NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Desperate Dems Deny Their Agenda Three Times

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/08/dems-deny-their-agenda-three-times-to-avoid-public-crucifixion/

Three of the big issues of the day have the liberal left scrambling to pretend that it’s not a group of outside-the-mainstream radicals: defunding police, critical race theory, and voter ID laws. There should be repercussions for such cravenness.

After spending the better part of the year talking up a “defund the police” agenda, Democrats are now trying to claim that it’s Republicans who want to strip the police of their resources.

Defund the Police: For more than a year, leading Democrats – up to and including President Joe Biden – have talked up the idea of cutting police budgets because local law enforcement is plagued by racism.

During his campaign, Biden was asked, “Do you believe there is systemic racism in law enforcement?”

“Absolutely,” Biden responded.

In another interview, Biden was asked, “Can we agree that we can redirect some of the funding” for the cops.

Biden said, “Yes, absolutely.”

His running mate and now Vice President Kamala Harris said that governments must “reexamine” where their funding is going.

Democrats didn’t just talk about defunding the police. Deep blue cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Austin, Portland, and others acted on it, slashing police budgets. The predictable result was an explosion in violent crime. Over the July 4 weekend alone, more than 180 people were shot to death. Not only that, but ambushes of police grew more than 90% this year.

So what’s the Democrats’ response? To claim that it’s Republicans who are defunding the police.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Pennsylvania Senate Chairman Initiates Forensic Probe of 2020, 2021 Elections By Zachary Stieber

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pennsylvania-senate-chairman-initiates-forensic-probe-of-2020-2021-elections_3890927.html

A Pennsylvania senator announced on July 7 that he has triggered a forensic investigation of the 2020 and 2021 elections.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, issued letters to several counties requesting information and materials that he said would enable an investigation.

“It’s distinct from an audit or forensic audit. It’s a big deep dive, like we saw in Arizona, but even deeper,” Mastriano told The Epoch Times.

“It takes a hard look at software, machine, scanners, in addition to looking at all the ballots themselves to see if they were hand-filled-in or copied by a machine. So a scientific approach to get to the bottom of what happened, what went right, what went wrong in an election. It takes out all bias.”

Philadelphia County received a letter, as did two that lean Republican: York and Tioga counties.

They were asked to send over hard copies of ballots and other election materials. Mastriano expects a court battle to play out and is ready to go to his committee and request subpoena power if the counties don’t comply or indicate their willingness to comply by July 31.

A deputy for Philadelphia Commissioner Omar Sabir, a Democrat, told The Epoch Times that Sabir believes the elections were run freely and secure. He said that the commissioners are consulting with the city’s law department on the request from the state Senate. Nick Custodio, a deputy for Philadelphia Commissioner Lisa Deeley, a Democrat, said that her office is reviewing the requests.

“We do want to be clear, however, that Senator Mastriano’s letter reiterates claims about the November 2020 election that have been resoundingly rejected by courts. The repetition of baseless claims by elected officials poses a real challenge to our democratic processes. We are committed to continuing the hard work of ensuring that Philadelphians are able to exercise their right to vote,” he said in an email.

A York County official acknowledged receipt of Mastriano’s requests but declined to comment. Tioga County did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

In an op-ed sent to news outlets, Mastriano charged that there’s a strong case for an investigation, noting that 2.7 million mail-in ballots were counted in the 2020 election, compared to just 263,000 in the prior presidential election. He also noted that many of the ballots were counted without signature verification.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

More Than 500 Chinese STEM Students Denied Visa to the US By Alex Wu

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/more-than-500-chinese-stem-students-denied-visa-to-the-us_3890384.html

More than 500 Chinese STEM students’ visa applications to study at major American universities were recently rejected by the U.S. government over security concerns, Chinese media reported. The news sparked debate on Chinese social media and netizens claim that most of the student visa applicants are from Chinese universities that have ties to the Chinese military.

