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April 2023

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Mike Pompeo Makes His 2024 Decision Sarah Arnold Sarah Arnold

By on April 15th, 2023

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/04/14/mike-pompeo-announces-2024-presidential-run-n2621998

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decided whether to enter the race for the 2024 White House. 

On Friday, Pompeo announced that he would not run for president against former President Trump during an interview on “Special Report.”

The Republican said that he and his wife pondered the decision for a few months but ultimately decided it was not the right time for their family. 

“I have made a decision,” Pompeo said. “We have prayerfully concluded we are not going to join the race in 2024. While we care deeply about America and the issues I’ve been talking about for the past year and a half and frankly for decades matter an awful lot, this isn’t our moment.”

Pompeo was asked if his former boss, a top contender for the GOP nomination, had any weight on his decision, which he denied but took a few digs at him.

“I think Americans are thirsting for people making arguments, not just tweets. I think they’re looking for someone who can clearly articulate their vision for what parents ought to be doing to help their kids be successful in schools and how we take back crime from our streets and cities,” Pompeo said while speaking to Fox News. “I don’t know if that will end up being President Trump that the American people choose or if that’s who our party will choose to be its nominee. But I’m hopeful it will be those debates about real arguments, things that really matter.”

However, he insisted that he still plans to support the Republican nominee no matter who it may be. 

In recent months, Pompeo had traveled to a series of early-voting states as his potential run was expected. But, in a statement, he didn’t rule out the idea of never running, saying more opportunities would come about.

“There remain many more opportunities for which the timing might be more fitting as presidential leadership becomes even more necessary,” Pompeo said. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

19 Times Democrats And DOJ Deliberately Politicized Law Enforcement By: Tristan Justice

By on April 15th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/14/19-times-democrats-and-doj-deliberately-politicized-law-enforcement/

Here’s a roundup of the DOJ deploying federal resources to do Democrats’ bidding.

Amid calls from former President Donald Trump to “defund” the partisan Department of Justice and FBI, which treats its friends above the law and its enemies below it, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer defended the agencies.

But a review of the agencies’ track records shows them to be indefensible. Here are 19 times Democrats and DOJ politicized the rule of law, deploying federal resources to do Democrats’ bidding.

1. Infiltration of Catholic Parishes

House Republican Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday after a whistleblower revealed the agency is targeting Catholic parishes.

In February, former Special Agent Kyle Seraphin revealed that “the FBI’s Richmond Division would like to protect Virginians from the threat of ‘white supremacy,’ which it believes has found a home within Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass.”

“The document assesses with ‘high confidence’ the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church,” Seraphin reported.

Jordan’s letter to Wray Tuesday said the FBI sought to use local religious organizations as ‘new avenues for tripwire and source development.’”

2. FBI Targeted Parents for Domestic Terrorism

Weeks before the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, in which parental rights in education were the centerpiece of Republican campaigns, the FBI deployed counterterrorism resources on parents who raised issues at school board meetings. Parents identified as extremists by FBI activists were labeled with “threat tags” under Attorney General Merrick Garland’s guidance. Whistleblower documents suggest Garland lied about the scandal when testifying before the House Judiciary Committee that October.

In March, the committee published an interim report on the debacle concluding the Biden administration had “no legitimate basis” to crack down on parents as terrorists.

Garland has refused lawmakers’ demands to repeal the controversial memorandum, according to the committee.

3. Crossfire Hurricane

The campaign to impeach former President Donald Trump began well before his 2017 inauguration.

Deep-state officials within the FBI concocted plans known as Crossfire Hurricane to frame Trump as a Russian agent after the Republican businessman secured the GOP presidential nomination. Within four months of Trump’s first term, a special counsel was appointed to investigate allegations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. After the more than two-year special counsel investigation run entirely by Democrats with unlimited resources, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team found not one person, let alone Trump himself, colluded with the Kremlin.

4. Hillary’s Emails

While the DOJ investigated the Trump campaign in 2016, the agency gave cover to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her private email server scandal.

The FBI told journalists there was no evidence that a foreign power reviewed Clinton’s emails improperly stored on a private server. According to a report from the DOJ inspector general in 2018, however, texts show they almost certainly did, “at least one of them classified,” as Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi wrote.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Trashing the Global Environment: ‘There Is No Fish in the Waters’ by Robert Williams

By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19554/china-trashing-environment

“Risks to marine habitats are most prominent in Caribbean island nations, such as the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, as well as coastal waters across Africa, most notably along Western and Central African coastlines. In the Bahamas, Angola and Mozambique, more than 2,000 km2 of marine habitats face high impact risks.” — bu.edu, December 6, 2022

“Across Angola, Fiji, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, more than 50,000 square kilometers of marine habitats are “facing low but non-negligible risks from nearby projects.” — bu.edu, December 6, 2022

Ports built or financed by the Chinese, the study found, pose the greatest risks to marine habitats; the risks remain high even up to 30 kilometers from the port.

