If there’s one lesson to be learned from the red sweep in Virginia this week, it’s that politicians, schools boards, and education administrators shouldn’t mess with parents, especially on the well-being of their children. Many more school districts across other states still have to learn this lesson, and to that end, one Wisconsin parent is enlisting the help of attorneys to go after her son’s public school.
On Wednesday, counsel for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) sent a letter to the school district of Kenosha, the scene of violent riots last summer and the site of the ongoing trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, threatening legal action if the Kenosha Unified School District does not allow a concerned parent to observe her son’s class as required by federal law.
It started when the mother of a student at the Kenosha School of Technology Enhanced Curriculum, a public charter school, became concerned about her son’s dropping grades. According to WILL, the student had reported a bevy of classroom disruptions that contributed to his struggle, including fighting, profanities, racial epithets, and property damage, as well as a new math curriculum that does not involve homework nor a textbook.
In September, the mom decided to take action, figuring the best way to help her son succeed would be to observe and understand his learning environment. She requested access to see his classroom for herself, but both the school district and the school reportedly denied her requests multiple times, giving her inconsistent rationale as to why she couldn’t enter.
For instance, Bill Haithcock, the chief of school leadership for the district, allegedly told the mother that an in-person observation by her would serve “no educational program,” ignoring the school’s charter contract, which says, “Parents are important partners in the educational program at KTEC.” Haithcock reportedly further noted that he didn’t think it was the “best idea right now” to “expos[e] the class to an outside visitor.”
However, as the WILL letter notes, the district’s policies and social media pages indicate that many other types of visitors such as mentors, chaperones, and nonprofits are welcomed.
Other times, the school district allegedly told the mother that as a parent, she was “not connected to the educational curriculum” and that allowing her to visit the classroom would open the floodgates of other parents wanting to observe. WILL hopes Kenosha schools change course and “view parents as partners in the education of children.”
According to federal law signed by the Obama administration in 2015, these denials are illegal, as WILL argues in its letter. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, public schools must have systems in place that involve parents in educational settings, meaning the Kenosha district must have a policy that grants parents the “observation of classroom activities.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg of parents’ rights in their children’s education. They also have a right to access curriculum, see progress reports, engage in communication with staff, schedule yearly parent-teacher conferences, and participate in their kid’s classes.
The Kenosha school district does have policies in place for parent involvement and “classroom visits,” yet it has so far stonewalled this concerned parent.
In response to The Federalist’s request for comment, the Kenosha Unified School District’s Chief Communications Officer Tanya Ruder said, “KUSD is aware of the WILL letter and is working with legal counsel to review the matter at hand.” The Kenosha School of Technology Enhanced Curriculum did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
WILL said it hopes Kenosha schools change course and “view parents as partners in the education of children.”
“Public school classrooms should not be a ‘black box.’ Parents have the right to know what is being taught in classrooms,” said WILL Deputy Counsel Dan Lennington.
This controversy over whether parents are partners in their children’s education or whether they should be staying out of schools has shown to have remarkable electoral significance this week, especially in the Virginia gubernatorial race. After candidate and former governor Terry McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” and doubled down on keeping parental involvement out of public schools, Republican candidate and parent advocate Glenn Youngkin won the race in the same state President Joe Biden won by 10+ points just one year ago.
“Federal and state laws impose simple and straightforward transparency requirements on public schools such as allowing parents to sit in on classes and the right to view curriculum,” Lennington told The Federalist. “But if public schools continue to treat parents as adversaries by concealing what’s going on inside school buildings, they face the real risk of an electoral backlash, like we just saw in Virginia.”
Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
The political pendulum will continue swinging back and forth every 4-6 years, but the policies will inexorably march leftward if we continue doing nothing to convert election victories into enduring policy outcomes.
Anyone asking how Tuesday night’s stunning election results will affect the race for control of Congress in a year from now is pondering the wrong question. The more salient question is how the GOP gubernatorial and state legislative victories will bear on other GOP governors and legislatures in states where they already command strong majorities right now.
We can’t wait until January 2023 or January 2025 for relief from COVID fascism, genocidal COVID treatment policies, denial of health care freedom, open borders, irresponsible refugee resettlement, rampant crime, and a return to gender sanity and traditional American values in our society and schools. The lesson from this week is that if Republicans can win in Virginia and New Jersey because of some of the aforementioned issues, that means they have no excuse not to immediately act upon all of these issues without any diffidence, equivocation, or compromise in all of the states where they already enjoy long-term control.
Although the issue of education, particularly school board decisions on transgenderism in Loudoun County and critical race theory across the state, loomed large in Virginia, it wasn’t any single issue that drove what was clearly a national wave. Republicans won races in places like Seattle and Long Island, and a truck driver who spent less than $200 on his campaign defeated the most powerful man in the New Jersey legislature, while a little-known candidate came within inches of unseating Governor Phil Murphy. Republicans flipped a Biden+14 legislative seat in Texas, a number of Soros prosecutor candidates were defeated throughout the country, and five anti-police incumbents were swept out of the Minneapolis city council. This was a clear rebellion by the voters against all of the chaos and tyranny created by the confluence of numerous odious policies foisted upon us by the elites.
But the question is what Republicans should do with the mandate clearly handed to them by the voters. The definition of insanity is repeating the same cycle of failed policies and strategies over and over again and expecting a different result. We were in this very position in November 2009 when Republicans won big against Obama’s radicalism in what became a harbinger for the Tea Party wave a year later. Then, we were told the House was not enough because they needed the Senate. Then they needed the White House. Then, in 2016, they won the federal trifecta. Not only did they do nothing with the power, but COVID fascism, which essentially remade our Constitution and way of life, began on their watch. Today’s level of tyranny, spending, dependency, inflation, crime, illegal immigration, and social rotgut makes 2009 look like the Reagan era.
As such, anyone who thinks Republicans winning a narrow RINO majority in Washington next year is going to make a difference was born yesterday or somehow doesn’t feel the pain of the average American. Besides, we can’t wait another day, much less until January 2023, to save our children from an imminent injection into their bodies, to save jobs and careers from being destroyed, and to save lives from a virus likely created by the very entities blocking lifesaving treatment against it. We need action NOW.
Despite losing the 2020 elections, Republicans already dominate in many state governments over and beyond their historical baseline, and this is even before what will likely be a wave election a year from now. Republicans will now control 28 governorships, 31 states with both chambers, 23 trifectas, and 19 trifectas with supermajorities in both houses. COVID fascism, in particular, began with states governments. It can and must end with those same state governments. We don’t need control of the federal government to change these policies in the states, nor can we afford to wait (and nor will it help anyway).
Yet even in most deep red states, we have Republican governors and legislative leaders who either support the dangerous vaccines and other aspects of the “COVID religion” or are somehow too scared to finally take a stand against the bio-medical security establishment and the powerful special interests representing this leviathan. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has wavered over signing a compromise bill against vaccine mandates overwhelmingly passed out of the legislatures, and Tennessee is the only state that even passed such a bill out of all the trifectas! We can’t get governors in states like Idaho and Alabama to combat the mandates, and even in Iowa, where Gov. Kim Reynolds has generally been more level-headed on this issue, she continues to push the already debunked premise that the shots are safe and “the best defense” against the virus.
Ironically, with some of the cultural issues that Glenn Youngkin successfully leaned heavily into while campaigning in a blue state, too many Republicans in deep red states are downright on the other side! For example, we couldn’t even get governors like Asa Hutchinson in much more socially conservative Arkansas to ban chemical castration of minors. While Youngkin ran hard against the Soros de-incarceration agenda and parole boards releasing criminals, many southern governors continue to push that agenda and somehow use a perverted view of the Bible to justify it.
Thus, we must finally realize this election cycle that we have won nothing with an election. We have merely secured possession of the ball with zero points on our side of the scoreboard after the other side already ran up the score to near-insurmountable margins. Now is the time to make the plays – big plays.
On Tuesday night, Republicans demonstrated that with the right message, they can make inroads even into blue-leaning areas on the East Coast. But what was also clear is that the “country class” voters are even more frantically anti-globalist and elitist than ever before. Youngkin blew out even Trump’s historically strong showing in rural southwest Virginia while picking up lost suburban voters in Loudoun County, the Richmond suburbs, and the Tidewater area.
You know what looks a lot like southwest Virginia? Places like Idaho, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee. The question all voters fed up with the unprecedented tyranny from the federal government should be asking is: If Youngkin can win in Virginia, why are deep red state governors and legislatures not immediately convening to counter every one of these policies emanating from the Biden administration? As I speak with legislators in supermajority GOP states, all I hear is a defeatist attitude of, “This is the best we can do with the leadership we have.” But why? If our message now resonates even in New Jersey, then most certainly we can push a no-holds-barred agenda against this administration and nullify every one of the unlawful policies without any need to work with Democrats.
As always, the GOP candidate victory speeches were full of optimism and broad platitudes on apple pie, American dream bromides, and general tropes about freedom and liberty. But when it comes to the specific policy outcomes that actually matter, the Democrats continue to succeed, largely because Republicans agree with the foundational premise of most of those policies, while opposing a few of the most extreme manifestations of it. It’s time for voters to demand immediate policy changes in any state where Republicans control government, including, but not limited to, the following:
A complete cessation of all “criminal justice reform,” the de-incarceration agenda that most GOP governors have bought into. It’s time to get tough on crime again by increasing sentences for violent offenders and limiting bail.
A big theme of the Virginia campaigns was safe and secure communities. Republicans must promise to block refugee resettlement in their respective states, as thousands of unvetted Afghans are being dumped into our communities with no regard for the safety and culture of those areas.
An immediate special session on COVID, in which all the funding and policies of COVID are shifted away from the failed vaccines and social control and toward early treatment, along with a complete ban on all mandates – no exceptions.
An immediate prohibition on castration of minors, men in female sports, and men in female bathrooms, as well as a clear protection against any institution from having to perform unethical and medically damaging transgender “surgeries.”
A categorical ban on all critical race theory in all states and replacing it with a curriculum built upon the 1776 Curriculum.
Every GOP state should, within the same week, pass an interposition bill, which empowers the legislature to ban the enforcement of any federal policies that violates the Constitution, the same way New York Democrats made it a felony to enforce immigration law or work with ICE during the Trump administration.
During the 1993 Super Bowl, Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Leon Lett famously celebrated before he got the ball in the end zone, only to have the ball stripped from him by Buffalo Bills wide receiver Don Beebe. In that case, the Cowboys already had a massive lead, so the Leon Lett blunder was merely symbolic. But in our case, we are the ones losing big-time and cannot afford to showboat before we get the ball in the end zone.
Virginia’s lieutenant governor-elect, Republican Winsome Sears, laid down a challenge to MSNBC’s Joy Reid Wednesday night, daring the progressive news anchor to invite her on her show to have a “real discussion” about race and politics in America.
Reid had claimed during MSNBC’s election night coverage that “white nationalism” played a major part in Republicans’ sweep of three statewide offices. But those comments didn’t sit well with Sears, who on Tuesday became the first black female lieutenant governor in Virginia’s history.
“You have to be willing to vocalize that these Republicans are dangerous. This is not a party that is just another political party that disagrees with us on tax policy. At this point, they are dangerous to our national security,” Reid said Tuesday night, arguing that Republicans were “stoking” white nationalism.
Speaking with Fox News’s Martha MacCallum on Wednesday, Sears responded by daring Reid to raise that argument with her face-to-face.
“I wish Joy Reid would invite me on her show. Let’s see if she is woman enough to do that. I would go in a heartbeat, and we will have a real discussion without Joy speaking about me behind my back,” Sears blasted. “She talks about white supremacy. Does she know that I ran against a white supremacist? Joy, come on. Get your facts straight and then come talk to me.”
Sears doubled down on Twitter, calling Reid’s comments “shameful.”
Sears, a Marine Corps veteran and naturalized U.S. citizen from Jamaica, delivered a rousing speech Tuesday night after defeating Democrat Hala Ayala, in which she referred to herself as “living proof” of the American dream. She repeated that same sentiment on Wednesday while criticizing Democratic attempts to divide the country along racial lines.
“We are framing too many issues in terms of race. It continues to divide us. And unfortunately, politicians are using it as a tool because of the things that happened to us historically to advance, I think, their nefarious purposes,” she told MacCaullum.
“If we stop looking at race and look at people. You see, I am destroying all of the narratives about race. Look at me! Look at me!” she continued. “I am a heartbeat away from the governorship, in case anything happens to the governor.”
“How are you going to tell me I am a victim?” she asked. “And I didn’t do anything special to get here, except stay in school and study. I took advantage of the opportunities available here in America.”
On Tuesday, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe in the race for governor, and Republican Del. Jason Miyares defeated incumbent Democratic incumbent Mark Herring to become the state’s next attorney general.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
A Christian student group has filed a lawsuit against the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, accusing the school of wrongfully denying funding for a guest speaker.
The UNL chapter of the international apologetics ministry Ratio Christi filed a lawsuit against UNL last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska, alleging that university officials engaged in “viewpoint discrimination.”
At issue is a funding request to host Christian philosopher and Notre Dame Professor Robert Audi for a lecture on whether it is rational to believe in God. The student group requested $1,500 in student activity funding for the event with Audi, who previously taught at UNL for nearly 30 years before his time at Notre Dame.
University officials denied the request, the complaint stated. The school allegedly told the students that they would need to invite a speaker to represent the opposite views of Audi to get the funding. The school reasoned that the funding could not be used to promote “speakers of a political and ideological nature,” the lawsuit added.
“Defendants spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in student fees each year to pay for speakers and other events promoting political and ideological viewpoints on topics like sexual orientation, ‘gender identity,’ ‘reproductive justice,’ social justice, police reform, and political activism,” the lawsuit reads.
“And Defendants do not present opposing viewpoints. … Commonly, the student speech that Defendants fund on those and other topics conflict with the viewpoints held by Ratio Christi, the Student Plaintiffs, and other University Students.”
Michael Ross of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal nonprofit representing Ratio Christi, said in a statement that public universities should foster “an inclusive environment that showcases a variety of viewpoints, not dismiss those with whom the administration disagrees.”
“The University of Nebraska–Lincoln has failed to ensure its student organizations are treated fairly and objectively; it turned down Ratio Christi’s reasonable request because of a blatant bias against its particular religious and ideological viewpoint,” Ross claimed.
UNL spokeswoman Deb Fiddelke said in a statement reported by The Omaha World-Herald last Friday that the university welcomes all viewpoints. She rejected claims of discrimination.
“We have a variety of speakers on our campus, from across the ideological, religious and political spectrum,” stated Fiddelke, adding that there are “many different sources” for event funding and that “Ratio Christi has been previously funded for speakers and events from other funding sources.”
The lawsuit drew the attention of Gov. Pete Ricketts, who called for the university to support “speakers from a wide variety of viewpoints on campus, including Christian speakers.”
“UNL has previously brought in much more controversial speakers, and Dr. Robert Audi and Ratio Christi should be given the same respect,” the Republican governor said in a statement. “I urge University of Nebraska Chancellor Ronnie Green to step in and define policies to end this kind of discrimination and to send a message that all viewpoints, including Christian values, are welcome.”
