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: Politics

CNN Suffers Worst Viewership Week in Nine Years

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, January 31, 2023:  

The latest Nielsen ratings show that CNN’s viewership last week fell to its lowest level since 2014. And the demographic most critical to sponsors has all but disappeared.

For the week ending January 22, CNN averaged just 444,000 viewers during prime viewing time, falling below 450,000 for the first time in nine years. In the critical advertising demographic, age 25-54, the network had just 93,000 viewers.

Fox News, on the other hand, enjoyed two million viewers, with 256,000 viewers between ages 25-54.

CNN This Morning, created three months ago to challenge Fox News’ Fox & Friends, has failed to gain traction as well. It attracted 331,000 viewers last week, while Fox & Friends had nearly a million.

TheWrap, a news outlet focused on the entertainment industry, reported that insiders familiar with CNN’s troubles are saying that a simple revamp of the present lineup proposed by CNN’s new CEO Chris Licht isn’t likely to improve things anytime soon.

Licht, who came on after the noisy termination of host Chris Cuomo over sex allegations and political shenanigans concerning his brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, put the best face he could on the latest data from Nielsen. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times he admitted that “trust” in the network “has eroded,” but that the owners, Warner Brothers Discovery, are very patient: “The people I work for understand that we didn’t get here overnight, and we’re not going to get out of it overnight.”

Chris Cuomo was CNN’s highest-rated host until his termination, and his replacements — Don Lemon, Kaitlin Collins, and Poppy Harlow — just aren’t cutting it.

Licht has said that the network has to overcome its perception of promoting far-left propaganda delivered by noisy and acidic newsreaders. He correctly noted:

The general sense was that you [as a conservative] would not get a fair shake and you wouldn’t be allowed to make your point.

 

I don’t want CNN to be a place where you [as a conservative] have such a combative experience that you go fundraise off of it.

He added:

We … want to be a place where we can have an open exchange of ideas no matter where you’re coming from, and that you would be treated with respect.

 

We won’t invite you on to score points on you.

However, Licht is determined to stay with the same people, just move them around a little on the network’s chessboard: “I think we have all the right raw materials, and now it’s just really about coalescing how the show is produced around those three personalities.… It’ll take some time to grow again.”

Moving the hosts who are the face of the failing network and the cause of its declining viewership around to different time slots isn’t going to solve CNN’s problem, if it is to be solved at all. The demographic CNN needs has moved on to Newsmax, The Epoch Times, and other more balanced networks. Until Licht and his bosses at Warner Brothers Discovery awaken to that fact, CNN will continue to flounder.

Such an “awakening” is extremely unlikely to occur, thanks to ties Warner Brothers Discovery and its other five media giants have with the globalist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The other five are:

General Electric (Comcast, NBC, Universal Pictures, and others);

News Corp (New York Post, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal);

Disney (ABC, ESPN, Miramax, and others);

Viacom (MTV, Paramount Pictures, and others); and

CBS (NFL.com, Showtime, 60 minutes, and others).

As The New American pointed out at the time the CFR was celebrating its 100th anniversary:

The CFR has managed to place its members into controlling positions in the major corporate media. In plain words, the fix is in.

 

The three-letter “news” organizations – ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, NYT, WSJ, FOX, NPR, etc. – are merely echo chamber adjuncts of the CFR.

As Jasper noted, nothing is likely change, either at CNN through its proposed changes in formatting (moving the same players around to different positions on the chessboard), or the other majors controlled by the CFR, until “more Americans awaken, expose the CFR’s growing control, and oppose its New World Order agenda.”

Colorado Baker Targeted Again by Anti-Christian Left

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 30, 2023:  

In its ruling in another lawsuit against Colorado baker Jack Phillips, the Colorado Court of Appeals last Thursday said its decision wasn’t biased against him just because he is a Christian:

These proceedings were not marked by any hostility toward Masterpiece [his bakery design business] or Phillips, or by a desire to punish or target them based on their religious views.

Of course they weren’t. Ignore the fact that two of the three judges ruling unanimously against Phillips had been appointed by far-left Governor Jared Polis, who is “married” to a man, and the third by Governor John Hickenlooper who, while a senator, racked up a treasonous Freedom Index score of 5 out of 100. This reflects Hickenlooper’s complete and utter disregard for any constitutional limitations on governmental power, especially in the realm of free speech and the free exercise of religion.

The entire lawsuit was a setup from the beginning.

Following a modest victory for the baker in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (where the Supreme Court decided in June 2018 that the “civil rights” commission had so grievously expressed its anti-Christian and anti-religious zeal that they ruled, 7-2, against the commission and in favor of Phillips), a queer lawyer from Denver asked Phillips to make a cake celebrating his transition from a man to a woman. He wanted Phillips to create a custom-designed cake that would be pink (female) on the inside and (blue) male on the outside.

The call was made the very same day that the high court agreed to hear Phillips’ case. And just to make sure that Phillips — and every other Christian wishing to enjoy his First Amendment rights — got the message, the queer mouthpiece for the commission called back to ask Phillips to make another cake depicting Satan smoking marijuana. The man/woman interposer said he/she wanted to “correct the errors of [Phillips’] thinking.”

The attorney filed a complaint with the commission, which was prepared to go after Phillips again until the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) informed them that if they did, the ADF was prepared, once again, to defend Phillips.

When the commission decided to back away and settle (details undisclosed), the queer attorney filed suit in state court. The state court ruled against Phillips (surprise!), declaring that “the act of baking a pink cake with blue frosting does not constitute protected speech under the First Amendment.”

In its press release following the state court’s ruling against Phillips, the ADF announced that it will appeal once again to the high court. This time the high court will have a second chance to rule in favor of Phillips’ First Amendment right, which they avoided in their earlier ruling.

The ADF is also defending Denver business owner and website designer Lorie Smith, owner of 303 Creative, over the same issue. That issue, according to the ADF, is whether elected government officials or unelected bureaucrats, as is the case with Colorado’s civil rights commission, have the power to inhibit individuals’ God-given rights to worship Him as they so desire and run their businesses accordingly.

The ADF, with all due respect, misses the point. The anti-religion, anti-Christian Left doesn’t care whether Phillips makes a blue and pink cake, or whether Lorie Smith designs a website celebrating an event that violates her religious beliefs. What they do care deeply about is that the message is delivered: Thou shalt not express Christian beliefs in the public square. Anyone who does so will be subjected to the same torments of hell being visited upon Phillips and Smith.

WH Press Secretary Repeats Lie That the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban Reduced Gun Violence

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January 25, 2023:  

Like clockwork following the California shootings, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre once again rolled out the canard that the Clinton-era assault weapons ban (the “Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act”) measurably reduced gun violence and therefore, by implication, it should be reinstated:

The last time we had an assault weapons ban on the books [1994-2003], thanks to the President [Biden was a senator then] and Senator [Dianne] Feinstein’s [D-Calif.] leadership, mass shootings actually went down.

She failed to note that the attackers in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay used pistols and not rifles to commit their mayhem.

Biden himself repeated the lie back in March 2021 following another mass shooting:

We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again.

 

I got that done when I was a senator. It passed. It was law for the longest time, and it brought down these mass killings. We should do it again.

In 2004 Christopher Koper, then a research criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania, issued his third and final report on the results of the ban on gun violence and mass shootings. The document, “Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003,” is available to the public and can be accessed here.

Said Koper:

We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence….

 

What we found in these studies was that the ban had mixed effects in reducing crimes with the banned weaponry … as a result, the ban did not appear to affect gun violence during the time it was in effect.

Koper warned that if the Clinton ban were reenacted, the reduction in gun violence would likely be too small to measure:

Should it be renewed, the ban might reduce gunshot victimizations. This effect is likely to be small at best and possibly too small for reliable measurement.

He concluded:

By most estimates, AWs [automatic weapons] were used in less than 6% of gun crimes even before the ban.

 

[Our research] suggests that the ban’s impact on gun violence is likely to be small.

Since Koper’s study was completed in 2004, any gradual reduction in gun violence that could be reliably traced to the ban’s impact would certainly have been noted in subsequent studies.

There have been none. But the lie that the ban reduced gun violence continues to be mouthed by politicians eager to remove firearms from private owners.

Enthusiasm Fading for Electric Vehicles

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 23, 2023:  

The recent announcement that electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla has cut its prices by between six and 20 percent just to maintain its production goals and market share is the latest manifestation of the fading enthusiasm for electric vehicles.

In essence, the result of government meddling in the private market is now showing up in such moves.

In 2021, for example, auto executives were “very optimistic” about EVs, expecting them to capture as much as 70 percent of the total automotive market by 2030. A year later that optimism had subsided considerably, with those same executives cutting their expectations to 40 percent.

The latest report from international accounting firm KPMG reveals that car dealers expect EVs to capture just over 20 percent of the total automotive market by 2030.

The initial enthusiasm was generated by the belief that somehow EVs would save the planet. Governments got on board with the fraud, allowing massive tax credits to be given to purchasers of them to stimulate demand and hasten the transition.

That demand is now causing consternation, especially in California, where the far-Left interventionist governor and his Democratic sycophants in the state’s Legislature have deemed that 100 percent of vehicles sold in the state by 2035 be electric. The only problem, of course, is that making the demand and providing the supply are separate issues. As Ram Rajagopal, a professor at Stanford University, pointed out, a complete transition to electric vehicles in the state would require at least 15 times more charging stations than the 80,000 that presently exist.

