Biden Administration Bypassing Americans, Violating US Law, to Appease Regime of Iran by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19959/biden-bypassing-americans-appeasing-iran

The Biden administration has been accused of secretly bypassing US laws to reach a deal with Iran’s Islamist regime.

On August 10, the Biden administration apparently cut a “deal” excluding Congress and keeping the American people and U.S. regional allies in the dark — even though they are the ones who would be the most directly affected by a “deal.”

The United States agreed to pay $6 billion dollars and release a handful of Iranian nationals who are serving prison sentences in the US, in exchange for the release of five Iranian-Americans imprisoned in Iran. The sum comes to more than a billion dollars per head — possibly largest hostage ransom payment in America’s history — and that makes every American on foreign soil a juicy mark.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul accused President Joe Biden on August 21 of breaking a 2015 law, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) by secretly negotiating and reaching a nuclear “understanding” with the Iranian regime alongside a hostage release deal.

“I urge the Administration to remember that U.S. law requires that any agreement, arrangement, or understanding with Iran needs to be submitted to Congress pursuant to INARA.” — US Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a letter to President Joe Biden, August 15, 2023.

“At least $16 billion has now been made available to Iran without any congressional input—and more might be on the way. Another $6.7 billion is reportedly moving to Iran via the International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights… and reportedly … another $3 billion of regime assets frozen in Tokyo. India and China….” — Richard Goldberg, former White House Security official, thedispatch.com, August 15, 2023.

How could the Biden administration keep the American people and allies such as Israel in the dark when the Iran’s ruling mullahs have made it clear that a top priority is to attack the US, eradicate the Jewish state and “wipe Israel off the map”?

Ruling Regime Locks Up George Washington By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/ruling_regime_locks_up_george_washington.html

A Missouri man walked into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, dressed as George Washington.  He caused no damage, engaged in no violence, and was even recorded peacefully speaking with police before leaving.  For daring to dress as America’s pre-eminent Founding Father and symbolically rebuking our corrupt ruling class, Isaac Yoder was surveilled for seven months, eventually arrested, fined, and sentenced to a year in prison.  Welcome to the Imprisoned States of America, where patriotic love of country is condemned and political persecution flourishes.  

At a time when the Biden regime is trying to imprison President Donald Trump for the rest of his life, Yoder’s story seems particularly poignant.  If the American War for Independence were being fought today, there is no doubt that the D.C. despots squeezing the life out of the American people would enthusiastically take sides with the British.  As soon as dishonest and nefarious lawmakers, police officers, prosecutors, and judges decided to treat the J6 protest against election fraud as an “insurrection,” the miscreants who imperiously occupy D.C. made clear that they have fully rejected both the spirit and the principles of 1776. 

If Americans cannot assemble to petition their government for redress of grievances without fear of being labeled “insurrectionists” or “terrorists,” then there is no First Amendment protection remaining.  If the American press corps can stand back and watch this political persecution unfold for years without being bothered to point out the deceitfulness in portraying an unarmed crowd of ordinary citizens as engaging in “rebellion,” then there is no institutional organ outside government extant to fight today’s oppression.  It makes sense that Mr. Yoder would be targeted for especial FBI harassment; if George Washington, Sam Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were alive today, the FBI would be busy hunting them down, too.  Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Merrick Garland, and Mitt Romney would be calling them “traitors.”  And the news media would be breathlessly reporting about how our Founding Fathers’ fight for liberty is really about their love for slavery and the “patriarchy.” 

Joe Biden joins Russia’s Putin, Nicaragua’s Ortega, Venezuela’s Maduro, Brazil’s Lula, China’s Xi, Iran’s Khamenei, and Turkey’s Erdoğan as another twenty-first-century tyrant with no qualms about locking up his political opponents.  There was a time when both the elected officers and the entrenched bureaucracy in the United States would have universally condemned foreign leaders for their efforts to undermine freedom of speech, dissent, and political self-determination abroad; now it is the United States that follows the example of the world’s worst authoritarians.  And just as every brutal dictator proclaims that he faithfully serves “the people,” America’s ruling regime will continue to insist that its illiberal displays of force, rampant censorship, and political targeting are all necessary to “protect our democracy.”

