacy.  Issue dire warnings about the "threat to democracy" and "rule of law." Identify the villain — Donald Trump, of course — and make solemn pledges to hunt down every perpetrator until justice is done.  Sympathy-inducing optics are helpful but not always necessary.  Critical cogs in this sort of performative outrage are government authorities who use their offices to convince the public the whole thing is on the square.  This is precisely what happened with the now discredited trope that five people died as a result of the chaos on January 6.  A brief report issued Wednesday by the office of the D.C. medical examiner confirmed only one person, Ashli Babbitt, was killed that day.

John Ratcliffe Discusses Severe Political Compromise Within U.S. Intelligence Community.  Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe appears with Maria Bartiromo [4/11/2021] to discuss the issues with Hunter Biden's laptop and the severity of political compromise within the U.S. intelligence apparatus.  Ratcliffe notes how politicized the intelligence community and national security have become specifically in defense of lies being perpetrated by those behind the Biden administration.  Misinformation and disinformation is rampant as the Nat Sec community and Intel Community use their political ideology to advance false assertions.  [Video clip]

Letting Hunter Biden Off Is A Message To Us Peasants.  [Scroll down]  It has a deeper and more cynical purpose — to show us that our overlords are unaccountable and that the law is now merely another implement in the regime's toolkit of oppression.  They are telling us that they and their scumbag progeny can do whatever they want, but that we can't.  In the short term, this is infuriating.  In the long term, it could bring down the system our garbage ruling caste inherited.  They are throwing it in our faces, thinking it's a good plan to force us to submit.  Right now, hundreds of Americans are being prosecuted for trespassing inside their own Capitol building, and eager agents of the American Stasi are salivating at the idea of charging them with "sedition" for doing exactly what hordes of leftist dirtbags did in the past.  Of course, none of the leftist dirtbags were shot dead while unarmed by some cop whose name we still don't know.  That's another message.

The FBI / DOJ is MIA on Hunter Biden, Seth Rich, Anthony Weiner laptops.  The FBI and DOJ have been missing in action for years.  Failing in disclosing and acting on the information in the Hunter Biden, Seth Rich, and Anthony Weiner laptops.  The two-tiered system of American justice has never been more hypocritical on display.  Democrats and the deep state lie, cover-up and protect the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, and the Biden crime family.  Yet the full weight and power of the government are brought against any Republican connected to Donald Trump.  The story of the Hunter Biden, Seth Rich, and Anthony Weiner laptops is a tale of just how debased and corrupt our Government institutions and modern media have become.

Police Officers Pay Visit to Home of Anti-War Activist Over Harmless Tweet Criticizing AOC.  Two plainclothes California police officers showed up to the home of an anti-war activist over a harmless tweet criticizing Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  The police officers were sent to the Los Angeles home of Ryan Wentz, an anti-war activist on April 8 on behalf of the Capitol Police.  AOC denies any involvement, however many are asking who initiated the phone call to the Capitol Police.

9 Things You Need to Know About Biden's 'Infrastructure' Spending Plan.  [#6] $700 billion in corporate welfare and tax credits.  While the stated top-line goal of the spending plan is "jobs," an alternate way of describing it would be "some jobs are more equal than others."  The broad corporate tax hike would necessarily shrink the private sector relative to what it would otherwise be.  In a classic "take with one hand, give with the other" maneuver, the spending plan would shower hundreds of billions of dollars on favored sectors, including "green" energy, politically selected manufacturing, and thinly disguised slush funds.  Rather than learning from Obama administration failures like the Solyndra scandal, the Biden administration seems determined to repeat the same mistakes on a larger scale.

D.C. Statehood? How About A Declaration Of Independence From Washington Instead.  The Democrats are agitating for a 51st state that would be the District of Columbia, not for reasons of fairness but to build their party into an unchallengeable political power.  America would be better off declaring its independence from the capital.  As it says in this nation's founding document, the Declaration of Independence, we believe our Creator endowed us with certain unalienable rights:  life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  But the ruling class in Washington does not believe as we do. [...]
  •   America's ruling class has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass and tax out their substance.
  •   It co-opted the military to gaslight the nation with the ultimate goal being the crushing of dissent.
  •   It has endeavored to foment civil war by enabling and encouraging racial division, riots, wokeness, and the relentless cancel culture.
  •   It has plundered our future with unnecessary aid in the present.
  •   It has constrained our fellow citizens through counterproductive, falsely premised lockdowns.
  •   It has excited domestic insurrections among us in service of its objectives.
  •   It has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving its assent to acts of pretended legislation.
  •   It wishes to abolish our most valuable election laws, and alter fundamentally the forms of our governments.
  •   It wishes to suspend our Constitution, and declare itself invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
  •   It has repeatedly attempted to dissolve elections legitimately won by political rivals.

New York Prosecutors Subpoena the Personal Bank Records of Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer.  Let's be clear about the motives of a fully weaponized DOJ here.  The DOJ is looking for any way to destroy Donald J Trump.  As long as he exists in the sphere of political influence, he represents a risk to their objectives.  Direct targeting of Donald Trump has not succeeded.  Direct attacks against Donald Trump and his organization and personal finances have not succeeded.  The DOJ is not getting the results they need.  So now they need a backdoor, some leverage, from somewhere, anywhere, where they can use that leverage to destroy their enemy.  THAT is what's going on.

The 10 Radical New Rules That Are Changing America.  There are 10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently.  [#1] Money is a construct.  It can be created from thin air.  Annual deficits and aggregate national debt no longer matter much.  Prior presidents ran up huge annual deficits, but at least there were some concessions that the money was real and had to be paid back.  Not now.  As we near $30 trillion in national debt and 110 percent of annual GDP, our elites either believe permanent zero interest rates make the cascading obligation irrelevant, or the larger the debt, the more likely we will be forced to address needed income redistribution.

Let's Celebrate the Federal Government on April Fools' Day.  Let's celebrate the federal government every April Fools' Day.  How fitting a holiday to toast a byzantine, irresponsible, and largely untouchable system of red-tape rule-makers and above-the-law actors who do little for the American people other than overpromise, underperform, and charge a hundred times more than they're worth for the service.  This is a bureaucratic leviathan so corrupt that it requires a cottage industry of lobbyists to enrich the "public servants," so unserious in its missions that it can't finish one war before starting the next, so anti-American in its sentiments that it routinely proclaims its citizens the most villainous racists and rubes on Earth, and so incompetent in executing its long-term strategies that its reckless spending of borrowed monies has pushed the dollar to the brink of collapse.

Nick Searcy's Viral Video Shows City of Burbank Padlocking Tinhorn Flats Restaurant:  "This Is What Totalitarianism Looks Like".  Actor-Director-Producer Nick Searcy is at Tinhorn Flats Burbank videoing the fascistic actions by Los Angeles County and the City of Burbank against this family-owned business.  Searcy posted to Twitter his viral video of a locksmith padlocking the doors of Tinhorn Flats in Burbank, California.  Two police officers stand to the side watching the locksmith and looking around.  According to Searcy, they are here to arrest owner Lucas Lepejian because he continues to operate his family restaurant despite temporary restraining orders issued by the Superior Court of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Department of Health pulling the restaurant's health permit, and the City of Burbank revoking its conditional-use permit, while cutting off the building's electricity.  Lepejian has been operating with generators supplied by patrons and supporters, and has kept the business open, despite the City's insistence on shutting it down.

Pelosi-Backed Push to Steal Iowa House Seat Fails, and the Reason Why Should Be Heeded by the GOP.  The dispute in Congress over Iowa's 2nd Congressional District race is now officially over.  Democrat nominee Rita Hart, who took her case to the Democrat-controlled House in December, instead of the courts, after losing the election by 6 votes to her Republican opponent, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, released a statement on Twitter just minutes ago declaring that she was withdrawing her petition to the House Administration Committee because she couldn't effectively combat the wave of negative PR she and her fellow Democrats brought on themselves over the issue.

An FBI so corrupt it lets mass shooters rampage needs to go.  [Scroll down]  While the FBI has been failing to stop terrorist attacks by known threats like these, it has conducted numerous political operations on behalf of Democrats.  The ones we know about include Crossfire Hurricane's use of federal spy power to affect election outcomes and prevent effective governance by elected Republicans.  That operation included spying on Fox News.  In 2020, the FBI sent 15 agents to investigate a rope tied in a loop that hysterical people alleged was a "noose" after a black NASCAR driver was assigned a garage with the rope as its door pull.  The FBI investigation determined the rope had been in the same shape and spot since at least 2019.  In 2019, the FBI executed operation "Varsity Blues" to shame rich people who attempted to buy their children entry into ruling class universities by means other than gobsmackingly expensive prep schools and SAT tutors.  The FBI also appears to have entrapped people into a ridiculous plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, by inserting agents into their social group who presented the plan and got them to appear to go along, at least on FBI recordings.  The same appears to be happening with Democrats using the Jan. 6 riot to have the FBI investigate and prosecute their political opponents among the hoi polloi.

The Dawn of a New Age of Tyranny Is Upon Us.  If you're bewildered by the breakneck pace of "change" since the inauguration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., back on Jan. 20, you're not alone.  Average Americans have been puzzled and, in many case, chagrined by the flurry of executive orders, ukases, policy prescriptions, social proscriptions, vengeful rollbacks, and other government meddling in the lives of our citizens.  Conservatives, meanwhile, understand that all this activity has one overarching purpose:  to punish the bad Orange Man and the country that voted for him.  And make sure he never happens again.  To that end, the string of top-down bossiness has been designed to look, and be, punitive.  Every major Donald Trump initiative or accomplishment must be negated and anathematized.  His supporters who unwisely marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6 — what did they hope to accomplish? — should not just be deplored but hunted down by the FBI for "sedition"; there's even a tip line for junior Stasis-in-training to rat out their friends and neighbors.

Joe Biden's Rule By Decree:  How Far Can He Go?  President Joe Biden's candidacy was built on the idea that he was an old, experienced, centrist in Washington, someone who could bring two sides together.  So far, with his penchant for issuing "executive orders" to fundamentally change America, he's governing precisely as a socialist dictator would.  Is that what Americans voted for? [...] He has power, and he plans to use it.  He's already issued more than 50 executive orders, including 22 reversals of previous Trump policies.  Even his aides have gotten in on the imperious act:  Last weekend one of Biden's public relations people physically interfered with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's efforts to film the conditions of migrants at the U.S. border.  Is this the Soviet Union?  Biden's ready to do more — a lot more.

The vaccine passport idiocy.  [Thread reader] [F]or the past year, Justice Roberts has allowed the fed courts to turn away hundreds of Constitutional & legal challenges to COVID government overreach in the name of emergency powers.  This is the civil right crisis of our time.  In the last year, I appeared before federal judges in several states from HI to CA to VA to NJ.  One after the other they gaveled down challenges to the blocking of prayer, protect, small business, schools, outdoor sports — even beaches! — despite the dearth of science to back it.  At @Liberty_Ctr my year and that of many other attorneys was an extended triage to determine which of thousands of civil rights violations was the worst.  Was it the violations of the constitutional requirements for how we make voting laws?  Or was it governors telling hundreds of millions they could only pray by video conference, forget about getting married baptized or burying your loved ones?  Was it telling poor and disabled children, "no school for you — the teacher's union said it's unsafe"?  Was it praising a 100,000-person BLM march in Los Angeles while telling 100 anti-shutdown protestors in Sacramento they would be arrested if they exercised their First Amendment rights peacefully and safely?

No Storm, No Reckoning, No Nothing.  For years we have been hearing about a coming storm.  It was to be biblical and would bring pain to members of the deep state ruling class who, after exposure, would not be able to walk down the streets.  The storm was to begin with spygate, a coordinated effort among top officials in the nation's justice and intelligence agencies, to prevent Donald Trump's election; then after failing, to undermine his transition, cripple his presidency, then stop his reelection, the latter goals achieved.  Then there were crimes against humanity:  child abuse, trafficking, and the like, all to be exposed via the Anthony Weiner laptop or the Jeffrey Epstein cabal.  Both seem distant memories now.  In fact, we are now going in the opposite direction with the Biden administration suspending FBI background checks for migrant children caregivers.  We have lived in the "calm before the storm" for years and to this day it remains calm.  There are no storm clouds building, nothing on the horizon.

States are trying to get Biden to enforce the 'public charge rule'.  Under the Constitution, Congress passes the laws, which reside in the United States Code, and it's the President's job to oversee their enforcement.  Federal agencies, which are the vehicles by which the president enforces the laws that Congress enacts, can create rules describing the details of enforcing the laws.  These rules are published in the Code of Federal Regulations or CFR.  The CFR is an obscenely huge document (as of 2014, it had 175,268 [pages]) that exists as a trap for the unwary.  In theory, the CFR is merely a how-to manual for enforcing the laws.  It's the laws behind the manual that matter.  Unfortunately, in reality, Congressional laziness has resulted in barebones laws, with regulatory agencies filling in the blanks.  As often as not, regulations that have nothing to do with Congress, have the force of law.  That's not quite the issue here, but every American should understand that most of the "laws" that control them are in fact regulations of dubious constitutional validity.

Can the GOP stop Democrats from trashing the country?  After having brazenly installed a feeble, geriatric president through a dubious (at best) election process, and almost three months after that mostly peaceful demonstration on January 6, the Democrats still surround the Capitol grounds with thousands of troops and razor wire fencing.  Are those props — befitting the palace grounds of a tinpot dictatorship — evidence of the Democrats' insecurity, of their need to reinforce the notion that they are in charge?

President Trump Asks a Question.  [Scroll down]  The staff of the legislative bodies have/had no intent to actually facilitate any sunlight upon the FISA, DOJ-FBI corruption that took place over three years.  How do I know that?  Well, first having sat in a room with the legislative staff, top people who actually write the briefs and inform both congressional representatives on House Committees and Senate Committees, including the chiefs-of-staff for the chairs, it was clear they did not even know the information from within their own research when spread over time.  Accepting this reality leads one to a natural conclusion... they don't know, because they choose not to know... & they choose not to know, because everything is a pantomime for public display.  The system of DC is based on a series of unwritten rules:  "You don't out me, and I will not out you... and that will protect us both."  These rules cross over both parties to the extent they usually have a common enemy, us.  The staff of Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, Homeland Security Chair Ron Johnson and even the staff of House Oversight Ranking Member Jim Jordan are purposefully and willfully blind.  They choose not to know things; or at least they claim not to know and do an exceptional job of purposeful pretend.

The U.S. Intelligence Community, Flouting Laws, is Increasingly Involving Itself in Domestic Politics.  A report declassified last Wednesday [3/17/2021(?)] by the Department of Homeland Security is raising serious concerns about the possibly illegal involvement by the intelligence community in U.S. domestic political affairs.  Entitled "Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021," the March 1 Report from the Director of National Intelligence states that it was prepared "in consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security — and was drafted by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)."  Its primary point is this:  "The IC [intelligence community] assesses that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021."

Marine Corps Officer Warns Congress Against Classifying Christians in Military as 'Religious Extremists'.  A slide used in a Department of Defense (DOD) training manual identifies Catholics and evangelical Christians as "religious extremists," along with members of the Ku Klux Klan, al-Qaeda, and Hamas, according to a Marine Corps officer.  "First Liberty also obtained a screenshot of an unclassified slide from a U.S. Army training manual.  The slide is entitled 'Religious Extremism' and it purports to identify religious extremists," Michael Berry told the House Armed Services Committee, during a hearing on March 24 titled "Extremism in the Military."  Berry is general counsel to the First Liberty Institute (FLI), a Plano, Texas-based public interest law firm that specializes in First Amendment and religious freedom cases.  Berry is also an officer in the Marine Corps Reserves, although he presented his testimony in his capacity as a civilian.

The Iowa steal:  To Democrats, 'democracy' means unbridled majority power.  Democratic candidate Rita Hart is trying to steal a U.S. House seat in Iowa.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is helping her do it.  Pelosi wants to overturn Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks's very narrow win in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District.  Her efforts are so blatantly partisan, dishonest, and anti-democratic that a few members of Pelosi's own party caucus have come out against her.  "Losing a House election by six votes is painful for Democrats," wrote Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, the first congressional Democrat to voice firm opposition to this scheme.  "But overturning it in the House would be even more painful for America.  Just because a majority can, does not mean a majority should."

The Social Cost of Carbon and Climate Sensitivity Is Model Manipulation at Its Finest.  The "social cost of carbon" is a calculation that the Biden administration is looking to use to justify stringent regulation of carbon dioxide emissions.  Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt — joined by Arkansas, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah — have now filed a lawsuit, arguing that the use of this metric in policy would constitute an overreach of government power.  Carbon dioxide is an odorless gas that is the basis for almost all plant life on earth.  Of course, carbon dioxide emissions have slightly warmed the surface temperature of the planet, but on the other hand, access to plentiful energy has been accompanied by a doubling of life expectancy in the developed world and an elevenfold growth in personal wealth, as noted in the 2016 book "Lukewarming."

The Editor says...
The warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far less than the warming effect of water vapor in the atmosphere.  So much less, that it is all but completely futile to even try eliminate carbon dioxide from the air — which (even if it were possible) would kill all plant life, and us with it.

Read the Shocking Pentagon Training Materials Targeting Conservatives in the Military.  I have obtained a copy of all the materials regarding the sudden new threat of "Extremism" used for training in the United States military.  Throughout the services, service members have been shocked at the Biden blitz to root out ideas and people who stand in the way of the administration's transformative agenda.  One individual in the training told me, "The military is one of the last institutions left that hasn't been radicalized by the progressives.  That's why it is being targeted now."  All personnel are being subjected to a PowerPoint presentation packed with progressive ideology and misstatements of the Constitution.  Designated officers are conducting the training on bases, stations, and ships at sea.  The slides contain misstatements of the law and warped characterizations of fellow citizens who believe in constitutional principles.

Dem lawmaker breaks from Pelosi, voices concern over possible bid to steal Iowa GOP seat.  A moderate California Democrat and member of the shrinking "Blue Dog Coalition" has broken with his party and is expressing concerns over a review by the House Administration Committee of a very close Iowa election won by a GOP candidate and certified by state officials.  Rep. Lou Correa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, has said he wants to "look at the facts" regarding Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks' six-vote win in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District, though a majority of his party is supportive of the panel's investigation.  Correa's concerns center on "what motivates Congress to look at something that should be a state issue," CNN reported on Thursday [3/18/2021].

Biden giving media 'zero access' to border operations: photojournalist.  Award-winning photojournalist John Moore blasted the Biden administration for giving "zero access" to the media to observe Customs and Border Protection operations at the southern border.  Moore took to Twitter to lament the lack of transparency as a surge of migrants trying to enter the country has put a strain on resources.  "I respectfully ask US Customs and Border Protection to stop blocking media access to their border operations," Moore tweeted Friday.  "I have photographed CBP under Bush, Obama and Trump but now - zero access is granted to media.  These long lens images taken from the Mexican side."  Moore, a Getty Images correspondent, won the World Press Photo Foundation's 2019 photo of the year for his image of a Honduran toddler crying while her mother is detained by Border Patrol agents.

The Battle of Burbank.  Tinhorn Flats is a family-operated bar and restaurant in Burbank.  Burbank has had a death rate from the Wuhan virus of 2.8 percent of which 80 percent were of those over 65 who had, on average three co-morbidities.  Despite this, and disregarding the substantial sums restaurant and bar owners had shelled out to keep outdoor patrons safe, on December 6 the city council ordered all restaurants closed.  Tinhorn refused and continued to serve patrons outdoors.  Six days later their health permit was revoked.  Tinhorn continued its outdoor service, ignoring the city's revocation of its permit.  In response, the L.A. County Department of Health cited the restaurant 13 times for operating without a permit.  Tinhorn stayed open.  The L.A. County Attorney filed a cease and desist order.  Tinhorn stayed open.  After a few more legal forays the Burbank City Council filed suit against the restaurant and obtained a temporary restraining order.  Tinhorn stayed open.  The city cut power to the restaurant and patrons and fans donated generators and equipment so the restaurant could continue operations.  The city council padlocked the front doors.  Tinhorn removed the doors and stayed open.  When the padlocked doors were somehow reinstalled, the restaurant posted on Facebook a picture showing a side door open.  Tinhorn stayed open.  Another L.A. County judge required the county to prove that the ban on outdoor dining was necessary.  The county failed to do so, but inexplicably the judge refused to lift the ban.

Since the cops in New York have nothing else to do...
De Blasio Wants NYPD Cops To Confront People Who Hurt Others' Feelings.  New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday said that New York Police Department (NYPD) officers should confront people who say mean or offensive things even if their conduct isn't criminal.  De Blasio made the remarks during a press conference on March 18 when the subject of hate crimes and a discrimination against Asian Americans in New York City was brought up, WLNY reported.  The mayor encouraged those who felt they were victims of discrimination or hate speech to report it to the police.

Who Is Our Military's Enemy?  The U.S. military has now turned its wrath inward on Fox News host Tucker Carlson.  The new secretary of defense relayed his "revulsion" for Carlson's questioning the role of women in combat — a position that had been the military's centuries-long orthodoxy until about seven years ago.  Pentagon spokesman John Kirby even compared Carlson to the Communist Chinese military:  "What we absolutely won't do is take personnel advice from a talk show host, or the Chinese military."  The now-cocky Department of Defense website further boasted, "Press Secretary Smites Fox Host."  So what was the biblically "smitten" Carlson's crime?  He objected to the military's fixation on race and gender in high-profile appointments — and questioned whether standards were relaxed to permit women in combat units.  He objected to the military's fixation on race and gender in high-profile appointments — and questioned whether standards were relaxed to permit women in combat units.  Carlson objected that the Capitol is currently domestically militarized.  More troops are on guard against purported American "insurrectionists" than are currently serving in war zones in Afghanistan.

Tucker Carlson-Military Spat Shows Left's Long March Reaching Dangerous Apex.  Is the military more focused on winning wars, or Wokeism?  Americans should not have to ask this question.  But on account of doings of the Biden-led Department of Defense (DoD), Fox News' Tucker Carlson was rightly compelled to proffer it.  That he received any DoD response — and no less an almost parodic scolding, rather than an assurance that the military is singularly focused on crushing our enemies — demonstrates an existential problem for our country.  It shows that the progressives' Long March through our institutions is reaching its dangerous apex.

Until Lambs Become Lions.  [Scroll down]  We arrived in our current situation because our ruling elites painstakingly prepared the battleground in advance.  In 2012, they amended the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act to permit the domestic dissemination of government propaganda into American newsfeeds.  In 2015, they passed the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Act, which created a cottage industry of government-funded, progressive-leaning CVE consultants and think tanks dedicated to pushing the myth of right-wing "domestic extremism" and "white supremacy."  Employing teachers, healthcare professionals, first responders, and community leaders, the Obama-era CVE mania built a federally controlled and funded local surveillance and intelligence collection apparatus that spans from grade schools to the workplace to the doctor's office.  An apparatus that still uses debunked pseudoscience to classify ordinary Americans' constitutionally protected speech and activities as "pre-terrorism indicators."  Under the pretext of keeping us safe, they passed multiple counterterrorism laws such as the 2001 USA Patriot Act, the 2015 USA Freedom Act, and the various FISA Amendment Acts (2008, 2017, 2018, 2020), which, taken together, authorize warrantless mass surveillance of all American's communications, activities, associations, and business transactions.  In addition to these legislative actions, Americans became apathetic and lost the will to hold their government leaders accountable.  The multi-tier justice system under which we now suffer has been years in the making.

The Dangers of Direct Checks From the Government.  Over the past year, the U.S. government has sent out three waves of direct checks to the vast majority of Americans.  So far, most Americans (89 percent of adults according to the Tax Foundation) will have received up to $3,200 in "free money" from Uncle Sam.  There are many reasons this could be very dangerous to the future of the republic.  First, it's akin to buying votes.  Now that the precedent has been set and Americans realize that politicians are willing and able to send them money, we're almost assured that in the future politicians will run on the promise of "free money."  In fact, we're already seeing this take place.  Many on the far left are calling for recurring direct checks.

The Editor says...
Social Security payments are another form of direct payments to individuals.  The difference is that nearly everybody pays more into the Social Security system than they get out of it.

Why Did The Guam National Guard Visit Marjorie Taylor Greene's Office At The Capitol Yesterday?  I can't understand how anyone involved in this thought it was a good idea but it's not the first time lately that the military has bent the rules against service members playing politics while in uniform in order to embarrass a populist Republican.  The Marine Corps had to apologize for unprofessional behavior a few days ago when one of its social-media accounts started snarking at Tucker Carlson for wondering why pregnant women are allowed to serve.  The Pentagon went so far as to issue a press release responding to Carlson with the clickbait-y headline, "Press Secretary Smites Fox Host That Dissed Diversity in U.S. Military."  A Twitter pal recently observed that the U.S. military has received withering criticism in the post-9/11 age about life-and-death matters like the occupation of Iraq and counterterrorist drone strikes in remote lands and they've endured it (mostly) in silence, which is proper in a country where civilians are in charge.  Cross certain lines of wokeness, though, and it turns out that even the Marines have their breaking point.  When did owning the cons become part of the defense department's mission?

Friendly 'diplomacy' or intimidation?  Guam Nat'l guard visits MTG's office after calling them foreign.  At the Conservative Political Action Conference, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene mistakenly referred to Guam, which is a U.S. territory, as a foreign land and that earned her a visit from the Guam National Guard, replete with cookies.  "I'm a regular person.  And I wanted to take my regular-person, normal, everyday American values, which is, we love our country.  We believe our hard-earned tax dollars should just go for America, not for what?  China, Russia, the Middle East, Guam, whatever, wherever," Greene stated in February at CPAC.  "If we want to build roads, if we want to put money into schools, if we want to build border walls, we want it right here at home.  This is easy to me; it's easy to us, but it's not easy to Washington."  In response, Guam Rep. Michael San Nicolas and a whole contingent of the Guam National Guard were recorded traipsing towards Greene's office on Monday where, unfortunately for them, she was not in attendance.  That did not stop them from leaving cookies as a reminder that they are part of the U.S.  They called it "cookie diplomacy."

US Military:  Social Justice Warriors.  I still struggle to process the meaning of the Pentagon's propaganda blitzkrieg against Tucker Carlson.  Even if you think Carlson is wrong in his criticism of the woke military (see here for some of it), the fact that the Defense Department has reacted so aggressively is extraordinarily troubling.  I would have been troubled by it had the DoD hit out at left-wing media critics like this.  But to my knowledge, they never have.  They reserved this kind of response for a conservative media figure who questioned the military's new wokeness.  This tells us something.

A politicized US military should horrify all Americans.  We expect politicians with partisan agendas to spar with journalists.  Not so much members of the armed forces speaking in their official capacity, which is what happened last week after Tucker Carlson of Fox News dared to comment about the role of women in the military.  The Second Marine Expeditionary Force responded with a snotty, childish tweet, telling Carlson:  "Come back when you've served and been pregnant."  Generals, other currently serving officers and the Pentagon's press secretary joined in the ensuing sortie.  The implication was clear:  Civilians who dare to criticize military policy should expect to be harshly rebuked, not by their fellow citizens or even by elected politicians, but by members of the armed forces in their official capacity.

Understanding the military's attack on Tucker Carlson.  There are limits to how far leftward our elites can push this country without buy-in, or at least acquiescence, from the military.  And the military is limited in this regard by the extent to which those who fill its ranks buy in or at at least acquiesce.  The woke left can never firmly control America if there is a disconnect between its agenda and that of the military.  It can never confidently control America if there is a disconnect between its agenda and the views and attitudes of the military rank-and-file.  Hence, the imperative that the rank-and-file be made woke through indoctrination and, if necessary, purging.  Hence, the indoctrination.

Democrat congressman marches National Guard troops to GOP representative's office.  Democrat Congressman San Nicolas, of Guam, marched National Guard troops from his home territory through the halls of Congress, leading them straight to the office door of an opposing party congressperson.  [Quoting tweet:]  ["]Interesting timing, considering all weekend we were talking about the politicization of the military.  They don't [care] how it looks.["]  Rep. Nicolas stopped his 20 or so troops to office door of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.  As majestic music plays, since this was all done with pride on the part of Rep. Nicolas, he stands in the hallway outside Rep. Greene's office with a gift basket, flanked by troops in camo fatigues.  Nicolas approached the door, and an aide knocks briefly before entering the office unannounced.

The Editor says...
What remarkably poor judgment!  What was to be gained from this stunt?  The politicization of the military is unwise, to say the least.  How did that work out in Venezuela, or Zimbabwe, or Burma?

The Sovereign Crime of Industrial Scale Vote Fraud.  [Scroll down]  Sovereign crime means your government was a participant, active or passive, enabling vote fraud.  Governors and secretaries of state refusing to cleanse voter rolls, refusing to check signatures for mail-in ballots — even during recounts, changing the voting rules weeks before an election, qualifies as your government messing with your vote.  The national government refusing to investigate the most egregious examples of voter fraud like hundreds of thousands of more ballots than voters in several states, that is a pretty good indicator that they are passive participants in industrial level vote fraud.  The refusal of the FBI to fully investigate Jesse Morgan's truck with the hundreds of thousands of ballots going from New York to Pennsylvania — yet dispatching agents to a NASCAR location to investigate a garage pull-down they hoped was a noose — well, that's a good indicator, too.  Wait, we're not done here.  The United States Postal Service managers telling employees to backdate ballots so they could be counted illegally.  Does that sound like your government — sovereign government — participating in vote fraud?

The U.S. Military Just Became A Political Attack Machine Against Joe Biden's Opponents.  Last week, Fox cable host Tucker Carlson called out DoD for introducing a flight suit for visibly pregnant women.  Flight suits are worn by pilots to wage our nation's wars.  It seemed incongruous that the military would issue flight suits to pregnant women, who most assuredly do not fight our nation's wars.  When the unit I served with in Iraq learned that two of our female soldiers were pregnant, the U.S. military put them on the highest priority to be evacuated back to the United States.  Within 24 hours, they were sent home.  They wanted to stay — God bless them! — but the DoD would not hear of having pregnant women in a war zone.  Whether Carlson was right or wrong or presented his views in a strident manner is immaterial.  He had an absolute right to say it.  The Department of Defense's leaders disagreed.  What should have been a one-line refutation in a run-of-the-mill daily press briefing became an all-hands public affairs campaign to destroy Carlson.

Did Biden Establish the Military's First 'Virtue Signal' Corps?  [Scroll down]  The social media airstrikes on [Tucker] Carlson over the past several days disturbed me quite a bit.  It was public affairs that initiated the attack on Tucker Carlson, straight from the Pentagon.  That's the top of command information on the public-facing side. [...] What we saw over the weekend appears to represent a new species of the military:  the volunteer Virtue Signal Corps.  It combines SigInt with command information, both trained on U.S. citizens.  This is not a positive development in my opinion, having served in the command information component of the United States Air Force.

Will FBI 'Chats' Send Conservatives to Prison?  Across the nation, FBI agents are swooping down upon conservative activists, Trump supporters, and anyone suspected of any tie to the January 6 clash at the Capitol.  Conservative author Candace Owens tweeted on March 3:  "About 10 of my friends who attended Trump's speech but DID NOT go to Capitol building thereafter have had the FBI turn up at their door to ask them why they went to D.C. ... Our FBI is trying to scare conservatives against ever gathering in the future."  Actually, the potential problem is far worse for people targeted by the feds.  FBI chief Christopher Wray, who is scrambling to deliver the indictments that will please his congressional overlords, says the agency is conducting 2,000 domestic terrorism investigations.  Few Americans recognize how badly the legal playing field is tilted against them.  When FBI agents knock on their doors, many Americans won't hesitate to open up because they assume "those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear."  But along with Bureau procedures that are a travesty of due process, the FBI is exploiting a sweeping law that criminalizes casual comments.  Federal agents have the right to lie to you and to put you in prison if you lie to them.  Any citizen who makes even a single-word ("no" or "yes") false utterance to a federal agent faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The Official Outrage Over Tucker Carlson's Critique of Joe Biden's Military Shows Just How Lost Our Military Is.  Friday [3/12/2021], Tucker Carlson kicked off a firestorm.  His monologue focused n the barking shambles that Joe Biden has made of the Department of Defense in less than two months.  His theme was the degree to which the Biden bunch is focusing on making the military a test bed for woke orthodoxy and putting combat readiness, particularly readiness to confront Joe Biden's paymasters in Beijing, in its rearview mirror.  He took, as a point of departure, Biden's mumblings on the occasion of "International Women's Day."  Carlson's strongest point was directed at Biden's decision to appoint a secretary of defense who is not only beholden to the defense industry but a rabid partisan[.]

Now Tucker Carlson Has Angered the U.S. Space Command.  [A]t this point I barely pay attention to the outrage du jour Tucker has kicked up.  That's his job, and there's nobody better.  Making libs mad is his business, and business is good.  But this latest one is flabbergasting.  Now he's actually got Democrats defending... the military? [...] So far, this has been just another phony outrage.  But here's where my eyebrows went up:  a uniformed Space Command guy just called out Tucker.  Ladies and gentlemen:  U.S. Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sergeant Scott H. Stalker.  [Video clip] [...] And doesn't the military have regulations about uniformed personnel making political statements?  Isn't that one of the things you give up when you join?  Isn't that the whole point of having civilian oversight of the military?

Sen. Cruz:  US Military 'Launching Political Attacks' Against Tucker Carlson, Requests Meeting.  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he requested a meeting with the head of the U.S. Marine Corps after one of its units tweeted statements insulting Tucker Carlson, along with unusually bellicose comments about the Fox News host.  "Under Biden, the military is launching political attacks to intimidate Tucker Carlson & other civilians who criticize their policy decisions," Cruz wrote on Twitter, saying he requested a meeting with the commandant of the Marines.  "Officials in uniform are being used for the campaign.  I've demanded a meeting with the Commandant of the USMC to put a stop to it."  Over the weekend, a U.S. Marine Corps unit's Twitter account — the II Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group — stated it "messed up" in its comments when responding to Carlson after the Fox host said the military should be focused more on adversaries like China rather than social issues.

Varieties of Legal Corruption.  PJ Media's Megan Fox has a very disturbing six-part series on alleged judicial corruption in St. Louis, Missouri.  The first five detail how family court guardians and psychologists are misusing their positions to siphon off money from parents in custody disputes while the St.  Louis judges ignore the fraud and collude with them, by, for example, ordering children's visits with sexual molesters and/or otherwise abusive parents in order to compel the other parent to keep paying lawyers to appeal the decisions and change the arrangements.  One might expect that bar examiners, judicial conduct boards, the state attorney general, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the IRS would register some interest in what appears to be appalling legal violations by officers of the court and the judges , but I don't see anything happening yet to check these outrages.  In many ways this alleged corruption is as bad if not worse than the case a few years ago of two Pennsylvania judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan, who routinely sent poor kids who had committed minor offenses to private detention centers in return for kickbacks from the owners of those jails.  They were finally sentenced for their kids for cash scheme.

More evidence that Obama is in charge again:
Biden Admin Brings Back Operation Rushbo Against Tucker Carlson.  One of the dumber campaigns by the Obama administration was Operation Rushbo.  Operation Rushbo was a campaign by Obama's people to target Rush Limbaugh personally, as the most outspoken voice in the conservative movement, and to, seemingly 'destroy' the conservative movement by making Limbaugh into its public face.  As I said, it was the kind of dumb idea by urban lefties who lived in a social echo chamber and had no idea why anyone might want to listen to Rush.  Now, the Biden administration has decided to relaunch Operation Rushbo to target Tucker Carlson:  the most prominent figure on FOX News.

Pelosi Hit With Lawsuit Over Phone Call To General Trying To Prevent Trump From Accessing Nuclear Codes.  Government watchdog group Judicial Watch announced a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for access to a telephone call between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and General Mark Milley shortly after the Capitol riots.  The call was revealed in a letter from Pelosi to Democrat lawmakers in which she described an attempt to prevent an "unhinged" President Trump from accessing the nuclear codes at the time.  Judicial Watch alleges that the Department of Defense has not provided any response to their FOIA request, which was filed on January 11th.

Regarding Democrats Stealing the House Seat in Iowa — It's Not Like the Democrats Haven't Stolen An Election This Same Way Before.  [Scroll down]  The Democrat challenger, Rita Hart, made a deliberate decision after the recount of ballots to NOT file any election contest in the Iowa courts as was authorized by Iowa law.  Instead, she filed the petition with the House that is now pending to have the "winning" candidate — as identified by Iowa election officials — Mariannette Miller-Meeks, disqualified from holding the seat on the basis that she did not receive a greater number of votes than Hart received.  The House has the final say under the Constitution with respect to the qualifications of any individual to serve as a member.  Under the statute authorizing the petition filed by Hart, the Committee conducts an investigation.  It can hear from witnesses, accept documentary evidence, conduct interviews in Iowa, and even conduct a recount of all the ballots on its own to come up with its own final vote tally.  Remarkably, if the Committee chooses to recount the ballots itself, the standards for what constitutes a "valid" ballot under Iowa law do not apply to such a recount by the House.  Democrats who have majority control of the committee can fashion their own standards as to what should be deemed a "valid" vote, and may freely choose to ignore any limitations on the process established by Iowa law and court precedent.

Pelosi: House could unseat Iowa Republican who narrowly won race.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House could ultimately vote to unseat Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who won Iowa's 2nd Congressional District seat by just six votes out of more than 394,000 cast.  Pelosi told reporters that the Democratic-led House Administration Committee "is following the law," in its review of the election, and it could ultimately result in a move to force out the first-term Iowa Republican.  "We will see where that takes us, but there could be a scenario to that extent," Pelosi said.  Democratic candidate Rita Hart has contested her narrow loss to Miller-Meeks, leaving the House Administration Committee to decide her case.  Hart believes 22 ballots were wrongfully discarded, and if they were counted, she would have a nine-vote victory.  House Administration Republicans want Democrats to dismiss Hart's case, but the committee voted Wednesday [3/10/2021] to table a motion to dismiss Hart's claim.

Rule by Left-Wing Lunatics.  A governing principle of the Democratic Party is to ask, "Who is in the dock?" before deciding whether to enforce the law.  As we have seen throughout the last year of antifa/BLM riots, in blue states, it's now legal to commit arson, attempted murder, assault on a law enforcement officer and destruction of property — provided the perp is antifa or antifa-friendly.  Andy Ngo's smash bestseller "Unmasked" gives chapter and verse on antifa's shocking violence untouched by criminal penalty.  On the other hand, if you're a conservative, don't commit a misdemeanor in a blue state.  Proud Boys, Capitol Hill protesters, police and other presumed Trump supporters are getting more prison time than actual murderers for minor infractions.  Even a couple of personal injury lawyers (liberals) are being criminally prosecuted in St. Louis for brandishing guns at violent looters coming toward their home.  The rioters, you see, were BLM protesters.  In all these cases, local Democratic officials gleefully announce that they are locking up "white supremacists."

Masks Are Just Part of the Socialists' Uniform.  [Scroll down]  In a sense, mask mandates have become nothing more than dress code loyalty oaths to the same state and local governments that have claimed for themselves the extraconstitutional powers to restrict free speech, religious liberty, personal commerce, and voluntary movement beyond the home in the name of a virus.  They represent Americans' symbolic acquiescence to government's mass lockdowns and economic shutdowns and their tacit acceptance that government's unconstitutional power grabs are somehow legitimate.  This symbolism, not the statistically insignificant decrease in infection and death rates in areas with strict mask mandates, is what actually animates those Americans who insist on controlling what covers other Americans' faces.  An American who refuses to participate in virus virtue-signaling is an American who refuses to believe that the economic, educational, and social carnage of the last year was justified.  And that repudiation is just too much for proponents of bigger and more intrusive government to take in stride.

The #BlueAnon Dossier:  The Conspiracies Promoted by the Conspiracy-Hating Press.  This past Thursday, on March 4, Washington was paralyzed.  The National Guard troops were placed on high-alert with their unloaded weapons, the security fencing surrounding the Capitol was fortified, and Congress suspended its daily schedule.  This was all done in preparation for a renewed assault on our nation's capital and our democracy.  The reason?  The devotees of Qanon — that amorphous and overhyped cabal of political zealotry — were supposedly claiming that is the true inaugural date and that a failure of a Trump swearing-in ceremony would lead to renewed violence. [...] This non-episode reveals two details on the whole Qanon issue.  One is that the press is intent to use this group as a political tool to attack conservatives, presenting their crackpot theories as mainstream thought within the movement.  This attempt however exposes the other issue.  In order to wield this weapon, the media needs to both pay close attention to Q theories, and then they need to broadcast them.  What takes place then is the press taking these conspiracies far more seriously than anyone on the right; almost anytime I have heard of a Q talking point it is being promoted by someone in the press[.]

For Much Public Spending:  Everything's Coming Up COVID.  For some special interests, a fading coronavirus pandemic poses a problem, but not always an insurmountable one.  Big Labor and its acolytes cite the virus as a compelling reason for doubling the minimum wage and forcing businesses to provide more paid sick leave, while the Biden administration is using the pandemic as part of its justification for overhauling immigration toward eventual amnesty for undocumented migrants.  Meanwhile, the left-leaning Brookings Institution has successfully persuaded the federal government to allocate more money to child-care programs in the name of pandemic safety.  These changes have long been on the policy wish lists of advocates, but in a time of pandemic they evoke words widely attributed to Winston Churchill:  "Never let a good crisis go to waste."  Or as a headline this week might sum up a new urgency:  "The U.S. Is Edging Toward Normal, Alarming Some Officials."

Jill Biden, the Meghan Markle in the WH, is egregiously guilty of elder abuse.  [Scroll down]  And what of the ridiculous transformation of our Capitol?  DC now resembles the Green Zone the Americans built in Iraq to keep out terrorists.  Nancy Pelosi feels no qualms about abusing all those patriotic National Guard troops who are being fed virtually inedible food and are being asked to stand around and freeze as props for her farcical fear of "right-wing extremists" like QAnon, a shadowy online "group" of two or three people that no conservative ever took seriously.  So invested in that inane conspiracy theory she and her fellow fearmongers have made even bigger fools of themselves.

Retired Purple Heart Veteran in Arizona Who Dove In Dumpster and Found Shredded Ballots Is Now Being Threatened.  A retired Purple Heart veteran who took a dive in a dumpster on Saturday and found illegally shredded ballots in Maricopa County is now reportedly a wanted man.  Yesterday [3/7/2021] it was reported that a man by the name of Earl S, who found shredded ballots in a dumpster backed up to the loading dock outside of the Maricopa County Tabulation Center, is now a wanted man.

Gaslighting, Unending Lockdowns And Climate Change.  [Video clip]

The Imaginary Government.  We have long been in a post-constitutional democracy, one that recognizes no individual rights, but simply who has the most votes, or, more accurately, the most ballots.  It is as destructive to the United States as it was to France, minus the guillotines, for now.  Driving home the fact of the stolen election is pointless.  Everyone knows it was stolen, especially those who benefitted from the steal.  They also understand the value of keeping up the illusion of legitimacy.  Equal to that value is the importance of never conceding that point.  The larger question, the most important question, is how do we expose the fraud in a real way?  Recognizing it is good, pushing back on the legitimacy narrative is good, but it's just filed away as two competing political voices urging the middle to move their way.  Lost is the importance of the stolen election.  The inability of the federal government to faithfully prosecute a free and fair election destroys its authority.  They gloss over this fact, because it suits both political parties to pretend that the election was legitimate, knowing that if it was not.  They no longer hold authority until a free and fair election can be held.  In essence, they are actors on a stage and as long as the people suspend disbelief, they can continue in that role. [...] A government that no longer needs the actual votes of the people is free to unleash all manner of unlawful assaults upon them.

Angry at Trump, Liberals Propose Unconstitutional Bill to Punish Him.  Democrats have twice impeached Donald Trump in the House and twice failed to convict him in the Senate.  They're angry about failing, and double angry about failing twice.  That's understandable.  Nobody likes to fail.  But they've now fallen into the trap of letting their anger get the better of their reason and their oaths to uphold the Constitution.  The result is a legislative temper tantrum in a bill dubbed the No Glory for Hate Act.  The act is petty and petulant, and it inspires a strong temptation to laugh and mock.  It is, however, an unconstitutional abuse of power, and that transforms an amusing little fit into a worrisome precedent.  The bill targets "any former President that has been twice impeached" — excuse me while I take a moment to figure out all the presidents that it applies to — and says that no federal funds may be used to commemorate all those presidents.

10 Big Warning Signs Biden is the 'Missing' President.  [#6] Biden is an executive order-signing machine:  President Biden entered office and immediately issued a record-setting flurry of executive orders, which he signed as if he were a human auto-pen.  Those orders were reportedly drafted and fast-tracked with the aid of a DOJ office under the supervision of former Attorney General William Barr, according to former Trump adviser Peter Navarro.  "Trump's last Attorney General actually also turns out to be Joe Biden's first Attorney General," Navarro said.  "Because here is what was happening.  We had over 30 executive orders queued after election day, ready to go.  But we kept running into all of these roadblocks and roadblocks and hurdles.  It turns out that Bill Barr's office of legal counsel was fast-tracking all of these Biden EOs."  [Video clip]  Of course, President Biden could not have had all of these executive orders ready to go by himself on day one.  They were drafted for him and merely handed to him to sign.

The Progressives are the extremists.  The Progressives, in their extreme denial of the First Amendment's freedom of religion clause, shut down churches, synagogues, and choirs.  And if not totally shut down, they limited church attendance in most of these.  Totalitarian governments do not like large groups of people assembled together, whether it is at church or at a Trump MAGA rally.  Hypocritically, they did not have any problems with Antifa nor Black Lives Matter riots.

House Democrats' Attempt to Pressure TV Carriers Could Trigger Lawsuit:  Dershowitz.  The attempt by several House Democrats to pressure television carriers to deplatform certain news organizations could trigger a lawsuit, law professor Alan Dershowitz said Saturday [2/27/2021].  "When the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, it's been interpreted to mean, take no action, it doesn't have to be law.  The First Amendment applies to presidents to governors to mayors to anybody who can abridge the freedom of speech.  And I think these letters abridge the freedom of speech," Dershowitz said during an appearance on Newsmax TV.  Reps.  Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) and Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) sent a dozen letters to 12 different carriers this week urging them to deplatform or otherwise take action against Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News for allegedly spreading misleading information about the Jan. 6 Capitol breach and the COVID-19 pandemic.  They pointedly asked the carriers if they were planning on carrying the networks "both now and beyond any contract renewal date."  "That's not a question.  That's a threat," Dershowitz said.

The Biden administration is systematically erasing Trump.  Biden is undoing every single executive order Trump signed, regardless of whether a given order made sense or not.  The goal isn't to benefit America or Americans, it's to destroy any vestige of Trump in the American government (and, as a pleasant byproduct, to replace the American population which a more malleable one).  The Victory Girls blog caught up with the seven executive orders that Biden signed on Wednesday [2/24/2021].  What's noteworthy is how innocuous or pro-American the Trump executive orders were.  It's clear that, for the Democrats now in power, the substance of Trump's executive orders is irrelevant.  The only thing that matters is getting rid of them.  This is the executive order equivalent of fumigation.  Or to put Biden's conduct in its proper historical context, we are witnessing the American version of the damnatio memoriae — or condemnation of memory.  It's how a successor government erases the predecessor from every official record.  It's a very primitive action, as well as being one that totalitarians embrace.  (Stalin was famous for it.)  You may draw your own conclusions about the Biden administration's motives.

The Lies Aren't Secret.  Secrecy is the ultimateentitlement program for the Deep State.  The federal government is creating trillions of pages of new secrets every year.  The more documents bureaucrats classify, the more lies politicians and government officials can tell.  In Washington, deniability is prized far more than truth.  At the end of the Trump era, the Deep State is triumphant at home and abroad.  Trump's epic clashes with federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies helped cripple his administration, and they illustrate the continued danger of Deep State secrecy.  If all of the FBI's shenanigans on Russiagate came to light, it would be far more difficult for the FBI to manipulate American politics and presidents in the future.  If CIA records on Syrian rebels were exposed, the Biden administration would have far more difficulty dragging America back into the Syrian civil war.  But both seem unlikely.  Recent court rulings make clear how badly Trump failed to drain the swamp.

A short primer on the importance of our Second Amendment rights.  Without the Second Amendment, there is no Bill of Rights.  As we're learning, the Bill of Rights is a leash on the government and has meaning only if the government accepts that leash.  If it throws off the leash and flexes its police power, the only recourse is to yield or fight — and you can't fight without weapons.  Incidentally, let me be clear:  We have not reached the physical fighting point.  Thankfully, we are still a civil society with multiple civil, legal, and non-violent means for asserting our rights.  Resisting now through these lawful mechanisms will ensure continued peace in America.  Still, an armed society is a society respected by its own government.

More than 35% of US Dollars Ever Printed [were] Made in 2020.  The Federal Reserve system printed more than 35% of the dollars ever printed in the year 2020 alone.  A graphic from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve reveals the severe increase in printing, with dollar printed dramatically exceeding the number produced in previous years.  The increase in printing and spending was spurred by the coronavirus, with the federal government moving to deliver two financial stimulus packages in the year which relieved the American taxpayer.  Leaders of both political parties agreed the stimulus spending was necessary, with the virus spurring an unprecedented recession.  However, the inflationary effects on the dollar from the print and spend approach are unavoidable.  The volume of US dollars circulating throughout the economy went from just over $15 trillion to over $19 trillion in one year alone.

Democrats take first steps to censor conservative TV channels OANN, Newsmax and Fox News.  In a shocking development in the ongoing censorship debate, two influential Democrat members of the House of Representatives have taken the first steps to challenge the continued availability of conservative channels Newsmax, OANN, and Fox News on mainstream cable, satellite, and streaming television platforms. [...] Among other things, the letter to the companies by [Rep. Anna] Eshoo and [Rep. Jerry] McNerney attacked the three conservative news channels as "misinformation rumor mills and conspiracy theory hotbeds that produce content that leads to real harm."

House Democrats are Going After Cable Providers and Streaming Services for Hosting Channels Like Fox News and OANN.  When going after advertisers wasn't enough to sink channels that hold conservative opinions, Democrats began shifting their attention to other methods of fascistically silencing their ideological opposition.  According to The Hill, Democrats are now going after streaming services and cable providers for playing host to what they call "misinformation" and for breeding "radicalized individuals."  The companies they're going after include Comcast and Verizon, as well as streaming companies like Hulu and Roku to question their "ethical principles".

Donations 'Requested' by Newsom Exploded as His Emergency Powers Ballooned.  In 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office reported that individuals or organizations made $226 million in private donations to organizations at Newsom's request.  These "behested payments" were a record-setting haul eclipsing all prior donations on record by nearly $100 million.  While most donations supported COVID-19 relief efforts, a closer look suggests Newsom's fundraising was supercharged not just by the pandemic, but also by the broad emergency powers the Democratic governor has assumed because of it.  Behested payments are a unique feature of California politics.  State law defines a behested payment as a donation to a government program or charity made "at the request, suggestion, or solicitation of, or made in cooperation, consultation, coordination or concert" with a public official.  While payments of $5,000 or more are disclosed to the public, they remain an overlooked portion of politicians' finances, even though contributions often come from businesses with interests in the state government.  Last year, Newsom raised a combined $45 million from insurance giants Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente for Project Homekey, his housing initiative.  Newsom had selected Blue Shield CEO Paul Markovich to co-chair California's task force on COVID-19 testing.  In January, the governor again tapped Blue Shield, with assistance from Kaiser Permanente, to manage vaccine distribution across the state.

How to Push Back Against a Bully.  Did a Minneapolis policeman's decision to sit on the neck of George Floyd on May 25 really "cause" the summer of violence, namely the one that Antifa, BLM, and their Democratic sponsors unleashed in every major American city?  Did a single killing in Minneapolis cause organized wars against "systemic racism" here and in Canada and then in Western Europe, with accompanying looting and burning?  Were people cancelled and fired, statues toppled, streets and buildings renamed according to quickly ratcheted-up standards of political correctness all because of an event in Minneapolis last spring?  The obvious answer is no.  Crises are generated when those in power decide to generate them.  The media can throw oil on the flames whenever they decide it is in their interest to do so.  Universities and other "institutions of learning" will then join the fray, together with their comrades in the deep state, who are always eager to fight "prejudice."  The fact is, we are dealing with a power complex that can turn even minor incidents into violent demonstrations and calls for government action to end "discrimination" and to ferret out and punish "white supremacists."

2020 made it really hard to take Washington seriously.  One is hard pressed to imagine how a former president can be impeached.  The term doesn't even make sense, as the whole idea of impeachment is to remove a president from office.  If said president isn't even in office, there's no squaring the circle.  The notion seems to be to close any avenue Donald Trump may use to re-establish himself in national politics.  Not a thing constitutional about it.  That Pelosi & Company fear Trump even out of office is beyond dispute.  He is a threat to their crooked lives because America is no longer blind to the extraordinary criminality that has Washington by the throat.  The hope that was America for centuries was predicated on sincere efforts to hamstring the corruption that otherwise ran rampant across the world.  Now the whole world has seen that not even America can stand honestly in the sunshine.

Power Crazed:  Inspector Dances with Glee While Shutting Down Los Angeles County Brewery Restaurant.  Moments after shutting down the Bravery Brewing Company for allowing customers to pick up prior to the Super Bowl rather than delivering, the LA County Health Inspector does a little happy dance.  Surveillance footage shows Los Angeles County inspector Jatinder Chhabra entering the building just over half an hour after they opened.  They had to shut down right now, she informed the employee, who was ringing up two customers at that moment.  Why?  No food truck.  [Video clip]

The Grand Illusion.  The federal government is illegitimate.  I can unwind that all you want, but it's a fact.  It's a fact to such an extent that they have put up a twelve-foot-high fence around the capitol with razor wire crowning the structure.  They've posted twenty-thousand troops near at hand in case too many of us figure it out.  They are afraid of us and they should be.  If I had defied the will of the people and installed a mentally deficient old man instead of the people's choice, I'd be worried about the anger of the American people, too.

A Freedom-Loving People Needs to Call the Bluff of Those Instilling Fear.  While it took the combined elements of the New Deal and American mobilization during World War II, the land of the free and the home of the brave eventually reasserted itself and America won through to victory — over straitened economic circumstances and the combined military might of National Socialist Germany and Imperial Japan.  What followed was two decades of prosperity, social harmony, and relative peace.  Today, that country has nearly vanished into history, defeated by a combination of "progressive" assaults on the nation-as-founded, and a concomitant loss of self-confidence and even legitimacy.  Worst of all, the fear that FDR warned of has now inculcated itself as the new American default mode: everything terrifies us, and sends us scurrying for the imagined security of "safe spaces."  Which are, of course, really prisons for a people no longer capable of governing themselves.  Exhibit A is COVID-19, China's gift to the world, the overreaction to which has elevated "civil servants" to the status of dictators, abrogated the Constitution, destroyed the economy, and encouraged the citizenry to shun their fellow men as if they were radioactive.  It has terrified a country grown ever more effeminate in its mannerisms and speech patterns, and fearful of engagement with everyday life.  It has created the absurd spectacle of once-free citizens habitually masked and shuffling along like the captive residents of a communist country, tethered to their iPhones, bombarded daily with government and Google propaganda, and accepting the notion that this is somehow the New Normal — and ought to be.

Free Thy Mind.  The federal government is a body of dictators.  They recognize no higher authority than themselves.  It isn't much better at the state, county or city levels.  The stolen election was just one more way to sideline the people, take them out of the equation for anything other than tax assets.  That's why a lot of Republicans failed to seek an audit of the election, or even individual state elections.  They didn't want to upset the process of removing your voice from future elections as well.  They have a nifty little game going on up there and they don't want principle to stand in the way of their power.  That power is to operate a money-laundering scheme wherein contributors to their "re-election" provide the slush fund from which the individual candidate is allowed to draw and return that cash to their donors through favorable legislation with a crumb or two aimed at the citizens.  This was most obviously the case with every "Covid relief" bill they have or will pass.  A few pennies to the people, a few billion to their global partners.

Lee Smith Nails It, The Elites "Want Us To Know" They Hold all Power and Control.  Adam Townsend had a great podcast interview with journalist Lee Smith last week, and for the first time Smith eloquently hit on something CTH has discussed for several years.  The "elites" writ large are so open in their current proclamations of being beyond reach, because they want us to know their power removes them from any accountability.  Often we see people ask 'why are they so openly admitting to their wrongdoing'?  Within the answer I have written frequently 'they simply do not care'...  It is not a sense of boundless hypocrisy that drives them to showcase their disconnect, the disconnect is purposefully part of the ideological advancement of their goal.

How Your Government Really Works.  [Scroll down]  It is almost impossible for prominent people to conceal their behavior.  The late Senator John McCain's wife Cindy claimed, "Epstein was hiding in plain sight.  We all knew about him.  We all knew what he was doing, but we had no one that was — no legal aspect that would go after him.  They were afraid of him.  For whatever reason, they were afraid of him."  The important part of this statement is:  "We all knew about him."  Jeffrey Epstein was prostituting young girls and Cindy McCain knew about it.  She did not report it.  What was she afraid of?  Vladimir Bukovsky pointed out one of the problems with exposing people:  "The movers and shakers of today have little interest in digging for the truth.  Who knows what one may come up with?  You may start out with the communists and end up with yourself."

ABC Now Looks to State and Federal Prosecutors to Get Trump in Court.  Only after former President Trump was acquitted for the second time in an impeachment trial did ABC finally give any form of credence to the Republican argument that the Senate was not the right place to hold a former president accountable.  And during Valentine's Day Sunday, Good Morning America was trying to count the ways and charges Trump could face and the federal and state levels to bar him from running for office ever again.  "In his speech after the vote to acquit, after he, in fact, voted to acquit, [Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell [R-KY] said, Trump, and I'm quoting here, 'didn't get away with anything, yet,'" co-anchor Dan Harris noted to legal analyst Dan Abrams.  "So, what legal consequences could Trump still face?  Could there be state charges, federal charges?  What do you think?"  According to Abrams, federal prosecutors would be too intimidated by the "political imagery" to prosecute Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection.  So, he looked to the states: [...]

Trump Acquittal Shows Congress Is Not Exempt From The Constitution.  House impeachment managers argued Saturday, as throughout former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, that Congress is exempt from the Constitution.  Lead manager Rep. Raskin (D-MD) said that because this was not a criminal trial, the legal requirements for "incitement" did not apply, the right to due process did not apply, and even the cherished First Amendment did not apply.  In effect, Raskin argued, Congress was exempt from following constitutional principles. [...] Raskin, Schiff, and the Democrats told the Senate that they should ignore the principles of the Bill of Rights.  As Trump's lawyers noted in their rebuttal Friday, the House managers were effectively asking the Senators to violate their own oaths of office.  That may or may not have been the reason the Senate ultimately acquitted Trump, both times.

Worshipping At The Altar Of Power.  On Wednesday, January 6th, a mob of aggrieved voters from across the political spectrum stormed the Capitol, [...] But more important than the unfortunate event itself was the way our political and cultural leaders described it.  Both former First Lady Michelle Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, among others, described the storming of the capitol as a desecration, meaning that that mob had defiled a sacred place.  Obama and Pelosi, it is assumed, believe that the capitol building is hallowed ground; that it is a sacred representation of our democracy.  While we might agree that it represents our democracy, it would be foolish and dangerous to consider it sacred.  Yes, our country was founded on sacred principles and transcendent truths, but these truths are not to be found in the seat of power, but rather where the founding fathers knew they resided, in our Creator.  Our Leadership class does not believe in the God of our founders.  They do not fear God the Creator nor kneel for his forgiveness and blessing.  Instead, they kneel and bow their heads for BLM or, rather, they supplicate themselves to the power it represents.  Power is what they crave, strive for, and worship.

Public Servants or Parasites?  When did politicians and federal employees start calling themselves "public servants"?  Even more importantly, why are we letting them?  It's almost as if they're trying to claim the mantle of nobility for making a sacrifice in the public interest.  But I don't understand what that sacrifice is.  They're paid better and have better benefits than most private-sector employees.  They're rarely held accountable for their performance.  Why do we treat them as if they're serving a higher calling than any other profession in the country?

Why are Democrats Pushing Impeachment?  Nancy Pelosi is one of the snidest and most petty representatives in Congress.  I have personally heard from several Democratic representatives their beliefs that Pelosi held up critical immigration and COVID legislation that they privately supported, for no other reason than that it might help Trump look good.  They supported the holdups because they feared retribution from Pelosi.  If you want to hear Pelosi's partisanship, listen for yourself to her opening comments during the beginning of the House debate on Arizona's electoral votes.  Pelosi is sufficiently petty to demand impeachment as a final boot out the door.  This is my personally favored reason and stands as a testament to the characters of Chuck Schumer, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and others who have joined them.  While several junior Democrats may have done so out of fear, Democratic leaders and Republicans had no good excuses.  But there could be another reason; one that fits well with Democrats' recent militarization of D.C. and gross violations of our 1st Amendment rights to speech and to assemble and the redress of grievances. [...]

Lawyers Are Facing Reprisal for Representing Trump.  This Is Un-American.  "So... you represented Trump?" That question is unfairly haunting a number of the former president's lawyers.  Because of his legal counsel to former President Donald Trump, constitutional scholar and law professor John Eastman — the former dean of the law school no less — was pushed out of Chapman University, where he spent his entire, very distinguished academic career.  The same thing happened to Cleta Mitchell, a well-known and highly respected Washington, D.C. lawyer who had practiced with Foley and Lardner for decades.  Now, Michigan lawyers Greg Rohl, Scott Hagerstrom, and Stefanie Junttila, who represented the Trump campaign in election litigation in the state, are being unfairly and unjustly targeted for disbarment by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and state Attorney General Dana Nessel.

Biden's Banana Republic.  [Scroll down]  [Under the Biden] administration, this country is shaping up as a banana republic.  Think about:
  •   How the Democrats want to turn the economy into one that's "operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class."
  •   The Democrats' retribution-filled, Reichstag-fire response to the breach of the U.S. Capitol by a group made up mostly of odd characters and some everyday Americans who got overheated and were shocked by their own behavior, all of them apparently unarmed.
  •   How a summer of real riots was tacitly, and at times, overtly supported by Biden's party.
  •   The second impeachment of Trump that is not an attempt to seek justice but a campaign to prevent him from running again for president and marginalizing his supporters.
  •   The lies about the promise of unity.
  •   Phony charges against political opponents designed to dehumanize them. [...]
  •   Government by executive command rather than through proper legislative channels.
  •   Shutting down politically unfavorable businesses. [...]
  •   The leader of a national government deciding alone what the property role of that government is. [...]
From any reasonable point of view, it's clear America is in a decline that might not be as steep as Biden's cognitive fade, but is just as real.

The FBI's Campaign Against Some Rightwing Groups Looks Exactly Like J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO Scandal.  [Scroll down]  For the past four years, we've been appalled by the FBI and the Intelligence Community working hand-in-glove to insert informers into a presidential campaign and transition team.  We saw an obviously faked dossier laundered by the CIA and FBI through press leaks to create the pretext for a special counsel.  Over the past month, I've posted about the alarming pattern of "militia" and "extremist" arrests with a common thread.  A group meets.  Someone in the group brings up the bright idea to commit a federal felony.  Discussion ensues.  An outsider with the means to carry out the felony is introduced to the group.  Some inciting act is taken, like purchasing an illegal device, and the FBI descends on the group.  There is a press conference and indictments and much blathering about the enemy within and the danger of extremists. [...] You have groups opposed in some fundamental way to the direction the elites want the nation to go.  They are targeted for no other reason than their dissent.  From there, it is a short jump to creating facts that enable law enforcement to suppress that dissent. [...] If federal law enforcement continues to push informants and provocateurs into otherwise peaceful organizations and engage in what a layperson would characterize as entrapment, then they build a case for having entire groups labeled as violent extremists.  As we saw in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, that kind of labeling can be used to prevent people from traveling (the 'no-fly" list).  It can keep them from renting housing (AirBNB canceling reservations).  It can get financial institutions to make it impossible to use a credit card or other payment system.  And on and on.

Slowing Killing The American Frog.  [Scroll down]  By harassing President Trump from the start of his term, Democrats kept him, and us, just enough off balance to keep on moving the pieces into place.  A big part of that was forcing us to accept, incrementally, things we knew to be wrong.  We knew to be untrue the Russian and Ukrainian plots Trump supposedly perpetrated.  By contrast, we had irrefutable proof that Biden plotted with Ukraine, but our institutions ignored that.  We were force-fed a 'new reality.'  Watching General Flynn, Carter Page and Roger Stone (among others) accused as criminals and destroyed financially added to the unease.  None of the accusations were credible.  A 5 a.m. raid on Stone with a SWAT team and a TV crew was chilling.  Why was it done?  To undermine our belief in reality!  We had to swallow each indignity.  We never knew what or who might be sacrificed next.  We thought the Democrat actors in Congress were evil fools but watched in horror as they got away with every outrageous ploy.  We will never see indictments for the plotters.

10 Years in Prison for a Meme?  The Department of Justice is showing that it has become a political weapon in the earliest days of the Biden Presidency.  The F.B.I. has arrested a pro-Trump meme maker (artist), who now faces a 10-year sentence for posting a comical image four years earlier.  They are outright beginning to arrest people for political speech.  [Video clip]

After Vetting 25,000 Guardsmen, No Extremists Were Found.  In the wake of the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, an unprecedented step was taken:  placing 25,000 National Guardsmen to protect the Capitol.  Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen expressed concerned that with so many white Trump voters in the guard, there could be violent extremists among them.  Politico shared these concerns in a piece arguing the military has a hate-group problem.  The piece used entirely anecdotal evidence, so is there any real data?  It turns out that thanks to concerns from people like Cohen, the National Guard and the FBI vetted the 25,000 grunts from across the nation to assure no extremists were among them.  It was widely reported that 12 guardsmen were removed from the force as a result of the vetting.  But now, The Federalist's Jordan Davidson has gotten clarification from the National Guard about these 12 people.  According to the Guard: [...] None of these individuals were flagged for extremist, criminal or threat association. [...] Thus far, Cohen has not apologized for besmirching the honor and morals of so many military service members, nor has the media done any kind of about-face on the nature of the threat.  This is because the idea that Trump-supporting boogiemen are lurking in our ranks serves their political purposes.

Unite and Heal With Show Trials and Fascist Purges.  When asked how he defines unity, Joe Biden, with the help of three teleprompters and a small staff communicating with him through his earpiece and a series of frantic signals and hoots, explained that, "If you pass a piece of legislation that breaks down on party lines but it get passed, it doesn't means there wasn't unity — it just means it wasn't bipartisan." [...] How do you unify?  The same way every great democratic people's regime did from France to Russia to China to San Francisco — with show trials and purges of the enemies of the people.  Nothing says unity like a city full of barbed wire and soldiers.  Not to mention a one-party system that is obsessed with criminalizing its political opposition using a fake state of emergency. [...] The show trial of President Trump and the city full of soldiers is just the opening act to the Great Purge of a domestic terrorism crackdown on anyone who ever retweeted the wrong meme.

Understanding the Institutional Protection Racket Via Congress, Main Justice DOJ, FBI and FISA Court.  Many people are now becoming aware of the severity of self-serving corruption in/around the institutions that frame our government.  Considering that Sundance has a target on his back; and considering that it is only a matter of time before that targeting gets ugly; let me remind everyone of just how severe the issues are confronting our nation. [...] The staff of Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, Homeland Security Chair Ron Johnson and even the staff of House Oversight Ranking Member Jim Jordan are purposefully and willfully blind.  They choose not to know things; or at least they claim not to know and do an exceptional job of purposeful pretend.  The investigative information that makes up the news cycles amid the investigative right-side of the spectrum is generally compartmented or silo'd.  Within DC all branches and people within them keep information isolated from each-other in order to create and retain plausible deniability.  This permits their leadership to talk a good game on television while nothing is actually accomplished.  It is all part of the game.

Funny how the party that claims to be for the little guy always supports the billionaires.  [Scroll down]  I have never seen anyone as dangerous in the White House as Joe Biden in his first nine days as he signs executive order after executive order, some 40 now at last count.  He has stacked his cabinet with radical leftists pushing the green agenda to destroy America.  He sends out John Kerry, with multiple mansions, a yacht and a private jet, to tell the public that is good for them that he is destroying their jobs.  After all, he drove a Tesla from Massachusetts to D.C.  On Fox News, I heard left-wing Juan Williams say he didn't really care about Kerry's or anyone else's lifestyle, even as they are dictating how all of us should live our lives.  [...] And no matter how often all these supposedly smart cabinet members, as well as Biden himself, his vice president, Kamala Harris, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others repeat that we have to get rid of oil and coal to control temperatures and the climate, not one sock puppet at the Washington Post or any other journalist, including at Fox, ask for scientific evidence to support their theory and destructive policies.  There is no scientific evidence, so they never ask.  They just go along.

Thermonuclear Option:  The Explicit Danger in Eliminating the Filibuster.  As Americans send a 50-50 Senate and 221-211 House to Washington, many of our friends on the Left are pushing for dramatic policy swings reflective of the dramatic march leftward of the Democratic party every year since Obama's departure from office. [...] The very thing we can not afford as a nation is for dramatic and one-sided federal action on the issues we've been divided over for so many years.  Lowering the degree of consensus necessary for dramatic swings in policy, enacting them absent broad national support, will raise the political stakes beyond comprehension and make the fervor of the 2020 election an unremarkable footnote.  A big reason that the Affordable Care Act was so embittered, caused such rancor, was because the president at the time chose to pass the legislation without having first established a national consensus for it.  That lack of support was evidenced in polls, the organic movements that rose up against it, and the need for Democrats to resort to budget reconciliation to pass it.

"80 Million Votes".  [Commentary on the sparsely-attended Biden inauguration ceremony.]  [Video clip]

Don't Fire Until You See The Whites.  [Scroll down]  We would never have thought that a picture of the American flag could make us sick to our stomach, but we were wrong.  This is that picture.  [Left]  This is the national mall, where 200,000 American flags have been planted to symbolically represent all of the people who would like to show up and kneel before the new king, but can't because A) no one really [cares] about Biden's inauguration and if they did B) the National Guard might shoot them out of an abundance of caution.  So now we've got an imaginary crowd of "supporters," which is actually a beautifully ironic depiction of the imaginary voters who made this day possible.  So yeah... looking at this picture makes us want to hurl.

I Watched Biden's Inauguration First-Hand:  Haunted and numb in a horribly sanitized city.  As I grabbed some coffee before heading to the Capitol Building to watch the 46th President of the United States of America take his title, the lovely lady behind the counter told me she had never seen anything like this in D.C. in her life.  And all I can say as I stand here now in the freezing cold with a handful of others is that I hope America never has to see anything like this again.  Nothing is as it seems.  It is just horrible, in every sense.  There is no one here.  And I am not saying that in the weird competitive way people talk about crowd sizes as a measure of popularity.  Remember the endless quarrel over the size of Trump's inauguration crowd versus Obama's?  What I mean is that there is literally no one here.  Even pressed up to the gates within sight of the Capitol Building there is barely a handful of Biden supporters — alongside a small gaggle of media, scratching about, trying to find something to film.

The Trial Of Citizen Trump Would Raise Serious Constitutional Questions.  With the second impeachment of President Donald Trump, the Congress is set for one of the most bizarre moments in constitutional history: the removal of someone who has already left office.  The retroactive removal would be a testament to the timeliness of rage.  While it is not without precedent, it is without logic. [...] Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats have stated that their primary interest is in the possible disqualification of Trump from holding future federal office.  Disqualification however is an optional penalty that follows a conviction and removal.  It may be added to the primary purpose of removal referenced in the Constitution.  The Trump trial would convert this supplemental punishment into the primary purpose of the trial.

DPS Abruptly Closes Texas State Capitol Out Of An Abundance Of Caution, Threats Of Violence.  It was just a few days ago that the Texas State Capitol opened up for the new session of the Texas legislature.  The top concern at that time was protecting lawmakers, staff, and visitors from the coronavirus.  Now the capitol building and grounds have been closed and it has nothing to do with COVID-19.  Threats of violent protests that have come into all 50 states, including Texas, caused the Texas Department of Public Safety to abruptly close the capitol Friday night.  The building and the Capitol grounds were closed due to new intelligence coming in that intensified safety concerns, causing DPS to tighten security.  The building and grounds were closed due to the pandemic and also due to damage done by protesters last May and June during the Summer of Love.  The closures begin today and last through Wednesday.  The Texas legislature gaveled in on Tuesday to begin its work.  The Texas legislature meets every two years, not annually.  This is the first week of the 87th Legislature.

Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue:  The Left 'Weaponized' Pandemic To 'Shutdown Economy' For 'Political Gain'.  Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue came out swinging at the political Left during a Friday interview on Fox News, saying that the political Left "weaponized" the pandemic to shutdown the economy for political reasons. [...] "The worst thing we can do is shutdown our economy, kill our spirit," Unanue continued.  "You know, we need a reason to get up in the morning:  God, family, work.  And they're taking away our spirit.  They're taking away our ability to work.  They essentially declared martial law, I believe, in this country, shutting everything down.  It's the worst thing we could have done just for political gain.  I think it's criminal.  I think it's immoral.  To shutdown this economy for this basically political reasons and, you know, we're one nation under God.  We're not one nation under Twitter.  We're not one nation under big media, or under central government."

An L.A. councilman lied to the FBI. Probation officials say he deserves no jail time.  It was the first blockbuster case to surface in the federal corruption probe of Los Angeles City Hall — a multi-count indictment accusing former Councilman Mitchell Englander of taking envelopes of cash, lying to the FBI about that money and obstructing its investigation.  Englander, while serving in office, made false statements to FBI agents during three separate interviews, prosecutors said, providing untrue information about his dealings with a businessman who gave him $15,000 in two casino bathrooms.  The case was resolved quickly, with Englander pleading guilty to a single count of scheming to falsify material facts.  But now, prosecutors are voicing objections to the sentence recommended by federal probation officials: three years' probation, a $9,500 fine and no jail time or community service.

The U.S. Government is Hopelessly Corrupt.  [Scroll down]  Today, in addition to maximizing profits, the oligarchy wants to control what you read, what you think and what you are permitted to express.  There is an unholy and dangerous alliance combining the media and Big Tech with the national security state, that is, the intelligence services, the military-industrial complex and law enforcement.  It is, quite literally, an effort to abrogate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and eliminate free speech.  The United States government has gone beyond authoritarianism towards the Chinese Communist Party model of state capitalism and totalitarianism.  And what better candidate to carry that model forward than Joe Biden, who is already compromised by his close connections with the Chinese government?  Make no mistake, Donald Trump won the 2020 Presidential election.  It was stolen, not only from him, but, more importantly, it was stolen from the American people by the well-organized and well-financed application of massive electoral fraud.

We Desperately Need SOME Institution to Execute as Constitutionally Designed.  Trump supporters' frustration is predicated in large part upon decades' worth of America's institutions not doing what they are Constitutionally mandated to do.  Our government is supposed to be limited — and subservient to We the People.  It's been more than a century since any of that was true.  The examples of this ever-worsening situation are more numerous than the stars in the sky.  But generally speaking, the Executive Branch and all its very many agencies don't do what they're supposed to do — and do all sorts of things they are not supposed to do.  The Legislative Branch doesn't do what the Legislative Branch is supposed to do — and does all sorts of things it is not supposed to do.  And the Judicial Branch doesn't do what the Judicial Branch is supposed to do — and does all sorts of things it is not supposed to do.

Waving Goodbye to the America We All Knew and Loved.  The worst shortcoming of our government is its failure to maintain election integrity. [...] The 2020 presidential election has brought us even lower on the ladder.  We have more than a thousand sworn affidavits attesting to massive voter fraud:  suspension of signature verification, violation of state election rules, non-verification of mail-in ballots, backdating of ballots, double-voting, dead people voting, hiding ballots under the table, refusal to allow poll-watching, and vote-switching by machine systems.  "People are going on the record under oath and risking being canceled, doxed, and even accosted, to tell what they have seen about this election process," said Rep. Michael Cloud.  "The apparent lack of action from the Justice Department regarding a number of anomalies, statistical improbabilities, and sworn accusations of fraud is troubling."  It may be troubling, but it is consistent with partisan activities of the DOJ, the FBI, and the IRS.  FBI Director James Comey's refusal to indict Hillary Clinton, Obama's weaponization of the IRS against conservative groups, and inaction from the Durham investigation have destroyed the public's confidence in our justice system.

We Were Laughed Out of Court because the Courts Have Become Ridiculous.  Conservatives who object to election fraud have found that liberals' favorite retort is "your claims have been laughed out of court."  This argument is authoritarian in its reasoning.  It defers to a juridical priesthood and allows one guild, the attorneys, to override what average people can see in front of them.  Such an argument should not stagger wise conservatives. [...] People who have been granted juridical authority can indeed err en masse by an enormous margin, for long periods of time, on matters that should be obvious. [...] It was bad enough that the United States courts rejected civil rights cases from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century out of hand.  By the twenty-first century, American courts were on course to affirm some of the most preposterous claims about sex and gender ever asserted in all human history.  The erosion of commonsense language that arguably began with Roe v. Wade moved quickly in forty-two years to the insanity of Obergefell v. Hodges and even to the madness of the supposedly conservative-dominated Supreme Court in 2020's Bostock and Henderson v. Box.

Without Our Constitution, We're Under Occupation.  I don't know if fed up Americans will rise up in the near future and defend their liberties against an ever more abusive and oppressive system of government, but I do know that 2020 has revealed vividly the post-constitutional wilderness the nation has entered.  Not since the days of slavery or internment have federal and local governments attacked the natural rights and freedoms of individual Americans so concertedly as they have this past year.  Arbitrary house arrests; the denial of religious freedoms; the closing of private businesses without any equitable measures of compensation; the intentional disregard for the destruction of private property while anarchists are given general grants of immunity; and the absolute refusal by governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general, and judges to provide for and ensure free and fair elections have combined to produce a lawless year in the United States.

A Call to Arms for All Patriots to Come to the Aid of Their Country.  Nov. 3, 2020, a new day of infamy, a devious covert attack shook the United States of America to its core.  This attack was worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11.  The perpetrators were our elitist aristocracy and political class that reject the concept of self-governing by We the People.  Complicit were our unelected administrative state, the Deep State, the mainstream media (MSM), Big Tech, The New World Order (Globalists — The Great Reset), and hostile foreign governments, specifically China.  This evil coalition seeks to subvert the People's will by undermining our core beliefs, sovereignty, and overthrowing our government as created by our founders. [...] This action was yet another coup to conceal the many past criminal acts of these perpetrators, e.g., treason, misprision of treason, rebellion or insurrection, and advocating the government's overthrow.  Including violating the People's civil rights under the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments and many other serious federal felonies that so far have gone unpunished.

Steadfast Doesn't Mean When It's Easy.  [Scroll down]  It was during one of those briefing trips to DC when I recognized a serious disconnect between what the people within those institutions of government viewed as their role, and what We The People expected of them.  It was also the first time when I realized that internal corrective action was unlikely to succeed because the scale of corrupt activity was not simply based on intent, but also present because the absence of morality was metastatic throughout the system.  I'm certain there are good people in DC, but the systems surrounding them have lost their originating purpose.  The central function of U.S. government is now so corrupt the institutions regard 'We The People' as the problem the people within the system must protect themselves from.  I quickly recognized the solutions to our national issues were never going to come from our requests to those who operate within the institutions.  However, even worse was the impact we were having on each other due to our national frustration.  It was evident within our frustration — as a nation we are losing a sense of identity, unity and fellowship.

The "Republican Democratic party" defines corruption:  They stole our money and gave it back to us.  The latest Republican democratic party garbage bill is just that, GARBAGE.  I started reading it yesterday, and by 7 am this morning I had a strange urge to pick up a pitchfork and drive to DC.  I expected it to be bad, but not this bad.  The first question I have for grifters on Capital Hill is "How can you give us money that's already ours?  Sure, it's our tax money so you can say it's already ours, but that's not what I mean.  What I'm saying is that they stole our money and gave it back to us.  How?  If you have paying close attention you would know that we have $450 billion left over from the first round of stimulus checks and the CARES ACT.  The money had already been approved and is already ours.  We didn't have to wait for a new round of funding to be approved.  It was just a simple matter of distribution.  What they did was steal our money, our 450 billion, called it "repurpose", and gave it back to us, as if it was theirs to give.

The Abominable 'America Last' Porkulus Bill.  This country is not governed by a "Republican Party" and a "Democratic Party."  It is governed by an establishment "uniparty" that betrays our citizens at every turn.  Exhibit A:  The joint annual ritual of fiscal vulgarity known as the omnibus spending bill. [...] The juxtaposition of measly COVID-19 relief for U.S. citizens against the backdrop of lavish aid for illegal immigrants, the military-industrial complex, Big Pharma, overseas social justice warriors, nongovernmental organizations and foreign countries is just too brazen to ignore.  Americans will receive $600 COVID-19 relief checks and $300 unemployment payments as part of the consolidated federal government funding package.  The $900 billion in COVID-related aid is folded into the massive, 5,600-page legislation encompassing 12 fiscal 2021 spending bills worth $1.4 trillion. [...] We've had enough.  A manufactured public health crisis, post-George Floyd anarchotyranny, and the wholesale hijacking of our election system are pushing citizens to the brink of revolt.

Yet another Democrat leader tells people to stay home for Christmas, then announces she will travel to visit her relatives.  Democrat leaders like Governors Gavin Newsom, Andrew CVuomo, Gretchen Whitmer, and J.B. Pritzker, Mayors Lauri [sic] Lightfoot and London Breed, and now Mecklenburg (Charlotte), North Carolina County Executive Dena Diorio, have all exposed themselves as outright hypocrites and elitists by telling ordinary people to obey restrictions on their personal freedoms while flaunting those same limitations themselves.  It is as if some madness has gripped Democrat elected officials, compelling them to flaunt their contempt for those they are supposed to lead and their belief that they alone are capable of making rational decisions about which risks to take, while the ignorant sheep must be told what to do and contrained.  Yesterday [12/23/2020], in a virtual news conference, County Executive Dena Diorio made a fool of herself by telling county residents to stay home for Christmas, and then under questioning admitting that she would be traveling by car to Durham (142 miles) to spend Christmas with her family.

Weissmann Lashes Out at Trump Over Manafort, Stone Pardons — Cooks Up New Plot to Prosecute Them for Perjury and Obstruction.  President Trump on Wednesday evening [12/23/2020] asserted his authority and announced 26 new Christmas pardons including ones to Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.  Trump's 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort was hunted down by Mueller's goons after he helped President Trump win the 2016 election.  Manafort was sentenced to 7 years in prison for tax evasion and other crimes stemming from his Ukrainian lobbying.  Andrew Weissmann, the real prosecutor in charge of Mueller's witch hunt lashed out at President Trump on Wednesday night following his pardon of Manafort and Stone.

Stimulus Bill Stimulates Congress's Lust for Power.  And so once again the mountain has labored mightily and brought forth a mouse.  Our dysfunctional Congress has just passed another "stimulus" bill designed to stimulate nothing but their own lust for power and determination to hang on to their seats at all costs — in this case, some $900 billion of our money, of which they have just doled out to the peons the grand sum of six hundred simoleons to help ease the pain of the Dreaded Corona Virus and their devastation of our livelihoods.  Thanks, Mitch McConnell (78) and Nancy Pelosi (80).  Fat-cat elderly millionaires both, these lifetime swamp creatures and selfless public servants have just pulled off an astounding feet of federal beneficence:  sending pittances to many Americans to "ameliorate" the effects of the CCP virus panic that they themselves — and "servants" at every level of government — have caused.

Will we go quietly into the night?  We've watched the rise of totalitarianism in disbelief as it has taken hold in the form of lockdowns, riots, censorship, and election fraud.  We have, for the most part, been obedient as a handful of "experts" told us what we can and cannot do after the coronavirus swept in.  We've tolerated demands to close our businesses, schools, and churches, not leave our house or have contact with aging loved ones, among other demonic edicts.  We've stood silently by as a "reimagined" police force issued citations, forcibly removed people from public spaces, padlocked doors, and made arrests because someone dared to live as a free American.  We've even been physically attacked while expressing support for the police, as the police stood by and did nothing.  On the heels of coronavirus lockdowns, came riots across the country as law enforcement was told to stand down.  And they obeyed.  Then the left pulled a poison arrow from their quiver and stole the election in their final coup attempt to deny a duly elected President his second term.  And nary a soul went to jail for any of it.  We're living in a world gone mad.  Lawlessness and criminal behavior has become a norm and no one does a thing to stop it.

The Left Redefines Resistance as 'Sedition'.  It was inevitable that the Democrats would overreact to legal challenges by President Trump and other Republicans to corrupt election practices in swing states, but some responses have been unhinged even by their standards.  One recurring refrain is particularly disturbing — that lawyers, members of Congress, and state attorneys general who supported post-election litigation are guilty of sedition.  At least one Democratic congressman insists that attorneys representing the president in such challenges should be disbarred and that House members who supported Texas v. Pennsylvania in the Supreme Court shouldn't be seated in Congress.  One of the defendants in that ill-fated lawsuit described it as a "seditious abuse of the judicial process."  This dangerous view of dissent has a long, sordid history among progressives.  Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, for example, was the driving force behind the notorious Sedition Act of 1918, passed by his fellow Democrats at a time when they controlled both houses of Congress.  This anti-democratic outrage made it a felony crime to criticize the government and, by extension, Wilson himself.

Joe Biden's niece Caroline gets no jail time after DUI guilty plea.  Another Biden walks free.  Joe Biden's niece Caroline Biden pleaded guilty to DUI on Dec. 3 — and was sentenced to 20 days to six months of "confinement," Pennsylvania court records said.  But the small print shows Biden, 33, won't see a day behind bars after she negotiated a plea deal with the Montgomery County district attorney.  Instead of jail, she got five-plus months of probation, with 20 days of rehab in January counted toward her sentence.  The walk-free plea continues a long Biden family tradition of avoiding jail time.  A [New York] Post investigation in July found at least eight other busts of Bidens resulted in wrist slaps.

Rhode Island Governor Tells Citizens To 'Stay Home' Before Heading To Wine Bar.  Democratic Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo was seen drinking at a wine bar just four days after reminding citizens to comply with coronavirus restrictions and stay home except for essential activities.  Photos published by Turtleboy Sports and the libertarian group Liberty Rhode Island reportedly show Raimondo sitting in a local restaurant for a "wine and paint" night without a mask.  The photo was taken by Erica Oliveras, who said she was also at the event at Barnaby's Public House in Providence, Rhode Island, according to ABC 6 News.

Democratic governor tells people to 'stay home except for essential activities,' then is spotted at a wine bar without a mask.  Democratic politicians have been caught openly disobeying their own COVID-19 lockdown orders for months:  The latest hypocritical offender is the governor of Rhode Island.  Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, was reportedly photographed at a wine bar.  The photo shows Raimondo, who is not wearing a face mask, enjoying a glass of wine at Barnaby's Public House in Providence.  The photo was taken during a "wine and paint" event last Friday [12/11/2020], according to Erica Oliveras, who took the photo.  However, only days earlier, Raimondo instructed her constituents to "stay home except for essential activities."

Rogue US Attorneys Coming to a City Near You?  Rachael Rollins, the rogue prosecutor in Boston, may want to be the United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts.  According to news reports, Rollins says people working on the Biden transition team have approached her about the position.  It is irrelevant whether she is just playing the "look at me, I'm important" political game or is serious about wanting the job.  She could be the nation's first rogue U.S. attorney.  The more disturbing thought is the possibility that we might end up with several rogue U.S. attorneys in key areas around the country.  If you thought things were bad in cities with elected rogue prosecutors — and they are — just imagine how crime rates will explode across the country if a President Joe Biden nominates, and the Senate confirms, rogue U.S. attorneys.

Republicans, Learn How to Fight Dirty or Keep Being Losers.  As long as Republicans allow unreciprocated decency to stand in the way of victory, they will be losers forever.  And, right now, the leader of the losers is Attorney General William Barr.  In the weeks before Election Day, Barr reportedly instructed prosecutors and senior colleagues to prevent the Department of Justice's (DoJ) investigation into Hunter Biden's brand of corruption and crony capitalism from leaking to the public.  His goal was to "keep the Justice Department out of campaign politics," although Biden's transgressions are directly relevant to a presidential election featuring his father.  Ultimately, Barr sat silent as the left-leaning mainstream media disregarded the Hunter story and labeled Trump supporters as kooks, while social media's "woke" elites censored it.  Even as President-elect Joe Biden lied to defend his son, Barr refused to speak up.

Supreme Court sides with Colorado church over COVID attendance caps.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday [12/15/2020] sided with a Colorado church challenging the state's capacity restrictions on houses of worship during the coronavirus pandemic, the latest order from the high court, now with a 6-3 conservative majority, in favor of churches and synagogues seeking to hold worship services during the ongoing crisis.  In an order with three dissents, the high court tossed out an August decision from the federal district court in Colorado that kept the attendance limits in place and sent the dispute back to the lower courts for further consideration in light of its November order barring New York from enforcing capacity restrictions at houses of worship.

Now we know for sure that our judges and justices are abject cowards.  The vote fraud that took place in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada was monstrous and long planned.  Election laws were surreptitiously weakened by secret consent decrees (GA), mass mail-in ballots, Dominion vote machines programmed to flip votes, the creation of tens of thousands of fake ballots, illegal alien voting, illegal drop boxes, get-out-the-vote campaigns in Democrat-heavy districts paid for by the execrable Zuckerberg of Facebook infamy, the refusal to allow GOP observers, ballots trucked from one state to another.  The judges dismissed lawsuits in every court where one was filed by the Trump campaign or other plaintiffs, seemingly without even considering the details.  The Supreme Court justices surely all know what took place; they can't have missed all the hearings at which witnesses to fraud testified and signed affidavits as to the truth of what they observed.  But the judges and justices were afraid.  Now that the left seems to have successfully stolen the election, they will certainly do it again.  They have the permission of the SCOTUS.

Defense attorney in Floyd case says prosecutors shared disorganized, duplicate evidence.  A defense attorney for the ex-Minneapolis police officer charged with murder in the death of George Floyd accused prosecutors of mishandling how they share evidence with the defense — including burying important information in between irrelevant material, providing duplicates of the same item and turning over thousands of pages of unrelated documents.  Eric Nelson, who represents Derek Chauvin, filed a motion and affidavit Monday [12/14/2020] accusing Attorney General Keith Ellison's office of delaying his progress in Chauvin's case.  "With every single round of discovery that has been disclosed there have been numerous problems and issues involving the manner in which the state disclosed it," Nelson wrote.  "...Substantive evidence is often 'hay stacked' between other information."

Also posted under obstructionism.

Cuomo releasing private personnel documents of the woman who accused him of sexual harassment.  [Thread reader]  This is the man who opened a corruption commission then closed it when the evidence led to him, he has a lot hide.  Cuomo is a man who renamed a bridge after his father with the intent to use it as a campaign boost with his name, even as his own CNN host brother told the world he shouldn't because his dad would have hated it.  Cuomo is a man who is sitting on billions in funds meant for our starving public schools, ignoring a court order to distribute it to schools while handing tax cuts to his Trump donors.  Even COVID didn't change his mind.  When Trump decided not to provide PPE, Cuomo chose twitter and CNN cameras in a tough guy act and got nothing while other governors worked quietly to create a buyers coalition and cornered the market to purchase PPE from under Trump successfully.

The 'kraken' is the sleeping giant now awakened within the GOP.  [Scroll down]  We're censored by big tech, smeared in the media, mocked in popular culture, and endure malicious political prosecution, as in the cases of Michael Flynn and Kyle Rittenhouse.  On the other side, Hillary Clinton destroyed 30,000 emails, federal bureaucrats broke countless laws in the Russian Collusion hoax, leftist radicals burned cities and attacked police, Obama weaponized the IRS against Republicans, and illegally imposed DACA.  The rules are clear:  Democrats can break the law whenever they want. [...] Can you imagine a country where Democrats can commit blatantly unconstitutional actions to enable voter fraud while simultaneously using the same Constitution to insist Republicans have no legal grounds to challenge them?  This is the America we're living in.

Courts to Voters:  Democrat Election Fraud Is 'Too Big to Fail'.  The courts have spoken, one after another.  Some 74 million Americans have been denied our day in court.  The Democrats' crime of stealing a presidential election is too big to fail.  Our play-it-safe judges don't want to venture into these enormous seas, full of sharks, without precedent.  They want to say in the safe spaces of the familiar.  Stealing an election for city council is familiar enough to be overturned by law.  Stealing a presidential election by wholesale fraud is above the law.  One might think that somehow our laws are written too narrowly to catch the whale of Democrat fraud in the election, but for one thing:  the declarations from the bench that it is unthinkable to "upend an election."  Our judges tell us that ruling fraudulent ballots invalid would "disenfranchise" millions of voters.  These are political statements.  They are pusillanimous statements.  They are not legal statements.

Bill Barr directly intervened to keep the Hunter Biden probe secret before the election.  Attorney General Bill Barr used the force of his office to instruct prosecutors investigating Hunter Biden not to take any steps that might cause the probe to be publicly revealed in the run-up to the election.  The directive, reported in the Wall Street Journal, was in keeping with existing Justice Department policy against taking investigatory steps close to an election that might interfere with it.  Barr and his team took steps to 'insulate' the investigations, according to the report, even as President Donald Trump repeatedly demanded a probe of his political rival's son.

Report: Bill Barr Knew of Criminal Investigations into Biden Family in Spring and Worked to Keep It Quiet.  A report within the Wall Street Journal does not necessarily come as a surprise; however, it also does little to provide solace for the lack of action by Attorney General Bill "Bondo" Barr.  According to the article AG Barr has known about at least two investigations related to the Biden family since early spring 2020, and he worked to keep them quiet.

The Honor of the Legal Profession.  [Scroll down]  Anyone who reads the complaint filed by Texas (and rejected by the Supreme Court) must conclude that there are serious reasons to believe that this election was characterized by massive fraud in certain swing states and that this fraud was prepared and executed by partisan party operatives who used litigation to erode mechanisms of ballot security and control of the counting to consummate the win.  Note that I do not claim that the evidence is conclusive, though I personally think it overwhelming.  I use the softer "reason to believe", which means only that it needs investigation.  A legal establishment dedicated to upholding process values would regard itself as honor-bound to demand an investigation of these charges. [...] This is not the reaction of the real legal establishment, which is demanding not just that the charges not be investigated, but that any lawyer who represents the president be damned.

AG William Barr reportedly hid two federal probes into Hunter Biden for months.  Attorney General William Barr knew about two contemporaneous federal investigations into Hunter Biden for months — and worked to keep them from the public ahead of the election, according to a new report.  The nation's top law enforcement official avoided providing information about the probes to Republicans in Congress without explanation, a person familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.  One of the investigations was made public this week, when the 50-year-old son of President-elect Joe Biden disclosed on Wednesday that he was being probed for possible tax fraud.

Congressional Republicans Are Furious With Bill Barr, and They Are Right to Be.  A new report is out detailing just how furious Congressional Republicans are over Bill Barr hiding the Hunter Biden investigation.  According to The Daily Caller, Barr knew about the investigation months ago (which also leaves the question open as to why he didn't know years ago).  Instead of allowing the voters to be made aware of such a monumental development prior to the election, the DOJ paused the investigation and refused to confirm it existed. [...] Barr knew about this in the spring but didn't tell the President, nor any members of Congress that would usually be kept abreast of such a high profile investigation into the son of a presidential candidate.  Further, Barr allowed the investigation to cease during the election season despite the fact that such steps were not taken for the Hillary Clinton, nor Donald Trump investigations during 2016.  Why did Joe Biden deserve this kind of protection?  And how was it fair to the electorate to not give them all the facts?

Confirmed: Barr kept Hunter Biden probe a secret until after Election Day.  Someone on Twitter said last night that this is the most ethical thing Barr has done as Attorney General and he's probably going to get fired for it.  Which would make this administration two for two in dispatching AGs for the crime of behaving ethically.  I'll be a little surprised if he survives the day.  Trump was already thinking of firing him.  Now he has confirmation from the WSJ that Barr could have revealed that Hunter Biden was under federal investigation at any time before the election — and chose not to.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board:  Fraud Hidden in Plain Sight.  All 50 states are experiencing revenue shortfalls due to declines in sales taxes, gas taxes, and licensing fees, not to mention the myriad other ways the government gleans revenue on a daily basis.  For many states, actual revenue will fall short of revenue projections, which were made before the pandemic.  In fact, 22 states will end the current year with deficits exceeding 10 percent of total revenue.  However, despite these alarming figures, many states are claiming they will end the year with a budget surplus.  A budget surplus in a year when almost every American not named Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk has had to tighten their belts more than a starving artist.  How is this possible?  The answer is in plain sight but clouded by a dense fog of fuzzy math.  It is called the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) and is the single worst display of accounting practices since the Enron debacle.

As Lockdowns Kill Businesses in California and New York the Politicians Ensure that Hollywood Is Thriving.  Recently entertainer Seth MacFarlane made a quiet announcement that his sci-fi space satire television show "The Orville" was going back into production.  This is a somewhat unsettling announcement for a couple of reasons.  For one, over the past months Seth had been a loud proponent of shutdowns, quarantines, and basically any limitations done in the name of safety.  We can guess that the virus has been scientifically shown to avoid television productions.  The other issue is that as Seth's show ramps back up California's Governor Gavin Newsom has imposed tougher lockdown standards on citizens and businesses, as well as instilling a curfew.  However, for this new round of clamps placed on the public, Newsom has seen fit to grant Hollywood an exemption from his lockdown, declaring that industry as "essential."  It becomes another example of politicians freeing up the studios from restrictions; one class of elites favoring another class of elites.

When Whistleblowers Are Treated Like Criminals.  [Bradley] Birkenfeld is a whistleblower, someone who exposes corruption in either government or the business world that cost taxpayers a fortune.  Through information from Birkenfeld, a former wealth manager at UBS in Switzerland, the federal government was able to recover "$780 million dollars in civil fines and penalties paid by UBS bank, and over $25 billion dollars in collections from U.S. taxpayers who had illegally held 'undeclared" offshore accounts in Switzerland and other countries," according to the National Whistleblower Center.  That's a lot of money, so you'd think the federal government would've been very grateful to Mr. Birkenfeld.

Biden:  The China Candidate.  There's a buzz going round about a lecture delivered by a Chinese economics professor, Di Dongsheng, at Renmin University in Beijing.  Tucker Carlson did a monologue with some clips from a video of Professor Di's presentation.  [Followed by (apparently) the complete transcript of the Professor's speech.]

Video Of Chinese Economics Prof With Ties To Gov Explains Why They Had To Get Rid Of Trump, Chinese Media Deleted Video!  Tucker Carlson just blew the lid off of the disturbing ties between top levels of the US government, Wall Street, and China.  Excerpts of remarks by Di Dongsheng, associate dean, School of International Relations at Renmin University of China on Nov 28, 2020 in Shanghai on the television program "The Answers."  The topic for a panel discussion was "Will China's Opening Up in the Financial Sector Attract Wall Street Wolves?"  The Chinese government deleted the video but not before Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng was able to capture it.  [Video clip]

Tucker Carlson's Monologue on a Chinese Professor's Recent Speech Should Terrify You.  In case you missed it, Tucker Carlson opened his show last night [12/7/2020] with a shocking video showing a Chinese professor of economics giving a speech about the country's decades-old activities in the United States.  He followed up with commentary from China expert Gordon Chang and current Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe.  The complete segment on Tucker Carlson tonight is about eight minutes long, but it is well worth a watch. [...] According to Carlson, the talk included references to a Chinese agent working as a vice president in a top Wall Street firm that was not named for fear of creating political trouble.  The professor also went on at length about an American who now has dual citizenship in China.  The professor asserts this agent helped the CCP with a propaganda operation in Washington, D.C., in 2015.

Justin Amash Says Members Of Congress Have 'No Idea' Who Is Writing Legislation.  Outgoing Michigan Rep. Justin Amash claimed on Sunday evening that members of Congress are not aware of who is writing the legislation that they vote on.  "Legislation used to be crafted by legislators, not 'negotiators,'" he tweeted.  "The public needs to know that members of Congress have no idea who the hell is writing our legislation.  It's certainly not us."

Oregon OSHA Can't Prove Salon Owner Is an Employer, Proceeds With $14k Fine Anyway.  In an exclusive interview with PJ Media, salon owner Lindsey Graham, of Salem, Ore., said that she had a hearing with Oregon's Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA) in her ongoing fight against fines for reopening Glamour Salon.  OSHA fined her $14,000 for creating an unsafe work environment, despite being unable to prove that she has employees.  As a salon owner, she leases stations to hairdressers who qualify as independent contractors.  Despite having no proof, OSHA said they would fine her anyway.

Government officials' coronavirus hypocrisy has created another public crisis.  Multiple reports in just the past week have revealed blatant acts of hypocrisy committed by leaders who would like to live by a different set of rules than their constituents.  In California, for example, Gov. Gavin Newsom was caught attending an indoor birthday party at a fancy French restaurant in the Bay Area after discouraging Californians from gathering with groups of more than 10 people.  A few days later, it was reported that San Francisco Mayor London Breed attended a similar event at the same restaurant, even though she had urged city residents not to mingle with people outside their immediate household.  And, perhaps worst of all, Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, Texas, posted a video last month urging residents to "stay home if you can" to prevent the spread of the virus.  He conveniently failed to mention that he filmed the video from his timeshare in Cabo, Mexico, where he was vacationing with several members of his immediate and extended family — having traveled there with a large group on a private jet.

Trump campaign charges 'not a single' witness interviewed by DOJ.  President Donald Trump's campaign on Dec. 1 fired back at Attorney General William Barr after the nation's top law enforcement official reportedly claimed that officials haven't seen evidence of widespread election fraud.  "With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn't been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation," Rudy Giuliani, a Trump lawyer, and Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign attorney, said in a joint statement.  "We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined.  We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud.  "As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DOJ.  The Justice Department also hasn't audited any voting machines or used their subpoena powers to determine the truth.

Democrat hypocrites are undermining COVID with 'Do as I say, not as I do' attitude.  As the nation tires of quarantines, boredom and loneliness, the same politicians who find glee in slapping wrists and dooming small businesses regularly break the rules, in letter and in spirit, when they want to.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom dining maskless and indoors with lobbyists at the tony French Laundry restaurant the same week he warned against Thanksgiving gatherings.  Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot having her hair done and joining in a riotous Joe Biden victory celebration in violation of her own restrictions — then having the gall to call her actions "essential activities."  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unmasked at a hair salon that wasn't even supposed to be open, even as she decried President Trump's reluctance to wear a mask — then claiming she'd been entrapped.

Rules for thee not for me:  Chicago mayor's security team gets traffic fines dismissed.  We already knew Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot doesn't like her own rules.  She was one of the first elected officials to fall victim to lockdown hypocrisy after getting her hair done shortly after she recorded a PSA urging Chicagoans to follow Illinois' restrictions on nonessential businesses, including not getting their hair done. [...] It turns out it's not just lockdown rules she thinks are worth breaking, either.  According to a Monday report in the Chicago Tribune, Lightfoot's security detail got a pass on multiple traffic violations, with city officials dismissing them.  Lightfoot became mayor of Chicago in May 2019.  Since then, her security detail has been issued 13 citations.  Ten of those tickets, all involving speed and red-light camera infractions, were dismissed by city officials.

L.A. Supervisor Sheila Kuehl Dines at Outdoor Restaurant After Voting to Ban Outdoor Dining.  Los Angeles County Suprevisor Sheila Kuehl reportedly dined at an outdoor restaurant in Santa Monica, hours after casting a decisive vote to ban outdoor dining in the county. [...] Los Angeles County has shut down outdoor dining for three weeks, effective Nov. 25.  The county, and the state, are experiencing a coronavirus spike.  Fellow supervisor Janice Hahn, who voted against the outdoor dining ban, told KTTV's Elex Michaelson that the danger of public officials doing what they have told constituents not to do means that they are "beginning to lose the trust of the public."  She said there was not sufficient scientific evidence to support the ban on outdoor dining, given the economic cost before the holidays.

The Editor says...
It seems a little like insider trading, when a politician goes out for a nice sit-down meal in a restaurant, knowing there is about to be a county-wide ban on such activities.

Hypocritical dining-out LA County supervisor Sheila Kuehl is also part of federal corruption investigation.  By now, you probably are familiar with the hypocrisy of Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who went out for a meal at her favorite restaurant hours after voting to ban outdoor dining at restaurants, after stating that outdoor dining is: "...a most dangerous situation" over what she described as a risk of tables of unmasked patrons potentially exposing their servers to the coronavirus.  "This is a serious health emergency and we must take it seriously," Kuehl said. [...] Obviously, she doesn't really believe she was exposing herself or anyone else to danger.  Supervisor Kuehl is 78 years old and obese, placing herself at high risk for Covid 19, so if "appropriate precautions" are good enough to allow her to dine outside at a restaurant, why shouldn't the vast majority of the population at less risk than she be allowed to do so?  But to get a sense of the character of Supervisor Kuehl, take a brief look at another scandal, currently under federal investigation, in which she played an apparently central role.

Another Democrat is caught violating the rules she imposes on others.  Every closed restaurant represents several people's lives going down the drain.  The owner who sank all of his money in the restaurant, the employees who worked there, the suppliers who were dependent on its custom, and the surrounding stores who counted on the foot traffic it brought — all of it's gone.  And I might add, there's no reason to believe that these horrific losses made a damned bit of difference to the course of a virus that is relentlessly working its way through the population.  While the people have suffered, the politicians imposing this suffering, like European royalty of old, have flaunted their special status.  Denver's mayor, Michael Hancock, flew to his family within 30 minutes of telling Denver citizens to stay home for Thanksgiving.  Andrew Cuomo, having reinstated the lockdown across New York, boasted about his family coming home for Thanksgiving.  Illinois's Governor J.B. Pritzker, another Democrat millionaire, was happy to see his family travel during the height of the spring lockdown.  Pennsylvania's health secretary, "Rachel" Levine, who leftists pretend is not a mentally ill man telling people he's a woman, forced sick people into nursing homes in May, even as he secretly removed his own mother.

Fellow Republicans file articles of impeachment against Ohio governor.  Several GOP state lawmakers have filed 12 articles of impeachment against Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, over their fellow Republican's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.  The articles, which were filed by Rep. John Becker, accuse Mr. DeWine of numerous abuses of power in the past several months, including threats to veto a bill to limit the governor's emergency powers.  "Governor DeWine's mismanagement, malfeasance, misfeasance, abuse of power, and other crimes include, but are not limited to, meddling in the conduct of a presidential primary election, arbitrarily closing and placing curfews on certain businesses, while allowing other businesses to remain open.  He weaponized the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation to bully and harass businesses and the people; to enforce a statewide mask mandate and other controversial measures of dubious 'value,' making Ohio a hostile work environment," Mr. Becker said in a statement reported by WTVG-13, the Toledo ABC affiliate.

Poll watcher witness says feds showed up at door, made her feel like a criminal after fraud testimony.  Amid all the inquiries into where Attorney General Bill Barr has been in the face of voter fraud allegations, there has been a sighting of federal agents — the question is, what were they investigating?  Leah Hoopes, a Republican poll watcher on Election Day in the state of Pennsylvania, dropped what's being reported as a "bombshell," which is that special agents from the Justice Department paid her a visit at home after she testified before the Senate last week.  Hoopes testified that massive voter fraud may have taken place in Delaware County, Pa., and she appeared on Steve Bannon's podcast "War Room:  Pandemic" on Monday to talk about "special agents from the Attorney General's office showing up at my front door just for speaking the truth."

Thankful for the Rights That Democrats Want to Take Away.  This ungodly Chinese Bat Flu has brought out the worst in a lot of people, most of them Democrat elected officials.  There have been some Republican transgressors as well, but the majority of the bad actors have been liberal leaders in traditionally liberal states and cities.  Basic rights have been getting trampled upon in the name of public health.  Yesterday [11/25/2020], Stacey wrote about the latest egregious overreach:  New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is placing law-enforcement COVID checkpoints around the city, giving it a Cold War East Berlin feeling just in time for the holidays.  Here in Arizona, we haven't been subjected to a third job-killing, pointless lockdown... yet.  For that I am most grateful.

Go Ahead and Celebrate Thanksgiving.  Minnesota is one of a number of states that are living under what amounts to martial law.  Our proto-fascist dictator Tim Walz, in his latest edict, purports to ban traditional Thanksgiving get-togethers:
["]Saturday, Nov. 21 through Friday, Dec. 18, Executive Order 20-99 requires all Minnesotans to:
  •   Limit social gatherings to one household.
  •   Not gather outside of your household.
  •   Postpone all celebrations, events, receptions, and parties, including any social gatherings for weddings and funerals.["]
So it is "illegal" for me to invite any of my four kids to Thanksgiving dinner.  Better send the heat, Timmy, because I have no intention of complying with your grotesque order.  For a while, Governor Walz told us he was "following the science," and his dictatorial orders were required by "the data." That pretense has been abandoned, as Scott reported, with Walz now saying, pathetically:  "It's not about numbers.  It's not about data.  It's about neighborliness."  So one naturally wonders:  is there any rational basis for Walz, and like-minded governors, to purport to ban Thanksgiving dinners?

I am having a nightmare, and I can't wake up.  There is some good news today, but the nightmarish dimensions of the problems facing the American Republic are also coming into horrifying focus. [...] The most important United States attorney is the one heading the Washington, D.C. district.  That important post is currently occupied by an acting U.S. attorney named Michael R. Sherwin, not confirmed by the Senate.  And he is declining to investigate an outrageous, murderous attack on a sitting United States senator.

What's Our 'Stamp Act'? When Will It Be Enough?  What is it going to be for us?  Which right is the one that finally becomes intolerable for us?  What will we finally take a stand to protect?  Is it the right to self-defense?  Is it the right to raise our own children?  To choose our own medical care?  To own our own homes?  What will our Stamp Act be?

Black Female Police Chief in Virginia Fired After Aggressively Investigating and Prosecuting Mob Violence.  This story out of Virginia is really quite something.  If I'm understanding it correctly, it very much appears as though the city's (Black, female) police chief was placed on administrative leave and then fired as retaliation for her investigation and attempted prosecution of criminal activity related to "Black Lives Matter" protests in the wake of George Floyd's killing.  The only attempt at a justification for the firing I've found is that perhaps she was overzealous in the charges she pursued, and even that critique is disputable.  There is also "an unspecified conflict of interest" that has not been established or expounded upon.  Her real supposed transgression, it would appear, is that she sought to hold prominent people accountable for illegal acts — resulting in punishment for her because said prominent people believe, apparently correctly, that they're above the law.

Michigan Republicans Introduce Resolution To Impeach Gov. Whitmer.  Three GOP House members in Michigan have introduced House Resolution 324, which call for the impeachment of their tyrannical governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a woman who has made it clear she will usurp power from the constituents she's supposed to serve and use it to oppress them with reckless abandon.  Folks, this is exactly why our system of government works the way it does.  We have the right to decide who governs over us, and if they go against our wishes and violate our God-given rights, it's our duty to toss these folks out on the street.

The Right to Worship Even in a Pandemic.  New York's dictatorial governor, Andrew Cuomo, may have met his match.  The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn is asking the Supreme Court of the United States to strike down Cuomo's Oct. 6 executive order shutting down "houses of worship" in areas of Brooklyn and Queens, while allowing "essential" businesses, like pet stores, groceries and big-box stores to stay open.  Cuomo insists he's battling COVID-19.  The Diocese says Cuomo's making a value judgment that going to Target is "essential" but taking communion isn't.  Truth is, for devout communicants who are already suffering social isolation during the pandemic, finding the church doors closed can be soul crushing.  Before Cuomo's executive order, churches were already following safety precautions including roping off every other pew, requiring masks and urging social distancing.  The executive order disregarded that and capped attendance at 10 people — even for large churches with a capacity of 1,200.  Sounds arbitrary.  Where's the science here?

Have too many people over for Thanksgiving in Oregon go to jail, but no sweat if you riot.  Some lawmakers are criticizing Oregon's limits on group activities so close to the Thanksgiving holiday while proponents of the measures stay quiet on the nightly riots in Portland involving hundreds of people.  Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, ordered a two-week freeze that includes limiting indoor and outdoor gatherings to no more than six people from no more than two households in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.  "For the last eight months I have been asking Oregonians to follow the letter and the spirit of the law and we have not chosen to engage law enforcement," Brown said Friday.  "At this point in time, unfortunately, we have no other option."

Black Virginia police chief fired for charging prominent BLM vandals and public officials.  Back on June 10th in Portsmouth, Virginia, a large group of protesters decided to tear down and destroy a Confederate monument located in that city.  An investigation was launched, led by Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene.  After collecting video from the event and conducting interviews for two months, Greene announced in August that charges were being filed against 19 people who had been involved in the destruction. [...] You might think that would be pretty much the end of the story, but it wasn't.  Among those arrested was State Sen. Louise Lucas, several leaders of the local Black Lives Matter movement, officials from the NAACP, and a member of the local school board.  Since several crimes had obviously been committed, you might think that Chief Greene (who is Black, by the way) would be lauded for holding all citizens, regardless of their status accountable.  You would be wrong, however.  Howls of protest emerged not only from the community but from elected officials.  Yesterday the situation came to a head and Chief Greene was unceremoniously fired.

Virginia Police Chief Fired After Charging Democrat Leaders with Felonies!.  Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene was fired Monday morning after being suspended from her position as Police Chief two months ago.  Chief Green was suspended on September 4th by the former city manager just weeks after she brought felony charges against Democrat State Senator Louise Lucas and others in relation to protests and monument destruction that occurred June 8th.  Senator Lucas was caught on video instructing Portsmouth Police officers to stand down during the protests.

Pennsylvania Democrat AG sparks outrage for saying Trump may have already lost [...] before the votes have even been counted.  The Attorney General of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro, who is a Democrat, has sparked outrage after suggesting on Twitter that President Trump may have lost the ability to win the crucial swing state, with 20 electoral votes, more than 24 hours before the polls even close.  'If all the votes are added up in PA, Trump is going to lose,' Shapiro wrote on Twitter on Monday evening.  'That's why he's working overtime to subtract as many votes as possible from this process.'  'For the record, he's 0-6 against us in court,' the attorney general continued. 'We've protected voting rights.  Now, ignore the noise — vote!'

The Bidens: A Delaware mafia.  [Scroll down]  Hunter was a principal in pay-to-play on a global scale.  Recent electronic and documented evidence confirms years of scuttlebutt that suggested that Hunter Biden, and Uncle Jim, were trading and profiting on the name and office of the "big guy."  Throughout, Joe claims he knew nothing of any family pay-to-play hustles in Oman, Luxembourg, Romania, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia, Guatemala, and China.  The ignorance defense is an instant replay of Clinton family tactics; deny, deny, deny, and when denials are no longer plausible, depend on Deep State Democrat Party Beltway hacks to cover or come to the rescue. [...] Withal, the Biden exposé is, by any metric, a day late and a billion dollars short — at best a pyrrhic victory for critics.  The Justice Department and the FBI have had the goods on Biden for some time, yet official Washington is still mute and inert.  Inertia at justice is a symptom of a much larger problem:  institutionalized federal double standards.  A Republican might be indicted by an ambiguous phone call while Democrats, like the Clintons and Bidens, get a pass on obvious felonies.

Why Democrats must be kept out of power for at least a generation.  California governor Gavin Newsom's recent ridiculous Thanksgiving edicts call for gatherings to be restricted to only three households and held outside.  Masks are to be worn before and after eating and between bites.  No singing or chanting is allowed and the meal is to last no longer than two hours.  These are just a few of the restrictions dreamed up to slow the spread of the Wuhan virus.  What these arbitrary proclamations illustrate is the mind of a power-hungry dictator.  Under the pretense of keeping people safe, governors like Newsom, Andrew Cuomo, J.B. Pritzker, Jay Inslee, Kate Brown, Gretchen Whitmer, and Tom Wolf have curtailed the freedoms of Americans — and not just Americans, but the voters who elected these hack politicians in good faith to serve the people.  Democrat governors and mayors have taken the Wuhan virus, along with the rioting and looting, and leveraged it into power that they will not easily relinquish if their behavior up to now is any indication.  They are long past fooling people with their faux compassion.  You can pull the wool over Americans' eyes for only so long before they become wise to you.

Keith Ellison Wields Power to Restrict Freedom of Assembly of Political Opponents at Minnesota Trump Rally.  The venue for President Donald Trump's political rally in Minnesota scheduled for Friday will be restricted to only 250 people after Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison put pressure on the business owners of multiple locations.  The rally was initially planned at the Rochester airport, but Ellison's office demanded a "COVID preparedness plan" from officials from the City of Rochester, Olmsted County, and the Rochester airport, as well as the Republican National Committee to ensure the event was safe.

President Trump Blasts Minnesota Governor and AG for Blocking Rally and Undermining First Amendment.  President Trump blasted Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and State AG Keith Ellison for their transparent political scheme to block his campaign event.  The same state officials who allowed Black Lives Matter to organize and march without restrictions under the guise of political protest, are the same officials now limiting attendance to 250 people at Trump's rally in the state.  Meanwhile just outside the venue thousands of supporters defied the arbitrary state rule and gathered together near the entrance.  So President Trump stopped to talk to the media, blast the state officials, and then went to talk to the assembled crowd that could not attend the rally.  [Three video clips]

Even so, that's ten times the size of a Biden crowd.
Desperate Dems limit attendance at Trump rally in Minnesota today to 250.  Minnesota's 10 Electoral votes are up for grabs, remarkable in a state that has not supported a GOP presidential candidate for almost half a century.  So desperate are the state's governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison (a former Black Muslim spokesman) — both Democrats — that they have imposed an attendance cap of 250 people (how is this constitutional?) on today's planned Trump rally at Rochester International Airport. [...] Officially, the campaign will admit only the first 250 people who show up, but does anyone expect that thousands of other people who arrive will simply turn around and drive home?

Meet Larry Krasner, the Rogue Prosecutor Wreaking Havoc in Philadelphia.  "F--- the FOP [the Fraternal Order of Police]" and "No good cops in a racist system!"  Those are the sayings that supporters of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner chanted at his election-night victory party two years ago.  Did he tell them to stop?  No.  Instead, he smiled approvingly.  Krasner, a career criminal defense and civil rights attorney, who had sued the Philadelphia Police Department dozens of times over the decades, ran to be Philadelphia's district attorney and received almost $1.45 million in campaign spending from George Soros in the process.  Unfortunately, Krasner is one of many elected rogue prosecutors around the country who have usurped the legislative power by refusing to prosecute large categories of crimes.  By refusing to hold criminals to account, Krasner and his ilk abuse the power of their offices and harm victims and their communities as a result.

L.A. County Sends Health Department Workers To Fine Church That Sued Newsom.  A Catholic church in Los Angeles County is alleging that the local government dispatched two health department officials to harass them in retaliation for their priest suing Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials.  On Oct. 15, two health officials showed up at Our Lady of the Angels Church in Arcadia, California, a congregation affiliated with the dissident Society of St. Pius X.  The officials watched approximately 11 parishioners leave the building from the sidewalk and then cited them for holding indoor worship services in violation of COVID-19 restrictions, according to a copy of the citation forwarded to The Daily Wire.  The citation carried with it a $1,000 fine.

School Threatens 12-Year-Old With Arrest for Allegedly Missing 90 Minutes of Zoom Class.  The parents of a seventh-grade boy received a letter from his school in Lafayette, California, warning of possible truancy charges if he missed any more virtual class sessions.  "Out of the blue, we got this letter," Mark Mastrov, the boy's father, told the East Bay Times.  "It said my son had missed classes and at the bottom, it referenced a state law which said truants can go to jail for missing 90 minutes of class."  Mastrov assumed the school had been sent in error, so he called the school.  He was shocked to learn that the authorities meant business:  The law says any kid who misses three full days of school or is tardy for a 30-minute class period on three separate occasions can face jail time.

'Banana Republic of America'.  We are living in times in which our leaders have intentionally cast doubt on the court.  Members of Congress have managed to earn the doubt of nearly 90% of America simply through childish partisan behavior.  They have intentionally cast doubt on the presidency through the abuse of the impeachment process.  Elected officials and the media have both cast doubt on law enforcement.  It seems nearly everyone even tangentially involved in politics now says or does whatever they think can win the moment regardless of the long-term consequences.  Bureaucrats in the state of Virginia have decided to ignore the law on the books regarding ballot postmarks.  The state legislature didn't change the law.  No.  Virginia administrative officials have simply made the choice to do something different.  On whose authority?  No one has that authority under the law, yet they insist anyway. [...] Stability no longer exists.  The rules change day to day.  The laws only apply sometimes and only to certain people.  Election results, the courts, the police and elected officials themselves are under a constant shadow of doubt.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer:  If You're Tired of Masks And Wish You Could Go Back to Church, Vote for Biden.  Are you sick of watching family-owned stores and businesses in your neighborhood fold because of reopening restrictions?  Are you saddened as you watch your favorite watering holes and restaurants close their doors for good, as unconstitutional lockdowns drag past the 200-day mark of "15 days to slow the spread"?  Have you had to move your family out of your state just to find a school your child can attend?  Do you find yourself wondering just when all this madness will end, and how?  Well, look no further.  There's a solution on the horizon and it's a mere 15 days away.  If you want COVID and the ensuing restrictions to disappear forever, all you have to do is... Vote for Biden/Harris 2020.  Don't shoot the messenger.  This logic came straight from the horse's mouth this past Sunday [10/18/2020] on "Meet the Press" — the horse being Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and the mouth being one adorned with bright red lipstick and frothing with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Is this another reason the FBI hid the Hunter Biden Laptop?  It didn't surprise the informed, and understandably a bit cynical, to hear that the FBI sat on Hunter Biden's laptop instead of seeking justice.  The bureau was previously involved in an illegal plot to take down Donald Trump, after all, and its Deep State elements would assuredly love to see Joe Biden succeed him in January.  So why would they reveal damning information on their establishment hope?  Yet suppressing Huntergate perhaps provided a secondary benefit:  The information could be used against Biden once he was in office.  This wouldn't be anything new.  It's believed that longtime, legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover used "dirt files" on politicians for leverage; for one thing, it's said, this enabled him to remain bureau head for as long as he wished.

The Gordian Knot Protecting Obamagate Secrets.  Donald Trump and Republicans are furious that U.S. Attorney John Durham has not brought indictments against senior people who spied on the president's campaign, lied repeatedly to judges in order to do it, and based their intrusions on specious evidence, which they knew to be false — and had been commissioned by the opposition political party.  We know the broad outlines of this coordinated operation, but we still don't know its full extent, all those involved, and what precise roles they played.  Attorney General William Barr promised major developments in this probe by late spring, then mid-summer, then Labor Day, and now sometime after the election.  If, as Republicans say (and the evidence seems to show), there was a systematic effort to weaponize federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political purposes, the public has a compelling right to know.  This need-to-know is urgent because the Democrats' presidential nominee, Joe Biden, served as the second-highest ranking member of the administration that conducted these acts.

Tyranny in Texas.  Some people go to jail because they break the law.  Sylvia Gonzalez landed in a Texas slammer because she criticized her local government.  Now the 74-year-old retiree is fighting back, trying to bring accountability to a system that too often lets public officials off the hook when they violate people's civil rights.  Gonzalez's ordeal started with a simple desire to help her community by serving on the Castle Hills City Council near San Antonio.  She knocked on doors and talked to more than 500 neighbors during her campaign, and what she heard strengthened her resolve to make a difference.  "They complained bitterly about the city," Gonzalez says.  After winning her 2019 election and becoming the first Hispanic councilwoman in city history, Gonzalez went to work.  Her first act in office was to champion a nonbinding citizens petition calling for the city manager's removal.  Rather than taking notice of the public discontent, however, the mayor and other political insiders attacked the messenger.  They had Gonzalez arrested, handcuffed, and jailed as part of a prolonged intimidation campaign.

9 Warning Signs of Democrat Radicalization.  If you threaten strangers and destroy property in the name of Black Lives Matter or Antifa, then local Democrat prosecutors will make sure you never answer for your crimes.  If you exercise your Second Amendment right to protect the lives of your family and secure your property, those same Democrat prosecutors will threaten your liberty and future.  If you riot in the name of "justice," then you are performing a public service.  If you seek spiritual salvation by attending church or synagogue, then you are a public health threat.  When Democrats are in office, there are two tiers of justice in America, one for protecting Democrats and one for harassing Republicans.  Former attorney general Eric Holder aptly articulated this reality when he argued that the fight against Republicans is "not about principle" but about the "acquisition and use of power."

Russiagate Hoax Mastermind Must Be Exposed.  In the bureaucratic struggle to declassify Russiagate-related documents before the Nov. 3 elections and help ensure they aren't buried forever, some valuable nuggets have just been partially unearthed by the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe.  Like handwritten notes by then-CIA Director John Brennan.  During the summer of 2016, he briefed President Obama and top advisers that the agency learned of startling intelligence about the Clinton campaign and Russia. [...] Yet many questions remain — such as who was the Russiagate Hoax Mastermind alluded to by Brennan?  Americans need to know.  The smear campaign wasn't just a political dirty trick.  Nor was it proportionate to combat Trump supporters chanting "lock her up."  No, the malicious lie was the acorn from which the mighty oak grew — one that launched the crime wave of the century.  Unprecedented and wrongful surveillance of a presidential campaign.  Then a prolonged stealth coup to overturn the election.  President Trump and over 50 associates were subjected to seemingly limitless investigations, Privacy Act violations, criminal leaks, defamation and ruthlessly pursued by overzealous prosecutors, including numerous Obama and Clinton political donors.

State Dept. officials [were] told they broke [the] law by monitoring Americans during [the] Ukraine scandal.  State Department officials were explicitly ordered in spring 2019 to stop tracking 13 prominent Americans' social media accounts for information about the Joe Biden-Ukraine scandal because the monitoring violated federal law, according to emails that were originally redacted to hide the concerns from the American public.  "We are barred by law from actively monitoring the accounts of American citizens in aggregate — and particularly from identifying and monitoring individual, selected accounts," a State Department official wrote in an April 1, 2019 email to officials in Washington and the U.S. embassy in Kiev[.]  The unredacted emails, obtained by Just the News, raise new questions about the accuracy of State Department officials' testimony during President Trump's impeachment proceedings.  They also provide a window into how the department used redactions in a Freedom of Information Act case to hide the potentially explosive information just weeks before Election Day 2020.

Yet Another Grand Jury Defies the Fake News Narrative.  The rules of a grand jury are not like those of a regular courtroom.  Only the prosecutor is allowed to put on a case.  No defense attorney is allowed in the room.  One witness after another is brought in and grilled by the prosecutor in front of the jury.  There is no judge to protect the witness from being abused.  The witness has nowhere to turn for legal assistance.  The prosecutor pummels him or her with tough questions, sometimes insults and nasty remarks.  The only brakes that prevent even worse abuse is that the experienced prosecutor knows the limits, that if he or she gets too vicious then the grand jury may shift its sympathies to the battered witness.  So the prosecutor plays the grand jury, using tricks of the trade, ploys and psychological maneuvers that never would be allowed in open court.  But, again, there is no judge in the room to rein in the prosecutor.  As day after day ensues, the prosecutor becomes increasingly chummy with the members of the grand jury.

Tish James' endless anti-Trump suits betray the AG's mission.  As the chief legal officers of our states, attorneys general possess a tremendous power to shape public opinion and make official decisions that can affect the outcomes of cases.  Regardless of party affiliation, when it comes to exercising the prosecutorial function of our offices, there are certain rules that every attorney general agrees to — and certain lines that should never be crossed.  We should never weaponize our office for political gain, regardless of the situation, even when the sitting president of the United States is a citizen of the state we serve.  Unfortunately, some of my colleagues across the aisle have done just that.  During her campaign, New York Attorney General Letitia James threw out numerous vague and baseless allegations, promising to harass and investigate President Trump's family and businesses that "may be engaged in illegal conduct." Although Trump was duly elected, she claims he is an illegitimate president.  This is nothing less than a gross abuse of her office.

Catherine Engelbrect and the Prestigious True The Vote Organization Release Powerful Warning on the Marxist Coup in 2020.  Catherine Engelbrecht is the Founder and President of True The Vote the nation's largest voters' rights group. [...] The voter rights organization was so successful that True the Vote and its founder Catherine Engelbrecht, were targeted by top federal government agencies including the IRS, DOJ, FBI, ATF, OSHA.  Under the Obama Administration, those agencies launched 23 audits, investigations, and inquiries, persistently attacking the patriotic group.  Engelbrecht and her organization were harassed by the Obama IRS for months.  The Obama IRS wanted to know Facebook posts, tweets and where Catherine intended to speak.

Pelosi doesn't rule out using impeachment as option to stop Trump Supreme Court pick.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday would not rule out impeachment as an option to stop President Trump's U.S. Supreme Court pick from being confirmed to the bench, saying Democrats will "use every arrow in our quiver" to block the eventual nominee.  Just hours after it was announced that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., vowed that a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court to fill her vacancy "will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate."

Politicians on the Take?  Politicians shut down businesses because of COVID-19.  But the rules don't apply to everyone.  In San Francisco, gyms were forced to close, but government gyms stayed open.  In my new video, we see a Dallas woman being jailed for keeping her salon open and a New Jersey man getting arrested after working out indoors.  Ordinary people who break the rules get punished.  But not House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Politicians are special.  Now, politicians have allowed more businesses to open.  Dallas relaxed its rules for most businesses a few months ago.  But not for Dale Davenport's car wash.  Dallas won't allow Dale to reopen because, shortly before the epidemic, they decreed his car wash a "hub for drug sales and crime."  His car wash is indeed in the middle of a high-crime neighborhood, and many cities have laws that let them close a business if the owners conceal crime.

Michigan residents get enough signatures to repeal Governor Whitmer's emergency powers, if certified.  More than 400,000 Michigan residents have signed a petition that would trigger a statewide referendum on lockdown-loving Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's draconian emergency powers provided that state authorities determine that at least 340,000 of the signatures turn out to be legitimate.  During the pandemic, Gov. Whitmer has relied on a 1945 law to enforce open-ended COVID-related restrictions, and the referendum outcome could mean the repeal of that mandate.

The left isn't fighting against fascism, they are fighting FOR authoritarianism.  [Thread reader]  Leftist-run cities have shown what happens when police and federal law enforcement are demonized and unsupported by elected leaders; when local leadership can seize "emergency powers" — then pick and choose who to punish:  rioters are exempt from lockdowns; you can sing in the streets but not in churches; masks are required, but not for them.  They can tell you what counts as a substantive meal, essentially holding businesses hostage to their arbitrary and incoherent edicts:  pot dispensaries and large warehouse stores can open; gyms and restaurants cannot.

Senate Intel Committee Refuses to Give GOP Senators Documents From Russia Investigation.  Of all the tells that have surfaced in the past four years, this is the biggest.  This is the one that reveals just how corrupt and duplicitous the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence really is.  Do not pass over this information without pausing and evaluating just how explosive this refusal is amid the largest, most corrupt scheme in political history.  The republican led Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) is refusing to provide documents to republican senators from their Russia investigation.  Citing archaic justification within senate parliamentary rules current Chairman Marco Rubio (R) and Vice-Chairman Mark Warner are refusing to allow Senator Johnson and Senator Grassley to review the evidence the SSCI assembled to create their report on Russian election interference.  The reason and motives for the denial are simple, yet the majority of Americans have no idea.  The SSCI was the legislative entity, both republicans and democrats, who participated in the unlawful effort to remove President Trump from office.  The risk of exposure is exactly why Mitch McConnell put Senator Marco Rubio on the committee as chairman to replace Richard Burr.  The Senate was participating in the soft-coup.

The CDC blatantly violates a Trump order regarding Critical Race Theory.  At the beginning of September, the director of the Office of Management and Budget announced that, at President Trump's direction, all federal agencies would be banned from imposing Critical Race Theory (CRT) on their employees.  This was the right thing to do.  CRT is pure racism.  While the KKK was obsessed with blacks and the Nazis were obsessed with Jews, CRT is obsessed with white people.  Teaching it at federal agencies is a shocking violation of the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Despite its unconstitutionality and the president's order, though, the CDC is planning to continue CRT training.  Christopher Rufo, who has become the point man for all of these stories about CRT training in the federal government, discovered what he aptly called a "Bombshell."  The CDC is going ahead with its plan — paid for with your money — to impose a thirteen-week-long CRT training program on its employees.  This an important story because it is a nexus of the issues that brought Trump into the White House in 2016.  It's the story of an out-of-control federal agency that feels that no one — and certainly not the constitutional executive of the United States — has any authority over it.

You Will Be Re-Educated.  On September 4, 2020, Russell Vought, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, sent a brief memo to the heads of the executive departments and agencies of the federal government.  Its purpose was straightforward: to end the practice by any federal government agency of using training materials that promote "critical race theory" or "white privilege" or that "teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is either an inherently evil or racist country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil."  The memo advised that further guidance would be forthcoming but for the time being, agencies should cease spending taxpayer dollars on such "propaganda training sessions."  They have a difficult challenge ahead of them.  Critical race theory, often under the guise of bland "diversity training," has led to such taxpayer-sponsored efforts as the U.S. Treasury Department's June 2020 training seminar "Difficult Conversations About Race in Troubling Times." Attendees learned that "virtually all White people contribute to racism," and those who were white were told they needed to acknowledge their "unconscious bias, White privilege, and White fragility."  At Sandia National Laboratories, one of the nation's premier nuclear-research facilities, the federal government paid a company called White Men as Full Diversity Partners to "train" white male employees at Sandia in the damaging effects of "white male culture."

Border-wall critic Gretchen Whitmer builds electrified fence around governor's mansion, hands taxpayers $1.1 million bill.  Controversial Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, once considered a frontrunner to become Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's running mate, has authorized construction of a large fence around the governor's mansion in Lansing as part of a $1.1 million security upgrade.  The 8-foot-tall electrified fence is especially galling to Whitmer critics because she has routinely criticized President Donald Trump's construction of a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border as a way to help reduce illegal immigration and human trafficking.  She has also questioned the effectiveness of security walls but is nevertheless billing taxpayers for the expensive upgrade that will include electrified fencing because, according to local media, Whitmer is fearful of threats.

Michigan Supreme Court justice pushes back on Whitmer's emergency powers.  A justice of the Michigan Supreme Court raised pointed and repeated questions Wednesday [9/9/2020] about whether the 1945 emergency law relied on by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was ever intended to deal with a health pandemic.  Justice David Viviano pressed the issue during oral arguments, pointing out that the Emergency Powers of Governor Act was enacted in the wake of Detroit's 1943 race riot, as it is known, and was referenced in news reports at the time as providing the governor with the police powers needed to respond to such events without having to declare martial law.  The 1945 law says it is intended to "invest the governor with sufficiently broad power of action in the exercise of the police power of the state."

'This Investigation is a Sham': Judicial Watch President Slams John Durham for Going Easy on the Deep State.  Trump supporters are waiting with baited [sic] breath for U.S. Attorney John Durham to come out with his explosive findings in regards to his investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion probe against President Trump.  Fitton said that he is inclined to believe disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan when he says that he is not a person of interest in Durham's investigation.  "I don't see grand juries operating.  I don't see a bunch of witnesses coming in.  I don't see lawyers complaining about their clients being brought in before Durham," Fitton said.  He said that the Mueller investigation was run much more thoroughly than Durham's so-called investigation, the goal of which appears to be protecting the deep state.

Growing numbers of district attorneys are out to undermine the law.  One reason for the surging, often protracted violence in US cities is the rise of a host of progressive prosecutors who actually tilt against law and order.  The trend is most glaring in places known for their kooky left-wing politics, like Portland and San Francisco, but extreme leftists have also taken over as district attorneys in cities like Chicago and Boston.  Many owe big thanks for their elections to funding from far-left fatcat George Soros.  In Portland, violent "protests" have dragged on for months, thanks to the idiocy of Mayor Ted Wheeler, who let hoodlums drive him out of his own condo — but also to Multnomah County DA Mike Schmidt, who dropped charges against hundreds of people arrested for offenses like interfering with cops, disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and rioting.  Schmidt also made it harder to prosecute assaults on cops.

Macomb County's Hackel, a Democrat, backs petition to limit Whitmer's emergency power.  Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel, the top Democrat in Michigan's third largest county, says he supports repealing the 1945 law that gives Gov. Gretchen Whitmer the ability to declare a state of emergency and keep the declaration in place without input from the GOP-controlled Legislature.  The 1945 Emergency Powers of Governor Act gives one person, the governor, "endless ability to create law," Hackel said in a Wednesday night interview.  He said he was surprised there wasn't more resistance to the Democratic governor's use of the 75-yer-old law to declare emergencies, which give her the ability act unilaterally to shutter businesses or require masks be worn.

Democrats Mistake Orwell's 'Animal Farm' for Instruction Manual.  [Scroll down]  However this worldwide hysteria was launched, its effects are now clearly observable all around us.  Just last night I was horrified to see a video of a young girl in Australia being choked by a police officer during her arrest for the crime of not wearing a mask in public.  We have all been treated for the past several months to the videos of police officers and sheriffs, or city employees sent by these Democratic politicians to
  [#1]   Arrest a solitary man jogging on a beach, or surfing in the ocean.
  [#2]   Arrest a mother pushing her child on a swing set in a park
  [#3]   Weld shut the gates of a park so no one could enter
  [#4]   Arrest hairdressers and other business owners who defied shut down orders.
None of these radical Democratic mayors and governors campaigned on engaging in this kind of behavior. [...] They all hid their true nature until they were established in office.  Had they revealed they would engage in this kind of tyrannical behavior while they were candidates, none of them would have been elected.

Portland Police, FBI and U.S. DOJ Refuse to Arrest Antifa Murder Suspect Because He Supports Joe Biden and Black Lives Matter.  It's time to be brutally honest and face the enemy as a united nation.  Trump supporter Aaron "Jay" Danielson was murdered on the streets of Portland Oregon.  Danielson's murder was caught on camera, and everyone, including thousands of people who watch social media, know exactly who killed him, [...].  However, despite everyone knowing exactly who carried out a politically motivated assassination, [the suspect] has not been arrested.  The Portland police, the FBI and the United States Department of Justice have not arrested him; and the only logical conclusion to be gained from that reluctance is that [the] Antifa supporter [...] is also a supporter of Black Lives Matter and Joe Biden.  Therefore no-one does anything.  When you accept this reality, it is only then that we can start to fathom just how seriously screwed up the U.S. system of justice has become.  If you support Trump you are a disposable statistic; however, if you support the mob all efforts will be undertaken to protect you from the consequences of your own violent action.

Americans Must Oppose the Tyranny That Is Rapidly Spreading Across US.  As Adolf Hitler rose to power, he took control of churches, shut down businesses, encouraged neighbors to report each other, and created a public surveillance operation system.  If these actions sound familiar, they should.  Public officials and bureaucrats are now putting their own tyranny on full display, using the COVID-19 crisis to impose similar draconian tactics in the United States.  While Maryland officials keep the state in lockdown, they are encouraging citizens not only to snitch on one another for breaking "prevention guidelines," but they are allowed to do so anonymously!  The Maryland Emergency Management Agency, State Police, and Department of Health announced a "COVID Prevention Line" available 24 hours a day as well as an email address where citizens can "report situations of concern where prevention guidelines are being ignored and the potential for the spread of COVID-19 is high."  Reports will be followed up with a visit from the health department or law enforcement.  Since July 2, nearly 40 Anne Arundel County businesses and restaurants have received citations, including my church.  After an anonymous reporting on August 11, a female employee from the Anne Arundel County Department of Health showed up at our Sunday morning service.  The health official presented our associate pastor with a citation and an "Order for Immediate Compliance."

Democrats Have Proven They are Unworthy of Power.  If a person or entity has proven to be abusive or irresponsible with power, then it is the duty of the people, while freedom still prevails, to resist and to ensure that such a person or entity is never entrusted with such power ever again or, at least until they have regained the confidence of the people.  Such is the case with today's Democrat party. [...] In six months, with the pandemic and nationwide riots, Democrat leaders have revealed that their natural penchant is not for freedom, but tyranny.  The past six months have shown that we are long past the days of mere policy differences between the two political parties.  Now our battle is against Democrats, a party that has been usurped by the radical left, is literally for the preservation of America as founded.  This election is about whether America will remain a light of liberty or descend into the darkness of Soviet-style communism with elements of Nazism.  This is not hyperbole.

When are Local and State Governments Illegitimate?  This descent into hell is enabled by so-called progressive Democrats in the aforesaid cities and Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, and wherever next.  The progressives have names:  Ted Wheeler, Jenny Durkan, and Jacob Frey — all mayors — along with numerous council members.  And governors, Kate Brown, Jay Inslee, and Tim Walz.  Add Lori Lightfoot, J.B. Pritzker, Bill de Blasio, and Andrew Cuomo to the roster.  All — all — have taken oaths of office to uphold the law and attend to the public safety.  They are glaringly derelict in their duties.  These elected leaders aren't simply craven, they're complicit in the violence and destruction that bedevils their cities.  They see the mobs in the streets.  They witness the destruction.  They are apprised of the violence.  They know innocents are being harmed.  They know citizens cower behind locked doors. [...] Yet they permit the mayhem.  They let the mobs roam.  They fiddle as their cities burn.  These elected leaders are, in fact, aiding and abetting insurrections.

This New York Diner's Response to Snitches and the Overzealous Health Department Will Make Your Day.  The effects of coronavirus mandates on small businesses, and especially restaurants, have been catastrophic.  New York, outside of New York City, went into "Phase 3" in July, and restaurants were able to open back up under severe restrictions, including reduced capacity.  Very few of them are doing well under this arrangement. [...] One diner in Seneca County, N.Y., has had enough and took to social media to tell the public what the county is doing to them.  The trouble started when a snitch ate a meal at A.J.'s Family Diner and then called the health department to report too many people in the establishment.  This prompted the restaurant to post a notice telling people who are uncomfortable and living in fear to stay out of their business.  But the harassment had only just begun.  The snitch prompted a full-scale inspection by the health department that sent an inspector to rearrange all the tables and threaten a fine of $1000.

Arizona Child Welfare Workers Caught Wearing 'Professional Kidnapper' T-Shirts.  The Prescott Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) is down to only one child-abuse investigator after having to fire at least eight others for wearing t-shirts that say "Professional Kidnapper" on them and posting the photos on Facebook.  The terminated child-welfare employees had these shirts made up with the phrase "Do you know where your children are?" in bright pink as a "joke" that no one who has battled DCS for custody of their children thought was funny.

New DA in Portland admits he is 'old buddies' with an Antifa militant.  Newly-elected District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who refuses to prosecute Portland rioters, admits he is "old buddies" with an Antifa militant campaigning to defund the police, abolish prisons, and demand reparations. [...] The hour-long July 21 interview with Schmidt is a first in the series of "social justice leaders" features conducted by a self-described "Anti-Fascist" and "old time buddy" of Schmidt's, social media personality Awkword.  Awkword leads the Ten Demands for Justice movement, "a roadmap for the defunding and then full abolition of police and prisons."

Despite Constant Libel of Trump, I Trust the People.  Ms. Harris has many critics among the 98% of Democrats who did not support her candidacy for president.  The Left is displeased with her performance as San Francisco's district attorney and as attorney general of California: she always called for maximum sentences and condoned the widespread American practice of prosecutors extorting or suborning inculpatory false evidence by threats of indictment if that evidence is not forthcoming, and promises of immunity from prosecution for perjury if it is.  Loyola law professor Lara Bazelon recently accused Ms. Harris in the New York Times of having "fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony, and the suppression of crucial information."  President Trump has made serious efforts at penal reform and sentence reduction for nonviolent offenders.  By contrast, Ms. Harris sent over 1,000 marijuana users to prison but acknowledged having tried it herself.  Ms. Harris's performance as a prosecutor clashes with the general current Democratic enthusiasm for defunding and discouraging the police and turning a blind eye to urban vandalism, arson, and looting.

No Need for a Conspiracy Theory.  [Scroll down]  There are two types of lobbyists.  The first group are often lawyers who act as "hired guns" for corporations.  Their incomes depend on doing what the corporation wants, and they have become rather good at it:  Steven Brill made their activities one of his principal concerns in Tailspin.  "Retired" bureaucrats often find high-paying jobs in this sector.  The second group includes lobbies established to promote "causes": they have to set up an organization, get the word out, and raise funds.  Once that's done, the insiders have a vested interest in maintaining the organization; the organization may die if its supporters conclude that its mission has been accomplished, so they can't ever admit that has happened.  Exhibit A for this process on race:  Al Sharpton.  The self-serving triangle is completed by members of Congress, who depend on these issues to garner votes.

