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The Death of Dissent If anyone thinks conditions will improve soon, just wait until this same Justice Department indicts Trump for “inciting” the events of January 6. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/20/the-death-of-dissent/

The lead prosecutor in charge of the January 6 investigation, the largest probe in Justice Department history, just confirmed what American Greatness has reported for months: the number of criminal cases related to the Capitol protest is expected to at least double before it’s all over.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, an advisor to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign who took over the powerful office in late 2021, sent a letter to the chief judge of the D.C. District court warning up to 1,200 more individuals could face charges. 

“We expect the pace of bringing new cases will increase, in an orderly fashion, over the course of the next few months,” Graves told Beryl Howell, who ended her term as chief judge last week. Graves’ office just surpassed 1,000 total defendants in what he renamed the “Capitol Siege” investigation—which means the final caseload might well exceed 2,000.

Graves also indicated his team would ramp up the number of felony indictments; the overwhelming majority of charges so far are low-level offenses, including the laughable “parading in the Capitol” misdemeanor. The Biden regime clearly wants to juice the numbers before the 2024 election season.

And Graves isn’t wasting any time. Eight people have been charged since March 1, including a married couple from Indiana arrested on a civil disorder felony and four misdemeanors. The D.C. federal courthouse is monopolized by January 6 hearings and trials on a daily basis; one judge announced he would retire rather than deal with January 6 cases for the next several years.

In addition to ruining the lives of thousands of Americans for mostly nonviolent participation in the events of January 6, the Justice Department is accomplishing a more sinister goal: criminalizing and silencing political dissent in America. I warned two years ago, as Attorney General Merrick Garland’s prosecutors bastardized a post-Enron law in an attempt to turn political protesters into lifelong felons, that January 6 would be used in this manner.

The “Trans Child” Is the New Totem of the American Left Christopher Rufo

https://rufo.substack.com/p/the-trans-child-is-the-new-totem?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Joe Biden recently proposed in an interview that he would support federal legislation to force states such as Florida, Texas, and Tennessee to allow doctors to perform hormone therapies and sex change operations on children. This is all under the rubric of a deeply misleading term, “trans-affirming care,” that has become a deep conviction on the political Left. I’d like to analyze the clip in which Biden is talking about this and show that, for the Left, the so-called “trans child” serves almost as a religious totem. Let’s take a listen.

[President Biden:] Transgender kids is a really harder thing. What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, “close to sinful.” It’s just terrible what they’re doing. It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, “You know, I decided I want to become a man” or “I want to become a woman” or “I want to change.” I mean, what are they thinking about here? They’re human beings. They love, they have feelings, they have inclinations that are, I mean, just to me is, I don’t know. It’s cruel. And the way we do it is we make sure we pass legislation like we passed on same-sex marriage. You mess with that, you’re breaking the law and you’re going to be held accountable.

Let’s break that down. In a certain sense, Biden’s comment sounds reasonable, it sounds humane, it sounds fairly rational. But this is all based on manipulative language and a hidden ideology that operates under the surface.

First, the category “transgender kids”: that’s the first thing he says and he lays down the marker that that’s the category we’re talking about. But as my friend and colleague Colin Wright has pointed out, there’s no such thing as a “transgender kid.” And what Wright means by that is that a child is not innately transgender, but becomes transgender once the child enters the process of medicalization—hormones, surgeries, and other medical interventions. It’s not that they cannot have feelings of discomfort or dysphoria—that’s certainly true—but they only become transgender when adults intervene. These are parents, doctors, and psychotherapists, and then that child is put on Lupron, put on testosterone or estrogen, has the double mastectomy, or gets the penile inversion surgery.

