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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Why is Joe Biden dodging the public and the press? By Joe Concha,

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/541580-why-is-joe-biden-dodging-the-public-and-the-press

President Biden is not unlike Candidate Biden in terms of being largely hidden from the public and press. Already, the decision by his team to limit his interactions with the media, while barely traveling outside the White House to address the concerns of the American people, is wearing thin, if new polls are any indication. 

It’s now been more than six weeks since Biden took office. He has yet to hold a press conference during a pandemic that has claimed more than 107,000 lives since his inauguration and more than 500,000 overall. His COVID-19 relief bill, with a price tag of nearly $2 trillion in what will be the largest spending bill in U.S. history, should be sold to the public by the president, just as his old boss, Barack Obama, sold the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in various speeches across the country in 2009. Biden and his equally invisible vice president are vaccinated, so the COVID-19 excuse for not venturing out much, which was used throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, is no longer applicable. 

This relief bill also is increasingly being paired down in Congress, infuriating Democrats on the left in the process. Gone is the federal minimum wage hike to $15 an hour that would have killed thousands of jobs, thanks to the Senate parliamentarian, who ruled that it couldn’t be included in the bill under Senate rules. So are proposals for a bridge between New York and Ontario, as well as a San Francisco transit extension, all of which have nothing to do with battling COVID-19. Republicans also argue, correctly, that money earmarked for reopening schools will not even begin until 2022, when the pandemic will probably be over or greatly reduced after the country is fully vaccinated by the beginning of the summer, according to Biden’s own timeline.

Will the real president of the United States please stand up? There’s no evidence that Joe Biden is actually serving as president Charles Hurt

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/mar/4/will-the-real-president-of-the-united-states-pleas/

Can anyone just tell us who the hell is running our federal government right now?

You literally get censored out of existence for suggesting that anyone other than Joe Biden won the election last November. Yet there is no evidence today — four months later — that Mr. Biden is actually serving as president.

A weird Tron video this week appeared to show Mr. Biden — looking every bit the part of Max Headroom — interfacing with House Democrats in Congress. Digitally, of course.

He droned on for a few minutes using scripted psycho-pablum, sitting alone at a table. The table was empty except for his instruction manual. As he spoke haltingly, he looked up at a giant screen from which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stared awkwardly, fake smiling.

One could imagine the Dem droids watching from somewhere in the cybersphere nodding along obediently.

The digital president then opened the floor for questions.

The New McCarthyism Comes to Harvard Law School by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17146/harvard-law-school-mccarthyism

This self-serving defense of censorship is intended to convey a crass economic threat: if you want to get a good job after law school, make sure that Harvard bans teachers and speakers who are trying to “rehabilitate their reputations and obscure the stain of their complicity in the Trump administration….”

One would also think that signatories would be aware that if these vague criteria — anti-democratic, racists, xenophobic and immoral — were applied across the board, they would result in bans on anyone who was associated with the current regimes in China, Cuba, Turkey, Belarus, Russia, Venezuela, the Palestinian Authority and other repressive governments.

It would also apply to supporters of American anti-democratic and anti-free speech groups, such as Antifa, and the very organization — People’s Parity Project — that is promoting this anti-free speech petition. Indeed, historically, repression and censorship have been directed primarily against the left.

The Harvard Law School petition is directed only at Trump supporters, not supporters of left wing anti-democratic repression, either here or abroad. It is based on the assumption that there is a special “Trump exception” to freedom of speech and due process. But exceptions to free speech and academic freedom for some risk becoming the rule for all.

Much of this effort to exclude Trump supporters from campuses comes from individuals and organizations that also demand more “diversity.” But their definition of diversity is limited to race, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity. It does not extend to the central mission of universities: to hear and learn from the widest array of views, perspectives, ideologies and political preferences.

A recent petition, signed by hundreds of Harvard Law School students and alumni, raises the specter of the new McCarthyism coming to the law school at which I taught for half a century. The petition states that “Harvard Law School faces a choice of whether to welcome the architects and backers of the Trump administration’s worse abuses back into polite society.” It demands that Harvard not “hire or affiliate with” any of these sinners, and threatens that “if it does so the school will be complicit if future attacks on our democracy are even more violent – and more successful.”