ADF has represented Ratio Christi groups in other cases, including a recent lawsuit against The University of Houston-Clear Lake that claims the school denied official recognition of the student group.
Days after the ADF filed the complaint against the University of Houston-Clear Lake, the university officially registered the Christian group as a student organization.
However, the university maintains that it never denied official status to Ratio Christi and was still processing the application when the lawsuit was filed.
The Loudoun County, Virginia, mother of the skirt-wearing teen accused of raping a female classmate in a girls’ bathroom is speaking out in defense of her son, saying that he is not transgender, identifies as male, and simply “wanted sex.”
The woman, who remains unnamed at the time of this reporting, told the Daily Mail that her 15-year-old son is male and not transgender. She defended her son as simply engaging in the actions of a “heterosexual, hormonal teen who, in the case of the rape, had consensual sex with the girl twice before.”
“He’s a 15-year-old boy that wanted to have sex in the bathroom, with somebody that was willing,” she said. “And they’re twisting this just enough to make it a political hot button issue.”
The woman said that her son — who she admitted is “deeply troubled” — was only wearing a skirt that particular day because he has an “androgynous style.”
She explained, “He would wear a skirt one day and then the next day, he would wear jeans and a T-shirt, a polo, or hoodie. He was trying to find himself and that involved all kinds of styles. I believe he was doing it because it gave him attention he desperately needed and sought.”
The woman added that her son described the sexual assault to her in a way that made her believe the incident was all a misunderstanding. The two, according to the woman, met in a bathroom earlier in the day because the female teen “wasn’t feeling well that day.”
“He was worried about her, asked her how she was feeling, touched her forehead, brought water for her,” his mother recalled, and said that her son told her that he and the female teen talked about having sex later on in the day.
She continued, “He’d mentioned something about hooking up with her, said they’d discussed it that day and that she was wishy-washy, was like, ‘Yeah, maybe, I still don’t feel well, we’ll see.'”
She then said that her son later followed the female teen into the bathroom a second time later in the day, where he ended up advancing on her when she said that she was feeling “much better” than earlier the morning. The male teen, according to the woman, “depicted the rape as an accident” and said that he didn’t mean to insert himself into her anus.
“He said he was intending for vaginal and it ended up for 10 seconds as anal,” the woman recalled. “He knew she was in pain. He said, ‘Are you okay?” She said that hurt. And he’s like, ‘What kind of pain?'”
The woman said, “He was showing genuine concern.”
She then called into question the teen girl’s response to the incident.
“If I was in a position where I was about to be raped, I would be screaming, kicking, everything,” she said. “You’re 15. You can reasonably defend yourself. You’re not just going to sit there and take it. And so, because there wasn’t a presence of a fight, he felt it was okay to keep going.”
In late October, the teen was found guilty for the May sexual assault, which took place at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, Virginia. His victim admitted that the two previously had sex in the bathroom and that they’d agreed to meet there once more during lunch break. In her testimony, the unnamed female student said that she arrived at the bathroom and told him that she no longer wanted to have sex, but he threw her on the floor in response and forced her into sexual activities.
He was remanded to juvenile detention pending a Nov. 15 hearing in connection with the second incident — which reportedly took place at Broad Run High School in Ashburn in early October.
The Daily Mail reported that sources stated that the 15-year-old has a checkered record when it comes to sexual indiscretions, and in fifth grade the teen reportedly sent nude photos of himself to a female classmate.
The girl’s parents reportedly agreed not to file charges in exchange for the district keeping the boy away from their daughter.
His mother, according to the outlet, confirmed the incident and snapped, “What the f*** does that have to do with anything?”
“What are they trying to do?” she asked. “Did they hire an investigator to dig up everything and ruin him for the rest of his life? … He’s been a challenging child his whole life, which I’ve dealt with myself. My son’s gone through multiple forms of counseling and therapy, resources here, at school, friends, family. It’s been 15 years of hell trying to get him to do better and be better.”
According to the report, the woman still is not sure what to make of the charges in connection to the Oct. 6 incident.
“I didn’t hear my son’s side of it because he was being hauled into [juvenile detention] before I could talk to him,” she concluded. “What is the end game on this? My son’s going to be on the sexual registry and be committed to Megan’s Law for the rest of his life because he had 15-year-old hormones.”
Jones surmised that Democrats have been living in a political bubble and not paying attention to voters’ real day-to-day needs — and paid for it at the ballot box.
“I think that the Democrats are coming across in ways that we don’t recognize that are annoying and offensive, and seem out of touch in ways that I don’t think show up in our feeds, when we’re looking at our kind of echo chamber,” Jones said, mimicking someone scrolling through a smartphone. “And I think that this is a message here.”
‘Moralizing’ messages: ‘We will tell you what is right’
Axelrod echoed Jones’ take, adding that Democrats also have come across as preachy to the point that they’re dictating what voters should believe and how they should behave.
He noted that the Democratic Party has “become a more college-educated, urban party in coalition with minority voters, and the messages tend to be moralizing. It’s like, ‘We are going to tell you; we will tell you what is right.’ And no connection to people who work with their hands, people who work with their backs, rural voters, so that’s part of the problem.”
How are folks reacting?
Twitter users responding to Jones’ comments posted on the Republican National Committee Research page couldn’t agree more:
“Oh honey, it’s not that they just come across that way, they are,” one commenter said.
“Yeah people are tired of all that woke nonsense,” another user offered. “We just want to know what is going on and live as peacefully as we can with one another.”
“YA THINK?” another commenter mockingly asked. “What idiot thought it was a good idea to portray concerned parents as ‘domestic terrorists’? ‘Defund the Police’ wasn’t a big enough failure, so Democrats went to war with parents?”
“‘Seem out of touch’?” another user wondered. “The fact that they don’t discuss the border crisis, the Afghanistan fiasco, defunding the police, the crime, the failing public schools are all evidence of that. Those problems do not exist to them.”
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, to decide whether the Second Amendment right to “bear arms” is a legally enforceable right. The case raises some of the same questions that were at issue at the infamous 1857 Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford.
The Dred Scott majority held that free blacks could never be citizens of the United States, so plaintiff Scott could not bring a case in federal court. In support of the supposed “absurdity” of free blacks having citizenship rights, Chief Justice Taney described a parade of horribles that would ensue.
Free black citizens would have the right to travel about the United States“‘without pass or passport,” to enter any state, to stay there as long as they pleased, and within that state they could go where they wanted at any hour of the day or night, unless they committed some act for which a white person could be punished. Further, black citizens would have “the right to . . . full liberty of speech in public and private upon all subjects which [a state’s] own citizens might meet; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” (Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 Howell) 393, 417 (1857)).
Most of the rights on the list were straightforward rephrasings of the Bill of Rights. Instead of “freedom of speech,” Taney wrote “liberty of speech”; instead of the right “peaceably to assemble,” he discussed the right “to hold meetings,” and instead of the right to “keep and bear arms,” he discussed the right to “keep and carry arms.” Although the right to travel is not textually stated in the Constitution, it has long been found there by implication.
So according to the Supreme Court, the “right to . . . keep and carry arms” is like “the right to . . . full liberty of speech,” the right to interstate travel, and the “the right to . . . hold public meetings on political affairs.” Each is an obvious individual right of American citizenship.
Congress Shall Not Infringe
Although resolving the citizenship issue was sufficient to end the Dred Scott case, the Taney majority decided to address what it considered to be an error in the opinion of the circuit court. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress had no power to outlaw slavery in a territory, as Congress had done in the 1820 Missouri Compromise for the future Territory of Nebraska. The Court noted the universal assumption that the Bill of Rights constrained congressional legislation in the territories:
No one, we presume, will contend that Congress can make any law in a territory respecting the establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people of the territory peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances.
Nor can Congress deny to the people the right to keep and bear arms, nor the right to trial by jury, nor compel anyone to be a witness against himself in a criminal proceeding.
Because Congress could not infringe the Bill of Rights in the territories, Taney concluded that Congress could not infringe the property rights of slave-owners by abolishing slavery in the territories. Again, the Taney Court treated the Second Amendment as one of the constitutional rights belonging to individual Americans.
What This Has to Do with Bruen
Dred Scott has several implications for the Bruen case. First, it affirms that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is a normal individual right, like the other individual rights listed in the case, such as free exercise of religion, freedom of speech and of the press, jury trial, and so on.
In Bruen, several amicus briefs have asserted that District of Columbia v. Heller was wrongly decided, because the Second Amendment was supposedly only for militiamen. The argument is based on a misapplication of a form of legal scholarship known as “corpus linguistics”—essentially, searching historic databases for certain words, and counting how often those words were used in various ways.
There is no dispute that in the Founding Era, “bear arms” was frequently used in a military context. That does not mean that militia service was the only meaning of bear arms. Indeed, when one looks for “bear arms” in the context of the word “right,” or when one looks for the phrase “keep and bear arms,” most of the uses unmistakably point to a general right of all citizens, not solely for militiamen.
Dred Scott shows that the Second Amendment’s original public meaning from 1791 remained the same through 1857. The Scott Court put Second Amendment rights into lists of other ordinary rights belonging to all citizens, not solely for a subset of citizens engaged in military service.
No, Gun Bans Were Not the Norm
Another argument of some anti-rights briefs in Bruen is that as of the mid-nineteenth century, Americans had no right at all to bear arms. The no-rights argument asserts that England’s 1328 Statute of Northampton was still the law in the United States, and that it banned arms-carrying.
However, the American case law is exactly the opposite. For example, the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1843 explained that the Statute of Northampton (while not applicable in North Carolina), was just a formalization of a common law rule (which did apply in North Carolina) against carrying arms “to terrify and alarm.”
As for peaceably bearing arms, “[T]he carrying of a gun per se constitutes no offence. For any lawful purpose . . . the citizen is at perfect liberty to carry his gun” (State v. Huntley, 25 N.C. 418, 420 (1843)).
As of 1857, eight states and the District of Columbia had statutes allowing lawsuits against persons whose bearing of arms threatened to cause a breach of the peace. If the defendant was proven to have been carrying in an unpeaceable manner, then he could continue to carry only if he posted a bond for good behavior. Aggressively misreading the Massachusetts statute and its parallels in some other states, several anti-rights amicus briefs assert that carrying guns was generally prohibited by these statutes.
However, a detailed survey of newspaper reports of the enforcement of these statutes has found that the very rare instances of someone being haled into court for peaceable carry all involved black defendants—two in Boston and two in the District of Columbia. Only one of the defendants had the resources to appeal, and when he did, the prosecutor withdrew the case.
Dred Scott refutes the notion that bans on bearing arms were the norm in the United States (or in any State). According to Dred Scott, American citizens have always had the right “to keep and carry arms wherever they went”—so recognizing blacks as citizens would mean recognizing their right to bear arms.
Supreme Court Justice Lists 2A as Constitutional Right
Dred Scott’s treatment of the Second Amendment was consistent with legal tradition. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Supreme Court justices individually “rode circuit,” by serving as judges in lower federal courts when the Supreme Court was not in session. In 1833, Supreme Court Justice Henry Baldwin, while circuit-riding, gave a jury charge that listed some of the constitutional rights possessed by the plaintiff.
Justice Baldwin pointed out that Article IV of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that “the citizens of each state shall be entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.” As part of the list of “the privileges and immunities” of U.S. citizens, Baldwin stated: “The second amendment provides, ‘that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed’” (Johnson v. Tompkins, 13 F. Cas. 840, 850 (C.C.E.D. Pa. 1833) (No. 7416)).
Since Johnson’s lawsuit was against an employee of a subdivision of the Pennsylvania state government, Justice Baldwin’s listing of the Second Amendment implied that he considered the Second Amendment to be a restriction on state actions against individuals.
Sen. Stephen Douglas summed up the litany of individual rights that Dred Scott said could not be violated in the territories:
Nothing can be more certain than that the Court were here speaking only of forbidden powers, which were denied alike to Congress, to the State Legislatures, and to the Territorial Legislatures, and that the prohibition extends ‘everywhere within the dominion of the United States,’ applicable equally to States and Territories, as well as to the United States.
While agreeing that no government within the United States could violate the right to bear arms, Douglas argued that there were particular historic and legal reasons the Court’s protection of property in slaves could not be applied to States that chose to forbid slavery. Stephen Douglas, The Dividing Line Between Federal and Local Authority: Popular Sovereignty in the Territories, Harper’s (Sept. 1859).
Dred Scott’s holding that blacks are not citizens was repudiated in 1868 by the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares that all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.
Other language of the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to prevent state and local governments from infringing the enumerated rights of American citizens listed in the Bill of Rights. For example, in congressional debate on the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, Representative Henry Raymond (R., N.Y.) stated: “Make the colored man a citizen of the United States and he has every right which you or I have as citizens of the United States under the laws and Constitution of the United States,” among which is “a right to bear arms” (Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 1266 (1866)).
Yes, States Must Obey the Bill of Rights
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court was initially hostile to requiring states to adhere to the Bill of Rights. Slowly, the court has corrected its earlier errors. McDonald v. Chicago in 2010 held that states must obey the Second Amendment, and Timbs v. Indiana in 2019 held that states may not levy “excessive fines” in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Yet today, New York State still refuses to comply with the Second Amendment. State statutes entirely prohibit open carry of handguns. Concealed carry is allowed only with a license, and officials in many counties refuse to issue licenses to adults who have passed a fingerprint-based background check and safety training, and simply want to exercise their Second Amendment right to peaceably bear arms.
The law-abiding citizens of New York are thus placed in the same position as free people of color in the slave states. Although early North Carolina had included free blacks in the state and colonial militia without discrimination and had not restricted the rights of free persons of any color to carry firearms peaceably, in 1841 the legislature enacted a statute that all free persons of color must have an annual license from the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions in order to own or carry firearms, swords, daggers, or bowie knives (“An Act to prevent Free Persons of Colour from carrying Fire-arms,” ch. 30, 1840-41 N.C. Laws 61-62 (1841)).
When the law was challenged, the trial court held it unconstitutional, but the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed. The North Carolina Supreme Court wrote that that “free people of color have been among us, as a separate and distinct class, requiring, from necessity, in many cases, separate and distinct legislation.” It was up to “the control of the County Court, giving them the power to say, in the exercise of a sound discretion, who, of this class of persons, shall have a right to the licence, or whether any shall” (State v. Newsom, 27 N.C. (5 Iredell) 250 (1844)).
Likewise, the Georgia Supreme Court stated in 1848 that “Free persons of color” were not citizens, and thus “not entitled to bear arms” (Cooper v. City of Savannah, 4 Ga. 68, 72 (1848) (upholding municipality’s special tax on free persons of color who moved into the city)). These were the kinds of laws that Dred Scott’s anti-citizenship holding protected.
It is not surprising that the plaintiffs’ briefs in Bruen, and several of the amicus briefs in support of the plaintiffs, directly address the Dred Scott case. It is revealing that neither the Bruen defendants nor their many amici claiming expertise in American legal history even dare to mention Dred Scott. The case destroys their assertions that bearing arms was generally prohibited in the antebellum United States.
