Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Category Archives: History

Does Decline in Consumer Sentiment Portend a Recession?

Monday, 16 May 2022 14:17
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, May 16, 2022:  

According to a report released last week by the University of Michigan,

The University of Michigan consumer sentiment for the US fell to 59.1 in May of 2022, the lowest since August of 2011, from 65.2 in April and below market forecasts of 64, as Americans remained concerned over … inflation.

Behind the headline there was little good news:

The current economic conditions index fell to 63.6, the lowest in 13 years while the expectations gauge sank to 56.2 from 62.5….

 

To make things even worse, the index of buying conditions for durable goods, such as household appliances, fell to the lowest level since the survey began in 1978….

 

Consumers’ assessment of their current financial situation relative to a year ago is at its lowest reading since 2013, with 36% of consumers attributing their negative assessment to inflation.

Economic prognosticators make a handsome living explaining the continuing drop in consumer sentiment. Topping the list is rising prices, incorrectly but repeatedly called “inflation.” Rising prices is the result of the inflation of the currency and the Federal Reserve is responsible for that.

Regardless, consumers see the impact every day at the grocery store and the gas pump. Every day they see their paychecks purchasing less and less. And they’re mad at Joe Biden, pushing his job approval rate to ever lower lows.

There are plenty of other “causes,” including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the invasion of illegals across the nation’s southern border, China’s internal lockdowns disrupting the supply chain, and the Fed’s belated response to the rising prices that its policies have created.

The Fed is playing catch up. Initially Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said last fall that the rise in prices was “transitory.” Now, to quench the fire he started, he is raising interest rates under the assumption that a slower economy will force prices down. There is little talk of the Fed reducing the money supply, which is the only permanent solution.

The Fed’s recent 50 basis point (half of a percentage point) rise in the Fed Funds Rate is not only the largest single increase in 22 years, but Powell has promised a similar half-point rise in interest rates at each of the next two meetings of the Fed’s Board of Governors.

The trick is to avoid raising interest rates too far and too fast, forcing a contraction in economic output. Two quarters of negative growth is the classic definition of a recession.

Some are blaming Wall Street, which has given up about a fifth of its value just since the first of the year. More than $7 trillion has evaporated from the stock market so far this year.

Others are saying that the decline on Wall Street is a predictor of a recession six months out.

Still others point to the recent “yield curve inversion,” that moment in time when short-term interest rates rise above long-term interest rates. The history is unhappy: That “inversion” has preceded every recession since 1955 — and giving only one “false positive” during that time — according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Another good living is made by those predicting just how far Wall Street will drop in the event of a recession. One firm doing just that is DataTrek, which is saying Wall Street could drop another 25 percent before finding a bottom. That would bring the Dow, currently trading at 32,200, down to 24,000. And the S&P 500 Index, currently at 4,000, would decline to 3,000.

One prognosticator with a remarkable record of calling tops and bottoms is Barry Ritholtz. His asset-management firm, Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC, has over $2.7 billion in assets under management. His blog, The Big Picture, generates half a million page views every month, and he is one of the few who saw the coming housing implosion and derivative mess long before his peers.

Today he is taking the long view. He wrote on Friday that there are many competing explanations for the selloff on Wall Street, including “inflation, war, rising Fed Fund rates, [the] end of cheap capital, [the] fall-off in liquidity, [the] impending recession, and political unrest.”

He thinks there is a simpler answer: a reversion to the mean. Wrote Ritholtz:

Over the past decade, we have enjoyed returns of above 14% per year … the past two years gained 20% and 28%….

 

Over longer periods of time, equity markets generate average returns of 8-9%….

 

Perhaps [the decline] is nothing more complex than mean reversion.

For the long haul, Ritholtz remains bullish:

This market could/should have another good 5-7 years in it (assuming random events do not mess it up).

 

That is how I have been seeing this market for a while: it is one part history, one part secular theory, [and] two parts wishful thinking.

Homeschooling Surge From Covid Is Permanent, Says AP

Tuesday, 19 April 2022 13:21
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, April 19, 2022: 

Following what the Associated Press (AP) said is “the most rapid rise in homeschooling the U.S. has ever seen,” homeschool parents “continue directing their children’s educations themselves.”

Prior to Covid, about three percent, or two million, young people were being homeschooled, according to the Census Bureau. That number tripled during the 2020-2021 school year, said AP, and fell off only slightly the next year.

The media outlet blamed the initial increase on the Covid shutdowns but had trouble dealing with the reasons homeschool parents are staying with the program. It gave three reasons: “health concerns, disagreement with school policies, and a desire to keep what has worked for their children.”

But, as Jazz Shaw, writing for Hot Air, explained, there is much more behind the move than just a “disagreement with school policies.” Parents, once forced to see exactly what their children were being taught in public schools, were aghast. Wrote Shaw:

I would imagine that a much bigger factor is the realization by many parents that too many public schools simply don’t do a very good job, despite the endless amounts of money that state and local governments flush into them. This is particularly true in more economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, where graduation and college acceptance rates remain unacceptably low.

 

On top of that, there is obviously a growing realization among parents that the nation’s public schools have largely turned from being centers of education to centers of indoctrination.

 

Doing away with honors programs (because they are supposedly racist) and adding in highly sexualized “gender awareness” programs isn’t helping matters either.

 

For every parent who learns that the school told their children “don’t tell your parents,” there are probably a dozen more families pulling the plug on public schooling.

 

And as an added bonus, children being educated at home don’t need to put on a d**n mask.

AP learned from the Census Bureau that black families have benefited the most from the surge in homeschooling: “The proportion of Black families homeschooling their children increased by five times, from 3.3% to 16.1% … while the proportion about doubled across other groups.”

Parents with children in public schools are learning the real purpose of public schools: socialization and integration. Said the late Horace Mann, a 19th-century politician known for his support for public schools, “Public Education is the cornerstone of our community and our democracy.” He knew, of course, that the Founders never intended to establish a democracy but took pains to avoid one by instituting a constitutional republic instead.

John Dewey, another educational “reformer” living at the same time as Mann, was more blatant about the real purpose of public schooling: “A socialized mind … is the method of social control.”

As Briana Brockbank wrote in Family Today:

Home education allows parents to adapt the curriculum to the student’s needs. Also, parents have a say in how the student will learn and what they will learn.

David Harper, principal of Freedom Project Academy, an affiliate of The John Birch Society, took it to another level. In a conversation with The New American, he said, “We teach our students how to think, not what to think.” He went on to say that his online program teaches students critical-thinking skills, how to defend positions, and how to present ideas, all based on a classical education model.

One parent’s testimony reveals just how effective Freedom Project is:

I would like to thank the faculty and staff of Freedom Project Academy for equipping my children with strong academic courses taught from a Christian worldview by teachers who integrated their faith in their teaching and their rapport with their students.

 

My daughter, a former FPA student, just graduated from Eastern Nazarene with a BS in Business and a minor in Biology. My son will graduate FPA this year and head to Florida Polytechnic University.

 

My deepest appreciation to everyone at FPA!

In the past two years, according to Harper, online enrollment at FPA has doubled, and enrollment for the 2022-2023 school year, which opened just two weeks ago, is ahead of schedule. For more information, go to https://fpeusa.org.

Georgia 25th State to Pass Constitutional Carry

Wednesday, 13 April 2022 16:09
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, April 13, 2022:  

When Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law Senate Bill 319 — aka the Georgia Constitutional Carry Act — on Tuesday, he said:

SB 319 makes sure that law-abiding Georgians … can protect themselves without having [to obtain] the permission of the state government.

 

The Constitution of the United States gives us that right, not the government….

 

People don’t have to carry if they don’t want to. But this is a constitutional authority that people have, and they certainly shouldn’t have [to get] a piece of paper from the government to be able to legally carry a firearm.

Kemp also signed into law Senate Bill 218 ensuring that citizens from other states who already have their concealed-carry licenses will also enjoy the same right in Georgia.

The law is effective immediately, and will save gun owners the $75 license fee and the ignominy of having to undergo a mental-health check as well as a background check. This has another advantage: No background check means no entry into the recently revealed national gun registry that the ATF has been keeping under wraps for years.

