NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

SEC Climate Disclosure Rule: A Duck That Quacks By Rupert Darwall

Posted By on July 6th, 2022

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/07/05/sec_climate_disclosure_rule_a_duck_that_quacks_840873.html

In his recent memoir, former attorney general William Barr recounts how the Trump administration lost its attempt to include a citizenship question in the 2020 census. After losing in the Supreme Court, Barr briefed President Trump on what had gone wrong. “If people were straightforward from the beginning, it could have gotten done,” Barr explained. “The trouble is the administration was too cute by half, and [Chief Justice John] Roberts threw the penalty flag.” The Supreme Court had thrown out the citizenship question because the Commerce department’s declared rationale for it was pretextual—that is to say, it was not the real reason that the Trump administration wanted a citizenship question in the census.

Much comment on the controversial climate disclosure rule proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has centered on whether the SEC has the necessary legal authority. By the end of the comment period on June 17, the SEC had received more than 3,400 letters, significantly more than usual. Linked to legal arguments on whether the SEC has an adequate statutory—or, indeed, constitutional—basis for its climate proposal is the question of pretextuality: Is the SEC being genuine in the stated justification for its sweeping climate disclosure rules? Should the SEC harbor doubts about its legal standing to compel climate disclosures—notably, greenhouse gas emissions data—from listed companies, it increases the likelihood that it will advance a public justification for the proposed rules that differs from its real one so that it better fits within its statutory authority.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Under Biden, U.S. Pushed Further Back in Latin America by Judith Bergman

Posted By on July 6th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18641/latin-america-china

China is now Latin America’s largest trading partner (excluding Mexico).

China’s relationships with Latin American countries however, are about far more than trade.

“It is not necessary to show malevolent PRC intentions with respect to its activities in Latin America and the Caribbean to conclude that the current and long-term implications of that engagement are grave for prosperity, democracy, and liberties in the region, as well as the security and strategic position of the United States.” — Professor Evan Ellis, US Army War College, “Testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission,” May 20, 2021.

China also has another advantage: No regard for human rights or democracy. It is more than happy to invest in and trade with authoritarian dictatorships like itself.

“… U.S. influence has been diminishing in the continent.” — Martha Bárcena, former Mexican ambassador to the United States, The New York Times, June 9, 2022.

The odds of Biden’s new plan winning over Latin American countries — where China has already massively invested in building roads, railways, harbors, bridges and a host of other infrastructure and communications projects, with no questions asked on the environment, climate or “inclusivity” — are probably low. Even Biden administration officials do not seem to harbor any illusions about the new plan’s ability to change facts on the ground….

“As long as China is ready to put its cash on the table, we seem to be fighting a losing battle.” — U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, Reuters, June 8, 2022.

“Latin American governments complain that there’s a lot of talk but ask ‘where is the money’?” — Welber Barral, Brazil-based partner at BMJ Consultores Associados, Reuters, June 8, 2022.

“The U.S. is losing Latin America to China without putting up a fight, Ecuador’s ambassador to Washington told Axios.”

“And China is waiting, saying, ‘We’re here. We’re giving you money.’ They want control of course, but they don’t say that.” — Ivonne Baki, Ecuador’s ambassador to the US, Axios, September 23, 2021.

China has overtaken the United States in trade terms “in large swathes of Latin America,” according to a recent Reuters analysis of UN trade data from 2015-2021. Reuters added that “outside of Mexico, the top U.S. trade partner, China has overtaken the United States in Latin America and widened the gap last year.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Children’s Library Association Pushes Gender Confusion On Kids With Pro-LGBT Summer Reading List By: Kennedy Kruse

Posted By on July 6th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/05/childrens-library-association-pushes-gender-confusion-on-kids-with-pro-lgbt-summer-reading-list/

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) is pushing multiple LGBT recommendations in its 2022 Notable Children’s Books and Summer Reading Lists. Some of these books include a simple picture of a gay union, while other suggestions are fully centered around transgenderism, but in each case, these recommendations are meant to normalize and promote LGBT values and lifestyles to children. 

By the ALSC adding these books to the reading list, it communicates that these works are of “especially commendable quality, books that exhibit venturesome creativity, and books of fiction, information, poetry, and pictures for all age levels (birth through age 14) that reflect and encourage children’s interests in exemplary ways.” 

