IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Most Americans Don’t Know How Bad the Border Crisis Is Now we see what happens when the media ignore a story. by Byron York

Posted By on December 27th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/most-americans-dont-know-how-bad-the-border-crisis-is/

This week could mark the most consequential development on the U.S.-Mexico border since January 2021, when President Joe Biden essentially opened the nation’s doors to millions of illegal border crossers. Depending on how court fights turn out, Title 42, the Trump-era measure that allows the U.S. government to quickly return illegal crossers to Mexico on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID, will likely soon expire. After that, officials expect a flood of illegal crossers, all coming into the United States confident that they, like hundreds of thousands before them just this year, will be allowed to stay.

The disaster will come on top of the Biden administration’s currently disastrous border policy. In fiscal year 2022, the period from Oct. 1, 2021 to Sept. 30, 2022, Border Patrol agents encountered a record number of migrants crossing illegally into the United States — 2,378,944. Add onto that the estimated 600,000 illegal crossers who got away without any contact with the Border Patrol, and that means close to 3 million border crossers in a single year. The two months since the beginning of the new fiscal year have seen crossings at an even higher rate. And that is before the Title 42 change.

Already, the numbers have risen to unheard-of levels. Recently the Border Patrol reported encountering 16,000 migrants in just 48 hours — 8,000 per day. Compare that to the assessment of Jeh Johnson, President Barack Obama’s head of homeland security, who once said that 1,000 encounters a day constituted a crisis. Now, there are predictions that post-Title 42 encounters might hit as many as 14,000 a day.

Cities and towns along the border have been overwhelmed since the Biden changes took place. Look at these figures from El Paso, Texas, in a story by the Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli: “According to all the data that are publicly available from the city, the 678,000 residents of El Paso have seen 84,082 immigrants released into their town between August 22 and December 11.” That’s an extraordinary influx in the last few months, repeated in other U.S. communities along the border.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Whither Canada? By David Solway

Posted By on December 27th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/david-solway-2/2022/12/26/whither-canada-2-n1656418

How much can one country endure of this arrogance and deception?
– Brian Peckford, Peckford42

Canada has been much on my mind these days, weeks, months, and years, not only because I am a Canadian citizen, but because, like many of my American friends, I am witnessing firsthand the destruction of a country.

The current prime minister’s campaign, amounting to a kind of jihad, to destabilize the nation and create the world’s first “post-national state” proceeds on many levels. Among them, as I have previously catalogued, are a burgeoning national debt, a series of repressive bills making their way through parliament (C-4, C-11, C-12 and C-18), a prohibitive and unnecessary carbon tax, the deliberate destruction of the energy sector, the impending rollout of digital ID surveillance technology, and the notorious invoking of the deeply flawed and inappropriate Emergencies Act to deal with the Truckers’ Freedom Convoy protesting the vaccine mandates. This last travesty was compounded by the government’s striking a Commission of Inquiry in which it set its own terms and appointed its own Commissioner.

PM Justin Trudeau’s declared purpose of protecting Canadians’ health via the vaxx mandates by, among other initiatives, attacking the Truckers as violent, racist, and homophobic was a false-flag operation. As constitutional lawyer Leighton Grey persuasively argues, Trudeau’s “ultimate goal, which the COVID-19 pandemic helped governments like Trudeau’s to advance,” is nothing less than “total surveillance and corresponding control of human populations.”

Grey cites Ayn Rand’s dictum from The New Left: “Civilization is the progress of a society towards privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” The surveillance state pursued by autocratic governments like Trudeau’s Liberals seeks to achieve the precise opposite: a society of obeisant serfs controlled by an all-powerful panoptic administrative regime. One recalls H.L. Mencken’s pregnant adage: “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

U.S. Voters (Overwhelmingly) Want Their Old Election System Back: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

Posted By on December 27th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/26/u-s-voters-overwhelmingly-want-their-old-election-system-back-ii-tipp-poll/

As 2022 nears an end, another election season has also come to a close. Time for second thoughts, and ideas about what to do to fix an election system that many Americans believe is irretrievably broken. As it turns out, voters have some very strong opinions about that very topic, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

The recent midterm elections were once again marked by claims of voter fraud and possible ballot manipulation behind the scenes by partisan actors, including even election officials. So we asked Americans of all political stripes and demographic backgrounds what rules and practices would they support to make our electoral system more fair?