Russia Hoax:  Are We All Being Played?  Put Up or Shut Up.  [Scroll down]  I never realized how terrible the deterioration inside the system had become until four years ago when I stumbled onto what was happening inside the FBI.  Those concerns were brought to my attention by former and current FBI agents, as well as numerous U.S. intelligence officials aware of the failures inside their own agencies.  But it never occurred to me when I first started looking into fired FBI Director James Comey and his former side kick Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that the cultural corruption of these once trusted American institutions was so vast.  I've watched as Washington D.C. elites make promises to get to the bottom of it and bring people to justice.  They appear to make promises to the American people they never intended to keep.  Who will be held accountable for one of the most egregious abuses of power by bureaucrats in modern American political history?  Now I fear those who perpetuated this culture of corruption won't ever really be held accountable.  These elite bureaucrats will, however, throw the American people a bone.  It's how they operate.  They expect us to accept it and then move on.

Selective enforcement:
Evidence Is Mounting That Governor Cuomo Is Targeting Bars That Criticize Him for Suspension.  A week after starting a petition calling for Governor Andrew Cuomo to reverse New York's mandate requiring that a substantial amount of food must be served with any alcohol purchase, Abby Ehmann, the owner of East Village dive bar Lucky, found out her liquor license was suspended.  "Ehmann says that two State Liquor Authority representatives visited the bar on Monday night at 8 p.m. to observe if the bar's eight customers had ordered food with their drinks," according to Eater New York.  "After the visit, Ehmann received her first warning from the SLA on a piece of paper that did not list out the specific violations, she says.  Shortly afterward, and with no further warnings, Lucky's liquor license was suspended."

Outrage as Manhattan's district attorney drops the felony charge against BLM leader.  The Manhattan District Attorney has dropped felony charges against the Black Lives Matter leader who was accused of assaulting a police officer, after an angry crowd chased off an NYPD team sent to arrest the man.  DA Cyrus Vance personally ordered the charges against Derrick Ingram, 28, dropped from felony assault in the second degree to misdemeanor assault, a law enforcement source told the New York Post.  Ingram is accused of injuring a female cop by shouting directly in her ear with a bullhorn on June 14, resulting in the officer being hospitalized with temporary hearing damage.

Trump urges churches to reopen, despite Dems who 'want to put churches out of business'.  President Trump urged governors to reopen churches and schools, saying they're "essential" services and should not remain shut down indefinitely.  "I think they should open the churches.  It's up to the governors.  But I'm recommending it, you open the churches," Trump told the Catholic Telegraph.  The President said churches can safely reopen as long as attendees wear masks and social-distance.  Trump said it's unfair to Christians that they're banned from going to church, but Black Lives Matter protesters and left-wing rioters can gather by the tens of thousands — and Democrats say nothing about the public-health dangers they pose.

Federal Judge Rules Cuomo, De Blasio Exceeded Authority by Restricting Religious Services While Condoning Protests.  A federal judge on Friday [7/31/2020] ruled that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo violated the Constitution by restricting religious services to stem the spread of the coronavirus while simultaneously condoning mass protests that took place across the state.  U.S. District Judge Gary Sharpe granted a preliminary injunction blocking New York from enforcing its stringent coronavirus restrictions on religious services.  The state's current restrictions require houses of worship to operate at 25 percent capacity and later at 33 percent capacity when New York enters Phase Four of its re-opening plan.

Who deserves a funeral?  No one would argue that Rep. John Lewis doesn't deserve a proper memorial.  He was a civil rights icon and a long-serving member of Congress who was beloved by his colleagues.  In the middle of a pandemic, however, how do we decide who gets the pomp and circumstance of a traditional burial and who has to watch their loved one go six feet under via Zoom call?  Funerals are important: they acknowledge the sanctity of life and allow friends and family to come together to grieve their loss. [...] Yet politicians have decided that celebrity affords them the right to override the onerous restrictions on funerals that so many average Americans have been forced to accept.  Yes, Georgia is unique in that it allows anyone to have a funeral.  However, the governor's executive order prohibits gatherings of more than 50 people if social distancing cannot be maintained.  Photos of Lewis's funeral in Atlanta showed that many more than 50 people attended and that social distancing was not maintained in parts of the church, nor during the burial outside.

Four Months of Unprecedented Government Malfeasance.  Over the last four months, Americans have lived through what is arguably the most consequential period of government malfeasance in U.S. history.  Public officials' overreaction to the novel coronavirus put American cities into a coma; those same officials' passivity in the face of widespread rioting threatens to deliver the coup de grâce.  Together, these back-to-back governmental failures will transform the American polity and cripple urban life for decades.  Before store windows started shattering in the name of racial justice, urban existence was already on life support, thanks to the coronavirus lockdowns.

No Holds Barred at the House Lynch Session.  [Scroll down]  Most Americans do not know this, but by law a congressional representative is permitted to say anything at a hearing, no matter how false, no matter how defamatory, and they cannot be sued for perjury or defamation.  It is like when former Sen. Harry Reid stood in the U.S. Senate chamber during the height of the 2012 presidential race and falsely accused Mitt Romney of tax evasion.  It was a lie, a slander — and Reid knew it.  But Reid also knew that, as long as he spoke his slander within the Senate chamber, he never could be sued for the defamation.  This unique protection is called the "Legislative Privilege," rooted in the Speech and Debate Clause of the United States Constitution (Art.  I, § 6, Cl. 1). By law, legislators may say absolutely anything they want, and by law they cannot be sued or prosecuted for any of it, as long as they say it within the chamber or otherwise as part of the legislative process.  As an attorney of 26 years and a law professor of 16, who practices and teaches this, I know about the legislative privilege.  But few other Americans do.

Partisan politics permeates AG Maura Healey's office.  Attorney General Maura Healey has turned her office into a virtual nonstop onslaught against President Trump, in the process elevating her own political aspirations on the backs of taxpayers.  Partisan politics has permeated the office of the state's top cop to an unprecedented level — whether it's the scores of lawsuits she's filed against Trump or the pro-Democrat tweets put out by her press aides.  Healey has dropped any illusion of being fair and objective to the point of whether it's unclear she'd be an effective advocate for a Republican looking for legal protections.  Voters look at Healey now not as a tough prosecutor against white collar crime but as an aspirant for higher office who can spout off Democratic talking points.

St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner is engaged in a political prosecution.  [Thread reader]  The right to defend one's person, family, home and property has deep roots in Missouri law.  Self-defense is the central component of the right to keep & bear arms, which receives the highest protection from the MO Constitution.  MO statutes specifically authorize citizens to use firearms to deter assailants & protect themselves, their families & homes from threatening or violent intruders.  A highly publicized criminal prosecution of citizens for exercising these fundamental freedoms threatens to intimidate & deter law-abiding citizens from exercising their constitutional right of self defense.  My job as AG is to protect the fundamental rights of all Missourians, including the right to keep & bear arm in self defense of one's person and home.  This case casts an ominous shadow over those fundamental rights.  The prosecution sends a powerful message to all Missourians that they exercise their fundamental right to self defense at their peril.  Missourians should not fear exposure to criminal prosecution, even prison time, when they use firearms to defend themselves and their homes.

St Louis prosecutor tampered with evidence to charge Mrs. McCloskey.  St.  Louis homeowners Mark and Patricia McCloskey were charged with felony misuse of a firearm and a misdemeanor assault charge after waving guns at an unruly mob of 'protesters' who stormed through their private community.  The couple said they were frightened and feared for their safety.  Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Hinckley stated in charging documents that the gun was "readily capable of lethal use," referencing Mrs. McCloskey's handgun.  However, her handgun was NOT "readily capable of lethal use" at the time she used it to discourage the protesters.  It was disabled by the couple so it could be used as a prop.  The corrupt prosecutor had it fixed so Mrs. McCloskey could be charged.  Seriously, that's what they did.

'Equal Justice': The Politicization of Prosecution.  As she announced felony charges against the McCloskeys, St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner noted something that most people missed:  that she was elected to pursue "equal justice."  What exactly is "equal justice," and how is it distinguished from justice?  "Equal justice" is a term used by neoleftist politicians to alert their base of racial disparities in the criminal justice system, with the implication that "racial equity" must be actively pursued.  It is most commonly used by Soros-sponsored wolves in prosecutors' clothing.  It is a political movement to interject a race consideration component into the criminal justice system.  There is even an Equal Justice Initiative organization, a Soros-sponsored group that advertises itself as "committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society."  But what does race and "ending mass incarceration" have to do with charging a White suburban couple, the McCloskeys?  Why was the term "equal justice" relevant in this particular prosecution?

Democrat Prosecutor Charges McCloskeys With Felonies After Using Guns To Defend Private Property.  St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, a Democrat, announced on Monday [7/20/2020] that she is charging the St. Louis couple who defended their private property using firearms last month with felony unlawful use of a weapon.  The couple is also reportedly facing a fourth-degree misdemeanor assault charge.  "Mark and Patricia McCloskey each are facing a single felony count of unlawful use of a weapon — exhibiting," The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.  "Charging documents say he pointed an AR-15 rifle at protesters and she wielded a semiautomatic handgun, placing those protesters in fear of injury."

The Editor says...
Violent protesters and rioters only respond to fear of injury.  That's the language they use, and that's what they understand.  They don't listen.  They don't reason.  They don't have any regard for private property.  But they do recognize firearms.

Missouri AG Files To Dismiss Charges Against McCloskeys: 'I Won't Stand By While Missouri Law Is Being Ignored'.  On Monday, following the news that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, the city's top prosecutor, announced that Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who pointed guns at a crowd in front of their home, would be charged with felony unlawful use of a weapon, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a brief that would dismiss the charges.  The brief stated that Schmitt "respectfully requests that the Court dismiss this case at the earlier possible opportunity."  "The right to keep and bear arms is given the highest level of protection in our constitution and our laws, including the Castle Doctrine, which provides broad rights to Missourians who are protecting their property and lives from those who wish to do them harm," Schmitt told Fox News, adding, "Despite this, Circuit Attorney Gardner filed suit against the McCloskeys, who, according to published reports, were defending their property and safety.  As Missouri's Chief law enforcement officer, I won't stand by while Missouri law is being ignored."

The Prosecution Never Rests.  In our constitutional system of checks and balances, ambition counteracts ambition.  But what happens when prosecutors are the most ambitious of all? [...] Of course, there are many kinds of prosecutorial ambition.  Some might be ambitious for lucrative law-firm partnership seats, or judicial appointments; others might simply like sending a message to criminals that they are the toughest guy on the block.  And others — surely the vast majority — are simply ambitious to do the best possible job they can, using all the legal tools at their disposal.  But here is the problem: there are many tools — and few practical limits upon their use.  While a prosecutor can't put a defendant in jail without a judge, or a jury, or the defendant's own guilty plea, there remains much that he or she can do to secure such convictions or plea bargains, or at least to make the defendant feel the pain of the criminal process.

Hawley calls for civil rights probe of prosecutor investigating gun-wielding St. Louis couple.  Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called on the Justice Department to launch a civil rights investigation into St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner and her office after Gardner announced an investigation into a white couple who were seen on video threatening Black Lives Matter protesters at gunpoint.  In a letter to the Justice Department obtained by The Washington Post, Hawley said that Gardner had established "a pattern of politically motivated prosecutorial decisions" during her time as St. Louis's top city prosecutor.  "The Second Amendment is not a second-class right.  No family should face the threat of harassment or malicious prosecution for exercising that right," he wrote to Attorney General William Barr.

De Blasio Says BLM Protests Can Continue While Canceling All Other Large Events.  New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio made some stunning remarks on CNN, declaring protests in the streets were perfectly acceptable while canceling other large events through September.  De Blasio joined CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Thursday evening [7/9/2020], discussing the evolving pandemic and policy response by City Hall to mitigate the spread in the city.  He said social justice warriors were too important after months of protests have yet produced an outbreak in cases.  "This is a historic moment of change.  We have to respect that but also say to people the kinds of gatherings we're used to, the parades, the fairs — we just can't have that while we're focusing on health right now," de Blasio told Blitzer.  Blitzer then asks:  What about protests?  De Blasio responds:  "This is a historic moment.  We have to respect that."

Missouri AG calls out St. Louis prosecutor, reveals history of politically motivated decisions.  Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt suggested Friday that St. Louis attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who went viral for defending their property from an encroaching mob, are being politically targeted.  On Friday, law enforcement executed a warrant against the McCloskeys and confiscated their firearms.  Speaking on Fox News, Schmitt alleged that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, the prosecutor handling the case, has a history of making politically motivated decisions.  "Under Missouri law, under the Castle Doctrine, an individual has really expansive authority to protect their own lives, their home, and their property.  I think the story here to watch here is the local prosecutor, Kim Gardner," Schmitt said.

Tyranny Without a Tyrant:  The Deep State's Divide-and-Conquer Strategy Is Working.  It must be said: the Black Lives Matter protests have not helped.  Inadvertently or intentionally, these protests — tinged with mob violence, rampant incivility, intolerance, and an arrogant disdain for how an open marketplace of ideas can advance freedom — have politicized what should never have been politicized:  police brutality and the government's ongoing assaults on our freedoms. [...] We may be worse off now than we were before.  Suddenly, no one seems to be talking about any of the egregious governmental abuses that are still wreaking havoc on our freedoms:  police shootings of unarmed individuals, invasive surveillance, roadside blood draws, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids gone awry, the military industrial complex's costly wars, pork barrel spending, pre-crime laws, civil asset forfeiture, fusion centers, militarization, armed drones, smart policing carried out by AI robots, courts that march in lockstep with the police state, schools that function as indoctrination centers, bureaucrats that keep the Deep State in power.

George Soros-backed DA Charges Couple with 'Hate Crime' for Painting Over 'Black Lives Matter'.  Contra Costa County, California, District Attorney Diana Becton, who was backed by left-wing billionaire George Soros in 2018, has charged a couple with a "hate crime" for painting over a "Black Lives Matter" mural on the road.  In a press release Tuesday afternoon, Becton's office announced that Martinez, California, residents Nichole Anderson and David Nelson were being charged with three misdemeanors for their actions, including "violation of civil rights."

Opposing Black Lives Matter Now Means Hate Crime Charges.  America is going to a bad totalitarian place at an incredible speed.  ["]A California duo was charged with a hate crime for defacing a newly painted Black Lives Matter mural outside of a courthouse, officials announced Tuesday.["]  Painting over a political message you oppose is not a hate crime.  Authorities who support that message using hate crime regulations to suppress protests are blatantly using the law to enforce their political affiliation. [...] This might at most be vandalism.  It's not a hate crime.  There's no expression of hatred or hostility for black people.  There is a rejection of Black Lives Matter, a political movement.  Conflating the political movement with black people and then treating hostility to BLM as a hate crime makes opposition to a political movement into a crime.  Treating it as one, while members of the racist Black Lives Matter movement tear down statues and terrorize people, is enlisting local authorities in that same campaign of political terror, punishing people for the political content of the vandalism, rather than for the act itself.

California duo charged with hate crime for defacing Black Lives Matter mural.  A California duo was charged with a hate crime for defacing a newly painted Black Lives Matter mural outside of a courthouse, officials announced Tuesday [7/7/2020].  Nichole Anderson, 42, was filmed using a roller to cover part of the yellow letters with black paint on Saturday as her cohort, 53-year-old David Nelson, stood guard near the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse in Martinez, the Contra Costa District Attorney's said.  As Anderson painted within the lines, allowing the letters "B" and "L" to remain visible, Nelson told onlookers:  "we're sick of this narrative."  "The narrative of police brutality, the narrative of oppression, the narrative of racism," Nelson declared.  "It's a lie."  "I said no one wants Black Lives Matter here!" he added.  "That's what I said.  All Lives Matter, you punk."  The temporary mural, which a Martinez resident received a permit for, was completed the same day the alleged vandals struck, authorities said.

The Editor says...
The whole premise of "black lives matter" is that black lives matter more than any others.  That's racism.  And now we see that any attempt to combat this racism will be met with hate crime prosecution.  This is what lawyers are for.  This is why we have trial by jury available to all criminal defendants.

Gov Newsom orders closing of Calif restaurants, wineries — but HIS remains open.  In what is seen as a major rollback, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered the closures of numerous businesses across 19 counties in California to counter a surge in coronavirus cases.  The order will be enforced for at least three weeks, and includes restaurants, wineries and tasting rooms, movie theaters, family entertainment centers, zoos and museums, cardrooms, and bars, Fox 26 reported.  While a number of Central Valley counties are included, Napa County, where Gov. Newsom owns a winery and tasting room is not among the counties affected and the business remains open as of the July 1, 2020 order, according to the Fox affiliate.

The Huge Law Enforcement Scandal that Cries Out for Justice.  In the American Thinker (June 30), Jack Cashill offers an eloquent plea for an Atticus Finch to take up the cause of George Zimmerman in suing those responsible for perpetrating the Trayvon Hoax.  There is another case, also in Florida, awaiting its Atticus Finch, the product of an earlier moral panic, the now largely forgotten "mass sex abuse in daycare" hysteria.  These cases, replete with lurid charges the media mindlessly and breathlessly disseminated in the 1980s and '90s, are today widely recognized as a modern version of the Salem witch trials of the 1690s, down to allegations of Satanic rituals by caregivers.  Despite this, one victim remains incarcerated.  Frank Fuster has now served thirty-five years in prison for a crime not only that he did not commit, but that never happened.  His first parole hearing is scheduled an unbelievable 114 years from now — in March 2134.

Soros Funded St. Louis Circuit Attorney Threatens Legal Action Against Property Owners Who Defended Themselves Against Rampaging Mob.  This is a great example why law-abiding citizens need to be very involved in local elections.  The husband and wife who defended themselves and protected their property from looters/protestors are now being threatened by a Soros funded STL Circuit Attorney.  Ms. Kimberly M Gardner is an activist within the legal profession who has an expressed purpose to destroy property rights, advance the cause of a socialist society, and collapse the legal system that allows citizens to protect themselves from the rampaging mob.

In Re:  Michael T. Flynn, Petitioner.  For five decades as a courtroom lawyer, I have devoted an inordinate amount of time to humbling myself and stroking the egos of federal and state judges while catering to their every whim and belief, no matter how mistaken, unfounded, or unjustified.  It's part of the job.  The more successful you are at sucking up to the robed potentates on the bench, the better it is for your clients.  Although many times I have been tempted to tell a judge to shove it, my duty to my client has held me back.  While on occasion I have been held in contempt, fined, and — most memorably — placed under arrest for speaking the truth, for the most part and my clients' welfare, I have kept my mouth shut.  It's never a fair fight.  The judge holds the power and knows that lawyer and client are at his mercy.  In my experience, the more egocentric and mediocre the judge, the more inclined he is to be the courtroom bully and to arbitrarily exercise his power free from the constraints of the substantive law and established procedure.  And when one of these mediocrities arrives at a patently illegal result, he will dismiss your pleas and objections with an impatient wave of the hand or bang of the gavel.

New York Governor Threatens Reopening Rollback over Street Drinking.  New York's governor threatened to roll back phased reopening plans Sunday after large crowds gathered outside bars in New York City in violation of coronavirus lockdown guidelines.  Andrew Cuomo said his office had received 25,000 complaints of reopening violations by businesses as New Yorkers flocked to streets to enjoy a weekend of late spring sunshine.

Liberals Still Think Obama Was the 'Best President Ever,' Here Are 14 Reasons Why That's Ridiculous.  [#1] Unprecedented abuse of power.  Amazingly, liberals still pretend the IRS didn't improperly target conservative and tea party groups, even though Lois Lerner, the former director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division at the time, admitted it happened!  Not only were tea party groups improperly targeted, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, but the whole scheme was orchestrated out of Washington, D.C.  There was also evidence of White House involvement.  IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman was at the White House at least 157 times while the IRS was targeting tea party groups.  Even Obama's cabinet members didn't visit the White House that often.  Some IRS employees even claimed that Obama himself requested the crackdown on tea party groups.  There was certainly ample reason to suspect coordination with the White House.  The IRS was also exchanging confidential taxpayer information with the White House the year Obama and Biden were reelected.  According to a scholarly study conducted by the American Enterprise Institute, suppression of the Tea Party movement by Obama's IRS helped him get reelected.

Gathering Is Essential — Unless You're Republican.  Gov. Whitmer's tune on the right to assemble has transformed, too.  She was appalled to see people without masks and parents "handing things to children, bare-handed" six weeks ago.  The horror.  "This kind of activity flies in the face of all of the best science," she scoffed, threatening to punish the protesting plebeians with a shutdown extension.  She expected their obedience.  The supposed science took a back seat last week when Whitmer kneeled in the street, shoulder to shoulder with activists, in violation of her own rules.  But that's nothing new.  Her husband can non-essentially travel to their second home, and name-drop his wife to try to cut to the front of the line and get their boat launched before Memorial Day weekend.  The Democratic mayor of Chicago can get a haircut, but you can't — you're not on TV.  The Democratic governor of Virginia can go to the beach without his mask, not even painted on.  It's "dangerous" to protest, Nancy Pelosi says, until she joins in.

Democrats, Not Republicans, Protect Dirty Cops.  Abuse and inequality — at the hands of American law enforcement — comes in all forms. [...] Calls for police reform and accountability are happening on a bipartisan basis.  That has not been the case, however, when it comes to Obamagate.  Democrats, led by the forked-tongue Schiff, have spent the past three years defending, even justifying, unprecedented abuses by the nation's top law enforcement chiefs related to their targeting of Donald Trump, his associates, and his family members.  The Trump-related victims of James Comey's FBI may not be black, they were unfairly targeted nevertheless.  It was not race that motivated their persecutors, nor was it any actual suspected wrongdoing.  They were targeted because of their political views.

In the History of Congress, the House Democrats' New Proxy Voting Is Radical.  Much of Congress' work takes place off the House or Senate floor.  Committees even hold field hearings around the country, and members spend time in their states or districts.  But since the House and Senate were established in 1789, their members have shown up to take official votes.  No crisis ever has changed that commitment.  Not when the Capitol was burned to the ground during the War of 1812, not the Civil War, not the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, or even the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  Nonetheless, on May 15, the House voted 217-189 to adopt House Resolution 965, which authorizes the speaker to designate a period during which one member may cast a vote for, and even "record the presence of," up to 10 other members.

Stopping Petty Tyrannies Is How We Beat the Serious Ones.  [Scroll down]  Americans are unlikely to tolerate, for long, nonsensical rules or enforcement policies that impede their day-to-day lives.  It was, after all, a long chain of large and small abuses by governmental authorities that led to the creation of this country.  And given the Constitution and remarkable political system created from it, we have a great deal of power to end abusive laws quickly.  Certainly, some of the coronavirus lockdown measures have had more serious implications for civil liberties than simple park closures.  While our federal system gives broad power to states and local authorities to act in the way that best serves their communities, it is still essential that Americans be wary of violations of the Constitution and their fundamental rights.  This important point was made by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who directed U.S. attorneys in late April to be on the lookout for violations of civil liberties by state and local governments.

Gretchen Whitmer slips state money to leftist political operatives to spy on Michiganders, then lies about it.  It's pretty amazing how many negative activities gather around Michigan's hard-faced and ambitious Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.  Besides her outrageous performance on the coronavirus crisis — banning sales of garden seeds, seeding nursing homes with COVID-19 patients, forcing private dam operators to overfill their reservoir for greenie purposes, causing two of them to burst — she's also a liar.  We saw that clearly enough when her husband tried to put himself at the front of the boating queue by citing his marriage to her — cronyism at its worst — and she claimed that it was a joke.  It was a story so egregiously bad that the only reason we didn't comment about it here at American Thinker earlier is that we mistakenly thought the story was fake.  Now there's the matter of Whitmer's political corruption — succoring her political cronies at state expense to spy on Michiganders to beef up the Democratic Party operation, which she's also lying about.

Comrade Crazy — Governor Gretchen Whitmer Claims She is Being Victimized By Citizens of Michigan.  Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer addressed the issue of her husband attempting to use his position to get their personal boat prepped and in the water prior to Memorial day so they could enjoy the holiday.  The Michigan governor said her husband was joking when he told the boat storage operator he was the husband of the governor and asked if that would move him up in the line of requests.  Additionally Governor Whitmer highlights how the citizens of Michigan are victimizing her; including scary men who have surrounded her home while carrying "automatic weapons."  Whitmer says the COVID-19 virus has created an undue hardship on her and her family, and she is burdened by hurt feelings and wounded sensibilities.  Whitmer personifies what happens when left-wing moonbats are allowed to gain political power.

Whitmer says husband's boat launch request was 'failed attempt at humor'.  Gov. Gretchen Whitmer confirmed her husband made "a failed attempt at humor" over the weekend after a comment he made to a docking company drew criticism from conservatives.  In a now-deleted Facebook post, Tad Dowker, owner of NorthShore Dock LLC, said a man called the company a few days before Memorial Day weekend asking if he could put his boat in the water.  According to Dowker's post, when office staff said the company started working three weeks late so that was not going to happen, staff told him the caller said, "I am the husband to the governor, will this make a difference?" The post said they were moved to the back of the waiting list.

The Editor says...
This is a very common Democrat tactic:  They will say or do something outrageous, and if there are any objections, follow up a few days later with, "Can't you take a joke?"  Examples abound:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30]

A Plague of Monsters.  Criminal terrorists attacked us on 9/11, and nations of the world united to treat us all like criminals and turn the fun and exciting world of air travel into an experience redolent of herding livestock to market.  Nineteen years later, a virus outbreak happens, and governments of the world — upon advice of the experts — treat us like infected patients, demanding we quarantine ourselves and cease all economic and social activities.  Is this the first time democratic governments have quarantined people who were not sick?

I Am Criminal.  Okay, what we really need to do and more of us should recognize it, is to put an end to this nonsense.  This government has bankrupted us by their inability to set and abide by a budget.  They have ensnared us in rules and regulations that bind us and has built a governmental structure that had they passed the $3 Trillion dollar monstrosity that the Democrats called a "Stimulus bill" that passed out of the House, ostensibly to provide relief from the coronavirus lockdown, the combined governments would have been bigger than all of the private sector.  Think about that for just one second.  I had the occasion to meet an Eastern European who had no bones about it, he proclaimed proudly "I am criminal."  What he meant was that he was willing to endure the penalty of disobedience to outlandish and often irrational laws.  One must recognize that under rule of an outlaw government, one willing to use terrorist tactics on its own people, tactics that create fear for a political gain, disobedience is the ultimate declaration of freedom.

Gov. Gretchen 'Karen' Whitmer in Hot Water Over Husband's Vacation Hypocrisy.  Michigan's Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has epitomized the political, draconian response to coronavirus imposed by some states.  Just recently, she extended the stay at home for Michigan until June 12th, forcing businesses to remain closed and people to not travel.  This wasn't in response to any scientific data, but appeared to just be retaliatory against recent protests of her actions.  But now, she's in a bit of hot water after it was revealed that not only was her husband looking to get their boat in the water for Memorial Day, but that he asked for special treatment in the process.

It's Over.  The Resistance Has Won.  [Scroll down]  But ah! — conservatives exclaim:  OBAMAGATE! Perjury traps.  Withheld evidence.  Oval Office conspiracy meetings.  Unmasking.  Edited 302s.  Leaks, lies and more lies.  And John Durham poised to blow things open and indict everyone in sight.  Any day now.  Really.  Get real.  The deck is so stacked for The Resistance that Bill Barr still can't even get the demonstrably wronged Michael Flynn off the hook.  There's a reason no one's heard from Durham yet:  corruption cases are hard to make, and harder to win.  Ask insufferable James Comey, insolent Andy McCabe and smug Peter Stzrok — all indictment-free amid Everests of evidence.  Tara Reade?  Three words:  Not.  Going.  Anywhere.  Listen carefully:  nothing — nada, nix, zilch, zero, zip — will turn the tide on the "scandal" front between now and November.  The wheels of injustice grind too slowly.

Obamagate: Of Course It Comes Back to Obama's Narcissism.  For three years, the Trump administration attempted to find their sea legs while actively being harassed and harried by Obama holdovers and self-dealing Republicans in the House and Senate.  None of this could have happened so easily had Congress provided oversight.  Why would they want oversight, though?  It would expose themselves.  It wasn't just Joe Biden's crackhead kid in Ukraine, after all.  Sens. John Kerry, John McCain, and, yes, Lindsey Graham, also had strange relationships there, too.  It's like Ukraine was one big money laundering scheme for political insiders.  A lot of pols have a lot to hide, and that's why this fiasco has gone on as long as it has. [...] The American system isn't equipped to handle this level of injustice.  Those who wait on justice likely wait in futility.

It Won't Matter What Obama Knew (or When He Knew It).  Even if we uncovered irrefutable evidence that Obama personally hatched the conspiracy to undermine either the Trump campaign or his presidency, Obama will not be held to account.  From the perspective of justice, what Obama knew and when he knew it is totally irrelevant because nothing will be done about it.  The reason nothing will be done is that the elites of our society have decided how Obama must be understood.  His presidency has unique importance due to his status as the first nonwhite person to attain the office.  Symbolically, then, Obama is supposed to represent the decency of the American people and the moral progress that we have made since the abolition of Jim Crow.

Clear and absent danger: why proxy voting violates the American system.  When House Democrats passed their $3 trillion coronavirus 'relief' package late last week, they also jammed through a rules change on proxy voting that fundamentally transforms the nature of the House of Representatives and junks centuries of tradition.  Because of a change to House rules, members will now be able to submit their votes from afar.  They will not have to travel back to DC to vote:  they can instead send their 'yea' or 'nay' to a colleague, who will submit it on their behalf.  One member can submit up to 10 votes at a time, meaning that the will of the House, which normally takes 218 members in the chamber, could be determined with only 21 members physically present.  The new rule allows this distance voting for up to 45 days for any coronavirus-related emergency.  It can be extended.  Now that the precedent has been set, expect it to be trotted out repeatedly as the House finds other reasons for members to execute their constitutional responsibilities from their couches.

Brooklyn Park Paints Circles on Grass to Force Public Into Social Distancing.  I don't know if this is worse than the pool noodle hats that a restaurant in Germany is asking people to wear, but it's close.  A park in Brooklyn has painted what looks like parking spots for humans on the grass six feet apart from one another to force the public to behave.  And they're doing it. [...] If this is the "new normal" I want nothing to do with it.  I've adopted Ron Swanson's attitude.  I'll do what I want.  And if the government tries to stop me, I'm calling my lawyer.  This is out of control.  Are you going to sit in a little circle on the grass like a good social distancing sheep?

Forget About Seeing Any Justice For Obamagate.  Allow me to disabuse you of your naïve delusion that we still live in a country with a justice system and break it to you that no one is going to jail for what was done to Flynn, or for the unmasking business, or for the Russia hoax or, for that matter, for any of the corrupt Dem/foreigner collaborations exemplified by the payoffs received by stripperphile and Bolivian folk medicine enthusiast Hoover Biden.  No one.  Well, maybe Mike Flynn himself will.  Since his judge is now making up the law as he goes along [...]

Requests for N.J. public records rejected during coronavirus crisis as Murphy administration uses little-known law.  In 2005, New Jersey enacted a sweeping law called the Emergency Health Powers Act, giving the governor greater authority to take actions to protect Garden State residents during a health crisis.  Gov. Phil Murphy has cited the statute frequently the last two months as he's issued a series of orders to place the state in near-lockdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic.  But in an unexpected development, some government agencies in Murphy's administration have also cited the law to reject requests from media outlets seeking public records related to how the state has responded to an outbreak that has killed more than 10,000 residents and caused widespread unemployment.  The ability to obtain records is one of the key tools journalists, advocates, and everyday citizens wield to examine the inner workings of government and discover how your taxpayer dollars are being spent (or misspent).

News Flash:  DOJ Targeted Other Conservatives.  A friend emailed me recently to say that on May 1st, in his opening monologue, Tucker Carlson made the statement, "You don't want to live in a society where the most powerful agency in government imprisons people it doesn't like.  That is horrifying."  Our friend lamented that he wishes there is someone who could "get Steve's story to Tucker" because what happened to Flynn is so similar to what happened to Steve, my husband — former pit bull Republican congressman from Texas.  Numerous reports verify that Rep. Stockman was quite a fierce critic of and whistle-blower on the Obama administration.  As a result, he was pursued for four years by the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the nonprofit division of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — the very same corrupted team that went after Tea Party and other conservative nonprofit organizations around 2012.  The DOD took their story before four grand juries before they were even able to obtain an indictment.

Liberals always lie.  As covered in this blog earlier this week the Mayor of Chicago thinks the coronavirus is so incredibly dangerous that people in her city should be locked in their homes against their will and businesses ordered closed.  In announcing her restrictions she actually cited haircuts as something she would not allow Chicagoans to do because they might get the virus and die.  Of course, we all know the mayor herself went out and got her hair cut and then lashed out at her citizens for pointing out her hypocrisy.  The main point here is she knew she wouldn't actually get coronavirus if she got her haircut.  That's just a BS story she told the people.  Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker has also taken heat for his own family heading off to Florida while he has ordinary citizens in his state locked in their homes.  He knew it wasn't dangerous for his family to leave the house or he wouldn't have let them, presuming he loves his wife and children.  That's just a lie to control everyone else.

Don't Expect Losers of Shutdown to Sit Idly by Forever.  Obedience to the law is bottomed on one of three motives.  First, people believe that the law is proper and just, and therefore it is their civic duty to follow its dictates.  Second, people expect that obedience to the law will provide them benefits that they cannot otherwise enjoy.  Third, people fear that disobedience to the law will impose costs upon them that they can avoid if they follow the rules.  These three motives often reinforce one another. [...] Far and away, the most important motive for obedience to the law is a conviction that it is just, or at least the regime that promulgated it is just.  This is what makes the law, for the most part, self-enforcing.  It keeps the government from having to impose draconian restrictions upon violations, as well as creating a massive police state to monitor public behavior.  This is one of the main differences between the United States and communist dictatorships.

I Helped Write FISA. Let's Destroy It.  Circa March 2016, as it appeared that Donald Trump would be the Republican Party's presidential nominee in the forthcoming election, someone with White House authority — we do not yet know who or through what channel — directed the National Security Agency electronically to surveil communications in and out of Trump's campaign headquarters in New York's Trump Tower.  At the same time, the CIA and FBI were vectoring longstanding CIA assets, including Stefan Halper in Britain and Joseph Mifsud in Italy as well as Australia's Alexander Downer not so much to gather information about low-level Trump advisers' contacts with the Russians, but to provide pretexts for further surveillance of Trump and, above all, for press stories implicating Trump with Russia.  By July 2016, the FBI and CIA had encompassed the Trump campaign in formal counterintelligence and criminal investigations, while shopping suggestive allegations to the press.  The so-called Steele dossier, alleging a host of details, some lurid, all false, was part of this classic political agitprop.  This effort was the product of a homogeneous mixture of persons official and officious, including John Brennan and James Comey, directors of the CIA and FBI, respectively, James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, along with some of the highest officials of these agencies, of the Department of Justice and of State.  These people are related to one another socially, politically, financially, professionally, maritally and extra-maritally.  They served Democratic President Barack Obama while furthering the election of his chosen Democrat successor, Hillary Clinton.  The notion that they acted without at least his tacit approval is not worth a second thought.

Legally Conflicted Senate Intel Committee Presents Another Defense of Intelligence Corruption.  Foolishness and betrayal of our country have served to reveal dangers within our present condition.  Misplaced corrective action, regardless of intent, is neither safe nor wise.  The intelligence apparatus was weaponized against our candidate by those who controlled the levers of government.  That said, today's SSCI defense of political corruption is infuriating.

Pennsylvania Business Owner Says They Are Being 'Unconstitutionally Closed Down'.  A business owner attending the protest at the Pennsylvania State Capitol on Monday [4/20/2020] told Breitbart News that businesses are "unjustifiably" and "unconstitutionally" closed down as a result of the drastic measures taken by local officials to combat the Chinese coronavirus.  Pennsylvania resident Chris Miller, owner of the Scranton Golf Center, told Breitbart News on Monday that his business has been closed for four weeks as a result of the shutdown.  [Video clip]

Easter wouldn't do it but...
Will Ramadan force an end to the lockdown?  As the Muslim celebration of Ramadan arrives (April 23 to May 23), many of the faithful will expect to attend worship services at their local mosques.  Will local and state governments treat Muslim worshipers at Ramadan the same as they treated Christian worshipers at Easter?  Will officials arrest imams for holding services as they did to a Christian pastor in Tampa?  How likely is it that Kentucky officials will sprinkle nails in mosque parking lots and take license plate numbers of worshipers?  Will NYC mayor Bill de Blasio threaten to permanently shut down mosques as he did Christian churches and Jewish synagogues if they dare to hold services?  And then there is the case of "the worst governor in America," Gretchen Whitmer. [...] How will she deal with the huge Muslim enclaves in Dearborn and Ann Arbor as Ramadan arrives?

Why Politicians Focus on Trivia in the Midst of Disaster.  You've probably heard:
  •   The municipal government of San Clemente, CA trucked in 37 tons of sand, at a cost of at least $100,000 when you count removal, to forcibly close a skateboard park that was being used by no more than a few dozen people per day.
  •   Governor Christine Whitmer of Michigan required that all stores over 50,000 sq. feet close their garden centers, eliminating access to plants, seeds, and other supplies.  The Governor admonished:  "If you're not buying food or medicine or other essential items, you should not be going to the store."
  •   The mayor of Greenville, MS outlawed public gatherings, including religious ceremonies, and sent city police to issue $500 tickets to worshippers who were sitting in the parking lot, windows closed, listening to a "drive-in" sermon on Easter.  The order was later reversed, but the mayor remains unapologetic.
  •   In Rhode Island, National Guard troops have been used at roadblocks, and in some cases for actual house-to-house searches, to find people who have "escaped" from New York to second homes or houses of relatives in the Granite State.

The Governors' Mutiny.  [Scroll down]  Mr. Trump and all other officers and legislators and judges of the federal and state governments are bound by oath to the Constitution.  Yet that same parchment absolutely forbids the states, without the consent of Congress, from entering into "any agreement or compact with another state[.]"  That is American bedrock.  It's right up there with the prohibition on states granting titles of nobility, say, or keeping ships of war in time of peace.  One doesn't have to be a Civil War buff to see that states forming compacts or agreements with other states smacks of a challenge to federal authority, no matter how un-total a president's authority might be.  Yet a bloom of stories in the press suggests states have begun doing just what the Constitution says they can't.

A populace kept fearful is ripe for abuse.  Along the way, the Protectors of our Well-Being began to give edicts more feverishly and more randomly.  "Wear a seat belt!"  "Quit eating so much grain!"  "Don't use those light bulbs!"  "Never drink from the hose!"  "Get a safer gas can (at an exorbitant government-inflicted price)."  "Stay out of the sun!"  "Don't eat butter!"  "Eat butter!"  On and on, the contradictory government edicts have been handed down from above.  And we dutifully fell in line. [...] Out of fear for personal safety, we bow down to their random and often senseless edicts.  Maybe by doing so, we will add a few more days to our lives?  Maybe.  I suppose it is possible.  But those few more days will also be government-controlled, highly taxed days.

The FISA Scandal Is about Corruption, Not 'Sloppiness'.  Consider this scenario:  A federal lawyer is filling out applications requesting FISA warrants to spy on American citizens who work for a major presidential campaign to determine whether the campaign staffers are collaborating with a foreign power to steal the presidency of the United States.  They must know that such a conspiracy, should it be exposed, would be the most explosive in the history of the nation — towering over the piddling criminality of Watergate or the Teapot Dome scandal.  And any genuine effort to ferret out criminality and sedition within one of the nation's major parties — perhaps going a high as the future president himself — would be supported by unimpeachable underlying evidence and undertaken with abundant care and meticulous oversight.  So what are the chances that a good-faith investigation would botch nearly every request to spy on the campaign when the FISA court is already signing off on over 99 percent of applications?

Ohio uses smoke and mirrors on voters.  The primary election in OH was set for March 10, 2020.  Then someone in Columbus, without explanation, changed the date to March 17, St. Patrick's Day.  The cynical among us believe that the hope was that fewer voters would turn out that day, with the Cleveland parade and all, which of course was cancelled for the first time in 178 years.  Except that lifelong politician and Governor Mike DeWine cancelled elections at 3:30 a.m. on the 17th itself.  He had gone to court earlier that day to try to stop the primary.  DeWine said he would go along with the judge's decision.  The judge said "no" and all of a sudden the judge's decision was unimportant.  It took DeWine's cronies until 3:30 a.m. to get four Ohio Supreme Court judges to agree by phone to call off voting.  (Was that even legal?)  DeWine set the new date as June 2.  Then on March 25, the General Assembly passed H.B. 197, resetting the date to April 28, 2020.

Why Does 'Sunscreen' Appear 49 Times In The $2 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Package?  The $2  trillion coronavirus relief package passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump mentions the word sunscreen 49 times, but why is that?  How could that help fight the coronavirus as the deadly disease continues to spread throughout the U.S.?  The Treatment of Sunscreen Innovation Act, which benefits large manufacturers in Kentucky — where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is up for re-election in November — was placed into the coronavirus stimulus package.

Empire State Building Debuts Dystopian Red "Siren" Light.  The Empire State Building debuted what appeared to be a spinning red 'siren' light atop the iconic structure in what many observers saw as a dystopian sign of the times.

Turning the Empire State Building into a massive flashing siren.  The top of the Empire State Building in New York City was lit up tonight to look like an emergency flashing siren, in honor of healthcare workers and first responders risking their lives in the new epicenter of the Chinese Corona Virus.

The Editor says...
It would have been less confusing and far less alarming if the purpose of this display had been publicized in advance.  (I've only seen the Empire State Building once, back in 1969, but I've always admired it as a national treasure.)

New Yorkers baffled over 'unsettling' Empire State Building siren display.  New Yorkers were left spooked Monday night by a glaring Empire State Building light display intended to honor emergency workers fighting coronavirus.  The iconic Midtown skyscraper announced the debut of a display that began at 9 p.m. Monday [3/30/2020], and will continue on through the course of the ongoing pandemic.  "Starting tonight through the COVID-19 battle, our signature white lights will be replaced by the heartbeat of America with a white and red siren in the mast for heroic emergency workers on the front line of the fight," read a tweet from the building's official Twitter account.  But to some, in addition to solidarity, the siren induced anxiety, as it spun for the first time surrounded by low clouds.  [Video clip]

The Editor says...
Such a signal could be used for tornado warnings, or to warn of an imminent military attack, but not if the general public is trained to ignore it, which is what happened last night.  Sounding a previously-unknown alarm in a time of national emergency is an indication of monumentally poor judgement on the part of the city leadership.

Kelly Loeffler Among Corrupt Senate Virus Profiteers.  If you ever wondered how public servants get so rich serving the public, or why the Senate and House are filled with so many millionaires, part of the answer is that they are often privy to knowledge not available to the rest of us.  Knowledge is power and it can also be very profitable if you are among the legislators who can take advantage of it before any of us common folk hear about it.  Just ask Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., who exploited knowledge provided in a private briefing about the Wuhan virus and its possible impact and along with her husband sold stock worth millions just before the Chinese Wuhan virus spread worldwide and tanked global markets.

Insider Trading Scandal Is Just Latest Reason Burr Should Be Removed As Intel Chair.  Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr is being criticized by liberals and conservatives due to the news he sold up to $1.6 million in stock after receiving private briefings about the coronavirus but before the stock market began its sharp decline.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted of the North Carolina Republican:  "Burr knew how bad it would be.  He told the truth to his wealthy donors, while assuring the public that we were fine.  THEN he sold off $1.6 million in stock before the fall.  He needs to resign."  Tucker Carlson told his audience Burr needs to resign and await prosecution if he's unable to explain his actions.  He said if the allegations are true, that Burr has betrayed his country in a time of crisis.

Senators Must Be Investigated:  Dumping Stocks After COVID-19 Classified Briefing Is Insider Trading.  Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, along with three other Senate colleagues, should be ashamed and investigated for insider trading if reports alleging they dumped their stock after receiving a classified briefing on coronavirus Jan. 24 are true.  If it is true, which it appears to be, Burr should also be removed as the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.  According to reports he sold $1.6 million of his stock after receiving the closed door briefing.

Even if legal, politicians profiting off inside information amid coronavirus crisis is outrageous.  As the novel coronavirus works it way through the United States, many Americans have seen their savings dwindle as the stock market continues its unprecedented free fall.  But for a handful US senators, the crisis was cause for a windfall.  That's because Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler, both of whom were briefed for weeks as the coronavirus approached America, decided it was a good idea to use their inside information to dump over a million dollar in stocks.  Sens. Diane Feinstein and Jim Inhofe also sold significant amounts of stock.  To make matters worse for Burr, at the same time that he was shedding doomed paper, he was assuring the American people that our nation was "better prepared than ever for coronavirus." Oh?  Really?  So is that why Burr engaged in dozens of transactions to protect his own portfolio while his fellow citizens lost billions?

Dianne Feinstein, 3 more senators accused of dumping major holdings before stock market plunge.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein is reportedly part of a small group of senators who sold off millions of dollars worth of personal stock days before the market crashed due to the coronavirus crisis.  The California Democrat and three of her Senate colleagues sold major holdings in February just before the stock market plunge, according to U.S. Senate disclosure records.

For Jeff Sessions, inside-trading stock scandal is his golden moment.  Jeff Sessions, President Trump's former Attorney General, who went out with rancor from Trump for opening the gates to the Mueller investigation and impeachment, is now running for his old Senate seat in Alabama.  President Trump has endorsed his GOP rival.  Sessions, with admirable restraint, has stated over and over that he nevertheless supports Trump and his agenda — which is perfectly credible, given that he was Trump's earliest high-profile supporter.  All the same, it's pretty impressive, given Trump's refusal to forgive.  While that issue may be understandable on both sides — fundamentally, Sessions wanted to be ethical, but, unlike Trump, he misunderstood the nature of the enemy he was appeasing, the new insider-trading stock scandal in the news, apparently involving Senators Richard Burr, Kelly Loeffler, and now Dianne Feinstein, gives his campaign some powerful impetus.

In the Face of Pandemic, the U.S. Senate Sells Stocks and Plays Politics With Our Lives.  On Thursday night [3/19/2020], news broke of two Republican Senators, Richard Burr of North Carolina and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, dropping some serious stock after an all-Senators meeting where they received a briefing on the Wuhan coronavirus.  We're talking stock sales in the millions.  It's an egregious abuse of power, if this is a case of insider trading, and there are calls from all over for both of them to resign.  Tucker Carlson even lit Burr up on his show and demanded he resign.  It's a bi-partisan thing right now, because we're in the middle of a pandemic and American citizens are terrified.  What do these two do when they catch wind of how bad it's going to be?  They get rich off of the crisis.  For Loeffler's part, she says the transactions were made by a third party broker, and she was not aware of the sale until weeks after.

Richard Burr, Kelly Loeffler urged to resign for selling stocks after coronavirus briefing.  Two more senators made hefty stock sales before the coronavirus pandemic tanked global markets, records revealed as two other lawmakers who dumped millions in shares faced mounting calls to resign.  Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Jim Inhofe sold as much as $6.4 million worth of stock in the weeks before panic about the coronavirus sparked a worldwide selloff, according to disclosure filings first reported by the New York Times.  The additional revelations came amid widespread outrage toward GOP Sens. Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler, who reportedly sold shares after getting briefings on the coronavirus threat.

Senator Kelly Loeffler dumped $3.1m in stock and Senate Intel chairman Richard Burr sold $1.5m while getting classified briefings on coronavirus.  Four senators dumped millions of dollars worth of stock while Capitol Hill was being briefed on the threat of coronavirus but before the markets tanked as infections soared, disclosure records have revealed.  Republicans Richard Burr, Kelly Loeffler and James Inhofe and Democrat Dianne Feinstein collectively offloaded up to $11 million in stock between late January and early February, according to records seen by The Daily Beast and New York Times.  Burr, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee that was directly briefed on coronavirus, sold up to $1.7 million in stock including in hotels; Feinstein, a member of the same committee, sold up to $6 million in stock including in a biotech firm.

Senators Loeffler And Burr Caught Dumping Their Stocks After Private Meeting On Coronavirus Impact.  Two Republican senators were caught selling off millions of dollars worth of stocks shortly after a closed-door Senate-only meeting forecasting the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the Daily Beast reported Thursday [3/19/2020].  Republican Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler sold roughly $3.1 million in stocks she jointly held with her husband between January 24 and February 14, just before the disease put the stock market into freefall.  Her colleague and fellow Republican North Carolina Senator Richard Burr sold off roughly $1.5 million of his own stocks in February as well, shortly before hosting a private meeting with wealthy constituents where he detailed to them the potential impacts of the virus, according to NPR.

On the other hand...
4 Senators Dump Stock After Wuhan Virus Briefing Leaving Reporters Breathless; Here's What They're Missing.  [Scroll down]  Here's what reporters are missing:  (Let me preface this by saying that Sen. Burr is one of my least favorite Republicans, and Sen. Feinstein, one of my least favorite Democrats.  I am neutral on Sens. Loeffler and Inhofe.)  [#1] The stock market was extremely overbought at the time and professionals, in addition to most Americans who follow the financial markets, were waiting for at least a ten percent correction.  It had come a long way in a short period of time and everyone knows markets never go straight up.  This market was screaming for a shakeout from at least mid-January on.  If you were to indict every investor who sold stock during this period, the number would be into the millions.  [#2] Burr didn't sell his stock until three weeks after the briefing.  Why would he wait 21 days?  That's an eternity in the stock market.  [#3] Burr addresses the accusations in a lengthy text message thread which can be viewed [elsew]here.  The gist of it is that the lunch which NPR portrays as "secret" was anything but.

Sources: Lindsey Graham Uses China's Disease Crisis to Deliver Green Cards to Wealthy Chinese.  Sen. Lindsey Graham is using the coronavirus recovery bills to dramatically expand the award of EB-5 green cards to wealthy Chinese if they lend money to U.S. real estate investors and other companies, according to several activists and Politico magazine.  "How can people pushing this not see how politically explosive this is?" said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.  "An EB-5 increase would almost exclusively benefit Chinese:  It is hard to imagine what they are thinking."

House Lawyers for Adam Schiff Assert Privilege over Schiff Subpoenas of Impeachment Phone Records.  Judicial Watch announced today [3/19/2020] that Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss the lawsuit against them for the controversial impeachment-related subpoenas for phone records, including those of Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's lawyer.  Schiff and the Committee are being represented by the Office of General Counsel for the House of Representatives.  The phone records led to the publication of the private phone records of Giuliani, Congressman Devon Nunes, journalist John Solomon, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, attorney Victoria Toensing, and other American citizens.

The FISA States of America.  The Justice Department brazenly disregards the Constitution when it comes to spying.  Does FISA help prevent terrorism?  As I noted here, the government obtained more than 1,000 warrants in a one-year timeframe to spy on Americans.  That's a lot of spying on a lot of Americans.  The Justice Department's lying to obtain these warrants has become so brazen that the court now questions whether it can trust any of the affidavits the FBI submits to justify its domestic surveillance.  The fact that none of these lies are ever criminally punished further reinforces a cycle of dishonesty within the process.

Will Elizabeth Warren Release Her Own NDA's?  NDA's are back in the news, at least when those NDA's concern Mike Bloomberg.  But what about Elizabeth Warren's NDAs?  Oh she may not have one for herself, but her colleagues do, there are over 250 of them!  What if I told you that Congressmen settled over 250 sexual harassment lawsuits using taxpayer money, and there was no way to find out who these Congressmen were?  Would you believe me?  The truth is that the situation is as described in the question.  For decades members of Congress would use your taxpayer dollars to buy their way out of bad publicity.  When a member of Congress was accused of sexual harassment, the case went to a secret court known as the Office of Compliance.  Hidden from public view, Congress's Office of Compliance paid out over $17 million for 264 settlements involving misconduct and sexual harassment.

Wisconsin parents suing school district for letting students switch genders without notice.  Parents are suing a Wisconsin school district for adopting a policy that allows students of any age to transition to a different gender and use a different name while at school without parental notice or consent.  The policy, according to the religious-liberty law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, prevents school officials from communicating about the child's choice to transition with parents if the student does not consent.  The parents charge that the school's policy violates their parental rights, usurping the upbringing of their children under Wisconsin law.

Revealed: How the government keeps its UFO information secret.  [Scroll down]  Essentially, the DIA's UFO program was set up to circumvent FOIA requests and avoid having to discuss UFOs publicly.  Let that sink in for a moment.  This was a massive program that almost no one knew anything about and it was explicitly crafted in a way that would allow them to keep all of the information from the public.  And it worked.

Constitutional law expert reacts to Trump impeachment:  The legislative branch can abuse its power.  On this week's episode of "Life, Liberty & Levin," Constitutional law expert Randy Barnett told host Mark Levin that the president is not the only elected official who can abuse their power.  Barnett, the director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, said the House of Representatives "misbehaved" in its inquiry and ensuing vote to impeach President Trump last year.  "The legislature can abuse power," Barnett said.  "That is one of the reasons we have judicial review — is to ensure that the legislature has not exceeded its proper powers — as it did, for example, when it passed the Affordable Care Act pursuant to its Commerce Clause power."

It's time for Trump to fight fire with fire.  We should all recoil in horror that the Intelligence Community and the DoJ could be weaponized against a sitting president.  Spying, planting informants, the use of purely partisan Democrats' oppo research to create a fake criminal narrative; how could decent Americans allow the rule of law to be bent in such an unlawful fashion?  And these plotters used scorched-earth tactics; surprising Trump supporters with unannounced interviews to create perjury traps, threatening their children with jail time, sending SWAT teams to kick in their doors at 3 a.m., raiding his lawyers' offices to search for dirt, and placing a defendant for a nonviolent white-collar crime in solitary confinement.  How could this happen in the Land of the Free?

How Democrats' Get-Trump Crusade Has Irreparably Damaged The Nation.  For more than three years, Democrats, Never Trump Republicans, and the left-leaning media proved themselves willing to destroy the country to destroy one man:  Donald J. Trump.  From foreign affairs to counterintelligence to law enforcement, from domestic governance to congressional oversight to separation of powers, Trump's enemies manipulated and misused our government powers because Americans dared to elect the wrong leader.  The Senate's acquittal yesterday [2/5/2020] of the president on the two spurious articles of impeachment concluded (for now) the years-long coordinated efforts at a coup.  But while Trump escaped the onslaught, the damage inflicted on our country will not be easily abated.

Preventing Another 'Crossfire Hurricane'.  Sometime this year, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, John Durham, will probably have a grand jury issue indictments of some of the "Crossfire Hurricane" leaders.  Among them will likely be former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, and former FBI director James Comey.  He may also indict some of the CIA's current and former leaders including Obama's CIA director John Brennan and current CIA Director Gina Haspel (Brennan's protégé) who ran the overseas elements of "Crossfire Hurricane."  However many of the "Crossfire Hurricane" team are indicted, and whether or not they are convicted, their indictment will shake the FBI (and, we hope, the CIA) to their cores.  The indictments will have the effect of dissuading further secret investigations of presidential campaigns but even that effect will not be permanent, nor will they prevent another "Crossfire Hurricane" from ever happening again.

Why the Senate Passed on Witnesses.  [Reason #2] In the House, a pathological liar like Adam Schiff actually could end up chairing the Intelligence Committee.  A Schiff and a Nadler actually could be hand-picked to run a sloppy and minor-league Grade C impeachment.  They could ram through votes as they like, hold secret sessions barred to the public, deny the President basic rules of due process.  They could run a kangaroo court and decide not to bother subpoenaing witnesses they want to hear, leaving it instead to Schiff to fill in any blanks with lies, fabricated phone conversations, assertions about "whistleblowers" that are not actually whistleblowers.  They can get away with it because they have just enough clowns and barkers in the arena to make it a circus, if they like.  With an assemblage of Lying Adam Schiff, Doddering Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and a whole tent-full of such cartoon characters, there is no holding them back when they have the majority.

Impeach Pelosi/Schiff/Nadler for Abuse of Power.  For three years, Democrats accused the president of having stolen the 2016 election.  Now, they maintain, he is trying to steal the 2020 election.  In reality, it was Hillary and members of the Obama administration (and probably Obama himself) who tried to steal the 2016 election and it is Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler who are trying to steal 2020.  Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler are using the power of their offices to erase the 2016 election, steal the 2020 Presidential Election, and damage Republican senators in purple states enough to flip the upper chamber to Democratic Party control.  Running on the issues against the successful Trump administration does not appeal to them.  Instead, they are using impeachment as the means to rig the election to get control of the presidency and the Senate.

Fake Investigations — Designed To Fool You.  Many government officials with long entrenched power are unwilling to give up any of that power. [...] Most of the big 'investigations' in the news in recent years have not been at all what they pretended to be.  The sham investigations of Hillary's email, or the Clinton Foundation, or Weiner's laptop, or Uranium One, or Mueller's witch hunt, or Huber's big nothing, or the IG's whitewash, or the Schiff-Pelosi charades, have all been premeditated deceptions.  There are three types of investigations that call for different deceptions by the Deep State.  The first type is the rare honest investigation.  Examples would be the attempt to find the truth about Fast and Furious (Obama's gunrunning operation), or the IRS scandal (Obama's weaponizing of government).  In response to real investigations, the criminals do two things:  lie and hide evidence.  Key evidence, even if it is under subpoena, just disappears.  In the IRS case, Lois Lerner's relevant email and the email of 6 others involved in the scheme was just "lost".  The IRS "worked tirelessly" to find the email, but hard drives had been destroyed and back-up drives were missing, so the subpoenaed evidence could not be provided.  For the Deep State, hiding and destroying evidence of guilt is standard operating procedure.  They simply report a "glitch" that destroyed the key evidence and that's the end of it.  Or, they simply redact the portions of the record that would expose the truth.  To my memory, no one ever suffers any consequences for this.

When public business is done behind closed doors.  Nothing puts a journalistr's [sic] antenna up faster than when it appears some public official is trying to hide something.  That's exactly what was going on last winter, when the Connecticut Port Authority, we now know, was hatching a grand plan, in secret, to drastically remake the historic port of New London, filling in seven acres of the river between the two existing piers, one a stone 19th Century structure on the National Register of Historic Places.  The extensive $93 million project, to be done at the behest of Danish wind power giant Orsted and Connecticut utility Eversource, with the state contributing $35 million, would potentially close the port to traditional cargo for the better part of a generation.

Torquemada Reborn:  The Swamp's Dept. of Labor Inquisitions.  During the turbulent tenure of former Secretary Alex Acosta, a Jeffrey Epstein apologist and Billionaire Democratic Party donor enabler, the Department of Labor (DOL), through the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), acted to further the Obama Administration's socialist agenda by harassing and vexing businesses engaged in federal contracting.  Astoundingly, even though Acosta's resigned amid the Epstein scandal and the Trump Administration is pushing to expand economic growth via streamlined labor laws, the OFCCP remains the feared torturer of American Industry.  Before resigning, Acosta acted like an Obama holdover in the Trump Administration.  Bizarrely, Acosta's replacement, erstwhile conservative Eugene Scalia, son of the revered conservative jurist Antonin Scalia, effectively perpetuates the Deep State Liberal hijacking of the DOL by failing to halt the OFCCP Obama Labor Inquisitions.

Unequal Justice And The Persecution Of Steve Stockman, Proud Boys, Andy Ngo.  If the hallmark of a Third World country is arbitrary law enforcement, we are already there.  Former Congressman Steve Stockman, an immigration patriot and a stalwart of the conservative movement, is serving a ten-year sentence for fundraising crimes, that, even if committed, would typically be punished by far less.  The extensive investigation was spearheaded by the same people Stockman exposed for weaponizing the IRS against conservative organizations.  In contrast, Democratic officials accused of crimes receive kid gloves treatment — even with the supposedly "authoritarian" Trump in the White House.  The Trump Administration's Department of Justice is being slammed for supposedly being "far-Right," but it's not even upholding equal justice against Leftist Deep State bureaucrats.  Stockman has been a thorn in the side of the Republican Establishment but a hero to many grassroots conservatives for years.

Watchdog Group Suing Adam Schiff Over Release Of Private Phone Records.  The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Wednesday [1/8/2020] that it has filed a lawsuit against Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the House Intelligence Committee for information relating to the acquirement and release of the phone records from Rudy Giuliani, Devin Nunes, and others.  "We are seeking records about [Schiff's] controversial subpoenas that led to his publishing the private phone records of President Trump's lawyers and other innocent Americans including:  President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Congressman Devin Nunes, and journalist John Solomon," the group said in a video announcing the lawsuit.  "The lawsuit seeks all subpoenas by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to telephone providers, including, but not limited to, AT&T."

The Schiff Effect.  [Scroll down]  As [Trey] Gowdy noted, time after time after time, Schiff and other House Democrats leaked — in partisan fashion — confidential information that should never have been slipped to their buddies in the media.  All targeted to attack the president.  And in so doing, what could be called "the Schiff Effect" created for the Democrats in both the House and Senate a seriously bad reputation for not being trustworthy with the handling of confidential information.  It is, as D'Souza was alluding, almost the same as leaking the information directly to the Iranians themselves.  Add to this image the rabid Trump Derangement Syndrome among Democrats, which has them literally siding with the murderous Iranian regime over the president.

Financing Big Government with the Printing Press.  Back in January, I wrote about the $42 trillion price tag of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal.  To pay for this massive expansion in the burden of government spending, some advocates have embraced "Modern Monetary Theory," which basically assumes the Federal Reserve can finance new boondoggles by printing money. [...] Wow, this Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) reminds me of the old joke about "I can't be out of money.  I still have checks in my checkbook."

The FISA Court Is Just As Guilty, Knew About Lies and Omissions Years Ago.  In the wake of the IG report, most of the blame for the Carter Page FISA abuse has rightly landed at the feet of the FBI and its leadership.  There is no doubt they actively chose to lie to the court in order to target someone they had insufficient evidence to target.  As part of the unfolding of the saga in the wake of Horowitz's report, the FISA court itself released a denunciation of FBI procedures and asked for an audit of other warrant request to see if the problems were systematic.  The tone of the letter was indignant but also smacked of trying to pass the buck.  No one held a gun to the head of these FISA judges and forced them to approve 99% of warrants placed before them, including the woefully lacking Page warrant.  In fact, it's now clear that the FISA court itself knew about these lies and omissions years ago and chose to essentially do nothing about them, perhaps even actively covering them up.

Against all Odds — Three FBI Officials Quietly Working to Reveal the Truth.  I'm not sure exactly who they are, and there's a possibility they might just be one person; however, it appears there are three distinct FBI officials engaged in an overall investigative capacity, attempting to break the truth through the corrupt machinery.  Each individual is noted within a specific event or outcome.  Hopefully AG Bill Barr has tasked his deputy James Rosen to hold an honest 'climate assessment' discussion with these individuals.  The first honorable FBI Agent is the FBI official who enhanced the DOJ sentencing memo for James Wolfe.  The DOJ prosecution, namely DC U.S. Attorney Jessie K Liu — possibly following instructions from Rod Rosenstein — was trying to cover-up the classified intelligence leak of SSCI Security Director James Wolfe in order to protect powerful Senators.

Blind man's bluff:  The curse of secret investigation.  The FBI had pursued an investigation of a presidential campaign on the basis of a dossier bought and paid for by the rival candidate with incalculable results:  "This is the FBI's darkest hour."  The most disquieting aspect of the whole affair was pointed out by the NY Post editorial board.  Could more abuses have been committed against the general public?  If the FBI could fabricate pretexts against prominent individuals who could afford the best lawyers, how safe were ordinary individuals from the secret inquisitors?

Two Possibilities in Trump Wiretapping, and Neither Is Good.  The report of the I.G.'s findings on the use of FISA in the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation is an outrage.  As a 22 year FBI Agent, I have personally conducted multiple investigations using both Title III "wiretaps" and FISA authorized intercepts.  From this perspective, I can only see two possible interpretations of the actions of the FBI and DOJ.  Either scenario should anger and frighten every fair minded citizen who takes the time to read the report and understand its implications.

If The FBI's Contempt For The Law Is Not Reined In, Its Abuses Will Get Worse.  In 2018, the U.S. government filed 1,117 final applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for authority for the FBI to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches.  One application was withdrawn.  One other was denied.  The remaining 1,115 were granted. [...] The legitimacy of the FBI is in free fall.  But not its terrifying power.  The biggest lie about the latest Office of Inspector General report is that it reveals "mistakes" made by the FBI.  These weren't mistakes.  The FISA court used more accurate terminology, like "misconduct."

FBI is investigating former Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin who issued more than 400 pardons in the weeks after he lost his reelection bid.  The FBI is investigating former Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin who controversially issued more than 400 pardons in the weeks after he lost his reelection bid.  Among those who were granted clemency after Bevin lost his seat on November 5 was murderer Patrick Baker, who had served two years of a 19-year sentence for killing a man during a home invasion.  Bevin also pardoned Micah Schoettle who was sentenced in 2018 to 23 years in prison for multiple sexual offences involving children.

The only guilty party during impeachment is Adam Schiff.  [Scroll down]  But to Mr. Schiff, California Democrat, and the Democratic leadership, President Trump had to be impeached by Christmas — at all costs.  Laws and the foregoing principles fairness of that interfere with this edict must be cut down.  Why?  The Articles of Impeachment charge:  (1) obstruction of Congress; and (2) abuse of power.  But Mr. Schiff has so biased and twisted the impeachment proceedings that, in the height of irony, he stands condemned by his own mouth of the same transgressions for which he will prosecute the president.  On this record it is Mr. Schiff, who has obstructed Congress and abused his power — not the president.

Former AG Mike Mukasey:  Adam Schiff Broke the Law in Subpeonaeing Phone Records from Verizon and AT&T.  [Scroll down]  [Quoting Mr. Mukasey:] ["]That is the stunner, not just that he had them, but where he got them, from the phone company providing the service.  There are statutes, part of the criminal code that restrict the ability of anybody to get those records and they list who can get them under what circumstances and that doesn't include Congress.  It is for law enforcement, for law enforcement purposes, or if the company wants to disclose them to save somebody's life or prevent serious injury they can do that.  Those are the only circumstances.  A Congressional committee, as far as I know, has no authority to subpoena that information.["]

Judicial Watch Files a Lawsuit Against Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee Over Phone Records.  Government watchdog group Judicial Watch on Friday filed a lawsuit against Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the House Intelligence Committee for failing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.  Specifically, Judicial Watch wanted information about private phone records that were released as part of the Democrats' partisan impeachment push against President Donald Trump.  The revelation came about on page 153 of the House Intelligence Committee's report on its investigation into Ukraine.

Adam Schiff:  Psychopath, or guilty conscience?  Fresh from his impeachment stunt, House Intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff comes off as an amazing creep in the aftermath.  Asked about the recent Horowitz report's findings on Carter Page, a young Trump advisor who was illegally spied upon, Schiff said he had no sympathy. [...] What happened to Page was an outrage, an unmistakeably grave abuse of government power as mendacious FISA warrants were enacted to spy on innocent and cooperative person.  Even people who dislike President Trump can pretty naturally recognize that Page's constitutional rights on unreasonable searches and seizures was violated.  Not Schiff, though.  All he could emit was stone heartlessness for the man whose good name was ruined by abuses of government power, revealing an utter absence of empathy.

Corrupt Democrats Pushing America toward the Abyss.  The rabid rogues who spat out this incomplete impeachment effort are corrupt to the core, all sense of sanity and restraint long gone.  The roots of this outrage were planted in 2008, when Democrats achieved near absolute power with the election of President Barack Obama.  For the first two years of Obama's administration, Democrats controlled Congress, to include having enough seats in the Senate to override a filibuster.  Democrats and their supporters ultimately had control of the Executive Branch, Congress, the vast majority of the federal courts, the media, academia, the entertainment industry, the federal bureaucracy, and the babbling women of The View.  They had a stranglehold on almost every lever of power and influence the likes of which had not been seen in generations.  Not only were Democrats not shy about using these levers, but under President Obama, they turned them into weapons.  They believed themselves to be ascendant, and they expected it to last forever.

DOJ's High Crimes and Misdemeanors.  Conservative talk show hosts frequently say corruption in federal law enforcement is "just at the top; we're not talking about the rank and file of these agencies."  But Representative Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was a low level a federal prosecutor in the late 80s and early 90s.  Robert Mueller was with DOJ during the same period.  Peter Strozk joined the FBI in the 90s.  Do we really believe members of the law enforcement community arrive at the top and then become corrupt?  No.  Skills of tampering with evidence to hide or alter it, fabricating false narratives, and controlling what information comes out in trials — or House hearings — are well-honed at lower levels of these agencies.

Schiff May Have Broken the Law with His Subpoena of Nunes' Phone Records.  Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey has questioned the legality of Rep. Adam Schiff's (D-Calif.) recent acquisition of phone records for five individuals, one of whom is House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).  Schiff is already facing criticism of his actions as Democratic members of Congress pursue the impeachment of President Donald Trump.  But, in what's being called a "stunning abuse of congressional power," Schiff divulged the phone records of Nunes, attorney Rudy Guiliani, and others during a recent session of the impeachment inquiry.

IG report suggests FBI might cheat on all its FISA wiretap requests.  Former FBI Director James Comey initially portrayed last week's damning report on the bureau's probe of Russiagate as a vindication.  This week, Comey admitted that Inspector General Michael Horowitz discovered "real sloppiness," which is "concerning."  That characterization does not begin to cover the problems described by Horowitz, which this week prompted a highly unusual public rebuke from the court that reviews secret warrant applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  The FISA court called the FBI's conduct "antithetical to the heightened duty of candor" that applies in such cases.  Comey may take comfort in the fact that Horowitz didn't find political bias.  The rest of us can hardly be reassured by the implication that the FBI is inept rather than corrupt.

Devin Nunes:  The FISA Court and FBI "Dirty Cops" are Working Together to Harm Americans.  As you listen to this please keep in mind that Devin Nunes is the Ranking Member, former Chairman, of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  Devin Nunes is increasing his warning tone and signals to Americans.  All nuance, pretense and subtlety is now being dropped.  Rep. Nunes is openly stating that FBI officials and FISA judges are working together with the *intent* to conspire against the American people.  [Video clip]

Exxon's big court win exposes major malpractice in the New York Attorney General's Office.  Exxon's win Tuesday against New York state's climate-change lawsuit couldn't have been more complete:  Not only did the judge find the Attorney General's Office failed to prove fraud, he also blasted the case as "hyperbolic" — and praised Exxon.  State Supreme Court Judge Barry Ostrager said the state's lawyers failed to show the company ever "made any material misstatements or omissions" that could mislead any "reasonable" observer.  The AG's Office had claimed Exxon defrauded investors in violation of the Martin Act and other laws.  But Ostrager flagged the "politically motivated statements by former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman," who launched the Exxon probe — which show that the litigation was political from the start.

Rand Paul to reporters:  Why aren't you making a bigger deal about Schiff's "immoral, unfair" seizure of phone records?  The seizure of phone records by Adam Schiff might have angered some Republicans even more than the impeachment process it was supposed to advance.  GOP members in both the House and Senate have been expressing outrage for days over Schiff's actions, perhaps none more than Sen. Rand Paul.  He wrote a blistering op-ed over Schiff's actions on Friday [12/6/2019], calling the seizure of records from fellow members of Congress and journalists "brazen and shameful."

Schiff's release of phone records is absolutely outrageous.  Sometimes the hypocrisy in Washington is so bad it is almost laughable.  The House impeachment witch hunt reached that level this week with the revelations that Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had acquired and published personal phone records of Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., (the ranking member on the Intelligence Committee), two of President Trump's personal attorneys, and an investigative journalist Schiff doesn't like.  This act was brazen and shameful.  While it may not have been illegal (because Congress writes its own rules on investigations) it certainly was wrong.  It certainly tramples on rights normally held dear by the left.  But most of all what it did was expose that Schiff, for all of his pompous bluster, is doing exactly what he has accused President Trump of doing: using his power to investigate his political opponents.

Adam Schiff Better Have a Warrant.  As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is supposed to be the lawmaker in charge of protecting Americans from the government snooping on our phone records.  He's not supposed to be using his position to snoop around in the phone records of Americans.  We have no oversight committee to protect Americans from Schiff's spying.  But, in his recent report on the inquiry into President Trump's interactions with the Ukrainian government, Schiff disclosed that he has indeed been spying on Americans.

The Shakespearean Grandeur of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  [Scroll down]  To put it into even simpler language, the impeachment of the president, for the Framers, was not conceived of as a tool for easy removal of that official whenever Congress may have political or policy differences with him.  It was to be reserved for occasions when there was a clear, convincing, and undeniable mistake made by those who selected the president when the president turned out to be something other than represented.  Impeachment, in other words, is not a game of "Gotcha!"  It is not about finding one or two things that can be spun to be self-serving acts, it is not about whether this president may have sought to use another country in ferreting out corruption in that country or at home, and may have used the powers of the presidency to seek to do just that.

