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Ruth King

Romney’s “Treason” Smear of Tulsi Gabbard is False and Noxious, But Now Typifies U.S. Discourse The Founders limited “treason” in the Constitution due to grave concerns it would be weaponized to criminalize dissent: exactly how the term is now routinely used. Glenn Greenwald

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/romneys-treason-smear-of-tulsi-gabbard?s=w

The crime of “treason” is one of the gravest an American citizen can commit, if not the gravest. It is one of the few crimes other than murder for which execution is still a permissible punishment under both U.S. federal law and the laws of several states. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were so concerned about the temptation to abuse this term — by depicting political dissent as a criminalized betrayal of one’s country — that they chose to define and limit how this crime could be applied by inserting this limiting paragraph into the Constitution itself; reflecting the gravity and temptation to abuse accusations of “treason,” it is the only crime they chose to define in the U.S. Constitution. Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution states:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Treason was the only crime to be explicitly defined and limited by the Founders because they sought “to guard against the historic use of treason prosecutions by repressive governments to silence otherwise legitimate political opposition.” In other words, the grave danger anticipated by the Founders was that “treason” would radically expand to include any criticisms of or opposition to official U.S. Government policy, activities they sought in the Bill of Rights to enshrine as an inviolable right of U.S. citizenship, not turn it into a capital crime.

Has Russia Been Financing Western Environmentalism? by Drieu Godefridi

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18330/russia-funding-environmental-groups

“I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.” — NATO’s then Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, The Guardian, June 19, 2014.

The mechanism, which can be summarized as follows: “Funds from the Russian government -> Shell company ‘incorporated’ in Bermuda -> American foundation -> American environmental organizations.” The advantage of Bermuda is that it does not require any disclosure that funds come from a foreign government, contrary to American law. Sea Change must disclose that it has received funds from abroad — in this instance a Bermuda company. Nothing more.

On March 11, 2022, US Representatives Jim Banks and Bill Johnson sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, asking for an investigation into the reported Russian manipulation of American “green groups” that are seemingly funded with “dark money” (anonymous donations). “Russia spent millions promoting anti-energy policies and politicians in the U.S. … Unlike the Russia hoax, Putin’s malign influence on our energy sector is real and deserves further investigation,” Banks said to Fox News Digital.

Below Europe’s soil lie large reserves of shale gas, also known as bedrock gas. The exploitation of these European natural gas reserves would have substantially reduced Europe’s purchases of, and dependence on, Russia’s gas — in particular on its gas giant, Gazprom. The same is true of nuclear power, which offers Westerners an abundant, non-CO2-emitting energy source as an alternative to Russian gas.

Hence the interest, for the Russian government, in mounting a vast disinformation campaign against shale gas and nuclear power in the West, by massively financing the groups most likely “naturally” to oppose it: environmentalist organizations.

Have Western environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), movements and parties been possible, even unwitting, collaborators with the Russian government for the last ten years?

Climate change is not an ‘existential threat’ by David Simon

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/climate-change-is-not-an-existential-threat

The Biden administration’s climate change policies have sharply increased oil prices, damaging the domestic economy and increasing the cost of nearly everything consumers buy. By increasing revenues for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, they also made Russia stronger and more dangerous at a critical time, thus damaging national security. It is worth noting that Russia’s invasions of Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine again this year each happened after an oil price spike.

But worst of all, the Biden administration’s basis for these policies, the claim that global warming presents an “existential threat,” is fraudulent. It is not based on any scientific consensus, and in fact, it ignores evidence of environmental benefits of global warming that offset its harm.

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Studies published in May 2015, July 2021, and August 2021 analyzed millions of deaths in numerous countries over recent decades and found that cooler temperatures kill several times more people than warmer temperatures. “Global warming,” environmental statistician Bjørn Lomborg wrote in September 2021, “now prevents more than 166,000 temperature-related fatalities annually.”

Matt Ridley’s February 2022 essay explained that global warming has increased both agricultural yields and growth of forests, grasslands, and tree leaves.

The facts regarding natural disasters also do not support the “existential threat” claim. The number of hurricanes per year, a 2021 EPA report shows, has not increased since the late 19th century. Moreover, although you wouldn’t know it from the panicky, sensationalized news coverage, the total acreage burnt by forest fires annually has decreased, and most rivers flood less today than they used to.