A Family on Trial for January 6 The Justice Department, which acts more like a consigliere for the Democratic Party than an impartial enforcer of the rule of law, wants to ruin the Cua family and send a message to others. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/04/a-family-on-trial-for-january-6/

Bruno Joseph Cua lives on a three-acre farm in central Georgia with his parents and two younger siblings. The 18-year-old likes to fish and build tree houses; neighbors, family friends, and classmates describe him as hard-working, kind, respectful, and patriotic. He’s not into drugs or alcohol—his biggest high last year was organizing Trump truck rallies in his community.

Before he traveled to Washington, D.C. on January 5 with his mom and dad to hear President Trump’s speech the next day, Bruno was finishing online classes to earn his high school diploma. (His mother, a veterinarian, stopped working years ago to homeschool her children.) Like many teenagers interested in politics, Bruno is a bit of a rabble-rouser and social media loudmouth.

The Cuas, after hearing the president’s speech on January 6, walked to Capitol Hill. Bruno made his way into the building; the teen later posted on Parler that he “stormed the capital (sic) with hundreds of thousands of patriots. Yes we physically fought our way in.”

Now, Bruno Cua sits in jail in Washington, D.C. awaiting trial for his involvement in the January 6 Capitol breach, the youngest of the nearly 300 people so far arrested under the U.S. Justice Department’s “unprecedented” investigation into the events of that day. Unlike tens of thousands of protestors who occupied the nation’s capital for months—including young people who bragged about it in a Washington Post magazine—Cua will be given no mercy.

Neither will his parents, Joseph and Alise.

We finally hear from the ‘QAnon Shaman’ By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/we_finally_hear_from_the_qanon_shaman.html

If there is one person who became the living emblem of the incursion into the Capitol on January 6, it is the man dubbed the “QAnon Shaman.” Jacob Chansley showed up in several pictures with his face painted red, white, and blue; his body covered with shamanistic tattoos; and his head attired with a fur hat sporting large horns. This horror, the media told America, was the living emblem of the evil, racist Trump supporters who were committing a deadly, armed insurrection against the seat of the American government.

Interestingly, the best evidence that, as is often the case, Democrats’ narrative was a lie came from a video The New Yorker published. It shows that Chansley is an odd bird, but obviously was not acting violently. Instead, he engages very politely with a Capitol Hill police officer:

Because of Chansley’s costume (which he’s worn before – and more on that later), he was easy to identify and the government quickly arrested him. He’s been in solitary confinement ever since, with no bail. This is in stark contrast to the way in which BLM and Antifa protesters were treated last year. Despite their heinous acts of looting, property destruction, and attacks on police officers, they were usually released instantly, whether without bail or with monies from leftist celebrities who paid for their bail. And just yesterday, we learned that the Biden DOJ is dismissing Portland Antifa cases left and right — or just left and left, I guess.

On Thursday, 60 Minutes+ put online an interview with Chansley. Without his rather magnificent costume, he seems very shrunken but, to his credit, he’s not going to accept the reporter’s accusations against him. (And again, just try to imagine Laurie Segall taking that antagonistic tone with someone from BLM or Antifa. The media treated those “peaceful” protesters with something akin to reverence.)

Dems Claim Republicans Helped the Capitol Rioters. Now the Feds Are Taking a Look By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/03/04/feds-probe-contacts-between-capitol-rioters-and-members-of-congress-n1430223

Federal authorities are investigating records of communications between members of Congress and pro-Trump rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, an unnamed U.S. official told CNN. The investigation appears to involve whether or not lawmakers wittingly or unwittingly helped the mob.

“The data gathered so far includes indications of contact with lawmakers in the days around January 6, as well as communications between alleged rioters discussing their associations with members of Congress, the official said,” CNN reported.

Such communications do not necessarily indicate any wrongdoing, and investigators have not begun to target members of Congress in the investigation, the source added. “Should investigators find probable cause that lawmakers or their staffs possibly aided the insurrectionists, they could seek warrants to obtain the content of the communications. There’s no indication they’ve taken such a step at this point.”

Federal officials have arrested and charged about 300 people, and the investigation is shifting to focus on the people who allegedly conspired and planned the riot. The Justice Department has assigned more than two dozen prosecutors to examine complex issues like the funding behind the riot and whether lawmakers assisted in the attack, the official told CNN.

