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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Justice for J16 Stephen Colbert’s insurrectionists must be met with the swiftest and harshest punishment possible. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/20/justice-for-j16/

An already overworked grand jury in Washington, D.C., presumably will be very busy in the days to come.

For nearly 18 months, at the behest of Joe Biden’s Justice Department, grand juries in the nation’s capital have issued a nonstop flood of criminal indictments against Americans who protested Joe Biden’s election on January 6, 2021; hundreds of people who peacefully entered the building as police stood by face serious felony charges punishable by decades in prison. Even those accused of low-level misdemeanors such as “parading” in the Capitol have been sentenced to months in jail.

Now, following last week’s arrest of Democratic Party activists disguised as staffers for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” for unauthorized incursions into Capitol buildings, one must assume prosecutors are hastily preparing similar indictments against Colbert’s team to reflect a fair handling of the two incidents. Colbert’s employees, after all, were caught not once but twice unlawfully entering areas of the Capitol complex—in Justice Department parlance related to January 6, that is known as a “restricted area”—on June 16.

News reports indicate the crew had the run of the place with the blessing of none other than Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the January 6 select committee. Capitol Police finally arrested the interlopers around 8:30 p.m. on Thursday night near the office of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a frequent target of the Left, in the Longworth building and charged them with illegal entry. (Colbert’s thugs the day before harassed the family members and lawyers for January 6 detainees during a press conference on Capitol Hill.)

The Taboo Lifts on Discussing Biden’s Age By Jim Geraghty

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-taboo-lifts-on-discussing-bidens-age/

Almost overnight, Biden’s age, mental state, memory, and health changed from the elephant in the room to a topic that is now acceptable for Democrats and the media to discuss. Hey, how about the rest of us who noticed all of this a long time ago?

Suddenly, It’s Okay to Say Biden Is Really Old and Out of Touch

Did you notice that discussing Joe Biden’s age, memory, and mental state — denounced as the “gross, lowest-common-denominator politics that drive people away from public life” by CNN’s Chris Cillizza when I wrote about this issue last August — became an acceptable subject for quiet and subdued expressions of public concern in the past week or so?

This isn’t about Biden falling off his bicycle. Last week, Mark Leibovich wrote in the Atlantic that Biden shouldn’t run for another term because, in his view, though Biden’s mental sharpness and physical health are just fine right now, they might not be in a few years:

They say, for the most part, that Biden is coping fine. You know, despite the 8.6 percent inflation, his depressed approval numbers, his vice president’s worse approval numbers, the looming wipeout in the midterms, and all the other delights attending to Biden as he awaits the big, round-numbered birthday he has coming up in a few months. But here’s another recurring theme I keep hearing, notably from people predisposed to liking the president. “He just seems old,” one senior administration official told me at a social function a few weeks ago.

He seems old, you say? Hmm. Has anyone else noticed this?

If Trump Committed ‘Insurrection,’ Indict Him Already Any first-year law student knows the DOJ has no hope of getting a conviction. Larry Elder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/if-trump-committed-insurrection-indict-him-already-larry-elder/

OK, so indict him already.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the Senate floor the first day of the televised Jan. 6 select committee hearings, said: “(Former President) Donald Trump was at the heart of a coordinated effort to overturn the 2020 elections, to overturn our constitutional order, and inflict permanent damage upon our democracy.”

But Democratic committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., when asked about possible Justice Department charges against Trump, said: “Attorney General (Merrick) Garland is my constituent, and I don’t browbeat my constituents. I think that he knows, his staff knows, the U.S. attorneys know what’s at stake here. They know the importance of it. But I think they’re rightfully paying close attention to precedent and history, as well as the facts of this case.” Not exactly full speed ahead.

And the day after the first hearing, committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, said: “(Criminal referrals to the DOJ are) not our job. Our job is to look at Jan. 6. What caused it and make recommendations after that. … We don’t have the authority.” Committee member Liz Cheney, R-Wis., disagreed, tweeting, “The Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time.”

Trump, on Jan. 6, in his speech before the riots, said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Two days earlier, according to Alec Schemmel of the Media Research Center: “A Capitol Police timeline of the days and weeks surrounding Jan. 6 shows former President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) offered the National Guard’s assistance in the days leading up to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, validating claims from Trump administration officials that were said to be false by liberal fact-checkers.”

The Dem’s Inflation-Fighting Plan Is A Cruel Joke

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/21/the-dems-inflation-fighting-plan-is-a-cruel-joke/

‘Today the Democratic House takes a strong step to bring down crucial kitchen table costs of the pump and grocery store and across the board.”

That’s the transcript of what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the House floor before all but five of her fellow Democrats voted for the “Lower Food and Fuel Costs Act” last week.

Pelosi’s garbled syntax aside, the only thing this bill would lower is the public’s trust in anything Democrats say these days. Despite its title, this bill would expand government but do nothing – repeat, nothing – to lower prices today, tomorrow, or any time in the future.