The Great Abdication In California, public officials now favor the lawless and deviant over the law-abiding and hardworking. Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/the-great-abdication-of-california

On August 15, 2022, an intersection in South Central Los Angeles fell prey to a particularly Southern Californian form of anarchy. Parked vehicles blocked the crossroad to through traffic, while inside the blockade, cars sped in tight circles, their burning tires emitting acrid smoke. Just after midnight, spectators to this “street takeover” stormed into a nearby 7-Eleven. They grabbed whatever lay closest to hand—candy, soft drinks, chips—jumped over the payment counter to get at cigarettes and lottery tickets, and pelted the lone salesclerk, cowering underneath the counter, with bananas and other items. The vandals live-streamed the mayhem from their smartphones. An hour earlier, a teenager had been fatally shot during a nearby street takeover.

Mass looting, in the post–George Floyd era, is hardly confined to California, but the sense of entitlement manifest in August’s double whammy of road and retail lawlessness is the signal feature of the state’s twin plagues of crime and vagrancy. California is being brought down by what one can call the Great Abdication. The law-abiding and the hardworking are no longer the main concern of public officials; instead, the interests of the lawless and the deviant prevail. Policy revolves around their alleged needs, not the needs of those whom they assault and encumber. The result of the Great Abdication has been brazen violence and streets mired in squalor.

You know street crime is bad when even rap celebrities complain about it. “Where I’m from, we like sneaky criminals. In L.A. . . . they bold!” opined Philadelphia rapper PnB Rock during a September 2, 2022, podcast. The day before, fellow rapper Wakko the Kid had been shot outside his North Hollywood house. The Kid had just returned home from a recording session when two men exited a parked car, yanked off his $80,000 necklace, and pumped 16 bullets into him and his audio engineer (both men survived). In February 2020, Brooklyn rapper Pop Smoke had been killed during a home invasion in the Hollywood Hills.

PnB Rock’s interlocutor on the podcast, DJ Akademiks, agreed with PnB’s assessment of the city’s robbers. “L.A.’s spooky, man,” Akademiks said. “I’m seeing mad videos, like they don’t even do it at night. . . . Broad daylight, that’s when they really do it.” A little over a week later, PnB Rock would himself be killed during a broad-daylight robbery at Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles in South Central Los Angeles. The assailant demanded PnB’s jewelry, fatally shot him when he resisted, and then grabbed his necklace anyway.

These rap stars had posted their diamond bling, luxury cars, and wads of cash on social media, often with location tags on the live photos. But less publicity-hungry residents have found themselves targeted as well, marked in upscale restaurants and bars and followed home, where they are assaulted exiting their cars.

Yale Law School—EXPOSED By J. Christian Adams

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2023/03/20/do-they-teach-law-at-yale-anymore-part-one-of-a-series-n1679841

Note: This is the first in a ten-part series at PJ Media examining what our nation’s top ten law schools are teaching. Hans von Spakovsky and I will undertake a deep dive into what is being taught in America’s top ten-ranked law schools.

Elite law schools have become training academies not so much for effective and competent lawyers, but instead for militant transformational radicals with a law degree.

Mainstream consumers of legal services, otherwise known as paying clients, would be shocked by the evolution that has taken place in the nation’s elite law schools. Instead of producing lawyers capable of helping clients, these schools now turn out leftist activists who are most competent at using transformational designs to upend centuries of legal traditions and institutions, including, ultimately, the U.S. Constitution itself.

This problem isn’t new. But the shocking behavior at Stanford by rude, belligerent proto-totalitarian students shouting down a federal judge laid bare this rancid evolution for everyone to see.

The next generation of lawyers at these schools isn’t focused on learning contracts, torts, civil procedure, and evidence as much as they are learning how to destroy treasured American institutions such as tolerance, liberty, and free speech.

This is important. Too many Americans still think a law degree from Harvard means that the graduating lawyer is competent to practice law. The opposite is becoming more true.

Harvard, Yale, and the elite law schools are graduating increasing percentages of incompetent lawyers, at least when it comes to what lawyers have long done: practice law.

