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50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Clarence Thomas calls out liberal court colleagues for inconsistent opinions ‘depending on the issues’ Michael Lee

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/clarence-thomas-calls-out-inconsistent-left-leaning-opinions

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used a footnote in a murder case to call out his liberal colleagues’ apparent double standard for minors, questioning why teenagers should have an absolute right to abortion but can’t be held fully responsible for homicide.

“When addressing juvenile murderers, this Court has stated that ‘children are different’ and that courts must consider ‘a child’s lesser culpability,” Thomas said in the footnotes of his opinion in Jones v. Mississippi. “And yet, when assessing the Court-created right of an individual of the same age to seek an abortion, Members of this Court take pains to emphasize a ‘young woman’s right to choose.’”

“It is curious how this Court’s view of the maturity of minors ebbs and flows depending on the issue,” Thomas continued.

Thomas cited multiple cases in which justices argued that minors were mature enough to be able to decide whether or not to get an abortion, a standard they suddenly abandon when assessing their culpability for violent crimes.

One such ruling from nine years ago held that life sentences for juveniles convicted of homicide were in violation of the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, reasoning that such mandatory sentences failed to take into account a minor’s immaturity at the time the crime was committed.

That ruling came up again in the case of Brett Jones, a Mississippi man who was 15 years old when he used a knife to kill his grandfather during an argument.

Senate Republicans Just Handed Matches to Arsonist Republicans aren’t just flat-footed in opposition, they are complicit in empowering this destructive regime. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/22/senate-republicans-just-handed-matches-to-arsonist/

“It’s hard to see why rank-and-file Republicans should keep sending the same craven bunch of leftist accomplices to Washington. Maybe one day, they’ll stop.”

One of the most fateful decisions of Donald Trump’s presidency happened just weeks after Inauguration Day.

In March 2017, Republican lawmakers joined Democrats to demand Jeff Sessions, a former Senate colleague and Trump’s new attorney general, recuse himself from anything related to the investigation into alleged Russian election collusion. Sessions’ two brief meetings in 2016 with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak—a figure who appeared often in collusion-related drama—amounted to evidence of collusion, collusion perps insisted.

Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) were just a few top Republicans who asked Sessions to step aside—so he did.

Sessions’ recusal put the Justice Department safely back in the hands of anti-Trump operatives just as their malfeasance was being exposed by Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). The cover-up of how the agency targeted Donald Trump and his campaign associates was secure while top officials deflected attention to the concocted Russian collusion hoax.

For an added punch, the same Republicans successfully pushed for a House ethics probe into Nunes, which sidelined his work for eight months until he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

A few months later, Republicans fiercely backed the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump’s alleged collusion with the Russians; Robert Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2017.

CAIR and US Islamists Have a #MeToo Problem Rape, sexual harassment, and child abuse in the Sharia states-within-a-state. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/cair-and-us-islamists-have-metoo-problem-daniel-greenfield/

First, Ahmad Saleem, a community organizer for CAIR in Florida, was busted after showing up to molest what he thought was a 12-year-old girl he had met over the internet. When Ahmad showed up in a car with a plate, “Invest in Children”, the cops were waiting for him instead.

The son of Pakistani immigrants had headed up the local Muslim Students Association at the University of Central Florida before moving up the ranks at CAIR. Then it was off to prison.

Now it’s Hassan Shibly’s turn. The Syrian immigrant who headed up CAIR Florida was accused of assaulting his wife, threatening to kill her, and sexually harassing CAIR employees. Shibly was also accused of threatening some of his accusers, and trying to pay them off.

An NPR article noted that CAIR leaders had been aware of the accusations as far back as 2016 and that no action was taken. “CAIR National has a history of turning a blind eye to many incidents over the years, and the information is coming out. No NDA will save them from what’s to come,” a former CAIR employee tweeted.

A forum for CAIR victims on Instagram quickly filled up with stories of a CAIR chapter head who “was found to be sexually harassing a member of staff and other women also complained about his behavior” only to be protected by the local CAIR governing board, a CAIR leader grooming an employee into a sexual relationship, a CAIR leader using “his religious belief that men can have 4 wives to manipulate women into having affairs with him behind his legal wife’s back”, and a “lawsuit with an imam and a little girl.”

This kind of thing happens a lot.

When the various Islamist groups set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and similar networks operate in this country, they use the laws of Sharia that they intend to impose on Americans.

Comedy Is a Dictatorship’s First Victim By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/comedy_is_a_dictatorships_first_victim.html

Humor has always been one of the first targets of a dictatorship.  It is no surprise that in America, comedians can no longer function because of rampant political correctness.  Thus,  according to Mel Brooks, “we have become stupidly politically correct, which is the death of comedy.  Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks.”  Comedian Gilbert Gottfried says:

Imagine if the most brilliant comedians in history were working today.  They’d never stop apologizing.  Charlie Chaplin would have to apologize to all the homeless people he belittled with his Little Tramp character.