And the demand on the state’s existing energy grid would be highly unlikely to be met. For instance, during a heat wave last September, just days after Governor Gavin Newsom announced that his state was going 100 percent “green” by 2035, the California Independent System Operator (which runs the state’s power grid) asked residents owning EVs to avoiding charging them during peak usage hours.

There are other issues as well. As inflation impacts the cost of building EVs, the so-called “cost advantage” of owning one over the traditional internal-combustion vehicle has narrowed to almost zero. An analysis by The Wall Street Journal in December showed that drivers of Tesla’s Model 3 had to pay the same to drive 100 miles as did the owner of a Honda Civic.

And there are political issues as well. Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan wrote:

The lithium comes from one place, and it’s all processed in China. So, just building the alternate processing infrastructure … and by the way, we [would] have to invade Russia too … just to get the materials to do EVs at scale is just laughable for the next decade.

There are reliability issues, too. Consumer Reports noted in its 2022 Annual Auto Reliability survey that just four of the 11 EVs in that survey had “average or better than predicted” reliability.

Plus, there are battery issues — they are expensive to replace. Consumer Affairs reported that “all EV batteries will eventually fail to hold a charge and require replacement.” In its survey of auto mechanics, the company reported that the total cost to replace a battery in a nearly 10-year-old Toyota Prius was $4,489, while the cost to replace the lithium battery in a 2014 Nissan Leaf was an astounding $17,657. A quick check on the price of a used 2014 Nissan Leaf reveals sellers are currently asking around $10,000 or so to get rid of them.

Then there are supply-chain issues. Last February the Felicity Ace — a cargo ship carrying hundreds of EVs — caught fire and sank in 10,000 feet of water off the shores of the Azores, Portugal. As Captain Rahul Khanna, global head of the marine insurance firm Allianze Global Corporate & Specialty (KGCS), noted, a single fire, from whatever cause, could (and did) incinerate an entire ship. In an interview with Autoweek, he said:

There have been quite a few, let’s say, near misses that the industry has seen over the years. And we … recognize the fact that EVs can be problematic, especially when it comes to fire….

 

The problem with EVs is that the lithium-ion batteries can actually propagate the fire. In fact, they can actually encourage a fire if a fire has already started and you have lithium-ion batteries — they can ignite a lot more vigorously as compared to any other cars.

Just last Friday a Norwegian shipping company banned EVs on its ferries, explaining that if an EV catches fire, the fire cannot be extinguished.

The bloom appears to be off the rose for EVs now that the reality of government interference for political reasons is becoming increasingly obvious. The cost of “going green” continues to escalate, and consumers are reacting accordingly.

Supreme Court Has Another Opportunity to Reverse a Poor Prior Decision

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 20, 2023:  

In agreeing to take under review a lower court’s decision in Groff v. DeJoy, the Supreme Court has another opportunity to right two wrongs simultaneously.

Gerald Groff, a Sabbatarian Christian, started work for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in 2012. His job description allowed him to take Sundays off. Even though the local post office grew over time, the service accommodated his religious commitments.

But then that office withdrew the accommodation and, when he couldn’t come to terms with the local postmaster, Groff moved to another location that allowed him to have his Sundays off.

When that second location’s rules changed, requiring Groff to work on Sundays, he tried to work out an accommodation, without success. He was forced to resign rather than violate his religious beliefs and, with the help of three public-interest law firms, filed suit against the USPS in 2016.

He was rebuffed at both the district and appeals court levels. The most recent decision claimed that “exempting Groff from working on Sundays caused more than a de minimis cost on USPS because it actually imposed on his coworkers, disrupted the workplace and workflow, and diminished employee morale….”

The 1964 Civil Rights Act, as amended, makes it an unlawful employment practice for an employer to discriminate against an employee on the basis of his religion. It requires that an employer make “reasonable accommodations” to the religious needs of its employees.

In the recent decision, the appeals court based its ruling on TWA v. Hardison, decided in 1977, which tilted the equation heavily in favor of employers and against employees seeking similar accommodations.

The dissenting opinion in TWA v. Hardison exposes that “tilt”:

Today’s decision deals a fatal blow to all efforts under Title VII to accommodate work requirements to religious practices.

 

The Court [majority] holds, in essence, that although the EEOC regulations and the Act state that an employer must make reasonable adjustments in his work demands to take account of religious observances, the regulation and Act do not really mean what they say.

 

An employer, the Court [majority] concludes, need not grant even the most minor special privilege to religious observers to enable them to follow their faith.

 

As a question of social policy, this result is deeply troubling, for a society that truly values religious pluralism cannot compel adherents of minority religions to make the cruel choice of surrendering their religion or their job.

A lawyer from the Independence Law Center (ILC), one of the three pro-bono law firms assisting Groff, said, “Observing the Sabbath day is critical to many faiths — a day ordained by God. No one should be forced to violate the Sabbath [in order] to hold a job.”

A lawyer from the Church State Council, another firm representing Groff, added:

Workers have suffered too long with the Supreme Court’s interpretation [in TWA v. Hardison] that disrespects the rights of those with sincere faith commitments to a workplace accommodation.

 

It’s long past time for the Supreme Court to protect workers from religious discrimination.

Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO, and chief counsel for First Liberty Institute (also assisting in the case), added: “It’s time for the Supreme Court to reconsider a decades-old case [TWA v. Hardison] that favors corporations and the government over the religious rights of employees.”

Groff is hardly alone in fighting to keep both his religion and his job. As Nathan Lewin, a writer for Newsweek, noted:

Countless committed believers have been demoted or denied employment since the Hardison [decision] because their … employers were unwilling to make more than de minimis adjustments in their working conditions and schedules.

The importance of this case is reflected in the fact that fourteen amicus briefs were filed by religious liberty advocates with the Supreme Court, along with 17 state attorneys general and members of Congress.

As ILC attorney Jeremy Samek noted:

At the end of the day, Mr. Groff wants his job back. It’s important for him, but it’s also important for lots of other people who work for the federal government or the post office that they be able to continue their employment and to continue to observe their religious beliefs.

Oral arguments in Groff v. DeJoy (the postmaster general) will begin in a couple months. As noted earlier, the high court has another chance to right two wrongs simultaneously in this case.

Matt Gaetz Moves to Abolish the ATF

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, January 19, 2023:  

To Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), the move last Friday by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to require citizens owning pistol braces to register them with the government was the “final straw.” On Tuesday, he rolled out a bill to abolish the rogue agency altogether.

The bill is one page long: “A Bill to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.… The [agency] is hereby abolished.”

Would that this would be so simple!

In June 2021, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene proposed the same thing but gave the agency six months to move its responsibilities to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). Her bill included:

  • Repealing all ATF regulations issued after August 1, 2020;
  • Rescinding all hiring authority for the agency;
  • Publishing a list of all the weapons it had confiscated, and then selling them to licensed firearms dealers via a public auction;
  • Putting those proceeds into a fund for Border Patrol agents killed in the line of duty as a result of one of its botched operations, Operation Fast and Furious; and
  • Using any remaining funds to fund grants to states to establish firearm safety programs.

In 2014 Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) had offered a similar bill, but with some of its operations being handed off to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) rather than the FBI.

When Gaetz rolled out his bill to abolish the ATF, he said:

The continued existence of the ATF is increasingly unwarranted based on the actions they’re taking to convert otherwise law-abiding people into felons. My bill would abolish the ATF.

 

If that doesn’t work, we’re going to try defunding the ATF.

 

If that doesn’t work, we’re going to target the individual bureaucrats at the top of the ATF who have exceeded their authority in rulemaking. And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to take a meat cleaver to the statutes that the ATF believes broadly authorize their actions.

When Representative Greene presented her bill back in 2021, she said the Biden administration was using the agency to harass lawful gun owners:

Joe Biden and the radical, anti-gun Democrats want to unleash the ATF on law-abiding gun owners across America, attacking our God-given Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

 

The ATF’s ongoing, unconstitutional attacks on the Second Amendment must end.

And, when Representative Sensenbrenner proposed abolishing the ATF, he also minced no words:

The ATF is a largely duplicative, scandal-ridden agency that lacks a clear mission.…

 

It is plagued by backlogs, funding gaps, hiring challenges and a lack of leadership.

 

For decades it has been branded by high-profile failures. There is also significant overlap with other agencies.

While neither of these last two bills saw the light of day (as will likely be the outcome of Gaetz’ effort), the history of the ATF shows it to be corrupt to the core. Sam Jacobs, in an article published by the Libertarian Institute in 2020, took 19 pages to review just a few of the agency’s egregious and illegal operations.

They included:

  • A review of the agency by a Senate subcommittee back in the 1980s that concluded: “Based upon these hearings, it is apparent that ATF enforcement tactics … are constitutionally, legally, and practically reprehensible”;
  • Its Siege at Ruby Ridge;
  • Its Siege at Waco, Texas;
  • Its expanded powers granted after 9/11;
  • Its harassment of gun-show buyers and sellers in Richmond, Virginia;
  • Its “baiting” of innocent Hmong refugees in Laos;
  • Its entrapment of mentally disabled teenagers;
  • What the agency actually does with all those Form 4473s gun buyers must complete to purchase a firearm;
  • What the agency does with its slush fund generated from its illegal sales of cigarettes; and
  • How it punishes whistleblowers inside the agency when they bring to light some of the agency’s illegal activities.