More specifically, in our online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Dec. 7-9, we asked 1,094 registered voters to select among three possible reforms or rule changes: “Requiring voters to show a photo I.D. to vote,” “Stricter mail-in voting,” and “Banning ballot harvesting.”

The answers showed an overwhelming sentiment in favor of change.

But by far the strongest response was for “Requiring voters to show a photo I.D. to vote.” It garnered 83% support from registered voters, with 60% saying they would support it “strongly” and 22% saying they would support it “somewhat.” Just 12% said they would not support a move, with just 6% saying they would oppose it “strongly,” about the same as those who said they would oppose it somewhat (7%).

The numbers may not add to 100% due to rounding. But the point is clear. Americans are hungry to have their elections once again based on solid identification of the voters with official I.D.s.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Twitter, America’s Founders And Free Expression Gary M. Galles

Posted By on December 27th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/27/twitter-americas-founders-and-free-expression/

Donald Trump’s declaration that he would run for president again in 2024 made me recall his previous tempestuous soap opera relationship with Twitter and “fake news.” And now we are living through the beginning of what could be an equally tempestuous soap opera triggered by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. After all, the left has decided that with Twitter no longer under its control, it now prefers a “hands around the neck of Twitter” approach rather than a “hands off Twitter” approach. It makes it worth revisiting the relationship between Twitter, and the constitutional freedoms of expression America’s founders guaranteed citizens for insight.

If we applied the same standards America’s founders applied to speech and the press to current media that did not then exist, there would virtually never be a time to acceptably deny Americans’ those freedoms. And that remains true even for Twitter or when “fake news” or “disinformation” is invoked as justification. However, as a recent Orange County Register editorial put it, “Maintaining a commitment to free speech and resisting the temptation to suppress  contrary points of view is especially hard without an appreciation for why freedom of speech is important.” Let us consider that issue more closely.

The Constitution included freedoms of speech and the press because our founders knew freedom of expression was necessary to maintain liberty. They repudiated restrictions on the press because they remembered that colonial printers had been licensed, but licenses could be revoked and printers imprisoned (e.g., Benjamin Franklin’s brother, James). At the time, newspapers were the primary means of public communication, so they were insulated from political extortion from those who didn’t like what they printed. However, what was emphasized was freedom of expression, not the particular medium of expression used. If radio, TV and the internet existed in the 1770s, the principle behind freedom of the press would have been expressed more broadly.

To see this, you need only consider some of our founding generation’s own words, and those of their predecessors who greatly influenced their beliefs.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Christmas Electric Grid Emergency Strain caused by climate policies left too many Americans shivering over the weekend. Worse is coming.

Posted By on December 27th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-christmas-electric-grid-emergency-11672091317?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

As temperatures plunged this weekend, Americans in much of the country were told to turn down their thermostats and avoid using large appliances to prevent rolling blackouts. The cascading grid stress came at an awful time but was all too predictable to anyone paying attention.

The interconnected U.S. grid is supposed to be a source of resilience, but the government’s force-fed green energy transition is creating systemic vulnerabilities that politicians don’t want to acknowledge. Utilities and grid operators weren’t prepared for the surge in demand for natural gas and electricity to heat homes, which occurred as gas supply shortages and icy temperatures forced many power plants off-line.

The PJM Interconnection, which provides electricity to 65 million people across 13 eastern states, usually has surplus power that it exports to neighboring grids experiencing shortages, but this time it was caught short. Gas plants in the region couldn’t get enough fuel, which for public-health reasons is prioritized for heating.