Adam Schiff Has Jumped the Shark.  Many Americans remain nonplussed over revelations in the House Intelligence Committee's Impeachment Inquiry Report that its chairman, Adam Schiff, not only secretly subpoenaed telephone records from President Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, but also obtained responses that detailed dates and lengths of phone calls to Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, ranking committee member Devin Nunes, and Hill reporter John Solomon.  That Schiff self-disclosed this action as a rightful part of his committee's information gathering is equally stunning.  Every bit as bad, it appears that national telephone carriers AT&T and Verizon, who so tout their corporate concerns about subscriber privacy, responded to such obviously politicized demands without a whimper.  Schiff's actions, and indeed those of everyone involved in secretly demanding and producing these phone records, while perhaps not outright illegal, are simply beyond the pale and reminiscent of Big Brother, from George Orwell's 1984.

Hold the Phone, Call Records Released by Adam Schiff.  It was bad enough for House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) to subpoena the phone records of businessman Lev Parnas and President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani and other political opponents, but when he released them in his impeachment report it was a stunning abuse of power.  In the view of columnist Kimberly Strassel, Schiff's move "trampled law and responsibility... it was a disgraceful breach of ethical and legal propriety."  Not surprisingly, Trump hating members of the news media trumpeted the release of the call records as a major step toward the President's impeachment.  Their desire to destroy the President is so all-consuming that they missed the bigger picture.  Instead, journalists should have been outraged by this invasion of privacy and misuse of power.  These records should have never been released to Schiff or any politician and should have never been included in his impeachment report.

Why Is Our Society Degrading So Badly, So Fast?  In Washington, the Democrats are attempting to subvert the will of the majority of the American people, as expressed by the election results in 2016, by executing and plotting orchestrated campaigns to remove President Trump from office before the next election.  These efforts range from the recently unsuccessfully perpetrated Russia collusion hoax, which is now being followed up by an illegitimate impeachment drive by the House.  These operations also revealed the mostly clandestine activities of a permanent and extensive Deep State, also labeled "the swamp," actively working with the Democrats to subvert President Trump.  A broken environment exists in Washington that contributes to the perception that too many of our elected officials feel free to participate in and to tolerate corruption without being held accountable for their actions.  It is highly discouraging for many Americans that up to this point, there have been no legal consequences or viable restraints in place to curb these types of actions that are so fundamentally dangerous to the very foundations of our country.

What Impeachment Tells Us A Democrat-Controlled America Would Look Like.  That Democrats would seek to impeach President Trump was apparently foreordained, but the Democrats' attempts to invent justifications for what can only be described as a coup have told us much more about them, than they have revealed about Donald Trump's alleged misdeeds.  What we have learned most recently is that a Democrat Congress can conduct secret warrantless searches against private citizens, against journalists and against attorneys in a completely extra-judicial attempt to pierce the attorney-client privilege.  But that should really not have surprised us — it is merely an extension of what Democrats did during the Obama years when they surveilled journalist Sharyl Attkisson and others, and used the NSA to sweep up the phone calls of an unknown number of Americans who may or may not have been associated with the Trump campaign.

Obtaining phone logs of political rivals is a stunning abuse of congressional power.  Fanatics can justify any action, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff this week demonstrated where that mindset leads.  In his rush to paint Donald Trump as a lawbreaker, Mr. Schiff has himself trampled law and responsibility.  That's the bottom line in Mr. Schiff's stunning decision to subpoena the phone records of Rudy Giuliani and others.  Mr. Schiff divulged the phone logs this week in his Ukraine report, thereby revealing details about the communications of Trump attorneys Jay Sekulow and Mr. Giuliani, [...]

WSJ Columnist:  Adam Schiff's Secret Subpoena Adventure Could End with Legal Buckshot in His Face.  This isn't about the Constitution, or the framers, or the rule of law.  It's not about upholding the integrity of our institutions; Democrats have already perverted those with their deep state antics against this administration.  It's about the Democratic Party's inability to grasp that it lost the 2016 election.  Democrats wanted to boot Trump since day one of his presidency.  The ironic twist is that their impeachment fetish could very well be what secures him a second term.  This is not popular in swing states.  No one cares.  And the liberal media has been so wrong, so stupid, and so corrupt in their coverage of this White House, even Democrats in these states cannot believe what they hear. [...] In the crusade to impeach Trump, [Adam] Schiff also appears to have abused his power — and it's all in plain sight.  It's meant to be that way.  It's to show off that he can get away with it.

Devin Nunes Discusses Impeachment and Schiff's New Found Authority — Congressional Subpoenas for Private Phone Records.  Devin Nunes appeared on Tucker Carlson to discuss the impeachment events of the day.  However, thankfully they also discussed the revelation that HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff randomly started issuing subpoenas for telephone information.  That's the part I find very troubling.  Notice how the media simply ignores it?  This is a pretty big [...] deal.  Under what authority can congress arbitrarily send subpoenas for the private phone records of citizens, journalists, and fellow politicians?  Can Nunes now start sending subpoenas for the phone records of Michael Isikoff around the time of the Flynn phone call leak?  [A]nd can congress publish those call records as a part of some possibly inquiry into the leak[,] and we can cross reference to identify the FBI leaker?

Adam Schiff Abused His Power to Dig up Dirt on Opponents.  House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has done almost exactly what he and fellow Democrats accuse President Donald Trump (falsely) of doing: he abused his power to ask an outside entity to investigate political opponents.  Schiff subpoenaed phone records from AT&T that he then used to claim his Republican counterpart, Ranking Member Rep. Devin Nunes (D-CA), was part of a plot to smear a U.S. ambassador.

Strassel, Attkisson would like to know when Schiff will be held accountable by media for 'snooping' on free press.  With all eyes on the latest on Democrats' impeachment circus show, it seems that attention turned away from House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff "snooping" on members of the press.  The California Democrat came under fire after the release of the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment inquiry report which included phone records for Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and others, including the committee's ranking member, Rep. Devin Nunes and members of the press like John Solomon.

Nunes Not Aware of Any Previous Time HPSCI Subpoenaed Phone Records; Calls it a 'Gross Abuse of Power'.  Rep Devin Nunes (R-CA) explained on Fox News Wednesday night how House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) obtained the phone records of President Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani.  Nunes told host Tucker Carlson that as far as he knew, the action the Democrats took to spy on the president's allies was unprecedented and that he was considering "legal remedies" to protect his civil rights.  Democrats obtained the phone records as part of their impeachment inquiry and according to critics, in possible violation of basic civil liberties.

About those phone records.  Contrary to the RedState post on which John relied [elsew]here, it does not appear that the Democrats obtained the phone records of Ranking Member Nunes or journalist John Solomon (or of Nunes staff member Derek Harvey).  Rather, the Democrats appear to have obtained the AT&T cell phone records of Rudy Giuliani (including Giuliani Partners) and the recently indicted Lev Parnas. [...] Schiff is a lout and a liar.  This particular aspect of Schiff's efforts appears to have no purpose other than to smear and/or sideline Nunes, who has established himself as the Republicans' most valuable player in deconstructing Schiff shows past and present.

'Dirty cops': FBI leaves trail of lies, leaks, lapses in Trump era.  The FBI already has amassed a record of misconduct by top officials leading up to Monday, when the Justice Department inspector general is scheduled to release conclusions on whether agents also abused the bureau's intrusive wiretapping powers.  To date, four inspector general reports and internal Justice Department documents have found senior FBI officials guilty of lying, insubordination, security violations, mishandling confidential material and personal biases against President Trump.  Rep. Devin Nunes, the California Republican who discovered that the FBI had used a Democratic Party-financed dossier as evidence, often refers to bureau leaders as "dirty cops."  Lisa Page, a former FBI senior counsel and one of those singled out, portrayed herself this week as an innocent victim of FBI betrayal.  Meanwhile, news media stories have downplayed the significance of the upcoming inspector general's report on how the FBI spied on the Trump campaign through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other means.

The New Nihilists:  Political Nihilism and the Progressive Movement in America.  The rise of progressivism had a lasting effect on the nation, as president after president followed Teddy's lead and sought to expand the power and scope of the federal government.  Wilson, who advocated a Darwinian approach to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, gave us the progressive income and estate tax.  FDR instituted the New Deal, and LBJ advanced the Great Society, waged the War on Poverty, and launched Medicare.  Not to be outdone, Bill Clinton signed the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement; Richard Nixon established the EPA and OSHA; Jimmy Carter developed the Departments of Education and Energy; and George W. Bush created Homeland Security, the Transportation Safety Administration, and No Child Left Behind.

FBI Diagnosed With CIA Disease.  The Justice Department's inspector general this month reprimanded the FBI for the manner in which it recruits and supervises its "confidential human sources."  To the layman, this seems about technicalities.  In fact, it shows that one of the CIA's deadliest dysfunctions now infects the FBI as well.  This disease consists of choosing and rejecting sources for the purpose of indulging the agencies' and their leaders' private agendas rather than to further intelligence work on the public's behalf.

WhiskeyWarrior556 falls victim to New York's red flag laws.  On Friday [11/22/2019], police showed up to a young man's workplace and tried to arrest him over social media posts reported to them by an old army buddy of the 28-year-old Afghanistan veteran.  This man, known as Alex and popular on Instagram under the handle of WhiskeyWarrior556, slipped out of the back door, hurried home to check on his family where he found out police had already forced themselves into his home and confiscated his legal firearms after threatening his wife with calling child protective services to remove her newborn child. [...] If the current legal landscape allows for citizens to have their Second Amendment rights stripped from them without any legal opportunity to dissent, what are the next rights to be taken?

On Government-Run Opposition Research:  The Damage the Church Committee Revealed and Caused.  An earlier essay on today's dueling accusations of government-sponsored opposition research described past examples of the practice, including how members of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) had assembled investigatory files on all potential GOP presidential candidates going into the 1976 election:  John Connally, Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Robert Dole, and even Ronald Reagan.  I concluded by asking if such abuse of process stretched back even further.  Today's essay answers that question by citing a multitude of examples from the 1960s, each lovingly documented by FBI testimony before the Church Committee.

'Crossfire Hurricane' and the FISA Court:  An expert's view.  "Operation Crossfire Hurricane," the FBI's code name for its investigation into Donald Trump's campaign and Russia, blew through the United States in 2016 and did more damage to our national security institutions than any real hurricane could.  The upcoming report from the Department of Justice's Inspector General may well conclude that high-level Obama Justice Department and FBI officials knowingly lied to obtain top-secret surveillance warrants that were originally designed to target foreign spies and terrorists, and used them to monitor a U.S. citizen whose only crime appears to have been acting as an adviser to the Trump campaign.  While lying to a federal court is a crime, lying in the context of using our nation's most secret — and most constitutionally intrusive — counter-intelligence assets as part of a false narrative to oppose a political candidate is downright dangerous and should strike fear in the average citizen who now is left to wonder what protects them from such seemingly unchecked power of the state.

Enough Calm, Where's the Storm?  Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, deep within the seditious coup, fired by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, supposedly under investigation, got a nice gig as a CNN contributor.  Despite McCabe being one of the point men in spying on the Trump campaign, the Department of Justice has, "No immediate plans to prosecute former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe."  Compare McCabe's treatment by the Justice Department to that of a Trump campaign advisor.  "Republican operative Roger Stone was found guilty Friday [11/15/2019] of all seven counts against him, including witness tampering and making false statements."  According to the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General, McCabe gave, "False testimony under oath to the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility."  Stone make false statements to the FBI and faces 20 years in prison.  McCabe makes false statements to the FBI and becomes a cable news talking head.  Some storm.  It's a promotion for McCabe, and prison for Stone.

Conviction of Roger Stone is the "tipping point for tyranny" as Americans realize the whole system is rigged.  Yes, while the dirtiest, most corrupt, most treasonous criminals in America go free, Roger Stone is going to be sentenced to essentially life in prison for the non-crime of mis-remembering something while talking to federal prosecutors.  This is called a "process crime," and it's the same kind of non-crime that federal prosecutors routinely use when they want to criminalize someone who hasn't committed any real crime.  But real crimes are exactly what the deep state spy machine committed against President Trump and his allies as an effort to carry out a coordinated political coup against the United States of America.  Yet to this day, not a single treasonous criminal has been arrested or indicted.

10 reasons why this impeachment 'inquiry' is really a coup.  [#3] First-term impeachment:  The Clinton and Nixon inquiries were directed at second-term presidencies, when there were no more electoral remedies for alleged wrongdoing.  By contrast, Trump is up for election in less than a year.  Impeachment, then, seems a partisan exercise in either circumventing a referendum election or in damaging a president seeking re-election. [...] [#10] Precedent:  The indiscriminate efforts to remove Trump over the past three years, when coupled with the latest impeachment gambit, have now set a precedent in which the out party can use impeachment as a tool to embarrass, threaten or seek to remove a sitting president and reverse an election.  We are witnessing constitutional government dissipating before our eyes.

Why Should We Keep Our Guns?  The right to bear arms shall not be infringed, according to the Second Amendment.  All winning candidates, as well as all appointees to office, must affirm under oath that they will support and defend the Constitution.  Nevertheless, many officials have demonstrated their disdain for that oath, for aspects of the Constitution, for unalienable rights, and for the lawful limits of their delegated power.  They have reneged on their solemn promise to support the Constitution.  They have betrayed the people, deceiving them upon taking the oath with no intention of fulfilling it; or else have decided to violate the oath after having taken it.  In either case, the failure to keep the oath renders them ineligible to hold office.  The tendency to fail to keep the oath of office is so commonplace, with virtually no consequences occurring as a result of that crime, that some candidates for public office now campaign for office on the basis of promises to violate the oath of office.

Our Elites Don't See What's Coming.  [Scroll down]  This all leads us to a serious problem that we as a country are facing:  we've been losing trust in our institutions for quite some time.  All that the last few years have done is to reinforce that kind of thinking.  Seriously.  Ask yourself:  Do you really trust the FBI?  I don't.  With the recent reports from Michael Flynn's attorney, Sidney Powell, apparently senior FBI agents tampered with 302s, falsifying information to get the results they wanted which had nothing to do with the truth.  This was the FBI — supposedly the world's greatest law enforcement agency.  I don't think so.  Until those senior officials go to jail for their abuse of power my distrust of the FBI will continue.  Do you really trust the Justice Department?  Maybe.  I'll see what Attorney General Barr and John Durham pursue and actually accomplish.  I can assure you, however, if there are not prosecutions with jail time, scratch that institution off the list.  The CIA?  Forget about it.  Congress?  You mean the inept worthless institution that sits on its hands and has ceded massive control of the lawmaking function of government to the administrative state?  I have to tell you:  is there really a point to Congress in its current form?

Kimberley Strassel's Home Run.  [Scroll down]  As she notes, the very term "the Resistance" is associated throughout history with movements designed to fight "occupying powers" as, say, the French Resistance came to life to fight the forces of the occupying Nazi Germany.  And once one goes down that road, as has the Trump-hating Resistance, the Resisters "view themselves as justified in taking any action necessary to get rid of the occupier."  Set loose the Department of Justice and the FBI to spy on a presidential campaign?  No problem.  Ambush a Supreme Court nominee "with uncorroborated sexual assault allegations"?  No problem.  Use "the impeachment process for political retribution"?  No big deal.  This, says Strassel, "has been the behavior of the Resistance leaders, and it has already caused harm to vital institutions."  Yes indeed.  And none more prominent than the self-inflicted massive damage the Justice Department, the FBI, and the "mainstream media" have done to their own credibility.

Who Can Stop Trump Now?  [Scroll down]  The rules of the impeachment process legalized by the House of Representatives turned out to be even worse than all assumptions.  Firstly, this is the first investigation of the current president in U.S. history, sanctioned by members of only one party:  the opposition.  Secondly, the new rules of impeachment legalize the de facto dictatorship of one person: chairman of the Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff.  Schiff gained almost unlimited power.  Now it is Schiff alone who decides who will be called in as a witness, what questions can be asked to the witness, and who exactly will get the right to ask questions.  Schiff obtained the right to terminate the hearing if his version of the events is disputed by some intractable witness.  Republicans were [...] given the right to be able to ask Schiff to call a defense witness, and then only Schiff would be able to decide to admit such a witness.  Only Schiff decides whether the hearing will be open or closed and whether a transcript of the committee's meetings will be made public.

Orwellian Fear Reigns in Vermont.  George Orwell explained in 1984 how Big Brother employed constant fear to pacify the masses (the "proles"), with vague foreign "threats" that were purely fictitious.  In the Cold War, it was nuclear extinction; in the Iraq War (and still), it was "threat levels."  After 9/11, Americans were cautioned with "threats to the homeland."  Orwell warned not just of Soviet socialism, but of any monolithic government that sought dominance.

Steve Scalise:  Pelosi Using Impeachment Probe to Influence 2020 Presidential Election.  While briefing reporters in the wake of the House Democrat's approval, along party lines, of the impeachment inquiry resolution, Scalise declared:  ["]If you look at where we are at right now, we're at an important point in history.  Clearly, there are people that we serve with that don't like the results of the 2016 election — that's their prerogative — but the country next year will be deciding who our president is going to be.  It should not be Nancy Pelosi and a small group of people that she selects that get to determine who's going to be our president.["]  He went on to say that Democrats are not interested in getting to the bottom of the allegations that triggered the impeachment effort.  Instead, their focus is solely on removing President Donald Trump from office and overturning the results of the 2016 elections, Scalise indicated.

Trick or Trick.  The nation is beginning to see the ugliness of the establishment, people who believe they have a divine right (if they believed in the divine) to run the federal government.  If that right is ever challenged, that's when the long knives come out.  Secret testimonies, barring Republicans from calling their own witnesses or cross-examining the ones Democrats have subpoenaed, and now a federal judge's ruling that secret grand jury records from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation must be turned over to House Democrats — this is how the establishment fights back.  A Wall Street Journal editorial called it "political damage control" when Democrats criticized a decision by the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into the genesis of the Russian "collusion" with the 2016 Trump campaign.

How America's justice system is beginning to crumble.  We Americans have long prided ourselves on the fairness of our system of justice.  It remains the best in the world.  But, just like a strong and magnificent bridge across a wide river, corrosion can set in.  If not monitored and repaired, the bridge can suddenly collapse.  Likewise, if we ignore the warning signs, if we do not address the inequities in our justice system, the public will reach a point when there is so little respect for the law that its enforcement will cease to be effective.  The danger is that we might become a lawless society, and that will lead to becoming a failed state.  Chaos and disintegration could follow.  Hyperbole?  Here are seven warning signs, present today, that we ignore at great peril. [...]

GOP Has A Choice:  Fight Anti-Trump Coup Effort Or Surrender Government To Democrats.  What we are facing now is not partisan warfare, it's not a mystery novel, it's not politics-as-usual.  We are facing an attempt to tear down the foundations of our republic by corrupt, unelected bureaucrats who have decided the will of voters is subordinate to their will to power.  It represents a fatal threat to our system of government, and if this coup succeeds — whether through impeachment proceedings, or through an election that (if the last three years are any indication) the other side is clearly willing to steal by hook or by crook — the nation will cease to be a constitutional, democratic republic.  This isn't about Trump, or Republicans, or conservatives.  It is about Washington needing to learn that political differences have to be settled at the ballot box lest they instead be settled with an undermining of our constitutional norms and institutions.

Steve Scalise: '75% of the Entire Congress' Not Allowed to Enter Schiff's Secret Impeachment Chamber.  [Quoting House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)]: Our members are really angry about this and want to highlight what's going on.  They want to stop this Soviet-style process.  If they are going to impeach the president, do it in clear view.  Everybody ought to be held accountable.  Don't hide behind one guy, Adam Schiff, and all these other members who want to have a justification for impeaching the president because they don't like results of the 2016 election, are going to fall back on that in secret.  We're all elected members of Congress.  We get held accountable every two years for what we do.  The things we do are done in public, not in secret.  That's got to stop, and we need to continue to highlight it.  People back home know, too.  One of the good things yesterday is that the press actually paid attention for the first time to how bad a hijacked Soviet-style process this is.

The Real Coup.  Starting in the 1930s, politicians began stealthily transferring power from themselves, the elected representatives of we the people, to unelected bureaucrats and judges.  We the people can't get rid of bureaucrats or judges via elections, so they can operate without our consent with impunity.  To get rid of them requires a significant majority of honest politicians in Congress, which hasn't been manifest for quite some time.  The politicians say the depredations of the administrators and the dishonest judges are not their, the politicians', fault, so they mislead voters into re-electing the very politicians who refuse to punish administrators and judges who violate their oath of office.  Much has been written about the rise of the administrative state, but the simple reality is that most of the rules and edicts from Washington that we the people have to follow aren't voted on or approved by the people we elect.  Rather, they're ushered in by nameless and faceless government employees.

O'Rourke's America.  With apologies to Margaret Atwood and a thousand other dystopian novelists, we do not have to theorize about what an American police state would look like, because we know what it looks like:  the airport, that familiar totalitarian environment where Americans are disarmed, stripped of their privacy, divested of their freedom of speech, herded around like livestock, and bullied by bovine agents of "security" in a theatrical process that has an 85 percent failure rate because it isn't designed as a security-screening protocol at all but as a jobs program for otherwise unemployable morons.

Nothing Constitutional About An Impeachment Process With Secret Evidence And Secret Witnesses.  The forceful and thorough rebuke that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone delivered to the "impeachment inquiry" will go down in history as the definitive document defeating an attempted coup.  Over the course of eight scathing pages in a letter last week, Cipollone thoroughly deconstructed the absurd "Ukrainegate" narrative that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (Calif.) has tried to construct.

Democrats using impeachment to consolidate power.  The Democrats are clearly planning something with the illegitimate and ever changing impeachment operation.  While they may think they're clever and strategic, their modus operandi has never been more obvious.  The impeachment inquiry has never been about shady White House leakers or fabricated whistleblowers.  It is entirely about a Legislative Branch under the control and used at the discretion of the Democratic Party.  The end goal is to abolish the separation of powers, or checks and balances, as outlined in the Constitution.

Tlaib: Dems Have Discussed Arresting White House Officials Who Refuse to Comply With Subpoenas.  Freshman Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MN) told the Deadline Detroit that House Democrats have talked about arresting and detaining members of President Donald Trump's administration who fail to comply with congressional subpoenas.  While this is something Democrats are contemplating, Tlaib said this is "uncharted territory."  "If they were to detain someone, where would they go and have them detained so that they can comply with the subpoenas?" Tlaib said.  "There have been actual serious conversations about what the logistics would look like ... if we did have to force someone through a court order to come before the Congressional committee," she explained.  "This is pretty uncharted territory for many of us and even for Congress."

The Editor says...
There's a reason it's "uncharted territory."  You're not supposed to go there!

Democrats' Treatment of Trump During "Impeachment" Is How They'd Like to Treat Each of Us in Court.  I want you to think about how the Pelosi-Schiff impeachment process is being conducted.  Imagine a criminal trial or civil action during which the "Democrat Prosecution" — the prosecutors — conduct themselves as follows:
  •   Prosecutors issue repeated, baldfaced lies to the public
  •   Prosecutors secretly solicit accusers
  •   Prosecutors collaborate with accusers to assist with the creation of a "complaint"
  •   All testimony occurs in secret
  •   No transcripts are made public
  •   No defense counsel are permitted
  •   The defense is prevented from calling witnesses or issuing subpoenas
  •   The accused is assumed guilty and must prove him- or herself innocent
  •   The accused is afforded no due process [...]
If they had their way, Democrats would treat each of you like this.

Will We Ever Prosecute?  Imagine that the local cops know that a gang member, named William, broke into the pawn shop and stole guns, jewelry, and money.  William's fingerprints, film image, and DNA add to the hard evidence log.  The owner knows it; the prosecutor knows it; William's gang associates know it.  But he is not arrested.  Nearby shopkeepers and neighborhood mothers are asking why he is walking the street.  No one explains it; mum's the word.  Could it be there is a grand plan to take out the gang's leaders?  No one knows; mum's the word.  Shopkeepers and residents are about to give up and start moving away from the area, and no one asks them to stay the course.  Fast-forward to today's still vocal Obama gang.  Why no indictments?  Mum's the word.  Can anyone hold to the faith in American justice?  Those who support the rule of law feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football.

So Who Went To Jail?  If you or I did something like this we'd be rotting in a prison cell right now.  They're not.  The reason why not is obvious.

Police chief ordered ticket quotas to raise revenue, N.J. cops say in whistleblower suit.  Six police officers in Mercer County have filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Lawrence Township and its police chief claiming they were ordered to write more tickets and impound as many cars as possible to meet an illegal quota.  The suit, filed Monday [10/7/2019] in Mercer County Superior Court, claims Lawrence police administrators ordered officers to write tickets and impound cars "every time they are eligible and without discretion."  The reason was that revenue was down, according to the suit.

More about radar traps.

The Ukraine Hoax is About Protecting the Side Hustle.  What?  There is no 28th Amendment you say?  Well, this one isn't actually written down or ratified but it's very real.  It explains how much of Washington actually works.  If it were reduced to writing, it might read, "Thou shalt not mess with another swamp creature's side-hustle."  The 28th amendment might have originated after the 1978 ABSCAM scandal in which one senator and six congressmen accepted or solicited bribes from undercover FBI agents.  What a bunch of amateurs!  Everyone in Washington knows that you don't act as your own bag man when selling favors!  Corruption in modern D.C. is shaped like a triangle.  A person or entity seeking a favor doesn't hand the money directly to the politician or public official.  Instead, the money goes to a trusted family relation under a vague "consulting" or "speaking" arrangement.  This golden triangle of corruption appears over and over again in the Russia collusion hoax.

DNI Declassifies FISA Judge James Boasberg 2018 Ruling — FBI Conducted "Tens of Thousands" of Unauthorized NSA Database Queries.  Background:  In April 2017 the DNI released a FISA report written by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collery that showed massive abuse, via unauthorized searches of the NSA database, in the period of November 2015 through May 2016.  Judge Collyer's report specifically identified search query increases tied to the 2016 presidential primary.  Two years of research identified this process as the DOJ/FBI and IC using the NSA database to query information related to political candidates, specifically Donald Trump.

Team Trump:  We'll sue Minneapolis over $530,000 shakedown by liberal mayor.  As of now, Donald Trump is scheduled to appear at the Target Center in Minneapolis on Thursday [10/10/2019], part of his plan to flip Minnesota to the GOP in 2020.  The city wants to make sure he pays for the privilege — through the nose, apparently.  The city sent a $530,000 security bill to the venue for Trump's rally, which then passed it along to Team Trump, which then promptly threatened to sue the city over its "outrageous abuse of power."

Minneapolis' liberal mayor trying to 'bully' President Trump out of Minnesota, says head of police union.  The mayor of Minneapolis, a Democrat, is trying to "antagonize" and "bully" President Trump to discourage him from coming to the historically blue state, a police union leader said Tuesday.  Lieutenant Bob Kroll, president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, said on "Fox & Friends" that Mayor Jacob Frey is discriminating against Trump ahead of his upcoming rally at the Target Center on Thursday [10/3/2019].  Kroll's claims are in line with Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale, who accused Frey of "abuse of power" over a proposed $530,000 security fee to use the arena.

Report Shows FBI Official Received Sports Tickets From CNN Reporter And Lied About It To Investigators.  The FBI's top press officer during the Hillary Clinton and Trump-Russia investigations accepted tickets to a Washington Nationals game from a CNN correspondent and lied about it repeatedly during interviews with the Justice Department's inspector general, according to a report obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.  Michael Kortan, who served as assistant director of public affairs, displayed a "lack of candor" during multiple interviews under oath with the DOJ watchdog about how he obtained the tickets, who he went with, and whether he reimbursed the CNN journalist, according to the report.

President Trump Is Absolutely Right To Assume Federal Agencies Are Against Him.  Federal employees are anything but neutral administrators of the law.  Fully 95 percent of donations from those working for agencies went to Hillary Clinton in 2016.  And a web of civil service laws built over the past century effectively inures them to the consequences of defying the elected and appointed officials tasked by our political process with captaining the ship of state.  It takes up to two years to fire a federal worker, even those convicted of felonies while on the job.  Four different appeal routes and a flowchart's worth of avenues prevent most managers from even trying to rid themselves of incompetent or outright insubordinate employees.  "At the DOJ, we can't really get fired," a career employee chuckles over coffee in an undercover video from Project Veritas, while outlining how she uses her position to undermine the administration.  As early as the winter of the president's inauguration, federal employees were already publicly trading tips on how to "#resist" from within.

Mike Pompeo:  Democrats Violated the Rules:  Told State Dept.  Officials "Not to Contact" Legal Counsel before Testimony.  [Quoting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo:]  ["]Back to first principles.  The predicate of your final question about objecting to what the folks on Capitol Hill have asked.  It's fundamentally not true.  What we objected to was the demands that were put that deeply violate the fundamental principle of separation of powers.  They contacted State Department employees directly.  They told them NOT to contact legal counsel at the State Department.  That's been reported to us.  They said the the State Department wouldn't be able to be present. [..."]

Stand.  We watched the passage of Obamacare at 1:38 am on the day before Christmas Eve in 2009.  We watched the Senate, then the House attempt passing Amnesty in 2014.  We know exactly how it passed, and we know exactly why it passed.  We don't need to stand around talking about it.  We know what lies hidden behind "cloture" and the UniParty schemes.  We watched the 2009 $900+ billion Stimulus Bill being spent each year, every year, for seven consecutive years.  Omnibus, Porkulous, QE1, QE2, Bailouts, Crony-Capitalism.  We know exactly how this works, and we know exactly why this ruse is maintained.

Rep. Ratcliffe:  Democrats Trying to 'Undo One Election and... Influence the Next One'.  Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) on Monday [9/30/2019] called the Democrats' three-year drive for impeachment "outrageous."  "I mean, there are now more versions of Democratic impeachment than there are Microsoft Window versions," Ratcliffe told Fox News's Mario Bartiromo.  He said Democrats are trying to "undo one election and at the same time influence the next one."

Senate GOP Should Give Democrats A Dose Of Their Own Medicine.  Democrats are searching, desperately, for anything to validate their push for impeachment.  They're only missing any evidence to justify the foregone conclusion they're gearing everything toward.  It's amazing what a political party will do when they lack a candidate with charisma and an agenda with support.  With that in mind, Democrats have embraced the ancient art of "making [stuff] up."  Hearings with no questions asked to elicit any information, just political speeches delivered one soundbite at a time.  Flat-out lies and fantasy portrayed as "parody" broadcast across the country with no "journalistic" pushback.

No One Noticed When Clinton and Obama Abused Whistleblowers.  Here are two unfortunate realities:  the first is that whistleblowing becomes virtuous only when a Republican is the one being whistled on; the second is that deep state Democrats have a habit of manipulating whistleblower laws when it suits their purposes.  I could write a book — I've written several, in fact — on whistleblowers the major media chose to ignore.  The two examples that follow, one regarding Bill Clinton, the other Barack Obama, should give a sense of how the worms in Washington turn.

Ruling Class vs. 'The Others'.  Should any of us violate the laws, we can expect to have the book thrown at us.  But for them, it's more a slap on the wrist, if anything at all.  We see this in the behavior of the Clintons, deep state actors, and even the Bidens.  No one seriously thinks that Hunter Biden's Ukrainian and Chinese business "activities" are above board.  But even more troubling, consider that a sitting vice president of the United States was potentially involved in pay-to-play with foreign nations.  The ruling class apparently believes the law is whatever it says it is.  It is whatever is convenient for them.

30 of The Biggest Lies & Hoaxes Perpetrated on The American People.  [Scroll down]  There are so many hoaxes, illusions, and lies that have been perpetrated not just on America, but across the Globe, for eons.  We could go on and on and do an entire dissertation on the Federal Reserve alone.  We could get into manufactured wars, technology suppression, patent interference, the space program and outer space, or medical cures that would surely drain them of their power and endless streams of cash.  Or, we could go down the rabbit hole on the Red Cross, or the creepy rituals performed by some of these "elite," or their illuminati symbolism.  But, you get the idea.  They are about power, control, money, children, AI, transhumanism, and a one world governance, and they don't care who they harm along the way.

Donor who gave $45K to elect sheriff got coveted gun permit from her office.  A manager for a prominent private security firm that provides bodyguards to Silicon Valley executives received a concealed-gun permit from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office months after he made a $45,000 contribution to an independent committee supporting Sheriff Laurie Smith's 2018 re-election, newly disclosed records show.  The campaign contribution is one focus of an investigation by the Santa Clara County district attorney's office into whether the sheriff gave out the coveted gun permits in exchange for campaign support, sources familiar with the probe have told The [San Francisco] Chronicle.

Hearings Expose How Kamala Harris Used Prosecutorial Power To Benefit Abortion Businesses That Support Her Campaigns.  More than four years ago, former California attorney general Kamala Harris launched an investigation into the work of citizen journalists and abortion activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who discovered Planned Parenthood's trafficking of aborted baby body parts. [...] Not only was the district attorney's office unable to produce evidence of probable cause, however, it instead became increasingly clear that the charges were not brought forth based on a real case but as part of a political prosecution on behalf of Planned Parenthood.  Cross examination of witnesses, abortionists, and investigators revealed not just admissions of the violent crimes Daleiden set out to expose with his undercover videos in question, but that this is a textbook example of corporate donors and corrupt politicians ignoring civil liberties and using their power to prey upon political opponents.

The Truth about Huey Long.  [Scroll down]  He was among the earliest American politicians advocating for redistribution of wealth, insisting that true equality would only be achieved when big corporations — in his case, Standard Oil — were forced to pay higher taxes to fund a more robust welfare state.  In public, Huey P. Long boasted of his populist policy bona fides, hiding his well-to-do upbringing to convince Louisiana's poor and working class that he understood their plight.  But in private, Long lived lavishly at taxpayer expense.  In speeches, he condemned J. P. Morgan Jr. for owning 100 suits, which Long said he stole off the backs of working people.  Meanwhile, Long used state funds to outfit a luxurious wardrobe of as many suits or more.  Deciding that the existing governor's mansion wasn't grand enough for him, Long demanded that a new one be constructed.  When the legislature wouldn't approve the funds for the project, Long simply ordered construction to begin, and it did.

President Obama Weaponized Government — Phase Two Was Positioned to Monetize Government.  President Obama's team used the DOJ, CIA, FBI and IRS to target their opposition.  The intelligence apparatus was weaponized; one small example that scratches the surface is the FBI/NSA database exploitation.  Black files on DC politicians, private sector groups and individuals facilitating leverage, and we are still seeing the ramifications. [...] Big multinational interests, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Global Banking interests, etc, were exclusively supporting both President Obama and candidate Clinton.  The domestic politics of the U.S. were/are tools toward an end; and, so long as the person occupying the oval office did not interfere with Big Club objectives, they too would benefit financially.  It is also obvious the opposition to President Trump, those who are really coordinating and manipulating the grassroots sheeple opposition, are these same multinational interests.

The suicide of the House is complete.  Over time, the House has had one major constitutional duty:  the budget.  All spending and taxation bills must originate in the House.  But in all likelihood, the decline of the House started in 1995, when the newly elected Republican Congress under Newt Gingrich caved in to media pressure to give Bill Clinton his bloated budget.  Since then, no House has even attempted to control the deficits or the debt.  For eight years under George W. Bush, the rationale was to fund the War on Terror.  Then, under Barack Obama, the Democrat House had no intention of dealing with the deficits or the debt.  For eight years, under both Democrats and Republicans, nothing was done to recapture the budget process.  Continuing resolutions were the rule of the day.  Enter Nancy Pelosi, whose Congress openly and energetically vowed to do utterly nothing in the way of actual legislation, but instead to investigate and otherwise obstruct President Donald Trump.  This marked the final transition of the House into irrelevance.

Are American Voters Helpless?  Many Americans know what the problems are, but they are helpless in solving them alone.  Why?  Because we are a representative republic and expect our elected representatives to know the problems and solve them. [...] Aren't these people elected to keep America safe?  Don't these elected officials work for their constituents?  Haven't they sworn that they "will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and that they "will bear true faith and allegiance to the same?"  They did, they promised and they lied.  So, now what?  We, the People, elect our leaders, and must hold them accountable.  So, what happens when they refuse to stand by their oath of office and defend the Constitution?  Fire them, you might say!!  That's one way.  How can we be sure the next guy isn't any better or different than the former?  The reality is, We the People live in a fantasy world and are under the assumption that everything will be all right.  But it won't be.

Slaying the imperial dragon.  The administrative state, sometimes called the Deep State, undermines the country.  D.C. is the hub of concentrated power used to control the country down to the most basic level.  If citizens allow D.C. to determine the size of their commodes, they will allow most any kind of centralized control.  In effect, D.C. is an Imperial City ruling by edict.  This is supported by the fact that the richest five counties in the country are located around DC. These areas are where the imperial elite live — highly paid bureaucrats in lifetime jobs, lobbyists, think-tankers and the good friends of lobbyists in Congress along with mainstream media enablers.  Congress is broken and has no intention of revoking the Imperial City now or in the foreseeable future.

The Deep State Will Face Justice Soon!  Right?  [Scroll down]  Then we have that pathetic excuse for a human being, James Comey, gloating over the I.G. report that issued a verbal slap on the wrist for his infractions.  Comey:  "And to all those who've spent two years talking about me 'going to jail' or being a 'liar and a leaker' — ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president."  But no worries:  Comey will pay when the FISA abuse report comes out.  Or not:  Washington insiders are now foreshadowing immunity for the entire cabal, saying that, "sadly," these lawbreakers probably won't be prosecuted.  That's not sad; it's terrifying.  If we can't indict and prosecute these clowns who have conspired to overthrow our government, who have committed the most egregious political crime in history, then stick a fork in our Republic.  We're done.  But what can we do?  Actually, this whole strung out Spygate nightmare is an exercise to ensure we do nothing.  Washington isn't a swamp; it's a sewer, and the rats that inhabit it are never going to allow their comrades to be indicted.

Cosmic Injustice.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg used to sermonize to the nation about gun-control, global warming, the perils of super-sized soft drinks, smoking, and fatty-foods in his efforts to virtue signal his moral fides — even as his New York was nearly paralyzed by the 2010 blizzard that trapped millions of his city's residents in their homes due to inept and incompetent city efforts to remove snow. [...] New Yorkers in 2011 were worried more about the piles of snow on the sidewalks than they felt threatened by 32-ounce Cokes — while realizing that no snow blocked either the Bloomberg official or private residence.

The Bogus Story That Launched a 'Collusion' Probe.  The George Papadopoulos Origin Story has never added up.  It has been portrayed as the Big Bang, the Magic Moment that started the FBI's investigation of "collusion" — a suspected election-theft conspiracy between Donald Trump's campaign and Vladimir Putin's regime.  But if the young energy-sector analyst had actually emerged in early 2016 as the key to proving Trump-Russia espionage, you would think the FBI might have gotten around to interviewing him before January 27, 2017 — i.e., a week after President Trump had been inaugurated, and six months after the Bureau formally opened its "Crossfire Hurricane" probe.

14 FBI Officials Leaked to the Media, Only Four Were Fired, Judicial Watch Reveals.  On Tuesday, Judicial Watch announced it had received records showing that the FBI referred 14 employees to the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) for leaking sensitive or classified information.  Of those 14 employees, only four were fired.  "No wonder the FBI was leaking so profusely.  Collectively, these documents show a show lenient treatment for evident criminal activity.  Only four of the 14 employees found to have made an unauthorized disclosure were dismissed from the FBI," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.  "And even though Andrew McCabe was fired and referred for a criminal investigation for his leak, no prosecution has taken place."

Mayor de Blasio ordered NYPD Executive Protection Unit to move his daughter out of a Brooklyn apartment, sources say.  Mayor de Blasio has his own moving company - the NYPD.  Hizzoner ordered members of his troubled NYPD security detail to move his daughter out of an apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, multiple sources told the Daily News.  The move happened roughly one year ago under cover of night, the sources said.  Chiara de Blasio lived in the apartment at 4th Ave. and 56th St. for roughly two years, according to a source close to de Blasio's Executive Protection Unit.  The move was an abuse of city resources, that source said.

Democrat Jerry Nadler Used Government Resources to Try and Deport American Citizen Sebastian Gorka.  Since telling American citizens who immigrated to the United States to "go back" to their original countries is in the news, it's important to remind everyone about despicable behavior from elected Democrat officials on the issue.  When President Trump tapped Hungarian-American immigrant Sebastian Gorka to serve in the White House, Nadler called for an investigation into how he became an American citizen and used government resources to get him deported.

Government Regulations: The Princess and Pea.  In "The Princess and the Pea," an old queen proves that a midnight traveler is a true princess by hiding a pea under an almost unbelievable number of mattresses and down bedclothes.  Because she is indeed a real princess, she feels the pea and the prince marries her.  It is an awful story, one I don't suggest telling your kids — unless you change the old queen to the old bureaucrat, the prince to the politician, the visiting princess to an entrepreneur, and the ending to a riot from the entrepreneurs after they figure out the pea was put there on purpose.  Then, although it is still an unpleasant tale, it will at least teach your kids a lesson about the way government works.  They manufacture a problem, and then they create a regulation to "solve" the problem.

In California, don't call them 'public servants,' call them 'the government gang'.  As a Californian of more than three decades, I have watched the highways deteriorate, with no new construction of freeways (or reservoirs for that matter) while the population soared.  I have watched the schools go from bad to horrendous.  Meanwhile, taxes have soared to levels that are driving out middle class taxpayers in very large numbers.  The rest of us who are not members of the government gang watch as the gang members get rich.

Is America Still the Land of the Free?  Although the number is disputed by some, even President Ronald Reagan once noted that there are roughly 20,000 laws regarding gun control alone, and that's just the federal illegitimate "laws."  So many other "laws" exist that it's been estimated that the average American commits approximately three felonies each day.  This makes the authorities' task simple if for any reason they wish to victimize you.  Just ask the Bundy Family, Hammond Father and Son, LaVoy Finicum's Family, Lt. General Michael Flynn, and Michael Cohen and a few others.

The Dems' 2020 Election Strategy.  [Scroll down]  The Swamp, we now know, cannot be drained because it is not a marsh or everglade but an ocean of sludge filled with plastic straws, unrecyclable paper, Strzok-Page love notes, and 33,000 bleached messages about yoga and wedding dresses.  The System betrays all.  Half of us vote for a liberal like Clinton, only to be presented with an end to Welfare, a tough crime bill, and a dry-cleaning bill for a dress stain.  At least he delivered Midnight Basketball.  The other half of us, deep-rooted patriotic conservatives, vote for Republicans and end up with Justices like David Souter and Harry Blackmun, with wage and price controls, and with international "free-trade" agreements that all-but-destroy our steel and aluminum industries, while decimating our manufacturing.

FBI Appears to Have Defrauded the Court in the Manafort Case.  The FBI appears to have regularly ignored factual material and used planted newspaper articles as secondary sources, even when they knew the documents were probably fake.  This was the FBI under Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe.  If true, it's especially ironic since they are so arrogant, self-righteous, and denigrating of others who they dislike.  A new exposé by John Solomon points to evidence that the investigation against Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's short-lived campaign manager, was based on evidence they knew was false.

How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty.  [Scroll down]  Some of the towns in St. Louis County can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts.  A majority of these fines are for traffic offenses, but they can also include fines for fare-hopping on MetroLink (St. Louis's light rail system), loud music and other noise ordinance violations, zoning violations for uncut grass or unkempt property, violations of occupancy permit restrictions, trespassing, wearing "saggy pants," business license violations and vague infractions such as "disturbing the peace" or "affray" that give police officers a great deal of discretion to look for other violations.

The Orwellian Attack on Section 101.  [Scroll down]  Let's be absolutely clear:  this bill, and the coalition of leeches pushing it, is anti-American garbage.  It is impossible to sustain the rule of law surrounding intellectual property in a world where almost everything can not only be patented, but also be the subject of contradictory, overlapping patents, with the only way to tell which of those patents is legitimate being a legal war of all against all.  And while the patent bloodsuckers like to wrap their policies in the mantle of property rights, a world where those property rights are the subject of endless haggling is one where the concept of property rights will come to be seen as useless, when properly applied, it should be the fruit of innovation.

The Selective Prosecution of Kellyanne Conway.  [Scroll down]  What utter garbage!  What member of any administration since any of us have been alive could not be accused of making political comments while in the White House, overtly or covertly?  At least when they're doing it overtly we can see what they're up to.  Kudos to Kellyanne for that.  So why Conway and why now?  Well, first we might want to know the names of those behind this smear.

Feds gone wild:  DOJ's stunning inability to prosecute its own bad actors.  One was caught red-handed engaged in nepotism.  Another, a lawyer no less, admitted to shoplifting at a Marine barracks store.  A third leaked sealed court information to the news media.  And a fourth engaged in fraud by turning a government garage into a personal repair shop.  Four cases, all solved in the past month, with suspects who cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and significant breaches of public trust.  But these weren't your everyday perps.  All were U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) employees who are supposed to catch other criminals while working for the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. attorneys' offices.  Instead, they broke the law or violated the rules.  And all managed to escape prosecution, despite their proven transgressions.

Free Steve Stockman.  My husband, former Congressman Steve Stockman who twice served southeast Texas districts in the U.S. House of Representatives, was a bold, outspoken opponent of the Clinton and Obama administrations during his two terms in office.  Now he sits in jail after being prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice. [...] Steve Stockman has spent most of his adult life working in one way or another to aggressively fight the political left's agenda to transform America into a socialist country.  Yet I watched as he was led away to prison as a common criminal when we both knew he was innocent of all the trumped up, vague, and highly confusing charges.

An obvious violation of the Eighth Amendment:
Why is Paul Manafort off to Rikers?  The decision to move Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was sentenced earlier this year to nearly seven years in prison in connection with two federal cases, from the decent federal prison to which he was sentenced to solitary confinement to the dangerous hell hole that is New York City's Rikers Island seems abusive and possibly illegal.  I know Rikers well having spent time there visiting numerous defendants accused of murder and other violent crimes.  It is a terrible place that no one should ever be sent to.  It should be shut down.  It is so bad that defendants often plead guilty, even if they have defensible cases, simply to move to a safer and better prison.

Legal experts stunned by DA's 'barbaric' move to send Manafort to Rikers Island.  The decision to send one of the highest-profile Trump campaign members prosecuted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to New York CIty's infamous Rikers Island jail has stunned many in the legal community — and even some Democrats not normally sympathetic toward Mueller targets.  Fox News reported earlier this week that Paul Manafort, who served as President Trump's campaign chairman, is being transferred from a federal prison to New York City's Rikers Island, notorious for gang violence and housing some of the most infamous violent offenders.  A state judge ordered the transfer at the request of New York City District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr., who is pursuing a case against Manafort involving alleged residential mortgage fraud, falsified business records and more.  Criminal defense attorneys swiftly slammed the decision.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:  Paul Manafort "should be released" from "torture" of solitary confinement.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday knocked reports that President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was going to be moved into solitary confinement in her district, calling the punishment "torture."  "Paul Manafort is being sent to solitary confinement in my district — Rikers Island.  A prison sentence is not a license for gov torture and human rights violations.  That's what solitary confinement is.  Manafort should be released, along with all people being held in solitary," the New York Democrat tweeted.  Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has been a vocal critic of prisons' use of solitary confinement.

Deep State:  First, the attempted coup.  Now, the political prisoner.  What we are all looking at is how criminal Deep State is, demonstrating how it can use the levers of power to turn a first-world country into a banana republic.  We aren't seeing normal things from these people, we are seeing some incredible abuses of power.  Manafort was convicted earlier and is doing time in Pennsylvania for white collar crimes around taxable income and foreign agent registration.  These are crimes few are ever prosecuted for, but they were real enough.  Now he's a wedge player in a new and very dirty deep-state political game.

Update:
Paul Manafort [is] not going to Rikers Island, will remain in federal custody after DOJ rejects move, source says.  The Justice Department has rejected New York County District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.'s attempt to have former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort transferred to the notorious Rikers Island prison complex ahead of his pending state court trial, amid questions as to why the move was even contemplated in the first place, Fox News is told.  Fox News first reported earlier this month that a New York State judge ordered the transfer at Vance's request.  However, because Manafort has been convicted on federal charges, any attempt to move him out of federal custody must be approved by Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.  On Monday [6/17/2019], Rosen denied the attempt, effectively keeping Manafort in federal custody.

The Editor says...
Earlier coverage of this story indicated that Mr. Manafort had already been moved [1] [2] or "will be sent" there [3] or "could happen as early as Thursday [6/6/2019]." [4]

Manhattan prosecutors cave in on Manafort Rikers scheme after DoJ note.  Maybe we really do have a Department of Justice that's serious about reforming itself.  Attorney General William Barr deserves applause for this one. [...] Now, Manafort is not a guy anyone needs to feel much sympathy for for being in a federal prison, given that he committed crimes on his tax reportage that most of us would never think of doing.  But the Deep State has shown itself to be far, far more vile than Manafort ever was.

Getting the Word Out on our Failed Ruling Class.  The problem for Britain's old working class, as for our U.S. white working class dying of despair, is that the glorious mechanical apparatus of progressive administration has no soul.  As Chris Arnade of Back Row America says, the lower class interface with the welfare state is with "sterile institutions that chew them up and then spit them out."  We are talking about the courts, the prisons, welfare offices, "rehab clinics and detox centers, law offices".  The fact is all government institutions are like that, including armies, which are expressly designed to suck up young men and send them out to fight the regime's wars.  In the process millions of young men get chewed up, and the lucky ones get spat out.  Hello liberals!  It doesn't matter what government program we are talking about, whether evil colonialist militarism, or domestic activist colonialism; in the end it comes down to chew-up-ology and spit-out-ology.  Because government is not compassion; it is force.

Maxine Waters Let Obama's Cat Out of the Bag in 2013.  Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), one of the left wing's most prominent and vocal figures, has a 30-year history of ill advised, frothing rhetoric.  "Auntie Maxine" is atop no one's list of vise-lipped confidantes, yet because of her prominence, she is clued in on much of the darker machinations of the Democratic Party and its backers.  Occasionally, she reveals more than intended.  February 2013 was one of those times.

Tyrannical Government Hunts Down Parents Of 3-Year-Old, Forces Child To Undergo Chemo, Then Strips Parents Of Their Custody.  When there is clearly neglect of a child, someone must step in and do something to ensure that the child is protected, but many times, I have become aware that the state quite often violates its jurisdiction and inserts itself into something it has no knowledge of nor business being involved in.  This is the situation involving 3-year-old Noah McAdams and his parents, Taylor and Josh.  Not only were the parents reported by Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital to authorities, but the government forced them to reluctantly submit their little boy to chemotherapy and later would strip them of their parental rights and custody of their son.  However, surprise!  The media failed to report the entire story and made the parents out to look like criminals.

3 Times Media Falsely Claimed Russiagate Transparency Would End The Republic.  As the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence prepared to release information about abuse of the secret court that permit the government to spy on American citizens, the Justice Department released a letter to the press saying the action was "extraordinarily reckless," would be "damaging" to "national security," and would risk "damage to our intelligence community or the important work it does in safeguarding the American people." [...] Justice and the FBI also have a pattern of redacting huge swaths of reports and letters to and from Congress as part of their oversight investigation into the spying on the Trump campaign.  When the redactions are lessened, they reveal not sensitive information that affects national security so much as embarrassing details about how Justice and FBI have conducted business.

Investigation Finds Thousands of Regulations Issued By Career Bureaucrats In Violation of the Constitution.  [Scroll down]  Recognizing that career bureaucrats signing off on rules is Constitutionally problematic, PLF investigated the rule-making process at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  Looking at all rules issued by HHS from 2001 to 2017, we found that 71 percent of the 2,952 rules we reviewed were unconstitutional.  The worst offender within HHS is FDA, where 98 percent of rules are unconstitutional.  Many of these are highly technical rules that govern scientific drug and food development; others are significant regulations that carry huge costs and have a substantive impact felt by businesses and consumers.  But in virtually all cases, these rules were enacted by government employees who lacked the proper Constitutional authority to do so.  What this practice represents is an erosion of government accountability, which paves the way to an erosion of liberty and, ultimately, government abuse.

Sharyl Attkisson:  How Obama "Surveilled" aka Spied On Me.  Sharyl Attkisson has a shocking story to tell about how she was spied on by our government.  She discovered shocking things that had been done in order to surveil her activities on because she did government watchdog reporting.  She goes into detail below about the measures that were taken to spy on her just like James Rosen of Fox News was spied on:  [Video clip]

Patriot Act enabled Russia collusion hoax and further Deep State treachery.  In October of 2001, and following 9/11, President George W. Bush told the nation that the Patriot Act would "give intelligence and law enforcement officials important new tools to fight a present danger."  It was assumed — foolishly — that the threat was from terrorism.  But when and as reauthorized, the Patriot Act during the administration of President Barack Obama, Obama claimed that tweaks to the act would allow US law enforcement to better target homegrown "lone wolves."  Again, the assumption — a foolish one — assumed that the targets would largely be self-motivated terrorists.  Terrorists like Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  But leave it to official Washington to stretch any legal definitions beyond their original, intended scope.

What Does It Mean To Be Moral In the Public Area?  We're at a time in our country when most of our elected officials apparently have forgotten their responsibilities.  In truth, U.S. politicians in their capacity as politicians have one moral imperative:  to promote, protect, and advance the interests of the American people they represent.  Everything else is secondary.  To do anything other than promote the interests of the American people — or worse, to promote behavior that is detrimental to the interests of Americans — is, in fact, immoral.  So what does it mean, then, to be a moral public official? [...] The first concern of any elected official in the United States should be for the freedom, safety, and welfare of the American people before all others, not the personal morality of their lives.

U.S. Intelligence [Agencies are] Institutionally Politicized Toward Democrats.  The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have become bastions of political liberals and the pro-Democratic Party views of intelligence personnel have increased under President Donald Trump, according to a journal article by a former CIA analyst.  John Gentry, who spent 12 years as a CIA analyst, criticized former senior intelligence leaders, including CIA Director John Brenan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former deputy CIA director Michael Morell, along with former analyst Paul Pillar, for breaking decades-long prohibitions of publicly airing their liberal political views in attacking Trump.

Why Democrats Freaked Out When Barr Said The Trump Campaign Was Spied On.  There are two reasons the political media establishment is growing increasingly hostile towards Attorney General William Barr:  First, he serves under President Donald Trump.  Second, he is not only the messenger of the demise of the Russiagate conspiracy theory that the Deep State and its aiders, abettors, and enablers in the political media establishment worked so hard to perpetuate, but he could also be the source of the demise of the establishment itself, if he ends up exposing their whole sordid affair.  Should Barr conduct a thorough investigation of the Russiagate investigators, and the associated leakers and colluders, and dispense justice to the fullest extent of the law, it would drive a stake through the heart of the establishment writ large by demolishing the unjust system of double standards from which it has benefited, while punishing its foes.

The Corruption and Influence of Jessie K Liu.  What do the following four points have in common?
  •   The manipulated DC legal case surrounding the Awan brothers; and how they escaped full accountability, likely due to need to protect politicians.  (House of Representatives)  The sweetheart plea deal.
  •   The manipulated DC legal case surrounding SSCI Security Director James Wolfe; and how he was allowed to plea only to lying to investigators when the evidence was clear from the outset how he leaked classified information to his journalist concubine.  Again, likely due to the need to protect politicians.  (SSCI, Senate)  The sweetheart plea deal.
  •   The manipulated DC legal case surrounding Obama lawyer Greg Craig; and how he escaped accountability for FARA violations by running out the statute of limitations and burying Mueller's evidence for 18 months.  Again, likely due to the need to protect politicians (Obama White House).  Sweetheart double standards.
  •   The manipulated DC legal case, a non-filing, surrounding former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for lying to INSD investigators about his media leaks.  Again, likely due to the need to protect the administrative state.

Government 'Oversight' Is a Very Bad Joke.  [Scroll down]  The 67-page audit of [the California] DMV found a "reactive culture that has adversely impacted the field office customer experience," outdated management structures, a third of customer-service windows closed even as people waited in lines that went around the DMV field offices — and pretty much everything else that anyone who has visited a California DMV office would know.  The audit suggested changes, but the agency reacted in normal fashion and requested more money.  DMV offices, which I've described as a cross between bus stations and Soviet bread lines, have been like this since time immemorial (although they're better in some states) and will always be this way.  We must deal with the agency if we want to drive.  There are no customers that must be satisfied because we have no other choice.

Nebraska Flooding:  When the Government Cares More about Birds than People.  [Scroll down]  Until 2004, the government kept its end of the bargain, and flooding, while still a danger, was dramatically lessened in frequency and severity by the prudent operation of the dam system and the mechanical restructuring of the river itself.  That last paragraph, while perfectly reasonable to normal folks, is cause for outrage and seething anger among the increasingly radical environmentalist left, which is enamored of a dream of "rewilding" vast sections of North America via the "recovery" of river basins.  One might ask, "Recovery from what?"  In a word, the answer is "man."  Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and American Rivers advocate the wholesale removal of dams, even if it requires the forced relocation of millions of people and their businesses.  They seek a continent with untamed rivers, devoid of human interference with the perceived "natural processes" of ebb and flood.  At this level of green-think, it is more religion than science, with devotion measured in antipathy for the needs of mankind whenever there is conflict with nature.

Social Justice Prosecutors.  [Scroll down]  Individuals from this new class of legal eagles have advanced in all branches of government and at all levels — local, state, and federal.  They have attended notable law schools, they are African-American, and they are hellbent on ushering in an era of seeking what today's liberal law schools are pouring into their students by the bucket full — not "justice" but "social justice."  Now finding themselves in positions of power, these social justice warriors have a deep-rooted belief in the fundamental unfairness of America in general, and our judicial system in particular.  They believe that crimes for which underprivileged groups, namely blacks and Latinos, have higher rates of sentencing and incarceration, are the product of an at best a biased, and at worst a racist system; a system which they are a part of and can find ways to affect.  One example is when the Obama/Holder DOJ released 6,000 people from federal prisons and reduced the sentences of as many as 46,000 others as a part of their sentencing-reform efforts in 2015.

Nadler must be stopped from weaponizing the House Judiciary Committee for political gain.  New York Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler is the Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.  His conduct in that role should greatly trouble every American who cares about the rule of law and fairness in our government.  The committee's website posts a lengthy bio of Chairman Nadler, portraying him above all else as a defender of civil liberties and the equal application of the rule of law for all people.  That picture might well have been accurate sometime in the past.  I lived in his District for a while and I was proud to have him as my Congressman precisely because of his reputation as a civil libertarian.

Chicago Isn't The Only Town With A Problem In The Office Of Its Chief Prosecutor.  [Scroll down]  This is about the office of St. Louis Circuit Attorney, Kim Gardner.  You may recall that Gardner's office was the driving force behind the prosecution (subsequently dropped) of former (now resigned) Missouri Governor Eric Greitens over his alleged photographing of his mistress in a state of undress prior to taking office.  Even at the time, Gardner's actions were questioned and criticized.  Since then, a grand jury probe has been opened into Gardner's handling of that matter and, in particular, her hiring of ex-FBI agent William Tisaby as an investigator and his purported perjury in that matter.  And it's not been a good look for Gardner.

You're A Sucker For Not Believing That The System Is Rigged.  America has changed.  There used to be one standard, one set of laws, one set of rules.  Now, there are two.  The one set of rules for normal people is designed to jam us up, to keep us down, to ensure that the power of the powerful never gets challenged.  And the one set of rules for the elite can be summed up like this:  There are no rules.

Will Trump's DOJ Do Anything About The Obama-Era Hacking Of Sharyl Attkisson?  A federal court ruled 2-1 last week against allowing Sharyl Attkisson to revive her suit over the Obama administration's alleged efforts to hack her personal devices.  The ruling spells doom for Americans victimized by government hackers in the future.  The ruling from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court's dismissal of her case against President's Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, "six unknown agents" and others.  Forensic investigators working for Attkisson — a former reporter for CBS — found that proprietary government software was used to hack her home and business computers, but the court denied her any right to pursue further evidence.

House Democrats Are Relentlessly Harassing the President with Abusive Investigations.  [Scroll down]  In October of 2018, Koppel got under the skin of CNN's Brian Stelter when he said that the network's ratings would be in the toilet if it weren't for Donald Trump, despite the anti-Trump bias that oozes from the television set.  It's all part of a rather funny dynamic.  The media hates Trump, but they get rating boosts when they broadcast his rallies, which in turn could help him win re-election in 2020.

Wisconsin Democratic Judge Says Duly Elected Republicans Can't Pass Laws.  Recently, Democrats have come out in favor of abolishing the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court (gotta get that social justice agenda passed somehow), and allowing non-citizens to vote.  It's almost like they don't like living in the United States very much, although you'd hurt their feelings if you gently suggest that if they don't like where they're living, they should depart for friendlier climes.  Now a judge in Wisconsin has issued an injunction against laws legally passed by the legislature by legally elected representatives of the people.  How did he do that?  By declaring that the legally passed laws by the legally elected representatives of the people weren't "legal" at all.

What happens after no one goes to jail?  Many of us have learned from past experience how to see.  For example, we soon realized there was no serious inquiry into Benghazi.  Same for the Clinton Foundation, as well as for all the nefarious deeds related to the nation's premier power couple.  We shrug — it is what it is — what can we do about it?  The FISA Court, created in the wake of 911, has become the means to conduct secret, unsubstantiated, investigations against political adversaries.  Hi ho.  NSA vacuuming up of a kazillion phone calls is, we're told, for our protection and well-being.  Sure it is.  Unmasking of persons, led by the Obama administration's U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and the Queen of Unmasking, Samantha Powers, was, well, it must have been justified, right?  Part of keeping us safe.

The joy of Left Privilege.  Karl Marx was right:  When you run the schools and the organs of propaganda you can do anything. [...] Here's only a partial list of Left-Privileged demagogues in today's America:
  [#1]   Without left privilege Hilllary would be in jail.
  [#2]   Sandy O is a complete creation of Left Privilege.  Every ignorant word she utters is treated as Holy Scripture... because of Left Privilege.
  [#3]   Obama and Michelle may be thinking of another eight years in the White House, because nobody can go after their misfeasance and malfeasance in office... since they've got L.P.
  [#4]   LP insists that the Robert Mueller investigation, which has wasted years of time and millions of taxpayer dollars to no useful result, is a "national treasure" that must be protected at all costs.
  [#5]   LP also protects and funds Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe, who ought to be doing hard time instead.

The long, odd history of Pasco County politicians behaving badly.  Port Richey's mayor, Dale Massad, was arrested last month by a SWAT team after deputies say he shot at them as they entered his home to take him into custody on charges of practicing medicine without a license.  Then his replacement, acting mayor Terrence Rowe, was arrested after authorities said he conspired with Massad to intimidate a Port Richey police officer.  They hatched the plan, officials said, while talking over a jail phone that is recorded — and that inmates are informed is recorded.  Both have been suspended by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Report:  Clintons' DOJ Deal With FBI Exposed.  While the Establishment Media attempts to distract with story after story of a college admissions scandal, or a shooting tragedy across the globe, the real news breaking in the U.S. this week involves some serious Deep State shenanigans whereby ruling class members like the Clintons and Obamas are allowed to do what they want when they want without fear of repercussions.

18 Real Attacks on the 'Rule of Law'.  [#7] The Michael Flynn set-up:  Flynn is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served for 33 years until his retirement in 2014. In January 2017, two FBI agents surprised Flynn with an interview about a legal and routine conversation he had with the Russian ambassador in his capacity as an incoming administration official.  On December 1, 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to what his interrogators considered unintentional misremembering of the facts.  Flynn's interrogators did not actually think he was lying on purpose.  News reports speculated that the special counsel threatened to prosecute Flynn's son and Flynn was otherwise financially ruined by the prosecution, leaving him little choice but to admit to "lying" about not remembering details of a conversation.

A Failed State.  The United States of America takes the Academy Award for officially becoming a Failed State.  We must admit that Venezuela gave the USA a run for its money; and speaking of money, we recently reached the failure-milestone of $22 trillion dollars in debt.  But, the coup de grâce came when former FBI Agent Andrew McCabe went on National television telling the world that he and a small group of co-conspirators had attempted a coup to remove the President of the United States thereby committing the act of treason.  And, the very fact that he and his known collaborators were not immediately arrested and charged, has put the USA in hands down first place for their failure of a state and have made a complete mockery of our founding documents and the rule of law.

To get Trump, FBI and Justice Department officials trampled the Constitution.  Justice Department and FBI officials spied on U.S. citizens with false warrants, gave a pass to one presidential campaign with a predetermined investigation, investigated another political campaign on the basis of no verified evidence, and illegally leaked information on investigations.  They discussed wiretapping and using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove President Trump, and appointed a special counsel as a retaliatory move for Comey's firing.  It is now crystal clear that the highest echelons of the Justice Department and FBI had morphed from the world's most professional law enforcement organization into a Third World rump group.  They had the hubris to believe that they — not the American people or their duly elected representatives — should decide who governs and how.

Alan Dershowitz:  Ousting Trump via 25th Amendment is 'clearly an attempt at a coup d'etat'.  Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz on Thursday said the Department of Justice's discussions to employ the 25th Amendment to oust President Trump — if true — amounted to an attempted coup.  Dershowitz appeared on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight," to give his take on former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's descriptions of Justice Department meetings where he said officials discussed ousting the president.  "If [McCabe's comments are] true, it is clearly an attempt at a coup d'état," Dershowitz said.  Evoking the 25th Amendment, Dershowitz added, would be a fundamental misuse of its original purpose.  He said it was originally "about Woodrow Wilson having a stroke.  It's about a president being shot and not being able to perform his office."

Congratulations, new AG Barr — now get to work investigating and prosecuting the coup plotters.  William Barr had no obvious reason to want to become the nation's chief law enforcement officer — again.  He already has that office on his résumé and no doubt has been making millions every year as a high-powered partner at one of the nation's highest-powered law firms, Kirkland & Ellis, in the lucrative specialty of advising big corporations on law enforcement and regulatory issues. [...] If he succeeds in getting to the bottom of what looks like the biggest political scandal in the nation's history, he will enter the history books as a great hero of the Republic, the man who uncovered and prosecuted the villains who sought to overturn a presidential election in what is could be termed a coup, perhaps prosecutable under the sedition statute.

I'm Suing the Government.  It Has a Problem With That.  A federal appeals court recently heard oral arguments in my lawsuit against former Attorney General Eric Holder, unnamed "John Doe" federal agents at the FBI and Justice Department, and others.  At issue are the intrusions into my computers while I worked as an investigative reporter for CBS News, revealed by multiple forensic investigations showing use of proprietary government surveillance programs.  It was clear early on that the Justice Department was not interested in investigating or prosecuting its own.  So I began the search to find the facts about the invasion into my computers and life.  That morphed into a lawsuit for damages, because that's what the law sets out as the legal remedy.

Another Inspector General Investigation Outlines FBI Corruption — Another DOJ "Declined Prosecution".  The Office of Inspector General (OIG) completes another investigation of an FBI Supervisory Special Agent finding unlawful and unethical conduct.  Unfortunately, despite the findings, the DOJ again declines prosecution.  Worth noting:  Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann prosecuted Michael Cohen for fraudulent mortgage documents; the exact same activity the DOJ has declined prosecution for against this FBI Supervisory Special Agent:  Two-tiered justice.  If it was the intention of FBI Director Christopher Wray and/or AAG Matt Whitaker to eliminate corrupt behavior within the leadership ranks of the DOJ/FBI; and if it was their intention to rebuild public confidence, this would not be the approach.

The Corrupt DoJ vs. the People.  This used to be the land of the free.  Thanks to the politicized justice system that was set in motion more than 20 years ago and reinforced during eight fateful years of the Obama administration, the quaint notion that we benefit from due process has evaporated, along with Cinderella's ball gown and fancy coach.  A former federal prosecutor by the name of Sidney Powell has blown the whistle. [...] Powell, author of Licensed to Lie:  Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice, described a system consisting of out-of-control prosecutors who will do anything to get a conviction.

The Potomac two-step:  Will no one stand up to the corruption in the FBI, DOJ, and CIA?  For nearly ten years now, Americans who have been paying attention have known that our government has become corrupt, that its premier institutions were weaponized by the Obama administration to the point that we have become something of a police state or banana republic.  This is not to say there was no corruption previous to Obama.  As Sidney Powell addresses in her book License to Lie, the current special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his amoral, ruthless right-hand man, Andrew Weismann, had already been practicing their prosecutions of personal destruction for decades.  In the 1980s, Mueller sent four men to prison who he knew were innocent.  He did it to protect a confidential informant.  Two of them died in prison.  The lawsuits filed cost taxpayers $100M.  That trial was connected to the murderous mafia hit man Whitey Bulger, who was finally caught after sixteen years.  He died in prison in 2018.  Was he murdered to protect Mueller?

Roger Stone's Arrest:  What's Scandalous, and What Isn't.  [Scroll down]  Now, for what is truly scandalous about Roger Stone's arrest:  the manner in which it was carried out.  The arrest was preserved on video because someone — presumably either the FBI or Mueller's team — tipped off CNN, and CNN had cameras stationed in front of Stone's residence at 5:00 in the morning.  The video shows a dozen heavily armed FBI agents carrying out what can fairly be described as a paramilitary operation against Stone's home.  Why?  Was there some reason to think Stone was so dangerous that it required a pre-dawn raid by a dozen agents with AR-15s to take him into custody?  No such claim has been made, nor would it be plausible.  The show that Mueller and the FBI put on for the cameras of their political ally, CNN, was a disgrace.

The FBI Drops In.  Federal Law enforcement appears to be adopting methods more suitable for the KGB or Stasi.  CNN's exclusive news coverage of Roger Stone's arrest was a big mistake.  It reminded sentient people of the Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Elian Gonzalez raids. [...] Stone should consider himself very fortunate.  Many predawn raids do not end well.  Ruby Ridge resulted in the death of Vicki Weaver, who was shot in the head by sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi while she was holding her 10-month-old daughter, and the 14-year-old Sammy Weaver.  In an effort to "save the children," the Waco standoff rvesulted in twenty-one children under the age of 16 being burned alive.  Elian Gonzalez was not shot or burned.  He vwas simply deported back to Cuba.  Of course, those were the days when people were not so concerned about children.  All these incidents illustrate that the Deep State is still in charge.  It appears that our elected President is not in control.  He keeps appointing Deep State apparatchiks like Wray and Barr.  The real criminals will never go to jail.

It's time to blow up the bureaucracy that's killing America.  For decades now, Americans have slogged through a rising tide of idiocies.  Getting a permit to do something useful, say, open a restaurant or fix a bridge, can take years.  Small businesses get nicked for noncompliance of rules they didn't know.  Teachers are told not to put an arm around a crying child.  Doctors and nurses spend up to half the day filling out forms no one reads.  Employers no longer give job references.  And, in the land of the First Amendment, political incorrectness can get you fired.  We'd all be better off without these daily frustrations.  So why can't we use our common sense and start fixing things?

Where's the Investigation into Senator Feinstein's Chinese Spy?  Let's look at a case study in Justice Department and news media bias:  the treatment of President Trump compared with the treatment of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein.  The media's glee over news that a group of anti-Trump bureaucrats took it upon themselves to investigate President Trump as a traitor when he fired their friend Jim Comey in May 2017 has only served to clarify the establishment and media hostility toward the President.  With no evidence — save some absurd and unsubstantiated opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democrats — Obama-era FBI officials decided to covertly investigate the newly-elected president for treason.  This inquisition was apparently in addition to the counterintelligence investigation over supposed (and undefined) collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia.

35 Times the FBI "Deviated from Standard Practice" or Committed Crimes in Effort to Exonerate Hilary and Indict Trump.  The FBI leadership under the Obama Administration took many actions that deviated from standard practice [i.e. were corrupt and criminal] in their efforts to exonerate Hillary from her crimes and then spy and frame candidate and then President Trump.  Today current members of the FBI are embarrassed to even turn on their TV's as a result.  Time magazine of all places reported recently about the many efforts the FBI took related to Hillary exoneration and then the Trump framing.  These corrupt and criminal actions have taken a desperate toll on the current members of the FBI[.]

