HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Biden’s DHS: Department of Homeland Surrender Alejandro Mayorkas, architect of DACA, picked by Biden to head DHS. Michael Cutler

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/under-biden-dhs-would-become-department-homeland-michael-cutler/

On May 5, 2005 the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims conducted a hearing on the topic, New ”Dual Missions” Of The Immigration Enforcement Agencies.

I was one of the four witnesses who testified at that hearing.

One paragraph in particular from Chairman Hostettler’s statement at that hearing back then, is of particular significance today, as we consider what will happen if Joe Biden is sworn in as President of the United States:

The 9/11 terrorists all came to the United States without weapons or contraband—Added customs enforcement would not have stopped 9/11 from happening. What might have foiled al Qaeda’s plan was additional immigration focus, vetting and enforcement. And so what is needed is recognition that, one, immigration is a very important national security issue that cannot take a back seat to customs or agriculture. Two, immigration is a very complex issue, and immigration enforcement agencies need experts in immigration enforcement. And three, the leadership of our immigration agencies should be shielded from political pressures to act in a way which could compromise the Nation’s security.

Now we come to Biden’s choice for the vital position of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. Remember Biden has pledged to create a massive legalization program for unknown millions of illegal aliens. The DHS enforces and administers America’s immigration laws and thus would bear the responsibility for administering this ill-conceived program.

I addressed my concerns about this amnesty in my earlier piece: “Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ is Bunk.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Lockdowns and Other Madness The coronavirus changed everything. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/lockdowns-and-other-madness-bruce-thornton/

Historians of the future will look back on the pandemic of 2020 as the occasion for one of this country’s worst unforced errors ever. The policies that the blue state mayors and governors of our most populous cities and states enacted were equal parts hysteria and politics, all the while they were touted as “following the science.” The lives of millions have been damaged, the economy willfully stalled, and a presidential campaign tainted with electoral fraud.

No enemy could have dreamed up a more insidious and devastating attack than those policies and their consequences, the ramifications of which will last for years––businesses lost, children harmed by isolation and their educations being interrupted, and the “deaths of despair” from depression, drug and alcohol abuse, unemployment, and domestic violence that typically follow economic depressions and natural disasters.

This disaster happened not just because the virus was new and its nature unknown. It soon became apparent that politics was driving the response. The progressive Democrats and Republican NeverTrumpers have for four years stewed in their bitter, irrational anger over losing the presidential election to an outsider like Donald Trump, who sneered at their technocratic pretensions, hypocritical “democratic norms,” and long record of policy failures both at home and abroad. He smashed the cognitive elites’ received wisdom and hypocritical “principles,” challenging the foundations of their power and influence.

So they set out to destroy him. They corrupted our federal investigative apparatus, jumped Constitutional guardrails, and fed anonymous mendacious leaks to a compliant media. When the “Russia collusion” canard collapsed, they turned to preposterous articles of impeachment that quickly imploded in the Senate. But nothing worked.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Texas A&M Threatens Student with Investigation, Possible Discipline for Posting Trump Signs By Bryan Preston

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/culture/bryan-preston/2020/12/06/texas-am-threatens-student-for-posting-trump-signs-n1194499

The fifth-ranked Texas A&M Aggie football team whomped Auburn on Saturday, 31-20. But today there’s a question of whether Aggieland is losing its soul.

Campus Reform tells us about student Dion Okeke (Class of 2022) finding himself on the receiving end of a threatening letter from one Jessica Welsch, who is Student Code of Conduct Office Assistant Coordinator. In the letter, Welsch demands Okeke’s presence at a meeting in January regarding an “incident” that occurred in November 2020.

Okeke’s crime? He placed Trump signs on campus prior to the election. The campus police were aware, and after initially trying to stop him on a claim of “ground damage,” allowed him to proceed. But they or someone reported him to the university, involving Welsch’s office.

Welsch wrote to Okeke:

“In response to this information, I would like to meet with you to discuss the circumstances surrounding this incident, your perspective, and how you can be successful as a student at Texas A&M University,” Welsch wrote.

Okeke is “required” to reach out to the Student Conduct Office by phone before January 22, 2021 to schedule the meeting, or an “administrative hold [may be] placed on [his] registration.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Judge Orders Forensic Audit of Dominion Voting Machines in Michigan By Matt Margolis

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/12/06/huge-judge-orders-forensic-audit-of-dominion-voting-machines-in-michigan-n1194602

The Trump campaign is celebrating a huge legal victory after Circuit Judge Kevin Elsenheimer said he would allow investigators to conduct a forensic examination of 22 Dominion voting machines used on Election Day in Antrim County, Michigan.

