European Union’s Border-Protection System Now A Tourism Agency for Migrants by Yves Mamou

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18493/european-union-border-protection

This accusation is at the heart of the conflict in the European Union: should EU member states keep their borders open at all times? And is it Frontex’s job to ensure that the borders of EU member states remain always open?

Whenever the European Union talks about “fundamental rights”, it is the right of migrants to move freely that is being discussed. Never the rights of the host populations. In this context, a “pushback” is perceived as a capital crime.

Frontex alone illustrates the European Union dilemma: to welcome refugees and turn back illegal migrants looking for economic opportunity, or to welcome all migrants for fear of turning back genuine refugees ?

In his resignation letter, Leggeri wrote, “It seems that the mandate of Frontex on which I was elected and renewed in June 2019 has silently but effectively been modified.” It was a way of saying that the mission of Frontex is no longer the protection of borders but only the protection of the right of migrants to settle wherever they want.

With the departure of Leggeri, Frontex officially becomes a tourism agency for migrants, not an agency to protect Europe’s borders.

The pro-migrants lobby inside the European Union has won: Fabrice Leggeri, director-general of Frontex, the European agency tasked with guarding the EU’s borders, was forced to send a letter of resignation on April 28, 2022. His resignation was accepted by the board.

Election Integrity Dead: Killed in Court by J. Christian Adams

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18475/election-integrity-dead

Many election operatives know that elections are won or lost because of process. For decades, one side has been focused on policy, big ideas, and winning debates. Meanwhile, the other side has been focused on process and the rules of the elections game.

[A] war is taking place around elections that has nothing to do with voting machines being controlled by Italian satellites or Internet hackers. They don’t need to be.

Election process fights have become a Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” Whichever side can effectively adapt to a new technological or cultural environment often determines who wins and who loses.

In 2020, an unprecedented burst of mail ballots swamped election offices because of the fright of COVID. All over the country, judges struck down or suspended laws that would have ensured those mail ballots were processed according to the law. At the same time, hundreds of millions of dollars in private money poured into election offices to change the way the elections were run.

It is a dangerous place we find ourselves, where citizens through the legislative process are enacting safeguards to keep our elections clean and manageable, yet a hyper-funded onslaught has mastered the art of killing real, verifiable, integrity in elections.

First, do not assume there will be a “red wave” this November. Many election operatives have demonstrated a fierce ability to adapt and leverage cultural and technological awareness into electoral wins.

Second, a “red wave” cannot overcome the “blue wave” tactics of 2020 seen in urban areas flush with outside cash.

Third, the Biden administration is already turning the battleship of the entire federal government toward turnout in 2022. Institutions have mobilized every single agency into a weapon to increase voter turnout among “historically marginalized communities.” Decoded, that means racial groups. This is all happening with little fanfare, and little means to stop it.

It also means that every federal agency has had a year-long head start into morphing into a get-out-the-vote tool. It means housing, welfare, and education offices will be turned into turnout machines. Institutions have adapted and created an architecture using the powers of the state to target certain voters and get them to the polls.

For good measure, the Biden administration proposed a $10 billion federal fund available for the next decade to replicate and expand the cash injections to election offices like those seen in 2020. Another $5 billion is requested for the U.S. Postal Service so it can expand its role in voting-by-mail. Even if the administration gets a fraction of that request, it will make the $500 million spent in 2020 from private groups to increase urban turnout look like small potatoes.

Perhaps most of all, we can start to pay close attention to the fights going on behind the scenes — the process fights. For so long, we have rightfully cared about policies such as taxes, government spending, education, and energy. We try to move heart and minds. But others put policy second: they are worried about whether process helps or hurts their ability to move bodies and ballots. Process is driving the outcomes of policies; it is time to fully engage before our ability to engage at all is extinguished.

In the wake of the 2020 election, states across the country enacted laws to try to prevent a repeat of the chaos from that election. In some states such as Arizona, Texas, and Florida, laws were passed to prohibit the private funding of election offices. In others, ballot custody vulnerabilities were addressed, such as limits on harvesting and drop-boxes.

Clean Energy Has a Dirty Little Secret By Stephen Green

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2022/05/02/clean-energy-has-a-dirty-little-secret-n1593821

Clean energy has a dirty little secret, just revealed by MIT science writing student Shel Evergreen: Its “unsustainable” appetite for minerals and the dirty ways they’re obtained.

From Evergreen’s report for Ars Technica:

In South America’s Atacama Desert, salt flats are dotted with shallow, turquoise-colored lithium brine pools. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, children chip at the ground for cobalt. In China, toxic chemicals leach neodymium from the earth.

All that extraction “presents humanitarian, environmental, and logistical challenges,” she writes.

Scenes like those might already be familiar ground for those who aren’t wedded to the green fantasy of clean energy. But what you might not know is just how much worse things are going to have to get for Mother Earth if the Greens (no relation) are going to “save” her.

The International Energy Agency warned last year that “to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, overall mineral requirements would need to increase six-fold.”