Georgia’s anti-gun politicians tried to block the bill by using old, outdated, and weak arguments. Democrat State Representative Kimberly Alexander intoned, “This legislation will … allow individuals with a criminal history who purchase a gun through a private sale to legally carry a hidden, loaded weapon in our communities.”

Alexander is correct: once an individual has paid his or her debt to society, their Second Amendment-protected right is restored. She is incorrect by intimating that they will cause an increase in gun violence upon their release, for at least two reasons: They may have reformed their behavior while incarcerated, and the new law would no doubt dampen any enthusiasm they have to return to their old ways simply because their search for a “soft target” — an unarmed citizen — is now going to be much more difficult.

Another anti-gun Democrat, State Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, ranted:

The governor is signing away lives [with] this bill. It is a sad day in Georgia when we have to watch legislation enacted that we know will cause harm, as this will….

 

He wants more guns on the streets, and the shameful outcome of that is more gun violence.

Both complaints are without merit, and John Lott’s research has proved it. The founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, Lott noted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines.

 

Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

When Lowndes County, Georgia, Sheriff Ashley Paulk was asked about the impact SB 319 might have in his county, he responded:

I don’t expect that [it] will have a big impact around here. The criminals don’t care — they’re going to get their weapons anyway — and a law-abiding citizen with a weapon won’t make trouble.

Lott agrees: Firearms violations among police officers are extremely low, as would be expected. But among those “law-abiding citizens” who now are free to carry without first being forced to get permission, firearms violations are one-seventh — 2.4 per 100,000 versus 16.5 per 100,000 — that of the police.

The real change will be in the behavior of criminals already on the streets seeking soft targets. They are now facing an existential question in their line of work: Is my target armed, or should I find another less-risky means of gain?

With half the states in the union allowing their citizens the freedom to exercise their rights under the Second Amendment, just how long will it take for the others to grant the same freedoms to their citizens?

At the moment, Florida and Nebraska are on the verge of passing similar laws, with South Carolina right behind. This is allowing the Second Amendment to occupy the place the Founders of the Republic intended: the anchor securing the others in the Bill of Rights.

Cook Political Report: No “Red Tsunami,” Just a Strong Red Wave Coming in November

Tuesday, 05 April 2022 13:01
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, April 5, 2022:  

Predictions, forecasts, and guesses about the November midterms speak of a “red tsunami.” Amy Walter, editor of the highly regarded Cook Political Report, dampened some of that enthusiasm with her carefully reasoned article: Republicans are likely to flip between 15 and 25 seats in the House in November. Depending on who actually takes the oath of office in January 2023, at least the new Congress will have the ability to stop the madness.

On the surface, it looks as if the November elections are the Republicans’ to lose: The National Republican Congressional Commission (NRCC) just expanded its list of “vulnerable,” winnable districts from 72 to 82. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House after the 1994 “red tsunami” flipped 54 seats, recently predicted:

I believe an immediate, consistent, and effective Republican application of the lessons of 2021 could lead to a 40- to 70-seat gain in the House; at least a four-seat gain in the Senate; and gains in governorships, state legislatures, and local offices including school boards next year.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff, after reviewing a poll he conducted for NBC, concluded that the Democrats are “headed for a catastrophic election [in November].”

Walter’s reasoning:

In 2010, Republicans won the House vote by almost seven points, a 17-point improvement from their 2008 showing. They ended up winning a whopping 64 seats that year.

If that seven-point shift holds up, then it follows that, wrote Walter, “At a very crude level, we could say that it would shift the 2020 vote margin in every CD (congressional district by) about 7 points more Republican.”

There are 435 congressional districts. How many are in play? “Any district that Biden carried by less than 7 points would be in danger of flipping to the GOP.” That number, according to Walter, is just 21 congressional districts.

The good news is that Republicans already hold eight of those 21 districts. So, the contest will be decided in just 13 districts.

As Walter noted:

Every metric we use to analyze the political environment — the president’s approval rating, the mood of the electorate, the enthusiasm gap — all point to huge gains for the GOP this fall.

 

But those metrics are bumping up against an increasingly “sorted” House with few marginal seats and few incumbents sitting in the “wrong district.”

 

As such, the more likely scenario for this fall is a GOP gain in the 15-25 seat range.

Opinion pollster FiveThirtyEight agrees with Walter. In its own analysis, just 33 out of 435 House seats fall into its “highly competitive” category.

The first state primaries are 40 days away; the November midterm election is six months away. As former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson said, “A week is a long time in politics.”

That means that there’s still plenty of time for Republicans to blow an historic opportunity. And it’s also more than enough time for Biden and company to chip away at its dwindling Democrat base with its dangerous and treasonous buffoonery to make the Republican victory in the November elections even more historic than Gingrich or McInturff are predicting.

Indiana the 24th Constitutional-carry State. Three More States Right Behind

Monday, 04 April 2022 12:30
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 4, 2022:  

Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law on March 21 his state’s permitless carry bill that had passed both the state’s House and Senate overwhelmingly.

That makes 24. And the third state so far this year.

On March 10, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a similar bill into law. This was followed by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who signed a constitutional-carry bill into law on March 14.

Georgia is next, as a similar bill passed both state houses last Friday and will arrive shortly on Governor Brian Kemp’s desk for signing.

Said Kemp earlier, “The Constitution should be our carry permit, and I look forward to signing a Constitutional Carry measure this year to enshrine hardworking Georgians’ ability to protect themselves and their families in Georgia law.”

National Rifle Association (NRA) Chairman Wayne LaPierre told Fox News:

The success of the carry movement in America cannot be denied at this point. When Gov. Brian Kemp signs this landmark legislation, half of America will protect the right to carry as an inherent and inalienable right.

Two more states — Florida and Nebraska — are on the brink of passing laws protecting their citizens’ right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, without first having to get permission to do so.

South Carolina is right behind, with conservative, pro-constitutional Republican majorities in both state houses. Constitutional-carry bills failed to pass last year, but pressure is building on Governor Henry McMaster to urge the legislature to bring such a bill to his desk for signing.

Tennessee already has a “partial” constitutional carry law in place, but it only applies to handguns, and legislators in the Volunteer State are itching to amend it to include long guns. What’s in place, according to John Harris, executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association, is “not real constitutional carry,” and his group is lobbying to expand the present law.

It should be noted that not a single state has repealed a constitutional-carry law, nor has there been a single move in any state to consider such a move.

It should also be noted that arguments against such laws consist primarily of worries that more firearms will mean more gun violence. But that has simply not been the case. According to the Crime Research Prevention Center (CRPC), firearms violations by police officers are very low — about 16.5 for every 100,000 police officers. For citizens who already have a permit, the rate is even lower: 2.4 per 100,000.

Further research by the CRPC reveals that gun violence drops as private gun ownership increases. As John Lott, founder of the CRPC, noted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines.

 

Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

That makes sense, as the people who benefit the most from carrying a firearm are the most likely to be victims: They are “overwhelmingly,” wrote Lott, “poor Blacks who live in high-crime urban areas.”

As states increasingly remove infringements from the right to keep and bear arms, it becomes increasingly difficult for tyrants to turn the American Republic into a dictatorship. To succeed, they must first disarm every private owner of his firearms. At present, the momentum is heading in the other direction.

The Second Amendment was never about duck hunting. It was always about keeping the government in check.

A quote from Adolf Hitler bears repeating:

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.

 

History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.

War in Ukraine Reminds Americans of Need for Second Amendment

Thursday, 31 March 2022 14:50
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, March 31, 2022:  

The day before the Russian invasion, Ukrainian citizens suffered under some of the most severe gun-ownership restrictions in the world: One had to be 21 to buy a shotgun and 25 to own a rifle. Handgun ownership was banned altogether.

A background check was required, along with a mental exam, the payment of a fee, taking a gun-safety class, and owning a government-certified gun safe for storage.

The process was designed to impede approval, which often took months and usually resulted in permission being denied.

That same day — February 23, 2022 — the Ukrainian parliament passed a law allowing Ukrainians to buy all the firearms they wanted. President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted:

We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country. Be ready to support Ukraine in the squares of our cities.

It has been reported that between 10,000 and 25,000 fully automatic rifles were snapped up by Ukrainians that same day.