Yet it would have been proper for the supporters of the current New York system to defend and extol Dred Scott v. Sandford. The ultimate principle that the anti-rights briefs support is that Dred Scott’s holding against the rights of free people of color should be affirmed and extended to all people, regardless of color. Should the Bruen defendants prevail, then all Americans will be reduced to the degraded legal status of free people of color in North Carolina as of 1844, with the exercise of their right to bear arms contingent on an official’s discretion about “whether any shall.”
David Kopel is research director at the Independence Institute in Denver. He is coauthor of the law school textbook “Firearms Law and the Second Amendment.”
The G20 (comprising 19 countries and the European Union) met in Rome this past weekend to address the global supply chain crisis, international taxes, and climate change. Three of America’s largest importers China, Japan, and Mexico leaders, were absent.
President Biden held a press conference focusing on the fragility of the global supply chains. Biden’s Rome speech finished by channeling Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini by quoting the need for “the trains run on time.” Many of our supply chains are almost entirely owned and operated by the private sector. But government can play a key role identifying supply chain risks and bringing the different pieces and actors together to address these vulnerabilities. To insure our supply chains are free from forced and child labor. Supporting the dignity and the voice of workers and are in line with our climate goals.
Last week in a futile attempt, Biden ordered the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports to work 24/7. Still, a shortage of rail workers and qualified professional truck drivers means continued bottlenecks. Also, there are punitive fines for container shipping delays. This Bureaucratic incompetency doesn’t inspire confidence.
Biden claims the Build Back Better spending bill will rescue the system by providing billions in funding to fix the private supply chains and provide monitoring and oversight.
Centralized Command Economy
Biden is moving towards an old-style Soviet Union command economy of issuing logistic regulations and objectives for producing, distributing, and consuming goods. Next on his agenda, we can anticipate a state planning committee to devise operational plans and destructive price controls to contain inflationary prices. The Soviet Command economy created empty shop shelves and long waiting lines. Biden’s economy is now doing the same just in time for Christmas.
Vilification of Just-In-Time Supply Chains
The global just-in-time supply chain (JIT) is based on suppliers stripping out redundancies, streamlining efficiency, and eliminating waste resulting in lower-cost products for consumers. JIT manufactures and distributes products at the right time in the right amounts based on customer demand. Absent panic buying, JIT worked well for decades until the mandated pandemic lockdowns disrupted the supply chains.
Biden’s cure is to force the private sector to take on more costs by re-engineering logistics, creating redundancies and inventory stockpiles to overhaul the JIT supply chains. It will create further disruptions and much higher consumer prices.
Gallup Poll – ‘Government Has Too Much Power’
Last September, the Gallup Poll found that 52% of the public favor a more limited government role. There has been a shift where American’s believe that the government is regulating business too much. The public also prefers lower taxes and fewer government services. Most American’s realize government regulation creates a covert tax known as inflation. Biden could care less about public sentiment.
“I am from the Government, and I am here to help.”
President Ronald Reagan’s famous quote addresses the folly of progressive policymaking. Dogmatic mandates and regulations don’t make our lives easier.
Joe Hoft is the twin brother of TGP’s founder, Jim Hoft, and a contributing editor at TGP. Joe’s reporting is often months ahead of the Mainstream media as was observed in his reporting on the Mueller sham investigation, the origins of the China coronavirus, and 2020 Election fraud. Joe was a corporate executive in Hong Kong for a decade and has years of experience in finance, IT, operations and auditing around the world. The knowledge gained in his career provide him with a unique perspective of current events in the US and globally. He has ten degrees or designations and is the author of three books. Joe is currently co-host of the morning radio show in St. Louis at 93.3 “Tomorrow’s News Today”. His new book: ‘In God We Trust: Not in Lying Liberal Lunatics’ is out now – please take a look and buy a copy.
U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington, U.S., November 27, 2017. | (Photo: REUTERS/Yuri Gripas)
The U.S. Supreme Court has vacated a lower court ruling against multiple religious employers seeking an exemption to a 2017 New York regulation requiring employers to provide healthcare plans that include coverage of medically necessary abortions. In an order released Monday morning, the nation’s high court vacated a lower court ruling in the case of Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, et al. v. Emani, Shiri, et al., remanding the case back to the New York Court of Appeals.
The Supreme Court cited its unanimous July decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia to justify the order. In that case, the high court ruled that Philadelphia officials could not exclude a Catholic charity from its foster program because the organization refused to place children with same-sex couples for religious reasons.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch voted to hear the charities’ appeal rather than send the case back to the lower courts.
Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, a legal nonprofit that represents the diocese, said in a statement that he is “thankful” for the order.
“New York clearly learned nothing from the federal government’s own attempts to force nuns to pay for contraceptives and is now needlessly threatening charities because they believe in the dignity and humanity of every human person,” stated Baxter.
“We are thankful that the Supreme Court won’t allow the New York Court of Appeals’ bad ruling to be the last word on the right of religious ministries to serve New Yorkers of all faiths.”
A group of religious organizations and orders, including multiple Roman Catholic dioceses, Catholic Charities, an Anglican order of nuns and multiple Protestant churches filed lawsuits against New York over its abortion coverage mandate.
“We believe that every person is made in the image of God,” said Mother Miriam of the Sisterhood of Saint Mary, the oldest Anglican religious order founded in America. “That’s why we believe in the sanctity of human life, and why we seek to serve those of all faiths — or no faith at all — in our community. We’re grateful that the Supreme Court has taken action in our case and hopeful that, this time around, the New York Court of Appeals will preserve our ability to serve and encourage our neighbors.”
The New York Codes, Rules and Regulations, Title 11, Section 52.16 (o) prohibits healthcare policies from limiting what it describes as “medically necessary” abortions.
“No policy delivered or issued for delivery in this State that provides hospital, surgical, or medical expense coverage shall limit or exclude coverage for abortions that are medically necessary,”the section reads.
“Coverage for in-network abortions that are medically necessary shall not be subject to copayments, or coinsurance, or annual deductibles, unless the policy is a high deductible health plan … in which case coverage for medically necessary abortions may be subject to the plan’s annual deductible.”
The New York mandate allows for a religious exemption, provided that the insurer for the religious employer “obtains an annual certification” confirming their status and that the insurer issues “a rider for coverage of medically necessary abortions.”
In section 52.2 of the New York Codes, a “religious employer” is defined as an entity that engages in the “inculcation of religious values,” “primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the entity,” “serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity” and “is a nonprofit organization.”
The plaintiffs contend that New York holds too narrow of a definition on what constitutes a religious employer and unlawfully restricts who can receive an exemption.
The U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled in favor of Christian-owned businesses and religious groups that sued for an exemption to an Obamacare mandate that required employers to provide health plans that cover birth control.
They may not have been the first publication to publish such an opinion piece, but the first place I saw one — fittingly — was in the U.K. Guardian. The Guardian — a left-wing, British-favored rag written by the kind of Labour Party die hard that still doesn’t get what was so extreme about Jeremy Corbyn — published the piece Friday. Headline: “Rust shooting sparks fresh debate over gun violence on screen: Firearms remain commonplace in major blockbusters but industry figures say Hollywood is led by audience demand.”
Never mind that this “fresh debate” was mostly happening in the pages of the Guardian. The header image for the article was Keanu Reeves carrying what appears to be a silenced pistol in the 2014 movie “John Wick.”
This is important because, while I was unable to find reliable data on the first film, MovieWeb reported in 2019 that the eponymous character fired 302 shots in the second film, hitting his targets 242 times. Of these hits, 104 were head shots, with a further 90 hitting the target in the chest. One shot even hit someone in the foot.
There’s no count of shots fired by the baddies in “John Wick: Chapter 2,” but given that they appear to be intergalactic descendants of the Imperial Stormtroopers in the “Star Wars” universe — at least when it comes to a genetic predisposition to itchy trigger fingers and terrible eyesight — there were a lot of fake gunshots fired.
According to New Zealand’s NewsHub, through three movies, the fictional Mr. Wick has killed 299 people. Here is the number of people who have been killed in actuality on the set of those three movies: Zero.
Those who might be persuaded by the Guardian’s hot take on guns and cinema in the wake of the “Rust” tragedy, keep those numbers in mind. Keep in mind, too, the reported last words of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins seconds after being shot by Alec Baldwin during the filming of the Western in New Mexico last week.
A report in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times detailed the events of the day of the shooting, including what happened in the moments leading up to Hutchins’ mortal wounding. The Times reported that Baldwin “had been preparing to film a scene in which he, as a grizzled 1880s Kansas outlaw, becomes involved in a shootout in a church. He was just going through the motions, giving the camera crew a chance to line up their angles.”
Those on set say the final moments began as Baldwin put his hand on a holstered Colt .45 revolver, which was supposed to be loaded with a dummy round with no gunpowder. “I guess I’m gonna take this out, pull it, and go, ‘Bang!’” he said.
Baldwin had been assured the Colt .45 was a “cold gun” — as in, no live ammunition was loaded. As he demonstrated what he was supposed to be doing when filming commenced, however, he shot both Halyna Hutchins and director Joel Souza.
“What the f*** was that? That burns!” Souza screamed after he was shot.
“What the f*** just happened?” Baldwin yelled; the Times reported he “put the gun down on a church pew” and “looked down in horror at his two injured colleagues, repeating his initial question like a mantra.”
Crew members gathered around Hutchins, with a boom operator saying, “Oh, that was no good.”
“No,” Hutchins said. “That was no good. That was no good at all.”
Those were her last recorded words, and, in a few hours, she would be pronounced dead.
The problem with those using “Rust” as part of a wider debate around gun violence in Hollywood is that very basic firearm safety measures — both in the entertainment industry and in real life — would have precluded this from ever happening.
Plenty has been made about the entertainment industry’s best practices for firearm safety. First and foremost, no live ammunition should be present on set. According to NBC News, attorneys for armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed said she had “no idea” how the live rounds got there and the “set would never have been compromised if live ammo were not introduced.”
“Hannah was hired on two positions on this film, which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armorer,” the statement read.
“She fought for training, days to maintain weapons and proper time to prepare for gunfire but ultimately was overruled by production and her department. The whole production set became unsafe due to various factors, including lack of safety meetings.”
“Rust” assistant director David Halls — another focus of the investigation — reportedly admitted to authorities he should have checked the gun he handed Baldwin more thoroughly before it was handed off.
“David advised when Hannah showed him the firearm before continue rehearsal, he could only remember seeing three rounds,” a search warrant affidavit read, according to NBC News. “He advised he should’ve checked all of them, but didn’t, and couldn’t recall if she spun the drum.”
Furthermore, Baldwin violated basic rules of gun safety. The California Department of Justice, in their Firearm Safety Certificate study guide, lists six of them. Of the first three, Baldwin violated at least two and arguably a third.
The first rule, inculcated in every gun user (and plenty of people who aren’t) from the day they’re around firearms: “Treat all guns as if they are loaded.”
Rule number two: “Keep the gun pointed in the safest possible direction.”
Rule number three: “Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.”
First, yes, live ammunition isn’t supposed to be present on a production set. Even still, if Baldwin treated the gun as if it were loaded, we wouldn’t be talking about this.
Second, the demonstration could have been done in a way where the gun was pointed away from people. Also, while we don’t know where Baldwin’s finger was, what we do know is that it somehow found its way to the trigger — and he was not ready to shoot, either on camera or in real life.
You may find it either surprising or predictable that Baldwin, a staunch gun-control advocate, either didn’t know or exercise these basic gun safety rules. The failure, however, cannot be blamed on firearms — not when this accident happened in one of America’s most liberal industries and to a man who once said the “Second Amendment is not a moral credit card that buys you all the guns you want.” Corners were cut and rules were broken.
The Guardian, however, looks at the firearm first, which shouldn’t shock anyone. First, a Hollywood workplace safety incident puts the blame on the people it usually lionizes within its pages. Second, noting the fact three John Wick films can pass without a single major firearms injury while a low-budget Alec Baldwin Western claimed one life would open up too many unsettling ideological doors for them. After all, if those on the left admit the firearm wasn’t the problem here, imagine how much else about gun violence they would have to re-examine.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
The race for Virginia governor comes down to the final hours in the battle between Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe and Republican contender Glenn Youngkin. The primary concern of education amongst voters has come home to roost on the last day before official Election Day voting.
John Roberts interviewed a local mother who voted for President Joe Biden about how she felt about McAuliffe. It wasn’t down party lines.
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” said McAuliffe in a debate at the end of September.
The Fox News host asked the local parent for her feedback. “Well I think it just highlighted, again, […] that Terry wants to silence the voices of parents, and I think that that comment made parents realize that we need to stand up, we can’t sit back. We can’t wait when it comes to our children’s safety in our schools and their education and what they’re learning in school,” the mother answered.
These remarks echo the concerns of parents in Loudoun County. They recently had to face a controversy surrounding how the school board handled a sexual assault case involving one of their students in a school bathroom.
This all comes as McAuliffe’s education plan intends to put “anti-racism” at the forefront, going as far as redrawing school’s boundary zones to reflect that ideological sentiment, which could see a return to 1970s-style bussing. In an event on Sunday in Manassas, Virginia, the Democrat vowed to the crowd that one of his priorities is diversifying the teacher base.
“50 percent of the students of Virginia schools K – 12 … 50 percent are students of color, and yet 80 percent of teachers are white!” McAuliffe said. “We all know what we have to do in school to make everybody feel comfortable in school. So let’s diversify! So here’s what I’m going to do. We’ll be the first state in America … if you’ll teach for five years here in Virginia, in a high-demand area that’d be geographic or course-work … We will pay room, board, and tuition at any college, any university, any HBCU here in the commonwealth of Virginia.”
According to the Daily Mail,McAuliffe has cancelled a Virginia Beach rally event scheduled for Monday as polls show him neck-in-neck against Youngkin.
This comes at the final hours of the McAuliffe campaign, who at the end of last week had to contend with a purported Lincoln Project hoax involving tiki torches and fake Republican supporters standing outside the Youngkin campaign bus. When the Democrat stunt was debunked, McAuliffe’s campaign had condemned the dirty tactics, despite spreading the hoax themselves all day.
The judge presiding over the highly anticipated Kyle Rittenhouse homicide trial recently criticized what he called a “vast amount” of “irresponsible and sloppy journalism” covering the events surrounding the case.
While speaking with potential jurors during the jury selection process on Monday, Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder said that those selected for the task may need to disregard much of what they have heard in the media about the case.
“This case has become very political. It was involved in the politics of the last election year,”Schroeder said in the court session, adding, “To this day, you can go out and read things from all across the political spectrum about this case, most of which is written by people who know nothing.”
“The price we pay for having a free press is a lot of irresponsible and sloppy journalism,” he continued, adding that his charge “is not an attack on the media” but a reality check for potential jurors about the need for a fair and impartial trial.
Schroeder said that he has read some things about the case that have been “perfect,” but noted that most of the reporting has either been “sloppy” or “deliberately biased.”