For example, children from birth to preschool are encouraged to read “The Pronoun Book” by Chris Ayala-Kronos to complete the summer reading list. As kids just begin to learn how to talk and read, they can also get a head start on trans pronoun propaganda. 

In this book, young readers are taught that they can’t know what people want to be called. A boy may want to be called a “she” instead of he. A girl may desire to use plural pronouns such as they/them or a “neopronoun” such as co, ey, per, or xe.

“Milo Imagines the World” by Matt de la Peña is another “notable” children’s book on the library association’s list, and while the book is not LGBT-centered, it slips in a picture of a same-sex wedding.

The story follows a young boy named Milo and his sister riding the train to see their mom. While on the crowded train, Milo looks at the faces around him. Notebook and pen in hand, he imagines and draws the lives of the people he sees.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Much Fossil Fuel Is Left? Humanity can adapt to whatever climate change may occur—with sufficient prosperity and political will. By Edward Ring

Posted By on July 6th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/05/how-much-fossil-fuel-is-left/

Fossil fuel powers the economic engine of civilization. With a minor disruption in the supply of fossil fuel, crops wither, and supply chains crash. With a major disruption, a humanitarian apocalypse could engulf the world. Events of the past few months have made this clear. Without energy, civilization dies, and in 2020 fossil fuels continued to provide more than 80 percent of all energy consumed worldwide.

This basic fact, that maintaining a reliable supply of affordable fossil fuel is a nonnegotiable condition for the survival of civilization, currently eludes far too many American politicians, including Joe Biden. Observes energy expert and two-time candidate for governor of California Michael Shellenberger: “One month ago, the Biden administration killed a one-million-acre oil and gas lease sale in Alaska, and seven days ago killed new on-shore oil and gas leases in the continental U.S. In fact, at this very moment, the Biden administration is considering a total ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling.”

Another basic fact, easily confirmed by consulting the 2021 edition of the BP Statistical Review of Global Energy, is that if every person living on Earth were to consume half as much energy per year as the average American currently consumes, global energy production would need to nearly double. Instead of producing 547 exajoules (the mega unit of energy currently favored by economists) per year, energy producers worldwide would need to come up with just over 1,000 exajoules. How exactly will “renewables,” currently delivering 32 exajoules per year, or six percent of global energy, expand by a factor of 30 to deliver 1,000 exajoules?

EDUCATION Comments turned off

How ‘Racial Literacy’ Erodes Education By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on July 6th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/how_racial_literacy_erodes_education.html

As the country plunges deeper into Wokeland, the institutions of alleged higher learning continue to support and promulgate the ideology of the Left.

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) offers an online book titled “Racial Literacy” edited by Detra Price-Dennis.

Chapter titles include the following:

To Dismantle Racism, We Must Discuss It
Everyday Colorism: Reading in the Language Arts Classroom
Centering #BlackLivesMatter to Confront Injustice, Inspire Advocacy, and Develop Literacies
Reopening Racial Wounds: Whiteness, Melancholia, and Affect in the English Classroom
Tough Talking: Teaching White Students about Race and Responsibility
Antiracist Language Arts Pedagogy is Incomplete without Black Joy

Thus, “[t]his collection shows how teaching from a racial literacy perspective is in conversation with antiracist, culturally responsive, equity-oriented frameworks that uplift curriculum design and instructional strategies to help educators [.]”

In effect, “[t]he English language arts classroom provides a significant place to begin as English Language Acquisition (ELA) schol­ars and teacher educators are illuminating the ways white supremacy of language policies and practice devalue Black ways of knowing, being, and doing in schools.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Biden Sets his Sights on K-12 Education By James Stansbury

Posted By on July 6th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/biden_sets_his_sights_on_k12_education.html

“Biden’s education council is a hyper-partisan packed court that is likely to dismiss any family input that differs from their progressive views.”

Few noticed or cared when U.S. education secretary Miguel Cardona announced on June 14 the launch of the National Parents and Families Engagement Council (NPFEC). The NPFEC “…will serve as an important link between families and caregivers, education advocates and their school communities. The Council will help foster a collaborative environment where we can work together to serve the best interest of students and ensure they have the academic and mental health support they need to recover from the pandemic and thrive in the future.” 

