NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Are the Walls Closing in on the Bidens? When a protection racket starts to sink. by Tim Graham

Posted By on August 1st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/are-the-walls-closing-in-on-the-bidens/

Everyone paying attention to the latest revelations about Hunter Biden and his energetically supportive father knows that journalists and Republican officials have opened a vein, or “the walls are closing in.” Even so, the leftist media are trying to report as little of this damaging scandal material as they possibly can.

We can scarcely imagine the anxious political chatter inside pro-Biden newsrooms, but let’s imagine it sounds something like Jen Psaki’s MSNBC show. Psaki brought all her persuasive pressure on former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan to recant how he tweeted former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden were both unpopular and “both potentially face very serious legal troubles.” It should apparently be unthinkable to compare them. Psaki argued, “Hunter Biden is not in office, he’s not serving in government … not equivalent!”

New scoops are underlining this is a Joe Biden scandal. The New York Post reported Hunter Biden’s former business partner and friend, Devon Archer, will be testifying that he put Joe Biden on the phone with his business associates from Burisma at least two dozen times. That’s worse than the story of Hunter intimidating foreign clients by claiming his dad is in the room, listening in.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

New York City: A Sanctuary No More Frantic Dems now drowning in the cesspool of their own creation. by Byron York

Posted By on August 1st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/new-york-city-a-sanctuary-no-more/

Recently, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city has printed thousands of flyers it plans to distribute at the U.S.-Mexico border. The flyer has a simple message to illegal border-crossers: Don’t come to New York.

The headline is in all caps: “UPDATES TO ASYLUM-SEEKERS FROM THE CITY OF NEW YORK.” The flyer goes on to say that more than 90,000 migrants have come to the city since April of last year. Now, the handout says, “There is no guarantee we will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals.” The flyer goes on to warn, “Housing in NYC is very expensive,” as is the cost of “food, transportation and other necessities.”

And then the message: “Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the U.S.”

Adams also announced that New York is going to get tough with migrants who are already in the city and are staying in its shelters. “In the coming days, the city will begin providing 60 days’ notice to adult asylum-seekers to find alternative housing paired with intensified casework services to help adult asylum-seekers explore other housing options and take the next step in their journey,” a city statement said. “Each asylum-seeker given notice will have multiple touchpoints with caseworkers over their 60 days to discuss their options and plan their next steps.” The short version of that is: We’re kicking you out. Find somewhere to go.

Adams, a Democrat, has come a long way since 2019, when he was the borough president of Brooklyn and, like some others in his city’s government, wanted to attack then-President Donald Trump’s policy on immigration. “Make no mistake, New York City will ALWAYS stand up to Donald Trump and call out his cynical plots to divide our country,” Adams tweeted on April 16, 2019. “To anyone in the world fleeing hatred and oppression, the ultimate city of immigrants wants you to remember: You’re ALWAYS welcome here.”

As it turned out, ALWAYS did not actually mean always. It didn’t even mean five years. Now, just four years after his everlasting commitment, Adams is telling illegal immigrants to stay away.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Change Hasn’t Set the World on Fire It turns out the percentage of the globe that burns each year has been declining since 2001. By Bjorn Lomborg

Posted By on August 1st, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-hasnt-set-the-world-on-fire-global-warming-burn-record-low-713ad3a6?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

One of the most common tropes in our increasingly alarmist climate debate is that global warming has set the world on fire. But it hasn’t. For more than two decades, satellites have recorded fires across the planet’s surface. The data are unequivocal: Since the early 2000s, when 3% of the world’s land caught fire, the area burned annually has trended downward.

In 2022, the last year for which there are complete data, the world hit a new record-low of 2.2% burned area. Yet you’ll struggle to find that reported anywhere.

Instead, the media acts as if the world is ablaze. In late 2021, the New York Times employed more than 40 staff on a project called “Postcards from a World on Fire,” headed by a photorealistic animation of the world in flames. Its explicit goal was to convince readers of the climate crisis’ immediacy through a series of stories of climate-change-related devastation across the world, including the 2019-20 wildfires in Australia.

This summer, the focus has been on Canada’s wildfires, the smoke from which covered large parts of the Northeastern U.S. Both the Canadian prime minister and the White House have blamed climate change.