China’s overseas infrastructure projects are not the only ones ruining marine habitats. China’s enormous fishing fleet is simultaneously contributing not only to the severe devastation of marine ecosystems but also to the destruction of the livelihoods of local fishermen.

Chinese fishing boats are destroying the livelihoods of West African fishing communities on the West African coast. Due to illegal Chinese fishing, they could be losing more than $2 billion each year.

In Ghana… illegal fishing boats use Ghanaian flags, but, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation, 90% of those boats belong to Chinese owners.

“There is no fish in the waters. We used to catch up to 90 trays of sardinella fish a day and now we barely get five trays a day.” — Dembo Touray, fisherman Bakau, Gambia’s largest fishing community, aa.com.tr, 2020.

Even though, in 2019, Communist Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that the BRI would become “green and sustainable,” he did not say when.

“China says it will follow environmental guidelines, but history has shown these protections are nonexistent.” — William Laurance, distinguished research professor of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, The Guardian, September 20, 2021

Additionally, China already mines 70% of all rare earth materials, a situation that has made the world virtually dependent on it. The future of the African continent’s environment, in short, looks anything but sustainable.

China’s overseas infrastructure projects present high-impact risks to the environment, a new study has found.

The report — conducted by researchers from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, the University of Queensland, the University of California Santa Barbara, and Colorado State University — focused on the risks to coastal and marine ecological systems posed by 114 of China’s overseas development projects between the years 2008-2019. According to the document, those 114 projects represent only 20% of all Chinese development finance projects in that time period, meaning that the results of the study are probably just the tip of the iceberg.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Lessons Lost to History: the Tragically Unheeded 2008 Warning of Biolab Threat By Ben Bartee

By on April 15th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/04/14/lessons-lost-to-history-the-tragically-unheeded-2008-warning-of-biolab-threat-n1687401

We ignore prescient warnings in the present at the peril of our future selves.

This one comes from a decade and a half ago, a full twelve years before the course of world history was literally changed forever for the worse by forced lockdowns, masking, and medical mandates unimaginable prior to 2020.

Via Scientific American, 2008:

In an opinion that echoes those of several public health scientists, Keith Rhodes, the Government Accountability Office’s chief technologist, told a congressional hearing in October 2007 that “we are at greater risk today” than before of an infectious disease epidemic because of the great increase in biolaboratories and the absence of oversight they receive.

Nevertheless, Michael Kurilla, NIAID’s director of extramural research, says that “we’re much better off” having spent $41 billion on bioterror research since 2002.

The study’s author, John Dudley Miller, offered his unheeded warning in the context of the anthrax score of the aughts.

Note how often these biomedical security state threads lead back to, and intertwine with, the post-9/11 War on Terror waged by the Bush Administration and continued by its predecessor.

In many ways, this is all one continuous, ever-evolving permanent emergency. The referent objects and threats (real or manufactured) change, but all of the unending crises that we are subjected serve to justify increased national security powers in some form.

The overarching message I wish to convey when discussing AI developers or virologists tinkering with forces beyond their control in a lab is: these people do not know what they are doing.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Michael A. Helfand : A New York State court ruling vindicates the principle of parental authority in education.

By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/ny-court-vindicates-parental-authority-in-education

Late last month, the ongoing battle between the New York State Education Department (NYSED) and a small group of Orthodox Jewish schools took a surprising turn. For the better part of a decade, the NYSED has been battling these schools over the quality of the education they provide, arguing that they fail to meet the basic educational standards required by New York law. For that reason, this past fall, the NYSED enacted new regulations setting out a process to assess the instruction provided in nonpublic schools and, when a school fails to meet state standards, ensuring its closure. Not surprisingly, a number of Jewish organizations and schools filed suit against the new regulations. But instead of deciding the case based on big-ticket constitutional questions, a New York court invalidated the regulations on grounds that put the obligation to meet educational standards on parents, not on schools. In so doing, the court severely undermined the NYSED’s ability to regulate nonpublic schools.

New York education law requires that, when minors receive “instruction” outside a public school, the instruction “shall be at least substantially equivalent to the instruction given to minors of like age and attainments at the public schools of the city or district where the minor resides.” This “substantially equivalent” standard has been on the books in New York since the late nineteenth century.