What Happened to Stanford? The list of serial embarrassments at Stanford reads like the suicides of Greek tragedy, where divine nemesis follows hubris. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/19/what-happened-to-stanford/

Stanford was once one of the world’s great universities. It birthed Silicon Valley in its prime. And along with its nearby twin and rival, UC Berkeley, its brilliant researchers, and teachers helped fuel the mid-20th-century California miracle.

That was then. But like the descent of California, now something has gone terribly wrong with the university.

Students at Stanford Law School recently shouted down visiting Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan. He had been invited to give a lecture by the school’s Federalist Society. 

The judge never even got the chance. The law school students drowned him out. They flashed obscene placards. They screamed that he was “scum.” One yelled he hoped the judge’s own daughters would be raped.

Others bellowed, “You’re not welcome here, we hate you!” “Leave and never come back!” “We hate FedSoc [Federal Society] students, f–k them, they don’t belong here either!” and “We do not respect you and you have no right to speak here! This is our jurisdiction!”

When the judge tried to reply, they drowned him out with “liar” and “scumbag.” Then, mission accomplished, they smugly stomped out.

Note these were ostensibly not teenaged undergraduates. Instead, they were wannabe adult professionals, in law school to learn jurisprudence and to enter the elite American legal system that is supposed to have protocols separating it from the mobocracies prevailing abroad.

One of those foundational principles is to honor the Constitution’s protection of free speech and expression—not to mention the ancient idea of respecting an invited guest, or the custom to treat with deference a federal judge, to say nothing of the duty to honor the codes and laws of the institution that they have chosen to join which prohibit disruption of lectures and any effort to drive out public speakers.

When an exasperated Justice Duncan called out for a university administrator to restore calm, his podium was instead hijacked by Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach. She then gave her own preplanned, scripted lecture that sided with the disruptive protesters! Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The diversity dean then turned on the speaker. She asked the startled judge whether it was even worth supporting his free speech rights, given he and his views were deemed abhorrent to the new absolutist Stanford.

Note well: DEI Deans normally do not attend law school lectures. She showed up because she apparently knew in advance that the law students would violate their own university’s codes of conduct and disrupt a speaker.

So she had planned, again in advance, to do nothing to stop them. Instead, she would prepare a performance-art speech for such a certainty, to chastise the speaker and defend the disrupters. She assumed correctly that none of the other administrators, who also strangely attended, would admonish her or the students for violating the laws of their own university. She apparently assumed, once more rightly, that her own leftist fides on campus would be enhanced.

So far neither the diversity dean nor the students have been disciplined by the university. When the dean of the law school, Jenny Martinez, offered an apology (but did not punish the students), most of her own class walked out on her. And dozens of Stanford’s law school students lined the corridor in attempts to intimidate her as if she was some sort of toxic pariah.

In a Soviet-style finale, the Acting Associate Dean of Students Jeanne Merino advised the Federalist Society students who were targeted by fellow law students that there were “resources that you can use right now to support your safety and mental health.” Then Merino directed them, inter alia, to none other than Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Dean Tirien Steinbach herself, the very dean who had taken over the podium to lecture Judge Duncan!

The debacle revealed four disturbing characteristics about the Stanford law students: One, they acted as if they were bullies and cowards. Videos of the mess showed how they turned mob-like in their chanting, flashing creepy placards, and, like Maoists, walking out on cue. Yet, when the judge fired back at their rudeness, like wounded fawns they took offense and pouted. And later, when there was mention that the names or photos of the protestors might be published, tit-for-tat, in the manner they themselves had put up posters of the Federalist Society members, they screamed that such exposure was unfair.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s viral take on the threat to arrest Trump By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/vivek_ramaswamys_viral_take_on_the_threat_to_arrest_trump.html

He continues to be an interesting candidate because he bypasses platitudes and focuses on issues that are core to American survival.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the businessman turned presidential candidate, has posted a not-quite-3-minute-long video in which he attacks DA Alvin Bragg’s efforts to use lawfare to kneecap Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election. Ramaswamy’s video has 3 million views on Twitter as of this post, and the numbers are going up—and no wonder. He says we what all fear: That the possible indictment of Donald Trump marks America’s official passage from a constitutional republic to a banana republic.