As English writer Samuel Johnson once famously said, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” 

 

From the NRA’s institute for Legislative Action:

Anti-gun commentators — Joe Biden among them — often mock the idea that an armed populace poses any obstacle to a modern military force. But some are now singing a different tune, now that ordinary Ukrainians are taking up arms in response to [the] Russian invasion.

From the Firearms Policy Coalition:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unequivocally reinforces the importance of the right to keep and bear arms beyond defense against single attackers and reminds Americans that the Second Amendment is as relevant today as ever.

From Bearing Arms:

Better late than never. This is a “break glass in case of emergency” moment, which is why the country’s parliament is … willing to reverse decades of restrictions and allow citizens the ability to carry firearms.

From Gun Owners of America:

Severe gun control policies infringed on the right of Ukrainian citizens to keep and bear arms until the very moment a nuclear world superpower launched its ground invasion.

 

Now it’s up to the government to pass out as many fully automatic weapons as it can … [so] that civilians might successfully repel a Russian invasion.

From Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

While we’ve seen reports that the Ukraine Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) has voted to ease restrictions allowing civilians to carry arms outside their homes, in our country this has been the constitutional law of the land since our nation was founded.

 

The right of the people to keep and bear arms has protected this country since the beginning, and what is happening right now in Ukraine should be a lesson to all of those who push for citizen disarmament and a ban on private gun ownership how perilous that would be….

 

Our Second Amendment was enshrined in the Bill of Rights by men who had just fought a war for independence. They returned to their homes from battlefields, not from some deer hunting camp.

The right to keep and bear arms has never been about shooting ducks, but about protecting our right as citizens of the greatest nation on earth to defend our homes and families immediately against the kind of international outrage now unfolding in eastern Europe.

 

From John Lott, founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center:

A lot of these countries have laws left over from the Communist era when gun ownership was basically banned. In the Ukraine, less than 2 percent legally owned a gun until the invasion. Then 18,000 fully automatic rifles were handed out in one day.

Even the far-left media outlet Occupy Democrats reversed itself. It tweeted:

Ukraine’s Interior Minister announces that 10,000 automatic rifles have been handed out to the civilians of Kyiv as they prepare to fight tooth and nail to defend their homes against Putin’s invasions. RT (retweet) if you stand with the brave Ukrainian People!

Putin failed to learn a valuable lesson from another tyrant bent on enslaving people: Adolf Hitler. On the same that day France surrendered to his Nazi blitzkrieg, June 25, 1940, he ordered his generals to draw up a plan to invade and subjugate Switzerland. The plan, called Operation Tannenbaum, which called for 11 German divisions and 15 more Italian divisions — between 300,000 and 500,000 troops — was drawn up but never implemented. As Michael Peck, writing for The National Interest, explained why:

The Axis would have faced formidable opposition. As with Sweden, Swiss neutrality was an armed neutrality.… All Swiss men were liable for conscription, and all were issued with rifles that they kept at home in case of mobilization.

 

For a nation of just four million people, the Swiss could have mustered an army as large as 850,000 strong. Largely mountainous Switzerland, where German tanks would have been useless, would have been a tough nut for blitzkrieg to crack.

Latest Polls Show Biden Increasingly Underwater

Monday, 28 March 2022 20:48
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 28, 2022:  

The results of two establishment polls released last week continue to confirm Americans’ increasing disapproval of Joe Biden. Even among Democrats, the polls reflect increasing disenchantment with their president.

The NBC News poll, taken between March 18 and March 22, reported that Biden’s approval rate has cratered to just 40 percent, the lowest of his time in office, and the lowest pollsters have recorded since 2014. Those polled indicated that they want Republicans to take control of Congress in the midterms by 46 percent to 44 percent. The last time that happened, in 2014, Republicans gained 13 seats in the House and flipped nine seats in the Senate.

Biden’s disapproval rating is now at 55 percent, close to one out of every six Americans.

On nearly every issue, Biden and company are underwater. More than seven out of 10 of those polled have “very little” or “just some” confidence in his ability to handle the Russian attack on Ukraine. That includes 43 percent of Democrats.

Among Biden’s strongest constituencies, his support has faded the most: Among women his support has cratered from 51 percent in January to 44 percent now. Among Hispanic voters, his support has dropped from 48 percent to 39 percent, and among independents, his support has all but disappeared, to 32 percent.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinions Strategy conducted the survey for NBC along with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates. Upon reviewing the findings, McInturff concluded, “What this poll says is that Biden and [the] Democrats are headed for a catastrophic election [in November].”

The poll conducted for the Associated Press (AP) by the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research focused more on how Americans are viewing Biden’s handling, or mishandling, of the crisis in Europe. According to Hannah Fingerhut, writing for the AP, “Only about a quarter are very confident that [Biden] has the ability to handle a crisis, promote U.S. standing in the world, or effectively manage the U.S. military.”

In addition, those polled are increasingly nervous about direct American involvement in that crisis, with nearly half either “extremely” or “very” concerned about America being drawn into a war with Russia. And an increasing number are concerned that nuclear weapons will be used in such a war.

Drilling down into the survey: Just 25 percent of those polled think Biden can “effectively manage the military,” just 32 percent think that he “incorporates the advice of his advisors and experts in his decisions,” only 28 percent think that his decisions and actions “promote the U.S. standing in the world,” and scarcely 26 percent think he can “effectively handle a crisis.”

According to RealClear Politics, there has been little “bounce” for Biden as he has ramped up his war rhetoric. His approval rating briefly touched 45 percent earlier this month, but now rests about where it was before: at 41.1 percent approving and 53.2 disapproving — a negative spread of 12.1 points.

RCP also reports that barely a quarter of Americans think the country is “headed in the right direction,” while two out of three think the nation is on the “wrong track” under Biden.

These two polls were commissioned by the mainstream media, who have slavishly supported Biden from the beginning. The fact that the results cut across that support lends even more credibility to the proposition — and outlook — that the Democrats are, in the words of Republican pollster McInturff, “headed for a catastrophic election [in November].”

New York City’s Reinstated Neighborhood Safety Teams Already Making a Difference

Wednesday, 23 March 2022 21:04
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, March 23, 2022:  

Following some initial success by New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ newly resurrected Neighborhood Safety Teams (NSTs), he announced on Monday that he is rolling out a second wave. He called it “precision policing”: “This is what precision policing is all about.… There’s a clear message: do it right, don’t violate the liberties of people, but go after those guns and those who are the trigger pullers.”

Since the first wave of some 168 officers — in teams of six in each of 28 of the Big Apple’s 177 precincts — began surveilling on Monday, March 14, “we have made 31 arrests,” said the mayor, “and 10 guns [have been] removed from our streets.”

The second wave began on Monday, focusing on another five precincts in high-crime areas.

The city’s police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, who initially was skeptical of the move to reinstate the teams, seemed to be on board. She said, “These impressive results represent the next era of responsive, responsible crime fighting,” adding:

These teams are for gun violence. They’re there for criminal activity. But they look like police officers. They are not in plain clothes. The uniform clearly states on the back: NYPD Police.

Since the effort was suspended in June 2020 by then-Mayor Bill DeBlasio, crime has soared. So far this year there have been 284 people shot, compared to 215 shootings in the same period last year. Adams’ promise to rein in the violence was widely seen as a major factor in his election last November.

Adams’ initial success is being viewed by many as just the first step. Part of his plan is not only to reinvigorate the NSTs, but to work to appoint judges with a “demonstrated commitment to keeping violent criminals who use guns off New York City streets.”

The strategy is similar to the “stop, question, and frisk” policies instituted under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, except for the “frisk” part. The teams use a Terry Stop — based on a Supreme Court decision (Terry v. Ohio) that watered down the Fourth Amendment from “probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion.”

But that “reasonable suspicion” is enhanced using the latest technology, which allows NST officers to identify from a distance when an individual is carrying a firearm. In essence, that technology allows officers to conduct a “virtual” frisk without touching the individual.

It remains to be seen if the initial “success” can be maintained. Tiffany Caban, a Democrat on the city council, said, “Much of the Mayor’s plan is cause for deep concern … [that it’s] built on a foundation of surveillance and punishment, which are ineffective and dangerous.”

Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Adopts “Originalist” Position on the Constitution

Tuesday, 22 March 2022 17:37
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, March 22, 2022: 

Joe Biden’s appointee to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, knew she would be pressed hard for her views on the Constitution: Is it, in her opinion, a “living” document, subject to judicial “interpretation?” Or is it to be interpreted in light of what its authors intended at the time they wrote it?

So, she tried to head off the question by answering it in advance. In her opening statement to the Senate Judicial Committee as her confirmation hearing began on Monday, she said:

I decide cases from a neutral posture. I evaluate the facts, and I interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me, without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath.

If she is confirmed she will take this oath:

 I, Ketanji Brown Jackson, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.

 

So help me God.

On Tuesday, the second day of her confirmation hearing, Jackson reiterated her fealty to originalism:

The adherence to text is a constraint on my authority — trying to figure out what those words mean, as they were intended by the people who wrote them….

 

I’m not importing my personal views or policy preferences. The entire exercise is about trying to understand what those who created this policy or this law intended.

She expanded on her position by specifically rejecting the theory that the Constitution is a “living document” that must be adjusted to changing times and circumstances:

I do not believe that there is a living Constitution in the sense that it’s changing and it’s infused with my own policy perspective or the policy perspective of the day.

 

Instead, the Supreme Court has made clear when you’re interpreting the Constitution, you’re looking at the text at the time of the founding, and what the meaning was.

Perhaps this is a ploy, to disarm Senators ready to challenge her judicial philosophy. By answering the question before it is asked, it puts those Senators on the defensive. If they press the matter, Jackson is free to remind them that she already answered the question.

Is she really a conservative? A black conservative, in the mold of Justice Clarence Thomas? If so, then she will greatly disappoint the far-left liberal group Demand Justice, funded with dark money through the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which itself is funded in part by George Soros and his Open Society Foundations. It was Demand Justice that provided Jackson’s name to Joe Biden and pushed him to nominate her over another equally qualified but more moderate candidate, Michelle Childs.

Jackson provided a clue in her opening remarks on Monday. She looked back fondly on her days as a law clerk for liberal Justice Stephen Breyer:

On the day of his Supreme Court nomination, Justice Breyer said: “What is Law supposed to do, seen as a whole?

 

“It is supposed to allow all people — all people — to live together in a society, where they have so many different views, so many different needs, to live together in a way that is more harmonious, that is better, so that they can work productively together.”

By contrast, French political philosopher and economist Frédéric Bastiat, author of The Law, first published in 1850, wrote:

The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over all.

This should answer the question: Will Jackson, if confirmed, be another Stephen Breyer, as expected? Or will her term as justice on the high court surprise and anger those who thought she was in their liberal, “living constitution” camp?

One senator on the committee, Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), isn’t persuaded. She has hinted that she will grill Jackson about her real agenda and her real judicial philosophy:

I can only wonder: What’s your hidden agenda? Is it to let violent criminals, cop-killers and child predators back to the streets? Is it to restrict parental rights and expand government’s reach into our schools and our private family decisions?

 

Is it to support the radical left’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court?… Is it your personal hidden agenda to incorporate critical race theory into our legal system?

 

These are answers that the American people need to know.

Jackson’s confirmation hearing is likely to extend into the middle of April before the committee issues its vote to confirm, or not.

Liz Cheney Repeats Claim That Trump “Provoked January 6 Attack,” Must Suffer “Enhanced Criminal Penalties”

Monday, 21 March 2022 20:43
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 21, 2022:  

Liz Cheney, co-chair of the infamous January 6 investigative committee, tried to breathe life into the dormant and essentially invisible effort to turn the event into a political tool Democrats can use in November. After months of investigation by the Democrat-controlled committee (also including two rabid Republican anti-Trumpers, Cheney and Adam Schiff), she breathlessly told Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday:

We’re looking at things like: do we need additional enhanced criminal penalties for the kind of supreme dereliction of duty that you saw with [President Donald] Trump when he refused to tell the mob to go home after he had provoked that attack on the Capitol?

After issuing 90 subpoenas and hearing testimony from almost 700 witnesses, this is all she could come up with: “There will be legislative recommendations, and there certainly will be new information.”

But she is sure that former President Trump is guilty of something:

I have not learned a single thing since I have been on this committee that has made me less concerned or less worried about the gravity of the situation and the actions that President Trump took and also refused to take while the attack was underway.

The Washington Post has exposed the sham and the fraud: The committee is nothing more than a political weapon to be used against Trump and his supporters in an attempt to influence the midterm elections in November. Wrote the Post: “They’ll attempt to do so this spring through public hearings, along with a potential interim report and a final report that will be published ahead of the November midterms — with the findings likely [to be] a key part of the Democrats’ midterm strategy.”

Daniel Oliver, chairman of the board of the Education and Research Institute (ERI), writing in Human Events, agrees:

The Pelosi committee is just a tool: a tool with which the Democrats are attempting to discredit Republicans of all stripes and to win the 2022 election … and perhaps also cover up Pelosi’s own rejection of National Guard assistance on January 6….

 

The goal of her committee members is not to discover the truth; they don’t care about the truth any more than they cared about the truth of the now wholly debunked Trump-Russia collusion story, which we now know (we always surmised it) was a Hillary Clinton campaign dirty trick.

 

The immediate goal of the Pelosi cabal is just another dirty trick … poison the 2022 elections.

The only problem with that strategy is that the American people don’t care. They do care about high and increasing gas and grocery prices.  They do care about the increase in violent crime, they do care about the Russian attacks on Ukraine, they do care about the immigration flood overwhelming the nation’s southern border. What don’t they care about? The Cheney/Pelosi farce that is the only tool Democrats think they might have to avoid a cataclysmic, historic bashing in November.

The Cheney/Pelosi cabal will enlist the help of the compliant media. As The Washington Post explained:

[The January committee is] seeking to compile dramatic videos, texts and emails in a digital format that is easy to understand — and easy to share on social media.

 

And they want to put together blockbuster hearings that the public actually tunes into.

But even if they build it, people won’t come. They’ll be much more focused on the failures of the Biden administration and his Democratic enablers in the House and the Senate. And polls show that they’re prepared to do something historic come November: possibly so weaken the Democratic Party with such devastating losses that it will, for a time at least, cease to function as a credible political party.

Biden Enjoys Ukraine “Bounce” in Polls but Remains Underwater Everywhere Else

Monday, 14 March 2022 20:50
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 14, 2022:  

The results of the latest poll done by Ipsos for ABC News showed Joe Biden enjoying a “Ukraine bounce” in the polls, with 48 percent of the 622 adults polled approving of his performance. This is up seven percentage points from a dismal 41 percent in January.

With the exception of a bounce in how he’s handling the pandemic that’s all the good news Ipsos had to report. Everywhere else, from inflation to gas prices, from immigration to crime, Biden’s decline in the polls continues.

Biden’s attempt to blame the jump in gas prices on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin failed the smell test, as did White House Secretary Jan Psaki’s. On Friday Biden said, “Make no mistake. Inflation is largely the fault of Putin.” Earlier, Psaki tried to defect responsibility: “The reason why the price of gas is going up is not because of steps the president has taken. They are because President Putin is invading Ukraine, and that is creating a great deal of instability in the global marketplace.”

House Minority Leader Ken McCarthy scoffed at this: “These are not Putin gas prices. They are Biden gas prices.”

Indeed, gas prices were moving higher long before Putin initiated hostilities in Ukraine.

Other polls reflect the same dismal result for Biden: Polling done for the Wall Street Journal and released last Friday showed his approval at 42 percent, while results of a poll done by Schoen Cooperman Research that were released on Sunday showed Biden “9 points underwater, which marks a 4-point drop since our December poll,” according to the poll’s author Doug Schoen.

In an op-ed piece done for The Hill on Sunday, Schoen, a Democratic pollster, reported that “most voters (61 percent) agree that Biden and Democrats are out of touch with hardworking Americans” and “have been so focused on catering to the far-left wing of the party that they’re ignoring Americans’ day-to-day concerns” such as “rising prices” and “combatting violent crime.”

He added:

Biden’s net approval rating is 9 points underwater (54 percent disapprove, 45 percent approve), which marks a 4-point drop since our December poll (51 percent disapprove, 46 percent approve). A plurality of voters (43 percent) also say that Biden has done worse as president than they expected, rather than better (19 percent)….

