NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Court Stands on Principle The Justices toss a census case ginned up by Democratic states.

Posted By on December 19th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-court-stands-on-principle-11608334424?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The fuss over President Trump’s order to exclude undocumented immigrants from the decennial reapportionment may be much ado about nothing. That’s essentially what a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court said Friday in dismissing a legal challenge (Trump v. New York) by Democratic states for lack of standing.

“A foundational principle of Article III is that ‘an actual controversy must exist not only at the time the complaint is filed, but through all stages of the litigation,’” the Court noted in an unsigned ruling with Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting.

Democratic states claimed they would lose federal funding and Congressional seats if the President’s order was implemented, though these harms are speculative. President Trump’s order directed the Commerce Secretary to gather information “to the extent practicable” and exclude undocumented aliens “to the extent feasible.”

The Justice Department conceded during oral arguments this month that the government lacked records on many of the 10.5 million or so undocumented immigrants in the country. It was also unclear whether the Census Bureau could even mesh the records in its possession with the decennial enumeration.

In other words, the order might not even be implemented, let alone harm Democratic states. “At present, this case is riddled with contingencies and speculation that impede judicial review,” the Court noted.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Beijing Tests Joe Biden Will the President-elect speak up about China’s jailing of Jimmy Lai?

Posted By on December 19th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-tests-joe-biden-11608334532?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

No one should mistake what the jailing of Jimmy Lai and other Hong Kong champions of democracy signals: China is testing Joe Biden.

Mr. Lai is the founder of one of Hong Kong’s most popular newspapers, Apple Daily. Now he’s in jail facing several charges, including one from a new national security law that China bullied through. We know China was enraged when Mr. Lai met with American politicians on trips to Washington in 2019, including Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the basis of the national security charge is that he’s encouraged foreign governments to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and Beijing.

Mr. Lai has been denied bail and publicly exhibited in shackles. Ta Kung Pao, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece in Hong Kong, says he should be extradited to the mainland for trial. Friends worry that would be a death sentence for the 72-year-old publisher.

President Xi Jinping is hoping to intimidate Hong Kongers into silence and testing whether Mr. Biden and his aides will look the other way at these and other abuses. So far Mr. Xi must be pleased at the lack of response.

One of the Trump Administration’s achievements was to recognize that China has become America’s primary adversary. It steals U.S. technology, monitors and intimidates critics on American university campuses, engages in massive spying, claims new territory in the South China Sea, and threatens U.S. allies in Taiwan and Australia. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has pushed back, from condemning China’s incarceration of the Uighurs to sanctioning officials responsible for the crackdown in Hong Kong.

MEDIA Comments turned off

A Second Zionist Jew’s Exit from New York Times Opinion Page Is Called ‘Disgrace’ By Ira Stoll

Posted By on December 19th, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/12/18/a-second-zionist-jews-exit-from-new-york-times-opinion-page-is-called-disgrace/

A second openly Zionist staffer has exited the New York Times editorial page as the newspaper’s publisher interviews candidates for the editorial-page editor job.

In June, a Republican senator, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, wrote a Times op-ed headlined “Send in the Troops,” calling for the deployment of the US military to quell what the article called an “orgy of violence” and “rioters and looters” in American cities following the death in police custody of George Floyd. More than 800 Times staff members signed a letter protesting the article’s publication, and more than two dozen New York Times employees called in sick to protest the op-ed.

New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet resigned after the publication of the Cotton article, but others sought to blame its appearance on two Jewish opinion-page staffers, Bari Weiss and Adam Rubenstein. I covered the episode at the time under the headline “Republican Senator Writes New York Times Op-Ed. Zionist Jews Get Blamed.”

“‘Blame Weiss and Rubenstein’ is the NYT’s new motto, and unlike its previous one, actually accurately describes what the paper aims to do every day of the week and twice on Shabbos,” quipped Seth Mandel, executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.