Yet the latest report by the United Nations’ climate panel doesn’t attribute the area burned globally by wildfires to climate change. Instead, it vaguely suggests the weather conditions that promote wildfires are becoming more common in some places. Still, the report finds that the change in these weather conditions won’t be detectable above the natural noise even by the end of the century.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Why Universities Should Get Rid Of DEI Statements Tom Hafer and Henry I. Miller

Posted By on August 1st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/01/why-universities-should-get-rid-of-dei-statements/                                                                                                        

Many U.S. universities, including MIT, our alma mater, now require Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) statements in applications for tenure-track professorships, and even for graduate students.  In many cases it is the first filter for applicants, so you may be the new Einstein but if your DEI statement says something like, “I treat all people equally regardless of race or gender,” you will be out of luck.  As discussed below, that isn’t what is meant by DEI, which demands fealty to equity – that is, equal outcomes – not equal opportunity free of discrimination.

Mandatory political pronouncements such as the anti-Communist oaths of the 1950s and 1960s were long ago ruled unconstitutional by U.S. courts. And given the recent Supreme Court decisions regarding affirmative action and freedom of speech, mandatory DEI statements should also be eliminated.

What is DEI, and why might there be objections, legal and ethical, to it?

Let’s start with the words themselves. Here is what Google (via Oxford Languages) says for Diversity: “the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.”  

Note what is not there: anything about a range of different ideas or viewpoints. But it is new ideas that will define future progress, not superficial differences such as skin color, ethnicity, or gender. And how does this comport with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s invocation to judge men not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character? Have we abandoned that?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Happened to Robert Malley? The downfall of the White House’s favorite Iran whisperer is a mystery wrapped inside a cover-up BY Lee Smith

Posted By on August 1st, 2023

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/what-really-happened-to-robert-malley-lee-smith

In late June, reports started circulating that White House heavy Robert Malley had been suspended from his job in the Joe Biden administration. That was surprising. Before he was pushed out, Malley had been seen as the visionary architect of the Democratic Party’s Middle East policy. He’d been Barack Obama’s conduit to Iran before Biden named him to do the same thing for his White House. For someone in his position to lose that job amid renewed talks with Iran was notable, but the most intriguing detail, hidden by the Biden team for months, was the reason why he was sidelined: He had reportedly mishandled classified documents.

So what was Malley doing that compelled the Bureau of Diplomatic Security to open an investigation on him before passing it to the FBI? Security clearances are a kind of currency in Washington and it’s unusual for a senior official to lose access to his colleagues’ secrets, especially a policymaker of Malley’s status. Had he been amassing boxes of documents in his home like former President Donald Trump? Had he taken classified documents from secure facilities and moved them to private work and residential spaces like Biden?

A large part of Malley’s work was to circulate information throughout the U.S.-based Iranian diaspora that eventually found its way to Tehran. According to Iran press reports that have foreign policy circles talking, those contacts are what got him in trouble. And the fact that the details about Malley’s suspension are coming from Iranian rather than U.S. media is a big clue that something big is missing from the White House’s highly minimized account.

At the beginning of July the Tehran Times, an Iranian regime English-language media outlet, published an article with insider details but no definite answer to the central mystery. According to the article, Malley’s clearance was suspended on April 21, two months before the news went public. Since then he’s met with CIA Director William Burns and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to try to resolve his situation but, according to the article, has not yet been granted an audience with Secretary of State (and high school classmate) Antony Blinken.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Uninvited Backbone of Israel’s Anti-Reform Movement by Steve Apfel

Posted By on August 1st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19853/ackbone-israel-anti-reform-movement

In the war of words over Israel’s judicial reform, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the disputants, the word “democracy” appears to have suffered a bit of a roughing-up.

“… Biden was wrong to intervene in the debate over Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms…. otherwise, Israeli officials may start commenting on Hunter Biden’s plea deal.” – Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Twitter, July 31, 2023.

So, the Biden Administration delivered an “either-or” threat: stop the judicial reform or break our special relationship. The break had actually already begun with President Barack Obama, who became quixotically committed to a policy to finance and enable Israel’s self-declared arch-enemy — “Death to Israel” should probably qualify one as an arch-enemy — unlimited nuclear weapons, billions of dollars to manufacture them; ballistic missiles to deliver them, and loose change for Iran’s mullahs to continue “exporting” their Revolution into Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Latin America.

“… the lawyers were all on one side, and they were all working to help Hunter Biden. The were all working to hide a blanket immunity agreement from the judge…” — Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, Fox News, July 28, 2023.

