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December 2021

I&I/TIPP Poll: 41% Don’t Trust Fauci’s Opinions On COVID-19 Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/20/ii-tipp-poll-41-dont-trust-faucis-opinions-on-covid-19/

Fewer than half of all Americans say they trust Dr. Anthony Fauci, the controversial director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, when it comes to the fight against COVID-19, a new I&I/TIPP Poll shows. But as with many other issues these days, the level of trust in Fauci is highly partisan.

The December I&I/TIPP Poll asked: “Generally speaking, how much trust do you have in Dr. Anthony Fauci’s opinions related to coronavirus?”

Of those responding, 47% said they had “a lot of trust” or “quite a bit of trust” in Fauci, while 41% said they had “little trust” or “no trust at all.” Another 13% responded they were “not sure.”

The December data were collected from I&I/TIPP Poll’s survey of 1,301 adults, which was conducted online from Dec. 1-4 by TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, I&I’s polling partner. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.8 percentage points.

In Email to Fauci, NIH Dir. Collins Asked For Media Hit Piece to Smear ‘Fringe’ Harvard, Stanford, Oxford Epidemiologists By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/20/in-email-to-fauci-nih-dir-collins-asked-for-media-hit-piece-to-smear-fringe-harvard-stanford-oxford-epidemiologists/

Last fall, outgoing National Institutes of Health Director (NIH) Francis Collins asked Dr. Anthony Fauci in an email to pursue a “quick and devastating” media hit piece to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration, recently released emails show.

More than 60,000 infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists signed the declaration to express their “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.”

The document was authored by Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. All three of the doctors are epidemiologists with expertise in monitoring infectious diseases.

“This proposal from three fringe epidemiologists who met with the Secretary seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford,” Collins wrote in the Oct. 8, 2020, email, released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis last week.

“There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises,” the NIH chief continued. “I don’t see anything like that on line yet – is it underway?”

How a CNN Headline Reports a Terrorist Attack Blaming “Israeli police actions.” Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/how-cnn-headline-reports-terrorist-attack-hugh-fitzgerald/

Headlines matter. I was aghast to learn that 8 out of 10 readers do not get beyond the headline of a story, and that the two who do are often deeply influenced by the headline in their reception of the story itself. How a CNN headline led readers astray is reported on here: “CNN Downplays Wave of Palestinian Terrorism with Bizarre Comparison to ‘Attacks by Jewish Settlers’ by Rachel O’Donoghue, Algemeiner, December 9, 2021:

An Israeli security guard was left seriously injured on Monday [Dec. 6] when a Palestinian driver rammed his vehicle into a West Bank checkpoint.

The perpetrator, identified as 16-year-old Muhammad Nidal Younis, from Nablus, was shot dead before he could cause further harm.

It was a terror attack — one that could have had graver consequences were it not for the swift and decisive actions of soldiers stationed at the checkpoint.

Yet, this was the headline used by CNN to report on the incident: “Suspected car-ramming attack by Palestinian teen highlights rising tensions, amid questions over Israeli police actions.”

There are several points that need to be addressed with regard to this title.

First, there is nothing “suspected” about the attack.

What Being Pro-Palestinian Really Means Campus activism for Palestinian self-determination has never been about statehood. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/campus-being-pro-palestinian-means-being-anti-richard-l-cravatts/

Writing in 2009 about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the insightful Palestinian/Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh observed that, “What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the ‘occupation,’” he wrote, “as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.”

And that is what those who observe the campus activism against Israel have never fully understood: that being pro-Palestinian, by definition, means being anti-Israel.

It does not involve urging the Palestinian leadership to come to terms with Israel about long unsettled negotiation points about borders, Jerusalem, the return of refugees, and other key issues. It has never involved advising Palestinians to abandon terror, or so-called “resistance,” as a tactic for advancing political ambitions.

Those helping to promote Palestinian self-determination have not been firm in suggesting that Palestinian leaders and other officials end incitement, stop the indoctrination of children in textbooks and lesson plans that demonize Israel and Jews and teach children to look at the Jewish state as an abomination, an illegal regime, a perverse example of the malignancy of Jews who steal land, commit genocide, and oppress an innocent indigenous people.

