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March 2021

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Have We Ever Had A President Like This Before?

By on March 19th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/19/have-we-ever-had-a-president-like-this-before/

Some believe that Woodrow Wilson’s wife Edith ran the federal executive branch after the president had a stroke in October 1919. Even the Obama White House said she “functionally” was in charge of the administration “for the remainder of Wilson’s second term.” At least Wilson started his presidency in a sentient state. Not sure the same can be said of Joe Biden.

It’s clear that the 46th president of the United States is impaired. He has yet to face the media, waiting longer to hold his first press conference than any president in the last 100 years. 

Biden’s team has finally scheduled a news conference, announcing Tuesday he’d be up for it on – March 25. Why the long run-up? Will it take his handlers that long to ensure that he doesn’t have a blowout while talking to the press? There’s a transparency problem, as Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has pointed out. Biden aides are doing nothing to inspire the country’s confidence in the man.

But then again, there’s not much to be confident about. Some recent evidence of note:

“Bubble Biden clearly not up for tough questions – or the job,” says the New York Post headline of Michael Goodwin’s March 16 column. Goodwin reminds readers that after “Biden’s lone interview since taking office,” the White House was forced to clean up his comments about Donald Trump receiving intelligence briefings, the $15 minimum wage campaign, and Iran’s nuclear program.
In late February, Biden famously rambled on about losing track of his thoughts and wondering where he was.
Earlier this month, the bumbling president called Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “the guy who runs that outfit.”
Biden ended his session at the House Democrats 2021 Issues Conference saying “I’m happy to take questions if that’s what you want me to do,” at which point he was given the modern-day version of the Vaudeville hook to, obviously, prevent him from making yet another public spectacle of himself.
Former White House stenographer Mike McCormick, who spent six years at “Biden’s side as he met with world leaders, delivered speeches and interacted with members of the news media,” told one-time Trump aide Steve Bannon in January that he estimated the president’s cognitive abilities have fallen by half in recent years. 
McCormick told the Washington Free Beacon last September that the Democratic candidate is “not the same Joe Biden,” and that “he’s lost a step and he doesn’t seem to have the same mental acuity as he did four years ago.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Senate narrowly confirms Xavier Becerra as Health and Human Services secretary

By on March 19th, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/18/politics/xavier-becerra-confirmation-vote/index.html

The Senate narrowly confirmed Xavier Becerra to be the Health and Human Services secretary on Thursday, giving the former California attorney general a crucial role in fighting the pandemic.

Becerra, the son of Mexican immigrants, is the first Latino HHS secretary.
The vote was 50 to 49. Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins joined Senate Democrats in favor of the nomination. Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono did not vote.
During the confirmation process, Becerra stressed his upbringing, his father’s recent passing and his efforts for expanding health care access as California’s attorney general and a 24-year Congressman representing a Los Angeles-based district.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

New Data Show 92,367 Mail Ballots in Nevada Went to Wrong Addresses—in a Single County By J. Christian Adams

By on March 18th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2021/03/17/new-data-show-92367-mail-ballots-in-nevada-went-to-wrong-address-n1433120

Hindsight is 20/20, and now numbers from the 2020 election show how Nevada made a mistake rushing to automatic mail ballots. Dirty voter rolls combined with automatic mail made the 2020 election a mess in Nevada.

Concrete post-election data show that 92,367 mail ballots sent out by Clark County election officials came back as undeliverable. They had incorrect or outdated addresses.

That means they were sent where the registered voter did not live. That means someone else could have snatched those misdirected live ballots. That means someone probably did.

This unfortunate number is unwelcome considering President Joe Biden only carried Nevada by 33,596 votes. Clark’s 92,367 bounced ballots demonstrate a real vulnerability with mass mail balloting.

That’s just Clark County where Las Vegas is. The number of ballots that went to the wrong addresses statewide is most certainly much higher.

It is true that these ballots ultimately bounced back uncast. If nothing else, that’s a lot of wasted paper and postage. But how many ballots never came back because there wasn’t yet clear information about the registrants who had died or moved away?

More importantly, sending 92,367 ballots to the wrong places was a gamble our system of electing leaders should not be making.