Weiss left the Times in July, complaining of “unlawful discrimination” and “constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views.” Now Rubenstein has also departed. He did not reply to a message asking why, but Weiss, on Twitter, wrote that he “was hung out to dry by his own colleagues.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Georgia announces signature matching review for presidential election ballots Move is attempt to “instill confidence in Georgia’s voting systems”

Posted By on December 18th, 2020

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/georgia-announces-signature-matching-review-all-counties-over

After three recounts, Georgia certified the 2020 presidential election.

But on Thursday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced a statewide move to match signatures to their absentee ballots in all 159 counties in the state. 

The announcement comes just weeks before two Georgia Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5 will determine which party controls the Senate.

Raffensperger announced that the signature matching will be done in partnership with the University of Georgia. The study will review a random sample of signatures for mail-in ballots that were cast in the presidential election.

“We are confident that elections in Georgia are secure, reliable and effective,” Raffensperger said.

“Despite endless lawsuits and wild allegations from Washington, D.C., pundits, we have seen no actual evidence of widespread voter fraud, though we are investigating all credible reports. Nonetheless, we look forward to working with the University of Georgia on this signature match review to further instill confidence in Georgia’s voting systems,” he also said.

Earlier this week, Georgia officials announced an audit of signatures for mail-in ballots in Cobb County, a suburb of Atlanta.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Beside the Pointe Diversity and bias obsessions come for Swan Lake. Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on December 18th, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/sniffing-out-racism-and-white-supremacy-at-the-ballet

The New York Times has published the latest installment in its running tally of alleged racism in the high arts: the Staatsballett Berlin (Berlin State Ballet) treated a black ballerina differently because of the color of her skin. Oh, wait! That was yesterday’s template. Today’s is that a black ballerina was treated the same as white ballerinas. The search for racism requires just such rhetorical nimbleness.

Since the nineteenth century, dancers in a corps de ballet often applied white body paint in works, such as Giselle or Les Sylphides, that feature a supernatural element. The intent was to create an impression of ghostly creatures from beyond the grave who might doom any red-blooded prince who crosses them. The use of white makeup was not a statement about white supremacy: there were virtually no black dancers in Russian or Parisian ballet troupes at the time against which a statement about skin color might be made. If one is looking for slurs, the body paint could be seen as anti-white, in its association of whiteness with death.

In 2018, the Staatsballett Berlin mounted Swan Lake, another ballet where white body paint has traditionally been used, in this case to increase the illusion that the dancers were swans. One of the company’s ballet mistresses told the company’s one black dancer, Chloé Lopes Gomes, to use the paint as well. Gomes says she told the ballet mistress, “I’ll never look white,” to which the mistress responded: “well, you will have to put on more than the other girls.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Supreme Court Green-Lights Trump Removal of Illegal Aliens From Census Count By Matthew Vadum

Posted By on December 18th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/supreme-court-green-lights-trump-removal-of-illegal-aliens-from-census-count_3624432.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-18-3

The Supreme Court ruled that the federal government may remove illegal aliens from the 2020 Census count, which eliminates that population from the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes that officially determine the presidency.

The 6-3 decision in Trump v. New York issued Dec. 18 is a victory for the Trump administration.

Placed on a judicial fast track because various census-related deadlines are nearing, oral argument took place telephonically before the nine justices on Nov. 30.

The Trump administration wanted illegal aliens removed from the decennial census count to prevent them from having an impact on the apportionment of political power among the states.

States and local governments, including so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, which refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials, sued to prevent the administration’s plan from moving forward. They argued that President Donald Trump, a Republican, was attempting to interfere with the count and prevent Democratic-leaning areas with large illegal-alien populations from gaining congressional seats.

But the high court found that their challenge was premature because they could not demonstrate any so-called concrete injury they might suffer. The ruling apparently leaves open the possibility of further challenges in the future and acknowledges the Trump administration may have difficulty implementing its policy.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Guess Who Was a Guest Preacher at Raphael Warnock’s Church in 2014? Bronson Stocking

Posted By on December 18th, 2020

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bronsonstocking/2020/12/17/remember-jeremiah-wright-raphael-warnock-hosted-him-in-2014-n2581787

Georgia Democrat candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock is running for Senate, but he’s also running from a pretty checkered past. Warnack has come under fire for interfering with a child abuse investigation, for his church’s decision to welcome communist dictator Fidel Castro and various other statements Warnock has made in support of Marxism and the like. 