Coal and nuclear plants can’t ramp up like gas-fired plants to meet surges in demand, so PJM ordered some businesses to curtail power usage and urged households to do the same through Christmas morning. Rolling blackouts were narrowly averted as some generators switched to burning oil. Americans in the southeast weren’t so lucky.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FBI Gaslights America Over Twitter Files Ben Weingarten

Posted By on December 27th, 2022

https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-gaslights-america-over-twitter-files-opinion-1769352

The FBI is gaslighting the American people over the stunning—if unsurprising—evidence that it engaged in a conspiracy with Big Tech to silence wrongthinkers in violation of the First Amendment, as the Twitter Files have revealed.

Meanwhile, in attacking those who refuse to be gaslit, the bureau is also telegraphing that it would respond to Congress investigating its hyper-politicization and weaponization with relentless information warfare.

The gaslighting comes in the preeminent law enforcement agency’s “move along, nothing to see here” response to the Twitter Files. It stated that “correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements.” The FBI, it says, “provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.”

Here is the kind of conduct the FBI wants you to believe is completely normal:

Grooming Twitter executives for months in advance of the release of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story to compel them to kill the story.
Referring myriad tweets concerning inherently political matters to Twitter’s censorship team for purging—so many tweets, in fact, that during one such bulk censorship request, a Twitter employee described the review of the “possible violative content” as a “monumental undertaking.”
Flagging specific Twitter accounts for the platform to take action against—up to and including suspension—apparently for engaging in thoughtcrime of promoting “civic misinformation” by making jokes related to the 2020 election.
Paying Twitter $3.4 million for its time and effort censoring Americans.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China sends 71 warplanes, 7 ships toward Taiwan in 24 hours

Posted By on December 27th, 2022

https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-politics-china-7ca84c323b8ed15253c9cb5c04789805?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_04

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China’s military sent 71 planes and seven ships toward Taiwan in a 24-hour display of force directed at the self-ruled island, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Monday, after China expressed anger at Taiwan-related provisions i n a U.S. annual defense spending bill.

China’s military harassment of Taiwan, which it claims is its own territory, has intensified in recent years, and the Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army has sent planes or ships toward the island on a near-daily basis.

Between 6 a.m. Sunday and 6 a.m. Monday, 47 of the Chinese planes crossed the median of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial boundary once tacitly accepted by both sides, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense.

Among the planes China sent towards Taiwan were 18 J-16 fighter jets, 11 J-1 fighters, 6 Su-30 fighters and drones.

Taiwan said it monitored the Chinese moves through its land-based missile systems, as well as on its own navy vessels.

“This is a firm response to the current U.S.-Taiwan escalation and provocation,” said Shi Yi, the spokesman for the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command, in a statement on Sunday night. It announced that the PLA was holding joint combat patrols and joint strike drills in the waters around Taiwan.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

2022: A year of victories for election integrity Yet there is still more work to be done J.Christian Adams

Posted By on December 27th, 2022

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/26/2022-year-of-victories-for-election-integrity/

The 2022 elections are over, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief that they largely followed the rule of law. Compared with the COVID-19-infected 2020 elections, 2022 was a breeze. Americans woke up to the vulnerabilities in election administration and sought improvements.

After 2020, smart states passed reforms to strengthen election security. Court victories also bolstered the rule of law in elections.

A big win for the rule of law occurred in Delaware. The Public Interest Legal Foundation, of which I am president, blocked the Department of Elections from enforcing mail voting and same-day voter registration.

Mail-in voting and same-day registration conflicted with the Delaware Constitution. The state constitution allows absentee voting only in certain enumerated circumstances, such as being ill. The Delaware Constitution also provides reasonable registration procedures, not walk-up no-verification voting on Election Day.

In legislative debate, Delaware Speaker of the House Peter Schwartzkopf quipped, “I don’t know whether [the law’s] constitutional or not constitutional, and neither do you guys or anybody else in here.” No kidding.

