RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://reason.com/2023/06/15/rochelle-walensky-cdc-congress-questions-covid-meta-censorship/

Rochelle Walensky, the outgoing director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), faced tough questioning from House Republicans on Tuesday, when she appeared before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Rep. James Comer (R–Ky.) grilled Walensky about the CDC’s communications with social media companies—Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in particular—during her tenure as the head of the federal agency chiefly responsible for battling COVID-19.

As reported in Reason’s March 2023 issue, Walensky’s CDC routinely communicated with content moderators and Facebook, recommending aggressive takedowns of purported misinformation about mitigation efforts, COVID-19’s origins, and vaccines:

According to a trove of confidential documents obtained by Reason, health advisers at the CDC had significant input on pandemic-era social media policies at Facebook as well. They were consulted frequently, at times daily. They were actively involved in the affairs of content moderators, providing constant and ever-evolving guidance. They requested frequent updates about which topics were trending on the platforms, and they recommended what kinds of content should be deemed false or misleading. “Here are two issues we are seeing a great deal of misinfo on that we wanted to flag for you all,” reads one note from a CDC official. Another email with sample Facebook posts attached begins: “BOLO for a small but growing area of misinfo.”

These Facebook Files show that the platform responded with incredible deference. Facebook routinely asked the government to vet specific claims, including whether the virus was “man-made” rather than zoonotic in origin. (The CDC responded that a man-made origin was “technically possible” but “extremely unlikely.”) In other emails, Facebook asked: “For each of the following claims, which we’ve recently identified on the platform, can you please tell us if: the claim is false; and, if believed, could this claim contribute to vaccine refusals?”

Comer’s questions got straight to the heart of this matter. Unfortunately, Walensky declined to directly comment on it.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/06/16/amtrak-joe-and-the-trans-pacific-trans-indian-railroad/

Some of the best advice ever given was from Mark Twain, who said “it’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.” We’re not saying Joe Biden is stupid, but his comment about “plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean,” removes all doubt that he is all there.

Speaking Wednesday evening before the League of Conservation Voters’ annual dinner, Biden waxed ineloquently:

“We’re talking about building — and I had my team putting together with other countries as well — to build a railroad from the Pacific Ocean — from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Indian Ocean.”

Reports said he also rambled on about a proposal to build a line across sub-Saharan Africa.

It’s too bad Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t offer a few words about the idea. She could have talked about, with a little Russian dressing on top, “the significance of the passage of trains over large bodies of water, which are known as oceans, and they are located on our planet, and there is a great significance to train travel, which has made history throughout history at a moment in time.”

It’s hard to decide which is more likely, construction and completion of Biden’s worldwide train, or the unlikely event he and Harris actually string words together in a coherent manner on the same day.

https://victorhanson.com/the-trump-indictment-in-10-bothersome-paradoxes/

Yes, we are told Trump is facing serious charges. Experts tell us he will be going to prison. Some of his legal team have quit. Yes, he was sloppy about communicating with the lawyers of the National Archives. Yet, read the 1978 Presidential Records Act (put into place after the typical sloppy departure protocols of most presidents)—and consider that Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Vice President Mike Pence were likely all in violation. Moreover, we are not stupid, when asked to ignore the following:

1) That a president who had the prerogative to declassify almost any presidential papers he takes with him when leaving office, in a way that a senator or vice-president does not, should be prosecuted for doing just that when a former senator, and former vice-president are not prosecuted for doing the same.

2) That an ex-president is prosecuted for having supposedly classified papers in his possession after 18 months as a private citizen, but an ex-senator, ex-vice president, and current president is exempt, despite having classified documents for some 15 years—and keeping that fact absolutely quiet.

3) That a “disinterested” special counsel who is currently indicting a conservative Republican ex-president and current opposition presidential candidate, is married to a leftwing documentary filmmaker, whose recent work includes Becoming, a 2020 obsequious documentary of Michelle Obama.

4) That the current president removed classified documents, and kept them stored while President of the United States in as many as four unsecured locations, including a poorly locked garage, shared by his drug-addled son, who made millions of dollars by leveraging foreign governments in quid pro quo fashion, presumably on the principle that he and his father had inside information that could be of monetary value—and is not being indicted.

5) That never before in U.S. history has any administration overseen the indictment either of an ex-president of the opposite party or a current leading candidate for president of the opposite party—or both.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/06/15/gop-congressman-brilliantly-destroys-dei-during-hearing-n1703542

Joe Biden has done all sorts of things to compensate for the fact that he’s just an old white guy in a party that basically hates white people. He picked a black woman as his running mate, pledged to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court, and routinely nominates people for various positions based on what diversity boxes they check off, rather than their competence. Under his administration, multiple government agencies have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices to effectively mandate diversity in each department.