Recent controversies have stemmed from complaints that a small group of Orthodox Jewish schools—primarily Hasidic schools—are failing to meet state standards. After some false starts, the NYSED enacted rules this past fall establishing a process for reviewing whether nonpublic schools were meeting the “substantially equivalent” requirement. If a school receives a final determination that it has failed to meet state standards, the penalties are severe. Under such circumstances, “the nonpublic school shall no longer be deemed a school,” in compliance with the state’s compulsory education law, and parents with children in that school are required “to enroll their children in a different, appropriate educational setting.” In sum, the school must close.

Various Jewish institutions and schools filed suit against the new regulations. According to their complaint, the regulations both exceeded the legal authority of the NYSED and, more dramatically, violated their constitutional rights, including their religious liberty, free speech, due process, and equal protection rights. Indeed, the lawsuit seemed destined to be fought out on the terrain of the Fourteenth Amendment, which ensures parents’ rights to control the upbringing of their children. This right, to be sure, is balanced against the government’s obligation to ensure that children receive an education that enables them to be economically self-sufficient and civically engaged. Figuring out where to draw the line between parental and government authority appeared to be the crux of the legal challenge.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Thirty Years of Global Warming Prophecies By Warren Beatty

By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/thirty_years_of_global_warming_prophecies.html

NBC News recently touted a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that says, “The chance to secure a livable future for everyone on Earth is slipping away.”  It further reported, “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” This was echoed by Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council: “This is the stone cold truth laid out in unassailable science by the world’s top climate experts.  We’re hurtling down the road to ruin and running out of time to change course.”

That’s the same U.N. that was wrong 34 years ago when Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, said that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

Fiona Harvey, Environment Editor at the Guardian, says, “Scientists have delivered a ‘final warning’ on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.”  She cited a report from the IPCC, comprised of the world’s leading climate scientists.

The U.N. again.

CBS News cited a study by Atmospheric scientist Dr. Walker Ashley at Northern Illinois University who predicts storms like the ones that tore through Mississippi, killing several dozen people, could become more common due to climate change.

Now let’s shift attention to hypocritical politicians who make predictions with their mouths and actions, beginning with Barack Obama.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts the sea level to rise by as much as 12″ in the next 30 years.  NOAA predicts the sea level rise, “…will create a profound shift in coastal flooding over the next 30 years by causing tide and storm surge heights to increase and reach further inland.  By 2050, ‘moderate’ (typically damaging) flooding is expected to occur, on average, more than 10 times as often as it does today.”

But that information didn’t deter Obama from purchasing an oceanside mansion on Martha’s Vineyard.  The 7,000 square foot house is zero feet above sea level and about a quarter mile from the sea.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in 2019, “…there is an urgency needed in addressing man-made climate change, warning that it will ‘destroy the planet’ in a dozen years if humans do not address the issue, no matter the cost.” 

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Tim Scott’s ‘Land of Opportunity’ The Senator’s optimistic conservatism may stand out in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries.

By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tim-scott-presidential-primary-gop-south-carolina-conservatism-2c4b2cce?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

One regrettable reality of today’s politics is that a left-right condominium is preaching that America is a failed experiment. All the more reason to welcome GOP Sen. Tim Scott as a presidential candidate running on better days ahead and a “new American sunrise.” The question is whether he can refine his aspirational politics into a credible agenda for national renewal.

“I know America is a land of opportunity, not a land of oppression,” the 57-year-old from South Carolina said in a three-minute video released this week. “I know it because I’ve lived it.” Mr. Scott was raised by a single mother in poverty. “I was that hopeless kid in America,” he said in a 2020 speech.

But he graduated from college and started his own business, and he credits his success in large part to the support of his Christian mother and a local Chick-fil-A franchisee who took an interest in him. Many voters will see the better angels of America’s nature in this story.

Mr. Scott has been a Senator for a decade, which isn’t an asset in an era when most of the country dislikes Washington. But he has been largely a constructive force, as Senators go. He helped build the GOP coalition for tax reform in 2017, and he rightly says the Tax Cut and Jobs Act built “the most inclusive economy” in recent U.S. memory, with record low unemployment for black and Hispanic Americans.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Supreme Court 9, Administrative State 0 The Justices rule that individuals can take a constitutional challenge to federal agencies directly to federal court.

By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-axon-v-ftc-sec-v-cochran-administrative-state-federal-court-elena-kagan-43f6b20?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The Supreme Court on Friday dealt the administrative state another blow with a 9-0 decision holding that individuals and businesses harpooned by an independent agency don’t have to suffer a torturous government adjudication to challenge its constitutionality in federal court (Axon Enterprise v. FTC and SEC v. Cochran).

