Gabbard Sounds the Alarm: Leftists Are Plotting ‘KGB-Style Surveillance’ of Conservatives By Tyler O’Neil,

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/01/26/gabbard-sounds-the-alarm-leftists-are-plotting-kgb-style-surveillance-of-conservatives-n1411860

On Tuesday, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) issued another important warning about the Democrats like former CIA Director John Brennan who appear to have seized on the Capitol riot as an excuse to crack down on dissent from the Left’s orthodoxy. Democrats seem to be mulling a new domestic “War on Terror” complete with surveillance of American “insurgents” like… Libertarians.

In a short video posted on Twitter, Gabbard began by condemning the mob that stormed the Capitol but went on to issue an important warning about the budding new “War on Terror.”

“The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let’s be clear, the John Brennans, Adam Schiffs, and oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally-protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance, are also domestic enemies, and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob that stormed the Capitol,” Gabbard declared.

She then played a brief clip of Brennan warning against an “unholy alliance” including “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, and even Libertarians” that “looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas.”

Gabbard, a former presidential candidate, ended her clip by calling on President Joe Biden and all members of Congress to condemn Brennan’s remarks, which suggest a threat to Americans’ civil liberties.

CDC Apparently Changed COVID Criteria That Inflated Fatalities 10-Fold (2/2) By Michael Thau

https://redstate.com/michael_thau/2021/01/25/report-cdc-change-in-covid-criteria-that-inflated-fatalities-10-fold-also-broke-federal-law-conclusion-n316252

Imagine if President Trump had managed to squeeze out $38 billion to fund a border wall by scaring the bejesus out of Congress with some incredibly alarming stats about illegal alien crime.

Now try to imagine that the mainstream press completely ignored the question of whether those stats might have been ginned up out of thin air precisely to get Congress to turn over all that dough.

Unless you’re on some pretty crazy hallucinogens, you can’t.

Heck, even if every single word of Trump’s story were true, not a week would pass before some New York Times reporter would be all over the news quoting her mentally defective brother-in-law as a “source familiar with the matter” who claims that Trump had not only lied about the criminal propensities of illegal aliens—whom everyone knows are better Americans than you or I and especially Donald Trump could ever hope to be—but that the dreaded Orange Man had also viciously mocked our founding fathers, flag, and Jesus Christ himself along the way.

Yet, somehow, hardly anyone in America is even aware that the CDC managed to get their initial $8 billion budget for 2020 increased by a factor of six to a whopping $46 billion by relentlessly honking the COVID-19 panic-horn. (H/t, RedState reader, Kurt Schulzke.)

Yet Another Trump Impeachment? Sorry, But This One Too Is A Sham

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/27/yet-another-trump-impeachment-sorry-but-this-one-too-is-a-sham/

he Democrats are racing ahead with their third effort to impeach former President Donald Trump. Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the impeachment articles to the Senate on Tuesday, and the now evenly-split Senate will take it up on Feb. 8. It’s a waste of time and taxpayer money for one simple reason: It’s not even legal.

No, that’s not a mere assertion or our opinion. It’s based on the only document we know that guides how impeachments should take place. It’s called the Constitution.

We still live in a constitutional republic, which means we are bound by its laws. So is Congress.

So here’s what the Constitution says:

When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

So the impeachment now being moved to the Senate is not legal, based on the clear wording and intent of the Constitution.

Meet Joe Biden, The Job Slayer

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/26/meet-joe-biden-the-job-slayer/

When running for office, President Joe Biden repeatedly proclaimed that his policies would create 18 million jobs. But on his first day in office, Biden took actions that will put millions out of work.

One of the very first executive actions Biden signed was to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that President Barack Obama had blocked for years, which President Donald Trump finally approved. Biden’s reason? To combat the “climate crisis.” While canceling the pipeline won’t have any impact on global temperatures, it will kill thousands of (mostly union) jobs.

As the plumbers and pipefitters union noted: “The Biden administration has now put thousands of union workers out of work. For the average American family, it means energy costs will go up and communities will no longer see the local investments that come with pipeline construction.”

Some estimates said the pipeline would employ 11,000 American workers in 2021 and create more than $1.6 billion in wages.

The same day, Biden imposed a 60-day moratorium on oil and gas leases on federal lands. The American Petroleum Institute calculates that, if made permanent, Biden’s ban will cost nearly 1 million jobs over the next two years and cut the nation’s economic output a total of $700 billion by 2030. Oh, and it will make the U.S. more dependent on oil imports.

