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Ruth King

Pelosi’s Capitol Riot Commission If it’s stacked with Democrats, it won’t be a credible inquiry.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosis-capitol-riot-commission-11614210098?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Nancy Pelosi wants a “9/11-type” commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, and there’s a case for doing it—if the goal is truly to find out why America’s seat of government was so poorly protected and how much of the violence was planned. Is that what Mrs. Pelosi is after?

There’s reason to doubt it, since she pushed to make the commission a partisan body. Her initial plan was to have seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans. This is impossible to justify, especially in a country so closely divided. Democrats have 51% of House seats and Republicans have 49%, and the Senate is 50-50. Why, then, would Democrats get to appoint 64% of a Jan. 6 commission?

The only way an inquiry can defang disinformation and conspiracy theories, like the idea that the Capitol rioters were antifa agitators in disguise, is if the country thinks the effort is factual and fair. An even partisan split is crucial for credibility. Otherwise a sizable share of Americans will suspect it’s a political weapon designed to find President Trump guilty of incitement to insurrection, more or less, after a failed impeachment trial.

Mrs. Pelosi should want an inquiry that delivers a unanimous outcome, not one that breaks down on party lines. Heed the veterans of the 9/11 commission, which she invokes. Its Democratic vice chairman, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, told Politico that Mrs. Pelosi’s proposal “does not sound to me like a good start; it sounds like a partisan beginning.” Its GOP chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, said that without equal representation, “the report won’t have as much confidence from the American people.”

Biden a dark money puppet Nominations of Xavier Becerra and Vanita Gupta show how dark money has infiltrated Biden administration By Adam Laxalt

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/23/biden-a-dark-money-puppet/

Liberal dark money groups spent a record-breaking $145 million to get Joe Biden elected, and now they are cashing in. These groups are pushing President Biden to nominate dark money appointees and pass their extreme left-wing policies.

From top to bottom, Mr. Biden’s staff is filled with people affiliated with dark money. His chief of staff, Ron Klain, was a board member of the dark money group CAP Action Fund before joining the Biden administration.

Similarly, Gina McCarthy, the White House National Climate Adviser, led the Natural Resources Defense Council, a climate action dark money group that has received millions from the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund.

Those two funds come underneath the massive dark money umbrella of little-known Arabella Advisors, which moves half-a-billion dollars per year to left-wing organizations involved in policy and political campaigns.

Another example is Jennifer Granholm, President Biden’s nominee for secretary of Energy. Ms. Granholm chaired a dark money think tank whose sister organization spent $60 million to help elect Mr. Biden.

Mr. Biden is already delivering for his dark money donors on a policy level. He canceled the permit for the Keystone pipeline, eliminating thousands of good-paying union jobs, and he is breaking all the promises of moderation he made in 2020.

Democrats love to chide Republicans about their dark money ties, but Mr. Biden is truly the first dark money president.

Compassionate Biden Moves Migrant Children From Cages Into Humane High-Security Metal Containment Cubes

https://babylonbee.com/news/compassionate-biden-moves-migrant-children-from-cages-into-humane-high-security-metal-containment-cubes

CARRIZO SPRINGS, TX—Biden has finally ended the cruel and long-standing Trump practice of keeping migrant kids in cages, and has elected to move them into much more compassionate “high-security metal containment cubes.”

“We are proud of our cute little containment cubes,” said Kamala Harris while loudly laughing for some inexplicable reason. “Look at them all neat and tidy, lined up in a row! Hahahahahaha!” 

The new administration has assured the American people that the containment cubes are “completely different” than the evil cages Trump used to use, mainly because they are called “containment cubes” instead of cages.

Social workers on the border confirmed the children will be given up to three meals per day, will be allowed to attend anti-racism classes on Zoom, and provided with free air conditioning–at least when the power is working.

Children will be kept in these highly humane holding units until the cubes can be conveniently loaded onto a truck and shipped back to South America. 

Liz Cheney Must Explain Why She Thinks The GOP Is A White Supremacist Party:David Marcus

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/24/liz-cheney-must-explain-why-she-thinks-the-gop-is-a-white-supremacist-party/

Cheney has defamed tens of millions of Republicans as white supremacists. I want to see her evidence.

Rep. Liz Cheney seems to think the Republican Party is the party of white supremacy. She is so convinced of this that she feels the GOP needs to make clear this is not the case. CNN and other progressive outlets could barely contain their joy. Here is how the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party down in Atlanta covered Cheney’s remarks: “In a speech on Tuesday in Washington, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney said something remarkable.”

