Displaying posts published in

June 2022

What the January 6 Committee Hearings Won’t Cover A sham congressional committee working with a corrupt Justice Department boosted by a dishonest national media can only be expected to create political propaganda. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/06/what-the-january-6-committee-hearings-wont-cover/

U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) promises the January 6 Select committee hearings “will tell a story that will blow the roof of the House.” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) insists the committee’s “job is to tell the truth.” Turncoat Republican Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) claims her fellow committee members will be “focused on facts, not rhetoric, and we will present those facts without exaggeration, no matter what criticism we face.” 

After a year of unrestrained investigation led by seasoned federal prosecutors who interrogated at least 1,000 witnesses and collected hundreds of thousands of documents including records once considered privileged material, the committee will present its findings to the American people beginning with a much-hyped primetime hearing Thursday night. Their bottom-line task is to convince the public that Trump led a “coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” according to a committee tweet last week. 

To spark interest in the hearing, the committee has hired, at taxpayer expense, a veteran television producer to create a “blockbuster investigative special” featuring clips of the protest and witness interviews.

Democrats hope “chilling” revelations about the four-hour disturbance at the Capitol more than 17 months ago will prevent an electoral bloodbath for the party this November. Collaboration between Congress and Joe Biden’s Justice Department has resulted in contempt charges against Trump confidants Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon; meanwhile, Biden’s handpicked U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia has criminally indicted more than 800 Americans for protesting Biden’s election on January 6.

On the same day last week, FBI agents arrested Navarro in public at a D.C. airport and arrested two men from Florida on charges of civil disorder and three misdemeanors related to the Capitol protest.

Contrary to what Cheney and her Trump-hating inquisitors say, the January 6 committee is far from a truth-finding mission. In fact, what the committee fails to address will speak more to its true motivations—to drive a stake in the heart of a political movement that refuses to die and, in some regards, is stronger than ever—not prevent another “insurrection” in the future, which is how the committee was sold to the country.

The Progressive Left’s Latest Shining Star Delivering the same woke snake oil in a new bottle. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/progressive-lefts-latest-shining-star-joseph-klein/

The progressive Left movement has a new shining star. Her name is Mallory McMorrow, a young Democrat Michigan State Senator, whose fiery speech earlier this spring on the floor of the State Senate chamber denouncing conservative Republicans has gone viral. She is enjoying her 15 minutes of fame with interviews on liberal media broadcast outlets, a personal call from President Biden praising her speech, and a New Yorker article calling Ms. McMorrow a “role model for the midterms.”

The New York Times exulted: “If Democrats could bottle Mallory McMorrow … they would do it.” The Nation, a leading progressive publication, lauded McMorrow for providing “Democrats with a cogent example of how best to respond to the GOP’s cultural warfare.”

Ms. McMorrow has indeed done something novel for a progressive politician. Rather than coming across as the usual secularist critic of religious faith, McMorrow has embraced Christianity as she understands it and weaponized religion against her political adversaries. She has cleverly positioned herself as “a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom” who is mortified by what she considers to be Republicans’ hateful “fearmongering” against “marginalized” groups such as blacks, gays, and transgenders.

The Indictment of Navarro is Unconstitutional by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18595/navarro-indictment-unconstitutional

Navarro has a strong claim of executive privilege that should be decided by the courts before any indictment can lawfully issue.

[A]bsent a judicial order, he cannot lawfully be indicted for invoking executive privilege and refusing to reveal arguably privileged material just because a committee of Congress, controlled by Democrats, has voted that he should. It is not enough to allow him to appeal after the fact, because information, once revealed, cannot be erased. He is obliged to claim privilege now and refuse to respond. That is not a crime. It is the constitutionally correct action.

Navarro’s indictment violates several key constitutional rights, including due process, fair warning and executive privilege. It also violates the separation of powers, under which the courts have the authority to resolve conflicts between the legislative and executive branches over claims of executive privilege in response to legislative subpoenas. Due process and fair warning require that these issues first be resolved by the courts before an indictment can be issued.

The Biden Justice Department knows the law and it should not be acting lawlessly to make political points.

In an age of partisan law enforcement, however, it is far from certain that neutral justice will be done. Some courts have been caught up in result-oriented injustice….

The Bible admonishes judges not to “recognize faces.” That command is the origin of the blindfolded statue of Lady Justice. But in our age of pervasive partisanship, too many judges peek out their blindfolds and rule differently based on the faces and political affiliations of the litigants.

The indictment of Peter Navarro for contempt of Congress violates several provisions of the Constitution and should be dismissed. Navarro has a strong claim of executive privilege that should be decided by the courts before any indictment can lawfully issue.

How the Free World Can Help Taiwan Avoid Ukraine’s Fate by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18594/help-taiwan

An important lesson learned after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that the Free World should immediately establish normal diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

The only message that ambiguity sends to Communist China is weakness, and a tacit green light to invade. America and her Asian allies would also do well to implement military and political initiatives in the Indo-Pacific region that would discourage any Chinese calculus to “reunite” with Taiwan by force.