For readers who may be unfamiliar with some of these illegal overreaches, the source is here. Upon reading, they may agree with Gaetz, Greene, and Sensenbrenner: The time to abolish this rogue agency is long past due.

15 States Try to Rein In Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January 18, 2023:  

In the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Ever since then, victims of the CFPB have tried again and again to find a court that would shut it down.

A brainchild of far-left Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), CFPB was designed from the start to avoid constitutional limitations. It is housed inside the Eccles Building in Washington, D.C., along with the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. It isn’t funded by Congress, but by the Federal Reserve, and, although part of the Executive Branch, there is virtually no congressional or executive oversight of the agency.

It writes its own rules, finds who violates them, and then punishes them, sometimes with outrageous fines that threaten their very existence.

In a lawsuit filed by Connecticut attorney Kimberly Pisinski in July 2013, Pisinski alleged that the “CFPB’s structure insulates it from political accountability and internal checks and balances in violation of the United States Constitution. Unbridled from constitutionally-required accountability, CFPB has engaged in ultra vires [“beyond the powers”] and abusive practices, including attempts to regulate the practice of law … attempts to collect attorney-client protected material and overreaching demands for, and mining of, personal financial information of American citizens, which has prompted a Government Accountability Office investigation.”

Her case was dismissed by a D.C. federal court a few months later.

In Seila Law v. CFPB, filed in 2018, the sole proprietor for a law firm that got caught in the CFPB’s web filed suit against the agency. After losing appeal after appeal, the case finally went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2020 that the agency could continue its unconstitutional operations.

This is the issue raised by Seila:

The appropriations issue that Seila Law noted has now come to a head. In [its decision] the Fifth Circuit correctly held that the CFPB’s unprecedented funding scheme impermissibly shifts Congress’s power of the purse to the Bureau.

 

But that decision is at odds with one from the D.C. Circuit, which saw no constitutional problem with “the CFPB’s budgetary set-up.”

 

So now much of the country’s financial industry sits in a state of regulatory limbo, wondering whether the CFPB can continue as a going concern without congressional intervention.

 

Meanwhile, the Bureau insists that it will “continue to carry out its vital work” without apparent change — even though a federal appellate court has told the Bureau it must change.

In Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. All American Check Cashing, Inc., another agency victim fought back and lost in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Fifteen states, including Texas, have filed a request with the Supreme Court that it take another look at the rogue agency. In their writ of certiorari, the states claim that since the agency is operating with funds from the Federal Reserve and not appropriated by Congress, as required under the Constitutions’ appropriations clause, it is operating illegally.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined the 15 states’ request:

The CFPB is a largely autonomous entity that has imposed a number of damaging regulations on American businesses.

 

While the CFPB’s constitutionality has been challenged on several fronts, the nature of this case revolves around the entity’s funding mechanism.

 

CFPB is not funded through the congressional appropriations process. Instead, it derives its funding from the Federal Reserve and may receive up to 12 percent of the Federal Reserve’s annual operating expenses, which amounts to several billion dollars.

 

This funding structure allows the CFPB to act as an unaccountable regulator in violation of the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution.

So, there it is: Warren’s totalitarian brainchild has virtually unlimited funding to wreak havoc on America’s financial industry, with no congressional oversight. It recombines the three elements of government that the Founders separated in order to keep that government from becoming tyrannical. Texas and the other states are hoping that this time is a charm — that the high court will take the case, uncover the agency’s unconstitutional structure and funding, and declare it illegal.

Delaware Gun Owners Sue State Over Magazine Ban

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 16, 2023:  

Two law-abiding gun owners, along with two pro-Second Amendment groups, filed suit last week in Delaware, challenging the state’s ban on “large capacity magazines.” The law being challenged was signed into law just seven days after the Supreme Court ruled in Bruen that such laws must now be justified by demonstrating that they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The challenged law, SB 6, makes it a crime to purchase, receive, possess, transfer, sell, offer to sell, or manufacture any magazine that can hold more than 17 rounds of ammunition.

The founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation (one of the two groups contesting the law), Alan Gottlieb, said the new law “literally criminalizes one of the most common and important means by which Delaware citizens can exercise their right of self-defense. In effect, SB 6 makes self-defense a potential criminal act, and that must not be allowed to stand.”

Delaware, the home state of Joe Biden, is under the virtual control of the Democratic Party: The governor’s office, all statewide executive offices, large majorities in both state houses, and all seats for the state in the U.S. Congress are held by anti-gun Democrats. Predictably, rather than celebrate the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen, the party thumbed its nose at the decision, implementing (for the first time in the state’s history) a ban on so-called high-capacity magazines.

The law, which became effective the moment the state’s Democrat Governor John Carney signed it on June 30, immediately criminalized every law-abiding gun owner in the state who owns such a “large capacity” magazine. All such owners must immediately turn over to a law-enforcement agency the offending magazines or face criminal charges: for a first offense, a $100 fine; for a second offense, six months in jail and a $1,150 fine; for additional offenses, up to five years in jail.

The lawsuit used logic, common sense, historical tradition, and the language from both the Second and 14th Amendments to make its case against Kathy Jennings, the Democrat attorney general for the state:

  1. The AR-15 rifle, many of which come from the factory with magazines of 17 rounds or more, is owned by nearly 25 million Americans;
  2. There are, as a result, some 44 million AR-15s owned by those Americans;
  3. Those semi-automatic rifles “are very rarely used in the commission of crimes,” according to the lawsuit: “mass shootings represent an extremely small subset of all violent crime committed with a gun, and mass shootings involving firearms that feature magazines holding more than 17 rounds are an even smaller subset still”;
  4. There is “no convincing empirical evidence that a state magazine ban will have any impact at all on mass shootings”;
  5. There is “no historical tradition” for prohibiting the possession of such magazines … “indeed, until [this ban] was put in place, Delaware did not restrict possessing, purchasing, manufacturing, transferring, or selling standard capacity magazines, and no such laws existed anywhere in the United States before the 1990s”;
  6. “Firearms capable of firing multiple rounds without reloading were well known to the founding generation”; and
  7. Violent criminals “will not be meaningfully constrained by Delaware’s Ban … it will not be difficult for violent criminals to acquire them through illegal sales or importation despite Delaware’s Ban.”

Hopefully all of this will be persuasive to the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, where the suit was filed last week. But for the Democrats, such expressions of logic, common sense, and historical tradition, not to mention the aforementioned amendments to the U.S. Constitution, mean nothing.

Final ATF Rule Turns Pistols Into Rifles to Be Regulated Under National Firearms Act

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 16, 2023:  

Back in 2012, the ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) ruled that pistol stabilizing braces didn’t turn pistols into short-barreled rifles, and therefore they were exempt from inclusion under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA). The NFA is a national registry of certain firearms and accessories such as machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled rifles (barrel less than 16″) and short-barreled shotguns (barrel less than 18″). Possessing an NFA item without jumping through the proper hoops, including registration and the payment of a $200 fee for a “tax stamp,” is a felony subjecting one to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Many see the NFA as a precursor to a national registry of all privately owned firearms.

On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland signed a “final rule” stating that any firearm that uses a pistol brace will be “considered a ‘rifle’ or ‘firearm’ subject to regulation under the NFA.”

Garland rolled out the canard that the agency’s primary concern is public safety:

Keeping our communities safe from gun violence is among the Department’s highest priorities.

 

Almost a century ago, Congress determined that short-barreled rifles must be subject to heightened requirements. Today’s rule makes clear that firearm manufacturers, dealers, and individuals cannot evade these important public safety protections simply by adding accessories to pistols that transform them into short-barreled rifles.

To clarify: The ATF has little interest in keeping communities safe when it moves to disarm law-abiding citizens, or impose such onerous regulations that they effect the same end. Instead, it has from the beginning been a tool to enact gun control.

The National Firearms Act was passed in 1934 following Al Capone’s reign of terror in Chicago. While citizens were out of work and struggling just to keep food on the table during the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration saw its chance to infringe on the Second Amendment. It passed muster with the Supreme Court, and has been a thorn in the side of law-abiding gun owners ever since.

A pistol-stabilizing brace is simply a device that, while similar in appearance to a rifle buttstock, is designed to be strapped on to the shooting arm of the user, allowing disabled people to more comfortably fire a rifle-style gun with one arm. Of course, it can also be used to shoulder-fire the weapon as a rifle. Since the ATF’s 2012 ruling that this device does not turn a firearm with a stabilizing brace and a barrel less than 16″ into a short-barreled rifle subject to the NFA, sales have skyrocketed. Estimates are that some 40 million such braces exist in the country.

That 2012 ruling has now been overturned.

ATF Director Steven Dettelbach, a hard-core anti-gun operative who previously served under Barack Obama as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, rejoiced in the rule change:

This rule enhances public safety and prevents people from circumventing the laws Congress passed almost a century ago.

 

Certain so-called stabilizing braces are designed to just attach to pistols, essentially converting them into short-barreled rifles to be fired from the shoulder.

 

Therefore, they must be treated in the same way under the [NFA] statute.

When the rule change was first proposed there was pushback — major pushback. There were nearly a quarter of a million negative public comments made on the ATF website. There is a bill called “Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles Today Act (SHORT Act) introduced by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) that would remove short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and certain other weapons from the NFA.

Said Marshall, “My bill is the only way to ensure the Constitutional rights of gun owners are protected against the ATF’s reckless abuse of the NFA to justify its pistol brace rule.”