While this sounds promising, a journalist with Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council (FRC) in their Washington Stand newsletter took an interest and identified some major red flags; “Yet one look at some of the council’s 14 acknowledged members shows it represents a small segment of elitist, left-wing views.” For example:

The National Action Network started by Al Sharpton made an “LGBTQ Alliance” in 2015 “…to promote “the hiring or participation of gay/transgender people “in all areas of religious and public life.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Texas Man Sentenced for Jihad Plot Against Trump Tower Tell us again about white supremacy? Robert Spencer

Posted By on July 6th, 2022

While Merrick Garland’s hyper-politicized Justice Department keeps hunting for terrorists at school board meetings, real terrorism continues: San Antonio’s KSAT reported Saturday that “a Gonzales County man was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for conspiring to provide material support to the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham/Syria, also known as ISIS.” The convict’s name is Jaylyn Christopher Molina, or rather, it was Jaylyn Christopher Molina; now’s it’s Abdur Rahim. Molina/Rahim is “accused of conspiring with a South Carolina man to provide services to ISIS by administering a chat group to share pro-ISIS propaganda and instructions on firearms training and bomb-making.” What was that you were saying again about “white supremacists” being the biggest terror threat the nation faces today?

Molina was very clear about his allegiances, writing in an online chat: “Let it be clear, I am against America. America is my enemy.” He and another American, Kristopher Sean Matthews, or rather, Ali Jibreel of Elgin, South Carolina, to commit “Netflix worthy” terror attacks at Trump Tower and the New York Stock Exchange, which they thought would gain them “rock star status.”

Molina wrote: “We need to stick together, we need to defeat them, we need to take a lot of casualties, a lot of numbers.” Matthews stated: “I would hit places like that to send a message.” According to the legal complaint against the pair, Molina “also described attacking communications centers and plans to ‘fortify a town barrier and establish the first bases or establish a HQ.’” Both Molina and Matthews pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS), discussed traveling to Syria to join up with the jihad group, and even tried to make contact with an ISIS operative who would help them get there. Molina pursued his jihad online, posting instructions on how to train to handle an AK-47 along with directions on how to build a bomb.

This raises a question that has come up many times before, but has never been answered: why do so many converts to Islam come to hate their own country? Nor are Matthews and Molina by any means the first Americans converted to Islam to try to join ISIS. Spc. Hasan Edmonds, a Muslim member of the U.S. Army National Guard, was arrested in 2015 at Chicago’s Midway Airport; he had been planning to join the Islamic State. His cousin, Jonas “Yunus” Edmonds, was arrested as well. They had allegedly been plotting a jihad attack against a U.S. military facility — making Hasan Edmonds the latest in a long line of people who convert to Islam and then turn traitor.

Is it just a coincidence that so many converts to Islam come to regard the country in which they were born and raised, the land of their families and forefathers, as an enemy? Or is there some connection?

Hasan Edmonds clearly believed that his new religion required a shift of his allegiance. “I am already in the American kafir [infidel] army,” he told an informant in January, “and now I wish only to serve in the army of Allah alongside my true brothers.”

Other American converts to Islam who have turned traitor include Sgt. Hasan Akbar, an American engineer from the 101st Airborne Division, who murdered Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert and Maj. Gregory Stone, wounding fifteen others in a grenade and small-arms attack in northern Kuwait on March 22, 2003. As he committed his murders, he yelled, “You guys are coming into our countries, and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.”

Yet Akbar was not Iraqi or Kuwaiti. He was an American from Los Angeles. But when he became a Muslim, any allegiance he may have had to America was gone. Likewise in the cases of al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn and the Marin County Mujahid, John Walker Lindh, both of whom converted to Islam and ended up waging war against the country of their birth on behalf of its enemies.

All the major Muslim organizations in the United States condemn ISIS. So why, when Jaylyn Molina and Kristopher Matthews converted to Islam, did they fall prey to its supposedly twisted and hijacked understanding of Islam? Why wasn’t the peaceful, tolerant, true Islam that everyone assumes converts to Islam are taught in American mosques able to withstand a challenge from the supposedly un-Islamic vision of ISIS? Why aren’t the mosques they attended being investigated? Why am I the only person in the country asking these questions?

There is another question as well: what if Molina and Matthews had succeeded in carrying out a large-scale jihad massacre at Trump Tower? How many Leftists would stand up and cheer because the killing took place at a site that had Trump’s name on it? Can anyone really doubt that this would have brought out the Left’s enthusiastic bloodlust?