Irony abounded in the black humor that described life under communism.

A farm worker greets Josef Stalin at his potato farm.

“Comrade Stalin, we have so many potatoes that, piled one on top of the other, they would reach all the way to God,” the farmer excitedly tells his leader.

“But God does not exist,” replies Stalin.

“Exactly,” says the farmer.  “Neither do the potatoes.”

After the death of Stalin, jokes were one way people could regain their sanity in a world gone mad under communism.  One joke that made the rounds went like this:

The regional KGB headquarters in Arkhangelsk suffered a major fire and was almost completely destroyed.  Shortly after, a man called looking for help.

“I’m sorry, we can’t do anything,” said the receptionist.  “The KGB has burnt down.”

Five minutes later, the receptionist received another call.

“I’m sorry, we can’t help.  The KGB has burnt down.”

Another five minutes passed, and the phone rang again.  The receptionist recognized the voice as the man who’d twice called previously.

“Why do you keep calling?  I told you that the KGB has burnt down.”

“I know.  I just like hearing it.”

Keep an Eye on This SCOTUS Labor Case By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/keep_an_eye_on_this_scotus_labor_case.html

Americans are proud of their right to property, not enjoyed by people in many democracies.  As the Cato Institute puts it, our founding fathers understood that private property is the foundation of prosperity and freedom.  But California’s 46-year-old Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) violates that constitutional principle, and it even fails to protect farm workers.  It allows union officials and pickets to invade farms — for three hours every day, for 120 days a year — and harangue, coerce, and arm-twist farm workers into joining the union and engaging in collective bargaining with growers even when they’re happy with their working conditions and pay.  The property-owner is powerless to stop the intrusion, as the regulation does not require the owner’s permission.

Surprising?  That is why a forthcoming decision by the Supreme Court in a case involving a strawberry plant nursery and a packager from California and the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) will be a watershed.  It will signal whether or not America will end up with more laws that stifle productivity and bestow overweening powers on Democrat-backing leftist unions.

The law came to be enacted in the first place because unions have been the most powerful force in California politics.  Public-sector unions together collect over $900 million in annual revenue.  These unions have long controlled the state Legislature, where Democrats have been in the majority for decades.  Non-public-sector unions too — such as the United Farm Workers (UFW), founded in 1962, and known to invade private farmlands — have wielded coercive influence disproportionate to their membership.  Rather than protect and fight for workers’ rights, unions have been busy increasing their power and political clout and pushing leftist agendas.  Worse, with misconceived laws that give them extraordinary powers and immunities, they force workers to accept unwanted representation, bully them into paying dues, and inflict what the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation calls “compulsory unionism abuses.”  They contribute almost exclusively to Democrat causes and give workers no say in how their dues are spent.  And the unions trespass unhindered on employers’ private properties.

New Footage of Columbus Shooting Released from Neighbor’s Security Camera By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-footage-of-columbus-shooting-released-from-neighbors-security-camera/

Newly released footage of a police shooting in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday shows 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant lunging at two girls with a knife before the officer shoots her.

Footage of the altercation was captured on a security camera belonging to neighbor Donavon Brinson, initially reported by the Columbus Dispatch. During the altercation, one of the people filmed yells “I’m gonna stab the f*** out of you, b****,” at the moment that Bryant was filmed attacking a girl with a knife. It is unclear from the footage if it was Bryant who said those words.

[Warning: graphic content.]

“If the officer hadn’t done what he did, I think we’d have two girls dead. It was violent and all just happened so fast,” Brinson later told the Dispatch. Bryant was living in a foster home across the street from Brinson.

In additional footage from a police body camera, one of the intended victims appears to accuse Bryant of attacking her.

“She f***ing came at me with a knife,” the girl told one of the officers who responded to the scene.

The shooting occurred shortly before the verdict in the case of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer found guilty of killing George Floyd during his arrest in May 2020. Video of that incident sparked massive riots throughout the country, along with demonstrations against police brutality that lasted through the summer.

Anticop Movement Wants Road Anarchy Too The death of Daunte Wright bolsters demands to get police officers out of traffic-law enforcement. By Heather Mac Donald

https://www.wsj.com/articles/anticop-movement-wants-road-anarchy-too-11619132197?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Traffic laws didn’t kill Daunte Wright, but critics of the police are using his death to call for an end to their enforcement. Likewise with George Floyd and laws against counterfeiting.