Here’s Ramaswamy:

This is about principle, not a person. This is about our country, not one man. The silence from the rest of the GOP field is deafening. pic.twitter.com/Jqi9o2d0wR

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) March 18, 2023

I continue to find Ramaswamy an interesting candidate, not just because he has a totally cool last name (which he does), but also because he speaks clearly, without political platitudes, about core American issues. Most conservative candidates don’t do this. Even Trump was incapable of doing so because that’s simply not how he thinks. He’s a pragmatic doer—and his second term could have been awesome—but he really never latched onto what makes America’s political system unique.

FBI Whistleblower Claims FBI Is Now a ‘Weaponized Apparatchik’ of the Biden Administration By Ben Bartee

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/03/19/fbi-whistleblower-claims-fbi-is-now-a-weaponized-apparatchik-of-the-biden-administration-n1679723

Via Epoch Times:

There’s a growing divide between the rank-and-file officers of the FBI and upper management, according to FBI agent-turned-whistleblower Steve Friend, and it’s those at the top who are pushing a political agenda…

“There are a lot of agents that sort of share that sentiment and just want to drive the mission forward. Unfortunately, there’s a big disconnect between the rank-and-file and the management class…

“I think there’s an argument to be made that the FBI has now just become a weaponized apparatchik of the presidential administration,” he added, holding that public trust in the agency has diminished largely as a result of the perception of political bias.”

As I have previously documented, it’s incontrovertibly true that the national security apparatus, including the FBI, is now politicized and weaponized against what the intelligence community terms “domestic extremists.”

This amorphic designation — “domestic extremist” — refers to the populist right, anti-establishment grassroots activists who oppose the silent coup that the Deep State has waged against the American people for several decades. It simply means opposition to the growing technocratic tyranny but, of course, is couched in post-9/11 language of “terrorism” and its alleged threat to “national security.”

Where Friend may be wrong is that the intelligence community does not ultimately serve the Biden administration. Biden is a disposable puppet who will be disposed of in due time when it becomes convenient. His current usefulness is his pliability and directability. He does not make decisions of consequence.

The true usurpers of power occupy the next level above even the elected portion of the executive branch — the proverbial “men behind the curtain,” which includes the likes of George Soros, Bill Gates, and their ilk. They operate across borders and are in the process of rendering the nation-state obsolete.

Joe Biden’s dangerous trans zealotry The US president claims it is ‘sinful’ to oppose the medical transitioning of children. Has he gone mad? Jenny Holland

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/03/18/joe-bidens-dangerous-trans-zealotry/

It is hard to tell which was the biggest lie Joe Biden told in his sit-down with Kal Penn, former stoner-movie actor turned Democratic Party lackey, earlier this week on the Daily Show.

Was it Biden’s claim that preventing minors from having genital-removing surgeries and harmful cross-sex hormones is ‘sinful’? Was it that he characterised as ‘cruel’ attempts to prevent these irreversible, dangerous and downright grotesque surgeries being conducted on children?

Or was it the outlandish story he told, about the time he was a senior in high school and he saw two ‘well-dressed’ men openly kissing on the street in Delaware? Or was it perhaps his claim that Biden Sr, a man who was born in 1915, had explained to Biden’s confused younger self that the two fellas snogging on the street just loved each other, and that it was no big deal? He even claimed that this scene led him to an ‘epiphany’ on same-sex marriage and that he has supported it ever since.

Far be it from me to question the veracity of anything that comes out of Amtrack Joe’s mouth, but there is literally no way this ever happened. For context, a personal anecdote: a gay family friend kissed his lover on the street in the 1980s, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, the birthplace of the American gay-rights movement. He was then beaten up so badly by a homophobic stranger that he carried a handgun for years afterwards. Two businessmen kissing, in the early 1960s, in Delaware? And Biden Sr was totally cool with it? No. I call BS. Not even the Washington Post’s supine ‘fact-checkers’ believe him, giving the verdict that there are ‘reasons to doubt’ Biden’s story.

