Sheila Jackson Lee Introduces Bill to Criminalize ‘Hate Speech’ When leftists don’t even pretend anymore. by Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/sheila-jackson-lee-introduces-bill-to-criminalize-hate-speech/

Leftists don’t even make much of a pretense anymore; they don’t believe in the freedom of speech, and they mean to deny it to their political opponents. This is by far the most disturbing aspect of their agenda, for without the freedom to dissent, a tyrant can operate without any restraint whatsoever. Without the freedom of speech, there simply is no free society.

The latest example of the Left’s war on dissent comes from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Reparations), who has just introduced a bill in the House, the “Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023.” Only vicious racists could possibly object to combating white supremacy, right? Actually, the bill is cleverly framed, but like so many other Congressional initiatives, it’s far more insidious than its name would suggest.

The bill is designed to “prevent and prosecute white supremacy inspired hate crime and conspiracy to commit white supremacy inspired hate crime and to amend title 18, United States Code, to expand the scope of hate crimes.” The framers of the bill were thoughtful enough to provide a helpful explanation: “A person engages in a white supremacy inspired hate crime when white supremacy ideology has motivated the planning, development, preparation, or perpetration of actions that constituted a crime or were undertaken in furtherance of activity that, if effectuated, would have constituted a crime.”

How Facebook Stifles Ex-Muslims in Norway It’s not just in America that social media clamps down on speech. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-facebook-stifles-ex-muslims-in-norway/

Thanks to Elon Musk, we’re now beginning to see solid evidence of the remarkable degree to which the social-media giants – in collaboration with Democratic politicians, intelligence agencies, and the corporate media –have striven to stifle their ideological opponents. But even the Twitter Files, at least the ones that have been made public so far, don’t satisfactorily convey the worldwide extent of Silicon Valley’s mischief. One of the most egregious cases that have come to my own attention recently is that of Ex-Muslims of Norway (EX-MN), which describes itself on its website as standing “for universal rights and secularism” and for the right of Muslims to criticize their religion and, if they wish, to leave it. The members of EX-MN emphasize their identity as ex-Muslims “because we will not be done with Islam until the Islamic mentality is modernized or Islam is cast onto the rubbish heap of history.”

Founded in 2016 by three writer/journalists – the Turkish-born Cemal Knudsen Yucel, the Iranian-born Lily Bandehy, and the late Iraqi–born Walid al-Kubaisi – EX-MN opposes forced marriage; polygamy; genital mutilation; child hijab; burkas; sexual segregation; taxpayer financing for religious institutions; religious intimidation and threats; and blasphemy laws. And it supports untrammeled freedom of speech. By way of promoting these worthy stances, EX-MN holds seminars, takes part in international conferences and demonstrations, sends its members to speak in schools and at public events, and posts videos on YouTube (most of them in English) about such topics as Koran burning, the concept of “Islamophobia,” pro-hijab Western feminists, and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

The Recycling Religion By John Stossel

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/01/18/the-recycling-religion-n1662662

For decades, we’ve been told: recycle!

“If we’re not using recycled paper, we’re cutting down more trees!” says Lynn Hoffman, co-president of Eureka Recycling.

Recycling paper (or cardboard) does save trees. Recycling aluminum does save energy. But that’s about it.

The ugly truth is that many “recyclables” sent to recycling plants are never recycled. The worst is plastic.

Even Greenpeace now says, “Plastic recycling is a dead-end street.”  

Hoffman often trucks it to a landfill.

Years ago, science writer John Tierney wrote a New York Times Magazine story, “Recycling Is Garbage.” It set a Times record for hate mail.

But what he wrote was true.

“It’s even more true today,” says Tierney in my new video. “Recycling is an industry that uses increasingly expensive labor to produce materials that are worth less and less.”

Mexico Is Not Really an American Friend By Victor Davis Hanson

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2023/01/19/mexico-is-not-really-an-american-friend-n1663061

Left-wing Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador recently praised a visiting President Joe Biden: “Just imagine: There are 40 million Mexicans in the United States — 40 million who were born here in Mexico, [or] who are the children of people who were born in Mexico!”

Why wouldn’t Obrador be delighted? Since Biden took office in January 2021, America has allowed some 5-6 million illegal entries across its southern border.