“It can be frightening,” he added while urging jury candidates to abandon their presuppositions and focus solely on the evidence presented at trial. He reminded them that the right to a fair trial is an important right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
What’s the background?
The news comes only days after Schroeder ruled that the men Rittenhouse, 18, fatally shot or wounded on Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, can’t be referred to as “victims” by prosecutors — but can be called “rioters” and “looters.”
Rittenhouse — then 17 — allegedly took a gun to riots in the city in order to defend local businesses against looting and ransacking in the wake of a white police officer’s shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man. During the mayhem, Rittenhouse shot three men, killing two. Rittenhouse was charged with multiple felonies, including first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, attempted first-degree reckless homicide, and first-degree reckless endangering safety. If convicted, he could serve a mandatory life sentence in prison.
Rittenhouse’s defense team has insisted he was acting in self-defense, and videos of the shootings from that night appear to back up his claims. He later told reporters he doesn’t regret taking a gun to protests on the night of the shootings, saying he “would’ve died” if he hadn’t.
By Monday evening, 20 jurors had been selected, and now the trial is set to be heard.
Kenosha County, Wis., Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder has a fanciful idea: That the trial he’s overseeing that includes murder charges against 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse can be removed from politics. He said so on Monday during jury selection. “We don’t want to fall into the trap,” he said, “that many in the media have, a large percentage of the media, and discuss this as a political trial or that there are bigger factors at stake in this trial.”
How naive. Of course this is a trial of political consequence and of course there are bigger factors at stake. The potential jurors know it, and that’s why during selection several of them expressed concern that their city or they personally might be the targets of rioting or harassment, regardless of the verdict the jury renders. All of the potential jurors are kept anonymous until after the trial is over but here’s a sample of what some of them said during selection:
—One said that no matter the verdict, “half the country will be up in arms about it.”
— Another said, “I’m more afraid of our community and the outsiders of our community that are coming in… It just brings us back to August (2020).” She also said she was “potentially” afraid of reliving riots depending on the verdict.
— A third said it was “scary” to be on a case like this one, specifically citing “riots” and wondering aloud, “Am I gonna get home safe?”
Those are legitimate concerns. We saw what happened earlier this year in Minneapolis, when businesses and restaurants boarded up their storefronts in anticipation of a possible acquittal of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who ultimately was convicted of killing George Floyd. If things don’t go a certain way in politically charged trials like that, despite evidence leading a deliberate jury to the opposite conclusion, well, that might very well mean more rioting, looting, arson, and violence. Potential jurors in the Rittenhouse trial received the message loud and clear that this isn’t just a murder trial. This is about the broader question of whether some types of political violence are acceptable, even necessary.
Rittenhouse is charged with the murder of two men and the attempted murder of a third. All relevant parties are white (sadly robbing the media of a beloved racially charged narrative) and it isn’t disputed that each of them had been chasing the teen and attempting to apprehend his weapon. All of it was in the context of several nights of destructive rioting in Kenosha, which resulted in a total of $50 million in damages to the city. The mayhem was sparked by the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man who was wanted for violating a restraining order stemming from claims he had sexually assaulted a woman. Blake is on video resisting his arrest and defying police orders by moving to enter his vehicle as they tried to apprehend him.
The city went up in flames and the national media to this day characterize the chaos as a “Black Lives Matter march” because they, along with leaders in the Democratic Party, believe all of it was justified.
Rittenhouse may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that’s not a crime and it’s not what he’s on trial for. He’s on trial for shooting men who pursued him and made moves to grab his gun, something that is seen on video, testified by at least one witness, and written out in the state’s own complaint against Rittenhouse.
A jury will inevitably render its verdict, but contrary to what the judge says, there’s no way around it— this is a political trial and that should scare the jurors.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
For Democrats, Groundhog Day came nearly a month early this year. For them, like the character in the classic Bill Murray comedy, every day is Jan. 6. For them, every challenge to leftist orthodoxy, whether in the form of Biden administration policy or local school boards attempting to impose critical race theory, unreasonable COVID precautions, or transgender policies, is another day of insurrection.
They see insurrectionists everywhere. They see them in the media, where they demand that Fox News be canceled or demonetized because of its Trumpist heresies and refusal to treat a Capitol riot — in which the only person killed was an unarmed protester gunned down in cold blood by a police officer — as a new Civil War. They see them in Congress, where anyone who challenged the 2020 results or resists the Democrats’ bills to ban voter ID laws and make permanent pandemic-based election changes that removed guardrails against cheating are seeking to steal not just the 2020 election but the ones yet to be held in 2022 and 2024. They also see insurrectionists in state capitals, where legislatures that have passed voter integrity bills that seek to prevent future fraud without taking away anyone’s right to vote as not merely advocates of a new “Jim Crow” but the moral equivalent of the Confederates who fired on Fort Sumter to save slavery.
When Everyone Is an Insurrectionist
It also explains why U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland isn’t backing down on his outrageous effort to treat school board protests as an insurrectionist terrorist conspiracy. Despite heated questioning from furious Republican senators last Wednesday, he wouldn’t concede that his directive to the FBI and the rest of the Department of Justice to investigate school board critics around the country was based on a lie. He denied that he was targeting the free speech of parents who have protested decisions by school boards on curricula and other policies. That Garland would stand by the rash directive was all the more curious because the hearing came after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) had apologized for the letter that began this shocking episode.
Garland’s doubling down at the hearing about the need for the government to crack down on opponents does make sense. Or at least it does when placed in the context of his party’s current political obsession.
For nine months the Biden administration, its congressional allies, and its media cheerleaders have treated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as not merely a disgraceful episode but an “insurrection” and “attempted coup” that represented an ongoing threat to the government rather than just a mob that ran amuck. At this point, it’s clear the Biden team has come to view any dissent from leftist dictums — be they national or local — as not merely unwelcome criticism but the work of Trumpist insurrectionists who must be put down rather than tolerated.
Democrats are determined to go on running against former President Donald Trump and his “deplorable” band of insurrectionists indefinitely. But they have been dismayed by the turn of events in Virginia, where resistance against the radical takeover of the schools by angry parents has transformed the gubernatorial race in what the left assumed was a securely blue state. So it was hardly surprising that the administration would seek to brand those citizens outraged by what was being done to their children as just another outbreak of the same insurrection they have been inveighing against all year.
Cornered by Republican senators, Garland asserted that his memo had not ordered investigations of angry parents as “domestic terrorists.” Yet his memo characterized criticisms of officials at public meetings as “harassment, intimidation and threats of violence.” In it, he stated plainly that Department of Justice would use its authority to “identify,” “discourage” and “prosecute” these alleged threats while maintaining “coordination and partnership with local enforcement.”
Even more disingenuously, he denied that the letter from the NSBA, which had been coordinated with the White House had prompted his directive. It labeled people like a Loudoun County parent whose daughter was allegedly raped by a boy in a girl’s bathroom then covered up by the school district as “domestic terrorists.”
‘Terrorists’ Have No Rights
Garland’s willingness to jump into that mess was predictable. Tellingly, earlier this month even after the truth had come out about the alleged rape and its coverup, Loudoun County Democratic Party Chair Lissa Savaglio called the parents “Republican insurrectionists.”
Republicans asked Garland about why the attempt to intimidate Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema into going along Biden’s spending spree when she was followed, harangued, and filmed in a bathroom wasn’t as worthy of investigation as incidents in which school board members were yelled at. Similarly, the invasion of the Department of the Interior earlier this month by a leftist mob demanding Biden adopt even more radical environmental policies didn’t make it onto his radar screen.
Nor is Garland or the mainstream media willing to admit that the hundreds of Black Lives Matter “mostly peaceful” riots in cities around the nation in the summer of 2020 were far more of a threat to public order and government authority than the misguided people who illegally entered the Capitol on Jan.6. But if we have learned anything in the last year, it should be this: Democrats will never stop talking about the insurrection.
In part, that’s because they actually believe their political foes don’t deserve constitutional rights. As we saw with their reaction to the fatal police shooting of Capitol protester Ashli Babbit and the treatment of those facing prosecution over their illegal behavior on Jan. 6, they believe insurrectionists have no rights, including those that guarantee due process.
Democrats also understand that labeling conservatives as domestic terrorists is key to their political survival as Biden’s presidency unravels in the face of domestic problems like the southern border crisis, the supply chain disaster, and feckless conduct abroad. Running on Biden’s record or defending efforts to impose woke ideology on children isn’t likely to bring them success. That means they will go on labeling anyone who questions their ideological hobby horses as Trumpist “traitors” so long as they think it will help them rally their voters to turn out and preserve their power.
Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for the New York Post. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.
Virginia’s hotly contested gubernatorial race is just days away, and with Republican Glenn Youngkin and former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe tied in the polls, the professional left isn’t leaving anything to chance. A McAuliffe defeat is largely considered a bellwether for congressional Democrats in the 2022 midterms.
So how do Democrats plan to ensure a McAuliffe win and a subsequent retention of power in the state and U.S. Senate? By using the same tactic they used in the 2020 national contest: profligate mail-in voting and fake grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts funding by philanthropies and wealthy leftists, a strategy revealed through Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s gift to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL).
And it’s a smart strategy. Joe Biden voters were twice as likely as Donald Trump voters to vote by mail in 2020, for example; and we know the effect of Zuckerberg’s millions on the 2020 election. The Capital Research Center specializes in exposing the activists behind these efforts. Here’s what we’ve discovered about the funding and activists behind them.
Getting Out the Vote for Democrats
Vote Forward is one of the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) groups swamping Virginians with a letter practically begging them to vote early. Here’s my copy:
Vote Forward is ostensibly nonpartisan—until you look at its original website from 2018, which reads “Flip the House Blue: Send letters to unlikely voters.” Elsewhere, the group admits it was founded to send “get-out-the-vote” mailers to “traditionally underrepresented communities,” code for Democrat-leaning constituencies.
The New York Times praised Vote Forward’s goal of boosting Democrat turnout just one week before the 2020 election. An old FAQ states that many of its campaigns “typically target low-propensity voters who we believe are likely to vote for Democrats when they do cast a ballot.”
In 2020, that target was 10 million voters. To make that happen, Vote Forward sued the U.S. Postal Service, accusing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—a Trump nominee—of “undermin[ing] USPS’s ability to ensure the on-time delivery of mail ballots” in the 2020 election. The details of their settlement remain unclear, but USPS agreed to deliver mail-in ballots in time for Georgia’s January special election, the result of which ultimately handed Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.
Like many organizations that present themselves as more interested in voting than election outcomes, Vote Forward is part of the Left’s Voting Machine: A massive web of interconnected GOTV nonprofits commanding tens of millions of dollars, mostly gifted by ultra-wealthy institutions like the Ford, Gates, and Rockefeller Foundations.
We’ve traced more than $600,000 flowing to Vote Forward from the Hopewell Fund, part of a $731 million “dark money” network run by the consultancy Arabella Advisors in Washington, DC. After studying this network for years, it’s become clear to us that wherever Arabella is involved, one is sure to find the left’s top operatives as well.
For example, Vote Forward’s board includes Ezra Reese, a partner at Perkins Coie and its Marc Elias-led spin-off (the Elias Law Group) “focused on electing Democrats, supporting voting rights, and helping progressives make change”—a fact you won’t find advertised on the “nonpartisan” group’s website. Perkins Coie is the left’s law firm of choice. Elias was general counsel to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and a partisan operative whose past dealings include George Soros-funded efforts to abolish voter ID laws.
The center explicitly targeted the “New American Majority,” another code for likely Democratic voters that they define as “young people, people of color and unmarried women.”That bloc contains 73 percent of all unregistered voters nationwide, which is why the left-wing strategists at the Democracy Alliance consider their turnout “central to progressive long-term success.”
The IRS requires all nonprofits be officially nonpartisan in order to be tax exempt. In the center’s case, nonpartisanship comes in the shape of a fig leaf—as liberal journalist Sasha Issenberg explains in his 2012 book, The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns: “Even though the group was officially nonpartisan, for tax purposes, there was no secret that the goal of all its efforts was to generate new votes for Democrats” (emphasis added).
We were among the first to report in-depth on how billionaire Zuckerberg and the little-known Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) spent $350 million to effectively privatize the 2020 election in battleground states, helping turnout for Biden in the name of COVID-19 “relief.”
Overnight, this little nonprofit’s revenues grew by more than 12,000 percent from $2.8 million thanks to Zuckerberg’s cash injection—fueling its “nonpartisan,” “charitable” façade to elections officials and helping Democrat turnout in precisely the spots Biden needed to win the presidency.
Across nine states, our data shows that CTCL’s grants consistently ignored Trump counties in favor of big, Democratic-leaning spots like Philadelphia, Maricopa County, and Houston—all essential to Biden’s victory. In Georgia, for instance, Biden counties were two-and-a-half times more likely to receive CTCL funding than Trump counties.
Virginia received close to $4 million in Zuck Bucks, more than one-third of which went to populous Fairfax County to “support in-person early voting” and “vote by mail.” Fairfax County was Biden’s biggest vote-haul in the state and is the linchpin to McAuliffe’s strategy.
Nearly $970,000 paid for “temporary staffing support” to bolster Fairfax County’s elections agency. That may sound innocuous, but as CTCL expert William Doyle recently wrote at this site, that funding “supported the infiltration of election offices by paid Democratic Party activists.”
[CTCL] funded self-described ‘vote navigators’ in Wisconsin to ‘assist voters, potentially at their front doors, to answer questions, assist in ballot curing … and witness absentee ballot signatures,’ and a temporary staffing agency affiliated with Stacey Abrams called ‘Happy Faces’ counting the votes amidst the election night chaos in Fulton County, Georgia.
Fairfax County applied for an extension to its CTCL grant in January, but ultimately returned its remaining $187,709 in April, spokesman Brian Worthy told me. To his knowledge, the county has not applied for another grant for the 2021 election. That’s a good start, but to save the integrity of our elections, Zuck Bucks need to be banned. No exceptions.
There’s no faster way to destroy what remaining trust Americans have in their elections than by giving them to the highest bidder. Private funding of elections would take us back to the worst of the 19th century robber barons, when rich political machines won elections by buying public officials and intimidating voters. It also presents opportunities for foreign interests to manipulate our politics and undermine American sovereignty.
It’s unknown how much CTCL money remains in Virginia or if the group has continued to make grants here. Neighboring Fairfax City reports $14,175 in CTCL funds leftover for the 2021 election.
CTCL has been surprisingly mum about the ongoing election considering how loudly it advertised open-ended grants to Georgia counties in January. It’s possible that the dozens of exposés, hundreds of critical news articles, flurry of state Zuck Buck bans, and an inquiry from furious congressional Republicans silenced the leftists running CTCL.
Or maybe not. A recent CTCL statement calls lawsuits against its grants program “frivolous” and its funding “equitable,” particularly in small counties with small elections budgets.
Today’s left has cynically embraced Zuck Bucks out of short-term thinking, believing like NPR that “private money from Facebook’s CEO saved the 2020 election.” That’s a losing hand. Americans can see that the same leftists who’ve now embraced plutocracy were just yesterday crying “eat the rich” and “abolish billionaires.” Close to a dozen states have already banned Zuck Bucks and grassroots groups are leading a national movement to audit the 2020 election and save the country.