On Tuesday, Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) questioned Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the outgoing chief diversity and inclusion officer of the State Department (and the first person to hold that position), during a hearing on Capitol Hill and with incredible precision destroyed the entire justification of Abercrombie-Winstanley’s position.

Mast began by asking her if being bald, 5’-8”, or 6’-3” tall makes someone a better diplomat. Abercrombie-Winstanley began by laughing but eventually said no.

“Likewise, does being white make somebody a better diplomat?’ Mast continued.

“No, I do not believe so,” she responded.

Mast continued asking the same question of African Americans, Asians, Islanders, Native Americans, or any specific group, to which she affirmed that the answer was that “it doesn’t.”

Mast then asked her if he was white. Abercrombie-Winstanley couldn’t answer the question, repeatedly telling him she didn’t know.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“A modern American industrial strategy identifies specific sectors that are foundational to economic growth, strategic from a national security perspective, and where private industry on its own isn’t poised to make the investments needed to secure our national ambitions.”Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser Brookings Institution, April 27, 2023

The presumption in Jake Sullivan’s words, quoted above, are astounding – that there is a, yet-to-be-named, “modern American strategy,” which identifies “specific,” but unstated, “sectors that are foundational to economic growth,” which are “strategic from a national security perspective.” But since the private sector has neither the means nor the foresight to “secure our national ambitions” (whatever they are), then it must be left to the public sector to decide how much and where to invest, decisions prior administrations from both parties have left to markets. Sullivan refers to this as Bidenomics. In reality it is central planning.

Greg Ip, in last weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, wrote of Mr. Sullivan’s speech: “Sullivan’s target was what some in the policy world call neoliberalism: the free trade, laissez faire economic priorities shared by Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.” “Executive policy-making,” wrote Christopher DeMuth, a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute, in the same issue, “has an ideological basis – that of ‘expertise,’ which holds that modern life demands government by expert administrators in place of amateur legislators.” When did Karl Marx replace Adam Smith?

Certainly, there have been times when government has had to take the lead – in times of war, in building the interstate highway system, DARPA, NASA, etc. But the concept that a state-mandated industrial policy is the wave of the future is to believe that Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. have brought to their people greater efficiencies, higher living standards, a cleaner environment, and greater financial opportunity and equality than the democracy and free market capitalism of the United States, and the West.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19725/donald-trump-lawyer

There are disturbing suggestions that among the reasons lawyers are declining the case is because they fear legal and career reprisals.

There is a nefarious group that calls itself The 65 Project that has as its goal to intimidate lawyers into not representing Trump or anyone associated with him. They have threatened to file bar charges against any such lawyers.

I wrote an op-ed offering to defend pro bono any lawyers that The 65 Project goes after. So The 65 Project immediately went after me, and contrived a charge based on a case in which I was a constitutional consultant, but designed to send a message to potential Trump lawyers: If you defend Trump or anyone associated with him, we will target you and find something to charge you with. The lawyers to whom I spoke are fully aware of this threat — and they are taking it seriously…. It may even be worse today….

Good lawyers… generally welcome challenges, especially in high-profile cases. This case is different: the threats to the lawyers are greater than at any time since McCarthyism. Nor is the comparison to McCarthyism a stretch. I recall during the 1950s how civil liberties lawyers, many of whom despised communism, were cancelled, and attacked if they dared to represent people accused of being communists.

Our system of justice is based on the John Adams standard: he too was attacked for defending the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre, but his representation of these accused killers now serves as a symbol of the 6th Amendment right to counsel. That symbol has now been endangered….

Trump’s lawyers have now alleged that one of the prosecutors has suggested to Stanley Woodward, the lawyer for Waltine Nauta, Trump’s co-defendant, that his application for judgeship may be negatively affected if he persists in defending Nauta vigorously rather than encouraging him to cooperate against Trump. If that is true – and I have not seen the evidence to support it – then it represents a direct attack on the 6th Amendment.

Whatever one may think of Trump or the charges against him, all Americans must stand united against efforts to intimidate lawyers and chill them from defending unpopular clients pursuant to the 6th Amendment. Bar associations must look into the threats and actions of The 65 Project and of prosecutors who try… to influence the representation of clients by threats to their careers or other means.

Hard cases may make bad law but partisan cases endanger constitutional rights. We must do everything to assure that all defendants, including Donald Trump, get the zealous representation to which the Constitution entitled all Americans.

Former President Donald Trump has now been arraigned and pleaded not guilty. He was represented by two lawyers, neither of whom he apparently wants to lead his defense at trial. He has been interviewing Florida lawyers, and several top ones have declined. I know, because I have spoken to them. There are disturbing suggestions that among the reasons lawyers are declining the case is because they fear legal and career reprisals.