On the diplomatic front, the Free World — led, one wishes, by the US — could help raise Taiwan’s global diplomatic profile by sponsoring its participation as an official member state in several international organizations, including the United Nations. The US Department of State should restore full diplomatic relations with Taiwan, as advocated by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a recent visit to Taipei. In addition, the US could encourage the world’s democracies to establish official bilateral links.

Another initiative by the US could be officially to recognize Taiwan as the Republic of China, while urging all the world’s democracies to do the same.

Taiwan is not Ukraine, but the suppression of Taiwanese democracy by the Chinese Communist regime would be at least as negatively consequential to global democracies as any Russian conquest of Ukraine.

Unless the West acts boldly and demonstrates to China that the cost to it of on attack on Taiwan will be crushing, China will not be able to help feeling irresistibly tempted not only to carry out its longtime dream of overpowering Taiwan, but also assuming dominance, for a start, in the South and East China Seas.

China has already built artificial islands that it pledged would not be militarized, but which soon were; and has effectively taken over the Solomon Islands — near American territory in Guam and Hawai’i — and wields strategic influence in Sri Lanka, at the control-point of the Indian Ocean. The Chinese military might then “help” its near-abroad neighbors to resolve bilateral territorial disputes in China’s favor. These might include the Japanese-claimed Senkaku Islands, the Philippines’ claimed Scarborough Shoal, and Vietnam’s claim to the Paracel Islands.

Such an apocalyptic turn of events could even encourage North Korea finally to attack South Korea.

America’s needs above all quickly to establish a massive credible deterrence against the People’s Republic of China. Unfortunately, that seems the only realistic means of bringing China’s out-of-control aggression to a stop.

US President Joe Biden, when, during a May 23 joint press briefing with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, was asked by a reporter if ” the US would militarily support Taiwan if China attacked” he answered, “Yes, that is the commitment we made” — a statement that unfortunately the State Department immediately walked back.

What Is a Woman? The Daily Wire’s new documentary will make you laugh, cry, and run screaming down the street. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/what-woman-bruce-bawer/

Having consumed an extraordinary amount of information (and misinformation) about transgenderism – whether through terrific books like Helen Joyce’s Trans and Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage or YouTube videos by transgender “influencers” like Noah Finnce or canny critics of transgender ideology like Mr. Menno, Arielle Scarcella, and Kellie-Jay Keen – I worried that the just-released Daily Wire documentary on the topic, What Is a Woman?, produced and directed by Justin Folk and starring Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh, wouldn’t offer anything new.

In a sense I was right. My mind wasn’t changed. I went in knowing that transgenderism is deranged and dangerous, and the film confirmed my point of view. But what confirmation! Folk, Walsh, and company have put together a serious and definitive piece of work – at once a comprehensive survey, a chilling indictment, and, strange though it may sound, an often laugh-out-loud piece of entertainment.

Structurally, What Is a Woman? borrows from, of all things, Michael Moore’s debut documentary, Roger & Me (1989), about the effect of GM factory closings on the increasingly bleak economy of his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Moore structured his film around the conceit that he was on a quest to track down, and confront, GM chairman and CEO Roger Smith, the tongue-in-cheek premise being that, if informed about the town’s suffering, Smith would certainly take remedial action. The conceit propelling Folk’s documentary is that Walsh, the 35-year-old father of two boys and two girls, is hopelessly confused by the new concepts of sex and gender, which posit that a man can become a woman and vice-versa, and is traveling around the U.S. to learn from experts on the subject – and to pose one question in particular: What is a woman?

In advance of Biden’s visit to Jerusalem, a warning By Barry Shaw

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/in_advance_of_bidens_visit_to_jerusalem_a_warning.html

Joe Biden is coming to Israel, likely in July.

Prior to this visit — to Jerusalem and other places — it is important to set the stage about what has happened in the region when fresh people, capable of thinking out of the Establishment box, came to the Middle East, turned perceived logic on its head, and made a miraculous difference by introducing the Abraham Accords, a new peace concept in the area.

Prior to that, the established notion was that peace was impossible until Israel bowed to international pressure by surrendering vital territory, legitimately theirs, to a violent Jew-hating Palestinian entity.

Thanks to people like President Trump and Jared Kushner, they were proven wrong.

Moderate Muslim countries see greater value in normalizing and extending ties with Israel. This has brought peace, progress, and greater prosperity to the participating countries.

One reason the world did not collapse with the Abraham Accords is that most Arab countries look on the Palestinians as an expensive nuisance and have stepped back from using them as a battering ram to bring down the Jewish State.

but it seems the developing peace camp in a new Middle East has not reached the ears and eyes of the Biden White House or the State Department, both of whom persist in slapping Israel with a wet rag to get us to move into granting even more concessions to a clearly avowed anti-Semitic and violent enemy that persists in an obsession of achieving a Jewless world in a Palestine that stretches from the River to the Sea, even to the extent that they want to divide Jerusalem, our sovereign capital.