Leftists believed the country would overlook their desperate indiscretions, claiming—as CTCL does—that Zuckerberg’s unprecedented spending spree somehow made 2020 “the most secure election in U.S. history.” We’ll know even more in December, when CTCL releases its IRS Form 990 filing to the public. If coming revelations are anything like observers expect, that claim will age about as well as milk.
Hayden Ludwig is an investigative researcher for the Capital Research Center in Washington, DC.
This aerial photo taken on October 29, 2021, show smokes and fires from Thantlang, in Chin State, where more than 160 buildings have been destroyed caused by shelling from Junta military troops, according to local media. | STR/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. State Department released a statement Sunday condemning the “gross violations of human rights” after Burmese security forces fired heavy artillery into a town in the predominantly Christian Chin state, setting at least 100 homes and two churches on fire. The attack was in retaliation after a Chin militia shot and killed a Burmese soldier who was breaking into houses and looting properties, according to a report.
In its statement, the State Department said the Burmese military must be held accountable:
The United States is gravely concerned by reports of gross violations of human rights that Burmese security forces have perpetuated in Chin State, including reports that forces have set fire to and destroyed more than 100 residences as well as Christian churches. We condemn such brutal actions by the Burmese regime against people, their homes, and places of worship, which lays bare the regime’s complete disregard for the lives and welfare of the people of Burma. These abhorrent attacks underscore the urgent need for the international community to hold the Burmese military accountable and take action to prevent gross violations and abuses of human rights, including by preventing the transfer of arms to the military.
We are also deeply concerned over the Burmese security forces’ intensification of military operations in various parts of the country, including in Chin State and the Sagaing Region. We call on the regime to immediately cease the violence, release all those unjustly detained, and restore Burma’s path to inclusive democracy.
We will continue to promote accountability for the horrific violence that has been and continues to be perpetrated by the regime against the people of Burma. We will continue to support the people of Burma and all those working toward a restoration of Burma’s democratic path and a peaceful resolution to the crisis.
Nearly 10,000 residents of the town of Thantlang fled the area as the fire raged on, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported.
The Southeast Asian country’s military, locally known as Tatmadaw, started attacking Friday morning after the militia, Chinland Defense Force, killed a Tatmadaw soldier while he was looting properties.
The presence of the Buddhist nationalist military makes civilians and militias in conflict-ridden states nervous. The military has been accused of vandalizing places of worship and civilians’ homes, raping girls and women, abducting civilians to be used for forced labor and shooting civilians to death.
ICC quoted the India-based Chin Human Rights Organization as saying that several religious buildings, including Church on the Rock, Presbyterian Church, and a building attached to the Thantlang Baptist Church, the largest congregation in town, have also caught fire.
“The first rockets to be fired into the town landed at the entrances to the Thantlang Baptist Church,” ICC said.
Earlier this month, the military, which staged a coup on Feb. 1, attacked Rialti village near the Chin state’s capital of Hakha, Radio Free Asia reported at the time.
“We see this as a war crime because wherever they go, they focus on wherever there are large numbers of people — it’s a deliberate violation of religious freedom,” Salai Za Op Lin, CHRO’s deputy executive director, said at the time.
Op Lin noted that other Christian communities in Chin state had also been targeted since the military coup in February. “Now that the military has started a real operation in Chin state, we can expect a lot of such abuses and acts, and we urge the international community to keep a close eye on this.”
Last month, a beloved youth pastor, Cung Biak Hum of Thantlang Centennial Baptist Church, was shot dead as he tried to help one of his congregants save their burning home after it was set ablaze by the military during an attack on civilians in Chin state.
Information on his Facebook page showed that he was married with two sons and was pursuing a master’s of divinity degree at MIT Yangon.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Tom Andrews, highlighted the pastor’s murder in a tweet at the time, calling on the international community to “pay closer attention” to the “living hell” civilians have been experiencing there since a Feb. 1 coup brought back full military rule following years of quasi-democracy.
Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, including Christians, live in the various conflict zones across the country’s borders with Thailand, China and India. Hundreds of thousands of civilians, many of them Christians, have been displaced due to the escalation of conflicts in the zones since the coup.
Militias in those areas have been morally supporting pro-democracy protesters since the coup, which has led to the use of heavy weapons by the Burmese army. Thousands of civilians in the conflict zones have sought shelter in churches when their villages are under attack.
Christians make up just over 7% of the majority-Buddhist nation. Formerly known as Burma, the country is home to the world’s longest Civil War, which began in 1948. Myanmar is ranked No. 18 on Open Doors USA’s 2021 World Watch List of 50 countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. The persecution level in Myanmar is “very high” due to Buddhist nationalism. Burma is recognized by the U.S. State Department as a “country of particular concern” for egregious violations of religious liberty.
“The military is notorious for its relations with the ultranationalist ultra-Buddhist group the Ma Ba Tha,” ICC’s Southeast Asia Regional Manager, Gina Goh, said in a statement earlier this year. “The military together with Ma Ba Tha has targeted the Muslims in the country, but they also go after Christians. Once they get a hold of the power, they might resort to things they were doing before they passed the power to the civilian government. They kill. They rape minority Christians.”
An NBC News poll released Sunday was so woeful for President Joe Biden that “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd admitted the results were “scary news for the Democrats.”
Biden’s approval rating in the NBC News poll dived underwater for the first time in his presidency. The poll conducted Oct. 23-26 found that 42% of U.S. adults approved of Biden’s job performance — a 7-point drop from August — while 54% disapproved. This is a near reversal from April’s poll that showed 53% approval and 39% disapproval.
The poll — conducted by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies that included 82% registered voters — revealed that only 37% of respondents believe Biden is “competent and effective as president,” compared with 50% who declare him not to be. Just 37% of respondents trusted that Biden could handle a crisis, while 47% said he could not.
“Democrats face a country whose opinion of President Biden has turned sharply to the negative since April,” Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research said. “The promise of the Biden presidency — knowledge, competence and stability in tough times — have all been called into question.”
Todd said, “Americans have lost their confidence in President Joe Biden and their optimism for the country.”
Only 28% of survey-takers said Biden was doing a “good” or “very good” job of uniting the country, a campaign promise the president often vowed to accomplish if he was elected. When asked if they saw the country “off on the wrong track,” 71% said the country was headed in the wrong direction, including 48% of Democrats. A mere 22% saw the nation heading in the right direction in the poll of 1,000 U.S. adults. There were 53% of participants who said the country’s best years “may already be behind us,” versus 41% who believe America’s best years are still yet to come.
“When you see a wrong track of 71%, it is a flashing red light,” Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies said. “These folks are telling us that this is not going well.”
The poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, also hinted that Democrats could be in trouble on several significant issues. The participants were asked which political party would do a better job with certain concerns. Republicans held double-digit advantages on border security (27 points), inflation (24 points), crime (22 points), national security (21 points), the economy (18 points), and “being effective and getting things done” (13 points). Democrats were said to do a better job on climate change (24 points), the COVID-19 pandemic (12 points), and abortion (by 10 points).
NBC News also noted, “GOP enjoys a significant enthusiasm advantage at this point in the election cycle, with 69% of Republicans expressing a high level of interest about the midterms (on a 1-to-10 scale), versus 58% of Democrats who hold the same level of interest.”
Good Sunday morning —
We have a brand new NBC News poll out this morning that's filled with tough news for Democrats.
The country is headed — In the right direction: 22 On wrong track: 71
Dr. Ben Carson, former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, went on the offensive against giving COVID-19 vaccines to children. Carson’s remarks come as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced its approval for Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for kids ages 5 to 11 years. Carson, who served as Housing and Urban Development Secretary under former President Donald Trump, blasted the “giant experiment” of vaccinating children against COVID-19 during Sunday’s broadcast of Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
When asked by host Maria Bartiromo whether he believes young children should receive the COVID-19 vaccine, Carson fired back, “Absolutely not.”
“The fact of the matter is, the mortality rate for children from COVID-19 is 0.025, which is very similar to the rate for seasonal flu,” he insisted. “And we haven’t been for years and years going through all these things for seasonal flu.”
He added that the long-term implications of the vaccines for children are currently unknown, which ought to send up red flags for parents.
“Plus, we don’t know what the long-term impact of these vaccines is, so this is really sort of a giant experiment,” Carson explained. “Do we want to put our children at risk, when we know that the risk of the disease to them is relatively small, but we don’t know what the future risks are? Why would we do a thing like that? It makes no sense whatsoever.”
Dr. Ben Carson on vaccinating children: "This is really a giant experiment. Do we want to put our children at risk when we know that the risk of the disease to them is relatively small, but we don't know what the future [vaccine] risks are? Why would we do a thing like that?" 🔥 pic.twitter.com/jp5MK4iKXm
The FDA on Friday announced its emergency use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech in children ages 5 to 11 years old and in a statement said, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet next week to discuss further clinical recommendations,”
The panel is set to convene on Tuesday to discuss recommendations. If and when the CDC gives the shot the green light, health care providers will be permitted to administer the vaccines. Vaccination for children in the 5-11 age group will be similar to that of adults — two doses separated by three weeks — but at a lower, 10mcg dosage, compared to the 12-and-over dosage of 30mcg.
“The vaccine’s safety was studied in approximately 3,100 children age 5 through 11 who received the vaccine and no serious side effects have been detected in the ongoing study,” the FDA said in its findings. “The available safety data to support the EUA include more than 4,600 participants (3,100 vaccine, 1,538 placebo) ages 5 through 11 years enrolled in the ongoing study. In this trial, a total of 1,444 vaccine recipients were followed for safety for at least 2 months after the second dose.”
Commonly reported side effects, according to the regulatory board, included sore arm, redness, swelling, fatigue, headache, muscle or joint paint, fever, chills, swollen lymph nodes, nausea, and decreased appetite.
“Side effects were generally mild to moderate in severity and occurred within two days after vaccination, and most went away within one to two days,” the agency added.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Racine County, Wisconsin law enforcement blew the 2020 election integrity question wide open on Thursday after an investigation into one nursing home. It revealed not only that state election officials flagrantly broke the law and ordered health-care employees to help them, but that the problem likely runs much deeper throughout the swing state’s other 71 counties.
An “election statute was in fact not just broken, but shattered by members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said during a Thursday press conference in which he and Sgt. Michael Luell detailed the findings of an investigation into Ridgewood Care Facility. The investigation came about when a woman named Judy signed a sworn affidavit with the Wisconsin Elections Commission after she discovered that her mother, who had died on Oct. 9, 2020 after a period of severe cognitive decline, had voted in the 2020 presidential election. The affidavit was later passed along as a complaint to the county district attorney. Judy alleged that her mother Shirley’s mental state had deteriorated so far that she was having hallucinations and wasn’t able to recall what she had eaten during a day or even what day it was. According to Judy, her mother couldn’t see — her glasses were broken, and she couldn’t even recognize her own daughter — so even if she were of a sound mind, she wouldn’t have known whether someone assisting her with a ballot had voted according to her wishes.
Luell, who led the investigation at the request of the district attorney, found an unusual spike in voting at this care facility: 42 people had voted in the 2020 presidential election. That number is usually 10. Furthermore, in 2020, 38 people had requested absentee ballots, up from the usual 0-3 in normal years.
When Luell attempted to contact the families of these voters to check whether their loved ones had the cognitive capacity to cast a vote, seven replied no, and almost all of them hadn’t voted since 2012. One of the family members said his mother would ask him who he was, meaning she didn’t recognize her own son. She hadn’t voted since 2012 — yet MyVote Wisconsin revealed she voted twice in 2020.
This surge in voting was the result of Wisconsin Elections Commission officials breaking state law. The commission — which is made up of six commissioners, including three Democrats and three Republicans, who are appointed by legislative leaders or the governor and serve as an agency in the executive branch under the governor — authorized nursing home employees to help residents vote, which Luell noted “is a direct violation of law.” According to Luell, employees would ask residents how they voted in the past and then vote according to that party. In other words, if Judy’s mother “could only recall JFK,” staff would vote Democrat for her.
According to state law, however, nursing home staff can’t assist residents with voting. In fact, nobody can help the voter other than a relative or “special voting deputies,” which are people appointed by municipal clerks or elections boards to conduct absentee voting at care facilities. In March, however, the Wisconsin Elections Commission sent out a letter mandating that municipalities should not use the “special voting deputy process.”
“Ladies and gentleman, it’s not a process. It’s the law,” Luell said, citing state Statute 6.875.
The original letter was issued under the guise of COVID guidelines. Nevertheless, in September, after the governors’ lockdown orders had expired and the initial shock of the pandemic had passed, the Wisconsin Elections Commission sent a letter to all residential care facilities telling the workers how to help residents vote, including even marking the ballot for them, in direct violation of state law. Racine law enforcement looked at 2020 visitor logs and found that other visitors were let into the nursing home throughout the pandemic, about 900 times between the decision in March not to use special voting deputies and November 2020. Those visitors included someone to clean the fish tanks and birdcages and even DoorDash delivery people.
“Those people were allowed into the Ridgewood Care Facility, but heaven forbid we make an exception for special voting deputies,” Luell said.
Under Wisconsin state statute 12.13, breaking these laws about special voting deputies constitutes “election fraud,” which is a felony.
“We’re just one of 72 counties, Racine County,” Schmaling noted. “Ridgeland is one of 11 facilities within our county. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of these facilities throughout the entire state of Wisconsin. We would be foolish, we would be foolish to think for a moment that this integrity issue, this violation of the statute, occurred to just this small group of people at one care facility in one county in the entire state. I would submit to you that this needs the attorney general’s investigation,” the sheriff said, calling for the AG to launch an immediate probe into the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
This bombshell investigation is only the latest in the long list of malfeasant actions by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, especially regarding the 2020 election. As Wisconsin radio host and lawyer Dan O’Donnell put it, the commission “was downright derelict in its duty to fairly and impartially oversee an election.”
As O’Donnell documented, the commission unlawfully allowed clerks to “cure” ballots, illegally permitted clerks to go home on election night and return to finish counting in the morning, and illegally told clerks they could relocate polling locations in the weeks before the election.
Furthermore, the commission failed to issue relevant laws and rules for training municipal election workers, special voting deputies, and election inspections. Worse, it failed to investigate voter rolls for the hundreds of thousands there incorrectly, including more than 45,000 first-time voters whose names didn’t match Department of Transportation records, among other issues.
As The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway outlines in her new book “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections,” the Wisconsin Elections Commission also wrongly kept third-party candidates off the ballot, including Kanye West and the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins. Third parties can significantly affect elections in the Dairy State.
“Following the [Legislative Audit Bureau] report, what Sheriff Schmaling has uncovered + disclosed might only be tip of the iceberg of fraud in the 2020 election. The Legislature must be given the time, resources, and cooperation of election officials to conduct a complete investigation of allegations,” tweeted Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin following the Racine press conference. “Using elderly residents with cognitive decline to commit election fraud is reprehensible, and should concern every Wisconsinite and American.”