“It’s very important, especially for us as Republicans, to make clear that we aren’t the party of white supremacy,” she said at an event at the Reagan Institute. Of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Cheney added: “You certainly saw antisemitism. You saw the symbols of Holocaust denial. … You saw a Confederate flag being carried through the rotunda. We, as Republicans in particular, have a duty and an obligation to stand against that, to stand against insurrection.”

It is important to understand that the mere fact that Cheney is spewing this nonsense is an obvious invitation to the left to conclude that the GOP is racist. Just the fact that she is raising the question, they say, is evidence that something deeply wrong is afoot. But in fact, Cheney’s claims are utterly baseless, and quite frankly, if she really believes the GOP is a racist party, the moral thing to do is to quit the party immediately.

But she’s not doing that because, of course, she does not really believe what she is saying. Were there racists who rioted at the Capitol in January? Yes. Was the riot immediately, roundly, and completely denounced by nearly every Republican in America within minutes? Also yes. Nobody is defending the racists at the Capitol riots. None are even so much as giving excuses as the left regularly does for antisemites like Louis Farrakhan.

Political Hacks At Newsweek Run Anti-Science ‘Fact Check’ On Study Promoting Hydroxychloroquine By Evita Duffy

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/24/political-hacks-at-newsweek-run-anti-science-fact-check-on-study-promoting-hydroxychloroquine/

A study by Baylor University Medical Center researchers published in the American Journal of Medicine in January 2021 found hydroxychloroquine is a potential treatment for COVID-19.

The study, which was originally written and posted on the PubMed website in August 2020, says, “When started earlier in the hospital course, for progressively longer durations and in outpatients, antimalarials may reduce the progression of disease, prevent hospitalization, and are associated with reduced mortality.”

After the American Journal of Medicine posted the study in January, it began circulating around the internet with captions and headlines such as: “After 440,000 Americans are Dead — Facebook and American Journal of Medicine Admit Their Stand on HCQ was Wrong — These People Should be Prosecuted.”

In late March and early April, former President Donald Trump endorsed treating COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine, which was echoed by the August study. Immediately, he received severe pushback from medical journals and associations as well as the corporate media, who warned that hydroxychloroquine has no benefit as a treatment and is even potentially dangerous. This is despite the fact that hydroxychloroquine has been safely used against malaria and various immune deficiency syndromes for decades.

Tech giants Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube followed suit by censoring and suppressing anyone who deviated from the prescribed left-wing narrative that hydroxychloroquine is an ineffective and dangerous method of treating the Wuhan virus.

The Morning Briefing: Thank God Merrick Garland Isn’t on the Supreme Court By Stephen Kruiser

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/02/24/the-morning-briefing-thank-god-merrick-garland-isnt-on-the-supreme-court-n1427780

Justice Garland Would Have Been a Nightmare

When looking at Joe Biden’s various appointments and nominations here in the first month of the Grandpa Gropes Traveling Sham Presidency Circus, one gets the feeling that former President Barack Obama is running a staffing agency these days. Or a recycling center. Team Biden-Harris has been stocking up on Obama administration retreads. Perhaps Ol’ Joe doesn’t remember most of these people and his empty head thinks they’re all fresh blood.

While Merrick Garland wasn’t really a member of the Obama administration, he is, of course, closely associated with it thanks to The Lightbringer’s lame-duck nomination of him for the Supreme Court in 2016.

Garland’s performance during his confirmation hearing this week has clearly illustrated that the United States really dodged a bullet in keeping him off of the Supreme Court.

The world is so screwed up right now that this guy is going to be the chief law enforcement officer in the land, but at least that’s not an appointment for life. At least not yet. The Democrats are all about fundamentally overhauling America and they’re clearly fans of one-party rule, so this administration may be around longer than we’d like.

I will share just a couple of the lowlights that Garland offered forth under questioning this week.

Dr. Fauci’s Interventions By Michael Brendan Dougherty

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dr-faucis-interventions/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s interventions continue to lose coherence and connection from reality.

We are now at the point where Fauci seems to be implying that normality will never come back, and where reasonable people may draw the inference that getting vaccinated is vaguely socially irresponsible.

Take his comments this week, from a report at Business Insider:

“There are things, even if you’re vaccinated, that you’re not going to be able to do in society,” Fauci said on Monday during a White House COVID-19 press briefing. “For example, indoor dining, theaters, places where people congregate. That’s because of the safety of society.”