Among the Democrats’ brilliant inflation-fighting ideas is to create a new meat police to harass the meat industry. Another is to expand a subsidy program for farmers that has already proved ineffective in keeping food prices from skyrocketing. Finally, it would expand the use of ethanol – a plan that even President Joe Biden admits will fail to lower fuel prices.

Biden loves to blame high food prices on the supposed lack of competition among meat packers. This is a favorite Democratic tactic whenever the price of something goes up. If oil prices soar, they accuse Big Oil of conspiring to rip off consumers. Now it’s Big Meat.

Biden and Oil: Destroy America in Order to Save It Our current oil shortage did not arise from a foreign war or tsunami, but from a deliberate policy to curtail oil production to force a more rapid transition to battery-powered transportation. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/19/biden-and-oil-destroy-america-in-order-to-save-it/

Try to follow the Joe Biden energy plan of frantically trying to get his hands on more of something that his own party despises. 

During the Democratic primaries, Biden ran on the premise that he would end all fossil fuels during his tenure. In 2019-2020 that bluster seemed easy demagoguery at a time of near-record low gas and diesel prices. The American people shrugged at such utopianism since they often were filling up their cars for less than $50.

Biden’s video clips from the primary campaign now seem surreal, as he tried to out-green Bernie Sanders in boasting about what has now become his own self-created energy disaster.

Biden monotonously promised at rallies, such as they were, that he would cancel pipelines, stop new federal leasing to oil and gas companies, persuade lenders to restrict loans to them, put the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve off limits, and embrace the green new deal. Those were certainly campaign boasts that he has followed up on. 

His environmental czar John Kerry has just insulted Americans by lecturing them that there is no need to pump more gas and oil to reduce gas prices that are well over $6 a gallon in many of the Western states. The billionaire Kerry exudes Antoinette disdain for the muscular classes, a hubris that now characterizes the elite rich leadership of the Left in general. 

Kerry and his progressive ilk make no effort to disguise that they feel the credentialed such as themselves, the wealthy, and the progressive enjoy the birthright to fly private, to be limousined, and to bounce between multiple energy-hungry mansions. Those compensations are all necessary, to allow them to focus on the divine task of directing and herding the unthinking and blinkered chumps, dregs, crazies and clingers to do what is for their own good—now most recently defined as paying more than $6 a gallon for gas.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also reassures the country that there is no reason to pump more oil and gas. Instead, she says, we just need to refine more. At her press conferences, she reads all her answers from prepared notes. But apparently Jean-Pierre’s twenty-something press preppers were oblivious that the United States, thanks to hard-left green opposition, has not built a major refinery since 1976, back when there were 110 million fewer Americans. 

Jean-Pierre has no idea why she cannot now and will never in the future answer a question about fossil fuels honestly. She knows that Left for now got what it wanted. Since January 2021 it has all but destroyed the idea of American energy self-sufficiency. 

Official Child Abuse By Philip Carl Salzman

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/philip-carl-salzman/2022/06/18/official-child-abuse-n1606365

“Apparently, no abuse of our children is too extreme when it serves narratives that signal virtue, even though the narratives are false and unscientific: “public health” that imposes useless material impositions on populations that would not need them even if they worked; unsubstantiated critical race theory that is little more than reverse racism; and trans theory that requires denial of biology and of the well-being of troubled youth. This abuse of our children is a disgrace, and we should all be ashamed that we have let it happen.”

Powerful American institutions have brought their power to bear on our children, to the children’s detriment. Rather than nurture children, these institutions have taken our children as fodder to advance their own power and ideological agendas.

The CDC in collusion with self-serving teachers’ unions imposed a mask mandate on school children and continued that mandate even when adults were no longer required to wear masks. This imposition on children was made in spite of the long-known and well-documented fact that children were the segment of the population least vulnerable to COVID-19 and thus not really in danger. The death rate (probability of dying if infected) for children 0-9 years was 0.0, i.e. no deaths, while for children (including those with comorbidities) 10-19, 0.2%, young adults (including those with comorbidities) 20-39, 0.2%, with an increased death rate for older segments of the population. In short, children were at little risk from COVID.

New York Health provides confirmation that deaths of individuals without comorbidities ages 0-17 was 0.0% of all deaths, ages 18-44, 1.0% of all deaths, with the percentage of deaths increasing, e.g. age 75+ comprising 14.2% of all deaths. Taking into account all deaths, including individuals with comorbidities, deaths of 0-17 make up 0.04% of total deaths, while 75+ made up 47.7% of deaths. Once again, the risk to children was minuscule.

International Swimming Federation Will Ban Some Biologically Male Athletes from Women’s Competitions by Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/international-swimming-federation-will-ban-some-biologically-male-athletes-from-womens-competitions/

The international swimming federation FINA announced a new policy on Sunday to ban biologically male athletes who have gone through male puberty from competing in women’s competitions. 

To qualify for women’s competitions, the swimmers must either have never gone through male puberty or had male puberty suppressed at the stage when physical changes begin to appear or before the age of 12, whichever occurred later, according to the policy.