Remember, last year The Public Interest Legal Foundation, an organization I am affiliated with, documented through video that ballots were mailed and cast from vacant lots, abandoned mines, liquor stores, and casinos in Nevada.

Nobody should want tens of thousands of ballots floating through the mails to destinations unknown. Elections don’t run well when voting is scattered and distant from election officials. The 92,367 bounced ballots demonstrate slack in the system.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Harvard Law Professor Wants Democrats to Disenfranchise Republican Voters By Dan McLaughlin

By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/a-harvard-law-professor-wants-democrats-to-disenfranchise-republican-voters/

We should not lightly disregard this as simply harmless academic scribbling.

R emember that brief moment between November and January when Democrats and their voices in the media told us that asking legislators to overturn elections and attacking the legitimacy of the results of elections was a bad thing? Well, Democrats’ old tricks of rejecting outcomes, attacking legitimacy, arguing that it is rigged when their side loses, and spinning conspiracy theories are never far from hand. The latest example comes from Democrat Rita Hart’s ongoing effort to get House Democrats to reverse the election of Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks by the people of Iowa’s second district to represent them in the House.

It is concerning enough that Democratic politicians act in self-serving fashion — that’s what politicians do — but it should particularly alarm us that the progressive intellectual class is continually pressing them to go even further. If misbehaving Republican politicians often embarrass the party’s intellectuals, misbehaving Democrats have their side’s scholars and pundits whispering in their ears like Iago, urging them to ever-more-radical steps. In this case, that means pursuing systemic and draconian “reforms” that aim explicitly at ensuring that a brief moment of narrow Democratic partisan control of the federal government is weaponized to prevent another peaceful transfer of power back to Republicans. This is branded as “majoritarianism,” but it is ultimately the politics of “one man, one vote, one time.”

Take, for example, a forthcoming law-review article by Harvard law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos (no relation, so far as I know, to George). Stephanopoulos argues that “majoritarian democracy” is “under siege.” He draws his diagnosis from the recent writings of former Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, who now serves in the Biden administration as principal deputy-assistant attorney general for the civil-rights division of the Department of Justice (conveniently, a post not requiring Senate confirmation). Both are activist lawyers as well as law professors: Before joining the Biden administration, Karlan was the lead lawyer arguing Bostock v. Clayton County; Stephanopoulos was one of the driving forces behind Whitford v. Gill, which tried to get the Supreme Court to throw out partisan gerrymanders. Given the close relationship between Stephanopoulos’s article and Karlan’s writings — along with Karlan’s powerful government position — we should not lightly disregard this as simply harmless academic scribbling.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Pompeo Hits Biden Team for Reversing the Trump Admin’s Migration Diplomacy By Jimmy Quinn

By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pompeo-hits-biden-team-for-reversing-the-trump-admins-migration-diplomacy/

As the White House contends with a growing crisis on the southern border, it has heaped blame on the previous administration because, as Press Secretary Jen Psaki put it during the daily press briefing on March 10, “they intentionally made it worse.”

But in a wide-ranging conversation with National Review on Thursday, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo argued that it is in fact the Biden administration, by unraveling the Trump team’s policies, that caused the current crisis. “It is patently obvious,” he said, defending the “enormous diplomatic achievement” that he played a role in crafting.

Pompeo has previously criticized the Biden administration’s border policy, including in recent appearances on Fox News. In a conversation with NR today, he elaborated on the diplomatic outreach that figured into the Trump administration’s work on border issues.

During that press briefing earlier this month, Psaki announced an end to the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), a complex set of agreements with Mexico and Central American countries, where individuals seeking asylum in the United States would be kept in Mexico or other countries as their claims were processed. According to Pompeo, ending these arrangements was a mistake.

“This policy, or what has been come to be known as Remain in Mexico, was really good work by me and my team to make the case to the Mexican government that the right thing for them — these are often El Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, who are transiting their country — that this is deeply inhumane, and that we’re not going to permit them to stay in the United States while the asylum claim was processed,” he told NR.

Implementing the MPP, he continued, “with the cooperation of the Mexican government was to turn off the magnet,” and therefore to convince individuals without valid asylum claims not to make the trip to the U.S. border.

