RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/07/06/covid-journalist-alex-berenson-settles-suit-with-twitter-is-reinstated-nearly-a-year-after-refusing-to-bend-knee-n1610725

Nearly one year after journalist and writer Alex Berenson was kicked off Twitter for being a sometimes COVID-19 contrarian, his account has been restored. He had to sue the tech platform to be reinstated.

Berenson announced a settlement with Twitter on Wednesday on his Substack page, “Unreported Truths.”

[L]ast August, Twitter banned me after I got five strikes under its Covid-19 misinformation policy. Which meant I’d supposedly made “claims of fact” that were “demonstrably false or misleading” and “likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm” (that’s the policy, that’s what it takes to get a strike, look it up).

Now we come to find those tweets “should not have led to my suspension”?

Here’s the tweet that got him “permanently suspended.”

Berenson is the former New York Times reporter whose specialty was reporting on pharmaceutical companies, dangerous drugs, health care, and government oversight. After leaving The Times, Berenson wrote novels and pamphlets. When COVID-19 burst onto the scene, Berenson began looking closely at government claims and wrote books and pamphlets about the disease.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/07

The Constitution provides for three branches of government, sharing sovereign power. In fact, we have a fourth branch, the sprawling administrative bureaucracies. They are nominally part of the Executive Branch, which struggles to control them. Congress struggles, too, and now spends much of its time trying to oversee them. The oversight is spotty and the bureaucracies are often left to their own devices, free to write their own rules on even the most important issues.

Last week’s Supreme Court decision took an important step to rein in these bureaucracies. It ruled the regulations for carbon dioxide emissions, written and enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, went well beyond the vague laws passed by Congress.

Most comments about the court’s opinion have emphasized two likely consequences of the ruling, both important. One, highlighted by the left and especially by climate activists, is that the ruling could lead to more CO2 pollution. Indeed, it undoubtedly will do so unless Congress acts. The second, underscored by conservatives and the right, is that the courts are finally trying to constrain Washington’s vast, centralized “regulatory state,” which they see as fundamentally undemocratic and a threat to our constitutionally guaranteed liberties and our right to govern ourselves through elected representatives.

This debate goes to the very heart of how we as Americans rule ourselves. The left sees Washington’s administrative apparatus as “rule by experts,” essential for controlling a technologically complex society. Their preference is for the modern equivalent of Plato’s philosopher-kings, people who understand the population’s needs far better than the people themselves.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/joe-biden-and-the-circular-firing-squad/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

The word is definitely out that the president’s stock is going to zero — and it’s time to get out while you still can.

The giant sucking sound you’re hearing is the panicked divestment of elected Democratic politicians, progressive activists, and the mainstream media from the Biden administration. The word is definitely out that the president’s stock is going to zero — and it’s time to get out while you still can.

Two weeks ago, in a foreboding sign for the White House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — with a finger to the political winds blowing on Instagram — announced that she wasn’t ready to support Biden in 2024. Then came California governor Gavin Newsom, asking “Where’s my party?” as Republicans and conservatives continue to score political wins. Newsom’s question sparked 2024 speculation for him, and then he stoked the flames even higher by buying ad time in Florida, demonstrating that he could identify and take on the real Republican threat, who is sitting behind a desk in Tallahassee: DeSantis.

After the Fourth of July weekend, we are now getting the hilarious reports — usually ones that a lame-duck president faces late in his second term. The first six sentences of Edward-Isaac Dovere’s dispatch for CNN sum it up:

Debra Messing was fed up. The former “Will & Grace” star was among dozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists who joined a call with White House aides last Monday to discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/07/05/sec_climate_disclosure_rule_a_duck_that_quacks_840873.html

In his recent memoir, former attorney general William Barr recounts how the Trump administration lost its attempt to include a citizenship question in the 2020 census. After losing in the Supreme Court, Barr briefed President Trump on what had gone wrong. “If people were straightforward from the beginning, it could have gotten done,” Barr explained. “The trouble is the administration was too cute by half, and [Chief Justice John] Roberts threw the penalty flag.” The Supreme Court had thrown out the citizenship question because the Commerce department’s declared rationale for it was pretextual—that is to say, it was not the real reason that the Trump administration wanted a citizenship question in the census.

Much comment on the controversial climate disclosure rule proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has centered on whether the SEC has the necessary legal authority. By the end of the comment period on June 17, the SEC had received more than 3,400 letters, significantly more than usual. Linked to legal arguments on whether the SEC has an adequate statutory—or, indeed, constitutional—basis for its climate proposal is the question of pretextuality: Is the SEC being genuine in the stated justification for its sweeping climate disclosure rules? Should the SEC harbor doubts about its legal standing to compel climate disclosures—notably, greenhouse gas emissions data—from listed companies, it increases the likelihood that it will advance a public justification for the proposed rules that differs from its real one so that it better fits within its statutory authority.