“Our team is going to be able to go in this morning at about 8:30 and will be there for about eight hours to conduct that forensic examination and we’ll have the results in about 48 hours, and that’ll tell us a lot about these machines,” Trump election attorney Jenna Ellis told Fox News.

Rudy Giuliani called the order a “big win” for honest elections, though the legal challenge is actually not related to the presidential election. Judge Elsenheimer’s order stems from a challenge by a voter who claims that ballots were damaged during a recount of a village marijuana proposal that just barely passed. Antrim County infamously showed Joe Biden as the winner of the county before a “human error” was discovered and Trump was revealed the true winner of the county by several thousand votes.

Lawsuits allege that nearly 300,000 votes were manipulated in Michigan. Dominion “is responsible for “the injection or fabrication, of 289,866 illegal votes in Michigan, that must be disregarded,” says expert witness Russell Ramsland Jr.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Pendulum Notches Down By Mark Ellis

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/columns/mark-ellis/2020/12/06/the-pendulum-notches-down-n1194202

Hundreds of courageous citizens are stepping forward from out the inner-city vote-counting sanctums and finding their voice. Their voices, combined together in a condemnatory chorus, bode ill for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

The evidentiary pendulum notched down last week, ever closer to the lifeblood organs of a concerted and thuggish scheme now strapped down on a slab by Rudy Giuliani and the President Trump legal team. At the very least, any potential Biden/Harris administration is doomed to asterisk from the standpoint of historical legacy. It is in no way clear that they came close to winning the 2020 election.

At best, President Trump gets his rightful four more years.

It may not even be Biden’s fault. It’s quite plausible that he cannot grasp how thoroughly and blatantly the operative apparatchiks plotted to commit the political crime of this or any century. Vice-presidential tag-along Kamala Harris, reeking of Venezuelan-reminiscent totalitarian stacked-deck vote counts, would likely know, however.

In America, even as the “good crisis” represented by COVID is not wasted by the Left, citizens can still come forward and testify. They are coming forward by the score, under penalty of perjury and jail time, some near tears, others with righteous indignation, and some possessed of the quiet calm of people who have witnessed something awesome and terrible. Something that speaks of the end of empires, the collapse of republics.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Is The President Our Daddy Who’s Supposed To Keep Us Healthy?

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/07/is-the-president-our-daddy-whos-supposed-to-keep-us-healthy/

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, much to the delight of the Democratic press, maligned President Donald Trump last week over the coronavirus pandemic, calling his leadership “a great human tragedy.” Are we alone continually puzzled as to why the head of the federal government is being held responsible for sickness and death from a natural cause? We shouldn’t be.

The Dec. 3 comment from Romney is at least the second time the 2012 Republican presidential nominee has been critical of the Trump White House’s response to the virus. In August he said “it’s fair to say we really have not distinguished ourselves in a positive way by how we responded to the crisis when it was upon us,” in what the media described as a “rare Republican criticism of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response.”

This should not have to be said, and won’t be well received by those relieved that America will have a “mommy” again in Jill Biden, but the president is not our father. It’s not his job to keep us healthy, to make personal decisions for us, to protect us from disease. We are not Washington’s children, and the government, from the White House and U.S. Capitol down to the smallest town, is not our nanny.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Sen. Braun Defends Election Fraud Probes, Says Legal Process Must Play Out By Isabel van Brugen

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/sen-braun-defends-election-fraud-probes-says-legal-process-must-play-out_3607332.html

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) on Sunday said he supports the ongoing probes into alleged voter fraud in the Nov. 3 presidential election, saying that half of the country is “uncertain” about the election outcome and that legal processes must be allowed to play out.

Braun made the remarks during an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week,” which saw host George Stephanopoulos ask Braun why he isn’t accepting yet that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump in the election, despite ongoing legal challenges nationwide.

Stephanopoulos noted that at least 38 of more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump’s legal team and his allies, have been dismissed by judges in the lower courts.

“I think it’s easy to say it’s played out because that might be the most convenient thing to say,” Braun challenged back. “Whether we dismiss it, reflexively, whether we would find widespread fraud … there’s a wide gulf in between. And I think that when you just say that there’s nothing there, you’re going to have half of the country uncertain about what just happened and disgruntled going into the future.”