As ABC News reported, Biden’s “moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases and drilling permits is prompting widespread concerns in New Mexico, where spending on education and other public programs hinges on the industry’s success.”

Top WHO Official: It’s ‘Definitely Too Early’ to Conclude Coronavirus Originated in China By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/top-who-official-its-definitely-too-early-to-conclude-coronavirus-originated-in-china/

A World Health Organization official said recently that it is “definitely too early” to conclude that the coronavirus first started in China.

Michael Ryan, the executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said Friday that “all hypotheses are on the table” as a team of WHO experts kick off an investigation in China into the origins of the virus.  

“I think we have to say this quite plainly; all hypotheses are on the table and it is definitely too early to come to a conclusion of exactly where this virus started either within or without China,” Ryan said at a press conference in Geneva in response to a question regarding the head of China’s CDC’s claims that the virus had not originated in the country.

Ryan said virus discovered in sewage and blood tests outside of China could indicate “earlier infection.” 

“Let’s step back, let’s follow the evidence, let’s follow the science. Our team are on the ground, they’re having a good experience working with our Chinese colleagues. We’re working through the data. The data will lead us to the next phase, where we need to go next to look at the origins of this virus,” Ryan said.

“It is too early to come to any conclusion but again we believe we are making some progress and we hope to continue to do so in the interests of public health in future,” he added.

However, health experts the world over have said that the novel coronavirus likely originated in Wuhan, China in November 2019. Scientists in recent months have questioned whether the virus originated at a live animal market in Wuhan or was the result of a lab accident at one of the city’s two laboratories — the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Wuhan Centers for Disease Control — that had been studying coronaviruses that originated in bats. 

Yehuda Meshi Zahav’s crucial COVID message: Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/yehuda-meshi-zahavs-crucial-covid-message-to-fellow-haredim/

 The triple tragedy that struck the family of one of Israel’s most righteous Jews in the course of a single month is garnering nationwide attention and sympathy. That COVID-19 caused the deaths of Yehuda Meshi Zahav’s brother, mother and father made the blow particularly relevant to the general public.

But it is Meshi Zahav’s response to his personal loss—and accompanying appeal to those members of the country’s haredi communities who are engaged in a battle against the state over its coronavirus regulations—that is most noteworthy. So distraught is he about both that he gave an interview to Channel 12 on Sunday evening, a day after his father passed away, in the midst of his sitting shiva for his mother, mere weeks after his younger brother’s funeral.

Meshi Zahav is the founder and head of the volunteer rescue and recovery organization ZAKA (the Hebrew acronym for Disaster Victim Identification). Established in 1995, ZAKA became famous in Israel for its painstaking gathering of human remains, tissue and blood from scenes of terrorist attacks to enable the identification and proper, dignified burial of dead bodies in accordance with Jewish law. ZAKA also collects the remains of non-Jews, including suicide bombers, for return to their families.

Javad Zarif’s Chutzpah By Jimmy Quinn

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/javad-zarifs-chutzpah/

Desperate to win sanctions relief, Iran’s foreign minister pens a falsehood-riddled essay in an American magazine.

T he foreign minister of Iran has a message for President Joe Biden: If you lift all of your sanctions and shut up about Tehran’s support for terrorist groups and its development of ballistic-missile technology, we’ll let you back into the 2015 nuclear agreement . . . maybe.

Tehran’s cosmopolitan, English-speaking, sometimes openly anti-Semitic top diplomat Javad Zarif made this incredibly bold argument in a piece published by Foreign Affairs magazine last week. One wouldn’t be mistaken to think that he’s beginning the negotiations with a high asking price — and without much to justify it. Iran’s been battered by the Trump administration’s sanctions, so much so that its support for paramilitary groups across the Middle East seems to be constraining its ability to finance its response to the COVID crisis.

It’s not immediately clear whom the essay is intended to sway. If the target audience is U.S. officials, it’s hard to imagine these lofty demands playing a larger role than does the Biden administration’s already obvious intent to reenter the agreement. And amidst pressure from congressional Republicans, Israel, and U.S. allies in the Gulf, it’s just as difficult to believe that Zarif’s bluster alone would convince the new team to drop its inhibitions against doing exactly what the foreign minister demands — that is, reentering the agreement with absolutely no preconditions:

The Senate’s impeachment trial is illegal and a sham by Sen. Rand Paul

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/the-senates-impeachment-trial-is-illegal-and-a-sham

Democrats claim to want to unify the country, but impeaching a former president, a private citizen, is the antithesis of unity. This impeachment is nothing more than a partisan exercise designed to divide the country further.

