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Stolen Elections: A Tale of Two D.C. Courtrooms Regardless of the verdicts for Sussmann and Hale, it’s increasingly clear Americans continue to live in two separate and unequal systems of government.  By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 27th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/26/stolen-elections-a-tale-of-two-d-c-courtrooms/

The Elijah Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C. is center stage this month to two competing tales of stolen presidential elections.

In the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, federal prosecutors have presented a detailed account of the greatest scandal in U.S. political history: the conspiracy of the country’s most powerful interests to fabricate the Trump-Russia collusion hoax in order to sabotage Donald Trump before the 2016 election. 

Michael Sussmann, a lawyer formerly employed at Perkins Coie, the influential law firm that funded the infamous Steele dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, is on trial for lying to the FBI. Sussmann is accused of presenting phony data alleged to prove a connection between Trump and a Russian bank to the department just weeks before Election Day 2016.

The sinister collaboration, exposed years ago by reporters and bloggers on the Right but now confirmed by Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation, involved Democratic Party honchos including the candidate herself; top officials at the Department of Justice, who used the dossier as evidence for a warrant to spy on Trump’s campaign; FBI officials and informants; the Central Intelligence Agency; and of course, the national news media.

Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to rig the outcome in favor of Trump was accepted as truth not just by the same interests responsible for the hoax but by tens of millions of Americans. Roughly half the country openly refused to accept the fact that Trump won fair and square. Media-fueled accusations that the new president and Russian President Vladimir Putin “stole” the election prompted the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017, a move supported by most Republicans in Washington.

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Race Huckstering in America Patrisse Cullors’ personal corruption and the malign organization she helps to run are surely better understood as a symptom of a diseased republic than as a revolutionary vanguard.  By Peter W. Wood

Posted By on May 27th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/26/race-huckstering-in-america/

…….One of the hustlers who works the tourists near my Madison Avenue office harangues reluctant donors by loudly declaiming. “Is it because I’m black? Is it because I’m black?” A fellow loafer with a more cheerful mien and a gentler line (“One dollar for the homeless. Just one dollar.”) rolls his eyes. Playing the white guilt card so clumsily embarrasses the better class of hustlers. 

These fellows, of course, are the smallest of small-time operators in the race industry. The career ladder extends upward to diversity trainers, corporate equity officers, supernumerary staff hired to fill BIPOC quotas, small-time politicians, big-city mayors, and, perched atop the highest pinnacle of Mount Hustle, Patrisse Cullors. She is one of the founders of Black Lives Matter who converted the charitable dollars given to her organization into a lavish lifestyle involving mansions, jets, and family members whose “services” gained them astonishing paydays. 

Damon Turner, the father of Cullors’ child, reportedly was paid $970,000 for “creative services.” These included “producing live events.” I am not sure what creative services Mr. Turner provided apart from procreative services. But that is a very high price for that kind of donation. The Daily Mail, among other publications, has been keeping track of Cullors’ generous treatment of her assistants. Her brother Paul was paid $840,000 for “security services.” For comparison, the average salary of an FBI executive is currently $235,143. 

The details of how Cullors and her cohort enriched themselves are head-turning, but it is best not to lose sight of all the good things that Cullors and Black Lives Matter have accomplished in a few short years. It was only nine years ago—July 13, 2013—that Cullors and Alicia Garza tweeted their way into history. Garza: “black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” Cullors: “declaration: black bodies will no longer be sacrificed for the rest of the world’s enlightenment. i am done. i am so done. trayvon, you are loved infinitely #blacklivesmatter” 

After which we had exciting festivities in many American cities, and a growing spirit of philanthropy, which culminated in 2020 when Americans (mostly) donated some $90 million to BLM. The organization has used those funds to spread the message of “love” in many directions (see above) and has become a force to reckon with in American politics and social life. 

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Abu Akleh report is CNN’s latest anti-Israel hit job Ruthie Blum

Posted By on May 27th, 2022

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-707833

CNN has a history of anti-Israel bias, but the left-wing Cable News Network outdid itself this week. In its coverage on Wednesday of the May 11 killing of 51-year-old Palestinian-American Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh during an Israeli raid on terrorists in Jenin, the outlet concluded that it had been a targeted shooting.

It did this by providing a dramatic headline about “new evidence suggest[ing]” that this was the case. The body of the story included a bit more context, but not enough to camouflage the slant of the six reporters in the byline. 

The description in the feature-like article of the “shaky video, filmed by Al Jazeera cameraman Majdi Banura, [which] captures the scene when Abu Akleh… was killed by a bullet to the head” glossed over the part about “the footage not showing [her] being shot,” and slid effortlessly into eyewitness accounts. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Majority Report: Canada’s Latest Advance in Precognitive Legislation By David Solway

Posted By on May 27th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/05/25/majority-report-canadas-latest-advance-in-precognitive-legislation-n1600764

The 2002 film Minority Report was a box office success and, like the Matrix franchise, emerged as one of the most talked-about movies of recent times. The crux of the film involved a “precrime” policing unit that could act to prevent crimes before they were committed, on evidence provided by a team of comatose subjects with precognitive abilities. Of course, the plot was utterly absurd, demanding major suspension of viewer disbelief, but nonetheless provocative in its social and political implications. 