While all eyes are on Ukraine, China continues undermining America’s wellbeing By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/while_all_eyes_are_on_ukraine_china_continues_undermining_americas_wellbeing.html

If you travel, you know that one of the things that countries and states zealously check for is smuggling prohibited foods. That sounds neurotic and protectionist but it’s an important part of securing a country’s food supply. If pests, parasites, or diseases migrate into a nation’s food supply, it can destroy entire farming sectors and even lead to famine. That’s why it matters that China has been caught smuggling hundreds of thousands of pounds of potentially contaminated meats into America. (Hat tip: FrontPage Mag.)

I first fully understood the problem of a contaminated food supply in the early 1980s when I learned that England’s cattle had been contaminated with Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (aka mad cow disease). News of it broke not long after I returned to America following a college year in England. Having eaten beef in England (although not much because I couldn’t afford it), I neurotically worried for some years after that I might find myself afflicted with the disease. As it turned out, I avoided that scourge but, over the next few years, the British slaughtered over four million cattle and numerous countries banned British beef. It was a tragedy and an economic disaster for farmers.

Thus, there is nothing foolish about countries rigorously policing any contaminants that might get into the food supply. But little things like rules don’t stop the Chinese. After all, they’ve already flooded America with fentanyl and COVID, so why shouldn’t we also be a target of potentially dangerous meats?

Barr Code One deep state drone after another. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/barr-code-lloyd-billingsley/

“I had been increasingly concerned about claims by the President and the team of outside lawyers advising him that the election had been ‘stolen’ through voting ‘fraud,’” writes William Barr on the first page of One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, just released by William Morrow.

“There’s always some fraud in an election that large,” Barr explains, and “there may have been more than usual in 2020,” but Barr’s Department of Justice didn’t see it changing the outcome.

On page 558, Barr enumerates President Trump’s many successes: tax reform, deregulation, the strongest and most resilient economy in American history, unprecedented progress to many marginalized Americans. As Barr recalls, President Trump restored US military strength, identified the threat from China, brokered peace deals in Middle East, pulled out of ill-advised agreements with Russia and Iran, and moved the US. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Barr notes that Trump curbed illegal immigration, enhanced border security, and “kept his promise of advancing the rule of law by appointing a record number of judges committed to constitutional principles.”  President Trump “exposed media and cultural elites as the outright partisans they have long been – mere extensions of the Democratic Party.” Trump did it all  “in the face of bitter, implacable attacks,” but it wasn’t enough.

“Trump, through his self-indulgence and lack of self-control, had blown the election.” If Trump had just exercised “a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness,” he would have won. As the two-time Attorney General has it, “the election was not ‘stolen.’ Trump lost it.”

By implication, cellar-dweller Joe Biden won it fair and square. Barr’s case is not particularly convincing, but readers may learn something new about the author.

The Top Ten Scapegoats Biden Has Blamed for His Failures A lying and pretend-president tries to cover his shame by deflection. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/top-ten-scapegoats-biden-has-blamed-his-failures-robert-spencer/

Old Joe Biden tweeted on June 4, 2020: “It’s hard to believe this has to be said, but unlike this president, I’ll do my job and take responsibility. I won’t blame others. And I’ll never forget that the job isn’t about me — it’s about you.” As is so often the case, he was lying. Since he started pretending to be president, Biden has blamed an endless series of scapegoats for his steadily spreading dumpster fire. It’s virtually everyone’s fault but his, and he has consistently made sure that Americans have a steady and sober regard for the suffering of their noble, selfless, heroic president, constantly let down by venal, self-serving opportunists and worse. Here is a list of 10 of Biden’s scapegoats:

Deep State Slayers A new book examines six American presidents and their war with The Swamp. Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/dragon-slayers-mark-tapson/

What is the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth? About six months.

Vindicated conservatives have been circulating that meme on the internet in the wake of being proven correct about every single thing the Left has denied over the last couple of years as nutty, right-wing conspiracy theories: from the Wuhan lab origins of the coronavirus, to Critical Race Theory being taught in schools, to the existence of a shadow government known as the Deep State (the Wikipedia entry for the Deep State insists four times in the first four sentences that this notion is a debunked conspiracy theory).