On July 7, Chinese state-run newspaper China Daily reported that at least 500 Chinese students who are majored in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) were denied visas by the U.S. Embassy and Consulates on the grounds of violating Section 212(f) of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act and Presidential Proclamation 10043.

Section 212(f) gives the U.S. president the power to deny entry of aliens or non-U.S. nationals who are deemed detrimental to the interests of the United States. Based on that statute, former President Donald Trump issued Proclamation 10043 on May 29, 2020, titled “Suspension of Entry as Nonimmigrants of Certain Students and Researchers From the People’s Republic of China,” in response to China’s technological theft through its researchers and students studying at American universities and research institutes.

According to China Daily, the visa applicants are all graduate students who have been accepted by American universities—including Harvard University, Yale University, University of California at Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Johns Hopkins University—to study for a doctoral or master’s degree in the United States. Most of them are studying engineering, computer science, machinery, chemistry, materials science, biomedicine, and other science programs.

After their visa applications were rejected, more than 500 Chinese STEM students co-signed a letter that circulated on Chinese social media, asking the U.S. government to resolve the so-called “discrimination and suppression” of Chinese students.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Ranked-Choice Voting Is Bad for Everyone It appeals to progressives because it allows them to vote twice—once for show and once for real. By Harvey Mansfield

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ranked-choice-voting-is-bad-for-everyone-11625674248?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

When it comes to counting votes, America’s political parties want to keep or gain their own advantage. The public interest, however, demands a nonpartisan method. No neutral method has yet been devised that merely elicits the people’s will without twisting it one way or another. Ranked-choice voting is an attempt that has its own twist and will make elections worse for both parties.

The idea isn’t new but it has gained favor, mostly from the left. It can be dismissed as too complicated and, coming as it does from professors, too demanding for most voters outside New York City. But I would like to present three deeper faults in it that concern how voters think, for ranked-choice voting is intended to make them think in a certain way.

First, by ranking choices a voter is required to divide his vote between a favorite candidate and some merely acceptable ones. The first choice is what the voter privately wills—the representative who suits him best. This choice is not directed at the common good, which requires that voters consider what others want. In a free country voters should desire a common good superior to the wishes of private individuals to prevail.

Ranked-choice voting makes the common good inferior to each person’s private first choice. The common good of the country typically gets ranked second choice or below for each citizen.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Guilty Until Proven Innocent An FBI raid in Beverly Hills tests the limits of civil forfeiture.

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/guilty-until-proven-innocent-11625697428?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

“If the FBI and U.S. Attorney have proof of wrongdoing, bring it on. But the burden for depriving an American of property is on the government to prove guilt, not on the targeted to prove innocence.”

When the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults in Beverly Hills in March, it did so after the business had been indicted for conspiring to launder money, sell drugs and other crimes. But the FBI also took control of $86 million in cash and valuables it found in the safe deposit boxes of people who haven’t been accused of a crime. Some of these folks have sued, and two weeks ago federal Judge R. Gary Klausner granted a temporary restraining order preventing the FBI from taking permanent legal title of the seized contents of the plaintiffs’ boxes.

The Institute for Justice is representing seven plaintiffs in this case. Their argument is that they have done nothing wrong and should not have to go through the cumbersome civil forfeiture process to prove that their cash, jewelry or precious metals are legitimately theirs.

Judge Klausner seems to think they may have a case, taking aim at the FBI’s forfeiture notice. “This notice, put bluntly, provides no factual basis for the seizure of Plaintiffs’ property whatsoever,” the judge wrote in granting the restraining order.

U.S. Private Vaults is a private safe-deposit company that asks fewer questions than banks, and its boxes could be used to stash ill-gotten cash, drugs or other loot. Even so, the Fifth Amendment guarantees the right to due process before property can be taken.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Teachers Unions Go Woke The NEA and AFT get behind progressive political indoctrination.

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-teachers-unions-go-woke-11625697757?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Parents didn’t ask to be thrown into the trenches of America’s culture war, but progressives aren’t giving them a choice. Witness the way the national teachers unions are adopting woke values and pressing them into K-12 curriculums across the U.S.