 

Biden’s approval rating on handling the nation’s economic recovery is 21 points underwater (59 percent disapprove, 38 percent approve). This marks a notable 17-point decline from our December polling, when Biden’s approval rating on the recovery was negative 4 points, 50 percent to 46 percent.

 

In addition to harboring negative views about the economy generally, two-thirds of voters (68 percent) blame the Biden administration’s policies for inflation either fully or partially.

Schoen summed up the results of his company’s latest poll:

Collectively, our data paints a picture of a Democratic Party that is unable to connect with voters on basic “kitchen table” issues, namely the economy and crime….

 

Ultimately, if Democrats do not embrace a strategic shift to the political center, they risk historic defeats — worse than 1994 or 2010 — in this year’s midterm elections.

For the record, Democrats lost 60 seats in the House and Senate in 1994, and 69 total seats — House and Senate — in 2010. At the time, those losses were considered catastrophic for the Democratic Party.

Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan Indicted

Monday, 07 March 2022 17:01
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 7, 2022:  

Michael Madigan, the longest-serving leader of any state legislature in history (50 years) is facing another possible 20 years — in prison. Last week he was indicted on 22 counts of conspiracy, racketeering, bribery, wire fraud, and attempted extortion. Following an investigation dating back to 2014, and ramped up over the last two years, U.S. Attorney John Lausch stated:

The indictment accuses Madigan of engaging in multiple schemes to reap the benefits of private legal work unlawfully steered to his law firm.… [he is charged with] racketeering conspiracy and individual counts of using interstate facilities in aid of bribery, wire fraud, and attempted extortion….

 

The indictment alleges a long-term, multi-faceted scheme to use public positions for unlawful private gain.

After reviewing the 109-page grand jury indictment, Crain’s Chicago Business journalist A.D. Quig called the scheme the “Madigan Enterprise,” which included co-conspirator and long-time political aide Mike McClain, along with the 13th Ward Democratic Organization and Madigan’s law firm, Madigan & Getzendanner. Madigan, claimed Lausch, used his considerable power accrued over five decades as House Speaker to reward his friends, ensure the cooperation of his allies, and generate income for various associates through these illegal activities. He “used threats, intimidation and extortion” to obtain the cooperation of his enemies.

There were so many enemies Madigan collected over the years that, according to Rich Miller, editor of the Illinois political newsletter the Capitol Fax, “The pile of political corpses outside Madigan’s statehouse door of those who tried to beat him one way or another is a mile high and a mile wide.”

Madigan is the latest in a long line of corrupt Illinois politicians that includes three governors (Rod Blagojevich, Otto Kerner, and George Ryan) and other state pols charged with corruption over the years.

Madigan is best known for his dictatorial control over members of the Illinois House, selecting which bills would receive a favorable hearing and which ones would disappear into the political woodwork. Those loyal received choice legislative assignments and campaign funds.

His former chief of staff, Timothy Mapes, was indicted last May for lying under oath to a federal grand jury that was investigating Consolidated Edison (ConEd) for seeking and receiving favorable benefits from Madigan. Although Madigan wasn’t indicted in that fraud, he was implicated in it, and ConEd ended up paying a $200 million fine.

In 2014, the Chicago Tribune found more than 400 current and retired state and local government employees who had “campaign ties” to Madigan’s machine. His daughter, Lisa, served as Illinois’ state attorney general for more than 15 years.

In 2016, the Illinois Policy Institute published a documentary about Madigan that almost didn’t get completed, thanks to pressure from the House Speaker. Titled “Madigan: Power, Privilege, Politics” and available for viewing here, the Institute said it was under pressure not to proceed from the beginning:

Making a documentary about the most powerful politician in Illinois is not for the faint of heart. Interviewees feared for their livelihoods. Three in-state production companies wouldn’t take the job, saying they couldn’t risk reprisal. The crew that decided to make the film received death threats.

 

This is Illinois’ political culture under House Speaker Mike Madigan’s reign.

Madigan is denying all charges: “It’s no secret that I have been the target of vicious attacks by people who sought to diminish my many achievements.… I [have] always act[ed] in the interest of the people of Illinois.”

Madigan’s longtime Republican counterpart in the House, Jim Durkin, responded to Madigan’s indictment: “This is another chapter in the sad story of corruption that has pervaded every corner of the state that was touched by Mike Madigan and his Democrat enablers, and has dismantled true democracy in Illinois.”

Illinois’ Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker tried to distance himself from Madigan, saying that his indictment “is a condemnation of a system infected with promises of pay-to-play.… The era of corruption and self-dealing among Illinois politicians must end,” adding,

The conduct alleged in this indictment is deplorable and a stark violation of the public’s trust. Michael Madigan must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.

Madigan resigned his position as House Speaker in February 2021 as he began to lose control of his reelection campaign for a 19th term. Rather than suffer the indignity of being relegated to that of a mere House member, he left the chamber that he had ruled with an iron fist for five decades.

The odor of corruption remains, and it will take more than just this indictment to rid Illinois politics of the vast array of dishonest, venal, and unprincipled politicians who owe their very political lives to the former speaker.

Ukrainian Resistance to Putin’s Invasion Is “Remarkable” as They Remember Holodomor

Monday, 28 February 2022 14:31
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 28, 2022:  

Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s invasion is “remarkable,” according to retired U.S. Army General Jack Keane. Speaking at Fox News Digital over the weekend, Keane said: “It is nothing short of remarkable what the Ukrainian military has accomplished … it is significant that not a single population center had been captured after five nights and four days [of fighting].”

Keane added that Putin has greatly overreached: “I believe Putin has strategically overreached and will suffer long-term consequences for this.”

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer agreed: “[Putin] miscalculated the amount of resistance [Ukrainians would put up] … he was going for a decapitation of the Ukrainian leadership. If you cut off the head, you don’t need to invade everywhere else.”

Putin was counting on the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to fold, pack his bags, and disappear into the night at the first show of force. Instead, not only did Zelensky encourage his countrymen to fight back, he ordered his staff to provide weapons to citizens requesting them. In addition, he visited the front lines of the developing conflict to encourage the resistance to Putin’s aggression. Finally, he turned down Biden’s offer to help him evacuate the country, firing back that what he needed was ammunition and “not a ride.”

There are times when numbers don’t matter, and this is one of them. Putin mobilized an estimated 250,000 soldiers to decapitate the Ukrainian government, but they met a Ukrainian force of about 110,000 soldiers and citizens. Putin’s army of invaders is not nearly enough to take over the entire country.

Putin’s advantage over Ukraine is staggering in the number of additional troops — active and reserve — he has at the ready, along with huge advantages in tanks, heavy artillery, and air power.

But it doesn’t matter, because Ukrainians remember Holodomor.

Holodomor, in Ukrainian, means to “inflict death by hunger.” Historians call it genocide. An estimated 10 million Ukrainians were deliberately starved in the early 1930s as a result of the Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin’s intention to “teach [them] a lesson through famine.”

In 1928 Stalin mandated an agricultural “collectivization” of Ukraine, ordering farmers to leave their farms, give up their livestock and equipment, and join collective farms. Ukrainian farmers resisted, and Stalin starved them in retaliation.

From the Holodomor Resource Library:

1.5 million Ukrainians in the countryside fall victim to Stalin’s “dekulakization” [removing private farmers — kulaks — from their farms] policies. Over the extended period of collectivization, armed dekulakization brigades forcibly confiscate land, livestock, and other property, and evict entire families.

 

Close to half a million individuals in Ukraine are dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped to remote, uninhabited areas such as Siberia where they are left, often without food or shelter.

 

A great many, especially children, die in transit or soon thereafter.

 

The remaining farmers are hounded to give up their land, livestock, and equipment and join the collective farms.

 

As the traditional structures of rural livelihood disintegrate, the religious clergy are demonized and arrested or deported, and their churches destroyed or repurposed for grain storage or other secular use.

Stalin used nearly incomprehensible draconian measures, including the arrest and execution of anyone — even children — found taking as little as a few stalks of wheat from the fields where they worked. Stalin’s brigades swept through villages, confiscating hidden grain and any other food items from their homes.