Across language and geography, ruling regimes throughout history have used a strikingly similar label to demonize their political adversaries: “disloyally affected person.”  The British used the term to lock up members of the Irish Republican Army.  Both Lenin and Mao used the phrase to justify mass executions of anti-communists.  Castro’s Secret Police used the alleged offense as an excuse to imprison and torture political opponents in Cuba.  Now the U.S. government throws around this spurious charge — disloyalty to the State — as if dissent against the permanent ruling class were the height of criminal activity.

Schools of the State As the summer fades into fall and the kids return to school, all is not well. by Larry Sand

https://www.frontpagemag.com/schools-of-the-state/

We have all gone through it as children. The joys of summer fade, the weather cools, the days get shorter, and the school doors swing open. For most kids – and I was certainly one of them – it is not a time of joy.

But these days, it can be downright depressing. The hysterical pandemic-related school shutdowns, notably, have done far-reaching and long-lasting damage. Released in July, “Education’s long COVID:2022–23 achievement data” reveals stalled progress toward pandemic recovery. As former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Bruno Mano explains, “The assessment provider NWEA reports that students in grades three to eight lost ground in reading and math during the 2022-23 school year. On average, they need four more months in school to catch up to pre-pandemic levels ….”

This assessment aligns with the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results. The scores on the reading and math tests administered in October-December 2022 showed the steepest declines ever recorded since the tests were first administered.

The bad news doesn’t end with academics; student mental health is also deteriorating. A CDC analysis declares that from April 2020 to October 2020 – when the pandemic first peaked, and the shutdowns were in full swing – the proportion of mental health-related visits to emergency departments rose by 24% over pre-pandemic levels for children aged 5 to 11 and by 31% for children aged 12–17. “By April 2022, 70% of public schools reported an increase in the percentage of children seeking school mental-health services compared to pre-pandemic levels.”

One of the attempted fixes for the various student problems wasthe American Rescue Plan, which saw the feds throw $190 billion at the problem. But a 10-month examination by The 74 shows that many districts haven’t used the funds with the urgency intended. Some have barely tapped monies that advocates say are “critical for academic recovery, while others have pumped millions of dollars into major classroom additions, upgrading athletic fields, and other expenditures unrelated to the pandemic.”

The Equalizer: Hero in a World Without Knights Denzel is back. Fear his wrath.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-equalizer-hero-in-a-world-without-knights/

Action flicks these days aren’t dominated anymore by square-jawed, one-note actors like Van Damme, Schwarzenegger, and Statham (they aren’t even mostly the domain anymore of men, but that’s an article for another day). In recent years, the leading men of the best “actioners,” as they’re known in Variety-speak, are heavy-hitting thespians like Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington, whose acting chops elevate the genre to a whole new level. In The Equalizer movies, for example, Denzel brings compelling depth to a character that would be one-dimensional in a lesser talent: a chivalric hero in a world without knights.

The Equalizer 3 opened in theaters last week, and I was in one of them to check out the latest installment of the franchise, happily contributing a few dollars toward the $42 million the film raked in domestically over the long Labor Day weekend.

If you’re unfamiliar with the movies, in the first Equalizer outing in 2014, Denzel (and let’s face it, he has reached the stratosphere of one-name celebrity, like Sting or Madonna) plays Robert McCall, a quiet, mysterious loner whose unassuming demeanor belies his lethal special ops training. Living like a monk, as one baffled character puts it, while working nine-to-five at a Home Depot-type store, the widowed McCall, a retired assassin from “the Agency,” flies under everyone’s radar.

McCall confesses in that film that he had once done things that he wasn’t proud of, but that he had promised his now-deceased wife that “I would never go back to being that person.” And indeed, he now lives by such an honorable code that he chides acquaintances about character failings like swearing and eating junk food. But he is supportive and inspiring as well: he helps coach a hapless coworker to prepare for a better-paying job as a security guard, for example, and he encourages the dream of a singing career for a young Russian call girl he has befriended at the local coffee shop, where he hangs out and reads during sleepless nights. Coming to the aid of this damsel in distress brings down the wrath of ruthless Russian sex traffickers – but they, like everyone else, underestimate McCall.