“Those minerals have to come from somewhere, and that often involves harmful sourcing, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and limits on the mineral supply.”

It’s somehow news that we can’t put minerals that we don’t have into solar panels, electric car batteries, or wind turbines. It ought to be news — GIANT BOLD-TYPE HEADLINE news — that clean energy means increased carbon emissions.

January 6 Committee Targets GOP Donors Ahead of 2022 Elections They can’t beat Republicans at the ballot box so Democrats are using every governmental, legislative, and legal weapon at their disposal to destroy them in court and in the court of public opinion.  By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/02/january-6-committee-targets-gop-donors-ahead-of-2022-elections/

Judge Timothy J. Kelly and his colleagues on the D.C. District Court have acted as little more than rubber stamps for the Justice Department’s abusive prosecution of January 6 defendants. As I reported last month, Kelly, a Trump appointee, continues to hold six nonviolent Capitol protesters behind bars while allowing the Biden regime to delay trial dates and skirt its discovery obligations.

After months of tolerating the government’s broken promises related to sharing evidence with defense attorneys, Kelly finally issued a toothless order to compel prosecutors in one major case to finally produce Brady material or face consequences. (He won’t do anything.)

But Kelly isn’t just helping Joe Biden’s Justice Department punish Americans who dared to protest Joe Biden’s election that day. In a shocking ruling issued Sunday night, Kelly gave his imprimatur to the House Democrats’ January 6 select committee, paving the way for hyperpartisan, vengeful lawmakers such as Representatives Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) to potentially access the private information of Republican campaign contributors.

In February, the select committee subpoenaed Salesforce, a data and digital communications vendor for the Republican National Committee, demanding all records associated with fundraising efforts between Election Day and January 6, 2021—an event the committee’s lawyers refer to in court filings as an attack by “domestic terrorists.” The subpoena covered outreach conducted by the RNC, the Trump reelection campaign, and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee—a breathtaking trove of internal records and documents were requested including all communications between the company and the political organizations as well as any data reports generated by Salesforce.

The committee claims emails with hyperbolic language intended to raise money before Congress’ joint session on January 6 were culpable for inciting violence. 

India State High Court Rules That Nature Is a ‘Living Being’ with ‘Rights’:By Wesley J. Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/india-state-high-court-rules-that-nature-is-a-living-being-with-rights/

The Madras High Court in India, which has jurisdiction over the state of Tamil Nadu, has declared that nature is a living being with rights. From the Hindustan Times story:

“Mother Nature” as a “Living Being” having legal entity/legal person/juristic person/juridical person/moral person/artificial person having the status of a legal person, with all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person, in order to preserve and conserve them.”

What a farce. Nature is not moral. It cannot have duties or liabilities. While being made up of sentient beings — as well as insentient life-forms, geological features, and atmospheric phenomena — it is not itself rational or sentient. I mean, if the monsoons flood a city, can the city sue “nature” for damages? Please.

But in parts of India, it now has rights that are, it would appear, going to be at least coequal to those of humans:

“They are also accorded the rights akin to fundamental rights/legal rights/constitutional rights for their survival, safety, sustenance and resurgence in order to maintain its status and also to promote their health and wellbeing. The State Government and the Central Government are directed to protect the “Mother Nature” and take appropriate steps to protect Mother Nature in all possible ways,” the court said.

Nature-rights laws generally allow anyone who believes that nature’s “rights” are being violated to sue to prevent the violation and to seek redress. That gives even the most extreme crank the ability to exercise a litigation veto over development, or a powerful club to use for “greenmail” extortion.

Bromide Politics: A Language Mauled In Service Of Power-

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/03/bromide-politics-a-language-mauled-in-service-to-power/

We Can’t be the Only Ones Sick of the Way Democrats Perverted Words.

We’ve heard since we were school kids that control of the language means control of thought. Anyone who has doubts that this is exactly what the Democrats have in mind must have missed the news last week when the White House named Nina Jankowicz to be the first disinformation czarina in U.S. history. Their objective is to regulate our thinking.

At the same time, the Democrats and their propaganda department, known as the mainstream media, have been hammering the public with words and phrases that mean just what they want them to mean, neither more nor less. It’s their way of conditioning voters’ thoughts as well as creating a cultural and class divide that allows the Democrats to preen as moral superiors and boost their status.

Think of the many examples of language abuse by today’s Democrats:

Our democracy is at stake: A justification for anything on the left’s agenda.

First, they want the public to believe we live in a democracy. We don’t.