Marshall’s bill, of course, won’t see the light of day in the anti-gun, Democrat-controlled Senate.

There was also a letter from the Senate Republican Caucus to AG Garland demanding that he withdraw the rule:

The way the proposed rule is written makes clear that ATF intends to bring the most common uses of the most widely possessed stabilizing braces within the purview of the NFA. Doing so would turn millions of law-abiding Americans into criminals overnight, and would constitute the largest executive branch-imposed gun registration and confiscation scheme in American history.

Of course. That is the whole point. Garland, Dettelbach, and the agency ignored all of this pushback and moved ahead with their grievous infringement of the Second Amendment anyway.

Some can take heart over the decision last week by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Cargill v. Garland. An initial lawsuit against another ATF proposed rule change had been tossed at the district level. On appeal, a panel at the Fifth Circuit agreed. But an en banc rehearing at the First Circuit ruled against the lower court and the panel, stating,

a plain reading of the statutory language, paired with close consideration of the mechanics of a semi-automatic firearm, reveals that a bump stock is excluded from the technical definition of ‘machinegun’ set forth in the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act.

A bump stock is not a pistol brace, but the breach by the infringement by the ATF is the same. From the Cargill ruling:

A bump stock is a firearm attachment that allows a shooter to harness the natural recoil of a semi-automatic weapon to quickly re-engage the trigger after firing, enabling him to shoot at an increased rate of speed.

 

When ATF first considered the type of bump stocks at issue here, it understood that they were not machineguns. ATF maintained this position for over a decade, issuing many interpretation letters to that effect to members of the public.

 

But ATF reversed its longstanding position in 2018, subjecting anyone who possessed a bump stock to criminal liability.

Michael Cargill gave up his bump stocks to the ATF and then sued the agency:

Appellant Michael Cargill surrendered several bump stocks to the Government following publication of the regulation at issue.

 

He now challenges the legality of that regulation, arguing that a bump stock does not fall within the definition of “machinegun” as set forth in federal law, and thus that ATF lacked the authority to issue a regulation purporting to define the term as such.

 

Cargill is correct. A plain reading of the statutory language, paired with close consideration of the mechanics of a semi-automatic firearm, reveals that a bump stock is excluded from the technical definition of “machinegun” set forth in the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act….

 

The Final Rule promulgated by the ATF violates the APA [the federal statute that governs how federal agencies propose and establish rules such as this]. We therefore REVERSE the judgment of the district court and REMAND [return] with instructions to enter judgment for Cargill.

Pro-Second Amendment groups are busy crafting a similar lawsuit, hoping that the precedent set by the Fifth Circuit (which encompasses Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas) will extend to pistol braces as well.

DOA: Fair Tax Act to Abolish the IRS Has Zero Chance of Passage

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, January 12, 2023:  

Tantalizing though it may sound, Rep. Buddy Carter’s (R-Ga.) bill to replace the IRS and the nation’s present convoluted and complex income-tax system with a simple flat-consumption tax has no chance of seeing the light of day in the new Congress.

It was one concession that now-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was more than happy to give to those blocking his campaign. Efforts in past decades to pass a similar bill have been ignored, with no committee even looking at it and never passing it on for a floor vote.

The concept is elegant: In place of the IRS (and its 87,000 new agents), the Fair Tax Act would eliminate all taxes — federal, state, estate, capital gains, gift, and payroll — and replace them with a nationwide sales tax, a simple 23-percent sales tax on all goods and services purchased for personal consumption.

Carter made his pitch to his colleagues:

Instead of adding 87,000 new agents to weaponize the IRS against small business owners and middle America, this bill will eliminate the need for the department entirely by simplifying the tax code with provisions that work for the American people and encourage growth and innovation.

 

Armed, unelected bureaucrats should not have more power over your paycheck than you do.

His pitch so far has elicited the support of fewer than a dozen of his colleagues. One of them, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R) from South Carolina, gave his approval:

As a former small business owner, I understand the unnecessary burden our failing income tax system has on Americans.

 

The Fair Tax Act eliminates the tax code, replaces the income tax with a sales tax, and abolishes the abusive Internal Revenue Service.

 

If enacted, this will invigorate the American taxpayer and help more Americans achieve the American Dream.

Another Republican supporter, Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, added:

I support the Fair Tax because it simplifies our tax code.

 

This transforms the U.S. tax code from a mandatory, progressive, and convoluted system to a fully transparent and unbiased system which does away with the IRS as we know it.

 

It is good for our economy because it encourages work, savings, and investment. Thank you to my colleague Rep. Buddy Carter for leading this effort to simplify the system for American taxpayers.

Just in case Carter’s bill gains some traction, the Biden White House fired a warning shot:

With their first economic legislation of the new Congress, House Republicans are making clear that their top economic priority is to allow the rich and multi-billion-dollar corporations to skip out on their taxes, while making life harder for ordinary, middle-class families that pay the taxes they owe.

The chances that Carter’s bill won’t see the light of day is due to the present system’s ability to be manipulated by Congress to reward certain segments of the economy through tax incentives, credits, or welfare transfer payments from people who earned it to those who didn’t, for political purposes.

The root of the evil is the 16th Amendment: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

This amendment passed muster at the Supreme Court in 1916, three years after its passage. Since then, it has allowed the Federal Reserve, also created in 1913, in conjunction with the U.S. Treasury, to fund both World Wars and create the largest welfare state in history.

Would a national sales tax do anything to reduce that welfare state? To be enforced, would not every transaction need to be monitored by the federal government so that “all goods and services purchased for personal consumption” could be effectively taxed?

Bad as it is, it’s perhaps best to keep the present system in place and let the utopian idea of a flat tax die a natural death in the 118th Congress.

Kevin McCarthy’s Concessions

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 9, 2023:  

In his acceptance speech just after midnight on Saturday, newly elected Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) claimed that “my ultimate responsibility is not to my party, my conference, or even our Congress. My responsibility … is to our country.”

But without major concessions to rule changes that he originally opposed, McCarthy would not be holding the gavel.

McCarthy, with a Freedom Index rating of just 60 out of 100, began to sound like a Constitutionalist:

We commit to stop wasteful Washington spending, to lower the price of groceries … and stop the rising national debt.

 

We pledge to cut the regulatory burden, lower energy costs for families, and create good-paying jobs for workers by unleashing reliable, abundant, American-made energy.

And he got specific:

Our first bill will repeal funding for 87,000 new IRS agents, because the government should be here to help you, not go after you.

One could convincingly argue that, under the Constitution that McCarthy regularly flouts, the federal government is not “here to help you,” but to stay out of the way so people can help themselves.

Nevertheless, McCarthy went on:

We’re going to pass bills to fix the nation’s urgent challenges — from the wide-open southern border to America-Last energy policies to woke indoctrination in our schools.

He promised to create committees “to pursue the truth … no more one-sided inquiries.”

The rules will be voted on Monday night, and here are the key concessions McCarthy made in his ultimately successful quest to lead the House:

A Motion to Remove the Speaker

Originally McCarthy wanted the House Freedom Caucus — the small but determined group of Constitutionalists who held their ground — to agree that he could be removed only if half of the Republican Party members in the House agreed to it. The caucus members said no, demanding that McCarthy agree to the rule that just one member of the House could call for a vote to oust the speaker. McCarthy counter-offered five. The group said no. McCarthy finally agreed to one.

Give More Committee Seats to Freedom Caucus Members

House Freedom Caucus members will receive three of the nine seats on the powerful House Rules Committee, the committee that has a major influence on which bills may be brought to the floor for a vote.

No More Omnibus Spending bills

Instead of wrapping a multitude of bills into one massive pork-laden package like the $1.7 trillion bill just passed by the Democrats in December, individual spending bills will be presented separately for a vote. And House members will have 72 hours before voting, giving them time to read the bills.

Possible Spending Cuts

This rule would cap spending at the levels from two years ago, which would mean potential spending cuts to most government programs.

Restoring the Holman Rule

This will allow amendments to reduce lawmakers’ salaries, to fire federal employees, and to cut federal government programs.

Vote on the Texas Border Plan

The plan has four aims: to complete building the wall; to strengthen border enforcement; to enforce laws against illegals already inside the country; and to target the drug cartels and other criminal organizations enabling the invasion of illegals into the country.

Investigate the Weaponizing of Federal Agencies

McCarthy agreed to allow a Judiciary subcommittee to investigate, among other things, the Department of Justice’s raid on Trump’s Florida residence and its probe into his handling of “classified” documents.

One Freedom Caucus staffer exulted:

Any [rule] that limits the Speaker’s power is a step in the right direction. The Freedom Caucus is more relevant than ever, and McCarthy won’t be able to get anything done without our endorsement and support.

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, a member of the House Freedom Caucus with a Freedom Index rating of 93, celebrated:

House conservatives delivered a massive victory for the American people by fundamentally changing the way Congress will operate.

 

We changed the way bills will be passed. We changed the way the government will be funded. We changed the way committees will be formed. We secured votes on term limits, the fair tax, the Texas border plan, and so much more.

Perhaps the most significant of the rules, if passed by the House Monday night, is the one that threatens to oust Speaker McCarthy if he fails to live up to his end of the bargain.

Virtually Unknown Lawsuit Challenging 2020 Election to Be Considered by Supreme Court Tomorrow

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, January 5, 2023: 

One lawsuit has slipped through the net cast around any challenging of the results of the 2020 presidential election: Brunson v. Adams. The Supreme Court has decided to consider whether it merits a full hearing. The decision, which takes place tomorrow, needs four of the nine justices to move the lawsuit to a formal hearing of the complaint.

