RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosis-capitol-riot-commission-11614210098?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Nancy Pelosi wants a “9/11-type” commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, and there’s a case for doing it—if the goal is truly to find out why America’s seat of government was so poorly protected and how much of the violence was planned. Is that what Mrs. Pelosi is after?

There’s reason to doubt it, since she pushed to make the commission a partisan body. Her initial plan was to have seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans. This is impossible to justify, especially in a country so closely divided. Democrats have 51% of House seats and Republicans have 49%, and the Senate is 50-50. Why, then, would Democrats get to appoint 64% of a Jan. 6 commission?

The only way an inquiry can defang disinformation and conspiracy theories, like the idea that the Capitol rioters were antifa agitators in disguise, is if the country thinks the effort is factual and fair. An even partisan split is crucial for credibility. Otherwise a sizable share of Americans will suspect it’s a political weapon designed to find President Trump guilty of incitement to insurrection, more or less, after a failed impeachment trial.

Mrs. Pelosi should want an inquiry that delivers a unanimous outcome, not one that breaks down on party lines. Heed the veterans of the 9/11 commission, which she invokes. Its Democratic vice chairman, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, told Politico that Mrs. Pelosi’s proposal “does not sound to me like a good start; it sounds like a partisan beginning.” Its GOP chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, said that without equal representation, “the report won’t have as much confidence from the American people.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/23/biden-a-dark-money-puppet/

Liberal dark money groups spent a record-breaking $145 million to get Joe Biden elected, and now they are cashing in. These groups are pushing President Biden to nominate dark money appointees and pass their extreme left-wing policies.

From top to bottom, Mr. Biden’s staff is filled with people affiliated with dark money. His chief of staff, Ron Klain, was a board member of the dark money group CAP Action Fund before joining the Biden administration.

Similarly, Gina McCarthy, the White House National Climate Adviser, led the Natural Resources Defense Council, a climate action dark money group that has received millions from the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund.

Those two funds come underneath the massive dark money umbrella of little-known Arabella Advisors, which moves half-a-billion dollars per year to left-wing organizations involved in policy and political campaigns.

Another example is Jennifer Granholm, President Biden’s nominee for secretary of Energy. Ms. Granholm chaired a dark money think tank whose sister organization spent $60 million to help elect Mr. Biden.

Mr. Biden is already delivering for his dark money donors on a policy level. He canceled the permit for the Keystone pipeline, eliminating thousands of good-paying union jobs, and he is breaking all the promises of moderation he made in 2020.

Democrats love to chide Republicans about their dark money ties, but Mr. Biden is truly the first dark money president.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/02/24/the-morning-briefing-thank-god-merrick-garland-isnt-on-the-supreme-court-n1427780

Justice Garland Would Have Been a Nightmare

When looking at Joe Biden’s various appointments and nominations here in the first month of the Grandpa Gropes Traveling Sham Presidency Circus, one gets the feeling that former President Barack Obama is running a staffing agency these days. Or a recycling center. Team Biden-Harris has been stocking up on Obama administration retreads. Perhaps Ol’ Joe doesn’t remember most of these people and his empty head thinks they’re all fresh blood.

While Merrick Garland wasn’t really a member of the Obama administration, he is, of course, closely associated with it thanks to The Lightbringer’s lame-duck nomination of him for the Supreme Court in 2016.

Garland’s performance during his confirmation hearing this week has clearly illustrated that the United States really dodged a bullet in keeping him off of the Supreme Court.

The world is so screwed up right now that this guy is going to be the chief law enforcement officer in the land, but at least that’s not an appointment for life. At least not yet. The Democrats are all about fundamentally overhauling America and they’re clearly fans of one-party rule, so this administration may be around longer than we’d like.

I will share just a couple of the lowlights that Garland offered forth under questioning this week.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dr-faucis-interventions/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s interventions continue to lose coherence and connection from reality.

We are now at the point where Fauci seems to be implying that normality will never come back, and where reasonable people may draw the inference that getting vaccinated is vaguely socially irresponsible.

Take his comments this week, from a report at Business Insider:

“There are things, even if you’re vaccinated, that you’re not going to be able to do in society,” Fauci said on Monday during a White House COVID-19 press briefing. “For example, indoor dining, theaters, places where people congregate. That’s because of the safety of society.”

“We hope that when the data comes in, it’s going to show that the virus level is quite low and you’re not transmitting it,” Fauci said, cautioning: “We don’t know that now. And for that reason, we want to make sure that people continue to wear masks despite the fact that they’re vaccinated.”

The first thing to ask is: What planet are you living on? People are dining indoors and going to movie theaters right now. Many schools are open and are managing to keep transmission very low.

Now, the background to Fauci’s comments is that, with some diseases, vaccination may reduce the incidence of serious disease and death, but may not stop people from contracting and transmitting the virus.

https://spectator.us/topic/really-pushing-misinformation-eshoo-mcnerney-cnn/

There’s a new administration in town. On Monday, House Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, both members of the House Energy and Commerce committee, sent letters to 12 grand poobahs of television to make sure they were properly updating their ideological software.