Johnson continued: “If Democrats will stoop this low to impact elections, one can only imagine what else they’re willing to do.”
Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
Workers with the U.S. State Department guide newly arrived Afghans to board a bus at Dulles International Airport that will take them to a processing center after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal on August 31, 2021, in Dulles, Virginia. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Montana’s governor has called for a halt in the resettlement of refugees from Afghanistan after an evacuee was charged with rape. In a letter sent to President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Gov. Greg Gianforte said that while he welcomes evacuees fleeing the Taliban to the state, he had “grave concerns” about the vetting process.
“The system requires a careful, immediate reevaluation,” wrote Gianforte. “As governor, the safety, security, and wellbeing of Montanans is my top priority. Tragic events over the last few weeks, including one in Montana, have brought to the front issues with your vetting system,” he added.
Gianforte was referring to the recent arrest of 19-year-old Zabihullah Mohmand, who was charged with sexually assaulting an 18-year-old woman. According to court documents, the victim called 911 early on the morning of Oct. 17 to report that she had been raped. For his part, Mohmand claimed the sex was consensual.
NBC Montana reported last week that Mohmand was an Afghan evacuee resettled in Missoula as part of the federal government’s resettlement program. Gianforte told Biden that he wanted a halt to the resettlement program until certain issues were resolved, specifically an explanation on how the federal government vetted Mohmand, details on reforms that will be made to the vetting system, a commitment by the federal government to cover all costs tied to Mohmand’s prosecution, imprisonment and possible deportation.
Montana’s governor is not the only elected official in Montana demanding answers from the Biden administration. Last week, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., wrote a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas asking for detailed information about the justification for why Mohmand received humanitarian parole status. Specifically, Daines asked, “Did Mr. Mohmand work with U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan or any other government entity?” He went on to condemn the administration’s generic statements concerning the sexual assault in Missoula as “deeply insufficient.”
In a statement obtained by the Montana-based news outlet KULR, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said: “Before individuals are permitted to enter the United States, they are subject to rigorous, multi-layered screening and vetting processes that involve biometric and biographic screenings conducted by intelligence, law enforcement, and counterterrorism professionals from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, FBI, National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), and additional Intelligence Community partners.”
Mohmand is not the only Afghan refugee to face criminal charges for actions they took after arriving in the U.S. Last month, a grand jury charged two Afghan men with crimes while residing at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. The unrelated cases involved 20-year-old Bahrullah Noori, who’s facing charges for attempting to have sex with a minor and three counts of engaging in a sex act with a minor, all by force. The other case involves 32-year-old Mohammad Haroon Imaad, who’s facing charges of strangling and suffocating his wife.
“Noori and Imaad were charged previously in complaints filed in U.S. District Court,” explained a U.S. Department of Justice press release on Sept. 22. “If convicted, Noori faces a mandatory minimum penalty of 30 years and a maximum of life in federal prison on the charges alleging use of force, and a maximum penalty of 15 years on the other two charges. Imaad faces a maximum penalty of 10 years.”
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that more than 700 Afghans who were flown to the U.S. had left their temporary housing on U.S. bases before completing their resettlement process. U.S. officials said that those departures involved Afghans who had been screened for any security issues and many were believed to already have family in the area.
Other concerns that have been raised involve child brides evacuated out of Afghanistan who were brought to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin and transit sites overseas. Last month, a State Department document showed that it sought “urgent guidance” from other agencies on what to do because child marriage is illegal in the U.S. and some girls said they had been raped.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Scott Smith, whose daughter was raped by a male wearing a skirt in a girls’ bathroom at her high school in Loudoun County, Virginia, appears on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” Oct. 12, 2021. | Screenshot: Fox News
When the Quisha Kings and Scott Smiths in a nation are considered by the regime in power to be the enemy, it says more about the danger of the regime than those the rulers consider as threats.
Quisha King is a Florida mother and a leader of Moms for Liberty, a group seeking to inform and inspire mothers and fathers to assert their parental rights in the face of a ravenous government and its allies, lackeys, parasites, and sycophants.
The regime now consists of the elite establishments of Big Entertainment, Big Information, Big Academia, Big Government, Big Corporations. The leviathan is bloated with the muscle of all those entities and seems to grow steadily in its capacities of repression. Together, they become the consensus establishment, the regime that determines what is permissible and what is not so a compliant culture can cash in its liberty and acquiesce to the demands of the regime.
Within that cluster is the National School Boards Association (NSBA).
Moms for Liberty, among other things, resists the mandated teaching of critical race theory (CRT), forced mask-wearing and other incursions against parental rights in the public schools their children attend. NSBA sent a letter to President Biden suggesting that, in accord with the Patriot Act, such people and their ilk should be handled like domestic terrorists because they demand their school boards be accountable to parents.
Scott Smith’s daughter was assaulted in a school bathroom by a transgender boy, and was also labeled a “domestic terrorist” because he rushed into a school board meeting and demanded that the board take responsibility for what had happened to his daughter.
As Smith was being pulled down to the floor and arrested his wife cried out, “My child was raped at school, and this is what happens!”
Apparently, all citizens so concerned about the direction of public education in America that they challenge the authority of their school boards, suddenly become, in the eyes of the leviathan government and elitist establishments, enemies of the state—itself increasingly the enemy of the freedoms established in the constitutional system.
The Biden White House sent the NSBA letter to the Department of Justice. Attorney General Merrick Garland instructed the FBI to get involved, exacerbating, and strengthening the resolve of the parents whose response shook the political barometers at the White House.
The outcome was an apology from NSBA, regretting their letter, and acknowledging that “there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.”[1]
Quisha King believed that if NSBA’s apology was genuine, instead of “calling us domestic terrorists, they would have investigated and questioned these school boards to see if there was any validity to any of what the parents are actually saying.”
There is something chilling here: NSBA’s suggestion that people like King are domestic terrorists who need to be reeled in under the Patriots Act calls to mind other regimes that have regarded the people of their nation as the enemy of the state.
For example, the Soviet Union under Stalin.
In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev (who would later prove himself as a totalitarian), then new leader of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union, shocked his fellow Marxists with a speech that revealed the monstrous nature of Stalinism. In doing so he exposed characteristics of any regime that sees its own people as the enemy.
“Stalin originated the concept ‘enemy of the people,’” said Khrushchev. Actually, the wording could have been, “the people are the enemy.” That term, Khrushchev continued in the Communist Party Congress speech, “made possible the usage of the most cruel repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations…”
Khrushchev went on to say that “this concept, enemy of the people, actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight.” Thus, the bottom line is that anyone labeled an enemy of the people or of the state were judged as guilty and pushed out of the public square where they might have defended their views.
Today’s regime in the United States has also pushed those considered as public enemies out of the public square, and, as much as possible, cut off their voice. Consider, for example censorship by Big Tech sites of groups deemed not worthy of public exposure because of their religious, political, or social views.
Silencing the enemies of the regimes is also the aim of the Cancel culture and Wokeism. Men and women who violate the value system and worldview specified by the high priests of Wokeism are ridiculed and banished. The regime cluster even turns on its own, like JK Rowling, who once helped build the Woke culture. She was cancelled for giving public support to Maya Forstater who said, “men cannot change into women.”
In an eyeblink, Rowling became the enemy in the eyes of the cultural regime.
However, when the regime considers the people as the enemy, then it is the regime that is itself the enemy of the people. That means action must be taken.
Throughout the history of civilization, the “public square” has been the locus of revolutionary resistance. So, the public square has to be the place of resistance in this current battle. Presently, however, that “square” has come under the censorship of authoritarian regimes. Under this repression the church and the home must be the primary places of resistance… forming worldview that will awaken a slumbering mass who at times seem not to want to be disturbed.
Churches must wake up to what is happening and recover the prophetic voice. Discipleship ministries must teach the biblical revelation concerning nations and cultures, and dare address the spiritual foundations of the nation. Parents must make their homes centers of worldview teaching and formation for their children.
Without this, we face a Stalinized future with the elite consensus establishment imposing its will upon us and our posterity.
[1] Florida mother says she does not accept NSBA’s apology for letter that likened parents to domestic terrorists | Fox News
The Oshkosh Area School District in Oshkosh, Wis. will no longer inform parents if their children identify as transgender while at school.
“The Oshkosh Area School District is committed to fostering a safe, supportive and inclusive learning environment for all students,” Matthew Kaemmerer, the district’s director of pupil services, said in a recent memo to staff. “District staff members are no longer required to seek parental consent prior to honoring student requests to be called by their preferred name and/or pronouns.”
To officially change their names in the district’s computer system, students will still need to provide documentation of a legal name change. However, the new policy allows teachers and other district employees to treat students as members of the opposite sex without ever informing their parents that they are doing so.
“This change only impacts how a student who is transgender or gender nonconforming is referred to (name and/or pronouns) during school and school activities,”Kaemmerer explained in an email to parents. “District staff will continue to work directly with students who are transgender and gender nonconforming and their families to maintain ongoing communication.”
“This is outrageous,” said one Oshkosh parent. “So, if my son starts identifying as a girl at school but hides it from me, I will never know about it?”
Oshkosh is not a major urban area, where many people might expect to find far-left policies like this. It is a modest-sized Wisconsin town of 67,000 people. The school district oversees nearly 10,000 students, according to federal data. While the city of Oshkosh voted for Joe Biden in 2020, the surrounding county voted for Donald Trump by four points. The area is represented by Republicans and Democrats in state offices.
Last year, the Madison Metropolitan School District announced a nearly identical policy change and faced an immediate lawsuit from parents. A Dane County Circuit Court judge issued an injunction barring the district from enforcing its policy “in any manner that allows or requires District staff to conceal information or to answer untruthfully in response to any question that parents ask about their child at school, including information about the name and pronouns being used to address their child at school.” A final decision on the merits of the lawsuit is still pending, but in both Wisconsin courts and the federal judiciary, the right of parents to have a significant say in the education of their children is well-established.
In 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska struck down a law prohibiting the teaching of foreign languages in school. The court did so in large measure because the Nebraska legislature “has attempted materially to interfere with the calling of modern language teachers, with the opportunities of pupils to acquire knowledge, and with the power of parents to control the education of their own.” This concept of a fundamental right of parents to exercise control over the education of their children was affirmed two years later when the Supreme Court held in Pierce v. Society of Sisters that parents reserved the right to send their children to parochial schools.
“The child is not the mere creature of the state,” the high court explained. “Those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right and the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
As recently as 2000, the Supreme Court in Troxel v. Granville upheld this right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children, declaring definitively that “the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause has a substantive component that provides heightened protection against government interference with certain fundamental rights and liberty interests, including parents’ fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.”
To make such decisions, parents obviously need to be informed of what their children are doing at school, and thus the Oshkosh Area School District’s deliberate attempt to withhold such pertinent information as the sex with which a child identifies represents a clear infringement of parents’ 14th Amendment rights. It also clearly violates the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which requires that “parents or eligible students have the right to inspect and review the student’s education records maintained by the school.”
In spite of this, the Oshkosh Area School District’s new policy is just the latest in a disturbing trend of districts willfully keeping students’ transgender status from parents. Montgomery County Public Schools in Montgomery, Md. announced in 2019 it would no longer disclose to parents the sex with which their children identify at school, prompting a lawsuit from parents. As far back as 2016, the National Education Association’s Legal Guidance on Transgender Students’ Rights instructed teachers and school administrators to “not disclose a student’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to others, including other students, parents or guardians…unless required to do so by law or unless the student has agreed.”
This guidance isn’t just erroneous; it is patently unlawful and unconstitutional. Parents have a deep-rooted right to control and direct their children’s education, and in order to exercise this right, they must know information as fundamental as the sex their children assume while at school.
Dan O’Donnell is a talk show host with News/Talk 1130 WISN in Milwaukee, Wis. and 1310 WIBA in Madison, Wis., and a columnist for the John K. MacIver Institute.
A lot of roadside signs for Virginia’s Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe include a special message: “Vote in Free and Fair Elections beginning September 17.” Odd. Shouldn’t “free and fair” go without saying? Why include it on a campaign sign?
This is especially odd since the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors recently asked Virginia’s current governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, to waive the legally required witness signature for absentee ballots, as well as the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number, both statutory requirements. They asked this about a month after voting began.
For me, the gratuitous addition looks like an attempt to cover up the left’s belief that fair elections are below its paygrade. McAuliffe’s operatives can’t possibly believe it, especially as they work to change and ignore rules in the middle of the game. But they sure want you to believe the electoral changes they enacted for 2021 in Virginia—including expansions of mail-in balloting, conditions for ballot harvesting, no requirement for photo ID, etc.—somehow add up to “free and fair.”
On top of that, the huge ballot drop box in front of Fairfax County is supposed to have 24/7 surveillance, but Director of the Fairfax County Office of Elections Scott Konopasek says the camera feed will never be available to the public.
As Mollie Hemingway’s investigative work in her recent bestseller “Rigged” shows, the 2020 elections added a lot of moving parts to the machinery of election rigging. In addition to inviting fraud, there are now more ways to disguise irregularities and to render election results unverifiable. Such chaos-by-design has been in the works for many years. It reached a tipping point when the oligarchical triad of Big Tech, Big Gov, and Big Media used the Wuhan virus shutdowns to vastly expand mail-in voting while relaxing controls on it during the 2020 presidential election.
Obviously, their first order of business was to prevent President Trump from winning re-election. I imagine the second order of business is to entrench these processes for other elections so that a permanent one-party state can cross all state lines.
At the moment, there seems to be just enough pretense—such as the continued existence of in-person polling places and polling officials who request some form of identification—to create an illusion of propriety. The idea is to keep actual voters clutching their ballots with the same persistent trust as Charlie Brown holding onto Lucy’s football every time she offers him a “free and fair” chance to kick it. McAuliffe, a heavily seasoned Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative, is joined at the hip to all that machinery. Yet Democrats in Virginia are acting as though they’re “nervous” that McAuliffe might lose.
Granted, if we’re operating on a level playing field, he should be nervous. For example, his callous assertion during a debate that parents shouldn’t be involved in what their children are learning in school caused a great backlash among his presumed base. It led to lifelong Democrat voters in Virginia openly campaigning for McAuliffe’s opponent, Glenn Youngkin. So, yes, it looks like McAuliffe should be in deep doo-doo. My guess, however, is that he isn’t really worried about “winning.”
Consider that he actually doubled down on excluding parents from their children’s education. He’s just fine with the idea of the FBI investigating concerned parents as domestic terrorists. He even walked away from a televised interview because he didn’t like the questions. This is the sort of behavior I’d expect from someone who believes he has it all locked up, kind of like the Biden campaign’s extreme confidence despite the candidate’s pathetic low energy and gaffe-prone appearances, of the snoozer of the DNC convention.
So if the McAuliffe campaign feels nervous, it’s likely only over the slight possibility of not generating enough fraud. So it looks like a two-track strategy. First, make sure enough leftist operatives (like that guy in Fairfax County) are taking care of the business of generating unverifiable fraud. Second, keep propping up the illusion of “free and fair.”