Stopping ‘Quarantine Camps’ in New York State By Bobbie Anne Flower Cox, Esq.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/stopping_quarantine_camps_in_new_york_state.html

This is the fight for freedom we Americans never dreamed we would have to fight.

Imagine a land where the government has the power to lock you up because the unelected bureaucrats in the Health Department think that you might, possibly have a communicable disease. They don’t have to prove you are sick. They don’t have to prove you are a health threat to others. They just need to think that, maybe, you were possibly exposed to a disease. And when I say “lock people up,” I mean lock you in your home or force you from your home into a facility, detention center, camp (pick your noun) that they get to choose and you must stay there for however long they want. No time limit; so it could be for days, weeks, months, or years….

Now imagine that there is no age restriction, so the government can do this to you personally, or to your child, or to your grandchild, or to your elderly parent, or to your ailing grandparent. The nightmare continues because you have no recourse. No chance to prove that you aren’t actually infected with the disease. No chance to confront your jailers, see their supposed evidence against you or challenge their quarantine order in a court of law before getting locked up. And they can use law enforcement to help them carry out their forced quarantine or isolation orders, so the knock on your door could very well be the sheriff or police coming to remove you from your home or to “check in” on you to ensure you are locked down in your home, isolated, in accordance with the Health Department’s order against you.

This dystopian horror sounds unbelievable to an American. That the government has the ability to control one’s every move is unnatural to us. Politicians and bureaucrats being able to have unbridled power to tell you where you can and cannot go, what you can and cannot do, and who you can and cannot see is the very antithesis of what our country stands for. It flies in the face of “liberty and justice for all.” After all, we are supposed to be a nation of governance of the people, by the people, and for the people.

And yet, the governor of New York and her Department of Health have promulgated a dystopian regulation that does all of that and more. The regulation is called “Isolation and Quarantine Procedures” and can be found at 10 NYCRR 2.13. It is a clear violation of the Separation of Powers because the governor is not supposed to make law, nor can an agency. Only the legislature can make law and agencies can only issue regulations that the legislature empowers them to issue. Simply put, an agency cannot just make up rules on its own whim. It must have a directive from the legislature to do so.

On Biden’s Decline Andrew McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-bidens-decline/

Regarding our senescent POTUS, Dan observes:

If you have spent much time around elderly men with declining faculties, you will recognize the all-too-common pattern of lashing out because they need help for things they could once do themselves, rather than being thankful for the help.

Okay, but the main thing the in-his-prime-such-as-it-was Joe Biden could do for himself was say stupid stuff . . . that he would then have to pretend not to have said.

The difference between then and now is that, as president rather than blowhard senator, Biden has legions of staff, rather than just the media, to walk it back.

He was grateful for the media. But now he’s angry at the staff. I guess that’s the measure of decline.

Inside the Infighting on the January 6 Committee Andrew McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/inside-the-infighting-on-the-january-6-committee/

Nailing Donald Trump is the only mission on which there is agreement between Democrats and the two Republicans on the committee.

There is internal division in the House January 6 committee regarding what legislative agenda to recommend to prevent a repeat of the 2020 election hijinks, according to an Axios report by Jonathan Swan and Hans Nichols. The fissure was inevitable.

On one side, this is a Democrat-dominated committee formed to address a supposed crisis. Like any Democratic partisan, the committee is determined to exploit the crisis to push for long-coveted radical change, even though the proposed change is largely unrelated to the causes of the crisis. On the other side, there is the Republican ally, Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whom Democrats have accepted into the fold so they can claim their gambit is bipartisan. However opportunistic that was, Cheney inconveniently opposes the Democrats’ policy ideas.

To conduct a proper investigation, a congressional committee must have a bona fide legislative purpose. The January 6 committee has never had such a purpose. It is mutual loathing of Trump, and nothing else, that unifies the committee’s seven Democrats and two Republicans (Cheney is joined by Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, also tapped by Speaker Nancy Pelosi because of his public chiding of Trump).

The Georgetown Law School Purge Ilya Shapiro resigns as the woke mob sets him up for dismissal.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-georgetown-law-purge-ilya-shapiro-resigns-tweet-william-treanor-11654552225?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Optimists have opined that America has reached “peak woke” as a backlash against it grows. Think again, as the experience of Ilya Shapiro demonstrates.

Nearby Mr. Shapiro describes his treatment at the hands of Georgetown University Law School, which had hired him to be the executive director of its Constitution Center. Mr. Shapiro is a libertarian-minded legal scholar who sometimes writes for these pages. Georgetown, like most law schools, is dominated by progressives, often of the intolerant and vindictive variety.

But Mr. Shapiro was encouraged by dean William Treanor and the school’s Speech and Expression Policy, which promises to defend dissenting voices on campus. His painful education has been discovering that some speech is more protected than others.