‘Some purported news outlets have long been misinformation rumor mills and conspiracy theory hotbeds that produce content that leads to real harm,’ the letter says. ‘Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN… now and beyond any contract renewal date? If so, why?’

Sadly, America’s government grows less transparent by the day, so the letter conceals half its content beneath a layer of subtext. That’s a nice TV company you have there, it says. Would be a real shame if something happened to it. TV companies that want to avoid a regulatory stink-eye are encouraged to make the bad voices disappear from the television.

Tragically, like Funes from the Borges story, Cockburn is cursed with the ability to remember things. So he remembers the four years of shrieking that every Twitter tantrum by President Trump was the worst attack on Liberty since the Israelis accidentally strafed it in the Six-Day War. In 2018, Trump was sued by CNN because he wouldn’t allow CNN’s Jim Acosta to keep Acostabating in the White House. PEN America sued the Trump White House in part because he was supposedly targeting the Washington Post by wanting Amazon to pay higher Postal Service delivery fees. The ACLU kept a running list of offenses which they claimed represented ‘an assault on the cornerstone of American democracy.’

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/philip-haney-not-resting-peace-lloyd-billingsley/

Philip Haney is the author of author of  See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad. One year ago, on February 21, 2020, Philip Haney was “found deceased in our jurisdiction,” in Amador County, California. According to the county sheriff, “a forensic autopsy was scheduled and performed,” but the case was more complicated.

“At that time, we reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist in analyzing documents, phone records, numerous thumb drives and a lap top that were recovered from the scene and Mr. Haney’s RV. Those items and numerous other pieces of evidence, were turned over to the FBI. The FBI has performed a forensic examination of these items. We expect to receive these reports within the next few weeks.”

That was the Amador County sheriff in a press release dated July 22, 2020, their most recent update on the case. Last week, the Amador sheriff’s office told Frontpage there was no new press release, and would say nothing else about the case. Last week, Amador undersheriff Gary Redman told Jack Mitchell of the local Ledger Dispatch, “We are waiting for a few remaining pieces to be analyzed out of Virginia,” but there was “no estimated time of arrival.”

Sources close to Haney told Mitchell the “documents,” found at the scene were from the manuscript of Haney’s new book, also on a thumb drive Haney carried at all times. Last September, the Department of Justice told journalist Rex Hastings these items were “exempt from disclosure” under the Freedom of Information Act. Even so, last week Frontpage asked the FBI about the documents, phone records, thumb drives and laptop. What did the forensic examination reveal?

https://justthenews.com/nation/technology/prior-removing-transgender-critical-book-amazon-changed-policies-ban-books-hate

Sometime before this week, when it removed from its digital shelves a book critical of transgender ideology, Amazon altered its content policy to explicitly forbid books that promote “hate speech,” a major rule change that could be used to rationalize action against a broader range of books sold by the digital retail giant.

Amazon this week yanked “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement” from its main web store, its Kindle servers and its audiobook lineup with no explanation, even as the book had been available on the site for three years with no apparent controversy. 

In the 2018 book, author and political philosopher Ryan Anderson draws on years of scientific research and data to criticize the prevailing approach to transgender issues in modern medicine. The book “exposes the contrast between the media’s sunny depiction of gender fluidity and the often sad reality of living with gender dysphoria,” according to its sales blurb. 

Anderson told Just the News that he had received no explanation for the ban.

Reached for comment by Just the News, Amazon declined to provide any explanation, offering instead a link to its book content policy. 

A review of those policies suggests that sometime in the last few months Amazon made a major change to the ways in which it moderates book content on its servers, imposing a much stricter standard on books than it had previously done. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/24/the-government-censors-are-here/

“But this is where we are in an America no previous generation would recognize. And the downward spiral is accelerating. Unless our decline is turned around hard and soon, it won’t be long before we’re burning books, because we’re already symbolically burning anyone who dares express a view that dissents from the Democrat-media narrative.”

Congressional Democrats are demanding to know what communications giants such as Comcast and AT&T are going to do about “the spread of dangerous misinformation.” How quickly this country is descending into an authoritarian regime where the government controls speech and the flow of information.

Ahead of a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, California Democratic Reps. Anna G. Eshoo and Jerry McNerney wrote a letter to Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox, Altice, Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Hulu. According to the New York Times, which says it has reviewed the correspondence, the pair is not pleased that “the cable, satellite and over-the-top companies that disseminate these media outlets” – likely referring to Fox News, One America News Network, and Newsmax – “have done nothing in response to the misinformation aired by these outlets.”

The hearing was called to focus on “disinformation and extremism in the media.” In practice it’s a stage for peacock strutting, spin, and projection (a diversionary tactic Democrats are well-practiced in) with the ultimate goal of gaining full control of the flow of information.