The Deep State, or “Swamp,” not only exists, but has roots reaching much farther back than just the presidency of Donald Trump, whose outsider status and populist appeal posed an unprecedented threat to the many-tentacled shadow government. That is the subject of the must-read new book Dragonslayers: Six Presidents and Their War With the Swamp, by the prolific historian Larry Schweikart. Dr. Schweikart’s previous works include, among others, Reagan: The American President (about which I previously interviewed him here), 48 Liberal Lies About American History, and A Patriot’s History of the United States (co-written with Michael Allen).

(That last title, by the way, is a much-needed antidote to the radical propagandist Howard Zinn’s poisonous, subversive People’s History of the United States, which has infected nearly every schoolroom in America for the last four decades. If only Schweikart’s book had been taught as widely since its publication in 2004, then perhaps we wouldn’t be reeling from the violent anti-Americanism of a couple of generations of youth brainwashed to despise our country, its values, and its Constitution.)

Will Putin Up the Ante? The answer may lie in his tactics in previous conflicts. Dr. Craig Luther

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/will-putin-ante-dr-craig-luther/

Geographically, Ukraine is the largest country in Europe (about the size of Texas and some 1800km across from west to east); it has a population of more than 40,000,000. The Russian invasion is being conducted along four axes: 1) from the north, out of Belarus; 2) from the northeast, along the Chernihiv-Sumy-Kharkiv axis; 3) out of the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine (with the help of the two Russian separatist republics of Luhansk and Donetsk); and, 4) out of Crimea in the south. In general, while the Russian assault has been significantly less effective than anticipated, Russian forces are still managing, deliberately and inexorably, to encircle and bombard key Russian cities and towns, e.g., the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Kharkiv (Ukraine’s second largest city), Mariupol. In the process, they have created the most tragic humanitarian disaster in Europe since the end of World War II, with more than 2,000,000 refugees now fleeing Ukraine.

The Initial Russian Air & Missile Strikes.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Western military observers expected the Russian Air Force (VKS) to unleash something akin to the “shock and awe” campaign of our first Gulf War in 1991. At the start of Operation DESERT STORM, U.S. and Allied air forces conducted literally thousands of sorties, paralyzing Iraq’s leadership, destroying its military infrastructure (including air bases), and eliminating or at least grounding the Iraqi Air Force, giving Allied air forces complete command of the air, something air war theorists call “air supremacy.”

The Price of Biden’s Excuses for Inflation Keeps Rising ‘Make no mistake,’ the president said last week, higher costs are ‘largely the fault of Putin.’ Gerard Baker

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-excuses-rising-putin-war-russia-ukraine-gas-prices-inflation-american-rescue-plan-build-back-better-stimulus-spending-11647275414?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

‘Make no mistake, inflation is largely the fault of Putin.”

Even by the high standards of political mendacity, the attempt by President Biden last week to assign blame for the acceleration of prices that began just over a year ago to a war that began just under three weeks ago is remarkable for its cynicism, its dishonesty and its desperation.

The cynicism is so sweeping that you have to sit back and marvel. How much contempt do they have for the intelligence of Americans to think that there are enough who would believe such a proposition?

In fact we have a good sense of the depth of the disdain the president has for Americans’ understanding of their economic circumstances. In that same speech, to the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference, he bemoaned that all his hard work doesn’t get the respect it deserves.

DOES ANYONE RECOGNIZE THIS COUNTRY ANYMORE? *****

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/15/does-anyone-recognize-this-country-anymore/

The U.S. went through a historical convulsion in the 1960s, and not only survived but emerged restored and optimistic in the 1980s. This time, though, the destroyers are better organized and seem more determined than their predecessors. We hope there are still enough Americans who believe the country is worth defending.

Don’t make the mistake that the political left wants a strong and prosperous U.S., and the only differences it has with the center and right are the methods for how that is achieved. The left, especially its progressive wing of radicals that is taking over the Democratic Party, wants America to be just another country, yet one in which a loud, power-hungry, elitist mob, with the support of an army of useful idiots, rules over everyone else.

The current remaking of America differs from the 1960s upheaval in a number of ways. The most prominent, though, would be today’s war on the First Amendment. The desire to control speech, and eventually thought, has created a dynamic in which Big Tech acts as a government agent to censor speech unapproved by the ruling class.

“A growing number of governments are asserting their authority over tech firms, often forcing the businesses to comply with online censorship and surveillance,” reports Freedom House. “These developments have contributed to an unprecedented assault on free expression online, causing global internet freedom to decline for an 11th consecutive year.”