The FBI Targeting the President is a Coup.  Now we have a black and white admission that the FBI went after President Trump for a nonsensical conspiracy theory put out by the Clinton campaign after he fired Comey.  This is a huge problem.  Forget the whole D and R thing for a moment.  Start thinking about Rome instead and the Praetorian Guard.  We have elected officials for a reason.  They're not immune to criminal charges.  But there's a huge difference between a Federal law enforcement agency investigating a crime.  And a Federal law enforcement agency deciding to launch an investigation of the President of the United States specifically after he fired their boss.  Is the entire FBI tainted?  Not in this regard.  The FBI suffered from politicized leadership.  It still does.  But it also suffers from political entanglements and a good deal of institutional arrogance.

When Did It Become the FBI's Job to Act as a Check and Balance to the President?  The proximate cause of the FBI investigation, if the [New York] Times reporting is correct, wasn't any new information about Russia's activity.  It was Trump acting entirely within his powers to fire his FBI director.  This might be the first time that a FBI counterintelligence investigation was triggered by a lawful domestic action.   This is crazy.  Perhaps you believe that Trump's firing of Comey was ill-intentioned and abusive.  That's a reasonable view, but it is Congress's job to take this up, not the job of a subordinate law-enforcement agency within the executive branch.

Rosenstein, DOJ exploring ways to more easily spy on journalists.  For months now, the Department of Justice (DOJ) quietly has been working on a revision to its guidelines governing how, when and why prosecutors can obtain the records of journalists, particularly in leak cases.  The work has been supervised by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's office, especially since former Attorney General Jeff Sessions departed, but is not wrapped up.  The effort has the potential to touch off a First Amendment debate with a press corps that already has high degrees of distrust of and disfunction with the Trump administration.

The FBI is the security threat.  The Washington Post ran a column, "The FBI can't neutralize a security threat if the president is the threat."  The President of the United States is never a threat to national security.  He is national security.  We elect him commander in chief.  The FBI works at his command.  Jimmy the Geek Comey and his crew committed mutiny when they began an investigation into Our President.  Their actions are treasonous and in violation of their oaths to defend the Constitution.

On What Grounds Can the FBI Investigate the President as a Counterintelligence Threat?  The New York Times reported on Jan. 11 that the FBI "began investigating whether President Trump had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests" soon after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.  In other words, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation on the president.  The Times reports that my friend and former colleague, former FBI General Counsel James Baker, said during testimony to House investigators in October 2018 that "Not only would [firing Comey] be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security." [...] If the story is accurate, then what the FBI did was unprecedented and possibly — I emphasize possibly, since many relevant facts are not included in the Times reporting — an overstep, or at least imprudent.  The reason the FBI step might have been imprudent is that it was premised on an inversion of the normal assumptions of Article II of the Constitution.

Why Did The FBI Launch An Unapproved Investigation Of President Trump?  There was a rather disturbing story in Friday's New York Times.  The headline is F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia.  The story is not disturbing for the reason the New York Times is flogging it, it is disturbing because it illustrates the extent to which senior law enforcement officials can use their power to attack political figures they perceive to be their enemies.

Sharyl Attkisson Previews Her Case Against Eric Holder's DOJ.  Former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson is preparing for her oral arguments in her case against the Department of Justice and the FBI.  Attkisson claims her computer was compromised by DOJ agents in late 2012 while she was reporting on the Benghazi attacks, Fast and Furious and Obamacare.  She first sued the Obama administration over the unwanted surveillance in January 2015.  She gave her "layperson's explanation" of the upcoming case in a recent video, first by identifying her team's targets.  Attkisson noted they are suing specific government officials like former Attorney General Eric Holder.  The government, she explained, is arguing they enjoy "broad immunity" for their supervisory actions while in office.  Her team will push back on that notion and argue that Holder "would have had to do more than just supervise these intrusions into my computer based on forensics" and therefore "immunity does not apply in this case."

Hiding Evidence:  The Continuing Cover-Up.  Look at the big picture.  Those in power regularly hide evidence of their crimes and get away with it.  From Lois Lerner to Hillary Clinton to Strzok and Page, the dreaded "glitch" eats the most important evidence.  From "Fast and Furious" to Benghazi to Comey's fake investigation of Hillary to Rosenstein's stonewalling to Mueller's "insurance policy" cover-up, hiding the facts is the primary goal.  Joseph Stalin is quoted as saying, "The people who cast the votes decide nothing.  The people who count the votes decide everything."  It is also true that the actual evidence decides nothing.  The people who control the evidence decide everything.

Democrats get away with a much worse crime than Watergate.  Since Watergate, the Washington wisdom has always held that it's not the crime, it's the coverup that sinks a politician.  But that's only the case when the coverup fails.  But what if the coverup succeeds?  It's horribly simple.  The crimes are never uncovered and the perpetrators are never brought to justice no matter how serious their crimes may be.  That is precisely what has happened because of the FBI and Justice Department's coverup of their abuses of power and illegal actions during the 2016 election.  In this case, the FBI and the Justice Department have succeeded in the most significant coverup in American political history.  The abuses of power and crimes they have succeeded in covering up are not only against the law: they are crimes against our system of law and government.  They were perpetrated by employees of the government, under color of law, with the intention of affecting the outcome of an election.

Mueller Won't Let Defendants See the Evidence in Russian Troll Case.  Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian nationals and firms for interference in the 2016 election after they placed ads and established profiles on social media.  Mueller was taken by surprise when one of those firms, Concord Management and Consulting, hired U.S. lawyers to fight it in court.  The thinnest of evidence makes up Mueller's case.  The judge issued a protective order for the 'sensitive' documents.  Only lawyers can see these documents.  Lawyers for the defendants asked the court to allow them to share protective order documents with their client so they can provide a proper defense.

What's Next in FBI Oversight.  Tax and criminal-justice reform and judicial appointments are all hugely important.  But House and Senate investigators get pride of place for unraveling one of the greatest dirty tricks of our political times, in which a Democratic administration, party and presidential campaign either co-opted or fooled the FBI into investigating the Republican campaign.  Lawmakers got to the bottom of this despite partisan attacks and institutional obstruction.  Congress has taken that probe about as far as was ever going to be possible.  The next steps are up to the White House.

Comey's anti-Trump and pro-Hillary bias in 2016 clear from new developments — Why was the Russia probe begun?  [I]n the massive news coverage of all sorts of unproven allegations against President Trump — many arising out of the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of alleged cooperation between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia — the FBI's pursuit of political targets has received far too little notice.  After Watergate and the Hoover's 48-year reign at the FBI, leaders of law enforcement agencies should have learned some important lessons:  Don't be used as the servants of people in power.  Stay out of politics.  And don't investigate political campaigns, because it's not your job to influence the outcome of elections.  Dictatorships politicize their law enforcement agencies.  In America, we want the FBI and police to be nonpartisan, and we expect them to give equal treatment to people of all political parties and persuasions.

New York AG Announces Plans to Weaponize Office to Target Political Opposition.  Did you get your yellow vest yet?  The recently elected New York Attorney General, Letitia James, makes a public declaration that she intends to fully weaponize her office to target the Trump family.  On the bright side, democrats can no longer claim their preferred approach of weaponizing their offices for direct targeting of their political opposition as a "right-wing conspiracy theory"; they are specifically outlining their intent to do exactly that.

Jerome Corsi Challenges Robert Mueller.  Misconduct by the once-great Department of Justice is all too common.  The unethical prosecution of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens stole a U.S. Senate election from the Republicans in 2008.  That earned a tongue-lashing from Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on April 7, 2009.  But left-wing embeds within the DoJ took the wrong lessons from the Stevens fiasco.  They took it as a dry run, practice for stealing the presidential election in 2016.  What is the DoJ claiming now?  That Jerry Corsi and Roger Stone must have been the conduit for a Russian conspiracy because they "knew" — after it was widely reported in the news media — that Wikileaks would release stolen documents that Wikileaks told the entire world way in advance it was going to release.

Grassley Questions Horowitz About FBI Raid on Whistleblower.  Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has always worked earnestly to protect whistleblowers; it is a subject near and dear to his heart.  Against the backdrop of an unexpected raid on the home of an approved and protected whistleblower named Dennis Nathan Cain, Senator Grassley writes to Inspector General Horowitz: [...]

Grassley Questions Director Wray About FBI Raid on Clinton Foundation, Uranium One Whistleblower.  Outgoing Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray about the raid of the home of a Clinton Foundation, Uranium One whistleblower in a letter this weekend. [...] When the agents showed up to Cain's home, he informed them that he was a protected whistleblower under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection and that Horowitz officially recognized his status as a whistleblower.  The FBI agents intimidated the whistleblower and rummaged through his home — Grassley is right to question FBI Director Wray's potential involvement and knowledge of this raid that appears to have violated the whistleblower's rights.

The super-secret pay hike for state legislators.  The state Legislature would really prefer that no one say anything about, or even notice, the quiet drive to hike its members' pay until it's a done deal. [...] Created this year by one of those "three men in a room" deals, the New York State Compensation Committee will announce its pay-hike recommendation early next month — and it'll become law unless the Legislature rushes back to Albany for a special session to vote it down.

Sharyl Attkisson, Veteran Journalist and Government-Fighter, Opens Up.  Stonewalled is the title of investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson's first book — and stonewalling is what the Department of Justice is doing to her now.  Determined to receive justice, she has a landmark lawsuit against the DOJ for electronically surveilling her computers.  Multiple forensics exams have revealed the government-related remote efforts to monitor her.  Government agents most likely did it because she had the "audacity" to dig into facts regarding wasteful green energy spending, as well as the Fast and Furious and Benghazi scandals.  Besides hitting a brick wall with those in the government who want to see the lawsuit eliminated, Attkisson also has to battle the enormous cost in terms of time and money.

The word 'Russia' eliminates all rational thought in journalists.  After two long years of the most expensive and wide-ranging independent counsel investigation in a generation, we should be close to nabbing those dastardly secret agents from Russia who supposedly hacked our presidential election.  Are we?  No, we're not.  Robert Mueller's prosecutors are instead threatening elderly men with life in prison for petty crimes.  Crimes that have nothing to do with spying or Russia or anything else that threatens America.  The whole thing is a grotesque joke.  But you'd never know that from watching cable television.

For the crime of forgetting, Jerome Corsi is facing bankruptcy and imprisonment.  Jerome Corsi is 72-years-old.  He has a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard.  He has written two New York Times bestsellers about politics.  He is the kind of person who could, and probably should be happily retired by now.  Instead, he's facing felony charges from Robert Mueller.  How did this happen?

The Escalating Assault on Citizen Journalism.  This past week, the progressive establishment attempted to silence two more independents.  In the first case, Twitter and Facebook conspired to deny the audacious 25-year-old journalist Laura Loomer her rapidly growing audience.  In the second, Special Counsel Robert Mueller lowered the boom on Jerome Corsi, a 72-year-old Harvard Ph.D.  An all too typical headline this week from ABC News — "Conspiracy theorist becomes key figure as Mueller builds case" — delegitimizes Corsi even before the article begins.  Corsi is not a journalist; he is a "conspiracy theorist."  The media are not opposed to conspiracy theorizing in general — Michael Moore did win an Oscar — but rather to theorizing that has the potential to harm the progressive establishment.

WaPo: Jerome Corsi in Negotiations With Mueller for Plea Deal.  Jerome Corsi is famous for his research, analysis and theories surrounding the life story of President Obama.  In most mainstream media circles Corsi was labeled a 'conspiracy theorist'.  Then again, some conspiracies are not theory; and seeing the Washington Post take lead against Corsi only cements Mueller's deep state allies are feeding the info.  As word spreads about Robert Mueller snaring Corsi inside his investigative quicksand, don't be surprised to find people wondering if Corsi's work into the background of Obama isn't the real motive behind snare deployment.

If You Want The Government To Hand Over Documents, You Might Want To Retain A Lawyer.  Fifty years after the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, the letter of the law lives on but its spirit has been crushed.  While it's definitely preferable to having no opportunity to demand government agencies hand over requested documents, it's not the significant improvement it was promised to be.  As was noted here four years ago, the government has pretty much adopted a presumption of opacity that necessitates the filing of lawsuits.  This contradicts the law's intentions, as well as proclamations made by President Obama, who declared his administration the "most transparent."  This assertion fell flat when government agencies engaged in FOIA business as usual and Obama did nothing to hold them accountable.

Falsehood shames Clapper, Brennan and pledge to protect whistleblowers.  In the summer of 2014, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent a letter assuring Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that enhanced monitoring of Intelligence Community workers was designed to find leakers and insider threats, and was not intended to thwart lawful whistleblowing.  Specifically, America's top spy told the two senators that if any protected whistleblowing was intercepted by the Obama administration's new monitoring, it wouldn't be used to tip off spy agency leaders. [...] It turns out that entire pledge was false and disingenuous.  And it took us four years and a new presidential administration to get the truth.  Just four months before Clapper penned that letter, the CIA intercepted one or more whistleblowers' disclosures, legally submitted and intended to go to Congress through the Intelligence Community's official whistleblowing office.  And the intercepts were briefed to CIA leadership, contrary to Clapper's assurance.

Sessions vows 'emergency' Supreme Court battles amid 'outrageous' discovery rulings by federal judges.  Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday lit into federal judges for what he called a dramatic uptick in "outrageous" decisions threatening to interfere with the separation of powers by exposing internal White House deliberations.  In a fiery speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, Sessions warned that "once we go down this road in American government, there is no turning back." [...] Sessions specifically singled out New York district court judge Jesse M. Furman, who ruled that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross could be questioned in an ongoing lawsuit concerning the legality of the Trump administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The Road to Waco.  The case of Frank Fuster has been back in the news thanks in part to this magazine's efforts at reminding the public of the injustice of his situation. [...] Fuster is certainly a criminal (he served time for homicide, and there is no question as to his guilt in that matter), and he may even be a child molester, but it is almost certain that he did not commit the crimes for which he was convicted, because it is almost certain that those crimes did not occur at all.

Law Enforcement for Rent.  This paper details an extensive and elaborate campaign using elective law enforcement offices, in coordination with major donors and activist pressure groups, to attain a policy agenda that failed through the democratic process.  The plan is revealed in emails and other public records obtained during two and a half years of requests under state open records laws.  Most are being released now for the first time.  Many were obtained only by court order in the face of a determined and coordinated resistance that one deputy attorney general foresaw, expressing early concerns over "an affirmative obligation to always litigate" requests looking into the effort.  The paper details how donor-financed governance has expanded into dangerous and likely unconstitutional territory:  state attorney general (AG) offices.  The plan traces back to 2012 when activists agreed to seek "a single sympathetic attorney general" to assist their cause.  AGs began subpoenaing private parties' records in service of a campaign of litigation against opponents of their climate policy agenda.

Credibility Is the Currency:  How to Defeat Propaganda.  The U.S. government has a number of messaging authorities assigned, in part, with countering propaganda — from the communications offices of elected political leaders and military public affairs officers to State Department public diplomacy and the routine statements put out by federal agencies every day.  The government does a lot of messaging aimed at setting the record straight.  Though it does little to align its messaging effectively across these agencies, and could do better, that is not the key problem.  The problem is trust.  Americans don't trust the government to tell them the truth.  The government has invited the people's mistrust.  False messages from politicians are a well-known feature of politics, whether they come from Twitter or from the media and public policy "echo chambers" or they were set up by the previous administration.

Framing Ted Stevens In 2008 Was The Deep State's Trial Run For Framing Trump.  According to the government's theory of the case, Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens underpaid for renovations on his cabin in a scheme to accept a non-cash bribe from a foreman for his contractor named Rocky Williams.  During the mock cross-examination, the prosecution became alarmed when Williams was easily led into adopting the defense's theory of the case.  Both the prosecution and the defense had Williams under subpoena.  This would not do.  So the prosecution filed an affidavit before Judge Emmet Sullivan claiming that the witness would be too sick to testify.  Instead of campaigning for his re-election in Alaska, then, Stevens defended himself in a rigged felony trial in Washington D.C., not knowing that the government had hid evidence and spirited away an exculpatory witness.  Stevens lost the trial in what some might consider the Deep State's trial run for 2016.

The Rule of Law Is a Sick Joke.  Sure, the rule of law is terrific in concept, and it would sure be nice to give it another whirl here in America, but we aren't blind or stupid.  We see what the "law" is and how it's applied — there's one law for the elite (that's the one that never gets applied) and one for us Normals that's designed to keep us in line with our mouths shut.  Today, the "law" is a weapon wielded by the establishment to cement its grip on its power and position.  That's why Democrats are so eager to repeal Citizens United and pass all sorts of new laws restricting election campaigning.  They know they will be able to violate those laws with impunity while using them to jam up their conservative opponents.

FBI Pushes Back On GOP Rep's Claim That FBI Uses Leaks To Get FISAs.  The FBI is disputing a claim that an FBI analyst told Congress that the bureau uses information leaked to the press to obtain surveillance warrants against American citizens.  On Monday [8/27/2018], North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows tweeted that Congress had "learned NEW information suggesting our suspicions are true:  FBI/DOJ have previously leaked info to the press, and then used those same press stories as a separate source to justify FISA's.  Unreal."  A congressional source told The Daily News Foundation that Meadows was referring to information provided during a congressional interview on Friday [8/24/2018] with Jonathan Moffa, an FBI analyst who worked on the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose.  The notion that people should be free to pursue their own lives, with only minimal interference and subsidy from the government, is never on the table.  The assumption, in the Legislature, among policymakers and in local government, is that private actors would leave a path of death and destruction if the government didn't try to manage everything.  That the government itself always leaves destruction in its wake — not only within its own bureaucracies but within the industries it controls — simply is more evidence that government needs even more power.

In This Corner:  Against Political Trials.  A "political trial" is any trial in which the prosecution is unusually severe because the defendant participates in the political process, or because the defendant has a friend, associate or family member who participates in the political process.  The extra severity may be that the person is prosecuted at all, or prosecuted under an unusual or newly created theory.  It may be that the defendant is pursued by especially aggressive prosecutorial attack squads or is threatened with a far greater punishment than for the same crime without a political link.  In a political trial, the defendant's nexus to the greater political system leads to harsher justice than for an average citizen who stays in the foxhole of private life and leaves control of politics and government to others.

No Sympathy for Elected Devils.  The congressman and his wife will have their day in court.  Perhaps the jury won't believe the charges or will accept some explanation from the defendants.  But right now, the indictment seems like a sterling example of why members of Congress need to be subjected to such relentless scrutiny and constant skepticism.  Yes, it probably feels unfair, but elected officials are given a pretty sweet deal — certainly a better arrangement than what most of their constituents will ever know — and some of them just can't resist the urge to take even more.

Why is the Lafayette library having Drag Queen Story Time?  The reaction has been mixed after the Lafayette Public Library announced plans for its first Drag Queen Story Time.  Members of the Delta Lambda Phi social fraternity will lead the event, scheduled for 2 p.m.  Oct. 6 at the library's main branch.  Library Director Teresa Elberson said the fraternity approached the library about the program.  After a lengthy discussion, library officials decided to move forward.  The event is expected to include fraternity members dressed in drag who will read to children and participate in activities with them and their families.

De Blasio lets security haul away [a] Post reporter for asking [a] question.  Mayor de Blasio is a such a big believer in the free press that he let two bodyguards physically remove a credentialed Post reporter who had the temerity to ask him a question in public on Sunday [8/12/2018]. [...] Instead of answering or even declining to answer the question, the mayor watched as two members of his NYPD security detail approached the reporter — who was wearing a police-issued press pass around his neck — with one grabbing his shoulder and leading him away from the mayor.

The Police Were Not Policed.  In sum, many within the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, the NSC, and the State Department may have been involved in the greatest scandal in American electoral history, by directing agents, informants, and employees to help one campaign to harm another — and then, even after the election, to work to undermine a sitting president.  In addition, these rogue agencies spent two years fighting congressional requests to release incriminating information.  And then, when they were forced against their will to cough up some documents, they redacted them so heavily that they're almost undecipherable.

Nashville Government Employees Tasked With Impounding Dockless E-Scooters Caught Riding Them Instead.  Government workers tasked with taking prohibited e-scooters off Nashville's streets have been caught riding them instead.  Nashville's NBC affiliate WSMV aired surveillance footage yesterday of employees from the city and county's shared Metro Public Works department having a grand old time riding confiscated e-scooters in a Metro-owned parking lot while on duty.  Now, it's certainly hard to fault anyone for enjoying themselves on these e-scooters, which are owned by scooter company Bird.  They're a breeze to ride.  But Metro employees doing so is a bit awkward given the agency's aggressive crackdown on these same vehicles.

City Council President Wants Tougher Enforcement of Airbnb.  Oh, He's Also President of the State's Hotel Lobby.  For several years, lobbyists for the hotel industry have been engaged in efforts to get local and state governments to make life more difficult for short-term rental and home-sharing platforms like Airbnb and VRBO.  But what happens when the lobbyists literally are the government?  We soon might get to find out, thanks to Kenny Glavan.  He's the city council president in Biloxi, Mississippi, and he recently pushed the city to step up enforcement of tax and licensing requirements for short-term rentals.  But Glavan also happens to be the president of the Mississippi Hotel and Lodging Association, the state arm of a national organization that's been on the forefront of legal and regulatory battles with Airbnb in New York City, Nashville, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

Here Are 410 Movies Made Under The Direct Influence And Supervision Of The Pentagon.  A year ago we featured a detailed report by authors Tom Secker and Matthew Alford exposing just how vast the Pentagon and CIA programs for partnering with Hollywood actually are, based on some 4,000 new pages of formerly classified archived documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.  The report noted at the time that "These documents for the first time demonstrate that the US government has worked behind the scenes on over 800 major movies and more than 1,000 TV titles."

Dinesh D'Souza's FBI File Was 'Red-Flagged' as "Right-Wing Conservative'.  Dinesh D'Souza said that Rep Devin Nunes told him what is in his FBI file and it should concern every American.  D'Souza said on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" that DeSantis called him after the lawmaker received a redacted version of the FBI file through a congressional inquiry.  "Finally they gave the congressional committee the redacted file, and a congressman who saw that file called me," D'Souza said.  "And he goes, 'No. 1, your case is a $20,000 violation, but the FBI immediately assigned $100,000 to investigate your case.' He said that's extremely abnormal."  DeSantis had looked into the file because he was concerned the prosecution of D'Souza was politically motivated.

The Police State Abolishes the Trial.  Several years ago, the police entered the office of a young professor at a reputable university and arrested him for an online crime.  They took the professor away, booked him, and then offered him a deal:  admit guilt and get off easy.  The professor said to the few people to whom he was permitted to speak that this was crazy because he was innocent.  His lawyer warned him:  fight this and you could get life; admit guilt and you will get a suspended sentence.  He took the deal.  It was a trick.  Now he languishes in jail, his life wrecked as far into the future as he can see.  This doesn't happen in America, does it?  Yes, it does.  Not only that, it is increasingly the norm.

SCOTUS Panic Shows Gov't Has Too Much Power.  Democrats loved it when President Barack "I've got a pen and I've got a phone" Obama utilized executive orders to achieve policy objectives they wanted, like Obama's DACA order on immigration.  But faced with President Trump's ability to exercise that same power (even if just to undo Obama's orders), they scream "Fascism!"  The problem isn't Obama or Trump per se; it is an executive branch that increasingly exceeds the constitutional limits of its power, and usurps that of Congress.

Rudy Giuliani:  Mueller investigation the 'most corrupt investigation I have ever seen'.  Rudy Giuliani, one of President Trump's lawyers, lambasted special counsel Robert Mueller's probe, calling it the "most corrupt investigation" he's ever seen.  "This is the most corrupt investigation I have ever seen that the Justice Department is allowing to go forward," Giuliani told ABC News on Sunday.  "I've never seen an investigation with texts from FBI agents, now seven of them, that have such extraordinary bias."  The former New York City mayor was referencing messages exchanged by FBI employees that were hostile to Trump.  The messages were revealed in a report from the Justice Department's inspector general last month.

The Gangster State.  Consider what we are watching with our government.  News brings word that the US Attorney is dropping charges against the terrorists, who went on a rampage during the inauguration last year.  They announced this in a holiday week, so it would get the least amount of news coverage.  Now, they certainly could have looked into who financed the riot, who helped organize it and then went after the shot callers, but they never bothered to do that.  Instead, they sat on it until people forgot about it and then dropped the case.  Now, we have mountains of laws for dealing with self-defined criminal groups.  The Feds could go after a Lacy MacAuley, who details her activities on-line, in order to figure out who pays her rent.  Then they could go after that person or group.  This is basic police work.  At the very minimum, the people financing these terrorists would know they have some exposure, but that never happens.  You see, everyone knows who finances Antifa and other terrorists operations and they have friends in high places.

De Blasio used a $3M counterterrorism plane to zip home from vacation.  The NYPD used a $3 million counterterrorism plane to shuttle Mayor Bill de Blasio back and forth from his Canada vacation to the Big Apple for an event Thursday [7/5/2018], The [New York] Post has learned.  Hizzoner, who is in Quebec on a weeklong respite, briefly flew back to the Bronx for a memorial for slain Detective Miosotis Familia.  "NYPD is transporting him in their plane," de Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips told The Post.  "Their plane" is a Cessna 208 Caravan that cost roughly $3 million and was picked up by the department in 2017, sources said.

FBI may have modified witness reports, misled DOJ watchdog with 'false information,' GOP Rep says.  The FBI may have "edited and changed" key witness reports in the Hillary Clinton and Russia investigations, a top House Republican charged in a hearing into FBI and Justice Department misconduct Tuesday [6/26/2018].  Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C, also raised the possibility that the FBI misled the DOJ watchdog in an attempt to hide the identities of FBI employees who were caught sending anti-Trump messages.

Imprisoned by the Deep State.  Paul Manafort does not appear to be a nice man.  But he deserves equal treatment under the law.  If certain members of The Deep State are not being jailed before their crimes are assessed, then he should at least be free on bond.

McCain Flunky Weaponized the IRS, Is Now In Control of All Internal Probes.  The revelation two nights ago that John McCain's Staff Director urged the IRS and Lois Lerner to target the tea party until its "financially ruinous" is bad enough.  However, it gets worse.  It must be noted that he is now in charge of all internal investigations in the government and he is in control of whistleblowers.  In his past positions, he was in investigative control during Fast & Furious, Benghazi, and other probes.  The man weaponized the IRS.  His goal was to target conservatives through the IRS.  Why is he in one of the most powerful positions in government, internally investigating a corrupt DoJ/FBI when he appears corrupt himself?

How Immigration Officials Cooked the Books and Fooled Congress for Years.  A recent Justice Department report on U.S. immigration courts provides a rare glimpse into the difficulties faced by the Trump administration as it repairs the damages inflicted on these tribunals over the last 20 years.  But give credit to the courts' new executive, James McHenry.  Early on, he identified the need for transparency and has made accurate disclosure of court business one of his agency's highest priorities.  Candor, if not reform, demands no less.  It's a good start for an executive whose predecessors often avoided — and sometimes denied — the truth about the courts' troubling dynamics.  Yet the courts limped along, their annual reports masking a systemic dysfunction never shared with Congress.  While transparency won't cure the dysfunction, it should identify obvious areas for reform — among them failures to appear in court.

The IG Report:  They're Guilty, but It's Okay.  First we were told that Comey was a straight shooter whom we could trust.  Then we were told the same about Mueller, Rosenstein, and now the IG. Yet in every case we've discovered that they are biased political actors who put the interests of the Deep State and the Democratic Party ahead of their sworn duty to uphold the law.  It's time for all conservatives to acknowledge that there are few if any honest people at the top levels of the FBI or the DoJ.

Sex, lies and betrayal at the FBI.  If Jeff Sessions and Christopher Wray want to clean house at the FBI, they'll be well advised to pack a good lunch.  Cleaning this house will be an all-day job.  The agency under James B. Comey has been more corrupt than we thought.  The long-awaited findings of the inspector general at the Justice Department were finally released Thursday, and it reveals clearly that officials high up in the food chain were out to protect Hillary Clinton by any means necessary.

Pardoned Sailor Files Lawsuit Against Obama, Comey for Unequal Prosecution of Clinton Email Case.  Former Navy seaman Kristian Saucier, who was sentenced to one year in federal prison for taking pictures aboard a nuclear submarine in 2009, is suing former President Barack Obama and former FBI Director James Comey for unequal protection under the law.  Saucier alleges he was unfairly punished while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was left to walk for her unauthorized use of a private email server, the Washington Times reports.  President Donald Trump pardoned Saucier in March this year.  Saucier's attorney says the lawsuit now plans to highlight the political nature of his client's prosecution compared to Clinton's.  In 2016, when Saucier's case was being litigated, prosecutors rejected any comparison to the Clinton case.

The Papadopoulos Case Needs a Closer Look.  Congress should be taking a very hard look at the prosecution of George Papadopoulos.  To these eyes, the harder one looks, the more the Papadopoulos case appears to be much ado about nothing.  That is no small thing:  The "much ado" here is a purported Trump-Russia conspiracy to subvert a presidential election.  There has always been something fishy about the charge filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller against Papadopoulos, who was a green-as-grass 28-year-old when he made the big primary-season move from Ben Carson-campaign novice to Trump-campaign novice.

On the other hand...
Carter Page is the Biggest Victim in the Trump-Russia Hoax.  It's hard to get a read on Carter Page.  Since the Trump campaign volunteer became a central figure in the Obama administration's plot to sabotage Donald Trump's candidacy and undermine — if not destroy — his presidency, Page has been the target of numerous death threats.  He is mocked by opinion writers and the public.  (Just check out the replies to any tweet he posts.)  While Trump antagonist Stormy Daniels earns sympathetic coverage and victim status in the pages of major newspapers and even some conservative publications, Page's plight is largely ignored.

Carter Page:  The FBI ruined my life.  FBI surveillance of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page cost him business, income and even his girlfriend.  Page tells The Post that during the media barrage he faced in late 2016, he visited his girlfriend at her London flat, where she was "freaking out with the fake news about me."  "Talking with her later in the evening after dinner, she told me that she didn't want me staying there anymore, and that our relationship was over.  "So late that night," Page continued, "I booked a last-minute hotel reservation as part of this early chapter of the redefinition of my life."

Trump says Mueller probe has 'destroyed' people's lives.  President Trump said "young and beautiful lives" have been destroyed by special counsel Robert Mueller's "Witch Hunt" investigation into Russian interference during the election and any collusion on the part of Trump campaign staffers.  "Who's going to give back the young and beautiful lives (and others) that have been devastated and destroyed by the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt?," Trump said in a tweet on Sunday.  "They journeyed down to Washington, D.C., with stars in their eyes and wanting to help our nation ... They went back home in tatters!"

'An Abuse of Power': Rep. Biggs Says Mueller Is Investigating a Person, Not a Crime.  Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) is one of several Republican lawmakers calling for a second special counsel to probe alleged abuses by the FBI and Justice Department.  On "Happening Now" on Wednesday, Biggs said the only way to get to the bottom of apparent "improprieties" in the Russia and Hillary Clinton email probes is to investigate the investigators.  "We can't rely on them to investigate themselves.  So we need to get a special counsel outside of them to get in there and investigate," Biggs explained.

Levin: Mueller's appointment was unconstitutional.  Kicking off the week on the radio Monday, LevinTV host Mark Levin raised a crucial point about the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller that no one is currently discussing — it was unconstitutional.  "The appointment of Robert Mueller violates the United States Constitution," Levin said.  "And every subpoena, indictment, and plea agreement should be null and void."

Can We Hope To Keep Our Republic When One Of The Parties Supports Tyranny?  Think about this — a significant portion of our country, including a majority of its elite, thinks that it's A-OK for a Democrat administration to spy on a Republican candidate.  Think hard about that.  And think about whether or not we can ever put the pieces of our shattered republic back together again if we can't even agree that using government power against our political enemies is a bad thing.  But the terrifying truth is that liberals and their Never Trump enablers actually think this kind of tyranny is a good thing.  You see, they think Normal Americans are so transcendently awful (and, even more importantly, that the elite's power so precious) that all is fair in order to stifle their opponents' collective voice.

Junk science locks up innocent people.  The TV show "Cold Case Files" covered the trial of Alfred Swinton.  He was convicted of murder because a bite-mark expert said his teeth matched a bite on the victim.  "A perfect match!" said Dr. Gus Karazulas, the "forensic odontologist" whose testimony clinched the conviction.  Karazulas sounded impartial and objective.  "A forensic scientist is not on the side of the prosecutor or defense," he said on "Cold Case Files."  "We look at the evidence."  But Swinton was innocent.  Lawyer Chris Fabricant helped get him released from jail by doing a DNA test, a much more reliable, less subjective form of science.  Fabricant scoffs at bite-mark testimony:  "The doctor was just wrong.  It's an unreliable technique."

Government corruption and the destruction of a great man.  It is easy to corrupt the greedy man.  It is another to corrupt a heroic man.  Yet within each of us lurks a dark corner that, unless we implore God to shine His light into it, can corrupt us.  If anyone doubts this, consider the tragic story of Randall "Duke" Cunningham.

We Need to Know What Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rice, Power and the Rest of Them Did.  The Mueller investigation has, oddly enough, revealed that the greatest perpetrator against the American people in the 2016 election was the federal government.  The greatest perpetrator against the American people was the federal government, was the leadership in the FBI, the CIA, the national intelligence director, etc.  We cannot allow this to happen again.  We saw our federal government used by the prior administration, by the head of the CIA, by the head of the FBI, by the head of national intelligence and many, many others used to try and destroy the candidate of the opposition party.  These Obama intelligence officials tried to destroy Donald Trump and the electoral process.  An administration interfering in elections is something we've never seen anything before in American history.

Spies Like Obama?  With the flood of new evidence from recent days, it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny that President Obama — undeniably the most pro-Russian president in American history — and his men abused the powers of their offices not only to spy on then-candidate Donald Trump but also to undermine and lay the foundation for the overthrow of Trump's administration.

Former Trump Campaign Advisor Claims The FBI Detained Him And Took His Phone During Interrogation.  A former Trump campaign adviser told Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tuesday the FBI detained him and took his phone when the agency questioned him earlier this year.  Theodore Malloch, a former Trump campaign advisor, was stopped at Logan Airport in Boston, "taken into a room and ask questions by the FBI," and had his "phone under a warrant seized," with no lawyer present.  Malloch said the FBI had him wait for about 20 minutes, divided him from his wife and searched his belongings and "took me to a separate building to introduce me to two different FBI agents who asked me a series of questions."

10 Key Takeaways From The New York Times' Error-Ridden Defense Of FBI Spying On Trump Campaign.  [#1] FBI Officials Admit They Spied On [the] Trump Campaign:  The New York Times' story, headlined "Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation," is a dry and gentle account of the FBI's launch of extensive surveillance of affiliates of the Trump campaign.  Whereas FBI officials and media enablers had previously downplayed claims that the Trump campaign had been surveiled, in this story we learn that it was more widespread than previously acknowledged: [...] This is a stunning admission for those Americans worried that federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies might use their powers to surveil, leak against, and target Americans simply for their political views or affiliations.

Mueller Year One:  The Real Heroes in Journalism.  The reality is that there are only a handful of reporters bravely bucking the media's status quo and conducting real investigative journalism to expose what, quite possibly, is the biggest political scandal in U.S. history:  How top officials in an outgoing administration colluded with a presidential candidate's campaign and a major political party for the purpose of discrediting the rival presidential candidate and then stage a soft coup against him after he won.  Out of thousands of reporters in the United States, fewer than a dozen journalists have dared to cover the ways in which the world's most powerful law enforcement and intelligence apparatus leveraged its authority to try and destroy Trump's candidacy, then his presidency.

Louisiana Protects Customers From The 'Danger' of Unlicensed Florists.  Flowers are a classic gift.  Beautiful bouquets are available everywhere, but customers in Louisiana are unique in that their florists must obtain licenses to practice their profession.  After a bill that would have repealed the licensing requirement was defeated in the State Senate Agriculture Committee by a 6 to 1 vote, licensing will remain the case for the immediate future.  Louisiana should remove this licensing requirement for florists.  It would create more opportunities for would-be florists, and lower prices for people looking for flower arrangements, regardless of the occasion.

Waco Biker Trials Update:  More Dismissals.  It's hard to think of such a high-profile modern criminal prosecution, following an incident in which so many people dead, where the prosecution of the case was so badly bungled.

The Process is the Punishment (As Always).  There have been exciting developments in the "Russia investigation". There always are, because that is the nature of open-ended money-no-object investigations.  But, to me, the most interesting development was the testimony of Michael Caputo, who appeared just before me on Tucker Carlson's show last night.  Mr Caputo was, briefly, a very minor Trump campaign aide — and so his life has been destroyed.

Of the bureaucracy, by the bureaucracy, and for the bureaucracy.  Bullies who abuse their power like Bungling Bob Mueller and Jim Shady Comey co-opted the national press decades ago.  Using leaks to take out critics — indeed President Nixon — the FBI created this illusion that it is an independent agency that is some unelected guardian angel of our republic.  Comey shattered that image when his agents smashed to smithereens the evidence of Hillary's breaches of national security in an effort to get her elected so Comey could continue his job.  The press ignored this story.

Dershowitz on Cohen Wiretap: 'We Are Moving Closer and Closer to the Surveillance State'.  Thursday on MSNBC, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz stated that President Donald Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen being wiretapped by federal investigators meant America was "moving closer and closer to the surveillance state." [...] Remember that when you wiretap a lawyer, you are wiretapping his clients and you wiretapping conversations between a lawyer and the client and you are searching for emails.  Where is the American Civil Liberties Union on this?  Where are civil libertarians?  We live in such a partisan atmosphere, get Trump at any cost that we are prepared to give up our basic civil liberties in exchange for getting Trump."

Does equal justice under the law exist in America today?  Having two sets of laws — one for the political class and one for everyone else — accelerated under the administration of President Obama, beginning with Obama's pick for Treasury secretary.  Timothy Geithner was delinquent on his taxes to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, but became Treasury secretary in charge of the IRS.  He paid no price for that behavior.  The Daily Caller discovered from an inspector general's report in 2015 that 1,580 employees of the IRS were found to have not paid taxes over a 10-year period and 61 percent were not fired, but were given suspensions, reprimands or counseling.  Would you or I be treated in the same way?  Revelations coming from House and Senate Intelligence committee investigations have shown how the Obama administration politically weaponized the National Security Agency, State Department, FBI and the Department of Justice.

A Prosecution for McCabe?  Fired FBI deputy director and discredited Democrat hack Andrew McCabe may soon be prosecuted for authorizing the leaking of sensitive information to the media and then lying over and over again to investigators about it, according to reports.  The news comes after House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told Fox News on Sunday [4/22/2018] that "there was no official intelligence that was used to start this investigation" of Trump's aides.  If Nunes is right, this means an official investigation was launched against a presidential campaign even though there was no official information supporting it.  This is a naked abuse of power, the stuff of banana republics, something Trump defenders have been saying for some time.

Mueller's harassment of Hannity may be criminal.  Bobby the Mule Mueller used the power of his office to harass Sean Hannity, a critic of Mueller's witch hunt.  Using judge shopping to get a warrant, Mueller raided Michael Cohen's office not to get the goods on President Trump — he's clean — but to do opposition research on one of the few commentators willing to take on Mueller and the vast power of the state he controls.  The Mule has leaked — likely through third parties — confidential information about Hannity including his ownership of 870 dwellings which he rents.  Cohen arranged this.  My guess is Mueller's activity was criminal.

Deep State or Democrat State?  The real climax of the Hillary investigation came when immunity agreements were handed out to her associates like candy in exchange for their "cooperation".  When Hillary and her people lied to the FBI, it wasn't a crime.  Not only wasn't it a crime, but the whole point of the exercise was immunizing her people from prosecution so that a Trump administration would have little leverage against them.  The investigations are also crimes.  And they not only abuse government power to suppress political opponents, but also work to suppress any counter-investigation of the crime being committing.  While Trump and Cohen had their attorney-client privilege shattered, Cheryl Mills inappropriately claimed attorney-client privilege in her relationship with Hillary Clinton, even though she had been a government employee, and not only did the FBI respect the claim, but she got an immunity agreement.  What do these three cover-ups have in common?  All three abused law enforcement resources to protect Democrat political assets.

Privatize 911 Services And Hold Your Providers Accountable For Negligence.  A recent story highlights the dangers of a government being entrusted with personal care of individuals.  A 911 dispatcher intentionally hung up on thousands of callers in need of emergency help.  She remained employed without anyone noticing.  For a year and a half this went on, and no one noticed.  Homicides, robberies, medical emergencies, etc.  All ignored.  But the individuals harmed by her cannot bring personal actions against their government.  Because the government has something called governmental immunity.  This law is troubling for advocates of limited government.  Basically, irrespective of whether you pay taxes and abide by the law, you are not entitled to 911 services.  Unless, you are imprisoned or otherwise in government custody.  Then you are entitled to these services.  Troubling, yes.  The courts have held consistently that the governments have no duty to provide care to you.  That means you can't sue for damages.  So no matter how wronged you were by 911 response negligence, you can't sue.

Trump and the attorney-client privilege.  Investigators are usually looking to trap an unwary potential defendant into lying to them — a crime in that environment, even though the potential defendant is not under oath — or unwittingly admitting to them an allegation for which they need proof.  The potential defendant often believes — foolishly, as history has shown — he can actually talk the investigators out of indicting him.

How Comey Lied About Spying on Trump Tower.  Jim Comey deserves a special place in the annals of sanctimonious frauds in Washington, D.C.  He leaked, lied, bent rules, treated FBI material as his own personal property, violated confidential conversations, and generally acted like a government unto himself.  But now he has the gall to write it all up in the sonorous nonsense language of "constitutional crisis."  His forthcoming memoir amounts to nothing more than the sour grapes of a self-serving operator over a wholly justified sacking. [...] Comey's wounded ego is not a constitutional crisis.  The scandal is not that he lost his exalted job but that such a pompous creep once held it.

Raid on Trump lawyer crossed the line into special prosecutorial abuse.  We're supposed to be reassured that the FBI agents who raided the offices and home of Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, were, in Cohen's words, "courteous" and "respectful."  The president's attorney was understandably grateful that the agents didn't replicate the FBI's tactics at the home of Paul Manafort, Trump's onetime campaign manager.  Busting in before dawn, guns drawn, with a "no knock" warrant while Manafort and his wife were in bed, the agents frisked Mrs. Manafort while she was still in her nightclothes.  Perhaps Cohen thinks if he sounds reasonable, he can appease Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who ordered Manafort's arrest, or his other federal prosecutors behind this raid.  Or maybe Cohen simply developed the quickest case of Stockholm syndrome in history.  Whatever his reasons, a line has been violated.  The government is going after lawyers now, as part of an investigation that feels as though policy differences and partisan politics have been criminalized.

The Real Investigation.  President Trump now has real legal peril.  The potential jeopardy stems from the investigation that came to light this week when the FBI conducted raids on the office and residences of his lawyer and self-professed "fixer," Michael Cohen.  I've never thought "collusion with Russia" posed jeopardy.  If there had been anything criminal to that storyline, the politicized anti-Trump factions in the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies would have leaked it.  And, notwithstanding Trump's nauseating nods to Putin, the administration has taken enough aggressive steps against Russia that it is past time for the Kremlin to broadcast the big kompromat file if it exists.

American Greatness and its Enemies.  There may have been much more involved, but it is significant that many in the media saw in this raid — a raid that honest analysts such as Alan Dershowitz pointed out undermined attorney-client privilege and would never have been tolerated by the ACLU if the target was a liberal — an attempt to uncover evidence of a purported campaign violation that wrongly sought to aid the President.  This was, of all odd things, the payment of $130,000 to porn[ ]star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence regarding an asserted brief affair with Mr. Trump.  One would have thought that this non-disclosure agreement (NDA), dealing as it does with a matter of private reputation would have been something that liberals would have thought did not belong in the public square, given their attitude toward President Clinton's escapades that Democrats believed ought never to have been a part of impeachment proceedings.

Never trust a Never Trumper.  We have a rogue prosecutor.  He has sent agents to raid the homes and offices of the president's former campaign manager and his personal lawyer.  This outrage has liberals gloating, be they on the left or be they on the right of your television screens.  Decades of chatter about civil rights turn out to be a facade.  They no more care about the Constitution than a Canada goose does.  And the Never Trump wimps once again side with the Big Government Deep State.

Piers Morgan:  Left Can't Prove Trump-Russia Collusion, So They're 'Moving the Goalposts'.  Piers Morgan said the left has been unable to find solid evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, so Democrats are "moving the goalposts" and going after President Trump's personal life.  "They want to prove to the world that Donald Trump collaborated with Russians to fix the election [and] that's why he won," Morgan said on "Hannity" on Thursday [4/12/2018].  "So far, they have singularly failed to establish that."  He said that's why they're moving on to lurid allegations about the president's private life, such as his purported 2006 affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels.

'This Is Third World Stuff': Former DOJ Attorney Suggests Legal Process Being Used to 'Terrorize' Trump.  Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should have been fired months ago, former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams argued, saying Rosenstein let Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation "get completely out of control."  Rosenstein met with President Trump on Thursday, amid recent calls for Rosenstein's ouster over his role in the Russia probe.  Adams explained on "The Story" on Thursday [4/12/2018] that Mueller originally was supposed to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, but the probe has expanded far beyond that.

Rand Paul:  Mueller abused authority; 'every American citizen' could be next.  Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., says that special counsel Robert Mueller has abused his authority by referring President Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to the FBI, which raided Cohen's office Monday morning, seizing business records, emails, and other documentation, including a record of a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.  Paul said the special counsel is no longer looking at Russian collusion in the 2016 election.  "Going after someone's personal attorney is a great overstep, I think, in the authority of the prosecutor," Paul said.

Tom Fitton:  DOJ Is 'Out of Control,' Mueller 'Ought to Be Shut Down'.  Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch official Tom Fitton on Monday night [4/9/2018] blasted the Department of Justice as "out of control," and suggested special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation "ought to be shut down."  The blast came during Lou Dobb's nightly program on Fox Business, where both Dobbs and Fox News Channel political and legal analyst Gregg Jarrett blasted the Mueller investigation in general — and the raid on President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in particular.  In his remarks, Fitton called on President Donald Trump himself "to intervene and save the Justice Department and FBI from themselves."

Guess Whose House Wasn't Raided by the FBI.  Can't find any collusion between Trump and Russia?  Hey, why not look for collusion between Cohen and professional whore and porn star Stormy Daniels?  Was she paid to go away with campaign funds?  Even so, that's an FEC violation punishable by a fine and something that does not require a SWAT team.  It certainly does not compare with money funneled by Team Hillary and the DNC though a law firm to Fusion GPS and British foreign agent Christopher Steele to put together a fake dossier on Trump using Russian sources.  But where were the raids on the offices of the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and Fusion GPS?  This is the FBI of Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, whose mission was to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House.  They never raided the home and office of Cheryl Mills, did they?  They never raided Hillary's house or seized the acid-washed server, did they?  But Michael Cohen is a threat to our democracy warranting brute force?

Yes, rogue prosecutors do try to take out elected leaders; one of them may face jail.  As we watch the drama escalate in the effort to undo the 2016 presidential election, consider the case of another chief executive elected at the same time, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens.  A Republican, Governor Greitens was indicted in February for felony invasion of privacy by allegedly photographing his former lover, "K.S.," without her knowledge or permission.  The indictment was sought and is being prosecuted by Circuit Attorney (the Missouri name for a district attorney) Kim Gardner, a Democrat who was elected as the first black Circuit Attorney in St. Louis.  Since then, the case has fallen apart, with no photograph produced, and with the revelation yesterday that the accuser K.S. has admitted under oath that she may have dreamed the incident.  That's right, a sitting governor prosecuted by a Democrat on the basis of something that was literally dreamed up by the purported victim of the alleged crime.

The Firestarter:  What Happens When the Government Lies About You in Court?  In 1963, the Supreme Court affirmed in Brady v.  Maryland that exculpatory evidence withheld from the defense by the prosecution violates constitutional protections.  Ever since then "Brady violations" have resulted in sanctions against prosecutors and police, as well as overturned criminal convictions.  But what happens when the government withholds exculpatory evidence during the prosecution of a civil lawsuit against an individual or company?  Nothing, apparently.  With Brady deemed to apply only to criminal cases, no specific case law punishes a government lawyer for failing to disclose evidence that would've been helpful to a civil defendant.

Police can't charge 'exhorbitant' fees for Vegas massacre info, judge rules.  The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has every right to try and recoup costs for providing the media with body camera videos, 911 records and written reports in connection with the city's Oct. 1 massacre, a judge has decided.  But police cannot charge "exhorbitant fees," such as the range of $233,750 to $458,159 the department has estimated for making such data available, Clark County District Judge Richard Scotti ruled Friday [3/9/2018].

A Member Of Congress Explains Why The Corruption In Congress Is Much Worse Than You Think.  What would you say if I told you that committee chairs were for sale in Congress?  And what would you say if I told you that many members of Congress spend far more time on the telephone raising money than on the jobs that the people of their states actually elected them to do?  There is a reason why so many Americans absolutely hate Congress.  At this moment, Congress has an approval rating of just 15 percent, and approval ratings for Congress have been at extremely low levels for a very long time.  We all know that Congress has become completely corrupt, that it is completely unresponsive to the American people and that it has become all about the money.

What good are police?  Police solve less than two-thirds of all murders committed, and in some cities (New Orleans, for instance) the murder clearance rate is only 30 percent.  There is only a 1 in 5 chance that property stolen from you will be recovered.  So what good are police?  Police power props up the state and provides cover for all its nefarious activities.  For police, the motto "To protect and serve," is really all about protecting government and their own gang and serving the state as revenue collectors and enforcers, not protecting the people.  They cannot and do not protect us, but they are all too willing to abuse us.  When the left and right embrace and submit to them in their current form, they are advocating for their own slavery.

DA Retaliates After Cops Expose Her For Letting Criminals Go.  Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg cut off police access to a database that is essential to criminal investigations after they criticized her actions.  The Houston Police Department lambasted Ogg after she said police were being too hard on illegal immigrants and criminals.  In response, the Democrat attorney issued a memo stating assistant district attorneys would no longer allow police to access the investigative database regarding court cases.  Members of the Houston Police Officer's Union slammed Ogg's office and said she is jeopardizing their ability to protect the people of Texas by denying them access to essential information.

Florida emergency medical teams frustrated over 'delay' in Parkland school shooting response.  Three high-ranking Florida officials close to the law enforcement response at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School tell Fox News there was a delay in Emergency Medical Service getting into the school in the critical moments after [the shooter] opened fire, killing 17 people and wounding at least 14 others.  Two separate sources told Fox News some of the EMS teams who requested to enter the school were told they could not.  One source said it was the Broward County Sheriff's Office — which was the commanding office — that ordered some of the EMS crews not to go into the school when they requested to enter.

Laura Ingraham: Broward County Deputies Told Not to Enter School.  This seriously changes everything.  We may have finally gotten to the bottom of why the Florida school shooter was able to take the life of 17 of his fellow students.  Previously, we reported that on-duty police officers at the site of the shooting neglected to enter the building while the shooting was ongoing, which could have cost an untold number of lives.  Then the Broward County Sheriff attempted to defend his department, despite the clear cowardice displayed by his officers.  Now we just received shocking news that the on-duty deputies were ordered not to engage with the shooter or enter the building.

The Editor says...
It sounds like the officials in charge were intentionally trying to make the situation worse, so that it would have a greater political effect.  Much like the way Barack H. Obama slow-walked his response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in order to maximize the damage and bring condemnation to oil companies in general.

Doctor Hamburger Diagnoses a Malignant Administrative State.  The ominous nature of the administrative state (think IRS, EPA, DOJ, DEA, Interior, FCC, SEC) transforms our government originally designed as limited and by the consent of the governed.  Emblematic of the administrative state problem is the slow-rolling special counsel coup being orchestrated by intelligence and law enforcement agencies intent on overturning a presidential election, energized and perpetrated by human creatures in the embedded federal bureaucracy that occupies a wide swath of swampland on the Potomac River.

New York's AG Uses Below-The-Belt-Measures On Pro-Lifers So He'd Win His Case.  New York's attorney general oversaw and facilitated secret surveillance on pro-life counselors outside an abortion clinic as well as the creation of a fake identity in an attempt to win an ongoing case, according to a witness's testimony.  Testimony in People v.  Griepp et al — New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman against pro-life advocates counseling women outside of Choices Women's Medical Center in Jamaica-Queens, N.Y. — illustrated Schneiderman used a witness to spy on pro-lifers via creating a fake Facebook account to access their information.  The witness testified she had used someone else's photo, listed her occupation as a bank teller, created a fake residency — even posting about the weather there to gain credibility — and went under the guise of "Shelly Walker."  The witness also allegedly accessed hundreds of pro-life activists' personal information around the country — she gave the data to Schneiderman's office, according to The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC).

We Should Care About What Happened to Carter Page.  The former Trump aide's reputation has been ruined — not by a conviction, not by any charges, but by a warrant that was supposed to be secret.

The Ruling Class Hates You.  Truth is, they really don't like the rest of us.  No problem, we have our own lives and families.  But it's only not a problem until such disdain is combined with a sense of political entitlement and the coercive power of government.  Which brings us to the political and cultural union of the Democratic Party and the permanent political class called the deep state, that forms the unelected, unaccountable fourth branch of government that wields so much power up to and including the police power of the FBI.

When Federal Prosecutors Go Bad.  [Sidney] Powell and [Harvey] Silverglate write about the horror faced by regular, even prominent citizens whom the FBI and DOJ destroyed, or tried to destroy, using their unlimited resources and the trust of the courts and the public.  From the very beginning of the prosecution when the affidavits for charges are submitted to the court, the honesty and fairness of the prosecutors is tested, and all too often, ambitious and aggressive prosecutors betray that trust.  Most of all, these books warn that the character and virtue of prosecutors are the critical factor in the proper conduct of a prosecution, the choice of target, the charge made, and the conduct of the discovery and the trial.  Prosecutors have all the cards, and if they don't conduct an honest and fair prosecution, innocent people are harmed, destroyed by their striving for conviction at any cost, even by cheating or by abuse of the process.

Bad People Lied to a Kangaroo Court.  The only people who think that the government in a non-adversarial, secret, non-reviewable judicial proceeding will produce "all material and relevant facts," including "information potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application," are those pathetically deluded souls who believe that when rules, regulations, and laws are promulgated everyone complies, including the government that promulgated them.  They're always shocked when reality proves otherwise.  The rest of us might want to consider what it took for this exposure of potential government wrongdoing before the FISC.  The House Intelligence Committee (HIC) pressed for months and was forced to threaten subpoenas before the Department of Justice and the FBI turned over the evidence upon which its memorandum is based.  If this wasn't such a high-profile partisan battle, impinging on the presidency, that effort never would have been made.  Had Hillary Clinton been elected or Democrats controlled Congress, none of this would have seen the light of day.  The intelligence agencies and the FBI can rest assured, it will be business as usual before the FISC:  non-adversarial, secret, non-reviewable proceedings in which they can allege, unchallenged, pretty much anything they want, their surveillance requests rubber-stamped by the court (historically it's approved over 99 percent of all requests).

Worse Than Watergate.  The FISA Abuse Memo is out and now we know why the Democrats were desperate to keep its contents hidden from the public: it confirms the worst fears not just of President Trump's supporters but of everyone concerned about the abuse of police power, government corruption, and the sanctity of our elections.  The memo shows interference in the 2016 presidential election by hostile elements within a United States intelligence agency.  It wasn't the Russians we had to worry about — it was rogue actors at the highest levels of the FBI and Department of Justice.  Left unanswered is to what extent the West Wing knew about or was complicit in this gross abuse of power.

Democracy's Highest Crime and Misdemeanor.  Is there sufficient decency and courage in the midst of Washington's swamp to compel the pursuit of justice wherever in the Ruling Class it leads and then to prosecute the lawbreakers — whomever they are?  First, it's vital to understand that when you give a pass — or worse you give multiple successive passes — to lawbreakers, you not only protect those who violated the law, but you empower and encourage would-be lawbreakers to do the same or worse.  Second, when laws are not enforced they cease to have meaning.  And that's when your nation finds itself on a slippery slope of arbitrary and subjective rule and cronyism, which ends in ruin... such as no borders, the hollowing out of protections in the Bill of Rights, and the politicization of government agencies, to name a few.

Why aren't the Democrats horrified by the corruption at the FBI and DOJ?  It is becoming clearer by the day, after over a year of investigations, that the Obama administration did indeed weaponize the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, the ATF, the IRS and the NSA.  Over those eight years, each of the above agencies was transformed into an arm of the Democratic Party tasked with crippling the opposition and abrogating the Constitution.  Since all of the mainstream media already were arms of the DNC, it is well and truly a miracle that Donald Trump prevailed throughout his campaign to win the election, as the entire DC bureaucracy and media were aligned against him.  Most of them still are.  Those law enforcement institutions in which Americans have put their trust and faith for many decades have been thoroughly compromised by a group of bad actors at the top, self-appointed arbiters of electoral politics.

Real Americans vs.  Our Effete Elites.  The revealed corruption of the FBI and DOJ is tragic and largely the responsibility of the Clintons and Obama.  Obama built upon, took his cues from the Clintons, the most corrupt family ever to wield political power in America.  Astonishingly, no one of the left seems to care about how criminal the Obama administration was or how unscrupulous the Clintons have always been. [...] No one on the left seems to care about the horrific abuse of power that occurred under Obama.  He effectively turned our law enforcement agencies into a Stasi that spies on its own citizens.

Deborah Jordahl: Wisconsin's Comey-over.  What do a former attorney general, two former judges, two licensed attorneys and a former state legislator have in common?  They presided over the Wisconsin Ethics Commission when it opened its doors on July 1, 2016.  This agency and the Wisconsin Elections Commission were created to replace Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board (GAB) following its participation in an unconstitutional John Doe investigation into Republican Governor Scott Walker, his aides and allies.  As a longtime conservative strategist and consultant, I had a front row seat to what the Wisconsin Supreme Court called "a perfect storm of wrongs," visited upon people who are "wholly innocent of any wrongdoing."

Constitution is no longer the law of the land.  Now the law is whatever a federal judge says it is.  A federal judge on the 9th Circuit Court — William Alsup — ruled that President Donald Trump's executive action phasing out the Obama-era DACA amnesty program is illegal and ordered the government to resume granting DACA waivers.  Trump announced the phase-out weeks ago, claiming the program established by his predecessor via executive order was illegal.  In doing so Trump sought to throw creation of immigration law back into the laps of the lawmakers — Congress.  Alsup, a Bill Clinton appointee, ruled the program legal.  In his ruling, Alsup concluded that without a nationwide injunction, DACA recipients would likely suffer irreparable harm, leading to harmful ripple effects on the nation's economy and healthcare system.

California Homeowners Association Forces Residents to Keep Garage Doors Open to Deter Squatters.  While the purpose behind an HOA — to keep the neighborhoods neat and orderly — sounds great, it's important to remember that HOA membership basically means that your neighbors get a say in what you do with your property.  It's not enough to have federal, state, and local governments issuing rules over what you can and can't do.  No, we had to create these petty tyrannies to stick their noses in as well.  Different HOAs have different rules, to be sure, but they all focus on the mundane, trivial stuff.  That's because the people who are attracted to rules like HOA boards and elected offices are people who are often attracted to power in general.

Louisiana Teacher Handcuffed at School Board Meeting After She Questions Administrator Pay Raise.  An English language-arts teacher in Louisiana's Vermilion Parish School District was removed from a school board meeting and handcuffed Monday night after asking questions about administrator pay, video of the event shows.  Deyshia Hargrave asked why board members were planning to give the superintendent a raise when teachers had not been rewarded a pay raise in years, the Washington Post reported.

Teacher handcuff video leads to death threats, investigation.  A Louisiana school board's office was temporarily locked down after members received death threats when a video emerged Tuesday showing a teacher screaming while being handcuffed at a board meeting.  Vermilion Parish School Board President Anthony Fontana told The Advertiser the threats came from as far away as South America, Australia and England, as well as other U.S. states.  He said the threats have been reported to local police and the FBI.  The threats came less than a day after middle school English teacher Deyshia Hargrave was forcibly removed from Monday night's meeting.  She was handcuffed and jailed after questioning pay policies — specifically a proposed raise for the superintendent — during a public comment period.

A Ludicrous Ruling That Trump Can't End DACA.  Yesterday [1/9/2018], Judge William Alsup ordered the Trump administration to keep its predecessor's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in place.  This remarkable 49-page order has all the aesthetics of a judicial decision but is, at heart, an amateur act of punditry.  Judge Alsup paints the picture of a divided White House, wherein "the Chief Executive publicly favors the very program [his Administration] has ended."  Citing a "presidential tweet," the court suggests that DACA's recision "was contrived to give the administration a bargaining chip to demand funding for a border wall in exchange for reviving DACA."  These talking points could have been plagiarized from the MSNBC chyron.  Such rhetoric in a judicial decision would have been unthinkable barely a year ago. But now it passes for the new normal.  Once again, the judiciary has attempted to shackle President Trump from making his own judgments about how to exercise his own power.  The Supreme Court has reversed Judge Alsup's outlandish rulings on DACA before.  And it will do so again.

Trump and Sessions must tell this amnesty judge to shove it.  Not in [Alexander] Hamilton's wildest imaginings could he ever have envisioned a time when a lowly district judge can force a president to make denizens of aliens, contrary to the most foundational sovereignty statutes.  Even King George couldn't do what Obama did on immigration without the consent of Parliament, according to the Library of Congress.  In that sense, the power of lower court judges has been elevated to a higher status than that of a king, much less a president.  Remember when Hamilton said even the Supreme Court would have "neither force nor will" on political issues even governing American citizens?  Those were good days.  It's not worth delving into the details of the ruling from this Antifa-style judge in San Francisco who declared last night that Trump must continue renewing work permits, visas, and Social Security cards for people who, pursuant to law, must be deported.  After all, Judge William Alsup is merely continuing "the resistance," with the power of supremacy that even conservative legal eagles have bestowed upon the judicial robes.  Let's put aside the fact that it is a settled, uninterrupted stream of case law that illegal aliens are considered as if they are outside the country and do not have standing to sue in court.  This is why we have administrative immigration judges, given that aliens have no access to Article III courts.

The Judicial Rebellion.  We are witnessing a treasonous rebellion by leftist judges who are declaring the last election null and void.  At the core of these traitors' arguments is the belief that the people do not have the right to express their views through the electoral process.  Essentially, these courts are declaring that President Trump doesn't have the same authority as his predecessor and that the powers of the executive branch are constrained by what the judiciary thinks is good policy.  These judges assert that President Trump can't overrule the executive orders of his predecessor with his own executive orders.  If that were the case, elections would be meaningless, since one president could effectively prevent the people from rejecting his position by voting for a candidate who disagreed with him.  We see this in the judge's ruling on DACA.  Ignoring for a moment the fact that DACA was an unconstitutional usurpation of power by Obama, there is still a huge problem with a court effectively declaring that one president, Obama, can make edicts that other presidents can't change.

Judicial Anarchy Over DACA.  A federal judge, U.S. District Judge William Alsup, took it upon himself to order that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), put in place by former President Obama's executive order and wound down towards ultimate termination by President Trump's own executive order last September, must stay in place at least for the time being.  The judge issued a preliminary injunction against ending DACA while lawsuits over President Trump's decision go forward.  The effect of Judge Alsup's order is to throw out a temporary lifeline to the illegal immigrant "Dreamers" who have or have had DACA protection to be able to continue staying and working in the country while they apply for renewals.  Needless to say, President Trump was not happy with this latest example of judicial overreach.

Judge rules DACA legal, blocks Trump's decision to end program.  A federal judge in California blocked President Trump's planned phaseout of the Obama-era DACA deportation amnesty in a ruling late Tuesday [1/9/2018] that could upend the negotiations on Capitol Hill over "Dreamers" future.  Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee to the bench, ruled the DACA program legal — the first court to do so — and said the administration illegally cut corners in canceling it.  He ordered the administration to allow illegal immigrants to renew their DACA applications just as they would have under President Obama.

Judge blocks Trump administration plan to roll back DACA.  A federal judge in California late Tuesday [1/9/2018] temporarily blocked the Trump administration's efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.  Judge William Alsup also said the administration must resume receiving DACA renewal applications.  But the ruling is limited — the administration does not need to process applications for those who have never before received DACA protections, he said.

Case Against Bundys Dismissed:  Obama's FBI And DOJ Are The Real Criminals.  Judge Navarro's ruling was based on the egregious misconduct of the FBI and Justice Department lawyers handling the case, that led her to conclude that a new trial would not be sufficient to address the problems in the case and would provide the prosecution with an unfair advantage going forward.  The judge criticized both the prosecution and the FBI for not providing evidence to the defense as required under court rules.  "The court finds that the universal sense of justice has been violated," Navarro said according to reporting by Robert Anglen for the Reno Gazette Journal.  Navarro said it was clear the FBI was involved in the prosecution of the case, and that it was not a coincidence that most of the withheld evidence came from the FBI.

Is there a single Democrat anywhere who [cares] about America?  We now have ironclad evidence that the Obama administration mounted at least two distinct and extraordinary efforts to weaponize government against its political opponents.  It used the instrumentalities of government to target members of the opposite party and — worse still — to influence the outcome of a presidential election.

Dangers of Government Control.  The Federal Reserve Board controls our money supply.  Its governors are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate and serve 14-year staggered terms.  They have the power to cripple an economy, as they did during the late 1920s and early 1930s.  Their inept monetary policy threw the economy into the Great Depression, during which real output in the United States fell nearly 30 percent and the unemployment rate soared as high as nearly 25 percent.  The most often stated cause of the Great Depression is the October 1929 stock market crash.  Little is further from the truth.  The Great Depression was caused by a massive government failure led by the Federal Reserve's rapid 25 percent contraction of the money supply.  The next government failure was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which increased U.S. tariffs by more than 50 percent.  Those failures were compounded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation.

Jail Hillary and Huma, Not Kristian Saucier.  Most Americans are not familiar with the name of Kristian Saucier, but they should be.  He is the U.S. Navy sailor sentenced to prison for taking pictures inside the nuclear submarine he served in.  He was not a spy for a foreign power.  He had no intent, to coin a phrase, to do anything with these photos except keep them as personal memories of his proud and honorable service. [...] No doubt Saucier watched with bitterly ironic interest as the email scandals involving former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and aide Huma Abedin unfolded with tales of private servers, mishandled classified emails, smashed devices, and scrubbed hard drives.  After all that, despite laying out a case for Hillary's indictment and incarceration, FBI director James Comey, who was writing her exoneration memo before even conducting a sham of an investigation, said no prosecutor worth his salt would bring a case because Hillary lacked "intent" even though the law regarding mishandling of classified information does not require intent.

Unsealed Court Docs Show How Prosecutors Tried To Rig Bundy Trial.  Unsealed court documents detail how the team of prosecutors tasked with convicting Cliven Bundy and his sons of crimes relating to a 2014 armed standoff failed to turn over potential exculpatory evidence to the court, The Oregonian reports.  The Bundys' case ended in a mistrial Dec. 20 after Judge Gloria Navarro ruled that prosecutors violated the civil rights of the defendants by withholding evidence supporting the Bundys' case.  Navarro is considering dismissing the case "with prejudice" and blocking prosecutors from retrying the case.  Her decision will come Jan. 8, according to The New York Times.

FBI Chapter of Hillary Clinton Fan Club Probes President Trump.  Recent weeks have revealed the chilling extent to which special counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI chief, has surrounded himself with pro-Hillary acolytes who scorn Trump and even his voters.  At worst, this is judicial corruption, rooted in bottomless affection for the subject of one inquiry and boundless disdain for the target of a different probe.  At best, this creates the appearance of corruption, whereby Mueller's team and their FBI and DOJ colleagues seem so pro-Hillary and so anti-Trump that even their totally even-handed and perfectly honest conclusions would be attacked as either a phony exoneration of Hillary, a fake prosecution of Trump, or an over-reaction to criticism that prompted the opposite results.  With Drano-like efficiency, these outcomes would corrode confidence in federal law-enforcement agencies and the rule of law.

The Wrong Man.  In the fall of 2001, a nation reeling from the horror of 9/11 was rocked by a series of deadly anthrax attacks.  As the pressure to find a culprit mounted, the FBI, abetted by the media, found one.  The wrong one.  This is the story of how federal authorities blew the biggest anti-terror investigation of the past decade — and nearly destroyed an innocent man.  Here, for the first time, the falsely accused, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, speaks out about his ordeal.

The State Government Agency That Spied on Citizens.  The 88-page report by Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel details the notorious "John Doe" investigations that went after almost every conservative, nonprofit organization in Wisconsin (the state chapter of Club for Growth among them) for supposed violations of campaign finance laws.  Except that there were not any actual violations of the law, according to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  The court shut down the prosecutions in 2015, calling the legal theory under which the prosecutors were pursuing the case "unsupported in either reason or law."  The state's highest court used the word "amazing" in describing the "breadth" of documents seized by prosecutors through numerous, wide-ranging subpoenas and search warrants.  This included "virtually every document possessed by the [targets] relating to every aspect of their lives, both personal and professional, over a five-year span."  The report from Schimel, a Republican, has an unbelievable list of 218 subpoenas and search warrants issued in the investigation — and this is only a "partial" list.

Stuck in the Middle with the Circumlocution Office.  Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit is not among his finest novels [...] but it deserves its place in the literary pantheon not only for its depiction of life in the Marshalsea debtor's prison (something with which Dickens had personal experience) but for its invention of the Circumlocution Office.  Fittingly, Dickens calls this chapter, "Containing the whole Science of Government."  It's the ultimate revenge of the bureaucrats on the masses of suffering humanity who pay their inflated salaries and expect something in return: [...] Another word for such an entity is, of course, a racket, a criminal or quasi-criminal enterprise designed to enrich the barnacles while at the same time absolving them of all responsibility, including having to work for a living.  In America, we call it the federal government.

Letter of Notice From Trump Transition To Congress Outlining Illegal Search and Seizure by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.  It is my belief, based on mounting evidence, a specific cast of characters within the Mueller "Russia Election Interference" probe were placed there to protect people behind the FBI's initial false claims.  Those claims formed the basis for the counterintelligence operation against 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Woman faces criminal charges for rescuing starving dog.  A dog rescued in Scioto County was so emaciated, an official said it lost half of its body weight.  That official, Rhonda Rose from the Scioto Area Humane Society, said she rescued the dog at the last minute, only to be charged with two crimes.  Rose works as the Treasurer of the Humane Society.  She has been charged with criminal trespass and petty theft after rescuing the dog.

Whistleblower Says CFPB Falsified Documents to Fine Payday Lender.  A former employee of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is calling for an investigation after accusing managers of falsifying documents to impose fines on a payday lender.  Cassandra Jackson, a former CFPB examiner in the southeast division, sent a letter last week to Attorney General Jeff Sessions also accusing managers of "widespread racism and gender discrimination."  Jackson said her superiors at the CFPB asked her to falsify documents during her investigation into a Texas-based payday lending company, Ace Cash Express.  "During the course of this examination, I was asked to change, remove, and otherwise falsify documents connected with this examination," Jackson said.  Jackson said she was asked to remove document evidence proving Ace Cash Express was complying with CFPB rules and to write a report including findings she knew to be "false and fabricated."

One Mueller-Investigation Coincidence Too Many.  Something has gone terribly wrong with the Mueller investigation.  The investigation is venturing well beyond the original mandate of rooting out evidence of Russian collusion.  Indeed, the word "collusion" is now rarely invoked at all.  It has given way to its successor, "obstruction."  The latter likely will soon beget yet another catchphrase to justify the next iteration of the investigations.  There seems far less special investigatory concern with the far more likely Russian collusion in the matters of the origins and dissemination of the Fusion GPS/Steele dossier, and its possible role in the Obama-administration gambit of improper or illegal surveilling, unmasking, and leaking of the names of American citizens.

The Swamp against the People.  [Scroll down]  These facts support two conclusions: [#1] The United States Congress is the only constitutional body with sufficient political power to declare the current Mueller witch hunt null and void.  If President Trump or the DOJ exercises its constitutional rights to do so, the acting party will inevitably be attacked by the corrupt media and the left.  [#2] The office of the "special counsel" is inherently a corrupt and partisan, cancerous growth on the U.S. Constitution.  That made up office must be abolished, and if existing constitutional prohibitions against arbitrary witch hunts are not sufficiently clear, a new amendment to the US Constitution should be passed on an urgent basis to make it clear beyond any doubt at all.