The athletes also have to prove that they have continuously suppressed their testosterone levels since that time.

“We have to protect the rights of our athletes to compete, but we also have to protect competitive fairness at our events, especially the women’s category at FINA competitions,” FINA president Husain al-Musallam said in statement.

The policy also includes proposals for an additional open competition category. FINA is set to form a new working group that will spend six months studying the most effective ways to set up the new category.

Show Trials—Then and Now Roger Kimball Roger Kimball

https://www.theepochtimes.com/show-trials-then-and-now_4528243.html?utm_source=epochHG&utm_campaign=rcp

Power Line’s Scott Johnson quoted a TV Guide reporter who described the viewership of the first Jan. 6 House Select Committee’s prime-time television extravaganza as “decent.”In context, “decent” means “dismal” since, as Johnson notes, “the networks graciously handed their prime-time slots over to the committee’s motley crew in unison, Soviet style.”

A show trial is a mock, or make-believe, trial in which the guilt of the party is predetermined.The trial is just a form of theater.Lenin called them “model trials.”

Their aim isn’t to discover the truth—which was supposedly already known—but to stage a propagandist exhibition.

The Soviet Union specialized in the genre, as did communist China, Nazi Germany, and other totalitarian countries.

As the White Queen in “Alice in Wonderland” puts it, it’s always “sentence first—verdict afterwards.”

If you turned on the television on June 9 and you weren’t tuned in to Fox News, you were watching—or “watching”—a couple hours of Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney conducting a show trial.

They vilified Donald Trump while airing a few misleadingly edited clips from the events of that day.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, the Democrats went all out on this show.

Even Democrats Blame Biden For Surging Inflation: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/20/even-democrats-blame-biden-for-surging-inflation-ii-tipp-poll/

If there’s a topic uppermost on most people’s minds today, it is certainly the surge in inflation over the past year. Soaring prices have affected virtually every person in the country. And Americans say they know who’s responsible: President Biden. Surprisingly, that includes more than half of all Democrats, too.

May’s 8.6% annualized inflation rate, the highest in 40 years, shocked financial markets and alarmed consumers and workers alike. As we’ve been reminded over the years, inflation acts as a tax on everyone, lowering standards of living, raising costs across the board, and eroding the very foundations of a productive economy. And once entrenched, it’s very difficult to get rid of.

How did this happen? And does President Biden deserve the blame? June’s monthly online I&I/TIPP Poll sought to answer those questions, asking 1,310 adults across the country the following question: “In general, how responsible are President Biden’s policies for causing the current inflation?”

The answers to the poll, which was taken from June 8-10 and has a margin of error of +/-2.8 percentage points, couldn’t be less comforting for Biden and the Democratic Party.

Of those responding, 64% said Biden was “responsible,” choosing either “very responsible” (38%) or “somewhat responsible” (26%). Just 25% answered “not responsible”, with 17% saying “not very responsible” but a far-smaller 8% saying “not at all responsible.” “Not sure” was 10%.

Fantasies and Infant Formula The people who can’t deliver on baby formula think they know what gender is right for your child. William Kilpatrick

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/fantasies-and-infant-formula-william-kilpatrick/

June is “Pride Month.”  It’s also the month in which many Americans woke up to the fact that the nation was running out of baby formula.  Distressed mothers couldn’t find any on the supermarket shelves or on Amazon’s site.

When you’re looking for a garden tool and all you can find is a sign that says “this product is currently unavailable,” it’s an inconvenience, but if you’re looking for baby formula and your own supply is about to run out, it’s an emergency.

A nationwide shortage of baby formula is a very big deal, yet the Biden administration which had known for months that a shortage was building, did nothing for the longest time.  It is difficult to avoid the impression that the administration didn’t really care that much.

“Pride Month,” on the other hand, is treated as a really big deal.  The Army, the Navy, and the Air Force celebrate it.  So do schools, sports teams, and major corporations.  Meanwhile, the Biden administration has initiated a National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality.  Why?  Because as President Biden has informed us, transgender rights are the “civil rights issue of our time.”

But what does Pride Month have to do with a baby formula shortage?  Quite a lot, actually.  During Pride Month we are asked to celebrate the LGBTQ+ movement, but implicitly we are being asked to celebrate the ideology that goes with it.  The LGBTQ+ movement is not simply about protecting certain personal choices, it’s also about promulgating a worldview in which babies and families do not figure prominently—at least, not in comparison to the needs and demands of what cultural historian Quentin Anderson called “the imperial self.”

The LGBT thought-world is part of a larger ideology that is widely shared in Washington.  For people who live in that thought-bubble, the subject of babies is not an interesting one. It’s not that they hate babies, but that they don’t think much at all about babies or their needs.  So, it’s no surprise that a shortage of infant formula should catch them flat-footed.  Compared to the really big issues such as world peace, racism, and climate change, the issue of formula shortage seems mundane to them.  On the other hand, if you could link the shortage to bias against trans youth, you might get a hearing.