Supporters of the Palestinians have not advised Palestinian leaders to abandon their unrealistic, maximalist ambitions where the fictional Palestine that Israel’s foes always refer to will be reborn—from the River to the Sea—in place of Israel, with the Palestinians the majority rulers of a dhimmi minority of Jews.

The Palestinians have never been told by their supporters that it is morally repugnant and diplomatically lethal to engage in a “pay to slay” program through which terrorists and their families were financially rewarded with $183 million in 2017, for example, garnered from foreign aid heaped on the Palestinians, purportedly for humanitarian aid.

Why Hasn’t Jussie Smollett Been Charged with Perjury? When the demand for hate crimes exceeds the supply, what to do? Larry Elder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/why-hasnt-jussie-smollett-been-charged-perjury-larry-elder/

This did not wear well. On February 22, 2019, a story posted on Gentleman’s Quarterly website was headlined: “The Racist, Homophobic Attack on Jussie Smollett Is America’s Endgame. When one of the most famous black and gay men in America is not safe, the message is clearer than it has ever been.” One of the most famous black and gay men? Count me among the multitudes who said, “Who is Jussie Smollett?”

GQ.com, of course, referred to the alleged hate crime committed one winter night in Chicago against actor Smollett, coming back from Subway toting a tuna fish foot-long sandwich. He claimed his attackers were President Donald Trump-supporting thugs who yelled racial and homophobic slurs. The tale quickly fell apart, but not before the “America is systemically racist” media and political ambulance chasers weighed in.

The soon-to-be presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted in January 2019: “What happened today to Jussie Smollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.”

Biden’s future running mate, Kamala Harris, tweeted: “Jussie Smollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. I’m praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern day-lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.”

Fit for a King Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate subverts the constitutional design. Jeffrey H. Anderson

https://www.city-journal.org/joe-bidens-anti-constitutional-vaccine-mandate

“In republican governments, the legislative authority necessarily predominates,” said James Madison. But what sort of government is it when the president thinks he can decree a nationwide vaccine mandate without the legislature’s involvement? Such a decree would seem to be more characteristic of an elective monarchy than a republic.

President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate has been criticized for intrusively injecting the federal government into personal health decisions, for denying the existence of natural immunity (already obtained by perhaps half of the U.S. population), and for causing people who choose not to be vaccinated to lose their livelihoods (and at a time when the nation is already experiencing a shortage of workers). In short, it is being criticized as bad policy. But another problem with the mandate is that Biden thinks he can decide such policy questions unilaterally for a nation of more than 300 million ostensibly free citizens—and that so much of the country is willing to go along with his claim.

Biden’s mandate is clearly an exercise of legislative power on the part of the chief executive. As such, it marks the substitution of the arbitrary rule of one man for the republican rule of law. At the same time, it represents the substitution of federal rule for state or local rule. In other words, it undermines both the separation of powers and federalism—which together form what Madison in Federalist 51 called the “double security . . . to the rights of the people.” Biden’s assertion of power is therefore about much more than Covid vaccines. It is about whether Americans will accept having the president function as a one-man quasi-legislature or will instead demand that we revert to what Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist 1, called “the true principles of republican government.”

President Trump Raises a Serious Question About Letitia James

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/president-trump-raises-a-serious-question-about/91836/

President Trump’s lawsuit against New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, deserves, in our view, a serious hearing. Mr. Trump complains that she’s investigating him for political purposes. That truth is so plain that even the New York Times has been warning against it. This is a moment for the robed sages to declare that they will not permit their hallowed courtrooms to be used for politics.

It’s hard to think of a more important principle. We carry no brief for Mr. Trump or any of his businesses. And we fully appreciate what a formidable opponent Ms. James is as a political operator. Without ever filing a charge, she took down, in Andrew Cuomo, the man standing athwart her own ambitions for the governorship. It’s no small thing, though, that Mr. Trump was in her sights when she was but a candidate.

During the race for attorney general in 2018, Ms. James told Democratic primary voters she was “closing in on him.” After winning the nomination, she credited her victory to her aggressive criticism of the President. Her win, she said, “was about the people but most importantly it was about that man in the White House who can’t go a day without threatening our fundamental rights.” She vowed to “stand up and fight back.”