Fox News is now reporting that Warnock hosted the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a guest preacher in 2014. A flyer for the event at Ebenezer Baptist Church bills Warnock as the senior pastor and Wright as a guest preacher. 

In a statement to Fox News, Sen. Loeffler’s communications director, Stephen Lawson, blasted Warnock’s decision to host the Wright. 

“Not only did Raphael Warnock praise Jeremiah Wright’s ‘God Damn America’ sermon, he thought it was so great that he invited him to Ebenezer Baptist to deliver it,” said Lawson. “Does Georgia really want a U.S. senator who thinks God should damn America?”

In a 2003 sermon, Rev. Wright railed against the United States following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. 

ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

Ivanka, Hunter and Vanity Unfair Tim Graham

Posted By on December 18th, 2020

https://townhall.com/columnists/timgraham/2020/12/18/ivanka-hunter-and-vanity-unfair-n2581779

No media analyst believes Vanity Fair is a “news” magazine. It’s a glossy liberal rag. But on Dec. 16, it displayed some amazing partisan gymnastics on the offspring of Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

This headline by writer Bess Levin was certainly clickbait for the haters: “Ivanka Trump Faces Off With Father to See How Many People They Can Kill With COVID-19.” We can guess no “independent fact-checkers” will get involved to insist that, in reality, the Trumps aren’t plotting to kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Just a month ago, Vanity Fair ran a story by a purported ex-best friend of Ivanka Trump’s in which she claimed that Trump once asked, “Why would you tell me to read a book about f—ing poor people?”

Levin’s Ivanka screed carried a subhead reading, “The first daughter, a noted epidemiologist, doesn’t think lockdowns are ‘grounded in science.'” That’s not exactly what Ivanka tweeted in response to a video of a businessman frustrated with the lockdowns. “These blanket lockdowns are not grounded in science,” she said. “These arbitrary rules imposed by callous politicians are destroying lives. It is just wrong for small business owners to have fight so hard to keep their American dream alive.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

WHO IS VERNON JONES?

Posted By on December 18th, 2020

Vernon Jones is an American politician who has served as a State Representative in the Georgia House of Representatives since 2017, and previously from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, Jones was Chief Executive Officer of DeKalb County, Georgia, from 2001 to 2009. He stands alone among Democrat legislators who support Donald Trump and his efforts to thwart election fraud.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Institutionalization of Election Fraud By Jon N. Hall

Posted By on December 18th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/12/the_institutionalization_of_election_fraud.html

Many Americans, including this writer, contend that the 2020 presidential election is being stolen. About 70 percent of Republicans and even some Democrats believe that such a theft is happening. But despite considerable evidence, they cannot prove their case and put a number on the full extent of this alleged fraud.

Other Americans contend that the 2020 presidential election is not being stolen, and they, too, cannot prove their case. This second camp doesn’t deny that election fraud occurred but alleges that the margins are too great for fraud to have changed the outcome. Even respected conservatives have taken the position that Biden’s margins of victory are too great to overcome. But that seems to beg the question, because unless one can demonstrate the legitimacy of each and every ballot, one can’t really say what the margins are.

To prove what the legitimate vote count is, one would need to establish the eligibility of all the voters. Essentially, one would need to reregister all the voters. And that effort would be just the first of the several tasks that would be needed to demonstrate what the true vote count is.

If election fraud occurs cycle after cycle and is even tolerated, it can’t be said that America has a real democracy. Recently, this writer urged that the U.S. Supreme Court vacate the presidential elections in several problem states and order new elections to be conducted. This would be an unprecedented event, of course, but the glaring irregularities, anomalies, and illegalities are also without precedent. However, an editorial at National Review asserts that “the Supreme Court doesn’t have the authority to order new elections in those states.”