If they turn it down, it will be just one more failed effort to consider fully and completely the questioned validity of that election. But if it moves to a hearing, and if the high court then rules in favor of Brunson, the shock waves and reverberations will be felt across the nation.

The lawsuit isn’t about the election, it’s about Congress’ unwillingness to investigate claims that it was fraudulent. From the complaint:

A rigged election is an attack against the U.S. Constitution, especially against the equal protection clause of 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

 

Despite the claims of evidence that the November 3, 2020, U.S. Presidential general election was fraudulent, affecting the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States and members of the United States Congress … Defendants intentionally voted against investigating the claimed evidence and conspired to cover up the “evidence” to fraudulently have Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (“Biden”) inaugurated as President and Kamala Harris (“Harris”) inaugurated as Vice President.

The 388 defendants named in the lawsuit include not only Biden, Harris, and former Vice President Mike Pence, but also every member of Congress, both House and Senate, who voted against that investigation.

They had their chance. Immediately following the election Texas Sen. Ted Cruz presented a resolution to delay certification and take 10 days to investigate the claims of election fraud made by more than 100 members of Congress about the election:

The most direct precedent on this question arose in 1877, following serious allegations of fraud and illegal conduct in the Hayes-Tilden presidential race. Specifically, the elections in three states-Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina-were alleged to have been conducted illegally.

 

In 1877, Congress did not ignore those allegations, nor did the media simply dismiss those raising them as radicals trying to undermine democracy. Instead, Congress appointed an Electoral Commission-consisting of five Senators, five House Members, and five Supreme Court Justices-to consider and resolve the disputed returns.

 

We should follow that precedent.

He then presented the resolution:

Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states.

 

Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.…

 

We intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not “regularly given” and “lawfully certified” (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed.

Even though 139 of the 221 House Republicans and eight of the 51 Senate Republicans voted for Cruz’s resolution, it wasn’t enough to carry the day and Cruz’s resolution was defeated.

This roused the ire of the Brunson brothers of Utah: Loy, Raland, Deron, and Gaynor. Loy filed one complaint, which “got stuck in the Federal Court,” according to the brothers, so Raland filed an identical one in Utah’s 2nd District Court.

When that one “got stuck” as well, Raland (with some outside assistance) filed an emergency complaint under Rule 11, which enabled it to bypass the 10th Circuit Court (where it got stuck) and allowed it to go directly to the Supreme Court.

The complaint isn’t about the alleged fraudulent election:

Is this about a rigged election? No. It’s about the members of Congress who voted against the investigation, thereby thwarting the investigation.

 

Was this a clear violation of their oath [of office]? Yes.

Tim Canova, a constitutional scholar and professor at Nova Southeastern University, spelled out the consequences if the high court agrees to hear Brunson’s emergency appeal:

The fact that the Brunson case has made it to the Court’s docket suggests profound concerns about a lawless Jan. 6 congressional committee, politicized federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies and major constitutional violations intended to overthrow an elected government by manipulating the outcome of the presidential election.…

 

Supreme Court justices may well see these approaching storm clouds and conclude that the Court’s intervention is necessary to prevent larger civil unrest resulting from constitutional violations that are undermining public trust and confidence in the outcomes of both the 2020 and 2022 elections.

 

The Brunson lawsuit does not claim the election was stolen, merely that a large majority of Congress, by failing to investigate such serious allegations of election rigging and breaches of national security, violated their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic — an oath also taken by Supreme Court justices and members of the U.S. military.

What Brunson is asking for makes this case extraordinary. It is asking the high court, if it finds all 388 defendants guilty, to remove them from office.

Said Canova: “It seems astounding that the Court would [decide] to wade into such waters two years to the day after the Congressional vote to install Joe Biden as President. But these are not normal times.”

For the record, this is the oath of office taken by the 388 defendants in Brunson v. Adams:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) 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.

McCarthy’s Bid for House Speaker Remains Uncertain

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, January 3, 2022:  

Despite the issuance of new House rules and a conference call by Representative Kevin McCarthy on Sunday night, the number of “Never Kevins” has grown from five to 14.

The proposed rules include giving Republicans a “vote of confidence” rule that would allow five or more members the power to move to “vacate the chair.” The original group of five “Never Kevins” are demanding that that motion may be made by just one member.

The proposed rules also would allow lawmakers to insert in a spending bill moves to reduce and not increase government spending, along with the power to reduce salaries of government officials or to fire them. They include a move to allow lawmakers 72 hours to read a bill before voting on it, and to create a committee to investigate the weaponization of the FBI and the CIA against American citizens.

In addition, they would end proxy voting and Zoom committee meetings. It also would move to put term limits on members of the Office of Congressional Ethics, which would immediately remove all but one Democrat from that committee.

McCarthy himself acceded to demands that he move to oust Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and give conservative firebrand Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) membership on the coveted Oversight Committee. In addition, McCarthy offered to investigate the “select” January 6 committee, scrutinizing specifically the failure of the committee to address security breakdowns that allowed violence to get out of hand.

In spite of these verbal concessions, there was no movement by the original five “Never Kevins” and precious little that McCarthy was hoping to count on from the other nine. Not long after the late Sunday night conference call, the nine put out a letter to their colleagues announcing that any concessions McCarthy said he would make were still insufficient: “Thus far, there continue to be missing specific commitments with respect to virtually every component of our entreaties, and thus, no means to measure whether promises [by the House Speaker] are [being] kept or broken.”

Adding to McCarthy’s woes was the announcement from the anti-tax group Club for Growth that it would score negatively any member of the party who votes for McCarthy.

The House opens at noon on Tuesday, with the first order of business, after administering the oaths of office to the members, being a vote for speaker of the House. If the vote fails to give McCarthy a majority of those present, it would be the first time since 1923 when the first vote failed to nominate the House speaker. In that year, it took nine ballots before a candidate for speaker gained a majority vote.

Correction: The oaths of office will be administered AFTER the Speaker of the House is decided. I regret the error.

Joe Biden’s Lies Dwarf Those of George Santos

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, December 30, 2022:

Democrats who supported Joe Biden’s presidential campaign expressed outrage over revelations that a Republican congressman-elect from Long Island, New York, lied.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas, declared that “George Santos should resign.… If he refuses, Congress should expel him.… Just about every aspect of his life appears to be a lie. We’ve seen people fudge their resume but [his] is a total fabrication.”

Castro, a far-Left member of the House (Freedom Index rating: 20 out of 100 in support of the U.S. Constitution), dug his hole even deeper:

George Santos represents more than an individual case for American democracy. If he’s allowed to serve there will be more who seek office up and down the ballot who will believe that they can completely fabricate credentials, personal features and accomplishments to win office.

 

[Santos is a] total fraud about academic and professional credentials, religion, sexual orientation [Santos is a homosexual], etc.

At least Santos admitted, partially anyway, to “embellishing” his credentials in order to win the district last November.

However, observers are still waiting for the current occupant of the White House to come clean over his many and continuing lies, fabrications, and falsehoods expressed repeatedly over decades as a politician.

DiscoverTheNetworks has 47 pages filled with detailed and sourced examples of the cascade of canards Biden has emitted for years. Here are just a few of the most obvious and odious:

His first wife and daughter were killed by a drunk driver:

In 1973 Biden’s wife Neilia and their three children were broadsided by a truck. Neilia died along with their daughter Naomi. His two sons, Beau and Hunter, survived and recovered from their injuries.

Here is how Biden told the story, with variations depending upon the audience. In September 2001 he said:

It was an errant driver who stopped to drink instead of drive and … hit my children and my wife and killed them.

Later on, in 2007, he retold the story in a speech at the University of Iowa:

Let me tell you a little story. I got elected when I was 29, and I got elected November the 7th [1972].

 

And on Dec. 18 of that year, my wife and three kids were Christmas shopping for a Christmas tree. A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly — and I never pursued it — drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly, and killed my daughter instantly, and hospitalized my two sons, with what were thought to be at the time permanent, fundamental injuries.

Biden lied. Curtis Dunn, the driver who broadsided Mrs. Biden’s vehicle, was never charged with drunk driving. “The rumor [spread by Biden] about alcohol being involved by either party, especially the truck driver, is incorrect,” said Delaware Superior Court Judge Jerome Herlihy. He had worked with crash investigators, some of whom thought that Mrs. Biden had pulled out in front of Dunn’s truck without looking, giving him no time to avoid the crash.

When Dunn’s daughter, outraged at Biden’s repeat of the lie, tried to contact Biden to extract an apology, she received nothing but silence. Finally, years afterward, Biden sent her a note saying, “Please know that neither I nor my sons feel any animosity whatsoever.”

His educational background:

In 1987 when a reporter from C-SPAN asked Biden about his grades in college, Biden revealed the mean streak that he largely keeps hidden:

I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect.

 

I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one in my — in my class to have a full academic scholarship.

 

In the first year in law school, I decided didn’t want to be in law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class, and then decided I wanted to stay, went back to law school, and in fact ended up in the top half of my class.

 

I won the international moot-court competition. I was the outstanding student in the political science department at the end of my year.

 

I graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school and 165 credits — I only needed 123 credits. And I’d be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours if you’d like, Frank.