How the FBI Criminalized Trump's Transition.  What do you call a system of government that cannot tolerate a transition of power without corrupt machinations by those unwilling to cede control?  Banana Republic is a term that comes to mind.  The Special Counsel was appointed to determine whether Russia colluded with Trump to steal the election.  Michael Flynn was indicted for a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador on December 28, 2016, seven weeks after the election.  That was the day after the outgoing president expelled 35 Russian diplomats — including gardeners and chauffeurs — for interfering in the election.  Yes, that really happened.  The Obama administration had wiretapped Flynn's conversation with the ambassador, hoping to find him saying something they could use to support their wild story about collusion.  The outrage, for some reason, is not that an outgoing administration was using wiretaps to listen in on a successor's transition.  It is that Flynn might have signaled to the Russians that the Trump administration would have a different approach to foreign policy.

Head of House intelligence panel finds evidence of abuse in US government surveillance.  House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told Fox News on Friday [12/8/2017] that his investigators have already uncovered evidence of "abuse" in the U.S. government's surveillance practices.  "I believe there's evidence that abuses have occurred," Nunes said in his first interview since the House Ethics Committee dismissed allegations he had wrongly released classified information as part of the panel's Russia investigation.  "We have had an ongoing investigation into DOJ [Department of Justice] and FBI since mid-summer for both FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] abuse and other matters that we can't get into too much.  But it is very concerning." [...] "I hate to use the word corrupt, but they become so dirty that, who is watching the watchmen?  Who is investigating these people?  There is no one."

Stunning Report:  Left-Wing Prosecutorial Crusaders Spied on Wisconsin Republicans, Defied Court Orders.  If you aren't familiar with the "John Doe" investigation that rocked Wisconsin politics a few years ago, or are hazy on the details, go back and read my coverage of how the Left engaged in gross abuses of criminal law to intimidate, harass and silence conservatives in the state.  The specifics were chilling — from pre-dawn raids on political activists' homes, to stifling gag orders preventing them from saying a peep about what was happening to them, all in pursuit of criminalizing and punishing the Badger State conservative movement.  Eventually, one target violated his gag order and blew the whistle on the whole operation, eventually leading to investigations of the investigations, and multiple courts shutting down the witch hunts with extreme prejudice.  It was a black mark on the state's politics, and it signaled just how ruthless the Left had become in its efforts to exact personal and legal vengeance on the political forces that had defeated them in a series of major electoral and policy battles in Madison.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is out of control and we should all be concerned.  The Obama era tradition of bureaucratic overreach is alive and well in the Fish and Wildlife Service.  Using an endangered frog, the Fish and Wildlife Service is attempting to dictate how private landowners use their land.  The saga of the dusky gopher frog is lengthy, but one perfectly illustrative of federal government overreach into the rights of the private citizenry.  Protecting endangered species is part of the function of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but a recent string of court decisions, based on a classic sue-and-settle case, has given the agency virtually unlimited power.  And it's all thanks to a frog.

Don't Register Anything.  Like too many jurisdictions, Hawaii requires gun owners to register their firearms.  Also like an excess of other control-freaky places, the state requires medical marijuana users to register themselves with the state Department of Health.  As it turns out, those who dutifully abide by both requirements find themselves in trouble.  Hawaii may allow the use of marijuana for medicinal uses, and even require registration of its users, but the state continues to regard the practice as a violation of federal law.

Nothing About Collusion.  There is a basic lesson here for anyone who enters government service:  do not ever talk to the FBI unless your lawyer is present.  Just ask Scooter Libby, who was punished for making allegedly false statements to FBI investigators.  In the Flynn affair, there was no need for the FBI to ask any questions about the telephone chats, since the transcripts were available from the get-go.  It is said that a skilled prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, and a special counsel has even greater powers.  Furthermore, prosecutors' motives are not limited to the pursuit of the truth.  The "accomplishments" of aggressive prosecutors often have very little to do with the facts, but rather with the number of scalps they can hang on their war belts.  Rare is the person who can insist on his innocence — of anything — if a special prosecutor is out to get him.  The prosecutor can catch you giving an incorrect or confused answer to questions ... about anything.

NSA wanted to use the Espionage Act to prosecute a journalist for using FOIA.  Declassified documents in the Central Intelligence Agency's archives show that while the CIA was looking to include the Freedom Of Information Act in its war on leaks, the National Security Agency was seriously considering using the Espionage Act to target target Puzzle Palace author James Bamford for using FOIA.  While Bamford has briefly discussed this on a handful of occasions, the declassified memos and briefings from NSA confirm that this was more than just an intimidation tactic or a passing thought — the NSA had truly wanted to jail a journalist for his use of public records.  When the Agency determined that this was unlikely to happen, they moved on to exploring other legal avenues which could be used to punish Bamford for his FOIA work.

Meet The Very Shady Prosecutor Robert Mueller Has Hired For The Russia Investigation.  Long before Donald Trump ran for president or most people had heard of Paul Manafort, fabled Judge Alex Kozinski proclaimed a veritable epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.  The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and even The New York Times joined the Kozinski chorus.  Abuses of power by prosecutors have changed the balance of power in the United States Senate and sent countless innocent people to prison.  Prosecutors have unbridled discretion.  With the stroke of a pen, they can indict and ruin anyone, while they enjoy immunity from suit and are rarely even rebuked.  Now, those close to the president have crossed the scope of a squad of prosecutors highly trained and experienced in abuses of that power — especially Andrew Weissmann, who just indicted Manafort and Richard Gates.

When Clinton Donors Prosecute And Judge Trump Associates.  In May, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed a lawsuit by the families of the victims of Benghazi against Hillary Clinton.  Judge Jackson decided that the families couldn't sue Hillary either for wrongful death or for defamation.  That isn't too surprising as Jackson is a former Clinton donor who had been appointed by Obama.  And a Clinton donor should never have been ruling on a Clinton case.  But now Judge Jackson will be presiding over the Paul Manafort case.  Presiding over Manafort's indictment is Judge Deborah A. Robinson.  Judge Robinson's most prominent previous case was the Berger trial.  Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's former National Security Adviser, stole classified documents about the terror failures of the Clinton administration, hid documents under a construction trailer, lied about taking them and destroyed some of them.

The Runaway Prosecutor.  [T]he Constitution provides legislative, executive and judicial branches but makes no mention of a hazy, indeterminate branch of government called special prosecutors.  Because ours is a system of checks and balances, not one in which roving prosecutors are given free rein to go after targets of opportunity even if that means making law instead of following it.  And the opposition can be expected to respond in kind.  Just as the investigation of Watergate led to the investigation of Iran-Contra.  And now the investigation of this president's aides will lead to the next scandal.  Because independent prosecutors seem to have as their motto Keep Busy — and tend to build little Justice Departments of their own that morph into legal empires.  Now is the time to short-circuit this pernicious process and return to simple law and order.

FBI agents manhandled Manafort and his wife during pre-dawn raid in intimidation effort.  Just how rough special counsel Robert Mueller is playing with Paul Manafort goes back before this week's indictment — to the FBI's no-knock raid in July.  It has been reported that the agents checked Mr. Manafort and wife Kathleen for guns as they broke into the Alexandria condo pre-dawn by picking the lock.  A source familiar with the case told The Washington Times the search was even more intrusive:  An agent patted down Mrs. Manafort before she was allowed to get out of bed.

Lawsplainer: The George Papadopoulos Guilty Plea.  The complaint shows that the FBI used a search warrant to get emails that contradicted Papadopoulos.  The timeline isn't explicit, but it's possible — in fact, probable — that they had the emails or other evidence before they even interviewed him, and knew he was lying at the time.  To convict on a Section 1001 charge for lying to the government, the government doesn't have to prove that you successfully lied or that the lie delayed or impeded them.  They only have to prove that the lie was on a subject of the sort that could be relevant to the investigation.  That's why interviewing subjects and targets hoping they will lie to you and thus make a case for you is a common tactic in federal investigations.  If Papadopoulos had shut up and refused to talk to the FBI — the smart thing to do — he almost certainly would not be charged with anything yet, and could have escaped any charges ever.  He had to plead to a federal felony because he talked to the FBI and lied, and then foolishly tried to destroy evidence.  That is a feature, not a bug, of federal investigations.

Robert Mueller's well-timed indictment.  Special Counsel Robert Mueller plans to indict someone this week, we are told.  Nobody knows whom or for what, but I know why.  People suspect that a Trump ally will be indicted for something vaguely related to colluding with the Russian Government.  We do not know any more details than that because we just cannot find any crime there.  So why is there such a hurry to indict a Republican now?  The key is that the indictment comes in late October.  Right before a November election.  There is pattern of October indictments against Republicans.

FBI Informant's Lawyer — Obama Admin 'Threatened' My Client And His Career.  A former FBI informant who blew the whistle on a high-profile bribery case involving a Russian energy company was intimidated by Obama administration lawyers into dropping a civil suit against the government last year, his attorney says.  Victoria Toensing, the lawyer for the informant, told The Daily Caller's Vince Coglianese that Obama Justice Department lawyers told her client that "his reputation and liberty [was] in jeopardy" if he did not drop a lawsuit against the government.  On Wednesday [10/25/2017], the Trump Justice Department released the informant from a confidentiality agreement, clearing the way for him to testify before several congressional committees about his undercover work at Uranium One, a Canada-based energy company that has ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton and their family foundation.

Lawyer: Obama Admin Threatened FBI Informant's 'Reputation And Liberty' If He Talked During Election.  The lawyer for the confidential FBI informant who exposed that Russian nuclear officials engaged in bribery, kickbacks, money laundering, and extortion in their attempts to corner the U.S. uranium market under the Obama administration revealed the threats her client received from the Obama administration if he didn't keep quiet during the 2016 presidential election.  Victoria Toensing, the informant's attorney, told WMAL DC's "Mornings On The Mall" host Vince Coglianese on Thursday that under the Obama administration, lawyers from Loretta Lynch's Department of Justice (DOJ) coerced her client into dropping a lawsuit against the government last year.

Federal judge rules illegal-immigrant minor has right to abortion.  Illegal-immigrant minors in the U.S. have an unfettered constitutional right to obtain an abortion, a federal judge ruled Wednesday [10/18/2017], ordering both the Trump administration and Texas officials to back off and allow a 17-year-old girl being held in a government-run shelter to be taken to a clinic.  District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who was appointed by President Obama, said during a hearing she was "astounded" that the administration was trying to hinder the girl, identified in court papers only as "J.D."  "Despite the fact that she's in this country illegally, she still has constitutional rights," the judge said.

The Editor says...
Really?  Everybody who steps across the border inherits the protection of the U.S. Constitution?  I don't think so.  Moreover, what part of the Constitution legalizes abortion, makes it a right, and bestows that right on everybody who sneaks across the border?

Why is rebuilding after storms the federal government's responsibility?  The hurricane devastation is severe.  What should the federal government do?  Give us lots of money, say many in the wounded states.  Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) demanded "about $150 billion" — just for Texas.  So far, Congress has agreed to $15 billion in hurricane relief.  But more will come.  Few Americans will object.  The House vote for the first $7.9 billion was 419-3.  But let's take a breath.  Why is rebuilding the federal government's responsibility?

Nothing Makes Liberals Angrier Than Us Normals Insisting On Our Rights.  I don't agree with liberals often, because I'm not an idiot and because I love America, but when they once again say, "We must have a conversation about guns!" I still couldn't agree more. [...] But we really don't need to have a conversation about our rights to keep and bear arms.  They're rights.  There's nothing to talk about.  This goes for all our rights that the left hates, like the rights to speak and write freely, to practice our religion as we see fit, and to not be railroaded by liberal authority without due process.  Leftists hate our rights because they hate us, and when we assert our rights it gets in the way of their malicious schemes to dominate and control us.

Judicial Watch representing Clarice Feldman in her lawsuit against DC Government.  Federal law requires that DC's annual budget be approved by a majority or two-thirds vote of the DC Council and have affirmative appropriation passed by both Houses of Congress and presented to the president for signing.  In 2013, DC passed the Budget Autonomy Act of 2012, which "purportedly grants the District authority to incur obligations and expend local tax and fee revenue without an appropriation passed by both Houses of Congress and presented to the President for signing." In other words, DC has sought to remove appropriation authority from Congress and grant it to itself.  "This is quite simply a case of politicians gone wild.  The DC government acts as if it can violate federal law and ignore the U.S. Constitution without repercussions," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  "It is a federal crime to spend federal dollars without congressional authorization."

Mueller Scorches the Earth.  Robert Mueller's sprawling special-counsel investigation is playing hardball.  It was not enough to get a search warrant to ransack the Virginia home of Paul Manafort, even as the former Trump campaign chairman was cooperating with congressional investigators.  Mueller's [investigators] persuaded a judge to give them permission to pick the door lock.  That way, they could break into the premises in the wee hours, while Manafort and his wife were in bed sleeping.  They proceeded to secure the premises — of a man they are reportedly investigating for tax and financial crimes, not gang murders and Mafia hits — by drawing their guns on the stunned couple, apparently to check their pajamas for weapons.  Mueller's probe more resembles an empire, with 17 prosecutors retained on the public dime.  So ... what exactly is the crime of the century that requires five times the number of lawyers the Justice Department customarily assigns to crimes of the century?  No one can say.

With a Picked Lock and a Threatened Indictment, Mueller's Inquiry Sets a Tone.  Dispensing with the plodding pace typical of many white-collar investigations, Mr. Mueller's team has used what some describe as shock-and-awe tactics to intimidate witnesses and potential targets of the inquiry.  Mr. Mueller has obtained a flurry of subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify before a grand jury, lawyers and witnesses say, sometimes before his prosecutors have taken the customary first step of interviewing them.  One witness was called before the grand jury less than a month after his name surfaced in news accounts.  The special counsel even took the unusual step of obtaining a subpoena for one of Mr. Manafort's former lawyers, claiming an exception to the rule that shields attorney-client discussions from scrutiny.

Filibuster is Senate invention to aid and abet senators.  First of all, let's get it straight.  There is no such thing as filibuster in the United States Constitution.  The notion that this was an invention of the Founding Fathers is just wishful thinking by senators who want to give their shameless power grab the imprimatur of legitimacy.  Actually, the Constitution provides that a simple majority in both the House and Senate is sufficient to do business.  We know that was the plan because the authors of the Constitution spelled out only a handful of circumstances when a super-majority would be required such as ratifying treaties.

The Democrats' War on First Responder Services.  Government derives much of its moral authority to tax from its obligation to provide public safety, health and education.  Yet as public-sector pension plans create ever-greater demands upon local and state financial resources, The Democrats' machine funnels so much tax revenue into the corrupt bargain the party made with unions that states and municipalities must rob local public services of funds in order to give their constituents outrageous salary increases, bonuses, benefits and what is called "other pay."  There are two types of demands for this money: salary increases and pensions.  Even while revenues increase, the demand for public pensions and salaries has grown so fast that it has outrun the increases in tax revenue.  And rather than stabilize pensions or go to 401K type plans, municipalities and states have chosen to violate the Constitution and cut back on essential government public services.

Parents Catch FBI In Plot To Force Mentally Ill Son To Be A Right Wing Terrorist.  It's become a near-weekly occurrence.  Somewhere in some state, the FBI will announce that they've foiled yet another terrorist plot and saved lives.  However, as the data shows, the majority of these cases involve psychologically diminished patsies who've been entirely groomed, armed, and entrapped by FBI agents.  Simply put, the FBI manufactures terror threats and then takes credit for stopping them.  While many of these cases have garnered attention and been exposed in the alternative media, a recent case out of Oklahoma sets a new low for FBI and exposes how insidious these plots can be.

This Is Not The United States.  What is the technical moment when the Constitution failed?  Maybe that goes as far back as Theodore Roosevelt when he decided that it would be a good idea to occupy huge swaths of the Western states.  Make no mistake, these are not states in the same way another state might have 3-5% federally-owned land somewhere as an island in the mass of privately-owned land.  Western states are between 35-85% federally-owned lands.  That is an occupation and I often refer to the Western states as the Occupied States of America.

No Mass Casualty Incidents on U.S. Soil Since Trump Victory.  In late 2001, after 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld created the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence (OSI).  OSI activities include strategic influence, special plans, psychological operations (psy-ops), and perception management.  The DoD has identified the information domain as its new "asymmetric flank."  The level of use of perception management continues to grow throughout the military.  There are now specialists, known as psychological operations officers and civil affairs officers, whose sole purpose is to decide how to present information/propaganda to the media and to the people.  The NDAA makes it legal to broadcast propaganda within America.  The bill passed in Congress legalized covert infiltration of media organizations by government agents and created media outlets that operate as government fronts.  The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 authorizes the dissemination of real fake news.

Prosecutors Look To Treat Illegal Alien Crimes Different From Actual Citizen Crimes.  [Scroll down]  In other words, there are games being played with the criminal justice system in order to protect illegal aliens who commit crimes above already being unlawfully present.  This is the point where the federal system should jump in and charge prosecutors and district attorneys with things like prosecutorial misconduct and violations of immigration law, such as 8 U.S. 1324, providing shelter to an illegal alien.

Gangster government revisited.  Michael Barone dubbed the Obama administration's casual attitude toward fundamental legal niceties "gangster government."  Based on recently unsealed documents in the shareholder litigation over the government's appropriation of the profits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, New York Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson provides one more striking case study: [...]

America's Long March toward a Secular Socialist Democracy.  Property rights are the bedrock of the American political system; without that foundation, there is no freedom.  The Founders held that property rights encompass not just physical property but also one's life, labor and livelihood, as individuals own their own lives; therefore, they must own the products of that life that can be traded in free exchange with others.  They further believed that the primary role of government is to guarantee and protect these property rights, and further, that these property rights are natural, or God given rights. [...] Nonetheless, since the 1930's the Progressives have been extraordinarily successful in gradually transforming the country into what the Founders feared:  a nation dominated by an all-powerful central government running roughshod over man's inalienable rights.

No, really — guns for we but not for thee.  Hey, remember two weeks ago when congressional bodies were hitting the ground, and some guy named Loudermilk rushed to a microphone and said congressvermin should pass a law giving them the privilege of going armed anywhere they wanted? [...] Introducing H.R. 2940, The Congressional Self-Defense Act, "To allow Members of Congress to carry a concealed firearm anywhere in the United States, with certain exceptions."

Code of Federal Regulations: 30 Miles of Paper.  The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) contains 180,000 pages, Business Insider reported on June 26.  "On standard paper, these pages would be about sixty feet tall if stacked," Business Insider contributor Nathan Bryant writes.  "That is roughly equivalent to the height of a six-story building.  If those same pages were laid end-on-end, they would be over thirty miles long," he added.  That's not just a problem for printers, it's a problem for people trying to make a living in the United States.  The cost of compliance with these federal regulations is roughly $2 trillion a year, according to separate reports published by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Robert Mueller Adopts Stalinist Tactics.  Yes, Virginia, this is a witch hunt.  Robert Mueller III was appointed special counsel after his friend, the vindictive James Comey, committed a federal crime by leaking a memo which was a government record to the press.  Mueller has picked staff and prosecutors as if he were stocking Hillary Clinton's Department of Justice.  He has picked a bevy of Clinton donors, an attorney who worked for the Clinton Foundation, a former Watergate assistant prosecutor, and even a senior adviser to Eric Holder.

Trump Russia probe gets special counsel but not Hillary, not IRS? Time to investigate the investigators.  The American people want justice to be blind.  They want equal justice and equal protection for everyone.  But Mr. Comey's actions continue to call his impartiality, and the impartiality of the Holder and Lynch Justice departments, into question. [...] Throughout 2015 and 2016 there were calls from Congress for a special counsel in the Clinton email scandal.  Again the Justice Department refused, even after it was revealed that Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with Bill Clinton less than a week before the FBI interviewed Hillary Clinton.  No special counsel was established, even after some unusual Justice Department immunity deals were revealed, including those designed to protect Secretary Clinton's chief of staff Cheryl Mills, and Bryan Pagliano, who set up the email server in the first place.  This is the type of unequal justice that Americans despise.  No special counsel in the IRS targeting investigation.  No special counsel for the Clinton email investigation.  But if it's about protecting Mr. Comey's reputation and hurting President Trump, then of course there has to be a special counsel.

A License to Mow Lawns?  Occupational Licensure and Liberty.  If teenagers in Gardendale, Alabama, want to earn money this summer mowing lawns, they'll need to comply with a city ordinance requiring them to get a lawn mowing license, permission that will cost $110. [...] How did we come to a place where the powers that be can demand people apply for permission to earn a living?  Is occupational licensure not a contemporary cousin to the Stamp Act that sparked a revolution?

Americans Learning to Live with Treason.  [Scroll down] 
  •   Benghazi — Obama and his administration to the American people that a video caused the horrific massacre.  President and allies openly engage in cover-up.
  •   FBI investigation on Hillary Clinton — Comey announces Hillary's guilty on all counts, then the judgment, and she walks.  A two-tier justice system; Hillary's above the law.
  •   CNN caught giving to Hillary Clinton.  Democrats rig debates.  Democrats cheat Bernie Sanders out of the nomination.  Democrats rig elections.
These are just a few of the unacceptable transgressions by our corrupt leaders.  Each time, outraged conservatives demand that the perpetrators be brought to justice.  Each time, the press gaslights the American people with a media blackout, acts as though the incident never happened.  Each time, the cabal rides out the news cycle until the story fades, and everyone's home free.

Alabama man jailed for a decade without trial awaits decision from judge.  An Alabama man who has been jailed on a murder charge for the last 10 years without a trial could soon learn his fate.  Houston County Circuit Judge Kevin Moulton heard arguments in a case involving Kharon Davis on Tuesday [6/6/2017] in Dothan.  Davis was arrested and charged for the murder of Pete Reaves in June 2007 at an apartment in Dothan, the Dothan Eagle reported.  Davis' attorney Thomas Goggans argued his case should be dismissed because he was previously represented by a lawyer with a possible conflict of interest in the case.  His previous attorney, Ben Meredith, had a son who was going to testify as a witness for the prosecution.

Obama's regulations in 2016 to drain economy by $2 trillion.  The Obama administration issued a record number of new regulations on its way out the door in 2016, leaving an administrative state that saps the economy of nearly $2 trillion a year, according to a new report being released Wednesday [5/31/2017].  The government itself spent $63 billion in 2016 to administer and enforce all of its own regulations, the Competitive Enterprise Institute said.

Vermont DMV Caught Using Illegal Facial Recognition Program.  The Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles has been caught using facial recognition software — despite a state law preventing it.  Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont describe such a program, which uses software to compare the DMV's database of names and driver's license photos with information with state and federal law enforcement.  Vermont state law, however, specifically states that "The Department of Motor Vehicles shall not implement any procedures or processes... that involve the use of biometric identifiers."

Republicans Go to Jail, Democrats Run Free.  Americans have lost faith in government because, frankly, had private citizens committed crimes remotely similar to those perpetrated by the Clintons, Abedin, Holder, Lerner, Rice, and the rest of these crooks, they would be making license plates.  Unfortunately, Republican ineptness has contributed to this excruciating disappointment.  This helps explain why so many Americans believe the elite operate with a rule book to which regular folks have zero access.

The News Is Propaganda.  Non-stop distractions are deliberately used by those in power as instruments of policy for the purpose of preventing people from paying attention to reality.  Propaganda is used by those in power to manipulate language, thought, and opinion in a way that causes the progression from thought to action artificially.  When the public is reduced to a state where people no longer care about the truth and are unaware of what that truth even is, propaganda takes hold and shows them what to do. [...] Under the conditions in which we find ourselves living crisis to crisis, there can be no thought as the steady stream of propaganda is fed to us in the form of "news" that never strays from a certain narrative.

Congress' secret police.  After the arrest and conviction of a woman for laughing during Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmation hearing, one might be curious to see the incident report filed by the police.  Unfortunately, the arresting agency, the United States Capitol Police (USCP), is a "legislative branch entity," and therefore not subject to FOIA.

Widow can sue over NASA's sting operation on her.  A 75-year-old widow in tough financial straits reached out to NASA about selling a speck of moon rock her late husband had given her.  Joann Davis then became the target of a sting operation at a Denny's that a federal appeals court suggested Thursday was outrageous overkill.  The lead agent "organized a sting operation involving six armed officers to forcibly seize a Lucite paperweight containing a moon rock the size of a rice grain from an elderly grandmother," wrote Judge Sidney Thomas of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in the decision allowing Davis to sue, per the Los Angeles Times. [...] Agents also forcibly restrained her second husband, who had accompanied her to the supposed sale.  Davis' first husband, Robert, worked as an Apollo 11 engineer, and he saved a paperweight with moon material and another with a bit of the heat shield.

Man Fined $500 for Crime of Writing 'I Am An Engineer' in an Email to the Government.  An electronics engineer says he found a flaw in traffic lights.  The Oregon engineering board fined him for it.

When the feds won't give up information the public owns.  There's no better example of our broken system than the partial Freedom of Information (FOI) response I just got.  It's from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding an Obamacare FOI request I made several years ago when I was at CBS News and investigating the failed launch and serious security risks surrounding the Affordable Care Act national website.  A couple of points:  In 2013, I asked for simple public information regarding the website, but the government improperly refused to provide it.  I filed a FOI request, which requires the government to process and provide the material within about 20 days.  The government didn't provide any of the material in the lawful time frame, which, unfortunately, is currently the typical response from federal agencies in response to FOI requests.  I eventually filed a FOI lawsuit with the help of Judicial Watch.  The government spent your tax dollars defending the lawsuit.

We're down to one branch of government.  How did we reach the place where nobody knows what the "law of the land" is until the Supreme Court rules?  How did the Supreme Court acquire so much blatantly unconstitutional and immoral power?  The answer is easy:  the Court stole it.

A Case of 21,587 Crimes.  In the 1990s, Dr. Ralph Erdmann, a highly paid pathologist working for Lubbock County, Texas, ran into a spot of trouble:  At one point he had misplaced a human head, and in one autopsy report he duly recorded the condition of the spleen of a man who did not have one.  He kept blood samples in his home refrigerator, next to the mustard.  He was eventually convicted of a raft of felonies involving evidence tampering and perjury.  Local lawyers insisted that he was cooperating with the district attorney and providing whatever evidence was needed to produce a conviction.  His tainted evidence helped produce convictions in at least 20 capital murder cases.  Dookhan received a sentence of three to five years and was shortly thereafter paroled.

White House sidewalk to be closed to public permanently.  The U.S. Secret Service said it would end public access to a sidewalk along the south fence of the White House beginning on Wednesday night [4/19/2017].

Congressman Says Corruption in Washington Is 'Worse Than You Think'.  Corruption on Capitol Hill is "worse than you think," Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., insists.  "When you first get here, you think that you are in some sort of fairy-tale novel," Buck said.  "They wine and dine you and they show you just exactly what it's like if you play the game.  It's a wonderful life."  Things quickly change, however, if "you don't play the game."  "If you don't play the game ... it becomes a much less conformable existence here," Buck said.

A Century of Political Surveillance and Repression.  Whether protesting the march to war, federal policy on AIDS research, civil rights violations, or simply enjoying the Nevada desert at a "Burning Man" gathering, the common theme that emerges is that simply publicly expressing strong political views that run counter to the prevailing government political paradigm is often enough to trigger federal government surveillance.

In New York, Big Brother Is Watching Your Free Speech.  When free speech threatens government power, government has a tendency to get curious about the identity and funding of dissenting speakers.  This was true in the civil-rights era, when the state of Alabama tried to force the NAACP to divulge its membership lists.  It was true during the Obama administration, when the IRS targeted the Tea Party for illegal scrutiny not merely by asking in some cases for donor lists but also by inquiring about the political activities of family members of tea-party leaders and the login information of tea-party websites.  And it was certainly true in the state of Wisconsin, when law enforcement used terrifying dawn and pre-dawn raids to gather information about First Amendment-protected issue advocacy about labor-union reform.  But why threaten to batter down a door when you can just pass a law that batters away at the Constitution?  That's the state of New York's approach, and it's now facing one of the more important First Amendment challenges that you've likely never heard of.

700 Attorneys Spied On in One Prison, Investigator Finds.  A court-appointed investigator has found that the United States Attorney's Office for Kansas is in possession of hundreds of phone and video recordings of communications between attorneys and their clients, inmates at a privately run prison facility in Leavenworth.  At least 700 attorneys are believed to have been recorded without their knowledge, the investigator's report submitted to a federal court said.  Last week Special Master David Cohen asked to expand his probe to determine whether prosecutors regularly listened to and compiled attorney-client conversations.  Already, 227 phone call recordings and at least 30 videos of attorney-client meetings have been discovered in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Kansas City.

Thanks to Trump, Pruitt, Gorsuch, and Goodlatte, the Constitution Is Back.  America has begun the process of reclaiming the Constitution.  This week, the Senate is taking up the confirmation Judge Neil Gorsuch, one of many Trump nominees known for his dedication to constitutional government.  This follows the Senate confirmation of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA — a federal agency he has sued not once, not twice, but fourteen times.  Pruitt's appointment could not come at a better time.  During the past eight years, the Obama administration has passed well over 25,000 regulations.  These regulations cost taxpayers a whopping $890 billion, or about $15,000 a household.  And of that $890 billion, the EPA is responsible for $344 billion — more than any other agency.  This kind of power goes directly against the framers' original intent.

Feds knew blizzard forecast was exaggerated — but didn't want to confuse us.  Fears of a massive blizzard led officials to close city public schools and for above-ground train service to be stopped — but in the end, only about 7 inches fell in Central Park.  After announcing that snow could reach record levels in the city, NWS meteorologists in New York and other Northeast cities held a conference call Monday afternoon [3/13/2017] about computer models that dramatically cut predicted totals.  But they decided to continue forecasting deep snow, claiming that they didn't change their forecast for fear people would mistakenly think the storm was no longer dangerous.

The Editor says...
The situation above demonstrates the state of the art in meteorology:  Snowfall cannot be accurately predicted a few days in advance, even with the fastest computers and best software in the world.  Tornados can't be forecast at all, and the prediction of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions is just as uncertain.  But these are the same people who are absolutely sure that by January 1, 2100, the average worldwide temperature will be two degrees higher than it is today.

Gorsuch Understands How Bureaucratic Bullies Harm First Amendment Rights.  One of the major threats to free speech today is not censorship.  It's harassment.  Here's how it works.  People join or give money to groups that support causes they believe in.  Those groups attract the ire of government officials when they criticize them or take a position they oppose.  Unable to ban the group from speaking, an angry bureaucrat does the next best thing:  launch an investigation into how the group operates and who supports it.  The best part for the government?  It doesn't matter how the investigation turns out or if no charges are ever pressed.  The investigation ties up the group's resources and scares away supporters.  The process is the punishment for speaking.

A Fair and Legal Replacement for DACA.  President Obama's DACA, issued in 2012 via memorandum, was a patently lawless use of executive power.  After Congress (again) decided not to pass the DREAM Act, granting legal status to illegal immigrants who came here as children, the president abused his "pen and phone" to impose the law's provisions unilaterally.  The administration risibly claimed that this was an exercise of "prosecutorial discretion," implying that the government would be evaluating applications for deferred status on a case-by-case basis.  Unsurprisingly, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials have reported otherwise; in fact, anyone who appears to be under the maximum deferral age — that is, any illegal immigrant who appears younger than 35 years old — is simply presumed to be eligible for DACA.  Under the policy, about 750,000 illegal aliens have been granted not only renewable, two-year deportation stays, but also work permits, Social Security numbers, access to the EITC welfare program, and driver's licenses.  Functionally, more than 2 million have been shielded from deportation for nearly five years.

Judge: If Obama Wiretapped Trump, It Would 'Destroy Whatever Legacy' He Has.  Judge Andrew Napolitano said Barack Obama's alleged wiretapping of Trump Tower is technically legal but it would destroy whatever legacy the former president has if true.  The Fox News senior judicial analyst was a guest Tuesday [3/7/2017] on "Fox & Friends" discussing whether the former administration would face legal trouble if the wiretapping is confirmed.  The judge said Obama had the power to legally order a wiretap, saying it's directly in the FISA statute that "the president of the United States on his own may conduct surveillance or order surveillance of any person in the United States upon the filing of a certification with the attorney general."

U.S. Gives Soros Groups Millions to Destabilize Macedonia's Conservative Govt.  The U.S. government has quietly spent millions of taxpayer dollars to destabilize the democratically elected, center-right government in Macedonia by colluding with leftwing billionaire philanthropist George Soros, records obtained by Judicial Watch show.  Barack Obama's U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia, Jess L. Baily, has worked behind the scenes with Soros' Open Society Foundation to funnel large sums of American dollars for the cause, constituting an interference of the U.S. Ambassador in domestic political affairs in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Tired of Everything Being Politicized?  There's One Simple Solution.  The problem with Big Government is that, when you have a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail.  Likewise, the answer to all issues of life in an over-governed society becomes one for public policy and, eventually, national debate to settle it out.  Pretty soon, the engines that make up our daily lives — the ones that ought to be filled by family and community institutions — become the purview of the state.

This Indiana Town Wants to Fine a Community Out of Existence on Behalf of Private Developers.  Members of a small, low-income community in Indiana are discovering that state-level protections that make it hard for cities to seize their property may not be enough.  When city leaders decide to get into bed with private developers, there are all sorts of ways for cronyism to threaten the property rights of owners.  When we imagine how a city or town seizes private property from citizens in order to hand it over to developers for special projects, we often think about eminent domain.  Governments can force citizens to sell them their property (often for much less than it's worth on the market). While eminent domain was supposed to be used solely for public works projects (roads, schools, et cetera), the infamous Kelo v.  City of New London Supreme Court decision set a legal precedent allowing governments to use it to hand over property to private developers for big projects.  Some states that objected to that decision passed new laws to restrict how eminent domain may be used within their borders.  Indiana was one of them.

The Ninth Circuit's Power Grab.  A federal judge in Seattle, James Robart, issued a temporary restraining order against the travel ban at the behest of two states, Washington and Minnesota, run by Democratic governors.  Now, the Ninth Circuit has upheld this single, unelected jurist's usurpation of the power to make American national-security policy.  According to the three-judge panel, even illegal aliens, to say nothing of aliens holding non-immigrant visas or permanent-resident status, have due-process rights against government actions to protect Americans from foreign threats.  Therefore, the president and Congress (i.e., the branches of government constitutionally responsible for national security) may not take such actions unless and until the judiciary (the branch with no such responsibility) has approved those actions.  That aliens are not citizens and have no constitutional right to come to the United States is apparently superseded by their newfangled "right" to be welcomed into the United States courts.  And even if they are not here already, even if they remain in the far reaches of the globe, this alien "right" may be asserted by state governments.

Troops Await Deployment Orders from Ninth Circuit.  Apart from the unremitting attacks on Republicans by paid mobs and Democratic congressmen desperate to help the base forget they lost big time and will continue to do so in 2018, the big news this week has to be the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granting itself the right to dictate foreign policy despite the clear words of the Constitution and federal law granting the president the absolute right to preclude entry to any alien he thinks poses a threat to national security.  Following a nonsensical decision by federal court Judge James Robart in Washington state staying the suspension of entry from seven countries, the administration sought to overturn it — the most popular Trump executive order — in the Ninth Circuit, the largest and most frequently overturned federal Circuit Court.

Court ends constitutional government by blocking Trump.  The 228-year experiment with a Constitutional Republic took another step closer to ending today in a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals courtroom when a panel of three judges upheld a district court's decision that the president of the United States and Congress cannot control our borders.  So much for the idea that elections have consequences. [...] he judges involved in this should be impeached for exceeding their authority.  There is no way every single district judge in America has the power or authority to make a policy decision affecting the national security of 320 million Americans.  The Supreme Court should make that perfectly clear.

Short Circuit:  Bill Aims to Deep-Six 9th.  How big is the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals?  The San-Francisco-based circuit is so big that it represents nine states, including Nevada, 20 percent of the U.S. population and 40 percent of the nation's land mass.  It's so big that Congress has looked at bills to split the circuit since 1941, and it's so big that none of those measures have succeeded.

U.S. judge who stayed President Trump's immigration order abused his judicial power.  I just read the ruling of U.S. District Judge James Robart blocking a sitting American president's ability to impose temporary rules limiting the entry of migrants seeking access to the United States so that the existing programs are properly evaluated and modified, as necessary, for reasons of national security.  Can you spell "forum shopping" for a favorable judge?  Imagine the attorney general of the state of Washington being able to strategically pick a judge who allows his personal preferences to override his responsibility to respect the law and apply it properly rather than acting as an independent arbiter with the duty to respect and follow the law.

President Obama Declares Record 26th, 27th National Monuments.  Using authority granted the President under the 1906 Antiquities Act, Obama created the 1.35 million acre Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and the 300,000 acre Gold Butte National Monument in Northern Nevada.  This action brings the number of national monuments created or expanded by President Obama to 27, more than any other president in history.  A national monument designation prevents a variety of uses on the land including energy development, mining, and sometimes fishing and hunting.

Oath, Shmoath.  I've long argued that the only impeachable offense committed by George W. Bush was when he signed McCain-Feingold into law while admitting that he thought parts of it were unconstitutional.  The president takes an oath to protect the Constitution every bit as binding as the one the Supreme Court Justices take.  If you're president or a member of Congress it is a violation of your oath to green-light an unconstitutional act, whether or not you think the Supreme Court will fix it.

Judge Newman Turns Slager Trial into Kangaroo Court — Verdict Now Irrelevant.  The afternoon story began with the announcement the jury in the Officer Michael Slager trial was hopelessly deadlocked.  Previously the State of South Carolina presented two options for verdict consideration, Murder or Voluntary Manslaughter.  The voluntary manslaughter option (lesser charges) was added AFTER the trial phase was concluded and the defense presented, then rested, its case.  The reason for the lesser charge was transparent to all who knew and followed the case closely, there was virtually no way for a jury to convict on just the original charge of murder, hence the lesser included.  Adding the lesser charge option after trial testimony was yet again more evidence of a manipulative prosecution.

Obama sets new record for regulations, 527 pages in just one day.  President Obama has just set a new record for rules and regulations, his administration spitting out 527 pages worth in just one day, as he races to put his fingerprint on virtually every corner of American life and business.  According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the administration has just shattered the old record for pages of regulations and rules published by the in-house journal, the Federal Register.  At 81,640 total pages for 2016, it ranks first and 235 pages more than all of those published in 2010, the previous record.

The Head of DOJ's Civil Rights Division Is Violating Federal Law and Her Actions May Be Void.  Vanita Gupta, the acting head of the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, apparently has been working in violation of federal law for more than a year and a half.  That may render all of the official actions she has taken during that period — lawsuits, demand letters, hires, you name it — "void" and of no effect.  To deter presidents from trying to get around the Senate's constitutional "advise and consent" role in executive branch appointments, Congress passed the Federal Vacancies Reform Act in 1998.  A key section of the law sets restrictions and time limitations on how long someone can remain as the "acting" official in a position that must be confirmed by the Senate.

House Republicans to Obama officials:  Slip new regulations through and you could be punished.  Newly empowered House Republicans on Tuesday laid down the gauntlet to the outgoing Obama administration:  Don't finalize any pending rules and regulations you think you can slip through before you leave office.  In a letter to hundreds of Cabinet secretaries, commissioners and other heads of federal offices and agencies signed by 22 Republican leaders, the lawmakers noted that President Obama has been generous in his use of executive orders to set policy.  And they issued a threat:  Ignore us and we will give your agency extra scrutiny.

The Persecution of Hank Greenberg.  Earlier this month in New York City, a 91-year-old man who fought on Normandy beach during World War II and later fought in the Korean War was dragged into a courtroom and drilled with questions for five days by a team of government-paid prosecutors.  There are no witnesses to testify against him, and no claim of damages.  The government's ultimate objective is to bar the man from working in the securities industry, though it also hopes to force him to forfeit bonuses that he earned nearly two decades ago.  The case has been in the works for 11 years.  Initially nine charges were filed, but now only two remain.  The trial is expected to last into next year.  None of this seems to make any sense — until you learn that it is all Eliot Spitzer's doing.

Paying the Price for Calling Obama a Commie.  Call President Barack Obama a communist in Nebraska and you could pay a hefty price.  Just ask Robert Bennie Jr., a successful financial adviser and former leader of the tea party in the state capital of Lincoln.  Bennie and the employer that eventually fired him were hounded and harassed by the Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance for months, in large part due to Bennie's political views, according to his attorneys.  And while a U.S. appeals court agreed with a lower court that the regulators "targeted Bennie partly in retaliation for his constitutionally protected political speech," the agency's harassing activities did not rise to a First Amendment violation — to "deter someone of ordinary firmness from continuing to speak."

FBI Leaks Reveal Disgust With Politicization of Agency and DOJ.  CTH readers will remember how far we researched the transparent politicization of criminal cases as they related to the DOJ (Eric Holder and Tom Perez) in the Zimmerman trial.  Specifically how entities within the DOJ/FBI colluded with State Attorney Angela Corey about extracting then hiding Trayvon Martin's phone metadata.  That level of coordinated DOJ/FBI corruption only worsened with Darren Wilson (Ferguson) and beyond.  The same manipulative tentacles became more evident with the IRS targeting scandal and later the email investigation into Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  In essence, the bottom line is:  the politicization and weaponization of government has been going on for more than just a few years.

Pastor Facing $100 a Day Fines for Helping Homeless Women and Children on His Own Church's Property.  Proving once again that the state has no interest in helping people, the state of Delaware is attacking a pastor who would dare attempt to help the homeless.  Pastor Aaron Appling of Victory Church West in Dover is being threatened with a $100 per day fine by county officials for allowing a 21-year-old homeless woman to live in an RV in the back of the church property.  Because Appling didn't go through the right channels of extortion and get his own property approved by the government to do with it what he wishes, officials are promising to extort him.

Obama: Country Can't Function With Only Eight Supreme Court Justices.  Article III of the Constitution lists nine classes of cases within the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court.  Among those nine powers, one does not find "amending the Constitution," or "voiding the will of the people," or "forcing states to accept social attitudes inconsistent with their citizens," or anything even close to amending the Constitution via judicial decision.  Article V of the Constitution sets out the amendment procedure and "whatever the Supreme Court says" is not part of the constitutionally mandated process!  Thomas Jefferson had something to say in the matter.  In 1804, he wrote that giving the Supreme Court power to declare as unconstitutonal acts of the legislature or executive "would make the judiciary a despotic branch."  He noted that "nothing in the Constitution" gives the Supreme Court that right.

FBI Colluded with Democrats, Team Clinton on Email 'Prosecution'.  The clueless Republicans — like most Americans — simply cannot bring themselves to realize what sort of government we are now living under. [...] The Obama administration has corrupted and weaponized the major enforcement agencies of the federal government, including the IRS and the FBI, and now is reaching down to the local level in order to bring municipal police forces under Washington's control.

School orders 5-hour psych exam for student after he hands in anti-gun control presentation.  Manville High School senior Frank Harvey school officials are driving him out over an anti-gun control class presentation he received an "A" on last year.  Harvey was suspended Tuesday [9/27/2016] and ordered to undergo a five-hour psychological exam before he can return after he left a thumb drive in the school library that contained an anti-gun control presentation he gave as an assignment in April, NJ.com reports.  Someone found the thumb drive and turned it over to school officials, who then called police to interrogate the student.

Ex-O.C. court clerk accused of fixing hundreds of criminal and traffic cases for bribes.  A dozen men have been charged in a massive bribery scheme allegedly run by an Orange County court clerk accused of forging records in hundreds of cases to get drunk drivers and other violators off with little or no punishment. [...] At the center of the case is Jose Lopez Jr., a former clerk in Orange County Superior Court who is accused of resolving hundreds of cases by entering information into the court's computer system to make it appear as if defendants had served jail time, been convicted of less serious charges and paid fines when they had not.

Inmates say prison made them watch Hillary Clinton's speech, blacked out Donald Trump's.  Federal convicts told a judge they were forced to watch Hillary Clinton's convention speech at the federal prison where they're being held — but said the prison imposed a blackout on Donald Trump's speech, tuning the facility's televisions to other channels.  The felons are trying to join the federal case against President Obama's 2014 deportation amnesty, saying that Mr. Obama is discriminating against U.S. citizens caught breaking the law by punishing them, even as he attempts to grant work permits and taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal immigrants.

Patent Office Workers Defraud Inventors Of Millions of Dollars.  Reviewing and issuing patents is one of the few responsibilities of the federal government that is actually important — which makes the revelations contained in a new report from an inspector general all the more disturbing.  The Commerce Department's IG found that hundreds of patent examiners billed for close to 300,000 hours that they didn't work, over a span of 15 months.  That cost $18.3 million, the IG says, with the bill paid by inventors themselves who fund the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office through application fees.  Plus, had these employees actually worked those hours, they could have cut the USPTO's chronic backlog of patent reviews by 16,000.

This Is Not Your Government.  Those who reside within the borders of the United States live under a despotic rule of Supreme Court justices, regulators, random judges, presidential decree and Fed policy.  There is no politician in the land responsive to the people.  This is how Donald Trump gained the Republican nomination, because folks were fed up with calling their congressperson seeking redress only to be sold out as soon as the votes were counted.  US citizens are not constituents in the normal vernacular, they are simply voters, you know, those folks who come around every two to four years and validate all of the larceny that has taken place in the past two to four years.

Obama's Indian Policy Threatens All Americans, Both Tribal and Non-tribal Citizens.  Flying completely under the radar of the vast majority of Americans, federal Indian policies of the Obama administration are subverting our constitutional order and successfully transferring vast land holdings and natural resources to corrupt, federally controlled tribal governments.  This stealth agenda is replacing the authority and obligations of the various state governments to protect the lives, rights, property, and natural resources of their citizens by illegally and immorally transferring that authority to select tribal governments. [...] The horrendous consequences of this political path are alarming, to say the least, not only for Americans living in the 39 states directly affected, but for our entire country.  While farmers, ranchers, and other rural citizens and small towns are the frontline targets of this stealth agenda, it will dramatically impact all Americans.

Government Workers Now Outnumber Manufacturing Workers by 9,932,000.  Government employees in the United States outnumber manufacturing employees by 9,932,000, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Federal, state and local government employed 22,213,000 people in August, while the manufacturing sector employed 12,281,000.  The BLS has published seasonally-adjusted month-by-month employment data for both government and manufacturing going back to 1939.  For half a century — from January 1939 through July 1989 — manufacturing employment always exceeded government employment in the United States, according to these numbers.

Dallas Judges Shred Constitution, Steal Millions.  Jeff Baron is a Dallas resident and U.S. citizen who was put into "virtual slavery" by U.S. District Court Judge Royal Furgeson after Baron settled an otherwise ordinary contract dispute in his court.  Although Baron was never accused of any crime and had just resolved the dispute in Furgeson's court, Furgeson seized the sum total of Baron's personal property and possessions, including his home and car, and suspended nearly all of his civil rights, including his right to be represented by counsel, right to own property, right to earn income, and right to travel.  Four years later, Baron was still in civil lockdown — even after the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the unlawful rulings and enjoined any further liquidation of Baron's property.

'Cajun Navy' Saves Thousands After LA Floods, Now Govt.  Wants to Introduce Legislation Around Citizen Heroes.  No good deed goes unpunished.  That's especially true when the government finds out about it.  The 'Cajun Navy' has rescued upwards of thousands of people after the floods ravaged Louisiana, but now Uncle Sam wants to introduce "legislation around future actions by citizen heroes."

A Louisiana Republican wants Good Samaritans to pay up before helping flood victims.  Louisiana State Representative Jonathan Perry has proposed a bill that could require training and a fee before volunteers can get past law enforcement cordons around dangerous areas, WWL-TV reports.  Perry argues that untrained volunteers pose a liability to the state.  But that almost immediately sparked resistance from the Cajun Navy.

The Editor says...
Liberals think you're too stupid to watch out for snakes and submerged hazards.  Statists abhor private-sector problem-solvers because they think the government should be in charge of (and take credit for) everything.  Self-important officials and politicians seem to believe that only those with badges and permits are capable of helping their neighbors.  This licensing of post-disaster volunteers has never been necessary before.  This is all about fees and licenses, which means it's all about control and taxes, not public safety.

Carbon Cost Ruling Favors Environment over Citizens.  On Monday [8/8/2016], the Chicago-based 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously rejected an industry-backed request to overturn a 2014 Department of Energy (DOE) regulation that set efficiency standards for refrigerators.  In doing so, the court decided that the DOE has the authority to use SCC as part of its overall cost-benefit analysis when considering environmental regulations.  This is the first time a court has weighed the legality of carbon accounting, which many congressional Republicans, manufacturers and fossil fuel interests oppose as inaccurate and unreliable.  But the court sided with the DOE and environmental groups that believe the social costs of carbon emissions can, and should, be assessed on an economic scale.

What's Wrong With the Government's Mandating of Energy Efficiency.  The Obama administration's Department of Energy has churned through a list of energy efficiency regulations before the next administration.  Just since June, the DOE has set or initiated standards for dehumidifiers, ceiling fans, battery chargers, and wine coolers. [...] Take a look around your kitchen.  Many of the appliances are also regulated by the federal government, from the oven and refrigerator, down to the standby light on the microwave.  Step outside to other rooms and even outdoors.  TVs, showers, air conditioners and heaters, washers and dryers, backyard swimming pools, toilets — these are just some of the other things regulated by the federal government.

Government Pulls Water Supply of Dakota Protestors Despite Sweltering Heat.  Growing in number and spirit, the Standing Rock Sioux protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline is swiftly gaining strength ahead of a federal hearing on the controversial project.  Support has spread across the country, and thousands have descended on the peaceful "prayer camps" in recent days, prompting state officials on Monday to remove the demonstrators' drinking water supply.  North Dakota homeland security director Greg Wilz ordered the removal of state-owned trailers and water tanks from the protest encampment, despite the sweltering heat, because of alleged disorderly conduct, according to the Bismarck Tribune, including reports of laser pointers aimed at surveillance aircraft.

Seattle Warrantless Garbage Searches Unconstitutional.  King County Judge Beth Andrus ruled Seattle's warrantless searches of garbage violate Washington State's constitution, banning Seattle sanitation workers from looking in residents' trash for possible violations of the city's composting law.  The ruling in Bonesteel, et al. v.  City of Seattle shows states are able to grant rights beyond those guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.  It was handed down on April 27.  According to the Washington State Constitution, "No person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law."  "By authorizing garbage collectors to pry through people's garbage without a warrant, the city has promoted a policy of massive and persistent snooping," said Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) attorney Ethan Blevins in a statement.  Blevins was one of the PLF lawyers who represented the eight plaintiffs.

With New Navajo Nation Lawsuit, EPA Faces More Pressure Over Gold King Mine Spill.  One year has passed since the Environmental Protection Agency caused a discharge of 3 million gallons of toxic water into the Animas River, and no one has been held accountable, although private parties have been criminally prosecuted under similar circumstances in the past.  Now, three entities' actions might change the resulting narrative that there are two sets of rules, one for people in the private sector, and another for employees of the federal government.

277,000: Fed Regulators Have More Than Quadrupled Since 1960.  Want to work in a field that has more than quadrupled in size since 1960?  Consider being a regulator for the federal government.  Even during the last recession, the regulatory agencies were hiring.  In 2015, the U.S. government employed more than 277,000 regulators.  To put that number in perspective, it's 50,000 more workers than General Motors Co. employs throughout the entire world.  We've all heard of the regulatory agencies that constitute the "fourth branch" of government.  It has cost our economy over $100 billion during the Obama administration.  But it wasn't always like this.  We haven't always lived in a world where unelected bureaucrats could fine a man $55,000 for taking photos of his friend's art project.

DOJ Bills JW $50k to Search for Nonexistent Records about Anti-Terrorism Coalition Launched by AG Loretta Lynch.  Specifically, Judicial Watch asked for legal opinions and analysis prepared by the DOJ relating to the U.S. involvement in the program, documents that form the foundation for the decision for the country to participate in SCN [Strong Cities Network], all international agreements and related records involving the commitment of U.S. resources or personnel to SCN and records of communication between officials in the Office of the Attorney General relating to the initiative.  The request reminds the agency that, under the OPEN Government Act, Judicial Watch is entitled to a complete waiver of search and duplication fees if records aren't produced within 20 business days.  On July 29, 2016, long after the deadline to produce the records, the DOJ sent Judicial Watch a $50,000 invoice for search fees, though not a single file was produced.

Was This Wartime Technology Really Deployed Against Journalists Inside the DNC?  Technology developed to jam cellphones during the Iraq War may be getting deployed against journalists reporting on protests against the political establishment in the United States.  While police and government surveillance of protests, including monitoring of cellphone use, is well-documented, efforts to block signals at protests remains an oft-repeated, but never proven, rumor.  It may be impossible to definitively prove that authorities are using cellphone "jamming" technology, but journalists working with both mainstream and independent media reported unusual difficulties accessing the internet during recent protests at the gates of the Democratic National Convention, consistent with the effects this very real technology could have.  During the protests outside the DNC, which I covered for MintPress News, I experienced this personally, with my internet connection behaving suspiciously near the convention's security fences and entrance gates, often abruptly blocking my tweets and other communication.  The same was true for every other journalist I spoke with who covered the protests.

Aristocracy In America.  An increasing number of Americans do not know history.  The result is the continued expansion of an elite class for whom the law does not apply.  We no longer recognize that there is a cycle from tyranny to revolution (or invasion), to liberty, to oligarchy and back again.  Our founders understood this and wrote the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights to counter it.  Yet knowledge of only 20th century history is enough to see the pattern clearly.  Since the writings of Karl Marx, aristocracy has flourished by camouflaging itself in the cloak of equality.  For example, an increasing number of Americans fail to recognize the inherent hypocrisy of politicians surrounded by taxpayer-funded, armed security while working diligently on removing the right of the citizenry to defend itself in the same way.

Donald Trump Is Right About One Thing:  Our Experts Know Nothing.  Americans are governed by politicians who see fit to reimagine entire sectors of our economy and, indeed, our lives despite having little, if any, experience in the areas of life they seek to reform wholesale.  This means Americans, seeing the failures of government from Obamacare to the Veterans Affairs, from the Environmental Protection Agency dumping toxic materials into a Colorado river to the Dodd-Frank regulations strangling local community banks, have had just about enough of their credentialed but utterly inexperienced supposed betters reordering their lives and livelihoods.  Think about it:  how many practicing physicians helped design and implement Obamacare?  How many doctors did the Obama administration consult in imposing its electronic medical records requirements on physicians?

Engineered Chaos And Fear The New Norm In America As Many Assume The "Reality" Of Staged Events.  There was a time when there was actually a sense of normality all around us and there was a sense of justice and accountability at the government level even if it was mostly the perception of it. [...] There was even a time when you could comfortably plan on traveling pretty much anywhere in the world, especially here in the United States for business or pleasure without having to deal with the prospect of "terrorism" or another psyop mass shooting, terror truck drivers, snipers or lockdowns.  You also didn't have to worry about a violent police state, checkpoints, surveillance cameras, killer robots, government spying and 24/7 fear, death and destruction being put out by the mainstream media news.  There was a sense of order, in other words, that many of us still remember and we remember exactly what it felt like.  Obviously you can't miss something or yearn for the days you've never experienced.  This disconnect that the younger generation has to what some may refer to the good old days is important in the grand scheme of things because this chaos is all they know and it is a grand example of learned helplessness.  For the first time in modern American history we have a generation that doesn't know what order, calmness and peace looks like.

Texas man made to pay child support in New Jersey for child that isn't his.  Abisai Moreno Iglesias is a 33-year-old man from Tyler, Texas, who for almost a decade has been embroiled in the one of the weirdest child support stories you'll ever hear.  He's had thousands of dollars garnished from his wages by the state of New Jersey — all to support a child that isn't his.  And he could have had even more money taken out of his paycheck as recently as the first week of July if it weren't for a little help from Chasing News.  Mr. Iglesias was accidentally attached to a child support case in Cumberland County, New Jersey because he has almost the same name as the father of a nine year-old girl.

You Need 4 Different Licenses to Shine Shoes in DC.  Most agree that jobs that deal directly with public health and safety should require some sort of license to do.  However, a 2015 study conducted by the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that the share of the U.S. workforce needing a license to work increased five-fold from 1950 to 2008.  In the District of Columbia, for example, someone looking to work as a shoe shiner must attain four different licenses and pay at least $337 to get those licenses.

The Bureaucracy — The Unaccountable Fourth Branch Of Government.  In arguing for the states to ratify the Constitution, James Madison wrote in Federalist 47, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."  In our time, the regulatory state has become a form of tyranny led by bureaucrats who have wrested power from Congress and even influenced the Supreme Court to bow to their power.  This concentration of power in the regulatory state has led to outrage after outrage as unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats act as tyrannical kings, issuing edicts that harm small businesses, restrict freedom and cost our economy almost $2 trillion per year.  This fourth branch of government exists outside of and unrestrained by the constitutional system of checks and balances.  It represents one of the greatest threats to the liberties of American citizens.

'Tens of Thousands' Wrongly Convicted Based on Unreliable Drug Tests.  ProPublica reporters Ryan Gabrielson and Topher Sanders estimate that widely used but notoriously unreliable field tests for drugs have led to "tens of thousands" of wrongful convictions in the United States.  The tests are not admissible in court, but that does not matter much, since the vast majority of drug cases — 90 percent or more — are resolved by plea deals.  Gabrielson and Sanders' story, which was published in The New York Times Magazine over the weekend, illustrates that point with the case of a Louisiana woman, Amy Albritton, whose employment prospects were ruined by a felony conviction after Houston police pulled over her car in 2010 and found a white crumb they mistakenly identified as crack cocaine.  The test that was used to incriminate Albritton involves dropping a suspected drug sample into a vial of cobalt thiocyanate, which is supposed to turn blue in the presence of cocaine.  But as Gabrielson and Sanders note, "cobalt thiocyanate also turns blue when it is exposed to more than 80 other compounds, including methadone, certain acne medications and several common household cleaners."

Thug-ocracy.  [Scroll down]  The law is for the Dirt People and it will be enforced by the Cloud People, but, the Cloud People will do as they please.  There's another way to look at it.  That is, the ruling class has lost control of the reigns and they can no longer police themselves.  Hillary Clinton has no business being president.  It's absurd even without the massive corruption and criminality.  Hillary's crowning achievement was marrying Bill Clinton 50 years ago.  Even a deeply corrupt and incompetent ruling class should be able to filter out the likes of Hillary Clinton.  The fact that they cannot bring themselves to flush her from the system when they have an iron clad criminal case against her is ominous.  There's another angle here.  The whole "Arkanside" thing is a fun gag, but it does appear that the ruling class is playing much tougher with one another.  Judge Roberts was either blackmailed or threatened into reversing his opinion on ObamaCare.  That's incandescently obvious.  FBI Director Comey's erratic performance yesterday suggests there's more here than just a man suddenly changing his mind about law enforcement.  He has prosecuted many others for these exact same crimes.  A lesson of history is that when ruling elites become unstable, they become thuggish.

America's Actual Biggest Lawbreaker.  Through the frequent and growing use of "administrative subpoenas," which are warrants issued by federal, state and even local government officials without prior approval of judges or magistrates, the government trespasses on papers and effects.  Courts and legislatures have eliminated the "probable cause" and other Fourth Amendment standards for these judge-less warrants, giving great deference to government trespasses. [...] Administrative subpoenas have become institutionalized violations of the Fourth Amendment.  America's biggest lawbreaker loves administrative subpoenas.  Government violations of the Constitution happen every day across the country.

The McDonnell Case:  Another Study in Criminal Law as Democratic Partisan Warfare.  It's common for those unhappy with a decision to criticize the partisanship of the judges involved, but the weakness of the case, which was evident when it was argued in the Supreme Court (and during the trial itself), and the fact that it was reversed unanimously warrants a raised eyebrow.  It comes on the heels of the reversed prosecutions of then-Senator Ted Stevens, Governor Rick Perry, House Majority leader Tom DeLay, the IRS war on Obama's opponents in the tea party and other conservative groups, and the outrageous trampling the rights of those who worked for and supported Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.  This case and those matters lead to an inescapable conclusion:  With the endorsement of partisan juries and/or judges, the Democratic Party seeks to and will use the power of the prosecution to destroy Republican political leaders and anyone who supports them.

After Air Force One Ride, Hillary Uses Official Presidential Seal For Campaign Speech.  Just hours after walking free from felony and misdemeanor charges for handling top secret, classified information in an "extremely careless" manner, presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton boarded Air Force One with President Barack Obama and jetted off to a campaign event in North Carolina.  The trip cost taxpayers $200,000 per hour.  During the event, President Obama spoke before Clinton and used the official Presidential Seal for his remarks.  When Clinton stepped up to the lectern it wasn't taken down, but instead used by Clinton for her remarks as well.

Is True American Liberty Gone?  It saddens me to see the dedication to liberty of the founders and those who sacrificed so much being flushed down the toilet by the people running the nation today who are only interested only in their own power and wealth.  There are only a few, barely a handful, who care about the well-being of the nation and its citizens.  Barak [sic] Obama is the most blatant of despotic wanna-be tyrants but far from the only one.  The entire political party system is corrupt and evil.

What's really behind the ongoing push for gun control?  All modern governments are organized crime legitimized by the police power of the state.  There is illegal crime and there is legal crime.  We tend to accept government crime because it has made itself politically legal and politically palatable with such propaganda myths as "democracy."  All economic power, political power and religious power are vested in the state.  The state manages the system backed by police power.  Police power is civil and military.  The German state under Adolf Hitler was organized crime protected by visible military power, whereas American so-called democracy is a police state without the jack boots and the swastika.  Police power in a modern "democracy" appears more benevolent because it is more subtle or more invisible.  But police power is ever present.  It normally isolates and prosecutes enemies of the state, radiating its presence through the controlled media for public obedience.  This type of police state is accurately described as benevolent totalitarianism.  Sometimes, however, it misfires and rears its despotic head in actions like Waco and Ruby Ridge.  All national states have one thing in common.  They want all uncontrolled arms of the people confiscated.

Federal Judge Strikes Down Security Buffer Zone for GOP Convention.  A federal judge found unconstitutional a heightened-security area proposed to surround the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio on Thursday [6/23/2016], saying the 3.5 square mile "event zone" unfairly restricted free speech.  U.S. District Judge James Gwin stated the event zone was "unduly large," siding with the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit on behalf of protesters.

A Week in the Life of the American Police State.  The following incidents constitute a typical week in the life of the American police state.  [#1] Not content with merely spying on our emails and phone calls, the NSA wants to spy on thermostats, refrigerators, and pacemakers.  [#2] Reinforcing fears about how easily surveillance technology can be abused by government officials, local police in California are using money acquired through asset forfeiture to buy surveillance equipment that was then used to blackmail city council members.  [#3] Small-town police departments continue to militarize their forces, acquiring military equipment such as BearCat armored vehicles and SWAT teams at an alarming rate.  [#4] According to the Government Accountability Office, the majority of people in the government's criminal face-recognition database have never committed a crime. [...] [#7] The Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that as long as the government shows "good faith," it can search your digital files as much as it wants.  [#8] The FBI and other government agencies have been hiding cameras in city utility poles in order to carry out warrantless, covert surveillance on Americans.

The Licensing Disaster.  When people on the right say "job-killing regulations," they usually are referring to health or environmental or social welfare rules that may or may not be wise but which actually have — or are intended to have — some kind of positive benefit for society at large.  But a good chunk of America's occupational licensing system — exemplified by the [New York] Times story about the animal masseuse ordered by Arizona's veterinary board to stop practicing unless she paid a quarter million dollars for four years of veterinary school — falls into a different category entirely.  These are cartels, plain and simple, that use state power to minimize competition and maximize rents, without any plausible justification besides self-interest.

Obama wants to starve kids in Texas.  State officials there are opposed to Obama's edict to allow students to determine which restroom or locker room they use, based solely on how they feel about themselves.  Obama says any state that does not bow to his wishes faces a cutoff of education funding.  Texas gets almost $2 billion a year from the federal government for its school breakfast and lunch programs.  Thus, over an issue affecting less than 0.01 percent of students in Texas, Obama is threatening to take food out of the mouths and bellies of the poorest of the poor children.  And it's not just kids in Texas.  More than a dozen other states are refusing to go along with Obama's edict on bathroom and locker room for so-called "transgendereds."  We're talking about millions of kids not getting breakfast and lunch as a direct result of Obama's bullying.

This Lyft driver uses her congressman father's Honda.  Users of the ride-sharing app, Lyft, were treated to more than just a low-cost ride when they requested one specific car.  Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings confirmed Tuesday [5/31/2016] he gave his daughter, Adia, permission to use his Honda while she was a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C.  But in an effort to pay her school bills, Adia used her father's vehicle to enlist as a Lyft driver, according to a statement obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Rep apologizes after daughter found using congressional car tag.  [Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings] said Tuesday [5/31/2016] that a daughter who recently graduated from college has been using his Honda with a congressional plate while working part time for a ride-sharing company to make extra money for school expenses.

Daughter of Democrat Congressman Elijah Cummings uses his car with official plates to ferry Lyft passengers around Washington.  Thousands of drivers work part-time for Lyft to make a little bit of extra money on the side, but not many of them are congressmen earning a $174,000 salary.  So it's no wonder eyebrows were raised when Democrat Elijah Cummings' Honda — complete with Congressional plates — was spotted picking up cab fares around Washington, DC.  The black car carrying a sticker for the car service app was spotted by eagle-eyed Lyft user Dustin Andres, who asked:  'So, which member of Congress drives Lyft in DC?'

It's Boomtime For Regulators Under Obama, While Economy Flatlines.  The economy might be tepid under President Obama, but there is one part that has been thriving.  Since Obama took office, the federal regulatory economy has never been better, with solid growth in spending and employment.  That's according to a new report that tracks how much the government spends on federal regulatory activity.  That is, how many people work at regulatory agencies, and how much money those agencies spend.  The numbers are staggering.

Congressional Conservatives Trying to Save You From Laws They Never Passed.  The vast majority of federal lawmaking is no longer done by elected officials, and a handful of congressmen are working to change that.  Wednesday morning [5/25/2016], Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Reps.  Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Mark Walker (R-NC) introduced the Article I Regulatory Budget Act of 2016, which seeks to force Congress to exert more of its constitutional authority in countering regulations imposed by the executive branch.

This Is Not The America My Parents Immigrated To In 1957.  This country is ruled by force, not law.  Governmental assassinations of US citizens.  A highly militarized police with almost unlimited powers to harass, intimidate, and brutalize with impunity.  TSA groping whereby in any other setting would be considered sexual harassment.  Overseas detention, torture and assassinations carried out against anyone, including American citizens, without due process — and without recourse if later cleared.  Warrantless GPS tracking by the FBI. The IRS targeting religious groups.  Some people now actually be charged with pre-crimes.  Checkpoints up to one hundred miles inland from all our borders (including the two oceans and Gulf of Mexico) in an area stunningly known as a "Constitution Free Zone".  No Ride / No Fly lists which are extrajudicial, secret, and form a guilty-until-proven innocent framework that subverts freedom instead of protecting it.  A See Something/Say Something program which goes beyond the already high-tech surveillance apparatus of the NSA and turns each of us into an unpaid employee of the police state similar to what the East German Stasi did to their citizens.  Web cameras and surveillance proliferating like a wildfire, data mining, recording all your phone conversations, all your web searches, all your emails, and all without your consent.  An FDA, which has near-total food control and usually renders anything healthy as toxic, and all that is toxic as healthy, and does insane [things] like jailing folks who buy raw milk.  Literally tens of thousands of regulations which literally invade every facet of society, whereby it has been said that almost all of us commit three felonies per day, and every violation of these laws will be met with the full force and fury of the State which promises fines, penalties, forfeiture of properties, or imprisonment.  Does any of this even remotely resemble a representative democracy, or does it sound more like a dictatorship?

Did the Houston DA's Office Abuse Its Power to Get Daleiden Indictment?  Did the Houston District Attorney's Office abuse its grand-jury subpoena power in order to help Planned Parenthood not only escape an indictment, but also turn the tables on the two undercover videographers who brought to light the abortion giant's fetal-tissue practice?  According to attorneys representing Center for Medical Progress undercover-video investigators David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, Houston Assistant District Attorney Sunni Mitchell engaged in prosecutorial misconduct by working closely with Josh Schaffer, legal counsel for Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast, which was the target of the grand-jury investigation that resulted instead in the indictments of the pro-life advocates.

Secret Service punishes 41 over leak of lawmaker's data.  Forty-one U.S. Secret Service employees have been disciplined over a media leak of the personal files of a congressman who had criticized the agency's security lapses, the Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday [5/26/2016].  Punishments ranged from a letter of reprimand to suspensions without pay for up to 45 days, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said in a statement.  One person found to have disclosed information on Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz to the Washington Post has resigned from the service, Johnson said, noting that privacy laws prevented disclosure of more details.

Any American who believes in the rule of law and fair play should be afraid, very afraid, of our government right now.  [Scroll down]  The problem of lawyers lying to judges is extremely serious.  Our system of litigation — lawyers present facts and argue about laws, and judges rely on the truthfulness of what the lawyers have told them — is built on trust.  Because lawyers know the facts in their cases more intimately than judges do, judges rely on lawyers to tell them the truth.  At first, these DOJ lawyers lied.  Then they lied about their lying.  Then they reluctantly acknowledged that they had momentary lapses in understanding, an argument that the court rejected because of the repeated nature of their lying.  The lawyers said the programs had not begun, when in fact they had — to a large degree.

A Monstrous Moral Leviathan.  Having grown up within a mile of the Beltway during the Cold War, the greatest fear dominating my childhood and adolescence was that I might one day look up and see a brilliant mushroom cloud rising over DC.  At the time, it never occurred to me that the biggest threat to our nation would come not from a foreign enemy, but from within the halls of power in our nation's capital.  Our government Leviathan is very real and has grown to previously unimaginable proportions.  Its ever-increasing reach seems to know no bounds.  And what was once perceived to be Leviathan's mostly fiscal threat to the health and well-being of our nation is now a monstrous moral threat.  Leviathan's vast bureaucracies are now its foot soldiers, who have busied themselves with weaponizing executive edicts, errant court rulings and out-of-control regulatory powers against all who disagree with our Ruling Elites never-ending social/moral engineering experimentation.

Killing the regulatory parasite.  The successful parasite does not kill its host.  But the federal regulatory parasite is in the process of killing the golden goose upon which it feeds.  Several studies from highly reputable institutions have been released in the last number of days, all with similar alarming conclusions — namely, the number and costs of federal regulations are growing much faster than the economy, and they are having a significant negative impact on economic growth and job creation.  From the new annual report, Ten Thousand Commandments 2016, prepared by Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, we learn that the costs of federal regulations — nearly $1.9 trillion — is now greater than the Internal Revenue Service collects from both personal income and corporate taxes.  "Federal regulation is a hidden tax that amounts to nearly $15,000 per U.S. household each year."

Obama Raided $500M for Zika to Finance UN's Green Climate Fund.  Last week, the Senate passed legislation to address and prevent the spread of the Zika virus.  However, the Senate failed to pay for it, and instead approved a $1.1 billion "emergency" spending supplemental bill that is not subject to the budgetary caps that were agreed to last year.  While congressional inattention to the budget crisis is inexcusable, it is even more disturbing that the Obama administration already has the authority to pay for a Zika response from existing agency budgets, but chose not to.

20,642 New Regulations Added in the Obama Presidency.  The tide of red tape that threatens to drown U.S. consumers and businesses surged yet again in 2015, according to a Heritage Foundation study we released on Monday [5/23/2016].  More than $22 billion per year in new regulatory costs were imposed on Americans last year, pushing the total burden for the Obama years to exceed $100 billion annually.  That's a dollar for every star in the galaxy, or one for every second in 32 years.

Obama Has 3,260 Rules In The Regulatory Pipeline.  The Obama administration's got more than 3,200 regulations at various stages of completion, including 2,239 active rules agencies are working to finish before President Barack Obama leaves office.  The White House's Office of Management and Budget released its spring 2016 "Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions," which lists 3,260 regulations at various stages in the regulatory pipeline.  The vast majority of these regulations — 2,239 — are considered "active" rules, meaning regulators are still working on them.

Obama rushes out rules to guarantee legacy.  The Obama administration is shoveling out regulations nearly one-third faster in its final year than during the previous three — all to beat a May 23 deadline to prevent a President Donald Trump from overturning them.  A total of 195 regulations have been pushed through since Jan. 1 at an estimated cost of $69.5 billion to the nation's businesses, according to the conservative American Action Forum.  One of the most significant — a sweeping rule that will extend overtime pay to more than 4 million people without any input from Congress — was released Tuesday night [5/17/2016].