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MEDIA, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Alexi McCammond’s Firing from Teen Vogue Is Preposterous and Illiberal Charles Cooke

By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/alexi-mccammonds-firing-from-teen-vogue-is-preposterous-and-illiberal/

Alexi McCammond has been fired from her new position at Teen Vogue, a week before she was set to start:

Alexi McCammond, who made her name as a politics reporter at the Washington news site Axios, had planned to start as the editor in chief of Teen Vogue on March 24. Now, after Teen Vogue staff members publicly condemned racist and homophobic tweets Ms. McCammond had posted a decade ago, she has resigned from the job.

Condé Nast, Teen Vogue’s publisher, announced the abrupt turn on Thursday in an internal email that was sent amid pressure from the publication’s staff, readers and at least two advertisers, just two weeks after the company had appointed her to the position.

“After speaking with Alexi this morning, we agreed that it was best to part ways, so as to not overshadow the important work happening at Teen Vogue,” Stan Duncan, the chief people officer at Condé Nast, said in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times.

This is utterly preposterous — the latest flare-up in an ongoing cultural riot that leaves room for neither growth nor redemption, and does so in the name of an “accountability” that can be demanded by strangers and has no discernible expiry date. McCammond wrote the tweets in question when she was just 17 years old. Not only has she apologized for them profusely, she proactively brought them up while interviewing for the position and was told that they posed no obstacle. Now, as the result of “pressure from the publication’s staff, readers and at least two advertisers,” she’s out.

That pressure, I am sure, was real. But that it was real does not make it worthwhile, and it does not make it any less deserving of resistance from people who should know better. What, one must ask, is the standard that these “staff, readers and at least two advertisers” hoped to establish? That if one erred a decade ago, while a minor, one cannot hold a position of authority as an adult? That if one is expected to “lift up the stories and voices of our most vulnerable communities,” one is obliged to be without sin oneself?

That second question may sound hyperbolic, but I’m not so sure that it is. Condé Nast’s HR chief, Stan Duncan, wrote in a statement co-signed by the company’s “chief diversity and inclusion officer” (there are a couple of people begging to be fired with prejudice out of a cannon) that given McCammond’s “previous acknowledgement of these posts and her sincere apologies, in addition to her remarkable work in journalism elevating the voices of marginalized communities, we were looking forward to welcoming her into our community.” But then, after a few ill-adjusted people complained, they just . . . fired her, lest her being less pure than Jesus Christ himself “overshadow the important work happening at Teen Vogue.” And they did so — get this — in the name of being “equitable and inclusive.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

John Solomon: Months after Trump complaints, some courts are finding irregularities in 2020 elections Michigan, Wisconsin and Virginia court actions show some absentee ballot procedures imposed by Democrats violated state laws.

By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2021/03/18/months_later_some_courts_are_finding_

Long after former President Donald Trump dropped his legal challenges to the 2020 election, some courts in battleground states are beginning to declare the way widespread absentee ballots were implemented or counted violated state laws.

The latest ruling came this month in Michigan, where the State Court of Claims concluded that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s instructions on signature verification for absentee ballots violated state law.

Benson had instructed local election clerks a month before the Nov. 3 election to start with a “presumption” that all signatures on absentee ballots were valid and only reject those that had “multiple significant and obvious” inconsistencies. Republicans and one election clerk challenged her instructions in court.

Chief Court of Claims Judge Christopher M. Murray ruled March 9 that the state Legislature did not provide such guidance in its election laws, and therefore Benson needed to promulgate a formal rule – a timely process – before imposing such a requirement. Murray told election clerks they should disregard Benson’s instructions in future elections.

“An agency must utilize formal rule-making procedures when establishing policies that ‘do not merely interpret or explain the statute or rules from which the agency derives its authority,’ but rather ‘establish the substantive standards implementing the program,'” Murray ruled.

“The guidance issued by the Secretary of State on October 6, 2020, with respect to signature-matching standards was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,” he concluded.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s anti-vaxxers–a cautionary tale Ruthie Blum

By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/why-israels-anti-vax-party-is-a-cautionary-tale-662507

Of the 39 parties running in Israel’s upcoming Knesset election, the one that least deserves a seat, which it has no chance of garnering in any case, is Rapeh (“Heal”).