McCall is also a big reader, working his way through a list of the 100 Best Books. At one point the call girl sees him with a new book and asks what it’s about. “It is about a guy who is a knight in shining armor,” McCall replies, “except he lives in a world where knights don’t exist anymore.”

Biden Freezes U.S. Arctic Oil Interior Secretary Deb Haaland relies on ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ as a legal justification to block drilling. No joke.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-cancels-anwr-oil-drilling-leases-deb-haaland-energy-russia-24a5c647?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Oil prices have climbed this week after Saudi Arabia and Russia extended their production cuts. The Biden Administration’s response? Restrict U.S. oil and gas development.

The Interior Department on Wednesday canceled seven oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and moved to limit development on 13 million acres in the state’s National Petroleum Reserve. “President Biden is delivering on the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in history,” Secretary Deb Haaland boasted.

Its climate agenda is also the most lawless and economically destructive in history. The 2017 GOP tax reform mandated two lease sales within the Coastal Plain of ANWR. The first occurred in January 2021, and the second is required to be held before Dec. 22, 2024.

Mr. Biden on his first day in office imposed a leasing moratorium in ANWR. Now Ms. Haaland is revoking seven ANWR leases issued by the Trump Administration in January 2021. She claims to have “the authority to cancel or suspend oil and gas leases issued in violation of a statute or regulation,” and that the ANWR leases include “fundamental legal deficiencies.”

Was Trump ‘an Officer of the United States’? A careful look at the 14th Amendment’s Insurrection Clause shows that it doesn’t apply to him. By Michael B. Mukasey

https://www.wsj.com/articles/was-trump-an-officer-of-the-united-states-constitution-14th-amendment-50b7d26?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Apart from the four criminal indictments brought against Donald Trump, those who would end his campaign for the presidency by means other than an election seem to be putting increasing faith in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, known as the Insurrection Clause. That faith seems to be seriously misplaced.

To the extent its text is relevant here, the section in question denies to a discrete category of people—including those who have taken an oath “as an officer of the United States . . . to support the Constitution of the United States”—the right to serve as a “Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office . . . under the United States” if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against same.”

A good deal of attention has focused thus far on whether the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an “insurrection or rebellion” and, if so, whether Mr. Trump “engaged” in it. Those questions, however, need not be answered until two preliminary questions of law are addressed: Is the presidency an “office . . . under the United States,” and was the presidential oath Mr. Trump swore on Jan. 20, 2016, to support the Constitution taken “as an officer of the United States”?

The latter question is easier. The use of the term “officer of the United States” in other constitutional provisions shows that it refers only to appointed officials, not to elected ones. In U.S. v. Mouat (1888), the Supreme Court ruled that “unless a person in the service of the government . . . holds his place by virtue of an appointment . . ., he is not, strictly speaking, an officer of the United States.” Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated the point in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010): “The people do not vote for the ‘Officers of the United States.’ ”

Lululemon, The Face Of Disorderly Society By  Nurit Greenger

https://newsblaze.com/usnews/crime/lululemon-disorderly-society_192742/

Allegory: A burglar breaks into your home to steal your property. You try to stop him. You get arrested for disturbing the act of burglary.

Lawlessness and Crime Rule

This is what we are witnessing in the United States of America. Lawlessness rules.

A Lululemon store is like your home. Two store employees tried to stop shoplifters who were shoplifting in their store. They two were fired. The shoplifters are roving free with the stolen merchandise.

The Lululemon Athletica Inc., commonly known as Lululemon, is a Canadian multinational athletic apparel retailer headquartered in British Columbia, Canada, and incorporated in Delaware, United States.

Many people living in the United States of America have lost all sense of reality and genuine social justice and have turned the world upside down which is encouraging bad behavior and criminality with impunity.

Shoplifting Episode at ’99 Cent’ store*, Los Angeles

During the week of August 20th 2023, I went shopping at a 99 Cent store, its name tells the reader the value of the items the store offers for sale.

*99 Cents Only Stores is an American price-point retailer chain based in Commerce, California. It offers “a combination of closeout branded merchandise, general merchandise and fresh foods.” The store initially offered all products at 99¢ or less. Today, thanks to inflation, the items sold are at $1.26 and up.