Each of these claims is a lie. Biden earned only two degrees — one in history and the other in political science — which he obtained at the University of Delaware, where he graduated 506th in his class of 688.

He attended law school on a “half-scholarship” that was based not on ability but on need, eventually graduating 76th in a class of 85.

When pressed over the lie, Biden responded: “I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.”

The Amtrak lie:

In a speech he made in New Jersey in October 2021, Biden repeated this fabrication for the fifth time:

I commuted every single day, 263 miles a day, on Amtrak from the time I got elected United States senator [1973 to 2009]. I got to know all the conductors really well, they became my friends — I mean, really, my genuine friends, I’d have them at my home for Christmas and during the summer.

 

And Ange [Angelo Negri] walks up to me and goes, “Joey, baby,” grabs my cheek and I thought the Secret Service was going to blow his head off.

Biden, who claims to be a Catholic, then blasphemed his Lord:

I swear to God, true story.

 

I said, “No, no, he’s a friend.” I said, “What’s up, Ange?” And he said, “Joey, I read in the paper you traveled 1,200,000 miles on Air Force planes.”

They laughed about it, according to Biden’s telling. But Negri’s obituary states that he retired from Amtrak in 1993, while Biden was still a senator. When this inconvenient fact was brought to his attention, Biden changed the story and made the lie even worse. The incident, he said, happened in the “fourth or fifth year” of his vice presidency, claiming more recently that it really happened in the seventh year of his tenure as VP.

Oh, yes: Biden officially celebrated flying one million miles on Air Force Two in 2015.

In still another iteration of the lie, Biden said he was traveling by train to visit his sick mother, even though she had died in 2010.

Back to Santos:

It’s likely that, since House-Speaker-to-be Keven McCarthy needs every single Republican vote he can muster on Monday to secure that position, he will remain silent until after Santos is sworn in and the vote taken. Then, expediently, McCarthy is likely to entertain a motion to sanction Santos or refer him to a House committee to investigate the matter further.

In the meantime, Santos is being investigated by law enforcement on every level — federal, state, and county — for lying about his ancestry, his education, his employment, his charity work, and his property ownership.

18 Republican Senators Sell Out Second Amendment in Passing Omnibus Spending Bill

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 29, 2022:  

In passing the $1.7 trillion spending bill that Biden has promised to sign into law shortly, 18 Republican senators (all of whom claim on their websites that they support the Second Amendment) joined with every Senate Democrat in passing the monstrous, pork-laden, and anti-Second Amendment 2023 Omnibus Appropriations Act.

After being approved by the Senate by a 68-29 vote, the bill moved to the House, where Democrats quickly passed it. Biden has confirmed that he will sign it.

Included in the 4,100-page spending bill is $858 billion for defense, another $787 billion for “non-defense” domestic spending and welfare programs, another $45 billion to shore up the corrupt Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, and 7,200 earmarks totaling over $15 billion.

Deep in the bill are found a dozen infringements on the Second Amendment, with the most pernicious and dangerous being funding to bribe state governments to pass so-called red flag laws, aka ERPOs — Extreme Risk Protection Orders.

ERPOs allow law enforcement to seize firearms from people who have committed no crime but are “believed” to be a danger to themselves or others. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have red flag laws in place, and more than $770 million of the odious omnibus bill provides federal funding (that is, bribes) to states that enact such laws.

The money will flow to the states via Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants, which will be parceled out to states acceding to the red flag violations.

Those laws violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as they may be issued without the gun owner’s knowledge, allowing his or her firearms to be confiscated without a hearing to allow a defense to be presented. This violation of due process is explained away by advocates who hold that the gun owner may appeal to the court to get his firearms back.

But this is backwards, and the 18 Republican senators who voted for it know it. They include such pro-gun worthies as Roy Blunt (Mo.), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Jim Inhofe (Okla.), and Richard Shelby (Ala.).

The danger of ERPOs is that the definition of who may be “dangerous” can be expanded — and likely will be — to include anyone who owns a firearm. And the ATF knows who those owners are. Given sufficient resources from bills like the one Biden is about to sign, the ATF will then be free to move from door to door collecting the firearms under the guise of removing those “dangers” from law-abiding citizens.

The sell-out by Republicans who claim to be “friends” of the American Republic and its guarantees spelled out in the Bill of Rights was predicted long ago by Professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University. In his seminal work Tragedy and Hope, published in 1966, Quigley wrote:

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers.

 

Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.

 

Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.

To see evidence of this, the reader is invited to review the “Freedom Index” (FI) made available by The New American here. That shows, not surprisingly, that the voting patterns of these 18 “Republican” senators range from “moderate” to “poor.” Senator Susan Collins (Maine), for example, sports a dismal 38 out of 100, while Senator Inhofe (from the dark-red conservative state of Oklahoma) has earned just a 69 out of 100. Senator Cotton from Arkansas, in a surprise to some, earns an Index rating of only 60, and Mitt Romney of Utah comes in at a disheartening 42.

Lest readers become discouraged at the selling out of our liberties by our “friends,” keep in mind those who voted against the bill, including Senators Mike Braun of Indiana (FI 80), Ted Cruz of Texas (FI 77), Bill Hagerty of Tennessee (FI 93), Mike Lee of Utah (FI 93), Rand Paul of Kentucky (FI 95), and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama (FI 87).

No Shoo-in for Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, December 28, 2022:  

Tuesday, January 3, 2023, could be a very long day for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). On the surface, all he needs is 218 Republican representatives to vote for him. There will be 222 Republicans in the new, 118th Congress.

End of story, right?

Not quite. Back in November, House Republicans nominated McCarthy for that position by a vote of 188 to 31. On December 9, seven Republicans issued a lengthy list of demands to McCarthy, including installing a “vote of confidence” rule — a “motion to vacate the chair” — that would allow any member of Congress to call for a vote to oust the speaker.

And on Wednesday, five anti-McCarthy Republicans — “Never Kevins” — announced a pact that they would vote as a bloc against McCarthy, depriving him of the position at least on the first vote.

Those five, according to the New York Times, “don’t seem to have a price.” In other words, they can’t be bought. They, among unnumbered others taking the oath of office next Tuesday, are determined to shrink the size of government, regardless.

It’s the number of those “others” that could upset McCarthy’s apple cart. He is the darling of “moderates” — those with voting records, according to The New American’s Freedom Index (FI), in the 60s (out of 100) — and McCarthy, with an FI rating of 60, fits right in.

He is, in the words of the Times’ White House correspondent Annie Karni, “not an ideologue” but instead “a go-along-to-get-along guy.”

In still other words, McCarthy is exactly the kind of speaker the country doesn’t need to begin to rectify the enormous damage being deliberately inflicted on the nation by Democrats and their enablers and sycophants.

McCarthy has the endorsement of Donald Trump, who, claims Karni, “doesn’t see a viable alternative and believes McCarthy [would be] better for him” in 2024 than an even weaker speaker “who [could] draw some Democratic votes.”

McCarthy, scrambling to secure his election before Tuesday, has several factors working in his favor, including history. In January 1997, Rep. Newt Gingrich secured the position with just 216 votes because four Republicans voted for another Republican, five voted “present,” and three were absent that day.

In January 2015, Rep. John Boehner won the speakership with 216 votes when 25 members didn’t vote. And in 2021, Rep. Nancy Pelosi regained the position with 216 votes due to vacancies and absences.

And history also records that no speaker vote has gone to a second ballot in a century.

McCarthy himself told Fox News last week that he would have the votes on the first round.

On the other hand, though, Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) said:

I’m obviously observing it from the other side [of the aisle], but all the intel I get from my Republican friends is … to expect it to go late … I plan to wear my comfortable suit.

64 Years Later, What Has The John Birch Society Done?

This article, written by the Communications Director of the John Birch Society, Paul Dragu, deserves widespread circulation. It appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 26, 2022:  

 

Modern man is simply being played for a sucker by an immoral gang of sophisticated criminals. These cunning megalomaniacs seek to make themselves the absolute rulers of the human race…. Although they now occupy most of the positions of great prestige and influence in Washington, London, and Paris, as well as in the educational, financial, and publishing circles of the whole world, their power rests entirely on bluff, pretense, and deception. Their success and their purposes are contrary to the whole current of human history. They are sitting precariously on the gigantic powder keg of all honest human emotions. Despite their arrogant assurance on the contemporary scene, they are well aware that sooner or later, the whole flamework of their cruel power will be blown pieces by a mighty uprising of the incalculable forces of man’s moral principles, love for freedom, and common sense. How soon that day of delivery comes will depend on you.

— Robert Welch, December 1958

On December 9, 1958, Robert Welch of Belmont, Massachusetts, gathered eleven successful and patriotic men in a quiet Indianapolis home to announce that he would forego retiring and dedicate the rest of his life to fighting the tyrannical forces trying to destroy America and establish a one-world totalitarian government. To do this, he was going to create an organization unlike any other. He wanted to know if they’d join him.

That was the birth of The John Birch Society.

Welch, who had worked many years as a successful executive for his brother’s lucrative candy company, James O. Welch Company, was a wordy man, attributes tragically considered liabilities in today’s distraction-filled, fast-paced society that is in dire need of truth and understanding. He spent two days explaining the gravity of the communist conspiracy, part of a larger “Master Conspiracy,” he would explain. The transcript of that two-day presentation was published as The Blue Book, now in its 25th printing.