On April 11 Brooklyn Center, Minn., police stopped Wright, 20, for an expired vehicle registration. Officers then discovered that Mr. Wright had an open warrant for failing to appear in court on charges of illegal gun possession and fleeing from arrest. After following instructions to get out of his car, Wright fought with the cops and lunged back into the driver’s seat when they attempted to arrest him on the outstanding warrant. One of the officers reached for her Taser but, she claims, mistakenly grabbed her pistol instead. She fired one lethal shot.

Floyd allegedly passed a counterfeit $20 bill, a federal offense, at a Minneapolis convenience store on May 25, 2020. The cashier called police after Floyd refused to return the cigarettes he bought. Floyd intermittently resisted arrest, prompting the responding officers to put him face down on the ground, handcuffed. Officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck and collarbone for nearly eight minutes. Floyd passed out and died. A jury convicted Mr. Chauvin of second-degree murder.

Wright’s and Floyd’s deaths were caused by a combination of their own actions and those of the arresting officers. But leftist politicians and commentators are blaming the laws the men violated in the first place. “No one should die over a traffic stop,” New York City Councilman Brad Lander said. CNN’s John Avlon asserted that “passing a counterfeit bill can get you killed in the U.S.” Yale legal scholar James Forman Jr. and a law student wrote in the Washington Post that “having expired tags or temporary plates” must be added to the list of actions that can “shatter Black lives”—never mind that Wright’s abortive arrest was not for expired tags but for failing to answer to gun charges.

Biden’s 10-Year Climate Plan He’s committing the U.S. to a far-fetched CO2 emissions goal without a vote of Congress.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-10-year-climate-plan-11619132440?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Was President Biden trying to impress China’s Xi Jinping at Thursday’s climate pep rally by committing to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by half below 2005 levels by 2030? His pledge tees up sweeping new government controls over the economy of the kind you might see in one of Mr. Xi’s five-year plans. Mr. Biden now has a 10-year version of central economic planning.

Mr. Biden’s virtual world summit was intended to coax China and other emerging countries to make more aggressive emissions reductions. The U.S. accounts for less than 15% of global CO2 emissions, Mr. Biden told world leaders. Emissions in the U.S. and Europe have been falling since 2005 as natural gas and renewables have replaced coal power.

But rising emissions from China have swamped these declines. At the Paris climate summit in 2015, China committed only to begin reducing emissions in 2030, and it has continued to build coal plants and expand industrial production. China’s CO2 emissions increased by more between 2015 and 2018 than the U.K.’s total emissions in 2018 (see nearby chart).

All of the CO2 commitments made in Paris, including Barack Obama’s to reduce U.S. emissions by 26% to 28%, would reduce the Earth’s temperature increase by a mere 0.17 degree Celsius by 2100—not even close to the 1.5 degrees that is supposedly needed to head off doomsday. Yet Mr. Biden now wants to double down on Mr. Obama’s futile climate gesture.

VIDEO: DIVERSITY VS. DIVERSITY BRUCE THORNTON:

https://jamieglazov.com/2021/04/22/bruce-thornton-video-diversity-vs-diversity/

This video is brought to you by a Freedom Center-Glazov Gang collaboration on a new exclusive webinar series, Teach-Ins for the Twenty-First Century. Join us as some of the leading thinkers and pundits on the scene today discuss key issues related to the coronavirus pandemic and its ongoing implications, confronting the Left, the jihad terror threat, and much, much more. And make sure to ask your own questions of our experts.

This new webinar features Bruce Thornton, a professor of Classics and Humanities emeritus at the California State University in Fresno. He is the author of ten books and numerous essays, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Research Fellow at Stanford’ Hoover Institution.

Dr. Thornton discusses ‘Diversity’ Vs. Diversity, unveiling the Left’s scientific racism.

Don’t miss it!

Data Undercuts Myth of ‘Racism’ in Police Killings John R. Lott

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/04/22/data_undercuts_myth_of_racism_in_police_killings_145640.html

President Biden claimed that Derek Chauvin’s conviction on Tuesday “ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism” of police. With the police shooting that same day of 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, the White House again pushed the racism claim, noting that this was just another example of how “police violence disproportionately impacts Black and Latino people.”

But where is the evidence for these claims? In Chauvin’s trial, the prosecution never once mentioned evidence that the now-former officer is racist. A day after the verdict, the Biden administration announced plans for a pattern-or-practice investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department to determine if there is such racism, but the administration’s comments sure sound as if they have already determined the study’s outcome.

In the other case, body camera footage released by police revealed that Ma’Khia Bryant was fatally shot as she charged another girl with a knife. The officer shot one black girl in an attempt to save what appears to be another black girl from being stabbed.

Politicians such as Biden as well as the media have helped create a biased perception that is far from the reality of shootings by police. In a study, the Crime Prevention Research Center (where I serve as president) found that when a white officer kills a suspect, the media usually mention the officer’s race. When the officer is black, news coverage rarely mentions that detail.