The Dems’ Voting Fraud Encouragement Bill A blatant power grab. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/dems-voting-fraud-encouragement-bill-joseph-klein/

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed the inappropriately named “For the People Act” (H.R.1) on Wednesday evening by the largely party line vote of 220 to 210. It now goes to the Senate. This bill, if enacted into law, will be a gift that keeps on giving to Democrats who care only about staying in power rather than securing the integrity of the electoral process. “This bill makes elections less trustworthy, not more,” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas.

The right to vote in a free and fair election requires procedural protections to ensure that elections are conducted in an honest manner. We must have guardrails to protect against potential election fraud, voter intimidation, illegal votes, and inaccurate vote counts. The American people’s willingness to accept the results of an election, whether a voter’s favored candidate wins or not, depends on their being convinced that the election was carried out in a legitimate manner. H.R.1 strips away any semblance of guardrails. Instead, H.R.1 creates multiple paths to election fraud, including the following:

Online Registrations: Let’s start with the provision that mandates online voter registration in federal elections, which would also allow registered voters to update their voter registration information online. With no more paper registration forms as backup, this is an invitation for hackers inside and outside the country to run amok. Hacking last year by one of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies of the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, nuclear labs, various cabinet department, and Fortune 500 companies should provide a clear warning that even highly secure systems are vulnerable. States’ voting registration databases will be easy pickings.

‘Neanderthal’ Governors Outscore Biden On The COVID Science

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/05/neanderthal-governors-not-biden-are-following-the-science/

President Joe Biden wasn’t too happy when Texas and Mississippi decided to reopen their economies and liberate their people from statewide mask mandates, calling it “Neanderthal thinking.”

But wait a minute, who’s following the science here, and who isn’t? While Biden is clearly in love with the idea of the government forcing Americans to wear masks and keeping heavy restrictions on businesses, the science is piling up showing that these measures are not very effective, if they are at all.

One Swiss group, for example, found 10 studies challenging the effectiveness of masks. One is a Danish review that compared a control group that followed social distancing guidelines but didn’t wear masks, while another group wore high-quality surgical masks. It found no statistically significant difference between the two groups.

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine, meanwhile, noted that “Focusing on universal masking alone may, paradoxically, lead to more transmission of COVID-19 if it diverts attention from implementing more fundamental infection-control measures.”

The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine noted last July that “despite two decades of pandemic preparedness, there is considerable uncertainty as to the value of wearing masks.”

The Madness of Nancy Pelosi

Responding to a question about the need for fencing and troops at the Capitol:

“Between COVID where we need to have vaccinations more broadly in the Capitol so that many more people can come here and do their jobs, and the threat of them of–of all the president’s men out there, we have to–we have to ensure with our security, that we are safe enough to do our job.”

‘Equity’ Is a Mandate to Discriminate The new buzzword tries to hide the aim of throwing out the American principle of equality under the law.Charles Lipson

https://www.wsj.com/articles/equity-is-a-mandate-to-discriminate-11614901276?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

On his first day as president, Joe Biden issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities.” Mr. Biden’s cabinet nominees must now explain whether this commitment to “equity” means they intend to abolish “equal treatment under law.” Their answers are a confused mess.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton raised the question explicitly in confirmation hearings. Attorney General-designate Merrick Garland responded: “I think discrimination is morally wrong. Absolutely.” Marcia Fudge, slated to run Housing and Urban Development, gave a much different answer. “Just to be clear,” Mr. Cotton asked, “it sounds like racial equity means treating people differently based on their race. Is that correct?”

Ms. Fudge’s responded: “Not based on race, but it could be based on economics, it could be based on the history of discrimination that has existed for a long time.” Ms. Fudge’s candid response tracks that of Kamala Harris’s tweet and video, posted before the election and viewed 6.4 million times: “There’s a big difference between equality and equity.”

Ms. Harris and Ms. Fudge are right. There is a big difference. It’s the difference between equal treatment and equal outcomes. Equality means equal treatment, unbiased competition and impartially judged outcomes. Equity means equal outcomes, achieved if necessary by unequal treatment, biased competition and preferential judging.