FTC Accused of Engaging in 'Partisan' Defense of Clintons.  The Federal Trade Commission is being accused of engaging in a partisan defense of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their business interests after the agency refused a congressional request to investigate the family's foundation.  The agency, which is charged with ensuring consumer protection, rejected a request to investigate the nonprofit Clinton Foundation despite "serious and well-documented" concerns from lawmakers, said Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney who serves as executive director for the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), an ethics watchdog group.  The FTC penned a letter to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) this week rejecting a request from she and 21 members of Congress that the FTC review the nonprofit status of the Clinton Foundation after reports raised questions about the charity's transparency and possible deception.

Resisting Obama's Transgender Directive:  A Hill to Die On.  [T]he left, without remorse, appoints results-oriented, activist judges, whom they view not as protectors of the Constitution and law but as vehicles to advance its political agenda by any means necessary, including twisting the meaning of constitutional and statutory provisions and often inventing rights out of whole cloth. It's why it doesn't even blink when one of its own usurps legislative authority and issues lawless executive orders in contravention of the people's will, even while knowing he has no constitutional authority to do so.  It's why it deliberately refuses to enforce immigration laws.  It's why it blackmails state governments, through the threat of withholding funds, into doing the will of the federal government.  It's why it privately applauds the use of the IRS to target its political opponents.  And it's why it stacks the Justice Department with radical leftists whose mission to effect changes in policy supersedes its duty of ensuring the fair and impartial administration of justice.

DOJ's Lawsuit Against North Carolina Is Abuse of Power.  North Carolina has sustained unrelenting and coordinated attacks from big business, the entertainment industry, the American Civil Liberties Union, and now the federal government over its commonsense bathroom policies.  Gov. Pat McCrory and the North Carolina Legislature have had enough of this bullying and filed separate lawsuits against the Department of Justice Monday in the reasonable expectation that a federal judge will order the ideologues at the Department of Justice to back off.

The use of airport security as a weapon against political opponents:
Is the U.S. Government Now TRACKING 'Right-Wing Extremists'?  It started last summer.  I don't consider myself a "right-wing extremist" — but the far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) does, and the FBI uses the SPLC as a resource.  Since then, every time I fly — and I fly almost weekly — I can't check in online.  I am always directed to go to the airline counter.  There — as soon as I present my identification — the trouble starts.  It generally proceeds like this:  [1] The clerk types a great deal, frowns at the screen, types some more, asks me what my middle name is, types still more, looks at me quizzically, and gets on the phone.  [2] They're very secretive about these calls, sometimes even moving to a different desk to make them.  They refuse to tell me anything about them afterward, including who they called or why.  [3] The call usually takes around ten minutes.  The whole process takes fifteen or twenty minutes.  Then I am checked in and allowed to go to my gate.

Let's Don't Put On a Show.  The only thing I know about Kasim Reed is that he's the mayor of Atlanta and I hate him.  If you've had the experience of going through the Atlanta airport recently, you'll be familiar with the deeply grating voice of Mayor Reed, who greets travelers with self-aggrandizing North Korea-style loudspeaker announcements in which he extols the virtues of his boring, sweaty little city and labors mightily to associate himself with military men.  It's the 500-megawatt-amplifier version of those dumb signs in which Governor Andrew Cuomo welcomes Fairfield County commuters to New York every time they cross the line from Connecticut:  Using public infrastructure for purely self-promotional purposes, as though all of New York State were a gubernatorial fiefdom and all of Atlanta Kasim Reed's personal playground.

She Spoke Up About Cooked ISIS Intel.  They Booted Her — for Cursing.  She worked on and off for five years identifying targets for the U.S. military's Central Command.  And then, when, some believe, she spoke up about cherry-picked intelligence in the ISIS war, she was drummed out of her job — allegedly for cursing twice in the span of the year.  Those were just some of the surreal allegations thrown around last week in a Tampa law office conference room turned into a quasi-courtroom.  Had the case not involved the third-highest ranking person at the Defense Intelligence Agency, a two-star general, a military judge, and hours of testimony — all at a cost of thousands of dollars — it would have been hard to take seriously.  Even with those high-ranking officials, at times it was hard not to do a double-take about what was happening.

It Takes 300 Hours to Become a Shampooer in Tennessee.  In 1996, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a law requiring natural hair stylists to attain a cosmetologist's license through the state's Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners.  Natural hair braiders like [Tammy] Nutall had excelled in their craft for years, learning braiding from their mothers and grandmothers.  But now, the state was telling them they had to log more than 1,500 hours of education through an eight-week course with costs topping $12,000, Nutall recalled, and all for a skill she pioneered in Tennessee.

Federal Regulations Now Cost Almost $1.9 Trillion, Study Finds.  Just look at the balance between regulations and laws.  For every bill passed through Congress and signed by the president last year, regulators imposed 30 new regulations.  And at $1.885 trillion, the cost of regulations now exceeds the cost of federal individual and corporate income taxes, which raised about $1.82 trillion last year.  The CEI report shows that economic regulations (such as market entry restrictions, price supports and the like) impose the biggest costs at $399 billion.  That's followed by environmental regulations at $386 billion, and — incredibly — the cost of complying with the tax code, which is expected to be $316 billion this year.

Ten Thousand Commandments 2016.  Ten Thousand Commandments is the Competitive Enterprise Institute's annual survey of the size, scope and cost of federal regulations, and how they affect American consumers, businesses, and the U.S. economy. [...] The scope of federal government spending, deficits and the national debt is staggering, but so is the impact of federal regulations.  Unfortunately, regulations get too little attention in policy debates because, unlike taxes, they are unbudgeted.

Crony Capitalism and the Spigot of Government Subsidies.  Creating something that people want is how one gets wealthy in a market economy.  Sadly, there's another way to get rich.  It's called cronyism, and it can make billions for the lucky businesses that get government support — whether their products are profitable or not.  In the process, the taxpayers foot the bill.  Taxpayer insurance against unprofitability takes many forms, from loan guarantees to grants, which provide a no-lose scenario for beneficiaries.  If the business is profitable, then the corporation makes massive profits.  If the business goes bust, then the taxpayers take a hit.  Either way, the crony capitalist wins.

Obama's Civil Rights Divisions.  For the past seven years and counting the Obama administration has been engaged in a silent war on the rights of the American people at the hands of an organized network of fringe leftist lawyers working within the Civil Rights Divisions of the Department of Justice (DOJ) as well as the Department of Education (DOE).  These lawyers have been unleashed under the administration to push an ideological agenda that is far outside of the American mainstream all under the banner of protecting civil rights.  As noted by J. Christian Adams and Hans A. von Spakovsky of PJ Media, if a president wanted to "fundamentally transform" the nation, he would likely start with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department because the tentacles of that Division reach into virtually every crevice of American life.  For example, Adams and Spakovsky write that "Federal statutes, under the banner of protecting civil rights, reach home lending, football stadium and theater seating, voting, elections, education, college admissions, apartment rentals, prisons, hiring practices, the use of English, special education programs, religious liberty, abortion clinic protests, arrests, law enforcement, voter rolls, insane asylums, state and local government hiring, swimming pool lift chairs, bathtub design, Spanish language ballots, school discipline, and even if boys can dress in drag in high school".  This list barely scratches the surface of the scope of the Civil Rights Division's powers.

The DOE is now in the High School Girl's Shower.  For more than two decades Americans have become desensitized to the arrogance, hubris and general incompetence of Washington insiders.  Each succeeding administration has seemingly tried to outdo the previous administration in outrageous conduct, whether it be in creative tax burdens or reasons for sending young Americans to other countries to fight and die.  Every day brings another revelation causing Americans to roll their eyes, shake their heads, and wonder what, if anything, can be done to a government that seems to pay no attention to its citizens whatsoever.

Pick one thing and fight.  The dismantling of America leaves one breathless as we face of an avalanche of horrors.  We've been dealing with a long roll out of evil with more to come.  It shocks the mind trying to absorb it all.  What can citizens do to stop the fundamental transformation of our nation?  How can we function effectively to save our country?  And how do we do so in a leadership vacuum?

Study: GDP Would Be 25% Bigger If Government Regulations Had Been Capped In 1980.  Under President Obama, annual GDP growth never once even hit 3%.  Under Bush before him, there were only two years when growth topped 3%.  But in the two decades before that, annual GDP growth was above 3% in all but six years.  Growth has been so anemic for so long, we're now being told that this is the "new normal."  As the Bureau of Labor Statistics put it, "annual U.S.  GDP growth exceeding 3% ... is not expected to be attainable over the coming decade."  It lists everything as a cause, except for one thing:  federal regulations.

An Amateur vs.  ISIS: A Car Salesman Investigates and Ends Up in Prison.  [Scroll down]  He was pulled into the murky world of Internet jihadists, sparring with them from his office at the car dealership and late into the night at home.  Before long, he was talking for hours on Skype with a man who claimed — falsely, as it would turn out — to be a top ISIS military commander, trying to negotiate the release of hostages.  Mr. Lopez contacted the F.B.I. and began a testy relationship with counterterrorism agents who came to believe he might pose a danger.  In the end, he landed in federal prison, where he was held for nearly 14 months without trial.

Is Eric Schneiderman colluding with other AGs in an illicit war on Exxon?  New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and other state AGs are probing ExxonMobil — but maybe they're the ones who should be investigated.  E-mails obtained by a free-market think tank (the Energy & Environment Legal Institute) show Schneiderman & Co. colluded with two activists last month just before the AGs rolled out their anti-Exxon campaign.  A top Schneiderman aide even tried to keep the press in the dark about the role of one activist, Matt Pawa.  Pawa was also in the loop for a January meeting by various groups — Greenpeace, the Working Families Party, the Rockefeller Family Fund — to plan how to "delegitimize [Exxon] as a political actor," smear it publicly as "corrupt" and steer away investors.

Democrat A.G.'s Colluded With Eco-Nazis to Punish Political Opponents.  Emails obtained by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) show that the offices of New York Democratic Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and those of other politically aligned AGs, secretly teamed up with anti-fossil fuel activists to launch investigations against groups whose political speech challenged the global warming policy agenda.  These emails, obtained under open records laws, shed light on what followed after a January meeting, reported by the Wall Street Journal on April 14, in which groups funded by anti-fossil fuel Rockefeller interests met to urge just this sort of investigation and litigation against political opponents.

AGs, activists accused of 'collusion' on Exxon probe amid new emails.  State Democratic officials are facing mounting accusations they secretly coordinated with climate activists to investigate whether ExxonMobil hid the truth about global warming, as new documents show the collaboration went deeper than previously thought.  Emails obtained and released by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute show a number of state attorneys general and their staff received advice and guidance from environmental activists at a March 29 meeting in New York, on the same day as a major press conference.

TX Judge resigns when caught texting instructions to prosecutors to help win convictions.  Texas district Judge Elizabeth E. Coker is stepping down from the bench after being caught engaging in a massive perversion of justice.  A whistleblower revealed that Corker was sending text messages to prosecutors with suggestions on questions to ask in court in order to secure a conviction.

The Cannons of Government.  The people cannot express their will through a government that seeks to impose its will upon them.  As President Obama withdraws American influence from the world, he extends a malicious imperial doctrine into the domestic private sector.  In exercising its vast regulatory powers, his administration has discovered the means by which it may exceed its lawful commission given by the people as expressed in their written Constitution.  Therefore, against the willful disregard of fundamental law by a few in the power of office, the people must hold dearly their own legitimate right and obligation to correct their government.

Panama Papers: The Elites' Shield From Laws Imposed On Us.  With the release of the Panama Papers Sunday [4/3/2016], it's increasingly clear that the global elites in politics, business and sports have two sets of rules — one for them, and one for the rest of us.

Report: Obama Admin's Effort to 'Eliminate Red Tape' Adds $16 Billion in Costs.  The Obama administration's effort to eliminate red tape added $16 billion in regulatory costs, according to a new report by the American Action Forum obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.  "President Obama signed executive orders (13,563 and 13,610) as part of an effort to 'eliminate red tape.'  Federal agencies were told to 'modify, streamline expand, or repeal' existing regulations," according to the report released by AAF, a center-right nonprofit led by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office.  The American Action Forum has found the reviews consist mostly of recycled regulations by federal agencies that have actually increased regulatory costs.  "The recent 'retrospective reports' from the administration reveal that executive agencies have added more than $16 billion in regulatory costs, up from $14.7 billion in the previous update, and 6.5 million paperwork hours," the report said.

Obama regulations whack GOP states, go easy on liberal states.  Sweeping and expensive regulations pushed by President Obama have had a lopsided effect on states that voted for Obama's presidential foes, Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain, according to a new George Mason University study of the impact of rules and regulations.  The top 14 states crushed the hardest by financial and environmental regulations sought by Obama voted for Romney in the last election and generally trend Republican in other elections.  They include Louisiana, Texas, Indiana, Kentucky and Alabama.

Turning back the leviathan of the administrative state.  There are two stacks of papers in Utah Senator Mike Lee's office that should cause all Americans to pause.  One stack is 400 pages; the other is over 80,000 pages.  The short stack is all of the laws Congress passed in 2014.  The 11-foot tall tower is all federal regulations.  Senator Lee and other members of Congress see this disparity as indicative of not just a growing government, but an erosion of the separation of powers.  They are correct.  When James Madison authored Federalist 47, he gave voice to a sentiment shared widely by the Founders:  consolidating executive, legislative, and judicial power into one entity is "the very definition of tyranny."  To preserve self-government, the Constitution separated those powers into three branches.  As new laws may restrict liberty, separated power ensures that one faction of society cannot run roughshod over another.  Debate, compromise and consensus should ensure that any new regulations are enacted with wide public agreement.

Rule by bureaucrat.  [Scroll down]  Why do federal agencies have so much power to begin with?  In simplest terms, it's Congress' fault.  The lawmakers you elect to make law have gotten into the habit of passing remarkably vague legislation.  The law your senator or representative votes for to do Good Thing X is often full of blanks.  Somebody has to fill in those blanks — to specify all the details about how X will be accomplished.  Increasingly, that somebody is not a man or woman who's directly answerable to you, but someone you'll never meet.  Someone who can't be voted out of office for failing to look after your interests.

Yes, Mr. President: Capitalism Is Better.  [Scroll down]  One can see how Obama's "pragmatism" is both laughable and pathetic.  Listen to the dichotomous thinking that our dear president wants to discourage.  There is no significant difference between the sanctity of property ownership and a society where there is no ownership (thus no need for contracts).  There is no significant difference between a society where the government is the only employer and a society where competing companies hire people.  There is no significant difference between a society where there are infinite regulations that discourage entrepreneurship and a society where entrepreneurship is encouraged.  There is no significant difference between a country that has a vast network of private banking with access to funds competing for venture capital and a country where all the banks are owned and controlled by the government.

The Lunacy of One-Size-Fits-All Law & Regulation.  [Scroll down]  It's called The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which is a federal law that seeks to keep American Indian children with American Indian families.  Congress passed the ICWA in 1978 in response to the alarmingly high number of Indian children being removed from their homes by both public and private agencies.  The intent of Congress under the ICWA is to "protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families (25 U.S.C. § 1902).  ICWA sets federal requirements that apply to state child custody proceedings involving an Indian child who is a member of or eligible for membership in a federally recognized tribe."  So here is [...] yet another example of the government screwing things up and then passing a law or regulation to solve the problem that they caused.  First they pass a law to be able to remove the children — then must pass another to return them, never considering the individual children or families.  But of course the "experts" in the federal government always know what's best.

Obama holds his own... Umbrella.  In previous such outings in rain or storm with President Obama, his Secret Service detail were shamefully abused by being forced to hold umbrellas over the heads of Obama and whomever else he thought warranted the cover.  To outside observers, this may not seem a big deal, but to cognoscenti, the use of Secret Service agents for any purpose other than alert protection is unlawful.

The Left Is Embracing Orwellian Policies to Go After 'Climate Deniers'.  Just when we thought liberalism can't get any more authoritarian, the Obama administration reminds us that it can.  Attorney General Loretta Lynch recently confirmed that she had "referred" the "matter" of whether climate change "deniers" should be brought to court on racketeering charges to the FBI.  Yes, that's right.  If you happen to disagree with the administration's views of global warming, you could face a civil suit accusing you of fraud and corruption.  This represents a breathtaking corruption of the law.  Laws designed to catch mafia figures on corruption charges could be twisted to punish Americans whose only crime is to contest the Obama administration's view of climate change.

Rick Perry [is] A Victim Of Democrats' Politicization Of Courts.  A Texas appeals court wadded up and threw out the "abuse of power" indictment against Gov. Rick Perry this week, the latest in a line of such harassment suits against effective political officials.  It was the right move.  But given what it cost Perry, where's the "abuse of power" charge against his odious assailants?  It was a travesty.  The distinguished governor of Texas, just finishing 14 years in office characterized by a dazzling economic record and a wagon-train of newcomers to his state, was hit with a nuisance indictment claiming "abuse of power" and "intimidation of a public official" after he vetoed funding in 2013 for a portion of a state prosecutor's office called the "public integrity unit."  That followed after its top prosecutor, Rosemary Lehmberg, refused to resign after being picked up by the cops for driving drunk and then, in a spectacular video caught on YouTube, drunkenly attempting to intimidate the officers from filing charges.

Rick Perry Is Not Guilty, but Texas Is.  Puff Daddy, or whatever his name is now, has a friend in Rosemary Lehmberg.  The hip-hop impresario is an endorser of Cîroc vodka, and Lehmberg, who in her role at the Travis County prosecutor's office oversees political crimes statewide, went through about 25 gallons of the stuff — 74 bottles — in the course of a year.  She had one of those bottles in her car when she was pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving.  She was convicted of the crime and went to jail.  Texas being Texas, she is not the first prosecutor to have been carted off to the pokey in shackles; truth be told, the state hasn't imprisoned nearly as many of its prosecutors as it should. [...] Upon her arrest, Lehmberg immediately went into "Do You Know Who I Am?" mode and was so abusive that she had to be put in restraints.  She demanded special treatment and threatened law-enforcement personnel with legal retaliation for refusing to let her slide.  Specifically, she threatened to have them arrested.

Networks Hyped Perry Indictment in 2014; Silent on Dismissal.  Political scandals make for juicy journalism, but apparently a politician being cleared of wrongdoing isn't even worth a mention.  When the initial story of Rick Perry's indictment broke in August 2014, ABC, CBS and NBC eagerly devoted 25 minutes in just two days to topic, speculating that the controversy could "end any chance" for Perry in 2016.  But when Perry was cleared of any wrongdoing on Wednesday, all three networks were silent, on both the evening news shows that night and the morning news shows the following day, Thursday, February 25.  [However, with their similarly half-hour-long evening news broadcast, Univision's Noticiero Univision managed to give Perry's exoneration 20 seconds on Wednesday night.]  The indictment came after then-Governor Perry vetoed funding for a public integrity unit after the District Attorney in charge of the unit refused to resign after a drunk driving conviction.

Report: Department of Education views for-profit colleges 'too big to fail'.  For-profit colleges will keep wasting billions of taxpayer dollars if the U.S. Department of Education continues to treat them as if they are "too big to fail," a new report said.  Chris Hicks, who formerly led the Debt-Free Future campaign for the advocacy group Jobs With Justice, said the Education Department has refused to use its authority to regulate such colleges, setting up students and taxpayers for massive financial blunders.

End the Army coverup on the 'lost dogs of war'.  From Bernie Sanders to Ted Cruz, the presidential candidates talk up how much they care for America's veterans.  Well, Sunday's [New York] Post suggests a test:  Will any of them fight for the "lost dogs of war"?  Maureen Callahan's expose shows the Pentagon repeatedly breaking its promise to reunite bomb-sniffing dogs with their handlers on the pups' return from war.  Instead, private firm K2 Solutions routinely places the four-footed veterans in civilian hands.  Never mind that a federal law passed in 2000 mandates that soldiers who handled the animals in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on get the chance to adopt their dogs.  Callahan uncovered evidence that three Pentagon employees took dogs for themselves.

California district reported incorrect numbers while 'shaming' water wasters.  East Bay Municipal Utility District, which serves counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, recently released lists of more than 4,200 customers accused of violating the water usage limit imposed to combat the lingering drought.  That limit is roughly 1,000 gallons per household each day.  However, an investigation from the Contra Costa Times revealed that some figures were off by 1,000 or more.  One retired woman was listed as using more than 5,000 gallons per day when the real number was just over 1,000, the newspaper reports.

FDNY chief had Bravest shovel out his home while Queens froze.  Two FDNY crews were dispatched to Commissioner Daniel Nigro's Queens home in the aftermath of the blizzard — just to clear a patch of snow that was blocking his path to the street, The [New York] Post has learned.  At least eight firefighters made the run to Nigro's private Whitestone residence at 8:49 a.m. Sunday [1/24/2016] and when they got there, he instructed them to shovel a 3-foot wall of snow between his walkway and the street, sources said.

FBI ran website sharing thousands of child porn images.  For nearly two weeks last year, the FBI operated what it described as one of the Internet's largest child pornography websites, allowing users to download thousands of illicit images and videos from a government site in the Washington suburbs.  The operation — whose details remain largely secret — was at least the third time in recent years that FBI agents took control of a child pornography site but left it online in an attempt to catch users who officials said would otherwise remain hidden behind an encrypted and anonymous computer network.  In each case, the FBI infected the sites with software that punctured that security, allowing agents to identify hundreds of users.

More Government Abuse: 120 Years in Prison for Firing Two Shots in the Air.  An Army veteran has been charged with 12 criminal counts for firing two shots off in the air that hit no one.  He didn't hurt anyone.  This is a case of blatant prosecutorial abuse.

How America can be saved from stupid people.  During the last few decades, politicians learned they could "buy" their way into elected office by promising various constituencies free stuff, such as favorable treatment for "well-connected" companies and welfare for those who did not want to work.  Government bureaucracies grew large to administer all the free handouts, and, of course, the free stuff had to come from somewhere, so politicians either took it from people who worked hard or, increasingly, borrowed it.  Our national debt is an estimated $18 trillion, which is about the size of our economy.  We make the debt that recently brought down Greece look like a poorly-run Monopoly game.  When our debt comes due, it may resemble the Great Depression of the 1930s and bring down the entire world economy.  The politicians took care of their own, of course.  And by "their own" I mean the vast bureaucracies — federal and state employees' unions, teachers' unions, police forces, and prison systems — that grew up to support the politicians' goals of transferring the wealth of those who worked to those who kept them in office.

Racism, Power and Control.  The bureaucrats within a multitude of ever growing agencies that create regulation after regulation based upon their parties fanatical ideology; the tenured professors who restrict the usage of words they deem offensive while punishing those who dare challenge them by practicing their right to free speech; the scientists who go along in propagating an erroneous myth of "climate change"; the journalists who act as the praetorian guard media as they spew this administrations talking points from healthcare to the environment and everything in between; finally we have the professional politicians who abdicate their responsibilities once elected into office as they campaign on a platform of lies and deceit.  All of this adds to the growing environment of authoritarianism as those who are currently in power seek to facilitate deception and manipulation of thought upon our society.

Global Tyranny Just Getting Warmed Up.  The great revolution of political progressivism was its creation of an intermediary mechanism, the administrative state, to filter the relation between the oppressors and the oppressed.  The regulatory bureaucracy depersonalizes tyranny, diluting its real meaning with legalistic paperwork and soporific incrementalism.  The bureaucratic labyrinth, with its officious, abstract, uncommunicative language, is the perfect guardian for the craven greed and power lust that occupy the offices on the top floor but dare not show their true faces in a "democratic" society.  With obscure jargon and banal committee reports, the administrative state trivializes the property-obliteration of confiscatory taxes, the horror of government-normalized mass killing (from "abortion on demand" to "palliative care"), the moral outrage of state-controlled child-rearing ("public school"), and the freedom-slaying thousand cuts of state-micromanaged daily life, recasting them as mere annoyances, equivalent to household chores.  History will someday show that the great coup of progressive authoritarianism was its translation of despotic decrees into the language of white papers, statistical analyses, and policy proposals.

Obama pushing thousands of new regulations in Year 8.  Nearly 4,000 regulations are squirming their way through the federal bureaucracy in the last year of Barack Obama's presidency — many costing industry more than $100 million — in a mad dash by the White House to push through government actions affecting everything from furnaces to gun sales to Guantánamo.  That means a full court press at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to reduce exposure limits for silica, a chemical used widely in construction and fracking that can cause cancer when inhaled; at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to require more small-scale gun sellers to perform background checks; and at the Food and Drug Administration, to make food manufacturers disclose on product labels how much sugar they add to cranberry juice.

The Spending and Tax Lollapalooza.  In the dead of night, House Republicans unveiled a massive tax and spending bill.  The bill comes with a price tag of more than $2 trillion — and your member of Congress will never read it.  At 2,009 pages, House members would have to read one page a minute over the next 48 hours without any bathroom breaks, sleeping, Christmas parties, lobbyist meetings, or taxpayer-funded steak dinners to interrupt them.  Of course, that wont happen.  Whether you are liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, the fact that your elected representative will cast a consequential vote on your behalf, dear constituent, without fully comprehending what he or she is voting on, is nothing short of outrageous and a dereliction of responsibility.

Terrorists are a real threat. So is your government with a blank check.  What should we do about terrorism?  After the attacks on Paris, the French government passed a law that allows anyone suspected of being a security threat to be placed under house arrest and searches to be conducted without warrants. [...] France also decided that it now has a right to copy data from anyone government deems of interest.  By "anyone," though, the politicians didn't mean politicians.  They exempted themselves — and journalists, lawyers and diplomats.  Insiders protect their own.  Of course, this will inspire terrorists to pose as — or become — politicians, journalists, lawyers and diplomats.  France also claims the right to control TV, radio and theater content that might incite violence.

The Growing Threat Of "Dark Matter" Regulations.  In his seven years in office, President Obama has signed 895 bills into law.  Over the same period, federal regulators issued 24,478 rules.  If you want an example of how unaccountable the federal government has become, it doesn't get much better than that.  The regulatory state is so massive that the government doesn't even know how many regulatory agencies there are.  Counts range from a low of 60 to a high of 438.  But this is just the tip of the regulatory iceberg, according to a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute titled "Mapping Washington's Lawlessness."

Little Sisters of the Poor vs. Government Almighty.  Whether it's President Obama ordering his HHS secretary to bring intransigent nuns to heel or the Emperor Trajan advising a provincial governor on the proper punishment of unrepentant Christians, it's all about worshipping the state gods.  During Trajan's reign, that meant forcing people to betray their faith by making them participate in the imperial cult.  This typically involved a public sacrifice to the "divine" Augustus.  Refusal to do so resulted in very unpleasant consequences.  In our era, it means forcing people to betray their faith by making them subsidize the sacraments of the secular state, like abortion on demand and "free" abortifacients.  Refusal to obey means financial destruction by means of ruinous federal fines.

Armed militias and concealed carry: It is Lexington and Concord time.  Thomas Paine wrote in the "Rights of Man" (1791):  "The fact, therefore, must be that the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a contract with each other to produce a government:  and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist."  That is, government is a construct of and accountable to its citizens and whenever the actions of government are contrary to their interests and well-being, citizens have the right to defy or dissolve the government.

Uncle Sam Owns This Much Of America.  Uncle Sam owns nearly one out of every three acres in the United States — 640 million acres of the entire country's 2.27 billion acres.  But "a picture is worth a thousand words," according to Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert, chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources' Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.  So, his full committee created an interactive map revealing every acre the federal government owns in each congressional district, color-coded by agency.  Those 640 million acres aren't enough for the White House and federal bureaucrats, as they're constantly trying to grab more for environmental reasons, Gohmert says.

We'll Tell You Which Black Lives Matter.  [Scroll down]  Congress has delegated pretty much everything they are responsible for — other than fund raising, pandering to special interest groups and holding court for lobbyists — to either staff or administrative agencies.  Justice Thomas' very legitimate point is that we've reached the point where the hundreds of thousands of "rules" that are written to "implement" the laws passed by Congress dictate how we are allowed to go about living our lives.  This is not how the Founding Fathers envisioned America working.

The surprising reason behind Obama's aggressive drive to regulate you more.  Clearly, Americans are incapable of living their everyday lives without explicit written guidance from Washington bureaucrats.  Thankfully, a caring Barack Obama and his minions are working feverishly these days to guide us on their proper path by writing and imposing a record number of costly regulations before his reign ends in 416 days.

Obama Turns Thanksgiving Into Rulesgiving.  With little fanfare, the White House announced more than 2,000 new regulations — including 144 deemed "economically significant" — just before Thanksgiving.  The law requires doing this twice a year, and Obama has followed it faithfully — repeatedly releasing rafts of costly new rules just days before holidays, when people are most distracted and not paying attention.  Luckily, Heritage Foundation fellow James Gattuso is paying attention.  He notes that the 144 new economically significant rules is a record, breaking the previous high of 136 set just last spring.

Also posted under Friday night document dumps.

One-in-five Americans still trusts the federal government!  It's not really surprising that after seven years of an administration of serial liars, empty promises and failed plans, an overwhelming percentage of the public does not trust elected officials, their politics or the government they're supposed to be running.  What's really shocking is that 19% of Americans still do.  Nearly one-in-five say they can always or most always trust that Washington crowd.  Seriously?  Who are these people?

Punishing the Obama way.  Mr. Obama's minions have prosecuted an oil producer for inadvertently allowing a duck that landed in a waste pond to die while granting solar and wind power producers the right to kill thousands of ducks, geese, eagles and endangered birds that get in their way, and they argue for more and more criminal penalties to be imposed on men and women who have unwittingly violated regulations they don't even know exist.

Feds Send Man to Jail for Overfishing as 6,000 Drug Convicts are Freed.  These are embarrassing times for the nation's criminal justice system; as the Obama administration executes the nation's largest mass release of federal prisoners, it's sending a Long Island fisherman to jail for reeling in too many.

Whitesplain This: A Response to My Hypocritical Accusers, Black and White.  In our culture these days, the ability to take offense is a kind of power.  Liberals abuse this power like a drunk cop with a nightstick.  They abuse it so much, they have become addicted to it and become blind to the reality in front of them.

America's Soft Tyranny is Hardening.  American citizens outside of the protective bubble of the government are not only expendable, they are fodder for bureaucratic abuse.  The IRS, the EPA, the DOJ, the VA, and the FEC under Obama are free to target and abuse those of us without the financial or government resources to protect ourselves.  The countless good people who were targeted by the IRS were prevented from exercising the freedoms guaranteed to them by the Constitution.  The actions of Lerner and the IRS very likely changed the outcome of the 2012 election.  That was the plan and it worked.  Prevent, with malice aforethought, hundreds of conservative groups across the country from organizing and raising money for their cause and you have silenced millions of people.

Forced Silence.  Before dawn, Deborah Jordahl was awakened by the sound of cops banging on her front door.  She rushed downstairs before police used their battering ram to break the door down.  The officers then said her household was under criminal investigation.  They ordered Deborah and her son Adam to step aside while they took her family's computers, cellphones and files.  They also told her, don't talk to anyone about this investigation!  If you do, you may be jailed!  They wouldn't tell her why. [...] This forced silence lasted five years, until Wisconsin's Supreme Court finally ordered the Joe Doe investigations stopped, saying prosecutors used "theories of law that do not exist."

Ted Cruz Dismantles Liberal Plantation Politics At Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing.  Fifty-five years ago, there were 13 regulatory federal government agencies.  Today, there are over 70.  Fifty-five years ago, the Code of Federal Regulations contained 23,000 pages — a sizeable amount.  Today, the Code of Federal Regulations takes up an astounding 175,000 pages and 235 volumes — all in incredibly small print.  Somehow the American people are expected to comply with 175,000 pages of regulations that no one person can even begin to understand. [...] Although an inexact science, estimates of federal regulations are estimated to increase costs up to possibly $2 trillion a year.  Is it any wonder we have the economic stagnation, so many millions hurting, when the federal government is putting $2 trillion a year of costs on small businesses, on those trying to create jobs and opportunity?

Our Lawless Secret Service.  Let's not shy away from what the Secret Service actually was up to in the matter of its illegal spying on Representative Jason Chaffetz:  conspiracy to commit blackmail against a member of Congress.  Representative Chaffetz has been investigating the scandal-plagued protective agency — the habitual drunkenness and whoring of its agents, among other things — when Secret Service personnel improperly accessed his protected records in a hunt for dirt.  The aim of this was made clear by assistant director Ed Lowery, who wrote to assistant director Faron Paramore:  "Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out."

Watchdog: Top Secret Service official wanted information about congressman made public.  An assistant director of the Secret Service urged that unflattering information the agency had in its files about a congressman critical of the service should be made public, according to a government watchdog report released Wednesday [9/30/2015].  "Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out," Assistant Director Edward Lowery wrote in an e-mail to a fellow director on March 31, commenting on an internal file that was being widely circulated inside the service.  "Just to be fair."

Distracted from an Ever-Growing Police State.  Caught up in the spectacle of the forthcoming 2016 presidential elections, Americans (never very good when it comes to long-term memory) have not only largely forgotten last year's hullabaloo over militarized police, police shootings of unarmed citizens, asset forfeiture schemes, and government surveillance but are also generally foggy about everything that has happened since.  Then again, so much is happening on a daily basis that it's understandable if the average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the "events," manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from reality while the government continues to amass more power and authority over the citizenry.  In fact, when we're being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it's difficult to stay focused on one thing — namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law — and the powers-that-be understand this.

Government: Here to Help!  People once borrowed from private banks, which applied market discipline.  If they thought you wanted to borrow more than you would likely repay, banks wouldn't lend you the money.  But now government — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration — guarantee nearly every loan.  That helped create the last housing bubble.  After it burst, and taxpayers were charged nearly $2 billion to bail out the FHA, the politicians assured the public they would fix this to make sure it never happened again.  But they didn't.  Today, once again, more than 90 percent of home loans are backed by taxpayers, and after briefly raising down-payment requirements, the FHA will again make loans to people who make down payments of as little as 3 percent.  A sensible solution would be to get government out of the home loan business, but even Republicans claim government support for homebuilding is needed.  It isn't.  Canada has no Fannie, Freddie or FHA, and no housing bubble.  In Canada, lenders and homeowners risk their own money, yet just as many people are able to buy homes.

Noose on James Meredith statue gets former Mississippi student 6 months in prison.  A former University of Mississippi student who admitted helping place a noose on a statue of a civil rights activist is going to prison.

The Editor says...
One might easily imagine that if it had been a statue of George W. Bush, the student would be given some sort of award for artistic expression.

Forget Justice: Government Just Wants Money.  The justice system is supposed to be about, well, justice.  It's why district attorneys are ethically obliged to pursue convictions only against people they believe to have committed the crime.  They are not supposed to pursue convictions at all costs to bolster their careers.

A Military Coup in the U.S.? A Surprising Number of Americans Might Support One.  Imagine you're watching the evening news, kicking back after a long day in the cubicle.  Suddenly a breaking news alert flashes across the screen:  "Military Coup Overthrows the Government."  What would be your reaction?  While most Americans say they can't imagine supporting a takeover of the government by the armed forces, or least aren't sure about it, a substantial number of people say they can imagine supporting the military in such a scenario.

The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot.  The FBI is obviously quite pleased with itself over its arrest of a 19-year-old Somali-American, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who — with months of encouragement, support and money from the FBI's own undercover agents — allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon.  Media accounts are almost uniformly trumpeting this event exactly as the FBI describes it.  Loyalists of both parties are doing the same, with Democratic Party commentators proclaiming that this proves how great and effective Democrats are at stopping The Evil Terrorists, while right-wing polemicists point to this arrest as yet more proof that those menacing Muslims sure are violent and dangerous.  What's missing from all of these celebrations is an iota of questioning or skepticism.

The USS Cole: Twelve years later, no justice or understanding.  One thing about kids is that overall they have much less history which can be challenged through examination of the evidence provided by experiences and relationships.  What we know about them comes from brief periods of their independence for which the official investigations provide all the information.  This ability to control the story could be why, since 9/11, we have seen the FBI caught in several attempts to entrap teenagers in terrorist plots manufactured by the FBI itself.

Six months earlier...
Agents' chatter in Osmakac sting skirts line between protection, entrapment.  Months after Sami Osmakac started serving a 40-year sentence for terrorism, debate continues over the FBI sting operation that landed him in prison.  Was Osmakac a mentally ill, penniless radical incapable of causing serious harm or a dangerous would-be terrorist stopped before he could strike?  Newly disclosed transcripts of private conversations among FBI investigators provide fuel for both scenarios while highlighting the dual challenge law enforcement faces in taking the time to build a legal case while protecting the public.

The Rule Of Law In America: An Autopsy.  The best indicator for the unbearable luxuriance of law is the legal library even the humblest practitioner is required to maintain.  Hundreds of thick volumes populate the shelves... but even perfect knowledge of their contents would not be a sufficient guide to the law, for today's lawyer is perforce a specialist.  He operates in a corner of the law, defined by subject matter and geographical application, and dares not venture beyond it without consulting another lawyer whose specialty would adequately supplement his.  If the heavily educated, licensed practitioners of law are so confined, what, then, could the common citizen know of it?

In Trashing Land, The EPA Has Nothing On The Forest Service.  Americans now comprehend fully the disdain the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has for truth-telling, the rights of others, and the environment. [...] Even so, the EPA has nothing on the U.S. Forest Service.  In documents filed days ago in a federal district court in Arkansas, the agency and its lawyers demand dismissal of a $5 million lawsuit against the United States for decades of tortious use and abuse of a Scot-Irish family's farmland settled one hundred years before the Ozark National Forest's creation made the Forest Service the family's neighbor.  Worse yet, Conner Eldridge, the United States Attorney for Arkansas, argues that, because the Forest Service trespassed upon Matthew McIlroy's farm for years, the government owns the land!  The assertion, which has no factual or legal support, is asinine, absurd, and in conflict with an admonition of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Justice Department's 'Grotesque' Misconduct against New Orleans Cops.  As we've previously observed, the Obama jihad to fundamentally transform America's police, spearheaded by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, proceeds from the premise that police departments are corrupt institutions, beset by a culture of racism and law-breaking.  This week, after a federal appeals court's exposé of a breathtaking prosecutorial conspiracy to deprive indicted cops of their civil rights, and then cover it up, it is again time to ask:  Which is the corrupt institution beset by a culture of racism and law-breaking — the nation's police, or the Justice Department, which presumes to tame them?

Well, At Least the DHS Finally Started Profiling: Problem is, they're only targeting conservatives.  James O'Keefe, an investigative reporter with Project Veritas, crossed the border in 2014 dressed as Osama Bin Laden.  Since the video showing his crossing was posted on YouTube, an apparently embarrassed DHS has targeted O'Keefe for interrogation at least a half-dozen times.

Conservative video-maker James O'Keefe: Homeland Security targeted me, asked intrusive questions.  Conservative journalist James O'Keefe, known for targeting liberal groups and Democratic politicians, says he is now the one being targeted — by the Department of Homeland Security.  It all started in August 2014 when O'Keefe donned green fatigues and an Osama bin Laden costume and sneaked across the U.S. border to Mexico and then back into Texas, a stunt cited by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during congressional hearings.  His point, O'Keefe said in an interview Wednesday [8/12/2015], was to "show that our elected officials were lying to the American people" by saying the border is secure.

Obama's "Community Schools" Aim to Replace the Family.  Lawmakers and the Obama administration are plotting to unconstitutionally commandeer local schools and turn them into "full-service community schools" — government centers that will usurp vast new responsibilities over children that have traditionally been handled by parents and families.  Under the plan, adopted in the Senate last month as part of a massive "education bill" solidifying federal control over children and schools, federally funded so-called community schools will "target" families and children for "services" covering their "academic, physical, social, emotional, health, mental health, and other needs."  If Congress and the Obama administration get their way, these full-service parent-replacement centers will soon be coming to a community near you, along with the swarms of government workers in charge of "home visitation" and "parenting education" under the program.  In fact, even without legislation to authorize it, Obama's education bureaucracy has already started using tax funds to create the "community schools" nationwide.

America: Founded in Liberty, Descended into Tyranny.  What started as a small list of enumerated powers in the Constitution, has evolved to hundreds of thousands of pages of laws and regulations in the Federal Register, and a government that has debt greater than the entire gross domestic product of the nation.  Laws have become so obtrusive that in any given day, millions of our fellow citizens can unwittingly commit "crimes" against the state, as documented in the Alan Dershowitz and Harvey Silverglate book, "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent."  We are so far removed from our foundation of individual liberty, that literally every action of every day that we engage in is regulated, taxed, or overseen by an omnipotent Master governing its peon subjects.  The tyrannical control of our lives far, far exceeds the relatively minor transgressions of King George against our founding colonists.

You Know You Live in a Conservative State When...  Over in Williamson County, Tennessee — just north of my home — prosecutors actually filed a motion asking the court to order a defense attorney to stop calling them "the government" in open court.  Yes, that's right — in my home state, it's apparently now a slur to call the government by its name.

FBI mined secrets from George McGovern's past.  On April 16, 1975, two FBI inspectors met with Sen. George McGovern in Washington.  A month earlier, McGovern had written a letter to FBI Director Clarence Kelley asking for a copy of any file that the FBI kept on him.  In fact, unbeknownst to McGovern, the FBI had accumulated a large file on the senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, but FBI officials were reluctant to share the information.  The two FBI inspectors met with McGovern to negotiate a compromise.

Too Many Secrets.  One of the most persistent challenges of U.S. national security policy is balancing the short-term benefits of secrecy with the long-term benefits of openness.  Government agencies responsible for dealing with national security threats will often be more effective if they are allowed to keep certain details about their activities secret.  But openness is not just a cherished American value; it is a core element of American strength.  Government officials who ignore this fact and insist on secrecy whenever it seems convenient will serve their agencies and their country poorly.

Official City Of St Louis Vehicle Spotted Sporting Anti-RTW Propaganda.  In a democracy (in third grade, the concept of a Constitutional Republic was slightly beyond our grasp), city governments were elected to discern the will of the people and govern accordingly. [...] In theory, that means that no city official should promote a specific political agenda while on duty.  In theory, that means that no one should affix paraphernalia associated with a specific political agenda to an official vehicle.  Why the impromptu civics refresher?  Obviously, someone employed by the city of St Louis missed it back in the third grade.

Truth is an existential threat to the US government.  The United States is not a constitutional republic.  It is an oligarchy controlled by wealthy financiers who hire politicians to pass legislation beneficial to them and employ journalists to keep the citizens ignorant and compliant.  Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans believe in democracy.  It is simply an ideological contest between two different forms of totalitarianism based on big government, where they represent only themselves in their pursuit of personal power and profit.  Over the last hundred years, the Democrat Party has moved farther and farther to the left, evolving from populism to Marxism and developing an operational model resembling that of the mafia.  Its leaders are a gaggle of coffeehouse communists and unindicted felons, who seek the lifestyles of the rich and famous while practicing the politics of Joseph Stalin.  The Republicans are democratic only in the sense that they are willing to sell their votes to the highest bidder, where their political power and, ultimately, compensation from their rich donors increase proportionally with the expansion of government.

Wisconsin Supreme Court ends 'John Doe' investigations.  The Wisconsin state Supreme Court has ruled 4-2 that the "John Doe" investigations targeting Governor Walker and several conservative groups in the state should be ended, and that no violations of the campaign finance law occurred.  Thus ends one of the most bizarre and frightening chapters in the history of American law enforcement.  The investigation into whether the Walker campaign colluded with outside groups was marked by pre-dawn SWAT raids on ordinary people's homes, as the hyper-partisan prosecutor — whose wife was an official with a local teachers' union — sought to intimidate conservatives statewide.

Obamuments: There Are Now 260 Million Acres Of 'National Monuments'.  President Barack Obama has designated more than one million acres of land as "national monuments," meaning the president has restricted the use of 260 million acres of U.S. lands and waters.  Obama has designated Berryessa Snow Mountain in California, Waco Mammoth in Texas and the Basin and Range in Nevada as national monuments under the Antiquities Act.  Together, these national monuments make up more than one million acres.

The Coming Confrontation.  [Scroll down]  Even our Supreme Court has been assigned a role in the destruction of the American culture.  There are parameters that the Court must abide by that have been trampled into oblivion.  Ethics have been set aside for political purposes in both the Obamacare and same sex decision.  States are laboratories for managed societal change and state's rights have been circumvented for the benefit of the Federal government and those dependent on it.  The non-recusal of both Ginsburg and Kagan are just the start of a judicial system that is progressive in nature and no longer follows the principled law that this country is founded on.

New national monuments in California, Texas and Nevada provoke ire.  The White House plans to designate three new national monuments Friday [7/10/2015] in California, Texas and Nevada, placing more than a million acres under monument status despite some objections.  The move brings the number of national monuments to 19 created or expanded by President Barack Obama under the Antiquities Act of 1906, a move that's been criticized as sidestepping the congressional process.

Mark Levin: 'We've Had a Silent Coup in This Country'.  Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin said that "we've had a silent coup in this country" with the Obama administration taking over healthcare, targeting the suburbs, and nationalizing the local police.  "His government doesn't have the authority to do any of these things, but he does it," Levin said on his July 8 broadcast.  "Well, if that's not martial law, what the hell is?  We've had a silent coup in this country."  [Audio clip.]

The squeeze of regulatory kudzu.  As with kudzu, the idea of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection seemed like a good idea at the time, seeded and fertilized by good intentions.  Its sponsors may have little imagined the bureau's remarkable appetite for turf, little sated by the transfer of 14 federal statutes by the Dodd-Frank Act.  At a May conference on "big data," a senior bureau official reportedly observed that the failure of Congress to enact laws is not necessarily a significant impediment to bureau involvement.

America's only remaining choices — civil disobedience or collapse.  The United States no longer has, as the Constitution designed, a government composed of executive, legislative and judicial branches, separate, but equal in power.  The federal government is now an alliance of branches, devoted to the preservation of government itself, separate, not from each other, but from the American people and dedicated to tyranny.  The policies pursued by the Obama Administration and facilitated by cowardly politicians and a compliant media are not simply the intersection of radical ideology and incompetence, but a dangerous subversive element of an anti-American and anti-Western strategy.

Constitutional Remedies to a Lawless Supreme Court.  This week, we have twice seen Supreme Court justices violating their judicial oaths.  Yesterday, the justices rewrote Obamacare, yet again, in order to force this failed law on the American people.  Today, the Court doubled down with a 5-4 opinion that undermines not just the definition of marriage, but the very foundations of our representative form of government.  Both decisions were judicial activism, plain and simple.  Both were lawless.

America's post-Constitutional culture.  Conservatives seem stunned that the U.S. Supreme Court ignored the plain language of the ObamaCare statute and upheld the legality of the premium subsidies that will flow indefinitely as the nation's newest entitlement.  Their surprise is similar to the shock they express every time the GOP congressional leadership passes a pork-laden spending resolution that lasts through the end of the fiscal year, essentially denying budget hawks the opportunity to trim federal spending.  This march of federal spending is an entirely predictable outcome.  As foreseen by Tocqueville in 1835, America has developed a post-constitutional culture in which citizens are transformed from independent citizens into weak dependents, fully reliant upon the dispensations and "protections" of government.  The Supreme Court and the Congress are now largely infirm, fatally weakened by the growth of an Executive branch that provides ever-expanding dispensations and "protections."  The entitlement state has killed the separation of powers.

Where Waco Is Headed.  F. Clinton Broden, the Dallas lawyer who is representing Scimitars Motorcycle Club member Matthew Clendennen in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Waco and McLennan County, served a subpoena today [6/25/2015] for the video taken by the Waco Twin Peaks restaurant on May 17, 2015.  Broden wants the video by nine o'clock tomorrow morning.  He is probably not going to get it. [...] The video Broden subpoenaed is probably the only one anybody will ever see.  The Waco police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other police forces meticulously seized every possible video source.  The video evidence that most directly contradicted the official police narrative was probably transferred to ATF custody the first week and sent someplace where it could be easily misplaced.  The remaining, less dangerous videos were transferred to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Customs Agents To James O'Keefe: You're Being Detained For Investigating The Federal Government.  U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents who detained conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe at the airport specifically asked him about the work he's done investigating the "federal government."  O'Keefe was detained by U.S. customs agents Monday [6/22/2015] after arriving at the airport in Nassau, Bahamas en route to Miami.  Agents told O'Keefe that he was being detained for crossing back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border while dressed as Osama bin Laden in a video that was published by The Daily Caller.  Agents marked his passport with an "X" and explained that he would be detained every time he enters U.S. territory henceforth.

Conservatives and Progressives Alike Despise Obamatrade; Only Beltway Insiders Love It.  Americans increasingly believe that their country isn't serving its own citizens. [...] The same routine plays out over and again.  We are told a massive bill must be passed, all the business lobbyists and leaders tell how grand it will be, but that it must be rushed through before the voters spoil the plan.  As with Obamacare and the Gang of Eight, the politicians meet with the consultants to craft the talking points — not based on what the bill actually does, but what they hope people will believe it does.  And when ordinary Americans who never asked for the plan, who don't want the plan, who want no part of the plan, resist, they are scorned, mocked, and heaped with condescension.

Illegal immigrant 'Dreamer' sees law license suspended.  The illegal immigrant "Dreamer" whose law license was approved by New York just two weeks ago, announced Thursday [6/18/2015] that his license has been delayed because he is on probation from charges stemming from his activism.  Cesar Vargas, a leader in the Dreamer movement, is still on probation after being charged with trespassing for interrupting Rep. Steve King's presidential forum earlier this year.  He said he's paid all fines, but a county prosecutor in Iowa has refused to clear him, and even argues he's a danger to society.

How Government Stifled Reason's Free Speech.  For the past two weeks, Reason, a magazine dedicated to "Free Minds and Free Markets," has been barred by an order from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from speaking publicly about a grand jury subpoena that court sent to Reason.com.  The subpoena demanded the records of six people who left hyperbolic comments at the website about the federal judge who oversaw the controversial conviction of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.  Shortly after the subpoena was issued, the government issued a gag order prohibiting Reason not only from discussing the matter but even acknowledging the existence of the subpoena or the gag order itself.  As a wide variety of media outlets have noted, such actions on the part of the government are not only fundamentally misguided and misdirected, they have a tangible chilling effect on free expression by commenters and publications alike.

Anti-Hillary Clinton Group Refuses to Change Name, Defying FEC Order.  An anti-Hillary Clinton group is refusing to change its name in an escalating dispute with the country's election watchdog agency.  The Federal Election Commission, which is tasked with enforcing campaign finance law, has ordered the Stop Hillary PAC to cease incorporating Mrs. Clinton's name in its own or face penalties.  At issue is a federal rule barring independent groups from incorporating or using the name of a candidate for federal office in their own names.  The rule is designed to protect voters from mistaking independent groups such as PACs and super PACs with official campaigns.

FEC Attempts to Strong-Arm Anti-Hillary Group.  Stop Hillary PAC on Tuesday [6/2/2015] responded to federal regulators' attempts to force the group to change its name with a simple declaration:  "No."  The Federal Election Commission told the group, a super PAC that opposes Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, that it had to choose a different name in order to make clear that it is not affiliated with Clinton's campaign.  Stop Hillary PAC said that the concern was laughable.  It responded with a sternly worded and at times humorous letter declaring that the FEC's interpretation of relevant regulations would "suppress citizens' First Amendment rights to engage in robust political speech."

'Stop Hillary' group pointedly refuses to change name after FEC request.  A group called the "Stop Hillary PAC" is pointedly refusing to change its name after the Federal Election Commission (FEC) said it could be running afoul of campaign finance laws by using former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's name without her authorization.  In an April 27 letter, the FEC wrote to Dan Backer, counsel for the group, pointing out that the name of the group included a name of a candidate but did not appear to be an authorized committee of the candidate.

The Editor says...
It is a sad day in America when certain words cannot be used in public without authorization.

Today's America is a landscape of legal abuses.  Every week there are new revelations of the decrepit and often barbarous state of the U.S. criminal-justice and prison systems.  The most egregious aspects of its dysfunction are not the absurdly severe sentences and world-record incarceration levels, or the North Korean conviction rates, or the frequent murders of prisoners by correctional officers in some of the state prisons, but the politically motivated antics of the prosecutors.

Obama Admin. Deems Part of Wyoming Tribal Land, Putting Hospital in Legal Battle.  Imagine learning the town you live in suddenly becomes part of an Indian reservation, subjecting you to tribal courts and laws rather than the U.S. Constitution.  That's exactly what is happening in Riverton, Wyoming.  President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has thrown a hospital in Riverton, Wyoming (population 11,000), into an expensive and exhausting battle to extricate itself from the oversight of an American Indian tribal court.  Riverton Memorial Hospital — a non-Indian entity organized under the laws of the state of Delaware — was recently sued by a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe for medical malpractice in the Shoshone and Arapaho Tribal Court, the court for the Wind River Indian Reservation.

A Scare a Week Keeps the Populace Meek.  [Scroll down]  One after another, these scares appear, command prime time on TV, control the headlines, make everyone crazy, and then disappear into oblivion, without a trace.  Like Sandy Hook.  Like the anthrax scare.  And so on.  They all have the same characteristics:  It's something big and scary, something that will certainly wipe us out, or will destroy America as we know her, the individual citizen is helpless before it, but the government — and specifically the Federal government — can and must do something about it, even if it means more destruction of our liberties.  Destruction of liberties, of course, only as the necessary price for gaining more security.  The global warming scare was too general and its threat was too far ahead in the future.

The Civil Disobedience Charles Murray Wants Has Already Arrived.  While Charles Murray has been out promoting measured civil disobedience in an effort to restore individual liberty, thousands of parents and children have been acting upon the same concept.  This spring has seen an extraordinary nationwide defiance movement aimed against standardized tests, thanks to Common Core.  It could be, as Murray hopes for, yet another "thin edge of a wedge that can work to wonderful effect" in service of restoring self-government.

The Tip of the Regulatory Iceberg.  In 2014, the government issued 2,400 new regulations, including 27 major rules that may cost $80 billion or more annually. They range from forcing restaurants to list the number of calories in food — even though past experiments have revealed that such measures fail to change consumers' behavior — to reducing consumer choices and increasing energy prices by imposing tighter energy efficiency mandates on the plugs that we use to charge cellphones, laptops and even electric toothbrushes.

Where America, Big Government Collide.  The U.S. government has well more than 2,000 overlapping, under-performing, over-regulating, inefficient agencies, so removed from their original purposes that no one knows how many agencies, offices and government corporations exist.  These are run by federal employees who, for the most part, are decent people but who probably couldn't tell you if their job is duplicated seven times over by 20 agencies, or who exactly runs their department, or to whom they ultimately answer — which is, essentially, you.  Because of the bureaucracy's size and power, scandals and negligence are endemic.

'Unfettered Capitalism'? 175,000 Pages of Federal Regulations.  Whenever a liberal like Paul Krugman talks about the American system of "unfettered capitalism" I break out laughing.  There are currently about 175,000 pages of federal regulations governing anything and everything about American business.  In truth, many regulations have become necessary over the decades.  Worker safety has benefitted enormously and death and injury rates on the job have plummeted in the last 50 years.  Our air and water are cleaner, consumer products are safer, and predatory capitalists have largely been sidelined.  But it goes without saying that agencies like the EPA are out of control, that the IRS has become even more overbearing, and that the dizzying array of federal compliance rules make it possible to violate the law without even knowing it.

Oyster Farmer: 'We Are Terrified' Of The Gov't.  The National Park Service used falsified data to shut down an 80-year-old oyster company in Point Reyes, Calif, its owner claims.  Drakes Bay Oyster Company operated in Point Reyes for decades until National Park Service officials used falsified data to force Kevin Lunny's family-run oyster farm to shut down.  The experience has left its mark on Lunny:  "We Are Terrified," he told lawmakers during a hearing Thursday [4/23/2015].  "Let me be clear, we did not fail as a business," Lunny said in his prepared testimony.  "This was not bad luck.  Rather, the Park Service engaged in a taxpayer-funded enterprise of corruption to run our small business out of Point Reyes."

EPA Spends $84,000 to Study Churches That Preach Climate Change.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is spending $84,000 to study how churches can be used to combat climate change.  A taxpayer-funded graduate fellowship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is examining 17 faith-based institutions that have implemented "sustainability initiatives" in the hopes of developing workshops to teach pastors and other religious leaders how to change the behaviors of their congregants.

Our troubled FBI: What Americans need to know about today's Bureau.  [Scroll down]  It was surprising, however, when the FBI was forced to admit last week that in the 1980s and 1990s, its agents and lab technicians who examined hair samples testified falsely in 257 of 268 cases that resulted in convictions.  Of the convictions, 18 persons were sentenced to death, and of those, 12 have been executed.  Some of these cases were federal, but most were state prosecutions in which state and county prosecutors hired the FBI to perform lab tests and compare hair samples from a crime scene with a defendant's known hair sample.  The faulty lab work and erroneous testimony destroyed the freedom of hundreds and the lives of 12, squandered millions in tax dollars, and impaired the constitutional values we all embrace.  You probably did not hear about the FBI cable guys or the admitted 96-percent rate of false testimony in cases of conviction.  That's because the FBI skillfully diverted your attention.

Thirty years in jail for a single hair: the FBI's 'mass disaster' of false conviction.  In July 2013, the FBI admitted that the foundations of what it called "hair comparison evidence" — a technique that its agents had used in hundreds of criminal cases nationwide and spread through the training of state-based detectives potentially through tens of thousands of other cases — were scientifically invalid.

Gov. Walker Supporters Claim Police Raided Their Homes Over Politics.  Megyn Kelly shared new information tonight [4/23/2015] about a series of terrifying raids which were reportedly a form of political retribution against supporters of Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI).  She explained that a few of the people who were raided came forward and spoke to the National Review about what they experienced.  Kelly reported that Cindy Archer had a raid conducted on her home when she was sound asleep one night.  Archer claims that more than a dozen police officers were yelling and pounding on her door.  She said that police would not tell her why they were there as they ransacked her home, Kelly reported.

Wisconsin's dirty prosecutors pull a Putin.  When Vladimir Putin sends government thugs to raid opposition offices, the world clucks its tongue.  But, after all, Putin's a corrupt dictator, so what do you expect?  But in Wisconsin, Democratic prosecutors were raiding political opponents' homes and, in a worse-than-Putin twist, they were making sure the world didn't even find out, by requiring their targets to keep quiet.  As David French notes in National Review, "As if the home invasion, the appropriation of private property, and the verbal abuse weren't enough, next came ominous warnings.  Don't call your lawyer.  Don't tell anyone about this raid.  Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends. ... This was the on-the-ground reality of the so-called John Doe investigations, expansive and secret criminal proceedings that directly targeted Wisconsin residents because of their relationship to Scott Walker, their support for Act 10, and their advocacy of conservative reform."

This is a Picture of Judge Barbara Kluka: Make Her Name a Household Word.  Judges are supposed to uphold the law, not rubberstamp the criminal suppression of political opponents.

Wisconsin's Shame: 'I Thought it Was a Home Invasion'.  Wisconsin, the cradle of the progressive movement and home of the "Wisconsin idea" — the marriage of state governments and state universities to govern through technocratic reform — was giving birth to a new progressive idea, the use of law enforcement as a political instrument, as a weapon to attempt to undo election results, shame opponents, and ruin lives.  Most Americans have never heard of these raids, or of the lengthy criminal investigations of Wisconsin conservatives.  For good reason.  Bound by comprehensive secrecy orders, conservatives were left to suffer in silence as leaks ruined their reputations, as neighbors, looking through windows and dismayed at the massive police presence, the lights shining down on targets' homes, wondered, no doubt, What on earth did that family do?

FBI overstated forensic hair matches in nearly all trials before 2000.  The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Can We Apply Common Sense to the Police Shootings Debate?  First, when wary, angry, and/or frightened citizens interact with wary, angry, and/or frightened police — often at odd hours and in moments of maximum stress — there will inevitably be a certain number of both tragic mistakes and heinous crimes.  Thus, it stands to reason that we should endeavor to decrease — not increase — such interactions.  Yet our regulatory state keeps criminalizing more and more conduct.  In two of the worst recent incidents, Eric Garner's choking death and Walter's Scott's apparent execution, the victims were facing prosecution for violating petty or stupid criminal laws — selling loose cigarettes in Garner's case and failing to pay child support in Scott's case.  Regarding child support, it's idiotic policy to lock deadbeat dads in debtors' prisons.  According to one study of South Carolina jails, one out of every eight inmates was behind bars for falling behind on child support.  Yet inmates are notoriously poor earners, and stints in prison tend to exacerbate chronic unemployment.

Kick Open the Doorway to Liberty: What Are We Waiting For?  Everything this nation once stood for is being turned on its head.  Free speech, religious expression, privacy, due process, bodily integrity, the sanctity of human life, the sovereignty of the family, individuality, the right to self-defense, protection against police abuses, representative government, private property, human rights — the very ideals that once made this nation great — have become casualties of a politically correct, misguided, materialistic, amoral, militaristic culture.  Indeed, I'm having a hard time reconciling the America I know and love with the America being depicted in the daily news headlines, where corruption, cronyism and abuse have taken precedence over the rights of the citizenry and the rule of law.

When everything is a crime.  What began as a trickle has become a stream that could become a cleansing torrent.  Criticisms of the overcriminalization of American life might catalyze an appreciation of the toll the administrative state is taking on the criminal justice system, and liberty generally.  In 2007, professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School recounted a game played by some prosecutors.  One would name a famous person — "say, Mother Teresa or John Lennon" — and other prosecutors would try to imagine "a plausible crime for which to indict him or her," usually a felony plucked from "the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield."

You are probably breaking the law right now.  Ignorance of the law, we are often told, is no excuse.  "Every man is presumed to know the law," says a long-established legal aphorism.  And if you are charged with a crime, you would be well advised to rely on some other defense than "I had no idea that was illegal."  But not everybody favors this state of affairs.  While a century or two ago nearly all crime was traditional common-law crime — rape, murder, theft and other things that pretty much everyone should know are bad — nowadays we face all sorts of "regulatory crimes" in which intuitions of right and wrong play no role, but for which the penalties are high.

Downsize the Federal Government.  Recent studies have found that economic growth rates decline when relative government spending exceeds 26% of GDP, and the United States government current spending is close to 40% of GDP.  The Republican Party claims the core principle of limited government, but has actively participated in this growth in both size and scope of the federal government. [...] Government monopolies are notoriously inefficient.  Revenues are collected not just to pay for government services, but now departments redistribute funds between people, between states, and even between countries.  The problem is that government execution gets worse the bigger it gets.  The federal budget deficits have caused the national debt to skyrocket over $18 trillion, with no end in sight.

Feds Invade Native American Gathering, Grab Property, Threaten Jail.  [Pastor Robert] Soto is an ordained religious leader of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas.  His tribe is recognized by historians, sociologists, and the State of Texas — but not by the federal government.  Members of federally recognized tribes can possess feathers.  But Soto cannot.  Ironically, the government issues permits to multiple institutions — including power companies — to kill eagles but it will not allow Soto, or his fellow tribe members, to pick up feathers that fall on the ground as the eagles molt naturally.

Time to Tame Prosecutors Gone Wild.  At CPAC next week, former majority leader of the House Tom Delay, John Fund, and I, among others, will be speaking on a panel dubbed "Prosecutors Gone Wild."  The topic alone is a sad commentary on the current state of our criminal-justice system.  As Ninth Circuit judge Alex Kozinski has said, "there is an epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct abroad in the land."  The epidemic is devastating the lives of innocent people and breaking families; it is devouring our tax dollars; and it has destroyed the public's faith in our justice system.

Politicians went overboard with Snowmageddon precautions.  When it comes to the Blizzard That Wasn't, don't blame the models.  Don't blame the meteorologists.  Don't blame the media.  Blame the politicians — you know, those officials we elect to hire and who actually work for us.  They showed their true authoritarian colors Monday [1/26/2015] as they garbed themselves in emergency clothing and tightened their jaws and announced they were going to shut us all down for our own good.  They shut down highways and public transportation not because they had to.  They did it because they wanted to, for various reasons.

Too Many Laws, Not Enough Sense.  From a country with no federal laws until the first Congress was seated, we are now swimming in a flood tide of legislation, as if Congress (and the states, and the cities and the local municipalities; what we are really swimming in is too much government, at every level) had nothing else to do but pass laws. [...] No wonder Harvey Silverglate, a crackerjack defender of freedom, called his book Three Felonies a Day.  That's how many crimes you personally have already committed today, before you got out of bed, and for which you could go to jail for a very long time.

Federal Judge Accuses DOJ Attorneys of Defrauding The Court, Threatening Witness in Case of ATF Whistleblower Jay Dobyns.  As a refresher, Dobyns is the first law enforcement agent to ever successfully infiltrate multiple layers of the notoriously dangerous and violent Hells Angels motorcycle gang through "Operation Black Biscuit."  After doing so and after his identity was exposed, he received death threats against himself and his family.  ATF did nothing to protect him.  When his house was burned to the ground at 3 a.m., ATF supervisors tried to frame him for the arson after Dobyns blew the whistle and exposed supervisors had done nothing to address serious and credible threats against his family.

'What's the Big Deal With Selling Cigarettes?'.  In the aftermath of the Eric Garner death in New York City, there has been ongoing analysis criticizing the NYPD's response.  As you might recall, Garner was being arrested for selling loose cigarettes on a city sidewalk at the time of his death.  Many have questioned the need for the NYPD to even enforce such a minor law violation.  Others have called a law of this nature just another example of an overexpansion of government into the lives of citizens.  Beliefs like these ignore that every city has ordinances that exist for the purpose of improving the quality of life for its citizens, business owners, and visitors.  Cities have panhandling laws that prevent people from being harassed by transient people who are begging for money.  NYC having an ordinance about selling loose cigarettes is just another example of a local law that was passed to protect legitimate businesses and to prevent local "street dealers" from harassing pedestrians. [...] Some people question whether the Broken Windows theory actually reduces crime.  But aggressive policing of minor crimes has a major impact on overall crime.

The Editor says...
Yes, I will concede and stipulate that cigarettes are nasty and cigarette smoke stinks, but nevertheless tobacco a legal product.  Informal offers to sell merchandise to passing pedestrians are fairly harmless, and are even expected in certain locales, for example, the sidewalks of New York City, or the State Fair of Texas.  The broken window theory (about minor laws being enforced to prevent more serious crimes) works under the presumption that all those minor laws are necessary and just.

Md. parents investigated for letting kids walk alone.  A couple being investigated for child neglect because they allow their children to roam freely in their neighborhood says their parenting style is unfairly under assault.  In many ways, the Meitiv family is very traditional.  They eat dinner together every night, their kids have fixed bedtimes, do chores and have limits on their sweets and screen time.  But the parents are under investigation because they let their kids walk around the neighborhood together, unaccompanied by an adult.  Danielle and Sasha Meitiv say the investigation is an invasion of their privacy and infringes on their rights as parents.

Federal prosecutors who railroaded Ted Stevens escape punishment.  Obamacare would not have passed if Senator Ted Stevens had been re-elected in 2008. But two Alaska federal prosecutors, assistant U.S. attorneys Joseph Bottini and James Goeke, charged him with accepting tens of thousands of dollars of illegal contributions, and obtained a felony conviction on October 27, 2008, just days before the election.  The only problem:  they had illegally withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense, and the conviction was overturned.  But the damage had been done, and the longest-serving Republican in the Senate at the time had neen turned out of office, replaced by Democrat Mark Begich, who provided the crucial 60th vote to pass Obamacare.  Yesterday [1/13/2015], it was revealed that the two prosecutors would escape punishment for their history-changing misconduct.

Lamenting Liberty Lost.  The Framers believed in the presumption of liberty, which declares that we are free to make personal choices, and the government cannot interfere with our liberties unless we violate the rights of others.  Stated differently, the federal government cannot interfere with our personal choices by writing any law it wants; it can only regulate behavior or spend money when the Constitution authorizes it to do so.  But for the past 100 years, the federal government has rejected the Madisonian concept that it is limited to the 16 discrete powers the Constitution delegates to it, and has claimed its powers are unlimited, subject only to the express prohibitions in the Constitution.

Congress' Sneaky Tactic to Grab More Land for the Government.  Congress has returned from the mid-term elections and members are hammering out the details of the National Defense Authorization Act.  NDAA, which has passed for more than 50 years consecutively, provides policy guidance for the U.S. defense budget.  The importance of the NDAA to the defense budgeting process and its traditional status as a "must-pass" piece of legislation makes it an inviting target for pet projects and wasteful spending.  Unfortunately, as this year's lame duck session winds down, some lawmakers are trying to end-run the normal legislative process in a rushed, closed-door approach.

Also posted under What's the rush?

The federal government can't stand to see an emerging technology fall into private hands without regulating or taxing it.
This government rule could cripple commercial drone flight.  One of America's most popular consumer drones, the DJI Phantom 2, is surprisingly cheap, lightweight and easy to fly, and lots of wedding photographers, farmers and real estate agents now depend on it for eyes in the sky.  But federal rules could soon require that, before flying their three-pound whirlybirds, they'll first need pilot licenses — certification that can cost $10,000 and demand many hours flying aircraft that control nothing like a little drone.  The proposed Federal Aviation Administration rules, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, could add a big new burden onto the first generation of small businesses using drones to cheaply shoot video, map land or monitor crops.

How Long Must A Long Train Of Abuses Be?  I say we have been disposed to suffer long enough.  The Founders rose up over less than we are experiencing now.  The Constitution has been overturned in a Stealth Coup that took slightly over a century to achieve.  The current Leftists in Power And Control are merely firing the final shots into it's critically wounded corpse.  How long is long?  You say a century is not long enough a train.  Many of us say it is too long, that it is so long we stand a very good chance of not being able to derail it.  I say the situation is insufferable, intolerable, that it is time to act.

Legislative tyranny in Illinois.  In 2011 the Democrats, led by House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, created a monstrosity of a gerrymandered remap that shamed all but the most hyper-partisan Dems.  It paved the way for the Democrats to enjoy veto-proof majorities in both chambers after the 2012 election.  Two years later the Democrats still have veto-proof majorities thanks to that redistricting assault on the people of Illinois.  In the House, the Democrats did not lose a single seat.  On of the effects of the Madigan-Cullerton remap was that 70 of the 118 House races were uncontested — nearly 60 percent of them.

America's perpetual state of emergency.  The United States is in a perpetual state of national emergency.  Thirty separate emergencies, in fact. [...] Those emergencies, declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers — to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will.  "What the National Emergencies Act does is like a toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers.  It's like a magic wand.  and there are very few constraints about how he turns it on," said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor at Princeton University.

Secret Service watched this woman for months.  The Secret Service monitored Brenda Allen and her family for months.  The surveillance came after an altercation with her neighbor, who worked for former Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan.  [Video clip]

Incompetence Meets Mendacity in Obama Administration's Ebola Response.  The shocking competence gap and the cavernous honesty gap — brought to you by the "most transparent administration in history" — make our heads spin as we careen from debacle to government-induced debacle.  In the tumult, we can miss the main point:  Why do we have a federal government?  Its purpose is to safeguard the American people and pursue our interests in the world, not to solve the world's problems on our dime and, occasionally, by using us as laboratory mice.  As free people, we can try to save the planet.  The federal government, however, was not created to do it for us, much less to coerce us into implausible "humanitarian" schemes that always manage to line some crony's pocket.  National interest is our government's only reliable compass, yet it has been discarded.

Department of Injustice.  [Scroll down]  As 97 percent of the 99.5 percent found guilty are intimidated by the manipulation of the plea-bargain system into pleading guilty to spare the state the irritation of a trial, the defendants accept the abandonment of 147 of the 153 counts against them, plead guilty, and are rehearsed in a catechetical process by the prosecutors to accuse themselves of cowardice, hypocrisy, sociopathic turpitude, and often outright evil, and profess their gratitude for the sentence they are about to receive.  It smacks of nothing so much as the Stalin system of torturing the innocent until, to spare their families, they proclaimed their guilt, fulminated an allocution of coruscating self-loathing and self-righteously bellowed their demand to be executed immediately, and were led away by Stalin's obliging jurists, and often dispatched, mercifully in the circumstances, in the basement of the courthouse.

Government Set Up A Fake Facebook Page In This Woman's Name.  The Justice Department is claiming, in a little-noticed court filing, that a federal agent had the right to impersonate a young woman online by creating a Facebook page in her name without her knowledge.  Government lawyers also are defending the agent's right to scour the woman's seized cell phone and to post photographs — including racy pictures of her and even one of her young son and niece — to the phony social media account, which the agent was using to communicate with suspected criminals.