As I was moving around the store doing my shopping, I saw a black man moving fast from aisle to aisle, without a shopping cart, picking up merchandise and collecting them on one of the store’s shelves. I got his drift. He was planning to bag all the merchandise in the black bag he carried and then run out of the store with his loot.

I called the store manager to alert him. He did not bother to step out of his office.

At the cashier, on my way out, I brought up my suspicion. I told her to call for help to stop the shoplifter in his tracks. Here is what she told me almost verbatim: “these shoplifters come here, sometimes even several times a day; they pick up merchandise and leave. The store management and owner don’t care. No one stops them. I see it every day and I am sick of this lawlessness but there is nothing I can do.”

Here Is Some of the Almost Daily News in California

The 21st Century Will NOT Be Chinese by Drieu Godefridi

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19948/china-21st-century

[T]he news of the week is most likely the crash of China. Real estate, currency, stock markets, technology, demographics: it all fits together, and what lies ahead for China looks like stagnation at best.

There are an estimated 80 million unoccupied homes in China — a huge number, even for a giant country. While real estate has driven China’s growth for decades, it is now in danger of wrecking it.

Then came the marginalization of the Chinese currency, the yuan, presented as destined to replace the dollar. Not quite yet. The yuan may or may not be weak, but above all no one wants it as an international currency because no one trusts the reliability of the Chinese regime in the long run. No one wants to buy Chinese bonds.

“It is very hard to create a reserve currency, without attractive reserve assets. China has a problem. It wants foreigners to buy bonds but they have been selling since early 2022” — Jens Nordvig, founder and CEO of Exante, Reuters, May 16, 2023.

Regarding the concept of a dedicated currency for BRICS nations, experts have expressed their skepticism. Danny Bradlow from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, cast doubt on the practicality of reverting to the gold standard — there is not enough of it if everyone wanted it a redemption — or using cryptocurrencies. He questioned their reliability in global trade. There are serious investors who regard cryptocurrencies as essentially a conceit, like the 17th century’s Dutch tulip mania. Even then, at least you had a tulip bulb.

Chris Weafer, an investment analyst specializing in Russia and Eurasia at Macro-Advisory, labeled the proposition of a BRICS currency a “non-starter.”

It is likely that Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping does not really understand how markets work… Why would anyone want to invest in a stock market that is constantly at the mercy of a communist ‘Prince’ and his subjective whims and predilections?

According to China’s new “Anti-Sanctions Law,” just about anything can be a crime, and one’s assets seized if the Communist Party leaders want them to be. The raid on the Shanghai headquarters of Bain & Company and the colonization (seizure) of the Hong Kong financial center by China’s imperialists also had the effect, from a strictly financial point of view, of emptying the Chinese market of all reliability.

There is also the problem that in China there are no private companies: under the Chinese Communist Party’s notion of “civil-military fusion,” all companies belong to the central government and can be raided for information at any time.

Manchin trashes Biden administration decision to pull US oil and gas leases in Alaska Misty Severi

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/senate/manchin-trashes-biden-administration-alaska-oil

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) trashed the Biden administration’s decision to pull oil and gas leases from Alaska on Wednesday, claiming the move was the latest example of the administration “caving to the radical Left.”

The Department of the Interior said on Wednesday it would prohibit oil and gas drilling on more than 10.6 million acres in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, ensuring “maximum protection” for more than 40% of the reserve, which is located in Alaska’s North Slope and is the largest undisturbed public land in the United States.

“I can’t explain to the American people why we would willingly become more dependent on foreign oil imports, eliminate good paying American jobs and drive up the cost of our electric bills and gas prices across the country,” Manchin said. “This is yet another example of this administration caving to the radical Left with no regard for clear direction from Congress or American energy security.”

Manchin called the move “embarrassing” and an attempt to circumvent Congress because the administration allegedly knows it does not have the support to get it approved properly. The senator added that the move allows Iran and Venezuela to produce more oil with fewer environmental regulations.

INTERESTING POLL

General Election Polls (CNN)
Trump (R) 47, Biden (D) 46

Biden (D) 47, DeSantis (R) 47

Biden (D) 46, Ramaswamy (R) 45

Haley (R) 49, Biden (D) 43

Biden vs. Pence, Scott, Christie