How Many Inflation Warnings Did Biden Ignore? A Democratic pollster reportedly offered better analysis than Powell and Yellen. James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-many-inflation-warnings-did-biden-ignore-11651522620?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

New York Times readers may be puzzled by a headline on the newspaper’s website this week: “Biden Received Early Warnings That Immigration and Inflation Could Erode His Support”. Is this news? Especially on inflation, in 2021 it was striking that some prominent members of the Obama economic team were joining conservatives in urging the President not to ignite his desired bonfire of federal spending. But this week’s Times dispatch is nevertheless useful in attempting to understand the failures that haunt the Biden presidency.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns report in the Times:

President Biden enjoyed high approval among Americans in the early months of his presidency . . .  But privately Mr. Biden’s lead pollster was already sounding the alarm that even with the early successes, certain gathering threats could sink support for the president and his party.
“Immigration is a growing vulnerability for the president,” John Anzalone and his team warned in a package of confidential polling, voter surveys and recommendations compiled for the White House. “Voters do not feel he has a plan to address the situation on the border, and it is starting to take a toll.”
Within a month, there was another stark warning. “Nearly nine in 10 registered voters are also concerned about increasing inflation,” said another memo obtained by The New York Times.

Since we’re talking about the Times, this column must issue the standard cautions against believing reports based on anonymous sources.

Leaked Draft of Supreme Court Opinion Indicates Roe v. Wade May Be Overturned Draft ruling, published by Politico, represents an extraordinary breach of the court’s private deliberations

https://www.wsj.com/articles/leaked-draft-of-supreme-court-opinion-indicates-roe-v-wade-may-be-overturned-11651554510

WASHINGTON—A leaked Supreme Court draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and published late Monday by Politico indicated the court may be preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent that established a constitutional right to an abortion.

The draft, dated from February, couldn’t be independently confirmed, but legal observers said it appeared authentic. The Supreme Court’s spokeswoman declined to comment.

The 67-page opinion, marked as a first draft, declared that Roe was “egregiously wrong and deeply damaging,” and that Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 decision that limited but didn’t eliminate abortion rights, prolonged the court’s error.

“Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion,” the draft opinion said. “Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”

The draft, written in February, doesn’t necessarily represent the court’s ultimate decision in the case or even the majority’s current thinking. But it is consistent with the tenor of December’s oral arguments in the case challenging Roe, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerning Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks. The draft was labeled the opinion of the court, implying a majority of justices had agreed with it.

Inflation Can’t Be Censored High prices broadcast the bad news every time we buy something. by David Catron

https://spectator.org/inflation-cant-be-censored/

An increasingly disturbing feature of American politics is the routine suppression of major news stories that reflect poorly on candidates favored by the Fourth Estate. The most egregious example in recent years occurred in October of 2020 when corporate news outlets and social media platforms colluded to bury a New York Post article on Hunter Biden. Fortunately, some stories just aren’t susceptible to such censorship. Inflation is a case in point. It can’t be hidden from the voters because soaring prices shout the bad news from every grocery store shelf and gas pump in the nation.

And the voters don’t like what they’re hearing. A new Gallup poll reports: “Americans’ confidence in the economy remains very low, and mentions of economic issues as the most important problem in the U.S. are at their highest point since 2016.” Moreover, when asked to specify the most important economic issue, inflation topped the list. Not coincidentally, the survey found that Americans identified “the government/poor leadership” as the most important non-economic problem facing the country. This is an evil portent for the Democrats who must defend tiny congressional majorities in the midterms. Politico elaborates:

The professionals who track American attitudes toward the economy say they can see the trouble coming. Angry voters slammed by higher prices and scarred by two years of fighting the pandemic are poised to punish Democrats in midterm elections, according to some of the leading experts in consumer sentiment and behavior. And with inflation persisting and Russia’s war on Ukraine stoking uncertainty, there are indications that public sentiment is getting worse, not better, posing a growing threat to Democrats’ already slim chances of holding onto Congress, they say.

The State Department’s woke surrender The agency defines down who gets to be a diplomat: Peter Van Buren

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/the-state-departments-diversity-surrender/

America’s diplomatic corps is the latest victim of diversity uber alles. Choosing diplomats for the 21st century is now about the same process as choosing which gummy bear to eat next. But fear not, because the State Department assures us that America will have “an inclusive workforce that… represents America’s rich diversity.”

At issue is the rigorous entrance exam, which once established a color-blind baseline of knowledge among all applicants and was originally instituted to create a merit-based entrance system. Until now, becoming an American diplomat started with passing this written test of geography, history, basic economics and political science, the idea being it was probably good for our diplomats to know something about all that.

The problem was that, racially, things never quite added up. No matter what changes were made to the test, or even if it was administered after an applicant had served two internships with State (below), blacks and people of color could not pass in the right magic numbers to satisfy the diversity police. The answer? State has now simply done away with the requirement to pass the test in favor of a “whole person” evaluation, similar to how many universities and the dead SAT gateway currently work.

The irony is that the test was instituted to avoid backroom decisions on color (and religion, education and peerage). When America first found itself in need of a real diplomatic corps during the nineteenth century, there were three qualifications for State: male, pale and Yale. The Rogers Act of 1924 was the first attempt to even out the playing field, first instituting a difficult written examination everyone had to pass. The Rogers Act also created the Board of the Foreign Service and the Board of Examiners to choose candidates in lieu of smoky backroom conferences at Skull and Bones HQ.