Communism had by that point officially blanketed with equal misery, tyranny, and poverty at least half the planet. Furthermore, Welch warned, communism had subversively infected the U.S. government. His insistence on the large degree of communist influence within the government would over the years serve as a lightning rod for smears and ridicule from corporate media journalists with their heads in the clouds. However, time — which made possible the declassification of documents such as the Venona cables — have unfortunately further vindicated Welch. The Venona operation was a U.S. Army intelligence program set up in 1943 to decrypt messages sent by Soviet spy agencies. According to historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr who read and analyzed the cables, by 1948 the “Soviets had recruited spies in virtually every major American government agency of military or diplomatic importance.”

Little has changed in the news business. Today’s regime propagandists by and large continue to deny our nation’s tyrannical march, yet they’re different because they do so while being trampled over by it.

After the Indianapolis meeting, Welch and his co-founders wasted little time getting to work. JBS began creating chapters the following month and in two years’ time the organization would explode in membership and influence. By 1961, chapters had formed from sea to shining sea, as patriotic Americans of all walks of life joined to reverse the fast-spreading disease of collectivism. JBS established its own book publishing house and set up bookstores all over the country to circumvent the publishing gatekeepers. This was in addition to the magazine Welch had started before JBS, American Opinion. Members worked to create understanding of the collectivist threat and an influence that would steer the nation toward freedom. Birchers passed out magazines, informational pamphlets, and books. They met regularly and recruited others and launched letter-writing campaigns. Many would even run for local office and win.

And all these book-reading, pamphlet-distributing, letter-writing patriots were getting things done. Americans were learning about the statist threat, they were joining in the fight against collectivism and government centralization, and they became part of a group who understood that behind the attempt to destroy our successful Republic stood a conspiratorial push for an oppressive New World Order, one that would crush the human spirit with the boot of tyrannical oligarchical rule.

It didn’t take long for JBS’s meteoric rise to incite a response from the forces it threatened. Beginning in 1961, corporate media — the propaganda arm of the Insiders — launched a nonstop, merciless, mostly fact-free onslaught at the JBS. Interestingly, corporate media attacks resembled to a tee the exact strategies the communist hierarchy in Moscow created to be used against the growing anti-communist grassroots movement in the United States. Psy-op expert and former OSS agent Edward Hunter revealed this in 1961 to the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws. In the coming years, media mouthpieces would smear Birchers as right-wing extremists, Nazis, fascists, antisemites, bigots, and racists, all despite blatant evidence to the contrary but all according to communist-devised strategies. The JBS has always opposed government centralization and all collectivism, which includes fascism; and JBS members, leaders, and sponsored speakers have included people of various colors, races, and religions, including Jews. The media painted a profoundly false picture of the JBS, a distortion each subsequent generation of reporters has largely perpetuated.

The attacks against the JBS became so intense that Welch asked the government to investigate his organization, confident it would vindicate it. In 1963, the California Senate Subcommittee on Un-American Activities released the results of an investigatory report on the JBS. It concluded that the organization comprised patriots of various colors and religions and nothing subversive or bigoted existed about the JBS. It also documented that JBS had chapters that were racially integrated. This was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.

But the fact-finding report did not curb the attacks. Even so-called conservatives got in on the act, including William F. Buckley and his National Review magazine. The neocons at National Review — the magazine included members with at one point had ties to communist organizations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the CIA — peddled the narrative that America’s decline was the result of bumbling liberalism and gross stupidity as opposed to an intentional, orchestrated dismantling. Welch and JBS members, however, knew better.

National Review went after Welch in 1962 with infelicitous articles about him. Then in 1965 NR went after JBS members because they followed Welch, whose great sin was believing in conspiracies. NR especially took issue, like the rest of media, with Welch’s belief that General Dwight Eisenhower had wittingly or unwittingly served the goals of the communists. Welch was inclined toward the former, that Eisenhower consciously served the communist agenda. Welch’s unpopular, hard-to-swallow thesis, which remains controversial to this today and is still being used as a cudgel against the JBS, was eventually printed as the book The Politician.

Sixty-four years have passed since Robert Welch launched the JBS. The organization, typical of one that has endured so long, has gone through changes, trials, and triumphs. But through it all, we have remained consistent in our mission, “Less Government, More Responsibility and – with God’s Help – A Better World.”

Decades after that fateful meeting in Indianapolis, Welch was asked to name one of JBS’s most significant accomplishments. “Surviving,” he replied. While this may seem a flat and inapplicable answer, JBS survival, we believe, is the difference between complete global tyranny and the world in which we live today. JBS members have foiled plans for regional alliances such as the North American Union. They have fought tooth and nail to prevent the destruction of the Constitution via an Article V Convention. They’ve worked since the ’60s to stop the nationalization of local police. JBS has also been credited by its enemies as the most effective organization to besmirch the angelic goals of the Agenda 21/2030 plan and derail it from burrowing into American communities.

But our greatest contribution has been education. Sixty-four years later, we’ve arrived at point in time in which we are on the brink of majority knowledge of the maniacal conspiratorial elite class. During all our years, from 1959 to 2022, Birchers continued living up to Mr. Welch’s mantra — “education is our total strategy, and truth is out only weapon.” They have distributed millions of magazines, books, pamphlets, and videos. We’ve even met visitors from the other side of the planet whose eyes were open after reading our materials. We’ve published and distributed some of the most important books on the Conspiracy, including None Dare Call It Treason by John Stormer, The Invisible Government by Dan Smoot, None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen, The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, and Deep State: The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes by Alex Newman. Our affiliate magazine, The New American, and its predecessors, Review of the News and American Opinion, have influenced more people than today’s efficient surveillance apparatus could track. We’ve also started a K-12 school, FreedomProject Academy, to raise up the next generation of patriots. And we recently revived a tool that can revolutionize the political makeup of the United States – the Congressional ScorecardThe Scorecard uses seven key votes to measure how well – or badly – every U.S. congressman, Republican or Democrat, adheres to the U.S. Constitution. This tool is now being expanded to include state legislatures. The Scorecard omits the need to decode politicians’ political rhetoric and goes straight to the fruit they bear via their legislative votes.

In short, JBS has prevented the destruction of America. If it weren’t for the JBS, we believe the world the globalists seek to install — one in which you will own nothing and they everything — would already be reality. If, however, we would’ve had more “pullers at the oars,” as we’ve always sought to recruit, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now in, either. Inflation is robbing us, our elections are a mess, government is collaborating with corporations to silence and manipulate us, and our rogue intelligence agencies run illegal operations against its own citizens.

However.

It is not unreasonable to argue that we are in better position than we were in 1958, if for no other reason than that more people know what’s going on than ever. You cannot address a problem you don’t believe exists. Birch education has converged with reality. Covid tyranny revealed that there indeed exists a totalitarian-minded managerial class seeking to render us subservient cattle citizens of their global oligarchical government. It showed that despite endless talk of “democracy,” the West is not only not immune to tyranny, but plans to weaponize its exclusively advanced technology to injure, control and enslave all humanity.

A giant is awakening. There are plenty of signs. An overwhelming majority of Americans now reject the experimental concoctions they tried to jab into all of us. The propaganda and censorship collaboration between government and Big Tech is coming to light faster than we can keep up with. Corporate media trust (and subscriptions) is plummeting while that of “alternative” media is skyrocketing. Government school indoctrination continues to lose its influence as parents are pulling their children out by the droves. Election chicanery has been exposed and Americans won’t rest until our elections are restored.  This is why the Biden regime has tried to nationalize elections. And patriotic Americans are working in a plethora of ways to raise awareness and change their communities, the key to national restoration.   And politically speaking, the America First takeover of the GOP is within sight.

In an August 1815 letter to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams ruminated on the War of Independence. “What do we mean by the Revolution? The War?” Adams asked rhetorically. “That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People….”

Why is there such an intense effort to propagandize and censor us?

Because they are afraid of you. They know that when enough Americans wake up, the jig is up. During that fateful meeting in 1958, Robert Welch said this to his future co-founding members:

“Truth, reality, human instinct, and the overwhelming weight of human desire are on our side. We have these points in our favor against a Conspiracy that must depend on falsehood, cunning terror, utilized by less than 5% of the population.”

New Jersey Gives the Raspberry to the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment Ruling

This article appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 26, 2022:  

The day after the Supreme Court gave full throat to the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right of a citizen to keep and bear arms in public (while striking down New York’s onerous restrictions on such ownership) back in June, anti-gun Democrat New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced he would find a way to “work around” the high court’s ruling.

The ruling in Bruen — New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen — struck down New York’s “proper cause” requirement and, by implication, New Jersey’s “justifiable need” requirement for a citizen to be able to exercise his Second Amendment rights.

So, New Jersey Democrats, fully in control of both houses of the legislature and the governor’s mansion, launched bill A4769, which Murphy signed into law last week.

Under New Jersey’s old law, now discarded, virtually no one (except the elite, of course) could own a firearm. Under Murphy’s new law, no one may carry a firearm virtually anywhere. According to a lawsuit filed immediately after Murphy signed A4769 into law:

A4769 unconstitutionally suppresses the fundamental right to bear arms in: parks, beaches, libraries, museums, theatres, playgrounds, zoos, medical offices, sports arenas, restaurants, public gatherings, casinos, one’s own car and other vehicles, and presumptively all private property.