At the bottom of the collectivization and forced starvation period (from 1930 to 1932), 28,000 Ukrainians every day were dying from starvation.

Ukrainians remember. In November 2006, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a decree declaring that Holodomor was a deliberate “Act of Genocide,” keeping the horror in the front of the minds of the country’s citizens.

When Ukraine was released from the yoke of Soviet imperialism in the early 1990s, Putin felt betrayed, as Keith Lowe noted in HistoryExtra.com:

Russian-Ukrainian relations have never been the same since. Russian nationalists, including President Vladimir Putin, have always felt betrayed by Ukraine, which they still regard as “Little Russia.” Putin has often claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people” and accused Ukrainian leaders of being little more than foreign puppets.

To Putin’s mind, all he is doing is restoring Russian control over territory Russia lost after the end of the Cold War.

All Ukrainians are doing is fighting back, remembering the days of the Holodomor under Putin’s predecessor, Joseph Stalin.

Biden’s Supreme Court Nominee Faces Uphill Confirmation Battle

Friday, 25 February 2022 20:28
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, February 25, 2022:  

Joe Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal judge currently serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to the Supreme Court on Friday. If confirmed she would replace Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring in June.

A liberal judge replacing a liberal justice. Senate confirmation of her should be an afterthought. After all, the so-called “conservative advantage” on the high court would remain in place, 6-3.

The White House exulted:

President Biden sought a candidate with exceptional credentials, unimpeachable character, and unwavering dedication to the rule of law.

 

He also sought a nominee — much like Justice Breyer — who is wise, pragmatic, and has a deep understanding of the Constitution as an enduring charter of liberty.

 

And the President sought an individual who is committed to equal justice under the law and who understands the profound impact that the Supreme Court’s decisions have on the lives of the American people.

It confirmed that Jackson is a bonafide liberal with all the proper credentials:

She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, then attended Harvard Law School, where she graduated cum laude and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

 

After law school, Judge Jackson served in Justice Breyer’s chambers as a law clerk.

She is a social justice warrior:

Judge Jackson served as a federal public defender from 2005 to 2007, representing defendants on appeal who did not have the means to pay for a lawyer.

And she is a black woman, meaning that she falls into the category that Biden said he would draw from for his Supreme Court pick:

If confirmed, she will be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

In addition, she has written opinions savaging the Trump administration, including ruling in December denying President Donald Trump’s claim that executive privilege protected White House records from being handed over to the House’s January 6 witch-hunt committee.

The nomination is clearly political, designed to shore up sagging support among women, minorities, and soft Democrats.

Missing from the White House statement was any mention of the enormous hill her nomination must climb before she takes Breyer’s seat next October. First, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has announced all-out war against her confirmation. Said RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel:

Maybe the only promise Joe Biden has kept is his pledge to nominate a liberal, activist judge to the Supreme Court. Ketanji Brown Jackson is exactly that: a radical, left-wing activist who would rubberstamp Biden’s disastrous agenda.

 

By picking Jackson, Biden put far-left special interests ahead of defending Americans’ rights and liberties.

 

The Republican National Committee will make sure voters know just how radical Jackson is and remember at the ballot box in November.

That assumes Jackson gets that far. Her ties with Democrat “dark money” funding groups like Demand Justice are likely to provoke inquiry into that connection. Demand Justice is a left-of-center advocacy group that put her on their “select” list of potential nominees for Biden to consider. It applauded Biden’s selection on Friday, saying that “Jackson would bring more experience as a trial court judge than any sitting Supreme Court justice.”

Demand Justice, formed in 2018 and financed by “dark money” [money from unlisted and untraceable donors] from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, opposed the confirmations of Trump nominees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, and advocates for court packing — adding additional seats to the high court to be filled by Demand Justice-approved nominees.

Sixteen Thirty Fund, which the liberal Atlantic calls “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money,” is primarily funded by four billionaires, including George Soros through his Open Society Foundations.

Judge Jackson will certainly be asked if she plans to recuse herself when Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard arrives at the high court in October. As a current member of Harvard University’s Board of Overseers, she has direct and intimate ties to the defendant in that case. As National Review noted:

The Senate should … probe Jackson on her role in and approval of Harvard’s policy of race discrimination which has led to vastly disparate effects on the admission rates for Asian students compared to African-American students with comparable academic records…

 

The Senate will be wholly justified in grilling Jackson to find out whether she supported Harvard’s policy of race discrimination in her role on its Board of Overseers.

 

This is not a hypothetical question about a future case, which she could reasonably decline to answer; it is a question about her own record, and it goes to the core of whether she is committed to equal justice under the law for people of every race and ethnicity.

When Biden nominated her for her present position last spring three Senate Republicans jumped the fence and joined Democrats in confirming her. Provided with this additional evidence of racial discrimination by a justice “who,” according to the White House, “is committed to equal justice under the law,” those three, and any others considering confirming her to the high court, might just conclude that her confirmation has become too high a hurdle too to overcome during the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings.

Democratic “Wipeout” Coming, Warn Bloomberg and Britain’s Spectator

Tuesday, 22 February 2022 12:43
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerica.com on Tuesday, February 22, 2022:  

Two recent articles, one from the Left and the other from the Right, predict a “wipeout” is coming for the Democratic Party in November.

Michael Bloomberg, the failed Democrat presidential candidate who spent nearly a billion dollars in 2020 and got almost nothing in return, wrote on Tuesday for his own mouthpiece Bloomberg News that his “party is headed for a wipeout in November, up and down the ballot.”

Editors of The Spectator, the conservative British weekly magazine, wrote on Sunday that “either the [Biden] administration faces reality and addresses real concerns — or it faces a wipeout in November.”

Bloomberg likened the 3:1 drubbing three school-board members took a week ago in San Francisco to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that cost 3,000 people their lives and destroyed 80 percent of the city:

The political earthquake that just occurred in San Francisco should be a dire warning to the national Democratic Party, because the same fault line stretches across the country and the tremors are only increasing.

That fault line stretches all the way from New Jersey and Virginia to California, wrote Bloomberg:

Three months after Republicans scored major election upsets in Virginia and New Jersey, largely because of the frustration parents felt with Democratic officials who catered to teachers’ unions and culture warriors at the expense of children, voters in San Francisco recalled three school board members by margins of nearly three to one.

 

Coming from America’s most liberal city, those results should translate into a 7 to 8 on the Richter scale.

Disgusted with the school board’s removal of iconic names from 44 schools under their control instead of working to reopen those schools, parents took the three board members to the woodshed. Parents of students at Lowell High School, one of the highest-ranked public schools in the nation, were particularly incensed at the board’s move to change its admission policy based on grades and test scores to a public lottery. As Bloomberg accurately noted, “Lowering standards in the name of fairness only exacerbates injustice and inequality.”

Swing voters are leaving the Democrat Party as a result, added Bloomberg:

Swing voters will decide the 2022 midterm elections, and right now, polls show they are swinging away from Democrats. The earthquake that shook San Francisco needs to shake up our party, before voters do it themselves in November.

Editors at The Spectator agreed but took a different approach: They called out Joe Biden’s “failure to fill the office,” calling it “painful to see.” They wrote:

He boasts of the fastest rate of job creation and the lowest unemployment rate in American history. He claims credit for the rise of the Dow Jones index, the rollout of the vaccine and the revival of the economy….

 

President Biden is now touting his own good news but convincing no one.

To wit, they summarize the extraordinary collapse in his poll numbers:

In his first year, Biden’s poll numbers have collapsed more spectacularly than any president’s since Jimmy Carter — and then some.

 

The US economy grew by 5.7 percent in 2021 — the best gains, on paper, since 1984. Yet in January 2022, a Pew Research survey found that 78 percent of American were “dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today.”

 

The percentage of Democrats who liked how things were going fell from 47 percent to 29 percent over the course of Biden’s first year in office.

The editors lay the blame at the feet of the Biden administration:

There is nothing normal, let alone acceptable, about an administration that is both deaf to the voters’ needs and unable to contrive an alternative fix.