Maybe that’s how you get a CYA dog-and-pony show with Stacey Abrams stumping for McAuliffe by warning against voter suppression. Maybe that’s the point of Vice President Kamala Harris’s video to 300 black churches during Sunday morning services to get out the vote for McAuliffe. The in-your-face illegality of Harris’s “Souls to the Polls” action adds to the hubris.
I’ll still mark a ballot on Election Day in Virginia (if I’m not told that I already voted.) Assuming McAuliffe ends up in Richmond again, I’ll expect to see local polling places disappear in Virginia in the future. And I’ll continue to have contempt for fake elections in 2022 and beyond.
U.S. Marine veteran James Kilcer, who thwarted an attempted robbery in an Arizona convenience store last week, received an award Tuesday from the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office while wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt. He was also sporting a red “Make America Great Again” hat, apparently in support of former President Donald Trump.
Sheriff Leon Wilmot presented Kilcer with the YCSO Citizen’s Valor Award, “For extraordinary heroism and exceptional courage while voluntarily coming to the aid of another citizen during an incident involving criminal activity at extreme, life threatening, personal risk in an attempt to save or protect human life,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
“The YCSO Citizen’s Valor Award is the highest award for citizens whose actions warrant recognition.”
Surveillance video of Kilcer stopping the robbery at the Chevron convenience store early in the morning on Oct. 20 went viral. The now-U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground employee had just purchased some Gatorades and other items and was talking to the clerk when the suspects came in, Kilcer told the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.
“I heard the door start opening forcefully and my ‘Spidey senses’ or whatever kind of tingling, and I turn around and saw they were coming in real quick,” he said.
The veteran turned around and his military training kicked in as he sought to disarm the robber.
“I was ready: I saw it coming,” Kilcer said. “The minute my hands closed around it, I never lost contact with the gun. And I pulled him down.”
ZERO FEAR: When this Yuma, AZ veteran saw some criminals pop in guns high — he didn't wait for things to potentially go south.
“The Marine Corp taught me not to [mess] around,” he later said.
He held the suspect down until law enforcement arrived. The person arrested was a 14-year-old juvenile who has now been charged with one count of armed robbery and one count of aggravated assault.
“Kilcer served as a tactical air operations technician in the Marine Corps and was deployed to Afghanistan during his time in the military. He credits his actions to his Marine Corps basic training and mindset,” DVIDS reported.
“I guess I was just in the right place at the right time,’’ Kilcer said. “I was doing what needed to be done.”Advertisement – story continues below
While appearing on Fox News on Friday, the Arizonan also waded into the political when he ended the segment, saying with a smile to host Dana Perino, “And remember, [Jeffrey] Epstein didn’t kill himself.”
The Marine who stopped the corner store robbery in the viral video was just on Fox News.
Randy DeSoto has written more than 2,000 articles for The Western Journal since he joined the company in 2015. He is a graduate of West Point and Regent University School of Law. He is the author of the book “We Hold These Truths” and screenwriter of the political documentary “I Want Your Money.”@RandyDeSoto
The Illinois state Senate voted Tuesday in favor of repealing a law requiring that the parents or guardians of a pregnant minor are alerted when a minor seeks an abortion. Lawmakers voted 32-22 on the proposal, according to the Chicago Tribune, which reported that four Democrats voted with Republicans against the move, while five Democrats did not even vote.
The move to ditch the parental notice requirement is supported by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), according to the outlet, which also reported that the matter now heads to the state’s House.
“Parental consent is not required under current law, and minors can ask a court to waive the notification requirement if they fear for their safety,” according to the Tribune.
The topic of abortion and the issues surrounding parental rights both remain areas of significant, contentious debate in the U.S.
“It’s the most basic human relationship that we know and it is a precious bond for a lifetime, most critical during a young girl’s, a minor’s, formative years….” Republican state Sen. Jil Tracy said, the AP reported. “We have enough problems in the state without creating more wedges between children and their parents.”
“One of the most detrimental laws that are currently on our books impacting young women is parental notification of abortion,” Democratic state Sen. Elgie Sims said, according to the outlet.
The U.S. State Department announced that it has issued the first passport with an “X” gender marker, a non-specific designation that will eventually be available as an option to others.
“The Department has issued the first U.S. passport with an X gender marker. We look forward to offering this option to all routine passport applicants once we complete the required system and form updates in early 2022,” department spokesperson Ned Price said in a news statement.
“Great news for Americans still stuck in Afghanistan,” Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas sarcastically tweeted regarding the news.
Earlier this year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the department intends to roll out the option of a non-specific gender marker for nonbinary, intersex, and gender non-conforming people, but noted that it would take time to make this option available.
“Most immediately, we will be updating our procedures to allow applicants to self-select their gender as ‘M’ or ‘F’ and will no longer require medical certification if an applicant’s self-selected gender does not match the gender on their other citizenship or identity documents,” Blinken noted in that June 30 statement.
The Biden administration has been a strong proponent of radical gender ideology.
“When a person obtains identity documents that reflect their true identity, they live with greater dignity and respect,” said Jessica Stern, U.S. special diplomatic envoy for LGBTQ rights, according to the Associated Press.
Last week, the State Department issued a tweet marking International Pronouns Day and on Tuesday, the department recognized Intersex Awareness Day. A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services news release last week described HHS Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine as the “first-ever female four-star admiral” in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) publicly announced today the nation’s first openly transgender four-star officer across any of the eight uniformed services of the United States,” the release declared. “Admiral Rachel Levine, who serves as the HHS Assistant Secretary for Health and head of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps, was ceremonially sworn in as a four-star admiral. Admiral Levine now serves as the highest ranking official in the USPHS Commissioned Corps and its first-ever female four-star admiral.”
Levine, a transgender woman, is a biological male who identifies as a female.
Commenting on the news that the State Department issued the first passport with a gender “X” marker, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, “I see that our super serious State Department is really addressing the most pressing and important issues of our time.”
With 99.7% of adults in the Irish county of Waterford having received the COVID shots, they have the highest per-capita case rate of COVID anywhere in the country. Are they now going to suggest it’s the fault of the 0.3%?!
The Irish Times reported last week that with one Waterford city district at a 14-day incidence rate of 1,486 cases per 100,000 of the population, Waterford has the highest incidence rate of anywhere in Ireland. The COVID case rate is three times the national average, which in itself has been increasing steadily in recent weeks, despite 91% of Irish adults being vaccinated. However, Waterford takes the cake.
“Waterford has the highest rate of vaccination in the country with 99.7 per cent of adults over the age of 18 (as registered in the last census) fully vaccinated,” reports the Irish Times. “The county has gone from having one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 infection in Ireland to one of the highest.”
How can a vaccine that is this leaky, and apparently even counterproductive, continue to be pushed on a population even if it had zero side effects? How many more examples of this do we need to see?
According to Our World in Data, most Irish began to get vaccinated in April/May, which is exactly when we saw a reversal of fortunes, with more cases than we’ve seen in months.about:blank
What else have we seen rise at the same time? You got it. COVID cases.
about:blank
And no, it’s not just mild cases. Ireland has the highest number of people in the hospital with COVID since March, and the trajectory is getting worse. This is with the highest vaccination rate in the EU – over 90% of those over 16 – and it’s particularly bad in the most vaccinated county of Ireland. The state’s chief medical officer, Dr. Tony Holohan, said he was “increasingly worried about the rising incidence of the disease nationwide” and that the primary focus “must be to protect the most vulnerable from Covid-19.” He then proceeded to blame the unvaccinated! Gee, if just 9% of those over 16 in the country are unvaccinated and just 0.3% in the worst area, what percentage of the vulnerable do you think are not vaccinated?! And wasn’t the vaccine designed to protect “the most vulnerable?”
At some point, there is nowhere to run or hide from the botched vaccine that not only fails to stop transmission, but causes viral immune escape and makes more virulent variants. A recent analysis of the emergent A.30 strain published in Nature shows that “the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 variant A.30 is heavily mutated and evades vaccine-induced antibodies with high efficiency.” This is what happens when you “shoot at the king and miss,” so to speak, by fighting a virus with weak, narrow-spectrum, and waning antibodies. We’ve gone backward. U.K. data already shows that the vaccinated are infected at a greater rate per capita – in some cohorts twice the rate – for every age group over 30.
It’s becoming clear that not only does this vaccine create greater transmission, but it also fails to protect against critical illness, especially for those who need the protection the most. Even the studies that continue to rely on old data – before the vaccines fully waned – show that the protection against critical illness doesn’t really work for the immunocompromised.
A new study from Sweden published as a preprint in the Lancet claims that the vaccine efficacy against serious illness is still holding up. There’s just one catch. “The effectiveness against severe illness seems to remain high through 9 months, although not for men, older frail individuals, and individuals with comorbidities,” conclude the authors. Well, isn’t that why we needed a vaccine in the first place? Even the Swedish study shows that after 210 days, there is zero efficacy against symptomatic infection, after which there seems to be negative efficacy. Researchers found just 52% efficacy against severe illness in all men after six months, which means you can no longer count on it for protection.
It’s also important to remember that many people in Sweden – more than most other countries – already had the infection, possibly asymptomatically. So, it’s possible that the efficacy of the shots is being overstated because some of those people benefited from natural immunity.
Thus, where are we nine to 12 months after the shot? Negative efficacy against symptomatic infection for all, as witnessed by the hard data in places like the U.K. and Ireland, and very low and spotty efficacy for serious illness, going down to zero for those who need it the most. But this is not cost-free. Who is to say that the effectiveness against severe illness won’t go negative as well, following some sort of pattern of antibody dependent disease enhancement? Moreover, who’s to say more mass vaccination of children and boosters for adults won’t create even more viral immune escape that will strengthen the virus and subject people to the risks of the shots without even protecting them for another month against these new self-perpetuated mutations?
This week, the Irish parliament was issued a “stark” warning from health officials about the growing threat of the virus. During sane times, policy leaders would reject the definition of insanity by engaging in introspection and changing course from existing failed policies. Yet in their warped minds, no matter how much the vaccines make the virus worse, you can always vaccinate more! So long as there is a single human being who didn’t receive the latest number shot, there’s always a way to project the viral enhancement on those who didn’t create it.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
At least 50 high-powered law firms that went out of their way to defend foreign terrorists in Guantanamo Bay free of charge are nowhere to be found as hundreds of American citizens languish in prison for charges related to entering the U.S. Capitol building during the January 6 riot.
When foreign terrorists, including the accused mastermind who helped plan the 9/11 attack, were being held in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, law firms from across the country volunteered to represent them pro bono. Now, nearly 600 Americans face an intense legal battle over their participation in the events of January 6, and these same firms are leaving them defenseless. Not one of the legal firms that assisted Gitmo terrorists have helped any of those charged with ties to January 6.
In 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union went so far as to create an entire group of lawyers ready to defend Gitmo detainees under the John Adams Project, to show their dedication to ensuring all have a top-notch defense.
John Adams, whose patriotism was proven in his instrumental legal role in helping found the American republic, defended British soldiers after the Boston Massacre in an American courtroom. Although undoubtedly a revolutionary hero, Adams felt convicted that the judicial system cannot be just if everyone doesn’t receive a quality defense. With popular opinion so staunchly against the soldiers, Adams risked his reputation to uphold this principle.
Attorney Steve Schaefer explained to me that a strong legal defense for all accused of crimes is necessary, as it is the only way to reveal the truth of what occurred before the court. If the facts don’t come to light, the American justice system is in jeopardy, as people are at the will of an arbitrary power. Schaefer said, that causes Americans to lose trust in the American experiment, so the importance of quality representation prior to adjudication in court can’t be overstated.
“It’s indispensable to have to have a strong advocacy on behalf of criminal defendants — even if the allegations are unsavory — because our entire process hinges on a protection of the citizen and that the government has to meet the highest burden, which is beyond a reasonable doubt, in order to convict them of a crime,” Schaefer said.
Without a strong criminal defense, the government can take away individual rights without a clear demonstration of the guilt of the accused. The firms who trumpeted the right to a strong defense for everyone charged in the American legal system when it came to Guantanamo Bay are well aware of the need for a competent defense for citizens today, yet they have not allocated any resources to an equal defense for some accused of crimes.
The law firm Wilmer and Hale told The New York Times in 2008 that establishing a proper defense for Gitmo detainees “was about as important as anything we could take on.”
Despite widespread allegations of prosecutorial zealotry and differing standards of prosecution for the January 6 rioters compared to the thousands of rioters across the nation in 2020 who besieged the White House, federal courthouses, police precincts, national symbols, and small businesses, no similar defense fund or coordination has been provided for those charged in the January 6 riot.
Julie Kelly, a reporter covering dozens of January 6 defendants since their cases began, said the majority of those who have been charged have no prior experience navigating the legal system. Few have been charged with any crime before in their lives and now must rely on government-provided public defenders because they can’t afford anyone else.
“We have a Gitmo in Washington D.C.,” Kelly told me. “We have a prison that has been used solely to house and detain men arrested and charged — not convicted, just charged with offenses — related to January 6.”
Some of the nonviolent defendants were so misinformed by the FBI that they thought they were being questioned to help them find violent offenders, all while the FBI was gathering evidence against those being questioned, she said.
“These people are being treated in court as domestic terrorists. Dozens of them are held under pre-trial detention orders, which means they don’t even have a chance to make bail,” Kelly noted. “They are considered too dangerous to be let out of jail, awaiting trials which won’t start until the middle of next year at the earliest.”
Capitol rioter Paul Hodgkins’ prosecutor referred to him as a domestic terrorist in his sentencing, and FBI Director Christopher Wray has designated January 6 an act of domestic terrorism. Many who didn’t even know they were doing anything wrong, entering the Capitol as police opened doors for them, face detrimental charges threatening to turn them into convicted felons, revoking their right to vote and to own a gun for the rest of their lives.
While corporate media and other establishment institutions have long encouraged pro-bono legal representation of those held at Gitmo, they have discouraged it for those charged in the January 6 riot. Media and political figures argue those charged in the riot were violent insurrectionists seeking to overthrow the government. However, not a single person at the riot has been charged with inciting insurrection. They have instead been charged with obstruction of an official proceeding, which is the felony charge that the government is adding to mostly misdemeanor cases of trespassing.
The vast majority of those charged with ties to January 6 carried no weapons, harmed no one, vandalized nothing, and stole nothing, according to Kelly. Most walked through the capitol against no resistance at 2:40 p.m., took a selfie, and were out by 3 p.m. These defendants are also being tried in front of a jury in Washington, D.C., a city where more than 92 percent of the voters voted to elect Joe Biden last November.
Civil liberties advocates say the treatment of January 6 defendants reveals an alarming threat to American jurisprudence. Some blame intimidation from well-funded leftist groups for the lack of a competent defense. Lawyers who do exert effort in providing such a defense have been harrassed.
According to NPR, attorney Nabeel Kibria represented one of the first defendants in the investigation to plead guilty, after which point Kibria began facing attacks and death threats 48 hours after her client’s plea deal “from people … who you would think were on a whole different spectrum than what the Bustles [a married couple on trial] are in terms of political ideology or the people of the January 6 riots.”