The bill also makes it nearly impossible for a citizen to obtain permission to purchase a firearm, despite the Bruen decision. The law prohibits the issuance of permits based on “character” and “temperament,” uses social media posts by the applicant as valid reasons for denying a permit, and requires four — four! — endorsements by unrelated parties assuring the governmental authorities of the applicant’s character. Furthermore, local law enforcement officials will then interview each of those four endorsers to make sure that they aren’t somehow in violation of some law themselves.

The permitting fee, under the new law, is raised from $50 to $200, and liability insurance is required to be purchased by the application. Unfortunately, there are no carriers presently providing such coverage in New Jersey.

Not surprisingly, the new law creates a “special class” of citizens — public officials — to whom the new law doesn’t apply (no permit required, and few restrictions on where they may carry a firearm).

The lawsuit filed on the same day that Murphy signed the bill into law pointed out the hypocrisy of the new law:

When [We] the People, by enacting that [Second] amendment, enshrined in their fundamental charter the right to “carry weapons in case of confrontation” for the “core lawful purpose of self-defense,” [quoting from the high court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller], they [the founders] did not mean to leave the freedom to exercise that right at the mercy of the very government officials whose hands they sought to bind.

At the time of the Bruen decision in June there were eight states with “may issue” laws that were struck down. In six of them — California, Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware — they either moved to remove the offending statutes from their books or were considering making such changes. New York, and now New Jersey, are instead giving the raspberry to the high court.

They are swimming upstream. Since the June ruling by the high court, nearly one million citizens in those former “may issue” states have purchased a firearm. Nationally, background checks are averaging nearly two million a month.

And a recent poll by the Marquette University School of Law revealed that almost two out of every three citizens support the Bruen decision.

So, New York and New Jersey are outliers in the great debate over the Second Amendment versus state government restrictions and limitations. The lawsuit, brought by the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, Inc., an NRA affiliate, was filed in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey. It asks simply that the court declares “immediate and urgent injunctive relief … [and rules] that New Jersey’s brand new law … is unconstitutional.”

Jan. 6 Report From Republicans Counters Official Report From the Select Committee

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 22, 2022:  

The “counter report” from the five House Republicans who were originally nominated to the Select Committee to investigate the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot is so hot that many of its sources were shielded from being named for fear of retaliation and reprisal by their superiors.

The report — Security Failures at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 — was prepared at the direction of the five Republicans who should have been on the Select Committee: Reps. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), and Troy Nehls (R-Texas).

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to seat Reps. Banks and Jordan, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy withdrew the other three from consideration, knowing that the Select Committee was to be nothing more than a kangaroo court — an inquisition instead of an investigation — designed to attack and sully the reputation of former President Donald Trump.

From the report:

This report goes to great lengths to protect the identities of the line officers and analysts who participated in interviews.

 

Sources who cooperated with this investigation described retaliation by USCP [U.S. Capitol Police] leadership for their participation in this investigation and other investigations into the events of January 6, 2021.

The report pointed to the likely instigator of those potential reprisals on the whistleblowers the counter report relied on:

The Staff Director for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, David Buckley, has a track record of acting in a retaliatory manner against whistleblowers.

 

For those reasons, this report uses “USCP source” to cite or otherwise refer to conversations with USCP employees who are not in leadership positions.

The counter report not only damns the Capitol Police for incompetence leading up to and during the January 6 riot, it also puts much of the blame on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It claims that Democrats, who held the majority in the House, were responsible for the security at the Capitol, and they failed — perhaps deliberately.

From the report:

Documents provided by the House Sergeant at Arms show how then-House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving carried out his duties in clear deference to the Speaker [Pelosi], her staff, and other Democratic staff.

Meanwhile, members of the Republican House leadership were kept in the dark about proposed security measures until it was too late to rectify any errors. Said the report:

Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on January 6, 2021.

 

The Democrat-led investigation in the House of Representatives, however, has disregarded those institutional failings that exposed the Capitol to violence that day.

What the report implies is clear: Since Capitol Police were denied knowing the potential for violence, and thus preparing for that possibility, instigators of violence insinuated in the vast crowd of citizens were allowed to run rampant. The media was complicit in reporting endlessly that, because of those relatively few intentional troublemakers, the entire crowd — and thus the former president himself — was responsible.

Based on that assumption, hundreds of otherwise innocent people have been arrested and jailed, and remain incarcerated in what are reported to be wretched conditions, many without being charged with a crime.

The counter report asks: “Why [was] the Capitol left so unprepared?” It provides several reasons, including “internal politics” and “unnecessary bureaucracy,” but fails to suggest that the lack of preparation was deliberate in the hopes that thugs inserted in the crowd would create the chaos desired.

Without calling it a “false flag” event, the report makes it clear that malfeasance of the first order made such infiltration and its consequences inevitable. Concluded the report: “The USCP was set up to fail.”

Among the report’s key findings:

Republicans were “intentionally excluded” from “key meetings and conversations related to House Security”;

 

USCP “leadership … retaliated against subordinates who spoke out about the division’s shortcomings”;

 

The House Sergeant at Arms “was compromised by politics … and did not adequately prepare the capitol for possible violence”; and consequently “U.S. Capitol Police did not give officers the appropriate training necessary to prepare them to protect the capitol from violence.”

The final report from the Select Committee is due out next week.

FBI Analyst Sues Bureau for Placing Him on Leave for “Conspiratorial” Views

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, December 21, 2022:  

Marcus Allen (not the NFL player), a former FBI analyst, was caught in the ongoing “purge” of American patriots from the FBI last January and, with the help of Judicial Watch, filed suit against the FBI last week. After serving the country as a Marine with two tours in Iraq, he joined the FBI seven years ago.

His record was unblemished until January, when he received this letter from the HR department of the FBI:

This letter is to inform you, as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Security Programs Manager, I (Jennifer Leigh Moore, acting Executive Assistant Director) am suspending your Top Secret security clearance effective upon receipt of this letter.

 

The Security Division has learned that you have espoused conspiratorial views both orally and in writing and promoted unreliable information which indicates support for the events of January 6th….

 

The suspension of your security clearance is based on security concerns related to [an internal guideline]….

 

You will not be allowed access to FBI space … You may not represent yourself as an FBI employee.

In February he received another letter indicating that he was being placed on administrative leave, without pay. Under the terms of that letter, Allen, if he wanted to obtain other employment outside the agency, would first have to obtain approval from his former employer.

When he tried to earn some money selling a personally written prayer journal, the agency ignored his petition to do so. Apparently, starvation is part of the retaliation and punishment the FBI metes out to those who might hold views it doesn’t like.

In May, he was called in for an interview by the agency. Since then, nothing has changed: He and his family (wife and three children) have used up their savings and are now living off early withdrawals from his pension account.

Judicial Watch (JW), self-described as “a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation which … fulfills its educational mission through litigation,” filed a lawsuit against the FBI:

Plaintiff … brings this action … against Defendant Director of the FBI Christopher Wray for violating Plaintiff’s rights, pursuant to the First and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution….

 

By a letter dated February 17, 2022, the FBI placed Plaintiff on administrative leave without pay due to the suspension of his security clearance.

 

Plaintiff has never “espoused conspiratorial views” and does not support the “events of January 6th,” which on information and belief is a reference to the unlawful activities that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (hereafter “January 6”).

 

The FBI has not identified any specific statements or actions supporting its contention that Plaintiff has done otherwise.

 

Prior to the January 10, 2022 letter, Plaintiff had never been disciplined in any manner during his years of service to the FBI…

Judicial Watch wrote that Allen had no connection with the January 6 incident:

Plaintiff was not involved in the events of January 6 and did not support them in any material way.

 

The FBI has made no allegation or offered any evidence to the contrary.

 

Plaintiff has expressed no view that could be reasonably interpreted as personally expressing support or sympathy for any unlawful activity that occurred on January 6.

In the months since Allen received the letter, the FBI has gone dark:

In the ten months since Plaintiff was placed on administrative leave without pay, the FBI has made no decision or taken any other action regarding the suspension of Plaintiff’s security clearance.

 

Because no decision has been made or any action taken on the security clearance suspension, Plaintiff has had no meaningful opportunity to challenge being placed on administrative leave without pay.

Nor has he had any opportunity to earn any income since he was placed on unpaid leave:

Despite being placed on unpaid administrative leave, Plaintiff is required to obtain the FBI’s approval for outside employment.

 

To this end, Plaintiff authored a prayer journal and sought permission from the FBI to sell the journal. After initially engaging with Plaintiff, the FBI has ignored his request for approval of outside employment, reaching no decision on whether he is permitted to sell copies of the prayer journal.

Judicial Watch spelled out what Allen wants the court to do:

  1. Declare that [the internal guideline] on its face … violates the First Amendment Free Speech Clause of the U.S. Constitution;
  2. Declare that [the guideline] violates the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution;
  3. Permanently enjoin [the FBI or any of its agents] from enforcing [the guideline]; and
  4. Declare [that the FBI] is in violation of the law, and order the FBI to act promptly in regard to [Allen’s] security clearance and employment suspension by reinstating [Allen’s] security clearance and returning [Allen] to active duty with the FBI.

Judicial Watch failed to demand that the FBI respond to Allen’s demands within a certain time frame, especially important in light of the agency’s policy to starve Allen and his family as punishment and retaliation for any perceived failure on his part to embrace fully the FBI’s agenda concerning the January 6 incident.

It’s likely the “guideline” is being used not only against Allen but against other FBI employees as a weapon to enforce submission of its employees to that agenda.

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