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Ruth King

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Maryland and Georgia Governors Suspend State Gas Taxes to Offset Fuel Prices By Eric Lendrum

By on March 22nd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/21/maryland-and-georgia-governors-suspend-state-gas-taxes-to-offset-fuel-prices/

On Friday, governors in two different states signed bills into law to suspend each of their respective statewide gas taxes, in order to offset the financial burden of rising gas prices on consumers.

The Daily Wire reports that Governors Larry Hogan (R-Md.) and Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) signed such legislation after the bills had already passed through the state legislatures, with Maryland’s gas tax being suspended for the next 30 days, while Georgia’s will be suspended through the end of May. Other states currently considering similar action include California, Michigan, and New Hampshire.

“This bipartisan action will provide some relief from the pain at the pump,” Hogan announced at a press conference prior to the signing of the bill, “and it is possible because of the prudent fiscal steps we have taken, which have resulted in a record budget surplus.”

“This is, of course, not a cure-all, and market instability will continue to lead to fluctuations in prices,” Hogan continued, “but we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to provide relief for Marylanders.” The bill in Maryland had passed through both houses of the state legislature with unanimous support.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Trump-Hating Backer of Biden’s Supreme Court Nominee Is Married to the Top J6 Prosecutor. By Julie Kelly

By on March 22nd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/21/a-trump-hating-backer-of-bidens-supreme-court-nominee-is-married-to-the-top-j6-prosecutor/

Confirmation hearings for D.C. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s first U.S. Supreme Court nominee, began Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During an event in Washington, D.C. on Monday morning, activists gathered to rally on behalf of the nominee who could be the first black woman seated on the nation’s highest court.

“It’s also, for so many of us, a moment that is personal,” Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, told the crowd. “It is personal if you have ever been the only person sitting in a room. It is personal if you have ever wondered, ‘Is that for me?’” Over the past several weeks, Graves, a graduate of Yale Law school, has given dozens of interviews in support of Jackson’s nomination.

In a January column for CNN, Graves denounced “the current homogeneity of the legal profession and judicial system” and claimed “the perspective of White men has been treated as the default” in court proceedings.

Graves’ D.C.-based nonprofit promotes any number of radical causes including unfettered access to abortion, gender “justice,” free child care, and LGBTQ equity. Appointed to lead NWLC one month after Trump’s inauguration, Graves was an outspoken critic of the president; she co-founded the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund in 2018 in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement and strongly opposed the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

After the media declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Graves, in a racist screed, berated the 55 percent of white women who voted for President Trump:

[Most] White women who support Trump are not blindly voting against their own self-interest. These Trump supporters, aided by a toxic mix of racism and disinformation, seem to be consciously supporting what they believe to be their own group interest, putting them on the same team as the White men society has been largely built to benefit. The right-wing has long focused its sales pitch to White women on the promise of preserving the modest gains a misogynistic system has allowed them—advancing a delusion of forced scarcity that pits White, cisgender, heterosexual women against all others in a zero-sum fight for survival.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

THE LEFT FEARS AND HATES THE INTREPID LARA LOGAN: VICTOR SHARPE

By on March 22nd, 2022

https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/220320

Many of us who daily scan the so-called mainstream media (MSM) know only too well how their vicious barbs are aimed at conservative writers, reporters, and talk show hosts, including such luminaries as Sebastian Gorka, Dennis Prager, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Tucker Carlson, Lars Larson, et al. With apologies for not mentioning the many other fine conservative hosts.

Among those who receive particularly egregious and venomous leftwing harangues is Lara Logan. For the Left, her sin? Exposing those media apparatchiks who are deeply mired in spewing Leftist, Socialist, Islamist, Marxist, and frankly anti-American falsehoods.

Ms. Logan was a former correspondent for CBS’s “60 Minutes” and later a contributor on Fox Nation’s “Lara Logan Has No Agenda.” She has opined on many occasions about the transformation of the media from what it was meant to be, with many journalists now blurring the lines between fact and opinion.

“They’re not journalists,” Logan has argued, “they’re political assassins, working on behalf of political operatives and propagandists. A lot of media entities are increasingly working hand in hand with Big Tech companies to shape narratives and public discourse.”

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Zelensky’s unfortunate Knesset address Ruthie Blum

By on March 22nd, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/zelenskys-unfortunate-knesset-address/

Clearly realizing, or having been told by advisers, that he’d crossed a line in his Zoom speech to the Knesset on Sunday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky subsequently softened his tone. In a video message on Telegram several hours later, he said, “Of course, Israel has its interests—strategy—to protect its citizens. We understand all of it. The prime minister of Israel, Mr. [Naftali] Bennett, is trying to find a way of holding talks, and we are grateful for this. We are grateful for his efforts, so that sooner or later we will begin to have talks with Russia, possibly in Jerusalem. That’s the right place to find peace, if possible.”

It is this sentiment that he should have conveyed while calling on Israel’s lawmakers for help. Instead, the leader who is being hailed by much of the world as a heroic David fending off an evil Goliath not only chastised the Jewish state; he totally distorted Holocaust history in the process.

Invoking Golda Meir, he quoted what he called her “famous words.” He said, “We intend to remain alive. Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.”
This was his way of tailoring his remarks to the audience, as he had done when speaking to the British Parliament on March 9, the Canadian Parliament on March 15, the U.S. Congress on March 16 and the German Bundestag on March 17. In each case, he cited examples with which the politicians and public could relate. And though his pleas for military aid included criticism that not more is being done to come to Ukraine’s rescue, they also contained clauses of gratitude. His admonitions to Israel, on the other hand, were unequivocal.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

There’s a cultural revolution occurring in America’s legal system By Andrea Widburg

By on March 22nd, 2022

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

People who hate lawyers like to quote Shakespeare’s line from Henry VI: “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” That’s completely wrong. In the play, it was the anarchy-demanding mob that gave voice to the sentiment. Lawyers are the bulwark of the rule of law and civil society. That’s why it matters that today’s law students and young lawyers are demanding that any lawyers who deviate from woke principles when it comes to representing people or issues must be silenced and, if possible, destroyed.

It used to be that every law student learned about John Adams successfully representing the hugely unpopular British soldiers charged with murder for the Boston Massacre. He did so because he understood a principle that I vividly remember my criminal law professor articulating almost 40 years ago: Nobody, no matter the charge against him, should have to stand alone before the awesome majesty of the government which, ultimately, is both judge and executioner.

That concept is completely lost today, something that burst into full public awareness last week when more than 100 Yale law students, through noise and physical intimidation, made it impossible for Kristen Waggoner, of the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, to speak (ironically enough) about free speech—with almost no administrative pushback and no consequences.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ted Cruz Destroys Democrats During Jackson Confirmation Hearings By Matt Margolis

By on March 22nd, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/03/21/ted-cruz-destroys-democrats-during-jackson-confirmation-hearings-n1568303

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was on fire Monday during Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings. He used his time to absolutely destroy the Democrats for their past reprehensible behavior and assured Jackson that Republicans would treat her more respectfully and fairly than Democrats have treated Republican nominees.

“Now, what should this hearing be? And what should it not be?” Cruz asked. “Well, you’ve heard a number of members on the Republican side of the aisle quite clear on what it should not be. This will not be a political circus. This will not be the kind of character smear that, sadly, our Democratic colleagues have gotten very good at,” he said, before detailing the Democrats’ shameful record.

He began by talking about a weekly podcast he did a couple of years ago on which a liberal guest insisted that both Democrats and Republicans smear Supreme Court nominees. But, Cruz pointed out, this person was dead wrong. “It is only one side of the aisle, the Democratic aisle, that went so into the gutter with Judge Robert Bork that they invented a new verb, to ‘Bork’ someone.”

“It is only one side of the aisle that, with Justice Clarence Thomas, was so reprehensible that […] President George Herbert Walker Bush wrote at the time, quote, what’s happening to Clarence Thomas is just plain horrible,” Cruz continued.  “All the groups that tried to beat him up on abortion, affirmative action have now come out of the woodwork, they’re trying to destroy a decent man. As Justice Thomas observed in that hearing, what happened there was, to use his words, ‘a high-tech lynching.’ And I would note the chairman who presided over that disgrace was Joe Biden.”

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Is It Twitter’s Policy That Users May Not Dissent (or Joke) on the Trans Issue? By Charles C. W. Cooke

By on March 22nd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/is-it-twitters-policy-that-users-may-not-dissent-or-joke-on-the-trans-issue/

EXCERPTS

Caroline notes that:

The Babylon Bee, a Christian satire site, was locked out of Twitter Sunday for a satirical post that named transgender Cabinet member Rachel Levine “Man of the Year.”

Twitter claimed that the article violated its rules against “hateful conduct” when it notified the Bee that its account had been frozen.