A number of states and news outlets have declared Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election. The Epoch Times won’t declare a winner until all results are certified and any legal challenges are resolved.

While media outlets can make their own projections as to the winner of the election, state electors and the Electoral College are the bodies that are officially tasked with declaring a presidential winner. Each state has different deadlines for when officials must certify their election results, and the Electoral College votes on Dec. 14. The Joint Session of Congress will then read the votes on Jan. 6, 2021, which can be challenged. The president-elect is then sworn in on Jan. 20.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Georgia Elections Supply Web Store Hosted on Canadian Platform By Ivan Pentchoukov

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/georgia-elections-supply-web-store-hosted-on-canadian-platform_3607176.html

The website used to order blank ballots and other election supplies from the office of Georgia’s secretary of state is hosted on Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce platform that admitted it was breached not long before Election Day.

The unique address of the website appears on the bottom of order records from local elections offices, some of which were discarded near the secretary of state’s distribution warehouse.

The shop’s landing page is protected by a password.

“The Georgia Elections Supply Store is for Georgia Election Officials only. It is password protected. If you do not know the password and you would like access to the store, please contact Rachell Simmons at the Secretary of State’s office,” the page states, before listing the email and phone number for Simmons.

Exposing the emails and phone numbers of officials involved in disseminating the password for the website leaves them vulnerable to phishing attempts.

An order slip discarded near the Georgia secretary of state’s warehouse in Atlanta shows that the Georgia Official Elections Supply Store is hosted on Shopify. (Anonymous Submission via Epoch Times)

Local election officials use the website to order blank absentee ballots, ballot envelopes, oath envelopes, applications for voter registration, signs for ballot drop boxes, and other items. The Epoch Times can confirm that boxes appearing to contain these and other supplies were being loaded from the warehouse into a UPS truck. The UPS has not responded to a request for comment.

Shopify announced on Sept. 22 that two rogue members of its support team had breached the data of some 200 members. The company said at the time that it had referred the matter to the FBI.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Judge Denies Request for Hearing Extension to Allow Experts to Testify By Janita Kan

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-denies-request-for-hearing-extension-to-allow-experts-to-testify_3607105.html

A federal judge in Arizona has denied a request by attorney Sidney Powell’s team for an extension in an upcoming hearing so that expert witnesses can testify before the court.

Powell’s team made the request in its recently filed Arizona case, which alleges that manipulation to election software and other fraud in the state resulted in violations in the U.S. Constitution and state election laws. The lawsuit also claims that at least 400,000 illegal ballots were counted in the state’s 2020 general election.

The suit was filed on behalf of several Republicans in the state, including 11 electors. Powell’s team also filed a temporary restraining order seeking to immediately block Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey from delivering the certified election results to the electoral college while the court hears the case. Arizona certified its presidential election results on Nov. 30.

Judge Diane Joyce Humetewa subsequently filed a hearing to consider the temporary restraining order for Dec. 8 but later converted the hearing so that she could consider the defendant’s request to dismiss the case. Powell’s team then asked Humetewa whether she would extend the length of that hearing from one hour to three hours to allow three expert witnesses to testify over the vulnerability and risks of the state’s election software Dominion Voting Systems.

Among the witnesses named is Russell Ramsland, a former Republican Party candidate who currently works with the Allied Special Operations Group. He claims an affidavit that his company found vulnerabilities linked to Dominion, including weaknesses for “hacking and tampering.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Schumer’s Wages of ‘Resistance’ Senate Democrats did everything they could to delay Trump’s nominees. Republicans won’t forget. By John Barrasso

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/schumers-wages-of-resistance-11607279227?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Mr. Barrasso of Wyoming is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.

Thousands of angry protesters gathered on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, N.Y. Camped out in front of Chuck Schumer’s apartment building, the mob used bullhorns and signs to jeer the Senate minority leader.

The activist left was sending a message to Democrats: President Trump was unacceptable. They accused Mr. Schumer and his colleagues of being soft. Signs urged him to “show some spine” and to resist “by any means necessary.”

Nearly every Democratic senator eventually complied. Oregon’s Sen. Jeff Merkley vowed to obstruct the president’s nominees purely as “a protest” against Republicans. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut promised to “shatter precedent” to stymie nominations.

The result was unprecedented. As had been tradition, Presidents Clinton and Obama had nearly all of their cabinet confirmed in January. Mr. Clinton had 13 out of 14; Mr. Obama, 11 out of 15. Senate Democrats made sure Mr. Trump had only three.