Though the story descends into complicated but typical melodrama — abducted child, failed marriage, false accusation, eventual resolution — resulting in the abandonment of the clairvoyant project, the idea of precrime prevention is the fanciful “hook” on which the narrative depends. It serves as the fiction within the fiction that has to be initially accepted if the film is to retain its unlikely coherence. Of course, what the film calls a “minority report” is an anomalous factor, different from the more comprehensive reports of predictive infallibility, but second sight remains the rule. Obviously, no such precognitive technology is even remotely conceivable — or so we might have thought.

Leave it to the Canadian prime minister, as many have noted, to translate the central premise of the movie into the realm of public policy. Bill C-261, currently pending before Parliament, proposes to deal with the newly formulated crime of online “hate propaganda” and “hate speech” before said crime has actually been contemplated, let alone occurred, assuming the plaintiff believes that he or she is the intended target of hate. An individual can thus be accused of a crime and made to pay the price — censure, compensatory damages, or even imprisonment — before the event has taken place. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

WH Denies Biden Is Talking About the Second Amendment One Day After He Said It ‘Is Not Absolute’ Spencer Brown

Posted By on May 27th, 2022

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/05/26/wh-denies-biden-is-talking-about-the-second-amendment-one-day-after-he-said-it-i-n2607868

In Thursday’s White House press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked multiple questions about federal legislation being bandied about in Congress ahead of the President and First Lady’s recently announced visit to Uvalde on Sunday. 

After refusing to comment on Thursday’s latest updates from Texas DPS officials — she said the White House would not “prejudge” local law enforcement’s response to the shooting — and repeating many of the anti-gun left’s talking points lamenting the fact that “America has more guns than people,” Joe Biden’s press secretary faced a question from Real Clear Politics’ Philip Wegmann. 

What does the president believe, at this point, is the purpose of the Second Amendment?” he asked as Michael Moore and other leftists renew their calls for a repeal of the right to keep and bear arms. 

Unsurprisingly, Jean-Pierre couldn’t offer a specific answer as to what President Biden — sworn to uphold the Constitution — believed the purpose of the 27-word Second Amendment to be.

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How Joe Biden and the I.R.S are Performing Criminal Acts To dismantle our borders and destroy our country.David Horowitz and John Perazzo

Posted By on May 27th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/how-joe-biden-and-irs-are-performing

In an earlier article about Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to fix the 2020 presidential election, we observed that the root cause of America’s current problems, beginning with broken borders and off-the charts urban violence – is lawlessness.[1] We also observed that this lawlessness originates in the White House, and includes the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Executive Branch generally.

Discussions of the border problem often touch on the criminal element that violates our unenforced border laws beginning with drug dealers, sex traffickers, and migrant smugglers. But the crime problem is vastly understated in these references which give the impression that it is largely confined to the countries they have left, and has no impact on the country they have invaded. In July 2018, the Government Accountability Office issued a report containing “Criminal Alien Statistics,”[2] which serves to correct this false impression.  Among its conclusions, the report states that one in five federal prisoners in the United States is a criminal alien. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The G.A.O. report covered the period between 2011 and 2016. During that time frame, approximately 2 million foreigners crossed the border into the United States illegally – which is just about the number of unvetted foreigners whom border officials predict will cross the border illegally this year alone. In that same time frame there were more than 730,000 criminal aliens in U.S. prisons, federal and state, and local jails. Criminals are not usually arrested the first time they commit a crime, and are often released with minimal time served when they are. So while there were 730,000 criminal aliens in U.S. prisons, they accounted for 4.9 million arrests and 7.5 million offenses – which would translate into a 10 times greater number of victims than offenders. 

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Unraveling of Education in America The bad news from the education industrial complex just keeps on coming. Larry Sand

Posted By on May 27th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/unraveling-education-america-larry-sand/

It’s no secret that education in America has been in bad shape for some time, and now, low student proficiency has been exacerbated by the hysterical response to the Covid outbreak. Most recently, the results of a Harvard University study, which investigated the role of remote and hybrid instruction in widening gaps in achievement by race and school poverty, have been released.

Using testing data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states and D.C., the researchers found that “shifts to remote or hybrid instruction during 2020-21 had profound consequences for student achievement. In districts that went remote, achievement growth was lower for all subgroups, but especially for students attending high-poverty schools. In areas that remained in-person, “there were still modest losses in achievement, but there was no widening of gaps between high and low-poverty schools in math (and less widening in reading).”