Obrador further congratulated the malleable Biden, whom he apparently sees as a kindred but complacent left-wing spirit: “You are the first president of the United States in a very long time that has not built even one meter of wall.”

Translated that means Mexico is delighted the United States now cares little about the security of its own border, the disappearance of which apparently is wonderful news for Mexico.

Note that Mexico itself facilitates illegal transits across its own southern border — as long as such Central American and other global migrants keep heading northward into the United States.

But when or if they pause, try to stay in Mexico, commit crimes, or expect Mexican social services, then almost immediately Mexico City sends thousands of troops to close its border with Guatemala, deports the illegal crossers, and revives talk of building a border wall of its own.

Biden has demolished America’s southern border. His illegal nullification of U.S. immigration law is music to Obrador’s ears.

But it is a nightmare to Americans who poll overwhelming disapproval of the subversion of their own border security. They are exhausted by the influx of death-dealing drugs. And they are furious over the hundreds of billions of dollars diverted from their own strapped social services to attend to the needs of foreign nationals who have broken their laws.

Even overwhelmed blue sanctuary cities that once boasted of nullifying federal immigration law are now beginning to object to Biden’s complicity in Mexico’s manipulation of the border.

D.C. City Council Overrides Mayor’s Veto of Criminal Justice ‘Reform’ That Would Lessen Penalties for Violent Crime By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/01/18/d-c-city-council-overrides-mayors-veto-of-criminal-justice-reform-that-would-lessen-penalties-for-violent-crime-n1662915

Washington, D.C. is in the midst of a violent crime epidemic, but that didn’t stop the all-Democrat city council from overriding Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto to pass a criminal justice reform bill that contains several problematic provisions, including lessening the penalties for violent crimes and allowing people charged with a misdemeanor to demand a trial — a move experts say will cause the D.C. court system to collapse under a tsunami of unnecessary and expensive trials.

Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto argued, “allowing the veto to stand would be a significant step back in our work to modernize the criminal code, negating years of work, compromise, and engagement by the council.”

It’s true. The city council has been writing, debating, and massaging this bill for 16 years. But is that any reason to pass a bill if it’s bad?

Bowser’s objections were straightforward. “Anytime there’s a policy that reduces penalties, I think that sends the wrong message. That takes the focus off using guns or possessing guns, and I think that’s the wrong way to go,” Bowser wrote about her decision to veto.

Washington Post:

The bill would, among other things, eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, allow for jury trials in almost all misdemeanor cases, and reduce the maximum penalties for offenses such as burglaries, carjackings and robberies. Law enforcement leaders had expressed concern that it could burden an already stretched court system and would send the wrong message to residents at a time when the city is struggling with gun violence.

Media Reach New Low With Biden’s Classified Docs

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/19/is-george-santos-a-bigger-scandal-than-bidens-classified-docs-the-legacy-media-thinks-so/

If you weighted the importance of scandal based on the amount of media coverage generated in recent weeks, you’d think that George Santos is the biggest threat the nation currently faces. Bigger even than Donald Trump, and much bigger than President Joe Biden, who has hoarded highly classified documents in unsecured locations for the past six years.

Who is George Santos, you ask? He’s nobody. He’s just one of 435 congressmen elected in the 2022 midterms. He’s someone who would normally get zero press attention, even if he had done something incredibly stupid like lie about his background to get elected.

But Santos, you see, is a newly elected Republican lawmaker from New York, one of a handful from that state, who won a swing district on Long Island and now serves in a House where the GOP holds a tiny majority.

For that reason – and that alone – he’s become the subject of an absolute media frenzy. An army of reporters follows him wherever he goes, demanding that he answer for his “crimes” and explain why he won’t step down. Reporters are plumbing every angle and looking into every crack and crevice to keep this story on the front page.

Jonathan Turley: Hunter Biden laptop-denier now admits emails are real. Don’t let him get away with it Intel officials who signed Hunter Biden laptop letter are seeking plausible deniability

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/hunter-biden-laptop-denier-now-admits-emails-real-dont-let-him-get-away-with-it

Douglas Wise, a former Defense Intelligence Agency deputy director and former senior CIA operations officer, is back in the news this week. 

In an interview with The Australian, Wise admits that he and others always knew that the emails on the Hunter Biden laptop were likely genuine. It was a remarkable admission from one of more than 50 former intelligence officials who signed a letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election as likely “Russian disinformation.” 