 

This administration is exquisitely sensitive on cosmic issues like the future of the planet — so sensitive that it has chosen to undo the US’s energy independence without creating a serious alternative — yet it is resolutely tin-eared about the everyday basics such as the prices of gasoline and beef or the notion, radical in some quarters, that education should be conducted in person.

 

No wonder the public doesn’t share in the president’s joy.

A quick perusal of polling at RealClear Politics confirms the extent of voter unhappiness. The latest RCP reading on Biden’s job approval shows a negative spread of 11.5 points (52.9 percent disapproving versus just 41.4 percent approving). That’s actually better than it was just two weeks ago, when the negative spread hit an appalling 14.6 points.

As for Congress, RCP’s reporting on the 2022 “generic” congressional vote shows Republicans leading Democrats, based on the five most recent polls, by 6.2 percent.

Just how bad could the predicted “wipeout” be in November? American voters revolted against ObamaCare being crammed down their throats in 2010 by turning out 63 Democrats from the House of Representatives.

American voters in 2022 have even more reason to revolt, including the invasion occurring on the nation’s southern border, high gas prices thanks to the administration’s move away from fossil fuels, and inflation due to government spending far beyond its means.

Barring an extraordinary (and unlikely) turn away from present policies by the Biden administration before the midterms, the “wipeout” of the Democratic Party in November predicted by both Bloomberg and The Spectator could in fact be epic.

House Leader McCarthy Endorses Liz Cheney’s Opponent Harriet Hageman

Monday, 21 February 2022 16:08
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 21, 2022:  

On Thursday, Kevin McCarthy, presently the House minority leader and likely to become speaker of the House (assuming Republicans take back the House in November), endorsed Harriet Hageman over Republican Liz Cheney for Wyoming’s House seat.

McCarthy said:

The most successful Representatives in Congress focus on the needs of their constituents, and throughout her career, Harriet has championed America’s natural resources and helped the people of Wyoming reject burdensome and onerous government overreach.

 

I look forward [as house speaker] to welcoming Harriet to a Republican majority next Congress, where together, we will hold the Biden administration accountable and deliver much-needed solutions for the American people.

He never mentioned Cheney by name, nor did he remind readers that the Wyoming Republican Party no longer considers her to be a Republican. He didn’t mention the censure she received last week from the Republican National Committee over her selling out to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Democrats’ continuing witch hunt against former President Donald Trump.

However, talking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, he did expand on the reasons he endorsed Hageman:

Wyoming deserves to have a representative who will deliver the accountability against this Biden administration. Not a representative they have today that works closer with Nancy Pelosi, going after Republicans….

McCarthy’s endorsement came on the heels of an endorsement of Hageman from another prominent Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who presently serves as chair of the House Republican Conference. In a press release, Stefanik said:

I’m proud to endorse Harriet Hageman in her race to unseat Liz Cheney.…

 

Liz Cheney abandoned her constituents to become a Far-Left Pelosi puppet. Liz sadly belongs in an MSNBC or CNN news chair, not in Congress representing Wyoming — a state that voted for President Trump by over forty points.

 

Harriet is a true America First patriot who will restore the people of Wyoming’s voice that has been long forgotten by Liz Cheney.

Hageman also received endorsements from two of her opponents in the primary, Bryan Miller and Darin Smith, both of whom dropped out immediately after learning of Trump’s endorsement of Hageman back in September.

Since 2016 Cheney has counted on Wyoming voters to give her a free ride into the House, winning consistently two out of every three votes in the primaries and the general elections. In 2020, before she revealed her true colors by turning against Trump as one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him, she won the general election by 68.6 percent of the vote.

Now, however, Wyoming voters have awakened from their slumber, and less than one-fourth currently support her.

At the moment, Cheney’s campaign war chest exceeds Hageman’s by a factor of ten — she has more than $4 million in the bank while Hageman, at last count, has scarcely $400,000. But, as Chris Cillizza, a writer for CNN, lamented: “What’s … uncertain is whether all this money can save Cheney from paying the price for her willingness to vote to impeach Trump.”

“All this money” could further exacerbate Cheney’s slide into oblivion: Every ad her campaign runs will continue to remind Wyoming voters how she fooled them into thinking she was a Republican and a supporter of the Republican president.

Stefanik is right. Once the primary is behind her, removing her from contention as Wyoming’s member of the House, Cheney will more than likely wind up as the “respectable Republican conservative” offering her establishment viewpoints on the issues of the day at MSNBC or CNN.

Remington’s Insurance Carriers Forced Remington to Settle With Sandy Hook Victims’ Families, Paying Them $73 Million

Wednesday, 16 February 2022 21:08
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, February 16, 2022:  

The announcement on Tuesday that Remington Arms had finally settled (some used the words “claimed liability” for) the seven-year-old lawsuit filed by parents of children lost in the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 was portrayed as a major breakthrough by the anti-gun major media. The settlement, wrote the New York Times, “is a significant setback to the firearms industry.”

No, it is not. The Times explained why: “The lawsuit worked around the federal law [Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA] protecting gun companies from litigation by arguing that the manufacturer’s marketing of the weapon had violated Connecticut consumer law.”

That’s why the lawsuit has meandered through the court system for seven long years: the plaintiffs had no case. It was the Supreme Court that refused to hear the case on appeal from Connecticut’s Supreme Court, thus allowing the case to proceed. Finally, in exhaustion and not admission of guilt, the settlement was made.

Originally the parents wanted $225 million. But Remington was in bankruptcy and the only asset it had was its insurance coverage from four different insurance companies, which just happened to be the amount of the $73 million settlement.

The Connecticut law involved in the “workaround” is the state’s Unfair Trade Practices Act. Its meaning had to be expanded to include marketing practices that the left-wing state Supreme Court considered illegal: Remington pointed its ads to young men, its most profitable target market. Some of those young men included mentally unbalanced people such as Adam Lanza who saturated his mind with video games that involved firearms.

As John Lott, head of the Crime Prevention Research Center, wrote in USA Today: “There is no evidence that the ads influenced the actions of the Sandy Hook killer.” In fact, Lanza didn’t even purchase the firearms used in the shooting: he stole them from his mother.

Added Lott:

The [Connecticut] state Supreme Court decision [that the Supreme Court refused to hear on appeal] significantly expands the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act. For the first time, the court has allowed the act to be used in cases where there was no “commercial relationship.” The shooter did not buy the gun he used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators at the Sandy Hook Elementary School; his mother did.

It’s clear who the ruling is targeting, and it’s not mentally unstable young men such as Adam Lanza: It’s the gun manufacturers. Jonathan Lowy, chief counsel for the rabid anti-gun group Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence (“Brady”), clearly stated:

This is an important win for victims of gun violence and the movement to hold the gun industry accountable. It sends a powerful message to these executives — even with your special protections, you can and will be held accountable for gun violence.

Not according to Timothy Lytton, professor of law and expert on the firearms industry at Georgia State University: “Most of the country — or at least half the country — is not looking for ways to liberalize or open the door to litigation. They’re looking for ways to expand gun rights and clamp down on anything that would restrict supply.”

The only state to pass a copycat law like Connecticut’s is New York, which is already notoriously anti-gun. A similar bill has been introduced in anti-gun California, and anti-gun legislators in New Jersey is considering similar legislation.

As crime rises in big cities across the land, the demand isn’t for more restrictions on the right to keep, bear and use firearms, but the contrary. Brady and its sycophants in the media celebrating the “big win” on Tuesday are pushing their agenda uphill against an increasingly informed electorate who know who is threatening their rights.

CNN Poll: Democrats Say Anybody but Biden for President in 2024

Monday, 14 February 2022 16:34
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 14, 2022:  

Poor Joe Biden. He can’t catch a break. Each poll shows him losing to the American people as his failed and destructive policies take hold: reducing the standard of living of the middle class, issuing mandates where none are necessary (or constitutional), scaring people with an incomprehensibly large national debt they know will never be paid off, and presenting himself as an aged and increasingly inept leader of the free world.

The latest poll from CNN, of all places, confirms and even amplifies his troubles: nearly three out of every four Democrats — Democrats! — want someone other than old Joe to run in 2024.

It gets worse. Those polled by SSRS for CNN, which released the results on Sunday, don’t really care who Democrats run in 2024, so long as it isn’t Biden!