Perhaps the cognitively declining Biden genuinely thinks that this happened (it’s a story he has used before). After all, he’s not a man at the top of his game, intellectually speaking. At one point, he told Penn: ‘My focus is just staying focussed.’

But Biden’s use of the words ‘sinful’ and ‘cruel’ to describe those who are opposed to giving children chemical and surgical sex changes cannot be brushed away with such generosity.

“That’s Not True”: President Biden Moves Toward the Evil Twin Family Defense: Jonathan Turley

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/03/19/thats-not-true-president-biden-moves-toward-the-evil-twin-family-defense/

President Joe Biden has repeatedly denied that his family received money from China. He has also denied any knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings despite direct evidence to the contrary, including a recorded message from the President to Hunter referencing the deals. The White House has simply refused to address the recording or photographs contradicting the President. Now, there is confirmation that millions were sent from China and then money from a third-party account was distributed to at least three, and possibly four, Biden family members. However, when confronted with the evidence on the way to Marine One, the President again declared “that’s not true.” Given that these are suspicious activity reports (SARs) from Biden’s own Treasury Department, it is unclear now what the President is suggesting beyond the possibility of an evil twin Biden family that is besmirching his good name.

After the GOP takeover of the House, the Oversight Committee demanded information long blocked by the Democratic leadership on the SARs related to the Biden family. The first such disclosure involved a Robinson Walker, LLC account that received $3 million from the State Energy HK Limited. Money was later distributed in incremental payments over three months to Hallie Biden and companies associated with Hunter Biden and James Biden. There was also an unknown bank account identified as “Biden.”

The House Oversight Committee is demanding to hear from the recipient of the transfer from China. Chairman Comer wrote John Walker that the panel “is investigating President Biden’s involvement in his family’s business practices” and “has identified you as a critical witness in this matter and has reviewed evidence showing you received millions of dollars originating from a Chinese energy company and elsewhere.” Walker can explain any connection between the Chinese transfer and the later distributions.

Guilty Of foul deeds. by David Horowitz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/guilty/

“Guilty as Hell, Free as a Bird, America’s a Great Country.”
— Bill Ayers, Weatherman Terrorist & Obama Confidant.

Last week another shoe dropped on the Biden crime family. James Comer, chairman of the committee investigating the most disturbing scandal in the history of the White House finally received the records from a bank – one of twelve – that the Bidens have used to stash their payoffs from China’s Communist dictatorship. Comer had previously been stone-walled for two years by the corrupt and incompetent Biden Treasury head, Janet Yellen.

This first Biden bank record to be surrendered showed that three members of the Biden family including Beau Biden’s widow Hallie and one person identified only as “Biden” received payments amounting to $1 million from a Chinese Communist State energy company.

What were the payments for? Forget asking the Bidens who have a long history of silence and denial on such material questions. When asked, Joe Biden denied that he ever even discussed Hunter Biden’s Chinese business affairs with him, even though he flew with Hunter on Air Force Two to China and met with his business associates. Never at a loss for brazen lies to extricate himself from difficult circumstances, Biden without a second thought denied that the bank records were “true.”

To date there hasn’t been one attempt by the Biden camp to try to explain what service the Bidens actually supplied to the Chinese Communists to earn such ample rewards. At the lowest levels of this corruption, Hallie Biden, who is a school counselor, received $25,000 from the Chinese Communist Party. For what?

When you have no answers to such material questions, when you lie continually about the operations themselves (“I never discussed Hunter’s business with my son!,”) when you suborn your intelligence services to carry out an elaborate and expensive effort to suppress the story of an incriminating laptop, and do it right before a presidential election, you are in fact telling us that you are guilty of the obvious crime you are covering up. In this case, treason. Colluding with an enemy power to hurt your own country.