In theory, “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease” sounds rather straightforward. In practice, it’s nothing of the sort. At this very moment, there are people on Twitter hoping aloud that Clarence Thomas dies. Day in, day out, those same people write that Thomas is “not black,” and even that he’s a “race traitor.” For some reason, they never seem to get suspended. Presumably, Twitter’s defense is that this is somehow “different.” If so, then Twitter should own that difference and help us all understand where its lines have been drawn.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Zelensky’s Holocaust Denial Should Be a Red Line for Jews Daniel Greenfield

By on March 22nd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/03/zelenskys-holocaust-denial-should-be-red-line-jews-daniel-greenfield/

Ukraine’s leader Zelensky had previously exploited and lied about the Holocaust, but not as much as he did in his attack on Israel.

First, Zelensky appropriated the Holocaust by falsely claiming that Putin’s invasion is another genocide. It’s wrong, but it’s far from genocide.

“That is why I want to remind you of the words of a great woman from Kyiv, whom you know very well. The words of Golda Meir. They are very famous, everyone has heard of them. Apparently, every Jew. Many, many Ukrainians as well. And certainly no less, Russians: “We intend to remain alive. Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.”

The Jews actually faced genocide at the hands of the Nazis and the Ukrainians. They face genocide again at the hands of Ukraine’s Iranian trading partners.

No one who hasn’t completely bought into the insane propaganda believes that Putin is about to kill millions of Ukrainians, to march men, women and children into pits and machine gun them, as the Nazis and Ukrainians did to the Jews at Babi Yar.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Most Americans Are Moving On from Covid. Progressive Elites Aren’t By Nate Hochman

By on March 22nd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/most-americans-are-moving-on-from-covid-progressive-elites-arent/

Mandates and masks and fear are no longer normal — unless you read or write for the New York Times.

T he chaotic news cycle in Ukraine has overshadowed a significant development domestically — the drastic shift in public opinion on Covid-19 precautions. “Two years after the start of the pandemic, the nation is ready to move on,” Axios reported last week. “64% of survey respondents now favor federal, state and local governments lifting all COVID-19 restrictions, up 20 percentage points since early February.” (Although “three in four say they’d go back to masking if infections increase again where they live,” it noted.) On top of that, “84% say their state of emotional well-being is good, the highest shares for both since May 2020.” And “75% said the country is moving toward a time when COVID won’t interrupt daily life, up from 66% last month.”

Notably, it’s Democrats who are reporting the largest shift in views toward the pandemic. According to recent numbers from Morning Consult, “the share of adults who say COVID-19 is a severe health risk in their local community fell to an all-time low of 17%, driven by a roughly 20-point decrease among Democrats in recent weeks. Just under a quarter of Democrats now say COVID-19 is a severe local risk, compared with 12% of Republicans, a level that has also fallen since late January.” From January 14 to March 13, the share of American adults who see Covid as a “severe” health risk fell 17 points, from 34 to 17 percent. Among Republicans, that number fell 11 points, from 23 to 12 percent. But among Democrats over that time period, it fell 23 points, from 46 to 23.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Our Surreal “Rage of Self-Mutilation” Biden’s shameless negotiations with the Mullahs are nearing completion. Bruce Thornton

By on March 22nd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/our-surreal-rage-self-mutilation-bruce-thornton/

That phrase is how Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described the 20th century’s catalogue of horrors: two world wars, fascism, communism, Nazism, mass slaughter, the Cold War and its apocalyptic stakes–“oceans of blood and mountains of corpses, Auschwitz and the Gulag,” as George Weigel put it. And that catalogue continues today in Ukraine, with mechanized violence and wanton inhumanity on a scale we haven’t seen since 1945.

Yet today our social, political, and cultural dysfunctions are more insidious, as over the last few decades they have distributed, promoted, and indulged failures of morality, technocratic hubris, and common sense of the sort that were the predicates of all the disasters of the 20th century. Only now they are at a level of surreal silliness and stupidity that would be mordantly funny if the stakes for our civilization weren’t so high.

Now comes proof in the news that the indirect negotiations between the Biden administration and the genocidal clerical regime in Iran are nearing completion. Since its beginning in the Obama administration, this diplomatic attempt to keep nuclear weapons out of the mullahs’ hands has defied facts and logic, and relied on magical thinking. How else other than surreal can we describe a process that aims at merely delaying, rather than preventing, an illiberal, fanatical cabal from obtaining weapons of mass destruction?

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