Bernie Sanders got five percent support, while Michelle Obama received four percent. Kamala Harris received a nearly invisible two percent from those even willing to offer an alternative to Joe. Most of those polled couldn’t come up with a viable alternative. Falling into the “virtually invisible” category to replace him were Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, Oprah, Cory Booker, Stacey Adams, and Amy Klobuchar.

When pressed by SSRS, the 1,500-plus respondents didn’t think Biden could run successfully against whomever the Republicans run. A third said he was too old (he’s 79 now and will turn 82 in November 2024), while the rest of them couldn’t come up with a good reason — they just want him gone.

It gets worse: Republicans can hardly wait for 2024 to rid themselves of the Democratic disaster — according to SSRS, more than eight out of 10 Republicans were looking forward to 2024, while barely four out of 10 Democrats were.

 

Democrats know the shellacking they are likely to take. If the midterms shape up the way current polls are showing, 2024 could be an utter and complete disaster for them and their party.

 

Under Trump Americans saw a glimpse of how great America could become, given the right policies while following the Constitution. They can hardly wait for the chance to rid themselves of the fallout of failed Democratic policies and put the nation back on the path to greatness.

Ed Morrissey, writing for Hot Air, called the opposition to Biden exposed by CNN “dead weight”:

If you’re a Democrat running in the midterms, what does this tell you — besides “retire”? These negative numbers within their own base [portend] a turnout nightmare for Democratic incumbents. The dead weight of that level of opposition to Biden makes a red wave in both chambers of Congress all but certain if something doesn’t improve quickly. But with Biden’s legislation stalled out, inflation increasing, and the White House refusing to read the room on COVID restrictions, there’s no path for this to improve … and still room for it to get worse.

About the only thing that could turn the Democrats’ ship around would be a shooting war in Europe. Most Americans, regardless of their extreme distaste for the present occupant of the White House, would likely rally around him if American soldiers were committed in some phony, fake, trumped-up excuse to meddle in someone else’s business overseas.

Ukraine might just fit that bill.

White House: J. Michelle Childs Being Considered to Replace Justice Breyer

Monday, 31 January 2022 12:13
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 31, 2022:  

The White House confirmed on Thursday that one of the nominees being considered to replace Justice Stephen Breyer is present U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs. Childs was nominated to her current position by then-President Barack Obama in 2009 and then nominated by Joe Biden to move to the U.S. Court of Appeals last December.

Biden said he’d been studying the backgrounds of a number of candidates, provided that each of them first fulfill his campaign promise that they be female and black:

While I’ve been studying candidates’ backgrounds and writings, I’ve made no decision except one: the person I will nominate will be someone of extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity, and that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

Nothing was said about how she might view the Constitution of the United States, or the historic (and controversial) decision made in 1803 in Marbury v. Madison what the high court’s primary responsibility is, in the words of then-Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall:

The particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written Constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument. The rule must be discharged.

Nothing was said about any “law repugnant to the Constitution is void” when she responded in 2010 to then-Senator Jeff Sessions’ question during her nomination hearings as to how she would “ensure the fair administration of justice”:

The “fair administration of justice” requires that judges act as fair and impartial arbiters, treat all litigants courteously, assess the particular facts and evidence presented in individual cases, make deliberate and well-reasoned decisions based on established legal precedent, and abide by the judicial canons and ethical standards of conduct.

So, by that light, her decision in Bradacs v. Haley in 2014 was bereft of any concern over the Constitution or its 10th Amendment. Instead, in the lawsuit brought by a lesbian couple who wanted South Carolina to recognize their marriage in the state, she ruled that “valid marriages of same-sex couples entered into in other states or jurisdictions [they were “married” in the District of Columbia in 2013] meet the prerequisites for marriage in the State of South Carolina,” completely ignoring the right of the state, under the 10th Amendment, to make its own such rules and establish its own “prerequisites.”

When the Supreme Court ruled in June 2015 that the case of “marriage” of same-sex couples was now a federal matter and not of the states, then-Justice Antonin Scalia voiced his dissent:

Today’s decree says that my ruler, and the ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.

 

The opinion … is the furthest extension in fact — and the furthest extension one can even imagine — of the court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its amendments neglect to mention.

The best any Senator could produce following Biden’s racist and discriminatory selection of Childs as one of the “black and female only” selections he is considering for the high court position was this from Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who called it “affirmative action”:

The irony is that the Supreme Court is at [this] very time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative action racial discrimination while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota.

No matter whom Biden selects, he will further enrage the electorate. The latest poll from ABC News/Ipsos finds that his decision to use race and gender as primary qualifiers for the high post is opposed by more than three out of four of those polled.

Rasmussen: Majority of Americans See Mainstream Media as “Enemy of the People”

Wednesday, 26 January 2022 14:58
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January 26, 2022:  

When Rasmussen Reports polled 1,000 likely U.S. voters earlier this month, it asked three questions:

  1. Do you trust the political news you are getting?
  2. How serious of a problem is “fake news” in the media?
  3. Do you agree or disagree with this statement: The media are “truly the enemy of the people”?

The results should be greatly comforting to those involved in the freedom fight: 580 of those polled agreed that the members of the mainstream media (i.e., The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, ABC News, CNN, etc.) are in fact enemies of the people.

Half the battle is knowing who the enemy is. Or, as Sun Tzu expressed it, “If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.”

Noam Chomsky, a media researcher and a specialist in propaganda tactics used by media, provided insight into the enemy camp in his 1997 article “What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream?”

He wrote:

The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching the Associated Press, who grind out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says, “Notice to Editors: Tomorrow’s New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page.”

 

The point of that is, if you’re an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don’t have the resources to figure out what the news is, or you don’t want to think about it anyway, this tells you what the news is….

 

These are the stories that you put there because that’s what the New York Times tells us is what you’re supposed to care about tomorrow.

Just who are the “elite media”? Chomsky answers:

What are the elite media, the agenda-setting ones? The New York Times and CBS, for example.

 

Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on.

Is every writer, every journalist, every news channel host in on the scam? Chomsky replies:

When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what Anthony Lewis [a former Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times] or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite correctly, “Nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like. All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I’m never under any pressure.”

 

Which is completely true, but the point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing.

In his book, “Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda,” Chomsky describes how the public is deliberately and intentionally manipulated and controlled; how the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States. He reveals how the mainstream media focuses on “controlling the public mind” and not on informing it.

He leaves open, however, the question of just who sets the agenda. One of the primary “agenda setters” in the United States has been the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Established in 1921 following the failure of the League of Nations, the CFR’s purpose is to “awaken America to its worldwide responsibilities.” It has succeeded by infiltrating the mass media, think tanks, universities — every part of the culture that controls the conversation.

Richard Harwood, a former senior editor for the Washington Post, wrote back in 1993 that the CFR is “the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States.” He explained:

The membership of these journalists in the Council, however they may think of themselves, is an acknowledgment of their active and important role in public affairs and of their ascension into the American ruling class.

 

They do not merely analyze and interpret foreign policy for the United States; they help make it. They are part of that establishment whether they like it or not, sharing most of its values and world views.

The tentacles of the CFR, and its sister groups the Bilderbergers and the Trilateral Commission, are exposed here. Members include Bill Moyers, Tom Brokaw, George Stephanopoulos, and Dianne Sawyer. Major newspapers infiltrated by the CFR include, in addition to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Associated Press, Reuters, and the L.A. Times.

Mainstream magazines also hawking the official line include Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Reader’s Digest, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes. Publishing houses also caught in the CFR web include MacMillan, Random House, Simon & Shuster, and McGraw-Hill.

The CFR has also insinuated its members into the Brookings Institution, the RAND Corporation, the Foreign Policy Association, the Hudson Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the United Nations Association.

Nor is it surprising that the CFR has enormous influence of the nation’s banking system, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs. It also has influence in the insurance industry as well, including the Equitable, New York Life, Metropolitan, and Prudential.

If, as Sun Tzu said, half the battle is knowing your enemy, the other half is enlisting in the fight. See jbs.org for details on joining the John Birch Society in its epic 60-year educational effort to expose the enemy, rout him, and then begin the process of restoring the American republic to its former glory.

After all, if Rasmussen is right, then more than half of likely voters are open to the invitation now that they have been awakened.

Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann