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50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Where Have You Gone, Atticus Finch? By Jack Cashill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/where_have_you_gone_atticus_finch.html

In the archives of legal fiction, two characters best embody historic liberal self-perception. One is attorney Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird fame. The other is Juror #8 in the 1957 film, 12 Angry Men. Today, each is an endangered species.

In his defense of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of rape in 1930s Alabama, Atticus ignored public opinion. He stared down the mobs intent on extra-legal justice and protected his ”mockingbird” as best he could. The unlikely mockingbird today is former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. As Chauvin learned quickly, if he did not know it beforehand, today’s vestigial liberals identify not with Atticus but with the mob.

Hell, as even Snopes had to concede Vice President Kamala Harris “encouraged her supporters to donate” to a nonprofit called the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) that was bailing out members of the mob arrested for rioting after George Floyd’s death.

Chauvin’s crime, like Robinson’s, was being of a certain race in a society that increasingly sees justice only through the prism of race. Like the fictional Robinson, the real-life Chauvin represents one of a long and growing line of sacrificial lambs offered on the altar of racial “justice” to expiate the nation’s imagined sins.

Ever impatient, the mobs from the very same liberal metro could not wait for Chauvin’s official immolation to demand the sacrifice of a new lamb. This time, the mobs have shown no scruple about sating themselves on a female officer. To them, it mattered not a whit that veteran Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, officer Kim Potter clearly showed no racial malice in her accidental shooting of Duante Wright, a troubled archetype from a subculture slowly being crushed under the weight of rigidly enforced dishonesty.

To his good fortune, Chauvin has found his Atticus in defense attorney Eric Nelson. Although he has backstage help from the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, Nelson has been arguing solo against the snarky Mod Squad of a prosecution team. Calm and dispassionate, the forty-something Nelson has been quietly picking the prosecution case apart these last three weeks.  Viewed from another planet, the unknowing alien might wonder why Chauvin is even on trial. For details, please see the work done by Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection.  Those who have not followed the case closely would be wise to ignore Big Media and watch the closing arguments, likely on Monday, before forming an opinion.

Biden Intelligence Community Breaches Authority to Target the Right Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/15/biden-intelligence-community-breaches-authority-to-target-the-right/

Instead of prioritizing resources to confront the menace posed by America’s foreign adversaries the IC is devoting most of its time to pursuing Americans on the political Right.

The freshly reelected Republican senator from Nebraska had kind words this week for Joe Biden’s intelligence chiefs. “The American people are blessed to have an [intelligence community] as serious as ours,” Senator Ben Sasse said during Wednesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. He called the group, which included FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director William Burns, “heroes” and wanted a chance to “say thank you” in front of the American people.

Sasse, who is supposed to act as a fierce skeptic not a fawning cheerleader of the world’s most powerful intelligence apparatus, singled out Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines for praise. “Your opening statement . . . was incredibly strong,” Sasse swooned. 

Haines, the top deputy to former CIA Director John Brennan during the Obama Administration, undoubtedly marveled at winning such a groveling endorsement from a sitting Republican senator—or perhaps she internally laughed at winning over yet another reliable GOP dupe. (In fairness, most Republicans on the committee joined in Sasse’s praise for Haines.)

But Senate Republicans should have been outraged rather than starry-eyed over Haines’ opening statement as well as her conduct in office since taking the reins of the intelligence community the day after Joe Biden’s inauguration. Haines is wasting no time accelerating the weaponization of a sprawling organization that is supposed to identify threats to the homeland by foreign actors, not target Americans with the wrong political views.

Orchestrated Anarchy Democrats are shamelessly using anti-police mob violence for political gain. Arnold Ahlert

https://patriotpost.us/contributors/496

“It wasn’t an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist. Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government-funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.” —Michigan Democrat Representative Rashida Tlaib, April 12

“All employees working for the City of Brooklyn Center are entitled to due process with respect to discipline. This employee will receive due process and that’s really all that I can say today.” —Brooklyn Center City Manager Curt Boganey

Following the shooting and killing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright by officer Kimberly Potter, a 26-year veteran of the force, during a traffic stop Sunday afternoon — which Police Chief Tim Gannon described as “an accidental discharge” of a handgun instead of a taser — one of the above politicians still has a job.

Unfortunately, it isn’t Boganey. For daring to support due process, the city council voted to give authority over the police department to the mayor’s office so Boganey could be fired. Councilmember Kris Lawrence-Anderson admitted the action was taken to appease rioters. “He was doing a great job. I respect him dearly,” she said. “I didn’t want repercussions at a personal level.”

Thus, Lawrence-Anderson opted for anarchy.

It is anarchy best described as formulaic. Ever since George Floyd died following his own confrontation with police — and a similar effort to resist arrest that was allegedly part of the equation here — such confrontations have not been seen as tragedies but as opportunities.

Opportunities to riot and attack police, as well as loot some businesses and burn others to the ground. And over the course of a year, rioters have done so while feckless Democrat politicians either looked the other way or condoned the mayhem, even as their media allies pushed precisely the same kind of rank propaganda embraced by Rashida Tlaib.

BLM Protesters Attack Media near Brooklyn Center Police Building by Bob Price

https://www.breitbart.com/law-and-order/2021/04/14/blm-protesters-attack-media-near-brooklyn-center-police-building/

BLM protesters attacked news media during the fourth night of demonstrations outside the Blanchard Center Police Department headquarters on Wednesday night. A CNN news crew member fell to the ground after being struck in the head by a thrown water bottle.

A video tweeted by Washington Examiner reporter Nic Rowan shows a member of a CNN news crew being attacked by protesters. Someone off-camera throws a water bottle striking the CNN worker in the head. He stumbles to the ground for a few seconds as people mocked him.

“A bottle of water knocked you out?” a protester yelled while laughing at the man.

“Get the f**k out of here,” someone else yelled in a video showing the crowd chasing the CNN news crew away from the police building.Fox News national correspondent Lauren Blanchard tweeted that the crowd was becoming more hostile. She said a group was targeting media, including Fox News, demanding to see credentials and then telling them to leave.

Hundreds of people gathered late Wednesday afternoon outside the Brooklyn Center police headquarters. National Guardsmen and State police moved in to protect the building during the fourth night of protest following the shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright by police on Sunday.

Why Is Everyone Swallowing Biden’s Lies?

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/16/why-is-everyone-swallowing-bidens-lies/

How did this happen? How did the nation go in an instant from disbelieving every utterance of Donald Trump to robotically repeating — and acting on — every claim that falls out of Joe Biden’s mouth, no matter how disconnected from the truth?

The most glaring example involves Biden’s fact-challenged tirade against Georgia’s new voting law. At his first and only press conference, Biden declared the state’s efforts to protect against voter fraud were worse than Jim Crow, “un-American,” “sick,” and “despicable.” (This was the same press conference where moments later Biden bragged about how much time he’s spent with China’s genocidal communist dictator before calling him “a smart, smart guy.”)

In any case, everything Biden said about Georgia’s voting law was either a gross mischaracterization or an outright lie.

Even the Washington Post’s notoriously biased fact-checker had to admit as much, giving Biden four “Pinocchios” — its worst rating on the truth scale — for his claims.

Yet, Biden’s blatant falsehoods were enough to convince Major League Baseball, an army of CEOs, and various other leaders to threaten to punish Georgia and threaten any other state that dares try to protect their elections from fraud.

The Ambassador of Blame America First We’ve come a long way from Pat Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ambassador-of-blame-america-first-11618527312?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

he U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations is supposed to speak for American values and interests. But judging by her recent remarks, new Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield is going to speak mainly about the faults of her own country.

President Biden’s Ambassador spoke Wednesday to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, and her recitation of America’s sins could have come from China’s Global Times. She said one of her priorities will be addressing racial injustice and spoke of her own experience with discrimination.

Fair enough, but then she kept going: “I shared these stories and others to acknowledge, on the international stage, that I have personally experienced one of America’s greatest imperfections. I have seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.”

How about American progress on race since the founding, such as the Civil War that ended slavery or the civil-rights movement? Ms. Thomas-Greenfield has other ideas.

Biden’s Country-by-Country Tax Canard His idea for taxing overseas profits is too much even for Europe.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-country-by-country-tax-canard-11618528445?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

We’re spelunking our way through the Biden Administration’s corporate-tax plan so you don’t have to, and how the plan would calculate tax bills is even worse than the higher rates. Nowhere is that clearer than its “country-by-country reporting” for taxing foreign earnings.

Under the 2017 tax reform, American companies pay U.S. tax on global profits as those profits arise each year. This is done largely via the global intangible low-tax income, or Gilti, regime that imposes an effective tax rate of at least 13.125% on overseas profits arising especially from intellectual property held by offshore subsidiaries. The Biden plan would increase the Gilti tax rate to a statutory 21% (and an effective 26.25% after accounting for quirky tax mechanics).

But wait, there’s more. The Biden plan also would overhaul how companies calculate Gilti liability. Currently companies aggregate overseas earnings, losses and foreign tax credits in various markets into a single global calculation. The Biden plan would go country-by-country, meaning that for each jurisdiction in which a company does business it would have to compute its Gilti taxable profit, work out any local tax credits, and then figure the tax due.