Dereliction of Duty on a Grand Scale.  [T]he people who run government are in control of gigantic, unstoppable machines.  Their actions have the force of law.  They are just humans — but with the whole power of the state behind them.  This is a good reason to be very careful who we have at the levers of power in government — and to try to keep the role of government as small as possible.  Power will be abused.  So let's make sure it is out of the hands of a few willful people — as in the people who started the recession or missed ISIS.  Government is a dangerous instrumentality.  Sometimes needed, but always dangerous.

Mandatory minimum sentencing: Injustice served?  "We had tried calling the cops," said Lee Wollard.  "We had tried doing everything.  Nothing worked.  Nothing."  After hearing 59-year-old Wollard's story, you may think he did what any family man would do.  Or, you may agree with a Florida jury and think he went too far.  But either way, you're likely to wonder:  Does Wollard's punishment really fit the crime?

Government Desperation Is Increasing.  Even under normal conditions government fudges numbers to support its actions and policies.  Government always benefits from making conditions look better than they are.  A true understanding of what government does, as opposed to what it pretends to do, would mean its end, at least in any form resembling its current size, configuration and responsibilities.  Allowing government to report its own performance is worse than allowing the fox in charge of the chicken coop to report on the number and health of the chickens.

In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment for a Novelist.  From the Dept. of Insane and Dangerous Overreactions to Fictional Threats:  A 23-year-old teacher at a Cambridge, Md. middle school has been placed on leave and — in the words of a local news report — "taken in for an emergency medical evaluation" for publishing, under a pseudonym, a novel about a school shooting.  The novelist, Patrick McLaw, an eighth-grade language-arts teacher at the Mace's Lane Middle School, was placed on leave by the Dorchester County Board of Education, and is being investigated by the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office, according to news reports from Maryland's Eastern Shore.  The novel, by the way, is set 900 years in the future.

Maryland's thought police strike.  A teacher in Cambridge, Maryland has been suspended from teaching, banned from school property, had his home searched, and been taken in for emergency medical evaluation because of a novel he wrote under a pseudonym in 2011, three years before he was hired.

"We are in a dangerous place when prosecutors can identify the target first, and then try to find a crime."
Revealed: Wisconsin John Doe investigation was full-blown anti-conservative fishing expedition.  The short story is that two separate proceedings were commenced under the auspices of Democratic District Attorneys in order to try to take down Scott Walker. [...] The investigators conducted a widespread fishing expedition through the otherwise private records of numerous conservative activists, as described by M.D. Kittle of Wisconsin Reporter, who has followed the case more closely than anyone[.]

Criminalizing Conservatism.  Newly unsealed federal court documents show that a crew of local prosecutors — Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat, his assistants, Bruce Landgraf and David Robles, a figurehead special prosecutor named Francis Schmitz, and a contract investigator named Dean Nickel — have exploited state law to seize "more or less all" the records of the Wisconsin Club for Growth and every other conservative group in the state dating back to 2009 as part of a boundless investigation of their own wild hunches.  Despite their unhindered access to the complete inner workings of the conservative movement in Wisconsin, these prosecutors have come up with nothing.

Westerners fear monumental land grab by Obama administration.  Utah officials are scrambling to prevent the Obama administration from locking down thousands of acres of land in their backyard, as federal officials consider up to a dozen possible national monument designations — all in western states.  The Antiquities Act gives U.S. presidents the authority to unilaterally declare public lands as national monuments at the stroke of a pen, with no input from the public unless they choose to seek it.

The Rick Perry Indictment is Textbook Malicious Prosecution.  Yes, for the past 16 years, Texas voters have elected only Republicans to statewide office, and since 2002 the GOP has controlled both houses of the state legislature, but the partisan divide in the Lone Star State is sharp and highly polarized.  In 2012, Mitt Romney trounced President Obama by 16 points statewide, but over 40% of the Texas electorate is resolutely "Blue."  There are pockets of liberal Democrats throughout the state, mainly in the large cities of Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, but Travis County (encompassing Austin) is the epicenter of the Liberal Political Establishment in Texas, which thrives on the flagship campus of the University of Texas, in the halls of the Legislature, and in the ultra-liberal media organs based there:  Texas Monthly, Texas Tribune, and the Austin American-Statesman.  Democrats control Travis County and the City of Austin, as thoroughly as the GOP dominates statewide offices.

Ferguson and the Changing Attitudes Towards Cops.  Much like the TSA being an agency of teaching sheeplike compliance (and guaranteed union jobs) — as opposed to the public mission of safety — these demonstrations of government force and tactics are the part of the same coercion.  There is an unsettling commonality among all of this, the IRS, the militarized police forces, the TSA, the BLM, ATF — and many conservatives are starting to connect the dots. [...] Boaters, who tend to be overwhelmingly conservative, get boarded and harassed by these multiple agencies on a routine basis.  Sometimes the LEOs cannot handle these pricey toys and up destroying private property.

Patrolmen Without Borders.  If I drive across a U.S. border, I expect to stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint.  But imagine driving to the grocery store, or Mom's house, well inside America, and being stopped by the Border Patrol.  Many Americans don't have to imagine it — it's how they live.  Even as the federal government fails to control the southern border, it sends the Border Patrol farther into the interior, where Americans complain that agents harass people who are already U.S. citizens.

Report: Feds Created 400 New Crimes Since 2008.  A 2008 analysis by the law scholar John S. Baker for the Heritage Foundation found that, between 2000 and 2007, the government added 452 crimes to the books, indicating the government has increased the rate at which it created new crimes.  The 2008 report identified "at least 4,450 federal crimes."  Adding in the CRS report tally, there are now 4,889 federal crimes on the books. [...] For example, it is now a federal crime to conduct "high seas navigation of an unflagged submersible or semi-submersible vessel."

$619 billion missed from federal transparency site.  That's a problem, said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.  "We live in a world in which information drives decisions," Carper said.  "And, given the budget constraints that our government faces, we need reliable information on how and where our money is being spent." [...] The report comes as the Obama administration begins to implement the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, which Congress passed last year to expand the amount of federal spending data available to the public.

$619 billion missing from federal transparency site.  The irony is thick with this one.  A government audit has found that a website dedicated to making federal spending "more transparent" can't find $619 billion. [...] No, this doesn't mean that $619 billion has been "lost," although some of it may have, indeed, gone down a black hole.  What it means is that we have incompetents running federal departments.

How the Obama Administration Has Actually Broken the Law Hundreds of Times.  Nearly half of the Obama administration's 4,000 regulations since 2012 were illegally imposed by skipping the required congressional review, the Washington Post reported — and there's not much Congress or the courts can do about it.  Under the 1996 Congressional Review Act, most federal administrative rules are supposed to be reported to the House and Senate and to the Government Accountability Office.  The idea was to give Congress the opportunity to take action before the rule goes into effect.  That same law also barred such rules from judicial review.  Curtis Copeland, a retired Congressional Research Service staffer, examined how many rules issued since 2012 were not reported to Congress and the GAO.  He found that out of about 4,000 rules, more than 1,800 were not properly reported.

Obama remains confident in CIA head John Brennan despite Senate spying.  President Obama remains confident in CIA Director John Brennan's leadership despite an independent investigation that concluded that the agency had overreached its authority by spying on Senate staffers.  White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the findings had not diminished Brennan's standing in the administration.  When asked whether it damaged his authority or credibility in any way, Earnest said:  "Absolutely not."

CIA confesses: Yeah, we hacked the Senate's computers.  In March, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) revealed that CIA Director John Brennan told her that the intelligence agency he leads had improperly accessed Senate computers and secretly removed classified documents while the agency's War on Terror interrogation tactics were under investigation.  Feinstein alleged that Brennan told her the CIA took that action because the agency believed the Senate might have accessed documents that they were not authorized to see.  In a statement, Brennan said the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman had leveled "spurious allegations about CIA actions that were wholly unsupported by the facts."  While he confessed that the agency had made mistakes, the CIA director insisted that there was no merit to the charge that the agency had spied on members of Congress.

Despite Brennan's Lying and Usurpation of Law, President Obama Gives Strong Vote of Confidence In CIA Director John Brennan.  President Obama issued a strong defense of CIA Director John Brennan on Friday in the face of revelations that his agency spied on congressional staffers' computers.  "I have full confidence in John Brennan," Obama said in a White House press conference.

A Government Feared and Distrusted.  [Scroll down]  The proposed regulations are so onerous, they could literally make farming of some areas impossible.  But if you don't comply, the EPA could label you a "polluter" whose wages should be garnished.  Case example:  the agency has threatened fines of up to $75,000 per day on Wyoming homeowner Andy Johnson.  He built a pond on his rural property.  Think twice before you build that koi pond in your own backyard — or collect rain water on your property, like Gary Harrington, an Oregonian now serving a 30-day sentence for violating water regulations.  An encyclopedia would be required to list all the examples of executive and governmental agency overreach.  But note the theme:  the examples above are violations of Americans trust by non-elected governmental agencies.  You, Joe Average, have no say in what is decreed.  You are not represented when thousands of regulations are enacted.

13 Ways The American Police State Squanders Your Tax Dollars.  Call it what you will — taxes, penalties, fees, fines, regulations, tariffs, tickets, permits, surcharges, tolls, asset forfeitures, foreclosures, etc. — but the only word that truly describes the constant bilking of the American taxpayer by the government and its corporate partners is theft. We're operating in a topsy-turvy Sherwood Forest where, instead of Robin Hood and his merry band of thieves stealing from the rich to feed the poor, you've got the government and its merry band of corporate thieves stealing from the poor to fatten the wallets of the rich.  In this way, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.  All the while, the American Dream of peace, prosperity, and liberty has turned into a nightmare of endless wars, debilitating debt, and outright tyranny.

Land of the Free?  [John M. Horne (1813-186?)] would be horrified, even more so should he find out the Agriculture Department has its own SWAT team.  John would probably wonder why we even need a Department of Agriculture.  Seeing a country where the president's wife can dictate what your child eats for lunch, and where local authorities can shut down your daughter's lemonade stand, John M. would not be surprised that a law was passed obscenely incompatible with the land of the free.  ObamaCare was claimed to be within the government's power to tax, and is to be enforced by — why, the IRS, of course.  Most Americans didn't want it and still don't.

16 Reasons Why the United States is Going to Hell in a Handbasket.  I don't think any one problem or event will cause the collapse of the American empire, but a number of separate but interlocking events and issues.  Another point to consider is that the U.S. government has the resources, and inside information that would allow them to foretell when a major disaster or complete collapse is coming and they have been prepping and building underground bunkers on a mass scale and despite the fact our tax dollars are being used to build those bunkers we are not invited.

IRS Gave FBI 1.1 Million Pages Of Taxpayer Data To Encourage Prosecution Of Conservatives.  The perversion of law enforcement agencies for political ends is starkly revealed by the fact that in 2010, as part of its effort to stem the Tea Party movement, the IRS gave the FBI disks containing more than 1.1 million pages of documents on Section 501 non-profits, so that the FBI could selectively prosecute conservative groups and donors.

Illinois warns parents: You are replaceable.  Deborah Teixeira is in danger of literally being fired by the state of Illinois from her job as Juliet's mother. [...] Her predicament comes from the fact that she takes care of an adult daughter with brain damage.  She provides Juliet with round-the-clock care at her home thanks to subsidies from Illinois' Home Services Program.  That's common: Most of HSP's estimated 20,000 "caregivers" are just people like Teixeira watching over severely disabled family members.  The program also comes with strings attached, including a new billing system that requires caregivers to call a phone number twice daily to literally clock in and clock out.  Forget to clock out and you are technically overbilling the state.

After Revelations DOJ Collaborated With IRS on Targeting, Oversight Reiterates Calls For Special Prosecutor.  Earlier we learned that in 2010, the IRS sent a massive data base full of confidential information belonging to [conservative] tax exempt groups to the FBI just before the 2010 midterm elections.  The information was sent after collaboration and agreement between former IRS head of tax exempt groups Lois Lerner and DOJ Election Crimes Branch official Richard Pilger that tax exempt groups needed to be investigated.  Fast forward to four years later and the Department of Justice has been tapped to "investigate" the IRS targeting of conservative groups, even though they were involved in the targeting themselves.

Privacy takes a beating in the FBI's kangaroo court.  Feds ran roughshod over Lavabit, forcing it to shut down and proving the government is fighting to win — and fighting dirty — in the privacy wars.

ATF Charged with Creating Fictitious Crimes.  We need more criminal law pushback like this, in more areas.  Law enforcement agencies, especially at the federal level, have gotten out of hand.

"We are witnessing a new federal government that is a sort of rogue organism that exists for its own enhancement and is willing to do anything necessary to help those who help it."

— Victor Davis Hanson            

America's Last Straw.  [In 1877,] President James Garfield issued this warning:  ["]Twenty years ago, the presence of the national government was not felt by one citizen in a hundred.  Except in paying his postage and receiving his mail, the citizen of the interior rarely came in contact with the national authority.  Now, he meets it in a thousand ways... [and] a vote in Congress may, any day, seriously derange the business affairs of every person.["]  Today, more than another hundred years later, Garfield would be appalled to see that not only is our postal system bankrupt, but that outside of our mailboxes and in both our business and personal affairs — we meet the serious derangement of national authority practically everywhere and in every way imaginable.

Government Will Control You Before It Controls Climate.  Ultimately, it will not matter if people in government cynically promote the theory that human activity is destroying the global climate as a means of taking control of your life, or if they take control of your life because they sincerely believe human activity is destroying the global climate.  Either way, government will control your life.  The National Climate Assessment the Obama administration released this week describes in Sisyphean terms the task government faces in limiting carbon dioxide emissions, which the assessment says make up 84 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions it holds guilty of artificially warming our planet.

The Editor says...
The global warming fad / hoax is all about accumulating centralized government power through the use of frightening forecasts and rash pronouncements of impending catastrophe "if we don't do something."  Remember, the bigger the rush, the greater the underlying deception.  The U.S. government will never be able to control carbon dioxide emissions in China, which shares the atmosphere with the rest of us, and even a unified one-world government will never be able to control carbon dioxide emissions from volcanos, termites and cows.

Who Owns One-Third of American Land — And How It's Holding Us Back.  Did you know that the federal government owns nearly one-third of U.S. land?  What are they doing with it, you might ask.  And the answer is certainly not making the most of it.  In fact, true to form, the federal government is getting in the way of domestic energy and American jobs.  "Inaccessibility and unnecessary regulations inhibit economic growth in various parts of the country," says Heritage expert Nicolas Loris, the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow.  He points to a recent study showing that "opening up offshore areas for drilling in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf — just one region where offshore drilling is possible but not permitted — would create 280,000 jobs in that region alone."  While U.S. oil production has gone gangbusters in recent years, most of that production has been on privately owned land.

It is time to choose our side.  Today in America, there are an increasing number of men and women who see the ominous parallels between the pre-Revolutionary War days and the present day. [...] Only those buried deep in denial or their own normalcy bias refuse to see the increasing oppression against the citizens of America by their own government.  Only those who are completely clueless or complicit cannot see or vociferously deny that the clouds on the horizon are not storm clouds, but the dust clouds of an approaching enemy selected and elected to retake our freedoms.  Only those who have been effectively brainwashed believe that those currently in power reflect the true will of the people.

GOP rep wants to cut funds for armed federal agencies.  A Republican congressman wants to crack down on the proliferation of armed law enforcement units within the federal government, on the heels of the standoff last month between supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and a federal land agency.  Both sides of that standoff — agents with the Bureau of Land Management, and states' rights protesters who streamed into Nevada — were armed, leading the BLM to back down for fear of violence.

Bunkerville, the New Bunker Hill: The Back Story.  [Scroll down]  I assembled this information because I, like many others, have had it with an over-reaching, lying government.  If nothing else, I wanted to show how the BLM has too much power and when you see them go against a fellow citizen poised to shoot other Americans with guns and body armor, it's time to take steps to back them out of the picture.  I don't completely agree with Cliven Bundy not paying his fees.  559 other Nevada ranchers paid their fees, but I do understand where he is coming from, he predates all land management agencies.  How is that one man who is developing 44,000 acres can use the system, and Harry Reid to get a 10,000 acre tortoise habitat disband from his property and another is locked out of grazing because of the tortoise.  The Tortoise is just a vehicle that the BLM can use at their "discretion" and interpretation of the BLM Regs.  Americans are done with this.

Hydra-headed federal bureaucracy threatens American liberty.  Because humans are inclined to believe their ends are virtuous enough to justify immoral means, America's founders designed a liberty-preserving system to thwart excessive government power.  Their revolutionary principles included limited government, popular consent and human equality, meaning no one — not a president, congressman, IRS official or Bureau of Land Management agent — can be the ruler over another because the government's power is citizen-derived.  If this sounds quaint and obsolete, it's because the federal executive branch bureaucracy has grown so huge and unaccountable.

The soft despotism of regulation imposes high costs on Americans.  Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the classic Democracy in America, were born in different times and places.  But the French aristocrat and American think tanker have the measure of the federal behemoth in the age of Obama.  Writing in 1835, Tocqueville eloquently predicted how it would function, while Crews today supplies in his annual compilation of federal rules and regulations, "10,000 Commandments," the hard numbers that describe the behemoths contemporary reach and costs.

True the Vote founder to Fox: Five separate agencies came down on me out of nowhere.  Conservative activist Catherine Engelbrecht was on "Fox and Friends" Wednesday [4/16/2014] and said she has no doubt that there was a "collaborative effort" by a number of federal agencies to try to silence her.  The founder of "True the Vote" made the assertion in the aftermath of last week's release of emails by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, that suggest U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., may have worked with the IRS to target Engelbrecht after her organization applied for nonprofit status.

Regulator Without Peer.  Anyone wondering why the U.S. economy can't seem to grow at its usual pace should examine one product category where production is booming: federal regulation.  Washington set a new record in 2013 by issuing final rules consuming 26,417 pages in the Federal Register.  While plenty of government employees deserve credit for this milestone, leadership matters.  And by this measure President Obama has never been surpassed in the Oval Office.

What Does the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Need with 96 Armed Agents?  The proliferation of federal agencies with armed agents is one of the most worrisome aspects of the growth in government.  Just last summer the EPA carried out an armed raid on a mine in Alaska to enforce the Clean Water Act — a bit of government intimidation that residents say was totally unnecessary. [...] And who can forget the Gibson Guitar raid by armed agents of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  The EPA, the USFWS ...the Department of Education?  It's getting ridiculous — and frightening.

Did someone mention Gibson Guitar?

The Progressive March to the Future is Destroying America.  The progressive march to the future is destroying America.  What the Democrats and the progressives are doing behind the scenes is a more frightening and unjustified power grab than Putin's on the Ukraine. [...] [I]n spite of the dysfunction of our House and Senate there is a more pervasive danger — and it is the people who are behind the scenes — people who in the dead of night write laws and bills that no one seems to know what [...] is in them.  Or decisions that give up America's sovereignty to an organization that has now changed what its initial purpose once was to an institution preparing for a one-world government, The United Nations.  So the freest, most stable nation in the world gives up the Internet to forces that could advance it being stifled?  Does this make sense?

ATF Director: 'Wish I Had Better Answers' About ATF Agents Probing a Tea Party Conservative.  B. Todd Jones, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, couldn't tell Congress why his agents made two visits to a tea party conservative in a 13-month period — but only after she requested tax-exempt status for her conservative group, True the Vote.  Catherine Engelbrecht had a Federal Firearms License (FFL) for 12 years.  "And suddenly she applies for tax exempt status, and you're knocking on her door twice in 13 months," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told Jones at a hearing on Wednesday.  "Congressman, I wish I had better answers," Jones said.

Under attack: Depth of federal arms race should surprise, shock citizenry.  In late February, four federal agents carrying side arms with a drug-sniffing dog descended on the Taos Ski Valley in what was called a "saturation patrol."  Authorities were working on tips of possible drug selling and impaired driving in the ski resort's parking lot and surrounding area.  But the agents weren't from the FBI, ATF, or even the Drug Enforcement Administration.  Rather, the agents represented the U.S. Forest Service. [...] It may come as a surprise to many U.S. taxpayers, but a slew of federal agencies — some whose responsibilities seem to have little to do with combating crime — carry active law enforcement operations.

U.S. confirms warrantless searches of Americans.  The Obama administration has conducted warrantless searches of Americans' communications as part of the National Security Agency's surveillance operations that target foreigners located outside of the U.S., the administration's top intelligence official confirmed in a letter to Congress disclosed Tuesday [4/1/2014].

Hate-Crime Laws and the Expansion of Federal Power.  Forty-five states and the District of Columbia provide additional penalties for crimes that they classify as "hate crimes," over and above what would have been available if the same crime been committed with a different motivation.  In 2009, President Obama signed into law a federal hate-crimes statute that adds a third level of criminalization for violent crimes that occur "because of" the victim's "actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, disability, or sexual orientation."  Actual hatred is not required. It is enough that there is a causal connection between the crime and one of these grounds.

A glimpse inside the dysfunctional federal bureaucracy.  We are governed by an arrogant, dysfunctional, self-serving organization that couldn't care less about us.  The federal bureaucracy, which increasingly behaves as our overlords, regulating what we may or may not do, prosecuting (or declining to prosecute) alleged wrongdoers, and spending roughly one dollar of every four in our economy (up from one in five in just a few years) is out of control and dangerous.  And it is only "extremists" like tea partiers who propose to do anything about it.

If You Are on the Right, 1st and 4th Amendments Don't Apply.  In August, 2012 uniformed county police officers showed up at Brandon Raub's front door.  They introduced Raub to several unidentified agents of the Secret Service and FBI who spoke with him concerning his anti-government Facebook posts.  A few minutes later, according to the August, 2013 complaint, one of the federal agents telephoned a Chesterfield County licensed psychotherapist to discuss the situation.  The therapist, without observing, meeting or evaluating Raub, recommended that he be taken into custody.  Raub was subsequently handcuffed, arrested and medically cleared before being driven to a psych hospital over a hundred miles away from his home.

The Obama Administration's Unilateral Actions.  Abusive, unlawful, and even potentially unconstitutional unilateral action has been a hallmark of the Obama Administration.  When Congress refuses to accede to President Barack Obama's liberal policies, the Administration often ignores the restraints imposed upon the executive branch by the Constitution, and when the Administration disagrees with duly enacted laws or finds it politically expedient not to enforce them, it waives legal requirements.  Under the U.S. constitutional system, Congress is charged with enacting the law, and the Executive is charged with enforcing it.  The individual liberties of all Americans are at stake when one branch usurps the role of another.

The Ten Most Abusive Obama Executive Actions.  President Obama has made liberal use of "executive action" throughout his presidency, and pledged to make even more use of executive action in this year's State of the Union speech.  He seems to think that because Republicans don't want to implement his agenda, he can go around Congress.  The Heritage Foundation is out with a new report on President Obama's executive actions, titled "An Executive Unbound," finding that "abusive, unlawful, even potentially unconstitutional unilateral action has been a hallmark of the Obama Administration."

Obama's Trifecta.  In its violations of the First Amendment, the Obama administration has consistently relied upon self-serving definitions of press, religion, and political speech.  Holder justified violating Rosen's press freedom on the grounds that he somehow wasn't acting as a legitimate member of the press.  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has arrogated to herself the right to determine what is and what is not a "religion."  She claims the HHS mandate doesn't violate religious freedom since groups that serve the public aren't religious according to her criteria.  She declared at the time of the mandate's release that only purely sectarian groups are deemed religious under Obamacare and thus worthy of an exemption.  The Federal Election Commission plays the same game on what constitutes political speech, defining the concept ever more narrowly to justify restrictions on ordinary participation.

Legal Kidnapping.  Are responsible and loving parents safe from having their children taken away from them by government agents?  The Joneses had always thought so, until recent events taught them otherwise.

Americans rising up against government.  [I]n response to widespread protests last week, the Department of Homeland Security canceled plans to build a nationwide license plate database.  Many local police departments already use license-plate readers that track every car as it passes traffic signals or pole-mounted cameras.  Specially equipped police cars even track cars parked on the street or even in driveways.  The DHS put out a bid request for a system that would have gone national, letting the federal government track millions of people's comings and goings just as it tracks data about every phone call we make.  But the proposal was suddenly withdrawn last week, with the unconvincing explanation that it was all a mistake.

Michigan Democrat Rep. Gary Peters threatens TV station licenses over Obamacare ad.  While Julie Boonstra of Dexter, Mich., struggles to survive leukemia, she now also has to cope with being called a liar by the Democrat who wants to be her next senator.  And the campaign of Rep. Gary Peters is also going after television stations airing ads in which her story is featured, threatening their licenses.  The ad by Americans for Prosperity features Boonstra talking about how her insurance was canceled under Obamacare and saying that Peters' decision to vote for the law "jeopardized my health."  The ads are airing in Michigan as Peters seeks the Democratic nomination to replace Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who is not seeking re-election.

Mark Levin: Obama Admin Using The Law Against Us Is The Definition Of Tyranny.  The FCC, call it whatever you want, Barack Obama's henchman, Barack Obama's comrades, there, that's right, all over the federal government have hijacked the institutions of government and are now turning them on the people.  Whether it's the EPA, or the Department of Justice, the Interior Department, NOAA, this, that or the other, they're using the government, they are using a law against us.  Which is the definition of tyranny.

Is Our Commander, Covert Or Criminal?  On January 1 an agreement between the United States and our most hostile enemy went into effect.  This agreement was secretly negotiated at secret meetings by a secret Presidential trip, and a secretive Secretary of State.  This super secret agreement we were told would bring peace in our time. [...] The only problem however is that there is now no way for "We The People" to know if our employee, one Barack Hussein Obama, is telling the truth.  And in our representative republic there is no way for our representatives — even ones legally empowered to watch foreign affairs and national security specifically — to be able to know.  Why?  Because the President has the text of the agreement — an agreement we are told is unclassified — being squirrelled away — and is off limits.

Atlanta Mayor Defends Using Emergency Lane to Get to Interview.  Atlanta's mayor is defending his use of emergency lanes at the height of Tuesday's icy traffic jam so he could do an interview at The Weather Channel's studios.

Big government does too much, badly.  Around the country there have been calls to raise the minimum wage, to impose strict regulations on our businesses and to forcibly adopt a health care system that nationalizes one-sixth of our economy.  The intended role of the federal government established by our Founding Fathers was to protect the rights of all Americans.  Nowhere in our Constitution is there a clause that mandates government to act as an employer, a health care provider or a charity — nor should it.  However, over the years the role of government has shifted from protecting rights to selectively distributing them.  This, in turn, has spawned a host of redistributionist policies that have been thrust upon the public as commandments.  Many people are beginning to wonder why they are being forced to pay for their neighbors.

What would Patrick Henry do with the NSA?  We are constantly informed that business cannot be trusted to regulate their public behavior, so government is called upon to manage the FDA, EPA, ICC, USDA and dozens of other alphabet-soup agencies.  We are told that even those who have taken oaths for their business activities, doctors and nurses come to mind, are not to be trusted to play fair with the fees they charge for services, with the latest attempt to fight this alleged threat being Obamacare.  Heck, we are even told that the clergy and those who look to them for spiritual guidance are not to be entrusted with the care of the poor any longer, thus the growing need for our vainglorious "safety net."  Everywhere an American citizen looks, you will find government, taxing, regulating, micromanaging, threatening and in some instances killing.  All made legal and growing by what force?  The threat of penalties, fines, unaffordable legal defense and imprisonment.

Rein in HUD.  Under our Constitution, a government agency may not act beyond the authority given it by Congress.  Indeed, as the Supreme Court has said, "an agency literally has no power to act ... unless and until Congress confers power upon it."  The principle is basic, but in a significant matter the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama has ignored it, to say no worse.  Fortunately, a lawsuit now moving forward in the nation's capital promises to compel the agency to quit its conspicuous overreaching.

Congress Must Curb The 'Soft Tyranny' Of Bureaucrats.  The late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn., observed, "The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency.  An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty."  He said this in 1979 when the Code of Federal Regulations contained about 30,000 rules.  Today, the federal government has more than 180,000 rules.

DOE Plugs Energy Rating For Homes Similar To MPG Rating For Cars.  The Energy Department on Tuesday [1/14/2014] is rolling out new, improved software to help Americans measure the energy efficiency of their homes.  DOE says its energy-scoring software — called the Home Energy Scoring Tool — is like a vehicle's mile-per-gallon rating because it allows homeowners to compare the energy performance of their homes to other homes nationwide.  It also provides homeowners with suggestions for improving their homes' efficiency.

The Editor says...
First of all, it's never a good idea to compare your house to someone else's house.  It only leads to pride and arrogance, or jealousy and envy.  All that aside, this is apparently the government's way of being "helpful" to home buyers that are too stupid to ask the right questions when shopping for a house.  It sounds harmless enough, but that's the way automobile gas mileage ratings got started, and now fuel efficiency standards are mandatory — and constantly tightening.

Mike Lee: Obama's 'Unelected Bureaucrats' Wrote 80,000 Pages of Rules in 2013.  Friday [1/10/2014], Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) published a photograph on his Facebook page of all the rules and regulations President Barack Obama's administration implemented throughout 2013.  The photo, a display of all the printed pages of the federal register, is 80,000 pages worth of regulations stacked in a filing cabinet.

Border Security as Oppressive as Ever.  A constant barrage of stories of abuse from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol have arisen in 2013.  These did not only occur at the physical borders, but at the numerous domestic checkpoints that appear all over U.S. roadways across the southwest.  Up to 100 miles into the country, permanent roadblocks exist where travelers are asked by federal agents to prove their citizenship and often subjected to searches and other harassment.

The Police State in Review, 2013.  The foundation of an American police state is already laid and making its existence known, while most of the country remains blissfully focused on sports, reality shows, establishment pseudo-news, and other distractions.  It would require an encyclopedia to cover all of the injustices, scandals, and brutality that took place in 2013.  This list is designed to illustrate certain trends and significant stories from the past year.  If Americans don't fix their apathy and disengagement toward causes that matter, we can expect these trends to continue toward their logical conclusions:  an increasingly repressive police state dominating the lives people inside these borders and beyond.

Happy New Year! Feds list 141 new regulations in only three days.  It's a new year and you know what that means — new regulations.  The Obama administration has wasted no time in writing them.  The website Regulations.gov lists 141 regulations that have been posted by federal agencies in the last three days alone.  Of these regulations, 119 are "rulemaking," meaning they establish a new rule.  Twenty-three are "non-rulemaking," meaning the regulations does not establish a new rule.  The largest group of regulations have to do with energy and environmental issues, many of them issued by the Environmental Protection Agency.

11 Nasty Trends That Will Test America's Resilience.  Last year was a challenging one for entrepreneurs and other productive Americans.  No fewer than 13 new taxes were put into place.  Big government now consumes one of every four dollars of our GDP and is getting bigger.  Entering 2014, we face problems, including taxes and spending, that neither the White House nor Congress is addressing.

Showing How Government Fails.  The hyper-regulation by the federal government of nearly every aspect of commerce and industry through an ever-growing leviathan of laws, regulations, judicial decisions, and executive actions has stunted and even crippled huge swaths of private enterprise in America.  Almost any small business can recount at least one horror story that cost our nation productive activity, reduced meaningful employment, and closed off areas of potential growth in our economy.  Many Americans, however, have generally been shown only the sunny side of the federal government.

Uncle Sam's New Year's Binge: Borrows $1,088 Per Household in 1 Day.  Uncle Sam — AKA the federal government — went on a New Year's Eve binge, adding a net of $125,202,709,546.99 to its total debt in just the one day of Dec. 31, 2013, according to the U.S. Treasury.  That equals approximately $1,088.60 for each of the 115,013,000 households the Census Bureau currently estimates there are in the United States.

40,000 new laws take effect in 2014.  In Illinois for example, teenagers will no longer get to use tanning beds without a doctor's note.  If you live in Delaware, visit the shark fin buffet while you can, a new law will make it illegal to own, sale, or distribute the controversial delicacy.  And in California, new laws take effect that will let students take part in school sports, or use bathrooms based on their gender identity, regardless of the gender noted in their birth certificates.

State Dept Whistleblower's Emailed Hacked, Deleted.  The personal e-mail account of a State Department whistle-blower was hacked, and four years worth of messages — some detailing alleged wrongdoing at the agency — were deleted, The [New York] Post has learned.  The computer attack targeted the Gmail account of Diplomatic Security Service criminal investigator Richard Higbie, his lawyer, Cary Schulman, confirmed.  "They took all of his e-mails and then they deleted them all," said Schulman.  He said that he could not prove who was responsible for the hack job, but said the attack was "sophisticated" and called the targeting of Higbie "alarming."

It's a Very Merry Christmas for Washington's Parasite Class.  Simply stated, government is a racket that benefits the DC political elite by taking money from average people in America[.]  I realize this is an unhappy topic to be discussing during the Christmas season, but the American people need to realize that they are being raped and pillaged by the corrupt insiders that control Washington and live fat and easy lives at our expense.

Illegal Immigration: History's Greatest Wage Suppression Tool.  The very notion that in today's day and age that borders cannot be secured is beyond contempt.  Meanwhile, your grandmother is getting cavity-searched by the TSA and yet another anchor baby is born in a U.S. hospital (which accounts for 8% of all births).  The average American knows this "look the other way" policy very well, with all of its repercussions, because he has been dealing with suppressed wages for decades.  This suppression has not only helped gut lower and middle-class Americans, it has also caused millions of Americans to rely on government subsidies, i.e. welfare checks, section 8 housing, and EBT cards.

The Fed Is Operating Without Rules.  Basically, the Fed has become a central-planning agency that does what it wants when it wants, and will not be subject to the discipline of rule making.  Over time this can come to no good.

'Massive Seizure of Power': Climate scientists, economists challenge EPA.  A group of climate scientists and economists are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other stationary sources.  These critics see a "massive seizure of power" by the agency.  The scientists and economists, including the former chair of the EPA's Science Advisory Committee, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, arguing that the agency does not have the authority to permit greenhouse gases from stationary sources.  According to the group, such a permitting scheme is a "naked power grab of the most cynical sort."

Drowning In A Costly, Intrusive Federal Regulatory Flood.  The federal regulatory machine is coming not only for power plants, as the president promised while campaigning in 2008.  It also has its eye on controlling private property.  Earlier this week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has a long history of highlighting Washington's regulatory excess, said that during the first week of December, "95 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register," which followed "77 new final rules" published the previous week.  It's "the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 46 minutes."

Politically motivated traffic are probably more common than anyone knows.
Christie ally steps down in wake of George Washington Bridge scandal.  Gov. Chris Christie's top appointee to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey resigned Friday [12/13/2013] amid questions over whether he ordered a traffic jam at the world's busiest bridge as political payback.  The Republican governor accepted the resignation of Bill Baroni, the agency's deputy executive director, effective immediately, and praised the former state senator's four-year stint at the bi-state agency.

Annie Dookhan's Falsified Lab Data: Symptom of a Corrupted System.  Friday [12/6/2013], former Massachusetts chemist Annie Dookhan pleaded guilty to all 27 counts of falsifying nearly 40,000 criminal drug cases, effectively upending the Massachusetts criminal justice system.  Dookhan admitted to filing false test results, mixing drug samples together, and lying under oath about her job qualifications. [...] Dookhan's "dry labbing" is just one part of a structure that incentivizes people working in the criminal justice system to get convictions — not truth — and put as many people in prison as possible without regard to their actual guilt.

BART Defends Cell Phone Shutdown.  San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit is defending its order last August to shut down commuters' cell phone service.  BART's actions attracted a considerable amount of negative attenion.  Digital rights groups have spoken out against government agencies assuming the authority to shut down wireless coverage.  "BART is a government agency, and the First Amendment prevents the government from censoring communications.  Also, federal law — the Communications Act — outlaws both the government and carriers from interfering with wireless service," said Rebecca Jeschke, spokesperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

EPA preparing to unleash a deluge of new regulations.  Happy holidays from the Obama administration.  Federal agencies are currently working on rolling out hundreds of environmental regulations, including major regulations that would limit emissions from power plants and expand the agency's authority to bodies of water on private property.  On Tuesday [11/26/2013], the White House released its regulatory agenda for the fall of 2013.  It lists hundreds of pending energy and environmental regulations being crafting by executive branch agencies, including 134 regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency alone.

The Drift toward Despotism.  [Scroll down]  But one notes that the Supreme Court has dramatically circumscribed Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure when it occurs at America's border, and post-9/11 the "border" has been redefined to mean anywhere within 100 miles of the actual frontier.  Many European countries are not 100 miles wide in their entirety.  A hundred-mile buffer zone from Belgium's northern border, for example, would be well south of the southern border and deep into France.

Father Fed Knows Best.  The government thinks you're stupid, or at least ignorant. [...] In Massachusetts, all kids in daycare are required by law to brush their teeth after lunch.  In Texas — Texas! — if you don't have an interior-design license, you can't call yourself an interior designer, lest some unsuspecting consumer trust your opinion on throw-pillow placement without the backing of the state.  Almost everywhere, Americans need a license to open a business — sometimes even a lemonade stand — but in Milwaukee, you even need a license to go out of business.

Horror: Police force man to undergo invasive anal operation.  When New Mexico police stopped a local driver for committing a minor moving violation, they decided to check whether he was carrying drugs in his anus.  So they procured a warrant, drove him to two different hospitals, forced him to endure eight medical procedures — including an invasive colonoscopy — and stuck him with the bill.  No drugs were found.

Schweizer Says DC 'Just Like the Mob, Except It's Legal'.  Peter Schweizer argued that Washington's political establishment creates threatening bills to scare wealthy interests into making big campaign donations and to hire favored lobbyists, similar to the mafia's tactic of requiring "protection money" on Friday [10/25/2013].

Ten Thousand Commandments 2013: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State.  Total costs for Americans to comply with federal regulations reached $1.806 trillion in 2012.  For the first time, this amounts to more than half of total federal spending.  It is more than the GDPs of Canada or Mexico.  This is the 20th anniversary of Ten Thousand Commandments.  In the 20 years of publication, 81,883 final rules have been issued.  That's more than 3,500 per year or about nine per day.

When Frogs Jump.  [Scroll down]  How far would today's American ruling elite go to stamp out real and concerted resistance to their brazen violations of individual liberty?  What steps would they not take to force submission to, and compliance with, their socialized medicine, their compulsory schooling, their EPA violations of private property, and so on?  In short, is there a point of coercive incivility beyond which you are certain they would never step to enforce their anti-constitutional, anti-natural rights, anti-rational plans?

Mission Creep: EPA Agents Enter Drug War.  A large-scale narcotics investigation and sentencing in Montana has revealed that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has entered the enforcement of U.S. war on drugs.  The EPA has full federal law enforcement capabilities, and their charter allows them to participate in the investigation and prosecution of "criminal conduct that threatens people's health," according to the EPA's Criminal Investigation Division (EPA CID).

Gun Free Zones are Designed to Spread, Like Smallpox.  The ugly truth is that gun free zones are not about irrational dreams of safety.  They are about power and control.  The irrational spouting about safety is just a way to get emotional support from those who do not think about the issue.  Gun free zones are just another incremental way to move toward total control.

Documents: Congress Charges Secret Fee to Land Top Committee Spots.  Members of Congress must pay secret fees known as "party dues" to the Democratic and Republican parties to secure and maintain top committee chairmanships and assignments, newly uncovered internal documents reveal. [...] The so-called "party dues" lawmakers must contribute for committee assignments are separate and apart from the fundraising they conduct for their own campaigns.  If lawmakers fail to make their tribute payment to their party, they can lose their place on a powerful committee.

Feds try to eliminate housing for the deaf — at complex built for hearing-impaired.  A 2005 federal study found that the U.S. had virtually no affordable housing for the deaf.  So the federal government helped build Apache ASL Trails, a 75-unit apartment building in Tempe, Ariz., designed specifically for the deaf.  Ninety-percent of the units are currently occupied by deaf and deaf-blind seniors.  But now, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development says Apache ASL Trails violates civil rights law — because it shows a preference for the hearing-impaired.

Democrats and Media Do a Number on the American People.  No free people should tolerate the pervasiveness of federal government activity in our daily lives even if we benefit from it in some fashion.  It is a matter of human dignity and self-respect.  And it was House Republican insistence on this very point that resulted in the shutdown.

Illegal use of DoD Communications Systems by Obama Administration.  The American Spectator has been provided with the text of a political message sent on Saturday evening, using Department of Defense communications systems, on behalf of President Obama and Secretary of Defense Hagel.  It is addressed to "all US government employees" and further specified by the DoD sender to go to "all subordinate commands," in compliance with Hagel's call for "the widest possible distribution."

Retaining America's liberty requires an alarmed America.  National finances, domestic and foreign policies are all askew.  Government spends the earnings of our yet-unborn great-grandchildren buying political support with corporate and individual welfare programs.  The U.S. government stifles the entrepreneurial spirit that made us prosperous, with over-regulation.  It partners with terrorists abroad, yet calls any who oppose unconstitutional tactics domestic terrorists.  And everywhere you turn, our government makes more and more nitpicking rules regarding everyday behavior, with drastic legal consequences for any who offend.

'Moral decay' and the rot of paternalism.  What is liberty when you can be forced by your government to spend endless hours toiling in the Kafka-esque maze of compliance and kow-towing that is our federal government today?  As businesses and individuals scurry to curry favor with their masters in Washington, D.C., the nation's wealth is being absorbed into a bottomless drain of regulation and dictate.  And what's scary is that this is the accepted norm.  The Supreme Court has joined with Congress and the president to rewrite the very rules which were intended to protect the people.  Now the Constitution of the United States of America is an instrument of the government, not a solemn vow of the people.

Woman who got 20 years for warning shot gets new trial.  A Florida appeals court is ordering a new trial for a woman sentenced to 20 years to prison after she fired a warning shot in a wall during a dispute with her husband.  The 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that a judge did not properly instruct the jury handling the case of Marissa Alexander.  But the appeals court did also state that the judge was right to block Alexander from using the state's "Stand Your Ground" law as a way to defend her actions.

The Hypocrisy Of Congress's Gold-Plated Health Care.  As close observers of history and human nature, James Madison and the other Founders of the U.S. Constitution knew that the equal and unbiased application of the law to all people, especially elected officials, is essential to freedom and justice and one of the primary safeguards from authoritarianism and oppression by a ruling class.  And so, referring to the members of Congress, James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 57:  "[T]hey can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society."  Today, elected officials need to be reminded of these truths.

E.P.A. is the New Gestapo.  Just recently, a task force including members of 10 state and federal law enforcement agencies descended on a gold mine in the tiny town of Chicken[,] Alaska[,] with a population of 17 last month, in what locals described as a raid.  "Imagine coming up to your diggings, only to see agents swarming over it like ants, wearing full body armor, with jackets that say "POLICE" emblazoned on them, and all packing side arms," gold miner C.R. Hammond told the Alaska Dispatch. [...] According to the EPA The investigation was into possible violations of the Clean Water Act.  The officers were part of the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force and visited the outpost near the Canadian border during the third week of August to investigate water discharges into rivers, streams, lakes and oceans.  This is how the EPA handles an investigation, with rifles, handguns and bullet proof vests?

It's the law: Washington state lawmakers don't get speeding tickets.  A spokesman for WSP says Washington lawmakers are constitutionally protected from receiving noncriminal traffic tickets during a legislative session, as well as 15 days before.

America: Not Shining but Burning.  America is now a nation ruled — and that is the correct word — by a self-appointed elite of ignorant snobs and power-mad degenerates to compete with the worst ruling castes of the civilized world.  The U.S. federal government has, through the deliberate deteriorations of a century, finally dispensed with all but the flimsiest pretense of the principles of limited government and the rule of law that virtually defined America's historic political achievement.

Where is the Rule of Law?  Maybe the new Rule of Law is now the plain clothes police everywhere, who no longer serve and protect since we don't know who they are to ask for help in an emergency, they just ticket us to death for speeding, or the drones hovering over quiet residential neighborhoods, or the EPA police surprising a few law-abiding miners in Alaska, or the fully geared and assault ready police in the metro, the TSA molesting and irradiating us at airports, or the IRS making sure that we pay all of our taxes, including the Affordable Care Act tax?

Stop privileges for government officials.  All over America, government officials enjoy privileges that ordinary citizens don't.  Sometimes it involves bearing arms, with special rules favoring police, politicians and even retired government employees.  Sometimes it involves freedom from traffic and parking tickets, like the special non-traceable license plates enjoyed by tens of thousands of California state employees or similar immunities for Colorado legislators.  Often it involves immunity from legal challenges, like the "qualified" immunity to lawsuits enjoyed by most government officials, or the even-better "absolute immunity" enjoyed by judges and prosecutors.

NSA Staffers Have Spied on Lovers.  National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency's enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said.  The practice isn't frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it's common enough to garner its own spycraft label:  LOVEINT.

NSA employees spied on their lovers using eavesdropping programme.  The employees even had a code name for the practice — "Love-int" — meaning the gathering of intelligence on their partners.  Dianne Feinstein, a senator who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, said the NSA told her committee about a set of "isolated cases" that have occurred about once a year for the last 10 years.  The spying was not within the US, and was carried out when one of the lovers was abroad.  One employee was disciplined for using the NSA's resources to track a former spouse, the Associated Press said.

NSA analysts knowingly broke surveillance rules.  The National Security Agency acknowledged Friday that some of its analysts knowingly violated the agency's rules, after the incidents were included in an inspector general report.  "Over the past decade, very rare instances of willful violations of NSA's authorities have been found, but none under FISA or the Patriot Act," the NSA said in a statement.

Washington's Blooming Bureaucrats Make 1,000 Flowers Wither.  A guerrilla gardener planted 1,000 flowers at the ugliest subway stop in the capital.  Instead of saying thanks, D.C. Metro authorities ripped the plants out to show him — and the public — who's boss.

The Government our American Founders Warned Us About.  The framers of the U.S Constitution were well aware of the historic trend of government.  They knew that ruling entities that endured over time evolved towards greater power, gradually increasing control over their nation's citizens.  The Constitution was designed in part to remedy this.  The Founder's vision of a limited government was a remarkable innovation for its time that was meant to maintain the rights of the individual citizen, and preserve the power of the individual states.  Their concept had little to do with left versus right, or liberal versus conservative.  Rather, they were largely motivated by the creation of a republic that would not descend into a state of tyranny — a fate that history seemed to show was in the end, inevitable.

Obama announces extra $300 million in aid for Syrians, refugees.  The U.S. is to give more than $300 million in additional "life-saving humanitarian assistance" to Syrians caught up in the country's civil war, Barack Obama has announced, taking the total amount given since the conflict began to nearly $815 million.

The Editor asks...
Can Mr. Obama generate $300 million dollars just by announcing it, and then spend it on whatever he pleases?  What part of the Constitution authorizes such a thing?

Fearless Fosdick at work.  The Obama administration and its well-meaning defenders, including several Republican members of Congress, argue that just because the government can discover intimate details about everyone's life, beliefs, politics, sexual orientation, health, diseases and sexual infidelities doesn't mean it would, with the click of a computer mouse, ever identify and mark this person for personal attention.  (We trust the IRS, don't we?)  If the snoopery were as innocent as these defenders claim, the government wouldn't have gone to so much trouble — in "the least most untruthful manner" — to hide what it was doing.

It's better to take our chances with the Muslim terrorists than to forfeit our liberty.
Are you Willing to Die for your Freedom?  [Scroll down]  I'm willing to die for my freedom.  I'm certainly willing to take the slightly-increased risk of dying in a terrorist attack that ostensibly will result from the government not sifting my email and monitoring all my calls and banking activity and who knows what else.  At this point, I'm becoming convinced it's not worth it.  We're groping children and Korean War vets in airports as part of an expensive show of security.  We're teaching our kids to put up with government intrusion into our lives.  On my most recent flight, I saw a father help his 5-year-old son remove his shoes and show him where to put them, how to remove his belt, how to wait his turn, how to go through security and comply with routine government searches.  It's not worth the toll on our freedom and our veneration of freedom.

NSA's PRISM, the IRS scandal: The U.S. Government gone wild.  [Previous presidents] created massive government regulatory and administrative bureaucracies — in fact, intelligence agencies — which demand information from businesses of all sizes to use against them at will — EPA, OSHA, IRS, and a host of other alphabet agencies, great and small.  The used these agencies and the intelligence they gathered to torment, punish and destroy their enemies.  Remember, intelligence is nothing more than information.  Intelligence gathering is information gathering.  What better way to gather intelligence than through pervasive regulatory regimes?

The felonious fibbers.  Thousands of Americans are languishing in federal prisons for lying to federal officials.  Federal officials themselves often get a pass when they tell a whopper to Congress.  It's a double standard that must end.  The problem starts at the top with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

A flawed federal law enforcement agency?  The federal government maintains a bewildering number of armed law enforcement agencies, including the 295 armed Social Security special agents, for whom 174,000 .357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow point bullets were recently put up for bid.  A much larger armed police force consists of about 2000 agents in the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security.  According to the New York Post, that police force is seriously compromised because numbers of people with hidden criminal backgrounds have been hired.  This makes them unable to participate in criminal prosecutions.

Government's Shocking Interference in Rancher's Life.  The 104-page opinion by U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Jones on May 23 in Nevada tells a sordid and infuriating tale of a two-decades-long conspiracy among federal employees of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of the Department of the Interior to deny the grazing rights of a Nevada ranching family, interfere with their water rights, and destroy their cattle business by scaring away their customers.

It's Not Government's Job To Require Paid Vacations.  Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, has introduced the Paid Vacation Act.  It would require employers with more than 100 employees to provide workers with a week of paid leave every year.  It's not the first time Grayson has cranked out crackpot legislation that requires the government to act dictatorially toward private businesses.  Four years ago he came up with the same idea, inspired, he said, by a trip to Disney World.

Brooklyn DA 'arrested' people and held them until they testified in 'private jail system'.  Brooklyn's District Attorney has been accused of using locked hotel rooms as 'private jails' to interrogate witnesses and pressure them into giving false testimony in court.  The office of Charles Hynes is said to have routinely held trial witnesses against their will, according to new court papers filed by a lawyer representing a man suing for $150million for a wrongful murder conviction.  In court papers, Joel Rudin said: 'Hynes's office was running a private jail system where witnesses were illegally interrogated and forcibly detained indefinitely.'

The VanderSlooting of America.  [Scroll down]  But what the massive abuse of the IRS illustrates is a tyranny of a different sort.  A bloodless yet still quite decided tyranny.  A tyranny of the American Left designed not just to chill free speech — although that is a primary goal.  What has evidenced itself in the Obama era is a tyranny designed not just to silence dissent, but to deliberately, willfully damage if not ruin outright the reputations and businesses of Americans across the land.

More about the use of the IRS as a weapon.

Barack Obama's America.  Barack Obama's America is one where fishermen aren't allowed to catch red snapper but where the government can kill tens of thousands of snapper by blowing up oil rigs that provide valuable habitat for Gulf sea life.

Why All of Us Should Mistrust the Government.  [Scroll down]  The government rejects the natural law because it is an obstacle to its control over us.  The natural law is divinely embedded in our souls.  It is manifested by the universal yearning for freedom and justice.  It consists of areas of human behavior — thought, expression, religion, self-defense, travel, acquisition and use of property, privacy, for example — in which our behavior is subject only to the exercise of our free will and not the permission of our neighbors or regulation by the government.  The natural law, properly understood, is a restraint on the government.

Judge asks enviros for ideas to punish gas company.  Apparently frustrated by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down an $18 million penalty for a Texas natural gas firm, a federal judge is taking the unusual step of asking the environmental community for suggestions on how to sentence the company in a way that will have "the broadest possible impact."

Big Sis: Obama Admin Can Pick Which Laws to Enforce.  During her testimony on the "Gang of Eight" immigration bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday [4/23/2013], Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared that she, President Barack Obama and other political officials at the top of this administration have the authority to decide which laws to enforce, and which ones to ignore.

Napolitano: Obama Regime can decide which laws to enforce.  In a startling and candid admission, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano argued to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday [4/23/2013] that regardless of oaths to uphold the law, the President and the executive branch can choose what laws are to be enforced.  Tensions rose as the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Napolitano over the enforcement, or lack thereof, of current U.S. immigration policies.

Leave your vuvuzula in the car.
Liquids banned from Obama's Ohio State speech despite past heat-related medical emergencies.  President Barack Obama's speech at the Ohio State University graduation ceremony Sunday will be on tight security lockdown, with graduating students subject to "airport-like security screening" and a strict list of prohibited items for graduates and their relatives attending the event at Ohio Stadium (capacity: 102,329).  Attendees are prohibited from bringing liquids into the stadium, despite high temperatures.

Is this an excuse to get a sample of everyone's DNA?
Federal panel says everyone 15 to 65 should have HIV test.  Citing recent evidence that HIV infections are best managed when treated early, an influential panel of medical experts has finalized its recommendation that all people ages 15 to 65 be screened for the virus that causes AIDS.  The recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force seeks to address one of the key challenges in the fight against HIV/AIDS:  The window during which patients respond best to treatment is also the time when symptoms of the disease are least noticeable.

U.S. Spends $1.75 Trillion to Enforce Federal Regulations.  It's a crazy system in which a bloated government meddles in areas that it shouldn't.  This is done via federal regulations that, of course, require manpower and money to enforce.  This costs U.S. taxpayers an astounding $1.75 trillion, an amount larger than all but eight of the world's economies, according to a U.S. senator who is pushing for reform.  It gets better; this means that more than 10% of the nation's economy is spent on trying to satisfy rules issued by Washington bureaucrats [...]

A Property Rights Revolution for 2013.  Martha Boneta had a business license for her tiny farm store in scenic Paris, Virginia, yet she was threatened with fines of up to $5,000 per violation per day for selling organic tea and wool products crafted from her rescued animals, and for hosting a birthday party for eight 10-year-old girls.  Officials from Fauquier County using zoning ordinances to bully Mrs. Boneta never obtained a warrant nor set foot on her property to gather actual evidence.  Instead a county bureaucrat relied on unscrupulous, unlawful methods to make these charges against Mrs. Boneta.  Her store remains closed out of fear of further uncertain charges carrying even criminal penalties.

Could Martial Law Be Right Around The Corner For Americans?  Merely a week after military exercises featuring Blackhawk helicopters were flown over the Miami skyline, the Florida Highway Patrol has informed the public that it will set up "vehicle inspection checkpoints" on specific roadways in at least six Florida counties that will be established during daytime hours.  State troopers will be requesting drivers licenses and conducting a visual inspection of every third vehicle once the checkpoint has been established.

Americans to Washington: Don't tread on me.  Nearly two-fifths of Democrats (38 percent) say the government is a threat to them personally, as do 45 percent of non-gun owners.  Overall, the percentage of Americans who view the federal government as a threat has increased from 36 percent in May 1995 to 53 percent today.

Guns and the Government.  The Supreme Court has ruled consistently and countless times that the "police power," that is, the power to regulate for health, safety, welfare and morality, continues to be reposed in the states, and that there is no federal police power.

The Greyhound Station Gulag.  No formal criminal charges were filed against [Abdulrahman] Zeitoun.  When he protested the denial of his due process rights and rudimentary decencies of living, he was told by the guards that he was under the jurisdiction of FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) — which meant that he was somebody else's problem.  If it hadn't been for an encounter with a Christian missionary ministering to the prisoners — a man Zeitoun believes was sent in literal answer to prayer — it's likely that he and at least one of his friends, a fellow Syrian-American, would still be prisoners of the Department of Homeland Security.

Today's Election Interference Isn't The First Time The FBI's Been Out Of Control.  On February 28, 1993, more than 70 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ("BATF") agents, with help from three military helicopters, launched an attack on the Branch Davidians, an offshoot sect of Seventh-Day Adventism, operating under David Koresh's leadership.  The attack took place at the Davidians' sprawling residence called Mount Carmel, in Waco, Texas.  The attack was spurred by allegations that Koresh and his followers had illegally converted semi-automatic rifles to full-automatic capacity and that nothing short of a massive military-style raid would make it possible to arrest David Koresh and properly search the residence.  To build the public case, the government alleged that the Davidians were a child-molesting cult.  The BATF agents botched the raid.  The result was that several were killed, and the remainder were forced into a humiliating retreat and ultimate surrender.  According to one writer, the real reason for the raid was that the BATF "saw the Branch Davidians... as the perfect patsies for a high-profile raid that would make G-men look like heroes."  After the ATF debacle, the FBI was called in to deal with the mess.  The FBI's involvement ultimately ended in a fiery inferno.  The FBI caused much of the main building to collapse on the Davidians, leaving 76 burned corpses buried in the smoldering rubble.

Waco 30 Years Later: It Is Not an Atrocity if the Feds Do It.  Thirty years ago, FBI tanks smashed into the ramshackle home of the Branch Davidians outside Waco, Texas.  After the FBI collapsed much of the building atop the residents, a fire erupted and 76 corpses were dug out of the rubble.  Unfortunately, the American political system and media have never honestly portrayed the federal abuses and political deceit that led to that carnage.  What lessons can today's Americans draw from the FBI showdown on the Texas plains 30 years ago?  Janet Reno, the nation's first female attorney general, approved the FBI's assault on the Davidians.  Previously, she had zealously prosecuted child abuse cases in Dade County, Florida, though many of her high-profile convictions were later overturned because of gross violations of due process.  Reno approved the FBI assault after being told "babies were being beaten."  It is not known who told her about the false claims of child abuse; Reno claimed she couldn't remember.  Her sterling reputation helped the government avoid any apparent culpability for the deaths of 27 children on April 19, 1993.  After Reno publicly promised to take responsibility for the outcome at Waco, the media conferred instant sainthood upon her.  At a press conference the day after the fire, President Bill Clinton declared, "I was frankly — surprised would be a mild word — to say that anyone that would suggest that the Attorney General should resign because some religious fanatics murdered themselves."  According to a Federal News Service transcript, the White House press corps applauded Clinton's comment on Reno.

President Trump Kicking Off His 2024 Campaign in Waco Sends the Right Message to the Right People.  The Trump 2024 presidential campaign will officially kick off Saturday afternoon in Waco, Texas.  The symbolism of former President Trump, beset by potential political indictments at the state and federal level, starting his presidential campaign at the site of the most egregious and unprovoked act of violence perpetrated upon US citizens by the federal government in the history of the Republic can't go unnoticed by even the dimmest bulbs in the ranks of NeverTrump.

Democrats Melt Down Because Trump Held a Rally in Waco.  Of all the dumb things leftists could be complaining about, this has to rank among the absolute dumbest.  On Saturday, former President Donald Trump decided to hold his latest rally in Waco, Texas, the city where the government murdered 76 people, including 25 children.  Here's a surprise:  Democrats aren't happy about it.  In fact, several left-wing influencers and media activists took to the interwebs to whine about Trump having the unmitigated gall to hold a rally only a few miles away from the site of one of the greatest atrocities the federal government has committed in recent memory.

Waco Massacre and the FBI — 30 years ago.  The ATF's attempt to execute a surprise search warrant on February 28, 1993, was thwarted after a local reporter tipped off a post office employee, who was Koresh's brother-in-law.  With their cover blown, ATF agents retreated.  Gunfire was heard, but there's a controversy as to where the shots originated, and from whom.  AFT agents attempted to breach the compound, at which time several agents and Branch Davidian members were killed or wounded.  The ensuing shootout lasted two hours.  Although ATF subsequently established contact with Koresh, the FBI took control because of the deaths of federal agents.  Over the course of the next 51 days, a group of 25 FBI negotiators communicated with Koresh. [...] The final assault started at 5:50 am on April 19, 1993, and escalated throughout the day.  Images of the burning compound were broadcast around the world.  Debate continues as to whether the explosions and fires in the compound were the result of the assault or if they were initiated by the members themselves.  Only nine people escaped the building.  In all, 76 men, women, and children died.

The Clinton administration's deadly mistake that gave rise to Oklahoma City, Columbine and Jan. 6.  Early in the morning on April 19, 1993, the FBI sent in tanks to doze the walls of the massive Mount Carmel compound in Waco, Tex.  It was a drastic measure to force Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and his people to surrender and face justice after a 51-day standoff that had begun with an illegal weapons investigation and the shooting deaths of six Davidians and four agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  The Feds had attempted to get Koresh's followers to surrender in the days and weeks prior with little success.  So the FBI — who already looked bad after two followers of Koresh snuck through police lines to join the Davidians — began lobbying for approval to use more forceful tactics to take control of the situation.  "When this event started to dominate the news ... the pressure escalated on the FBI to end this thing.  It made the Clinton administration look terrible, it made the FBI look silly," Kevin Cook, author of "Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America's Modern Militias," out Tuesday, told The [New York] Post.  So the Feds pressured then-new Attorney General Janet Reno to allow them to use tear gas — "a tear gas that wasn't allowed in warfare and she did."

The Waco Siege:  What Happened When the Feds Laid Siege to the Branch Davidian Compound.  The siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, is an important event in American history because it directly led to one of the biggest terrorist attacks on American soil — the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building.  It's not necessary to defend this act of terrorism to understand why the entire freedom movement of the time was so incensed by it.  Indeed, it stood as a symbol of federal overreach and the corruption of the Clinton Administration.  It's important to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the siege of Waco, just as it is important to do so with the siege of Ruby Ridge or the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi.  With every event, it is important to stick to the facts and what can be extrapolated from them to make the strongest argument about what went wrong and why, and what could be done differently in the future.

Waco:  The Untold Story.  ATF management knew that a peaceful arrest would have been easy to arrange — if they wanted it that way.  ATF management did not.  At this point, it was a beleaguered agency, wracked by scandals, with a new administration promising to "reinvent government" by doing away with small, inefficient agencies.  The beginning of the ATF's appropriation cycle was under two weeks away.  ATF management desperately needed lots of good publicity, the type that a dramatic raid would generate and a quiet arrest would not. [...] All this evidence has been available, largely on the internet, for over a decade.  We are left to hope that some journalist or documentarian will pick up the ball.

Overview of the Waco Massacre.  In 1993, 76 citizens — including 26 children — were burned to death when the FBI laid siege to a Branch Davidian compound in Waco on the grounds they believed cult leader David Koresh possessed unauthorized weapons.  However, there was no reason for the FBI to use police state tactics.  Koresh visited town almost every week and could have easily been arrested during these excursions.  Six years later the FBI admitted during the course of a civil lawsuit that the tear gas it fired into the compound was, in fact, pyrotechnic tear gas, which, probably caused the fire that killed most of the people.  The shells were even stamped with a fire warning.  Moreover, a law enforcement infrared video revealed muzzle flashes from the FBI's positions, so contrary to the FBI's testimony that they did not fire "a single shot," it appears its snipers were shooting people as they tried to escape the compound.  Indeed, a Policy Analysis report by the Heritage Foundation stated that "numerous crimes by government agents were never seriously investigated or prosecuted" and therefore, "the people serving in our federal police agencies may well come to the conclusion that it is permissible to recklessly endanger the lives of innocent people, lie to newspapers, obstruct congressional subpoenas, and give misleading testimony in our courtrooms."

Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the swamp.  As one alternate juror put it, "I felt like a little kid that finds out there is no Santa Claus."  This was the remark of one citizen who observed testimony and other evidence arising from the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident, in which an innocent woman and her 14-year-old son were ambushed and gunned down by federal agents over what was, at worst, a minor infraction that could easily have been remedied without violence.  Then, in the following year, the Waco incident proved, once again, that there is no government Santa Claus.  Seventy-six men, women, and children were killed in a fire started by the improper use of tear gas by federal agents after four of the agents were killed trying to gain forced entry to the building housing the targeted cult members.  Yet the cult leader could easily have been arrested in prior days, when he had voluntarily visited the federal office to which he had been summoned.

Hillary Clinton and the Branch Davidian Holocaust.  [Vince] Foster had a special Waco file.  Deborah Gorham, his personal secretary, said that he had a cabinet reserved for his most sensitive files:  "There were two.  One was Sean Hadden [a White House staffer], and the other was Waco."  After his death, Foster's Waco file somehow vanished.  Secret Service Agent Henry O'Neil later testified before a Congressional committee that on the night of Foster's death he encountered Maggie Williams leaving Foster's office with two handfuls of folders.  Williams denied removing any files, and when called upon to explain her presence in Foster's office that night, claimed she had gone "in the irrational hope that she would find her colleague still alive there."

More about Vince Foster.

Hillary Clinton and the Chain of Command at Waco.  The 1993 Waco showdown began when federal authorities rushed the communal home of a religious group, killing six of them, and losing four agents in return.  The FBI then besieged the place with tanks and other armored vehicles, and ended up with the armored vehicles punching holes in the building, and injecting massive quantities of CS "tear gas." When that didn't work, the tanks began to demolish the building, eventually smashing about a quarter of it and damaging the remainder.  A fire broke out and 74 people died in the flames, including twenty-one children.  It was the deadliest law enforcement operation in American history.  After the tragic debacle, the Clinton administration claimed that Attorney General Janet Reno had been solely responsible for the final assault.  There had been no White House input during the siege, and at the end, President Clinton only acquiesced in a decision Reno had made.  Twenty-three years later, there are substantial reasons to doubt the truth of these claims.  The evidence is strong that the Clinton White House was calling the shots, and that Hillary played a prominent role.

Hillary's Waco Deception.  Before Benghazi, before the e-mail scandal, before the numerous allegations of impropriety involving the Clinton Foundation, there was Waco.  On April 19, 1993, a few short months into Bill Clinton's first presidential term, nearly 80 men, women, and children perished at Mt. Carmel, their religious community and home near Waco, Texas.  A Federal investigation into the tragedy in 2000 found that government agents were not responsible for the deaths of Davidian civilians — that the sect members who died there had committed mass suicide, similar to the Kool-Aid drinking by Jim Jones' aficionados, but more violent.  This verdict was significant, given the allegations by Davidian survivors and relatives that sect members had been shot as they tried to flee their burning buildings.  And while many laid blame for the outcome at the feet of then-Attorney General Janet Reno, there are claims that Hillary Clinton was actually the one in charge.

Hasn't Al Sharpton Heard of Waco?  Those like Sharpton who hope to nationalize the police might want to recall what our national police forces accomplished on the dusty plains outside of Waco, Texas, twenty-two years ago next Sunday.  For those of short memory, the FBI, trying to mop up for a botched earlier raid by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), launched a tank attack on a Branch Davidian religious community called the Mount Carmel Center.  The ATF had gotten it into its head that the Branch Davidians were converting legally owned, semi-automatic AR-15s into illegal, fully automatic weapons.  The ATF had no proof of this beyond the report from one neighbor who thought he heard machine gun fire, a report that the local sheriff had already investigated and discounted.

Disastrous raid on the Branch Davidians compound near Waco quietly remembered 20 years later.  The 20th anniversary of the disastrous raid on the Branch Davidians compound near Waco passed quietly Thursday [2/28/2013], as colleagues of the four agents who died gathered in private and local officials made no plans to mark the day.

Waco's Assault on Religious Toleration.  Looking over the span of American history, we must be struck by what a radical departure the conflict marked in religious terms.  Rather than ask what could have led believers to follow such a bizarre movement, we should see the Davidians as part of a well-established tradition of religious movements in America.  It is the ferocity of the official response that still demands explanation.

The Editor says...
Once again, it wasn't Waco that did this.  The evidence points to Janet Reno and Bill Clinton.

Progressives, Guns, and the Assault on Truth.  It is very clear that the Obama anti-private gun ownership people are on the offensive right now.  The mass murder of little children by a private gun user has a way of doing that.  (There was no such outcry when Bill Clinton and Janet Reno ordered the massacre of more than 20 children at Waco in 1993.  After all, Branch Davidians were on the fringes of what "bien-pesant" journalists would call polite or acceptable society, or what my academic colleagues call "wackos," "gun nuts," and "whack jobs."  In other words, they were not like the rest of us, so the FBI and BATF gave them what they deserved.) [...] On top of that, we have seen exponential increases in SWAT-type raids in which innocent people are killed, young children terrorized, and people unnecessarily exposed to police brutality.

The 'Heroic' Louis Freeh and His Legacies.  [Scroll down]  No, I am writing in order to let readers know that this "heroic" Louis Freeh has some serious baggage of his own, baggage that includes covering up murders, whitewashing the most hideous domestic massacre since Wounded Knee, publicly making wrongful accusations, and further turning the Federal Bureau of Investigation into an entity that James Bovard accurately has called, "A Stasi for America."

When They Come for the Smaller Groups...  Everywhere, totalitarian governments do the same:  one group after another, singled out, marginalized, demonized, and then safely destroyed or brutalized.  And the rest of the population remains silent.  Why?  Because "I am not a Jew, or a Ukrainian, or a Menshevik, or a kulak, or a person with glasses."  The massacre in Waco of a few days ago bears all the marks of this tactics.  A group is picked so small and marginal that most people won't associate with them.  The group is then marginalized and demonized, and all kinds of false accusations are said about them — violence, illegal drugs, illegal weapons, etc.  Then, when the group is so marginalized that the majority of the population won't trust them, and won't take their word for anything, the government ambushes them and guns them down. [...] It was that same Waco that saw an earlier version of the same tactics, with the Branch Davidians.

31 Years After Ruby Ridge, the FBI Is Still Killing Americans with Impunity.  It's been 31 years since the beginning of the FBI's murderous siege on the home of the Weaver family.  The deadly incident prompted enough outrage to spur Congressional hearings, protests from across the political spectrum, several dramatized TV portrayals and a promise from the FBI and Department of Justice that they would revise the reckless tactics used at Ruby Ridge to avoid future tragedies (this was six months before the Waco massacre).  Fast forward to 2023, and the only difference in relation to federal law enforcement behavior is the disappearance of journalists and politicians willing to demand accountability from the FBI.

Rebellion Against the People.  While it's important to justify one's position, to provide proof and evidence of crimes, betrayals and treason, I believe we're past the discovery phase and need to move on to the resolution.  What more do we need to know than the CIA has been involved in some of the most treacherous acts committed against the republic, that they've had their hands in the dirtiest of business?  What more do we need to know than the FBI has worked with social media companies to install a worthless, feckless president, perpetrating a treasonous coup in the guise of an election?  All of this, while recently verified, was information we had long since accepted as true.  Such villainous acts were known in 1992 when Vicki Weaver was shot down by a government sniper while holding her infant at Ruby Ridge.  Does that not speak of the inhumanity with which the government views all of us with dissenting views, those who will not simply obey every outrageous law or dictate?  To domestic enemies, patriots are scum.  This is a division between the people and those entrusted with power that cannot be ignored without the absolute destruction of the republic in all but name.  That is the current state of the union and has been, I would venture, since 1963.

Mr. Weaver passed away Wednesday at the age of 74.
Flashback: Randy Weaver Of Ruby Ridge Speaks About The Waco Massacre.  Following the passing of Randy Weaver on Wednesday, Infowars dug into the archives and found this interview where Weaver shared his opinion on the Branch Davidian massacre in Waco, Texas as locals helped rebuild the church.  Weaver was the focus of the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff at his cabin near Naples, Idaho that ended with the tragic deaths of his mother and son at the hands of the federal government.  [Video clip]

ADL Defames Ruby Ridge's Randy Weaver Less Than 24 Hours After His Death.  A Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Extremism, with the Anti-Defamation League, Mark Pitcavage, has taken to Twitter to lob accusations of "white supremacy" against Ruby Ridge's Randy Weaver, less than 24 hours after he had passed away.  [Tweet]  For those who remember, Randy Weaver was caught in an entrapment situation wherein the Federal Government attempted to get Randy to sell illegal firearms before eventually shooting and killing his dog, his son, and his wife.  Mark Pitcavage claims the federal government's handling of the situation, as in, the senseless killing of an innocent family, directly resulted in individuals having issues with the government.

Siege at Ruby Ridge:  The Forgotten History of the ATF Shootout that Started a Militia Movement.  The short version is this:  Randy Weaver and his wife Vicki moved with their four kids to the Idaho Panhandle, near the Canadian border, to escape what they thought was an increasingly corrupt world.  The Weavers held racial separatist beliefs, but were not involved in any violent activity or rhetoric.  They were peaceful Christians who simply wanted to be left alone.  Specifically for his beliefs, Randy Weaver was targeted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) in an entrapping "sting" operation designed to gain his cooperation as a snitch.  When he refused to become a federal informant, he was charged with illegally selling firearms.  Due to a miscommunication about his court date, the Marshal Service was brought in, who laid siege to his house and shot and killed his wife and 14-year-old son.

Ruby Ridge and the Age of State Terrorism.  Sara Weaver has forgiven the people responsible for murdering her mother Vicki and younger brother Samuel twenty years ago.  Lon Horiuchi, the FBI sniper who shot Vicki in the head while she was holding a ten-month-old infant, is still being sheltered by the Regime that employed him.  If he were any part of a man, Horiuchi would make a pilgrimage to Sara's home in Montana to express remorse for the crimes he committed against her family.