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Revolution Against the Administrative State Touching the “third rail” of government. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on July 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/revolution-against-administrative-state-daniel-greenfield/

Four days before Independence Day, the Supreme Court fired its own shot at the modern tyranny that has dismantled the Constitution and runs our lives to a degree King George III could never have imagined and that the Founding Fathers would never have tolerated.

The shot fired at the administrative state was almost missed in the fury over the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. While the amateur liberals who live on ActBlue, wield blue checkmarks on Twitter and inhabit blue states raved over the fall of Roe v. Wade, the professionals of Washington D.C. were much more worried about another Supreme Court decision.

“Supreme Court climate case might end regulation,” E&E News, a Politico green energy site, warned. That may be excessively pessimistic for big government proponents or optimistic for conservatives, but there’s no question that big government has suffered a serious shock.

West Virginia v. EPA wasn’t just a victory for the coal miners of Appalachia, it sent shudders through the vast infrastructure of the D.C. administrative state. Dobbs v. Jackson was a cultural blow to a post-everything feminism that discarded women, but retained abortion, that felt like an earthquake, but changed surprisingly little, while West Virginia v. EPA is the real revolution.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s open border is now the world’s ‘deadliest’ land crossing By Monica Showalter

Posted By on July 6th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/joe_bidens_open_border_is_now_the_worlds_deadliest_land_crossing.html

When you think of the world’s “deadliest land crossing,” what springs to mind?

Perhaps the Stalag-like border around North Korea? The jungly narcoguerrilla-infested Colombia-Venezuela border? Perhaps the swampy predator-infested Colombia-Panama Darien Gap? Maybe the Israel-Gaza line? Some nightmare crossing full of child soldiers around the Central African Republic? The Afghanistan-Pakistan land crossing? There are a lot of hellholes out there that make good candidates.

But according to a United Nations agency, looking at the objective numbers, the honor goes to Joe Biden and his open border — now the world’s deadliest land crossing.

According to the Epoch Times:

The U.S.-Mexico border has become the world’s “deadliest” land crossing, according to data recently brought to light by a United Nations study.

A historic high of 728 recorded immigrant deaths and disappearances along the U.S.-Mexico border crossing in 2021 has made the land crossing the deadliest in the world, according to the study conducted by the United Nations agency, the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

These deaths accounted for the majority of the 1,238 immigrant deaths in the Americas in 2021, the IOM said in a press release on July 1, adding that these numbers should be considered an “undercount” due to difficulties in collecting data.

The study attributed the deaths and disappearance of immigrants in the Americas to a “lack of options for safe and regular mobility,” saying that this would drive migrants, presumably those choosing to enter as illegal aliens, to pursue riskier dangerous pathways to their destinations.

The agency also noted how the dangers faced by migrants are highlighted by recent news about what amounted to the deadliest known smuggling incident in American history: the discovery of 53 bodies in a tractor-trailer packed with 67 illegal immigrants in San Antonio on June 27.

That’s quite an achievement, Joe, besting North Korea and all. What a “historic first” as Joe likes to say. What feather in Joe’s cap.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liz Cheney’s J6 Committee Show Trial Theatrics Are Further Exposed After ‘Concerning Messages’ Source Is Revealed: Stacey Matthews

Posted By on July 6th, 2022

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/07/liz-cheneys-j6-committee-show-trial-theatrics-are-further-exposed-after-concerning-messages-source-is-revealed/

The January 6th hearings are unquestionably carefully orchestrated show trials designed to try and make self-important committee members look like they are “doing something!” to get to the bottom of the Capitol riot incident, who was allegedly behind it all, etc.

Unfortunately for the Democrat/NeverTrump “Republican” committee members, not only have they failed to produce any evidence that former President Trump intended to incite supporters to get them to breach the Capitol and/or was involved in some vast alleged conspiracy to subvert the democratic process or whatever, but their TV ratings have been abysmal, which is further confirmation that their efforts to “get Trump” are not the midterm election year motivator they’d intended them to be.

Just this week, we saw “star witness” Cassidy Hutchinson’s “bombshell” hearsay testimony about how Trump allegedly tried to assault a Secret Service agent in order to take over “the Beast” (or SUV) so he could join the protesters fall apart when the Secret Service told reporters that the two agents at the center of this fantastical tale were willing to testify under oath that what Hutchinson was told happened never happened, but that curiously they had not been called upon to do so this week by the committee for reasons that should be obvious to anyone.