Yet, Wise still maintains that, while true, he and the other officials were right to call it out as likely “disinformation.” Arguing that something is true, but still constitutes disinformation sounds a lot like . . . well . . . disinformation.

The infamous letter from the former intel officials (including such Democrat figures like John Brennan, James Clapper, Leon Panetta, and Jeremy Bash) was used by the media to assure the public that there was nothing to see in the scandal. It was the perfect deflection in giving a cooperative media cover to bury the story of how the Biden family engaged in influence peddling worth millions with foreign figures, including some with foreign intelligence connections.

It worked beautifully. It was not until two years later that NPR, the New York Times, and other media outlets got around to telling the public the truth.

Now some of the signatories are trying to rehabilitate themselves. It is not hard. Figures like Bash have been rewarded for their loyalty. Others like Brennan and Clapper have become regulars on CNN to continue to give their takes on intelligence.

What The Left Tells Us About the Left. Part Four Victor Davis Hanson

https://victorhanson.com/what-the-left-tells-us-about-the-left-part-four/

Police Killing of the Unarmed

Following George Floyd’s death, the Left went ballistic that the Washington Post of all places had found that unarmed black suspects were not necessarily killed in percentages higher than the percentages of blacks among the some 11 million who were arrested each year.

The distinguished Harvard University economist Roland Fryer (an African American) looked at police shootings in Houston and did not find that racial bias was a major factor in the use of deadly force.

The point, then, is that there is little data to suggest that white officers are systematically and inordinately lethally shooting unarmed black suspects. (Note that shortly after his research was published, Fryer was conveniently charged with sexual harassment—resulting mostly from off-color jokes—at Harvard and was put on leave by the university, and had his brilliant career essentially aborted if not destroyed.)

Videos changed the country forever on May 25, 2020. The smart phone clips appeared with a white Minnesota police officer with his knee on the neck of a black arrested suspect who later died. Autopsies (more than one) followed that variously suggested that either drugs or the deliberate use of the officer’s knee to obstruct Floyd’s breathing or both mostly caused Floyd’s death.

The major facts were mostly not in dispute: George Floyd, a career felon, who had been charged, convicted, and incarcerated for prior felonies, including a home-invasion robbery, during which he put a loaded pistol to the stomach of a pregnant woman, was arrested on reports he was attempting to pass counterfeit U.S. currency.

US-Israel Kinship: Part 1 and Part 2 The Early Pilgrims as the Modern Day Exodus VIDEO

Part 1 The Early Pilgrims as the Modern Day Exodus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxOmhEYHhUs

Part 2 The Founding Fathers, Moses and the Bible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHssQLeKuVQ&t=2s

Israeli attorney general and legal advisers in judicial reformers’ crosshairs The government’s legal reform package calls for making ministry legal advisers’ opinions non-binding, putting an end to what it calls the “subjugation of the government to an unelected rank.” by David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/attorney-general-and-legal-advisers-in-judicial-reformers-crosshairs/

The Netanyahu government’s plan to enact wide-ranging judicial reform has taken center stage in Israeli politics, causing tens of thousands of opponents to take to the streets. On Monday, the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee will debate a part of the plan dealing with the proper role of ministry legal advisers, chief among them the attorney general (the position’s formal title is “Legal Adviser to the Government”).

The draft legislation heading to committee would allow ministers to choose whether or not to follow legal advisers’ opinions. “Legal advice given to the prime minister and any minister of the government will not bind them,” the bill’s summary states. “The government, the prime minister and any minister of the government may reject the legal advice and act contrary to it.”

Justice Minister Yariv Levin, in unveiling the “first stage” of his judicial reform plan on Jan. 4, stressed that the legal advisers are “advisers, not deciders, who represent the government and not their personal positions.” He called for an end to the “subjugation of the government to an unelected rank.”

They’re bringing legal advisers back down to earth, “making them understand that they’re advisers, that they’re not in control,” Haran Fainstein, a retired Israeli judge who teaches at Bar-Ilan University’s Department of Criminology, told JNS.

“There’s no law that says a government representative has to act according to his or her legal advisers’ wishes. It was a decision of the Supreme Court years ago that made it mandatory. It was Shamgar who made the decision,” said Fainstein.