The private litigants in these cases want to challenge Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission actions on grounds that the agencies are unconstitutionally structured. But the discrete question before the Court was whether they had to run through the agencies’ long and costly administrative process before they could go to federal court.

The government claimed they did, but a unanimous Court disagreed. In the controlling opinion, Justice Elena Kagan explained that both parties in the two cases allege they are “‘being subjected’ to ‘unconstitutional agency authority’—a ‘proceeding by an unaccountable [administrative law judge].’”

“This Court has made clear that it is ‘a here-and-now injury,’” she writes, citing its Seila Law (2020) precedent. “And—here is the rub—it is impossible to remedy once the proceeding is over, which is when appellate review kicks in.” Judicial review after cases are adjudicated by the government “would come too late to be meaningful.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Democrats to Biden: Ensure aid to Israel isn’t used in support of human rights violations

By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/369983

A group of 14 Democratic lawmakers on Thursday urged the Biden administration to undertake a foundational shift in its approach to the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict.

Spearheaded by Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the letter, quoted in Haaretz, urges US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “undertake a shift in US policy in recognition of the worsening violence, further annexation of land, and denial of Palestinian rights. Only by protecting democracy, human rights, and self-determination for all Palestinians and Israelis can we achieve a lasting peace.”

The letter was signed by Reps. Cori Bush, Andre Carson, Summer Lee, Betty McCollum, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Raul Grijalva, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Delia Ramirez.

The lawmakers are further urging the Biden administration to ensure US taxpayer funds are not supporting “Israeli settlements projects”, and to determine whether US military aid is in violation of the Arms Export Control Act or the so-called “Leahy Law.” The Arms Export and Controls Act stipulates that US weapons are sold only for legitimate self-defense, while the Leahy Law prohibits US funding from being used to equip or train foreign military forces suspected of human rights abuses or war crimes.

“Furthermore, we call on your administration to ensure that all future foreign assistance to Israel, including weapons and equipment, is not used in support of gross violations of human rights, including by strengthening end-use monitoring and financial tracking. We ask that you respond with a detailed plan as to how the administration plans to achieve that goal,” the letter says.

The lawmakers wrote that they are “deeply concerned by Israeli government moves that demonstrate that illegal de facto and de jure annexation of the occupied West Bank is well underway,” stressing that “this Israeli government’s anti-democratic mission to dismantle the rule of law is a threat to Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

“We know your administration has met repeatedly with Israeli officials to reiterate US support for ‘equal measures of freedom, dignity, security and prosperity’ for both Israelis and Palestinians. Unfortunately, these good faith entreaties have had no effect,” they note.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Jonathan Tobin:The ‘occupation’ myth is the engine of antisemitic terror The biased reactions of U.N. officials and corporate media to attacks on Israelis as well as to disputes over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount are rooted in leftist lies about Zionism.

By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-occupation-myth-is-the-engine-of-antisemitic-terror/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%2004-14-2023&utm_medium=email

Anger at the U.N.’s “Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories” Francesca Albanese for her outrageous slanders of Israel is more than justified. So is frustration and outrage about biased coverage of the Middle East in leading corporate media outlets like CNN and The New York Times of a string of deadly Palestinian terror attacks as well as recent events on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

The never-ending series of egregious comments from Albanese provides plenty of fodder for critics of the United Nations and the international “human rights” community. Similarly, news reports that treat terrorist attacks on Jews with indifference while hyping the shootings of Palestinian terror suspects by the Israel Defense Forces or even attempts to restore order on the Temple Mount after the mosques there were commandeered by rioters into grave violations of human rights are flagged by the vital groups that monitor anti-Israel media bias.

These awful examples of how both international groups and the media misreport and falsely characterize events in Israel are, by themselves, important and deserve vigorous pushback. But such statements and media coverage that might well be termed more a form of disinformation or propaganda than journalism are just the tip of the iceberg that those who care about the campaign against Israel must confront. And, as important, even essential, as it is to call out each and every such instance of lies and prejudice may be, the confluence of so many egregious incidents should serve as a reminder that the problem goes much deeper.

The bile and lies tweeted by Albanese as well as most of the media coverage of what’s been happening on the Temple Mount as well as in attacks, such as the tragic slaying of 48-year-old Lucy Dee and her daughters Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, when Palestinian terrorist fired on their car, is infuriating. But it’s not merely the product of indifference to Jewish suffering and rights or even antisemitism, though all of it can be easily observed in such cases.

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