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” then-presidential candidate Barack Obama declared a few days before the 2008 presidential election, somehow neglecting to say what he was planning to transform it into.

FBI agents, in an illegal “state action,” attempted an end-run around the First Amendment, dishonestly colluding with Facebook and other tech companies to censor news reports about Hunter Biden’s 2020 election-altering “Laptop from Hell.”

Team Biden, in the person of Antony Blinken, had reportedly called Mike Morell to get what ultimately turned out to be 51 former intelligence officials to sign a letter falsely alleging that the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the earmarks of a Russian intelligence operation.” That letter, it turned out, was the real disinformation.

It was countered immediately on Fox Business by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. “Let me be clear,” Ratcliffe said, “the intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports… that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign. It’s simply not true.”

What it all comes down to is that one party seemingly decided that Obama’s promise to radically transform America was too important to trust to the electorate.

Now Blinken and Biden are supposedly qualified to give Israel’s coalition government a lecture on judicial probity and democracy?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Justice Jackson’s Dissent on Affirmative Action Ruling Just Got Worse Matt Vespa

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/07/31/again-theres-another-glaring-error-in-justice-jacksons-affirmative-action-dissent-n2626414

We’re returning to the affirmative action case that sent liberal America into a tailspin. The late June ruling by the Supreme Court struck down the practice in higher education applications as unconstitutional, leading to a couple of days of rage from progressive commentators. It quickly died because not even black Americans supported the protocol; many Black Americans were not keen on the practice.

Overall, 63 percent of Americans oppose affirmative action procedures, with Asian Americans being one of the most vocal communities voicing their opposition. The liberal media hilariously tried to manufacture the narrative that Asians support affirmative action, despite 76 percent saying they don’t think race or ethnicity should be considered in the college application process.Yet, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in the companion case— Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina—raised some eyebrows when she cited shoddy data to justify the affirmative action process. In short, namely that black babies will die if this policy for college applications is scuttled:

“It saves lives. For marginalized communities in North Carolina, it is critically important that UNC and other area institutions produce highly educated professionals of color. Research shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly (including, for example, prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication). For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”

Association of American Medical Colleges, who filed an amicus brief in this matter, asked that a correction be issued because, mathematically, what Jackson said is impossible. Law professor Jonathan Turley added today that there’s another issue with the dissent: she cites how black doctors can better diagnose black patients regarding pain management.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Exclusive: Poll Shows Majority Of Americans Support Voter ID, Limited Mail-In Voting By: Shawn Fleetwood

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/31/exclusive-poll-shows-majority-of-americans-support-voter-id-limited-mail-in-voting/

New polling provided exclusively to The Federalist shows a vast majority of U.S. voters support election integrity initiatives such as voter ID requirements and limitations on the use of mail-in voting.

Conducted by the Honest Elections Project (HEP) from July 13-16, the survey reveals widespread support among the American electorate for common-sense election integrity policies. According to the poll, 88 percent of Americans support laws mandating voters show a form of ID in order to cast their ballot, including the vast majority of black (82 percent) and Hispanic voters (83 percent). Only 9 percent of those polled opposed ID requirements.

The survey’s findings paint a vastly different picture than the one crafted by legacy media and Democrat politicians, who for years have maliciously smeared voter ID laws as Republican-sponsored tools designed to “suppress” the votes of racial minorities. Two years ago, for example, Democrats and their propaganda press allies used this tactic to smear Georgia’s passage of an election integrity law that contained a provision mandating voter ID for absentee voting. President Joe Biden went so far as to label the bill “Jim Crow on steroids.”

Not only did Georgia experience record early voter turnout ahead of its Nov. 8 general election and Dec. 6 Senate runoff, but a poll conducted after the 2022 midterms revealed zero percent of black Georgia voters said they had a “poor” experience voting in the elections.

The HEP survey also found overwhelming opposition to noncitizens and minors voting in U.S. elections. In recent years, Democrat-controlled cities such as Washington, D.C., have passed measures permitting foreign nationals to vote in their respective municipal elections. Meanwhile, blue localities in states such as Maryland and California have passed measures allowing kids as young as 16 to vote in local elections.