Headed by Aryeh Avni, a physician whose license was recently revoked, the newly formed faction is waging war on the country’s coronavirus vaccination drive. More precisely, it is leading a movement against what it deems the government’s “coercion campaign” against the public.

Avni and his followers purport that the reason for his ouster from the medical profession is solely due to his warnings about the dangers of the COVID-19 and other vaccines. In fact, he’s been on the Health Ministry’s radar for years, and has had his license temporarily suspended on a number of occasions.

He has a history of condemning colleagues, particularly oncologists. Indeed, it’s not only vaccines that he opposes; he’s none too fond of chemotherapy and other accepted methods of treatment, either.

Since the onset of the pandemic, however, he’s been especially vociferous in his denunciation of any peer who takes the coronavirus seriously, continues to call on the populace to ignore all directives, and vilifies the vaccine.

In his decision to strip Avni of the right to practice medicine, retired judge Amnon Strashnov stated, “There is no doubt that his harsh and blatant statements in articles he published on his website, Facebook and recently also on YouTube against the coronavirus vaccination pose a real danger to public safety and health. Add to this his unbridled, blatant and baseless insults to the medical community and the heads of the Health Ministry, which go far beyond what is reasonable and permissible in the context of freedom of expression, and you have a clear view of the absolute anarchy that [he] is trying to create.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Admin’s High-Level China Meeting Shows Dangerous ‘Reset’ Already Underway Plus the media’s Trump-GA election call catastrophe Benjamin Weingarten

By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.newsweek.com/bidens-reset-communist-china-beckons-opinion-157663

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are set to meet with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) counterparts Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi today in Anchorage, Alaska, in what some have speculated is an effort to “reset” relations between the two powers.

The Biden administration has played down this idea—having vacillated previously on its desire for a “reset”—while China has indicated that it welcomes bilateral relations, on its terms.

But the truth of the matter is that by dint of having any such meeting, Team Biden is signaling that a reset is already well underway.

That the administration seeks to engage China without preconditions—and, further, from a position of relative weakness when it has professed it will only do so from strength—validates the view that the executive branch is reverting from a posture of hostility to one of accommodation. This holds regardless of whatever “tough talk” administration officials will likely say they communicated in the aftermath of the meeting.

China has done nothing in the early days of the Biden administration to merit this powwow. Therefore, it is proper to view the Alaska exchange as a de facto reward for the CCP’s continued malign behavior. The CCP continues to persecute Xinjiang’s Uyhurs, crack down on Hong Kongers and threaten the Taiwanese. With respect to its dealings with the West, the CCP has continued its coronavirus cover-up by obstructing the efforts of those investigating the origins of the pandemic that it unleashed upon the world.

In spite of this malign behavior, while it has tsk-tsked China over its human rights abuses and expressed muted criticism over China’s stonewalling of the World Health Organization (WHO) in its pandemic “investigation,” among the Biden administration’s first acts was to rejoin the WHO.

Does the fact it legitimized this CCP-captured organization, becoming party to it again without it having made any discernible reforms, indicate the administration is engaging from a position of strength?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Opinion: Where’s the outrage? US Jewish groups mum on anti-Israel Pentagon pick By David Isaac

By on March 18th, 2021

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-wheres-the-outrage-us-jewish-groups-mum-on-anti-israel-pentagon-pick/

“Pro-Israel groups launch blitz against Kahl nomination for top Pentagon job,” read the Jewish News Syndicate headline on March 15.

The headline isn’t untrue.

The problem is that there were just two groups, one of them Christian. How’s that line go again “If I am not for myself…”?

There should have been a chorus of protest from the American Jewish establishment at last week’s Senate hearings on Colin Kahl’s nomination for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

It’s an important job. As The Wall Street Journal noted, “While the Secretary of Defense handles high-level defense politics, and the deputy secretary manages the department day-to-day, the undersecretary plays the leading role setting strategy — including representing the department at National Security Council deputies meetings.”

Yet AIPAC was AWOL. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s excuse is it doesn’t take positions on presidential nominations.

If you’re the largest pro-Israel lobby in America and you can’t call out nominees espousing anti-Israel policies, what can you do? Kahl typifies such policies. It should be right in AIPAC’s bailiwick. As it likes to say, “policy over partisanship.”

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