The National Education Association, the largest teachers union, held its annual meeting last week and the measures approved by delegates deserve broader attention. One calls for the union to support and lead campaigns that “result in increasing the implementation of culturally responsive education, critical race theory, and ethnic (Native people, Asian, Black, Latin(o/a/x), Middle Eastern, North African, and Pacific Islander) Studies curriculum in pre- K-12 and higher education.”

Critical theory is a neo-Marxist ideology that is pervasive in higher education and teaches that a person is defined above all else by race, gender and sexual orientation, and that American institutions are designed to ensure white supremacy and “the patriarchy.”

The delegates also directed the NEA to lobby for “professional development around cultural responsiveness, implicit bias, anti-racism, trauma-informed practices, restorative justice practices and other racial justice trainings” for “all school employees.” The delegates called for similar training for students. Just what second-graders need: instruction on how to distrust kids with different skin colors.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Inc.: Hunter, Joe, and the Mexican Oligarchs Charles lipson

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/07/07/biden_inc_hunter_joe_and_the_mexican_oligarchs_146043.html

The indictment of the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer has received a lot of press, and properly so. But while the media has been focused on the former president, they have ignored another corruption story involving the sitting president and his family. Like so much news that has been buried, the latest comes from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. You know, the one the Bidens and their allies in Congress and the media suggested was a “Russian plant” and disinformation campaign, before that cynical claim was demolished by the director of national intelligence.

The latest buried story involves some photographs, taken in Joe Biden’s office in 2014. They include the then-vice president, his son Hunter, and Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico (and once the richest in the world), plus some of Slim’s associates.

Why are the pictures newsworthy? Not because some U.S. officials met with some rich foreign businessmen. That happens all the time. Their real significance is that the vice president met with these guys and included his son at the same time Hunter was working on lucrative business deals with the same people. That looks like self-dealing by the Biden family, despite Joe’s repeated insistence that he knew nothing about his son’s business.

Hunter had other meetings with Carlos Slim and associates in Mexico. Those came after he flew there with his father on Air Force Two, just as he had flown to similar business meetings in China. When you arrive on Air Force Two, when your father is the second-highest official in the U.S. government, and when you bring your business associates to meet him, you are sending a clear signal to potential partners around the world: “I’m incredibly well connected and, if you do business with me, I can open the biggest and best doors in the U.S. government for you.”

Since Hunter has no other marketable skills, opening those doors is the only thing you are paying him for. In country after country, the oligarchs Hunter was wooing had the good fortune to meet with the vice president, meetings that Hunter apparently arranged. Some were held in the host countries, some on the White House grounds.

When you have connections like this in Chicago, you whisper, “I know a guy.” Hunter virtually shouts it. He knows a guy: the “Big Guy,” as one of his secret notes describes his father. That note laid out how the lucre from another deal would be divided, with the “Big Guy” as a silent partner. A partner in that deal, Tony Bobulinski, has publicly stated that all the partners knew the “Big Guy” (or BG) was Joe Biden.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“Thoughts on Voting, Including Ranked Choice Voting” Sydney Williams

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Because of technology we are able to live in a complex world. Yet, we make better decisions, when, as Confucius said, we make the complicated simple. Through early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, officials have made voting more accessible but associated complexities have increased the likelihood of fraud. Debate persists as to whether those changes have proven efficacious.  Now, there is a renewed effort to improve the election process through the (re)introduction of ranked choice voting (RCV).

From a personal perspective, I am not a fan of early voting for two reasons: One, it deprives the voter of weighing issues until Election Day and, two, early voters are more likely to go to the polls following a pep rally, so their decisions are likely to be emotional rather than deliberative. As for absentee voting, I believe that, to the extent possible, voters who are able should vote in person. Not only does is it simpler, it is easier to assure that the voter is legitimate. As for ranked choice voting, I lean in its favor.