They have brazenly appointed an openly pro-impeachment Democrat to preside over the trial. This is not fair or impartial, and it hardly encourages any kind of unity for the country.

If we are about to try to impeach a president, then where is the chief justice? If the accused is no longer president, then where is the constitutional power to impeach him?

Private citizens don’t get impeached. Impeachment is for removal from office, and the accused here has already left office.

Hyperpartisan Democrats are about to drag our great country down into the gutter of rancor and vitriol, the likes of which have never been seen in our nation’s history. Instead of doing the nation’s work with their new control of the House, Senate, and executive branch, Democrats are wasting the people’s time on a partisan vendetta against a man no longer in office. It’s almost as if they have no ability to exist except in opposition to Donald Trump. Without him as their boogeyman, they might have to legislate, and actually convince the public that their policy prescriptions are the right ones.

Democrats are about to do something no self-respecting senator has ever stooped to. They are insisting the election is actually not over, and so they insist on regurgitating its bitterness. In the past, calmer heads have typically prevailed in our history and allowed public opinion to cast blame where blame is deserved.

China Is Wasting No Time In Testing Biden Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-1-25-china-is-wasting-no-time-in-testing-biden

If you were to consider a job description of the President of the United States, about 80% of it would involve issues of national defense and foreign policy — dealing with the other countries of the world, and keeping America safe. All of the responsibility for defense and foreign policy of the United States is under the personal control of whoever is the President. Whatever else you might have thought of him, and whether or not you agreed with his approach on any given issue, President Trump at least took his responsibilities in these areas seriously. Now we have Joe Biden.

To give you an idea of how seriously Biden takes his responsibilities, when he was Vice President he thought that it was perfectly OK for his son Hunter to travel with him on Air Force 2 to China in 2013 to solicit investments from Chinese-government-controlled funds. And Joe thought it was perfectly OK for Hunter’s company to accept an investment of approximately $1 billion of Chinese-government-controlled money, with Hunter having a prospective ownership interest in management fees charged on that investment. And then in 2017, after Joe had left the Vice Presidency but was planning a run for President, Joe thought it was perfectly OK for his son Hunter to negotiate a joint venture with a Chinese-government-controlled energy company. And then, when the joint venture didn’t go forward, Joe thought it was perfectly OK for Hunter to get a $5 million “non-interest-bearing forgivable loan” from this Chinese energy company.

Can you remember all the way back to January 6? That was the day — with Trump safely headed for the exit door — that China chose to make its move against Hong Kong, rounding up some 53 of the principal opposition politicians who were attempting to run in legislative elections in that city. Now only a couple of weeks on, that event (and its aftermath) seems to have completely faded from mainstream news coverage around here.

Does Joe Know?   He is, effectively, a hologram. By Lisa Schiffren

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/25/does-joe-know/

For those of us watching this made-for-TV special in which a totalitarian cabal at the core of the Democratic Party takes over America while we are locked at home, one question arises: Does the mentally impaired Joseph R. Biden know that he was put into the presidency by a small committee* of hard Left operatives, and is currently serving as a figurehead, as all decisions about policy and personnel are made by others? 

Or does he think that he really is “the president,” with all that usually entails? 

Does he believe that 81 million adult American citizens voted for him after he failed to answer basic questions about what he would do in office, while hiding in his basement all summer? When he thinks about his support across this great continent, does he see the faces of those who showed up to signal assent? The crowds? The four or six or 11 people in tiny yards, in random places? How could he not know, you wonder . . . ? But, ego.

Does Joe know that he is, effectively, a hologram—a 3D projection in space, retaining outward signs of being a sentient human— whose mental processes have been taken over by the committee? That earpiece he wears, who is speaking into it? Remember, he wore it at the debate, too. How does that work? It’s hard to just repeat words as they come into your ear, with anything like normal inflection. Those dark contact lenses he is wearing—what does he see?

When he sits at the Resolute desk, with a stack of executive orders to sign for the cameras, and the sheets of paper he is signing are blank… surely he knows. Unless he sees something else. 

And let’s discuss the content of those EOs for a second: Joe Biden is an unprincipled panderer, but he is not personally hard Left. He swore up and down at his second debate that he would not end fracking or shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, putting tens of thousands of American union members out of work, thus ensuring a steep rise in energy prices. Yet he signed that order on day one. Would the real Joe Biden have signed EOs allowing China to meddle in the U.S. energy grid?  Or agree to destroy women’s sports?

The key question is, does Joe know the timeline for his departure? We can’t be sure, but the satirical news site the Babylon Bee gives him 100 days, as of January 22.