According to HEP’s polling data, 89 percent of voters “think that American elections should only be for American citizens, including 82% of Democrats, 80% of Black voters, and 78% of Hispanic voters.” The survey also found 72 percent of voters oppose dropping the voting age to 16.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Dark Green Lunacy as a Cardinal Virtue Peter Smith

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2023/07/dark-green-lunacy-as-a-cardinal-virtue/

“We are not dealing with rational people. Explain until the cows come home that achieving net zero is impossible. Explain that wind, solar and batteries cannot replace a coal power station. Marshall your data, your facts. It will be to no avail. The inmates are running the show.”

John Clauser is an American physicist and the 2022 (joint) Nobel Prize winner. As we’ve heard, he was cancelled from addressing the IMF about “climate change.” Well, that’s understandable. I mean, he’s not a qualified climate scientist or anything. He’s not in the same league as, say, Greta Thunberg or Al Gore, John Kerry, António Guterres or Tim ‘dams won’t fill’ Flannery. Apparently, he knows a thing or two about quantum entanglement. This is where two particles interreact and separate but then, like identical twins, behave as though they are one, doing exactly the same things no matter how distant apart; apropos their direction of spin. Strange business.

Stranger still are climate-change ministers mirroring sub-atomic life; interacting at United Nations COP meetings before going home and spinning as one. Spruiking net zero, with the same cunning plans to get there. To wit, taxing emissions, banning the sale of ICE cars, and ordering by proxy thousands of turbine blades, solar panels and batteries from China. Might this similarity have piqued Clauser’s interest in climate science? Perhaps not.

Clauser has recently been elected to serve on the board of directors of the CO2 Coalition. Best to go to the source itself for reliable information on the Coalition; hence the link I’ve provided. Because, according to Wikipedia, “it spreads misinformation about climate change.” Misinformation, hmm? More like disinformation, if you ask me. Don’t let them off the hook. The Coalition sets out deliberately, with nothing less than malice aforethought towards the IPCC, to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What perfidy is that?

Back to Clauser. Maybe he knows a little more about climate science than you would think. More than does your average quantum physicist; if you can describe quantum physicists as average. Anyway he has a theory. In a nutshell, he believes that cumulous clouds keep the earth’s temperature fairly stable. He reckons that when sunlight reaches the earth it evaporates sea water – covering two-thirds of the earth’s surface – producing cumulous clouds which reflect back 90 percent of the sunlight which hits them. It’s akin to a thermostat controlling the temperature. The warmer it gets, the more evaporation, the more cumulous clouds, the more sunlight reflected back. Viola! He further reckons that the radiative heat transfer rate associated with atmospheric CO2 is “nearly two orders of magnitude smaller than the effective stabilisation of the input-power provided by the cloud-based thermostat.” Thus he believes that the effect of CO2 is diddly squat, to put it in precise scientific language. If I remember rightly, Richard Lindzen also refers to clouds reflecting back sunlight. It seems worthwhile investigating. That is, if you had an interest in discovering the truth and weren’t as mad as a hatter.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Justice Sotomayor’s Supreme Court Staff Sold Her Books By Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/07/31/justice_sotomayor_uses_supreme_court_staff_to_sell_books_969348.html

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s taxpayer-funded staff helped organize events to sell her books, for which she has made $3.7 million since joining the court in 2009, according to an Associated Press investigation. Her salary on the court is $285,000.

In 2019, Sotomayor hosted an event at a Portland public library for her book “Just Ask!” Before the event, a Sotomayor aide emailed the organizers, informing them they had not bought enough books. “For an event with 1,000 people and they have to have a copy of Just Ask to get into the line, 250 books is definitely not enough,” said her aide, Anh Le, in an email, the AP reported.

Staff pushed books at other events as well. Before events at UC Davis Law School, University of Wisconsin, Clemson University, and Michigan State University, taxpayer-funded staff pushed organizers to buy books, or to buy more than their original order. Some books were shipped to the Supreme Court, where her staff brought them to her to sign in her chambers.

The court defended Sotomayor, saying in a statement that, “When [Sotomayor] is invited to participate in a book program, Chambers staff recommends the number of books (for an organization to order) based on the size of the audience so as not to disappoint attendees who may anticipate books being available at an event.”

What’s more, Sotomayor’s publisher, Penguin Random House, has had several matters before the court in which Sotomayor did not recuse herself.

“Justice Sotomayor would have recused in cases in which Penguin Random House was a party, in light of her close and ongoing relationship with the publisher,” the Supreme Court said in a statement. “An inadvertent omission failed to bring Penguin’s participation in several cases to her attention; those cases ultimately were not selected for review by the Court. Chambers’ conflict check procedures have since been changed.”