Progressives favor this approach because they think the aggregate method allows companies to use higher tax payments in high-tax jurisdictions to offset tax windfalls in low-tax jurisdictions. But it’s not that simple.

1,500 Rabbis Slam the ADL for ‘Grossly Misplaced Charges of Anti-Semitism’ By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/04/14/1500-rabbis-slam-the-adl-for-grossly-misplaced-charges-of-anti-semitism-n1440111

A coalition of 1,500 Orthodox Jewish rabbis condemned the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) after it called for Fox News to fire Tucker Carlson, accusing him of anti-Semitism. The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) sent a letter rebuking the ADL and urging it to “discard its partisan preoccupations and undertake an urgently needed course correction.”

“There is nothing supremacist, much less antisemitic, about concerns that voting by illegal immigrants is a negation of America’s electoral system and a violation of our democracy,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken, CJV’s managing director, told PJ Media about the situation.

The outrage traces back to Carlson’s show last Thursday. “The Left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” Carlson said. “I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate.”

The ADL called for Fox News to fire Carlson, saying he “embraced a foundational theory of white supremacy.” White supremacist anti-Semites claim that Jews and others are orchestrating a “great replacement,” importing racial minorities in order to replace white people.

“Mr. Carlson’s attempt to at first dismiss this theory, while in the very next breath endorsing it under cover of a ‘voting rights question,’ does not give him free license to invoke a white supremacist trope,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote.

Yet Carlson’s remarks did not focus on race.

Pelosi Hijacks Everything for Her Agenda — Even the Holocaust By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/pelosi_hijacks_everything_for

One would expect the commemoration of something as tragic and sacred as the Holocaust be done in a respectful manner and not be manipulated for political goals. Such was not the case this week with Nancy Pelosi’s statement sent out on Holocaust Remembrance Day; known in Israel as Yom Ha’Shoah. Instead, she exploited the murder of six million Jews by Hitler and his regime into a manifesto of Democrat false talking points and the demonization of millions of Americans associated with conservatism and who voted for President Trump. It was sacrilege and shameful.

The first principle regarding the Holocaust is as follows: It was a unique, once-in-history genocidal plan to exterminate an entire race of people, Jews, across the globe simply because of who they were at birth. Unlike conventional warfare where antagonists may wish to eliminate those they are fighting, Hitler planned the systematic murder of those not only at war with him but those beyond the confines of the battle lines, searching for Jews worldwide even though they were not in the way of his territorial ambitions. They were murdered not for what they did or their conduct, but for simply being born into a people. While he did kill others during the war, the grand plan of Final Solution was specific to eradicating the Jewish people, no other group, from the face of the earth, leaving no trace of their ever having existed.

Holocaust Memorial Day was never established as a general memorial day for all those harmed during World War II, but as something specific to the once-in-history systematic implementation of that Final Solution plan to eradicate the Jewish people from existence and human history. The remedy for what happened is for the world to make sure, this time, that Never Again shall we stand by while adversaries, such as Iran, go about with plans to once again exterminate the Jewish people by destroying Israel, as is their announced plan, or by murdering all Jews worldwide who are Zionists, something every Jew is commanded to be.

Systemic Racism is a Conspiracy Theory Cult A conspiracy theory that explains everything in the world as racism. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/systemic-racism-conspiracy-theory-cult-daniel-greenfield/

What is a conspiracy theory anyway? Conspiracy theories are, by definition, things that other people believe. Nobody believes in conspiracy theories, they believe that other people do.

As an old dead white Elizabethan male who invented the toilet once quipped, “Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason? Why if it prospers, none dare call it treason.” Like treason, a conspiracy theory with the backing of the establishment becomes an article of faith.

What’s the most dangerous kind of conspiracy theory? The kind no one dares to call what it is.

Political extremism is invariably based on a set of conspiracy theories. And when the extremists take power then their conspiracy theories become establishment dogma. The dividing line is easy to spot. Extremists who aren’t in power invent conspiracy theories about those who are, while extremists who are in power invent conspiracy theories about those underneath them.

The shift from conspiracies about an established upper class to conspiracies about bad ideas held by the lower classes, or from class warfare to political correctness, was also a power shift.

It’s a covert confession about who really runs things by the conspirators who actually do.

While few will agree on what is a conspiracy theory, the most obvious symptom of a conspiracy theory is that it cannot be disproven. The most popular establishment conspiracy theory is systemic racism. Like most conspiracy theories, anything can be ascribed to systemic racism, from mathematics to the existence of a highway, it can be used to explain everything, and yet it so comprehensively pervades everything that its existence can never be disproven.

To test that theory, describe any element of life, no matter how random, milk, traffic signals, or weather, as racist, and you will find that these accusations have already been made, and that there is no way to disprove them in terms that a critical race theory believer will accept.