RCV is used in elections when three or more candidates are on the ballot, as it eliminates the need for a runoff election. As the name implies, it allows voters to rank choices by preference, i.e., 1 – 5. When the votes are tallied, if one candidate has won an outright majority, then he or she wins the election. If not, the candidate with the fewest number of first choice votes is eliminated. Those who voted for that candidate have their votes transferred to their second choice. This continues until a single candidate gains a majority. If the process is prolonged, some ballots will be eliminated – “exhausted” is the term used.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Palestinian Leaders Are Really Inciting Violence Against Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on July 7th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17533/palestinian-leaders-inciting-violence

Less than three hours after Banat, 42, was taken into custody, the PA announced that he had “died after his health deteriorated during the arrest.”

Banat’s family has called for a neutral international committee to investigate….

The Palestinian government, which is responsible for the killing of Banat and assaults on journalists, political activists, and social media users, is now supposedly trying to beautify its image by joining a UN treaty against torture.

If the PA were really serious about human rights, it would stop arresting, torturing, harassing and intimidating its critics and political rivals. The PA talk about joining the anti-torture treaty is solely aimed at deceiving the international community into believing that Abbas and his government actually care about reforms and human rights.

Senior Fatah official Ahmed Bahar said that any Palestinian who protests against the Palestinian leadership, and not Israel, is a “traitor.”

This is the same Palestinian leadership that has told the new US administration that it is keen on resuming the peace process with Israel. While Abbas and senior Palestinian officials are talking about the resumption of the peace process with Israel, they are at the same time urging their people to forget about the killing of the anti-corruption activist and continual attacks on their own citizens, and instead engage in violent confrontations with Israelis.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), facing growing criticism over the death of Palestinian anti-corruption political activist Nizar Banat, is trying to redirect the anger on the Palestinian street toward Israel.

Although Israel had nothing to do with the brutal killing of Banat, steering anger toward it is an old tactic used by Palestinian leaders for many years; whenever your people are angry with your corruption and repressive measures, you tell them that it is all Israel’s fault.

Banat was killed on June 24, shortly after more than twenty Palestinian security officers raided the home where he was staying in the West Bank city of Hebron. Banat’s family said that even before taking him into custody, the officers beat him with metal clubs and rifle butts.

Less than three hours after Banat, 42, was taken into custody, the PA announced that he had “died after his health deteriorated during the arrest.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Class at Yale Compares American Prisons to Nazi Concentration Camps By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on July 7th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/06/class-at-yale-compares-american-prisons-to-nazi-concentration-camps/

In the fall of this year, the Ivy League university of Yale will be offering a class that explicitly compares the American prison system to Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags, and other brutal authoritarian regimes throughout history, the New York Post reports.

The class, titled “Mass Incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States,” falsely claims that the United States is currently operating “one of the most brutal prison societies in human history.” The course description says that the class will be “an investigation of the experience and purposes of mass incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States in the twentieth century.”

To this end, the class will also compare the American prison system to “important comparative cases, such as Nazi Germany and Communist China.”

“Incarceration is central to the understanding, if not usually to the self-understanding, of a society,” the course description claims. “This course proposes a frontal approach to the subject, by investigating two of the major carceral systems of the twentieth century, the Soviet and the American.”

The class will be taught by History professor Timothy Snyder and Philosophy professor Jason Stanley. Stanley took to Twitter to further justify the course’s existence, claiming that “the United States is the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world…almost 10 percent of the world’s prison population comes from the US’s traditionally oppressed minority, the 38 million black Americans.” He then went on to further claim, without any evidence, that “US prisons are famous for brutality.”

In the Soviet Union, such concentration camps – known as “gulags” – were primarily used for the imprisoning of minorities and political prisoners, often put to heavy labor or starved to death for opposing the Communist regime. In Nazi Germany, similar concentration camps were primarily used for rounding up and executing various minorities that did not support the Nazi regime, with Jews being the primary target, as well as Christians, Communists, homosexuals, and other groups.