Another study, by curriculum and assessment provider Amplify, examined test data for some 400,000 elementary school students across 37 states and found a spike in students not reading at grade level, with literacy losses “disproportionately concentrated in the early elementary grades (K-2).” The report also found that minority children suffered disproportionate learning loss. As The Wall Street Journal reports, “During the last normal school year, only 34% of black and 29% of Hispanic second graders needed intensive intervention to help catch up. This school year 47% of black and 39% of Hispanic second graders have fallen this far behind on literacy, compared to 26% of white peers.”

And distressingly, a longitudinal study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation finds that kids “who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave school without a diploma than proficient readers,” and “for the worst readers, those [who] couldn’t master even the basic skills by third grade, the rate is nearly six times greater.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The FBI is on the November Ballot The incoming Congress could stop the FBI’s warrantless spying on more than three million Americans. Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on May 27th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/fbi-november-ballot-lloyd-billingsley/

As the midterm election approaches, the Annual Statistical Transparency Report Regarding the Intelligence Community’s Use of National Security Surveillance Authorities shows why the Federal Bureau of Investigation is also on the ballot.

One of the few to give this document the attention it deserves was historian Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and affiliated scholar at the University of California’s Hastings School of Law.

The report “provides statistics and contextual information concerning how the Intelligence Community uses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act  and certain other national security authorities to accomplish its mission.” The Act authorizes the U.S. government to engage in mass surveillance of foreign targets.

As Guariglia discovered, FISA is “still being abused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to spy on Americans without a warrant.” This abuse takes place under Section 702, an amendment to FISA.

Between December 2020 and November 2021, Guariglia notes, the FBI potentially queried the data of more than three million Americans without a warrant. Collection of the data, from telecom and internet providers, renders conversations described as “incidental,” but they aren’t. Each intelligence agency’s rules on “targeting” and “minimization,” Guariglia shows, allow access to access to the communications of Americans caught in  the “702 dragnet.”

EDUCATION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Chiefly Illiterate in San Francisco Schools The district pulls ‘chief’ from its CFO’s title as a progressive gesture to Native Americans

Posted By on May 27th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chiefly-illiterate-in-san-francisco-schools-chief-native-american-11653599414?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The San Francisco school district is a slow learner, apparently. In February voters ousted three school-board members in landslide elections. One complaint was that the board was more interested in progressive gestures, such as scrubbing Abraham Lincoln’s name off school buildings, than in reopening classrooms amid the pandemic.

Now the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the school district is planning to phase out the word “chief” in its job titles, “given that Native American members of our community have expressed concerns.” Currently the district has executives with the customary roles of chief financial officer, chief of staff, and so on.

Here’s what is particularly amusing in this attempt at progressive sensitivity: While the English language has lots of words that can be traced to the native peoples of the Americas, including “chipmunk,” “barbecue” and “hurricane,” they don’t include “chief.” That word comes from Old French, and originally Latin, and the Oxford English Dictionary has citations back to 1297.

“Farewell great Chiefe,” says a character in Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” That’s dated to the early 1600s. Somehow we doubt he was thinking about the Sioux. A biblical translation from William Tyndale in 1526 speaks of “the power of Belzebub, the chefe of the devyls.” The earliest examples are hard to parse unless you’re fluent in Beowulfese, but here’s one we grasp from 1483, a decade before Columbus sailed to the west: “She was made abbesse and chyef of al the monasterye.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Militarizing The Baby Formula Crisis Is Infantile Iain Murray and Michelle Minton

Posted By on May 27th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/27/militarizing-the-baby-formula-crisis-is

A military cargo plane lands filled with vitally needed baby formula to be greeted by a top government official. A relief flight to a developing world country? A ray of hope for a war-ravaged Ukraine? A blockade broken? No, America in the year 2022.

Simultaneously, the president invoked the Defense Production Act to force American companies to produce more baby formula. Our response to a problem caused by domestic regulation and protectionism has been to militarize it.

I’m sorry, Mr. President, but this solution is infantile.

America is unique in having this problem because its regulatory state caused it. The proximate cause of the shortage was the February recall of products made at America’s largest manufacturer of baby formula, Abbott Labs’ facility in Michigan. The Food and Drug Administration was concerned about outbreaks of death and illness among infants fed with the formula but was slow to inspect the facility. Abbott has indeed announced that it will reopen the facility, as the FDA found no evidence of contamination. As 40% of America’s supply comes from that facility, the shortfall hit supplies hard.

Ordinarily, however, the market would respond to such a shock by two means – raising prices to signal a shortage and importing substitutes from abroad. However, regulation precludes those two responses. Much of the American market depends on price agreements with the country’s welfare agencies, which are there to stop poor mothers from having to face difficult choices for their pocketbooks. Higher prices could lead to mothers choosing to limit formula use, with nutritional detriments to the baby.