He went further: “The best way to get this thing done is to hear this bill, move forward, and let a challenge go to the courts and let them decide it.”

Decide they did.

Days before ballots were mailed, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that both laws were unconstitutional. This ruling effectively stopped a lawless election in Delaware.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate The platform suppressed true information from doctors and public-health experts that was at odds with U.S. government policy. David Zweig

Posted By on December 27th, 2022

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

By the time reporter David Zweig got to the 10th floor conference room at Twitter Headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco, the story of the Twitter Files was already international news. Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Leighton Woodhouse, Abigail Shrier, Lee Fang and I had revealed evidence of hidden blacklists of Twitter users; the way Twitter acted as a kind of FBI subsidiary; and how company executives rewrote the platform’s policies on the fly to accommodate political bias and pressure.

What we had yet to crack was the story of Covid.

David has spent three years reporting on Covid—specifically the underlying science, or lack thereof, behind many of our nation’s policies. For years he had noticed and criticized a bias not only in the mainstream media’s coverage of the pandemic, but also in the way it was presented on platforms like Twitter. 

We couldn’t think of anyone better to tackle this story. — BW

I had always thought a primary job of the press was to be skeptical of power—especially the power of the government. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, I and so many others found that the legacy media had shown itself to largely operate as a messaging platform for our public health institutions. Those institutions operated in near total lockstep, in part by purging internal dissidents and discrediting outside experts.

Twitter became an essential alternative. It was a place where those with public health expertise and perspectives at odds with official policy could air their views—and where curious citizens could find such information. This often included other countries’ responses to Covid that differed dramatically from our own.

But it quickly became clear that Twitter also seemed to promote content that reinforced the establishment narrative, and to suppress views and even scientific evidence that ran to the contrary. 

Was I imagining things? Was the pattern I and others witnessed proof of purposeful intent? An algorithm gone rogue? Or something else? In other words: When it came to Covid, and the information shared on a service used by hundreds of millions of people, what exactly was being amplified? And what was being banned or censored?

So when The Free Press asked if I would go to Twitter to peek behind the curtain, I took the first flight out of New York. 

Here’s what I found.

The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic. Internal emails that I viewed at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A federal judge essentially says parents have no rights over their children By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on December 26th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/a_federal_judge_essentially_says_parents_have_no_rights_over_their_children.html

Lenin is reputed to have said, “Give me four years to teach the children, and the seeds I have planted will never be uprooted.” Every parent knows this is true: Children are sponges, learning things incredibly quickly. These things then stick, for they are buried in the very deepest recesses of our brains. Today’s leftists are attempting to reinstitute this specific type of Leninism in America. They want your children, and your efforts to protest will be unavailing. A Massachusetts federal judge confirmed this last week, saying that it didn’t “shock the conscience” that a school secretly indoctrinated two children into transgenderism.

From the Daily Wire:

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit from Massachusetts parents who accused public school officials of hiding their children’s gender transitions from them.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark Mastroianni, an Obama appointee, criticized Ludlow Public Schools officials for allegedly hiding the pair of siblings’ gender transitions from their parents, but he said the officials’ actions do not “shock the conscience.”

“While the court is apprehensive about the alleged policy and actions of the Ludlow Public Schools with regard to parental notification, it cannot conclude the decision to withhold information” about the children from their parents meets the conscience-shocking legal standard in Massachusetts, the judge wrote in his December 14 ruling.

The case revolves around the fact that the school deliberately made the decision to keep from the parents the demands that they be treated as members of the opposite sex in junior high school:

The 11-year-old girl allegedly emailed school staff in February 2021 and announced that she wanted to go by a cluster of new pronouns.

“I am genderqueer. … My new name will be R**** … If you deadname me or use any pronouns I am uncomfortable with I will politely tell you … A list of pronouns you can use are: she/her he/him they/them fae/faerae/aer ve/ver xe/xem ze/zir. … Please only use the ones I have listed and not the other ones. I do not like them,” the girl wrote, her parents said in court documents.