“We hope that when the data comes in, it’s going to show that the virus level is quite low and you’re not transmitting it,” Fauci said, cautioning: “We don’t know that now. And for that reason, we want to make sure that people continue to wear masks despite the fact that they’re vaccinated.”

The first thing to ask is: What planet are you living on? People are dining indoors and going to movie theaters right now. Many schools are open and are managing to keep transmission very low.

Now, the background to Fauci’s comments is that, with some diseases, vaccination may reduce the incidence of serious disease and death, but may not stop people from contracting and transmitting the virus.

Tanden votes scrapped in latest sign of trouble for budget nominee Another bad sign for White House budget director nominee’s chances By Jennifer Shutt

https://rollcall.com/2021/02/24/tanden-votes-scrapped-in-latest-sign-of-trouble-for-budget-nominee/

The two Senate committees tasked with approving Neera Tanden’s nomination to be White House budget chief postponed their Wednesday votes, hours before senators were expected to vote on the nominee.

An aide to Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Democrats said the panel postponed the meeting because “members need more time to consider the nominee.”

“The president deserves to have a team in place that he wants, and we’re going to work with our members to figure out the best path forward,” said the aide, who was not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations.

The Senate Budget Committee, which shares jurisdiction, never officially set a time for its expected business meeting on Wednesday. A Senate aide who spoke on condition of anonymity said Wednesday morning the vote had been postponed.

Several high-profile defections in recent days have put Tanden’s confirmation in jeopardy, starting with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who said Friday he couldn’t support her based on her past attacks on other lawmakers.

Later on Wednesday morning, the Budget committee scheduled a confirmation hearing for Shalanda Young, whom Biden has nominated for deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget, on March 2. Young, a popular former top aide to House Appropriations Democrats, has been on the short list of potential candidates to replace Tanden if her nomination continues to falter.

Confirming Young as deputy, which under Senate rules could occur after just two hours of debate versus up to 30 hours for the No. 1 position at OMB, would position her to at minimum take the role of acting OMB director while the Biden administration decides its next move.

Who is really pushing misinformation? Two House Representatives want channels they don’t like taken off air

https://spectator.us/topic/really-pushing-misinformation-eshoo-mcnerney-cnn/

There’s a new administration in town. On Monday, House Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, both members of the House Energy and Commerce committee, sent letters to 12 grand poobahs of television to make sure they were properly updating their ideological software.

‘Some purported news outlets have long been misinformation rumor mills and conspiracy theory hotbeds that produce content that leads to real harm,’ the letter says. ‘Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN… now and beyond any contract renewal date? If so, why?’

Sadly, America’s government grows less transparent by the day, so the letter conceals half its content beneath a layer of subtext. That’s a nice TV company you have there, it says. Would be a real shame if something happened to it. TV companies that want to avoid a regulatory stink-eye are encouraged to make the bad voices disappear from the television.

Tragically, like Funes from the Borges story, Cockburn is cursed with the ability to remember things. So he remembers the four years of shrieking that every Twitter tantrum by President Trump was the worst attack on Liberty since the Israelis accidentally strafed it in the Six-Day War. In 2018, Trump was sued by CNN because he wouldn’t allow CNN’s Jim Acosta to keep Acostabating in the White House. PEN America sued the Trump White House in part because he was supposedly targeting the Washington Post by wanting Amazon to pay higher Postal Service delivery fees. The ACLU kept a running list of offenses which they claimed represented ‘an assault on the cornerstone of American democracy.’

Biden’s twisted immigration policy Who built the cages, Joe?

https://spectator.us/topic/biden-immigration-policy-migrant-protection-protocols/

Immigration, a top issue before and during the Trump presidency, has become much less of a concern for Americans over the past year due to the primacy of the pandemic and the ensuing economic shutdown. That, combined with the press’s lackadaisical approach to covering the Biden administration, means there hasn’t been enough media scrutiny of Biden’s incoherent border policy.

Frequently the Biden administration’s words do not match its actions, primarily because it does not seem to understand that policies have real-world consequences. For example, after Biden campaigned on loosening Trump’s stricter enforcement of immigration law, thousands of Honduran migrants formed a caravan to come to the US in hopes of gaining entry. The Biden team tried to put the genie back in the bottle. An unnamed transition team official told NBC News that migrants ‘need to understand they’re not going to be able to come into the United States immediately’.

Such messages are meaningless of course, unless they are accompanied by an actual policy change to eliminate the pull factors that incentivize migrants to attempt to cross the border. Instead, after taking office, Biden proposed legislation that would grant amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country, signed a memo upholding DACA and is phasing out the Migrant Protection Protocols program.