Firms that consider themselves advocates for the least among us fail to uphold their convictions by abandoning people like Hodgkins. The system of justice that exists in this country, outlined in the Constitution in no uncertain terms, requires a strong defense.
“It is extremely frustrating and heartbreaking to see the Beltway’s legal and judicial system so heavily stacked against these people who have no means to defend themselves,” Kelly said. “And you have no lawyers on the right willing to step up and take these cases either pro bono, or even low bono, to help these people.”
One thing is clear: Those on the left put a lot of work into defending Afghan terrorists a decade ago, touting the need for providing a quality legal defense to those who were least likely to have quality, willing representation. Now, in the hour of need for Americans charged with much lesser crimes than mass murder, the same firms remain silent.
Allison Schuster is a research assistant for Hillsdale College in DC and a 2021 Hillsdale graduate, as well as a former intern for The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter @allisonshoestor.
Two female police officers with the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department have revealed that when they were cadets, their superiors ordered them to terminate their pregnancies.
Chanel Dickerson, assistant chief of the MPD Youth and Family Engagement Bureau, explained at a recent community gathering at Unity Baptist Church of D.C. that she became pregnant during her time at the police academy. She was told to get an abortion if she wanted to keep her job.
“When I was 18 years old, as a police cadet, I was told I had to have an abortion or be fired from the MPD cadet program,” Dickerson said, as reported by Fox 5. “Wow. My choice to have a baby was personal and it should’ve been mine alone and not … with an employer ultimatum.”
Dickerson’s ultimatum was not a unique phenomenon. A day after publishing the report about Dickerson, Fox 5 broadcast an interview with Karen Arikpo, a police officer who alleged that abortion was painted as a mandatory course of action for pregnant police cadets. Arikpo recalled a female sergeant in the police academy telling the cadets: “If we were pregnant, we need to get an abortion or we would be fired.”
Arikpo later told her sergeant that she was pregnant. In response, she recalled the sergeant saying she “needed to have an abortion” and “she referred me to a doctor.” Arikpo, who graduated with Dickerson from the police academy in 1997, said the consequences of her abortion still haunt her to this day.
“I’ve never been able to have a kid,” she explained. Arikpo maintained that if she could go back in time, she would have quit the police academy and had the baby: “I did this for a job. … And then to want kids and can’t have them. How do you tell people that?”
Dickerson is one of 10 African American female police officers who joined a class-action lawsuit filed last month against the MPD, which accuses the department of engaging in discrimination on the basis of race and gender. The plaintiffs are seeking $100 million in compensatory damages and an order declaring that “the MPD’s employment policies, practices and procedures towards Black women police officers constitute unlawful discrimination and retaliation.”
Their legal complaint claims that the Equal Employment Office, the division in charge of dealing with discriminatory problems within the department, is itself headed by a man who “has repeatedly expressed hostility to women officers, and who colludes with management to crush Black women who complain about race and gender discrimination and sexual harassment.”
Dickerson elaborated on the workplace culture during her remarks at Unity Baptist Church. When one of her colleagues “needed a shift that was conducive to taking care of her child as a single mother,” she declared that her colleague “had to do things no woman should ever have to do to care for her child.”
NBC News reported that Tiara Brown, who worked for the MPD for five years and is one of the complainants, was named officer of the year in 2019.
Of the 10 women, three said they were forced out of their jobs with MPD, while five remain on the force, one is retired, and the tenth complainant resigned last year.
“While we cannot discuss the specific allegations due to pending litigation, the Metropolitan Police Department is committed to treating all members fairly and equitably throughout our organization,” responded MPD spokesperson Alaina Gertz in a statement to NBC News.
“We take these allegations seriously and we will be reviewing them thoroughly and responding accordingly,” she vowed.
Rachel Levine, a trans-identified nominee for Assistant Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, testifies at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on February 25, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Levine previously served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health. | Caroline Brehman-Pool/Getty Images
Twitter has suspended the account of a Republican congressman who posted a tweet noting that President Joe Biden’s U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine, who identifies as transgender, is a man. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., was suspended Saturday after posting a tweet in response to Levine — who went by the name Richard before he began identifying as female — becoming the first trans-identified four-star officer in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
Banks has been temporarily blocked from using his Twitter account until he agrees to delete the tweet calling Levine a man, according to NBC News. In the now-deleted tweet posted Tuesday, Banks lamented that “the title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.” Twitter claimed that the tweet violated its hateful conduct policy, which prohibits tweets that engage in “misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
For his part, Banks took to his Instagram account to post a statement denouncing the actions of Twitter, saying that the social media site was censoring “a basic truth.”
“My tweet was a statement of fact. Big Tech doesn’t have to agree with me, but they shouldn’t be able to cancel me. If they silence me, they will silence you,” he warned.
“We can’t allow Big Tech to prevent us from telling the truth. When Republicans take back the House next year, we must restore honesty to our public forums and hold Big Tech accountable.”View this post on Instagram
Levine was the previous secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March to be assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services in a 52-48 vote.
In a tweet still visible as of Monday morning, Banks criticized the hailing of Levine as the first “female” four-star officer at the corps, arguing that it disrespected biological females.
“Calling someone that was born and lived as a man for 54 years the first ‘female’ four-star officer is an insult to every little girl who dreams of breaking glass ceilings one day,”tweeted Banks on Oct. 19.
HHS deputy secretary Andrea Palm swears in Levine, with @Surgeon_General Vivek Murthy (a vice admiral himself) as witness.
Levine now the first openly transgender four-star officer across any of the eight uniformed services, which include Army, Navy and Air Force. pic.twitter.com/ne2xBdsFk9
“May this appointment today be the first of many more to come,” stated Levine. “Diversity makes us stronger.”
Banks is not the first person to face repercussions from Twitter for asserting that Levine is a biological male. On Jan. 20, the day of Biden’s inauguration, radio host Michael Brown sent out a tweet asking, “Will I get punished by Twitter for saying that, in God’s sight, ‘Rachel’ Levine (nominated by Biden to be his assistant secretary for HHS) is a man?” Shortly after that, Brown was locked out of his account for 12 hours.
A recent report from a media watchdog reveals that censorship of conservative politicians is not an uncommon phenomenon. The Media Research Center found that censorship of Republican members of Congress outnumbers censorship of Democrats in Congress by a ratio of 54 to 1. Follow Michael Gryboski on Twitter or Facebook
A Sudanese teenager will resume his life now that he is free on bail only weeks after being charged with three counts of murder. Ahmedal Tayeb Elnouman Modawi, 17, made bail over the weekend, according to KPRC-TV in Houston. Modawi faces three counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault with serious bodily injury stemming from an Oct. 1 joyriding incident that ended in tragedy. As a condition of his release, Modawi can attend school and church, and must wear a GPS ankle monitor.
Modawi is a Sudanese national who has lived with his family in Houston for the past five years. He is not an American citizen.
The teenager who had worked as a valet at a Houston restaurant, was spotted by police at about 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 1 while driving a customer’s white Infiniti G37 and doing various stunts in a parking lot. Modawi fled when the officer who spotted him hit the lights and siren. He did not get far but struck and killed three valets who worked at another restaurant, Eric Orduna, 22; Nick Rodriguez, 23; and Fran Measho, 18. He then flipped the car before it crashed into a fence. Modawi and a passenger each suffered leg injuries.
“We’re talking about three individuals who were just out here working. They were out here doing their job. They were coming back from parking cars going to get more cars,” Sean Teare, Harris County assistant district attorney, told KPRC after the incident. “We’re going to prosecute this person to the fullest extent because this is completely unacceptable.”
Modawi’s bond was set at $350,000 but was later reduced to $220,000.
Johntrel Lewis, the customer who owned the vehicle Modawi was driving, had left the car to be parked that night when he went into a sports bar.
“I’m trying to figure out what you were you thinking when you jumped in the car,” Lewis said, according to KPRC.
He had come out of the bar to take a picture of the accident when he realized it was his own car.
“I took a picture of it and I’m sending it to my friends like, ‘Bro, somebody’s car is jacked up, they’re going to be mad in the morning,’” he said. “That was my car.”
After getting a ride home, he said, he received a call from the police.
“That’s when the detective called me,” he said. “He was like, ‘Your car was involved in a homicide. It was used in a homicide. It’s totaled. There’s nothing you can do.’”
Bob Lowry was at a nearby establishment when the crash happened.
“It sounded like a clap of thunder. I looked over and a car just came flying through the air and hit the ditch,” Lowry told KPRC.
He said he was sorry for the valets who were mowed down.
“Just doing their jobs, God bless them. I hope justice has a swift hand,” Lowry said.
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
A juvenile court judge found a teenage boy guilty of “nonconsensual sex” with a female student in the controversial case from Loudoun County in Virginia. The sexual assault became a national outrage after public school officials denied any knowledge of an assault during a heated confrontation with parents protesting against a transgender bathroom rule proposal.
Scott Smith, the father of the victim, was dragged out of the June 22 board meeting by police after engaging in an altercation with a woman who accused his daughter of lying about the assault. That altercation was used to justify an announcement by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland that the FBI would investigate threats against school board members.
On Monday, Juvenile Court Judge Pamela Brooks found that the evidence presented was sufficient to find that the 15-year-old suspect had engaged in “nonconsensual sex” with the victim during the bathroom assault on May 28 at Stone Bridge High School. The suspect was also accused of sexually assaulting a second victim early October after he had been moved to another school in the district.
“The matter will be continued for review, to determine the outcome of the second set of charges against the same young man, who is accused of sexually assaulting a second Loudoun County student after being transferred to Broad Run High School,” read a statement from attorney Elizabeth Lancaster, who represents one of the victims in the case.
The boy reportedly said in court that he had worn a skirt into the restroom.
Parents and other critics of the Loudoun County school board have called for resignations of those members who are accused of covering up the sexual assaults at their schools in order to push liberal policies. The Smith family said in a statement Monday that they would continue to press for accountability from the school officials responsible for the scandal.
“We are relieved that justice was served today for the Smith’s daughter,” the statement said. “This horrible incident has deeply affected the Smith family, and they are grateful for today’s outcome.”
Here’s a news report about the shocking Loudoun school scandal:
Legendary comedian Dave Chappelle responded to the outrage against his comments on “The Closer” comedy special in a video he posted to his Instagram account Monday. The video shows Chappelle addressing the issue during a stand-up comedy session Sunday in Nashville, Tennessee, with a large audience.
“It’s been said in the press that I was invited to speak to the transgender employees of Netflix and I refused. That is not true — if they had invited me I would have accepted it, although I am confused about what we would be speaking about,” Chappelle said in the video.
“I said what I said, and boy, I heard what you said. My God, how could I not? You said you want a safe working environment at Netflix,” he continued.
“Well, it seems like I’m the only one that can’t go to the office anymore!” he quipped to loud applause.
He went on to say that he had created a documentary that had been accepted by many film festivals until the controversy over his special, after which they canceled.
“I want everyone in this audience to know that even though the media frames it that it’s me versus that community, that is not what it is. Do not blame the LBGTQ [sic] community for any of this s***. This has nothing to do with them. It’s about corporate interests and what I can say and what I cannot say,” Chappelle said to more loud applause.
Chappelle said the documentary would instead play at select theaters in 10 major cities. He also said he was willing to meet with the transgender community but only under his conditions.
“To the transgender community, I am more than willing to give you an audience, but you will not summon me. I am not bending to anybody’s demands. And if you want to meet with me, I’d be more than willing to, but I have some conditions,” he said.
“First of all, you cannot come if you have not watched my special from beginning to end. You must come to a place of my choosing at a time of my choosing, and thirdly, you must admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny!” he added.
Gadsby was one of the comedians who lashed out at Netflix over the controversy.
“For the record, and I need you to know this,” Chappelle added, “everyone I know from that community has been loving and supporting, so I don’t know what all this nonsense is about.”
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Taliban fighters atop vehicles with Taliban flags parade along a road to celebrate after the US pulled all its troops out of Afghanistan, in Kandahar on September 1, 2021 following the Talibans military takeover of the country. | JAVED TANVEER/AFP via Getty Images
The Biden administration, which had been saying for weeks that the number of Americans still left behind in Afghanistan and urgently want to be evacuated was about 100, has now increased the number to about 200. State Department spokesman Ned Price said last week that while the U.S. airlifted out dozens of people in the past couple days, more people had come forward in recent weeks expressing a desire to leave and the number is somewhere between 100 and 200, The Washington Times reported.
Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, criticized the Biden administration.
“For weeks, their official number was ‘about a hundred’ and it magically never changed — as Americans slowly got out the total number never went down. Now they say more than 300 Americans are still in Afghanistan,” Sasse was quoted as saying.
The number quoted by Sasse includes Americans who, according to the State Department, haven’t said they want to leave. Price, however, claimed that the “proven ability” of the U.S. in airlifting people out is behind the higher number of people wanting to flee.
Following the drawing down of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban quickly seized control of much of the country, taking the capital Kabul in August and forcing the government to flee. Afghanistan’s interim government includes more than a dozen leaders who are designated terrorists and ex-Guantanamo detainees.
Meanwhile, Aman Khalili, an Afghan interpreter who helped rescue Biden in 2008, when he was a senator, after a helicopter he and other senators were riding on had to make an emergency landing in Afghanistan, was able to escape earlier this month. U.S. veterans worked with former Afghan soldiers and Pakistani allies to help Khalili cross the border into Pakistan with his family, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“Aman helped keep me and other Americans safe while we were fighting in Afghanistan, and we wanted to return the favor,” said Brian Genthe, a combat veteran, was quoted as saying. “He’s a blessing.”
Last month, the Taliban declared they will carry out executions and other brutal punishments, including amputations, under Islamic Sharia law as part of their rule in Afghanistan.
“Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security,” Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, a member of the Taliban’s interim government and chief enforcer of the group’s strict interpretation of Sharia law, told The Associated Press. “Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments. No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran.”
Turabi, who is under U.N. sanctions, also said the new government may consider carrying out such punishments in public. The Taliban have banned all demonstrations and have violently cracked down on protests, including beating women and killing demonstrators. The Taliban are arresting, and in some instances executing, people they perceive as their enemies, Christian missionary David Eubank, a former U.S. Army Special Forces and Ranger officer, said in an earlier interview with CBN News. Eubank also said recent photos and video suggest they’re killing as many as 30 to 40 people at a time.
“They [the Taliban] are hunting down people right now, trying to get all the names of anyone they perceive as an enemy,” Eubank said, adding that the enemies include “people who work with the U.S. government, people who are with other governments, people who work with nongovernmental organizations they don’t agree with.”
To great public fanfare, Joe Biden has anointed Rachel Levine a “four-star admiral” in the Public Health Service (PHS). The public relations campaign in support of Levine has emphasized his status as the first transgender four-star “admiral” in the “eight U.S. uniformed services.” That PR campaign is misleading, and it is part of a dangerous effort to undermine the military. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) kicked off the propaganda campaign, leading with the “four-star transgender” meme: On October 19, it announced “the nation’s first openly transgender four-star officer across any of the eight uniformed services of the United States. (emphasis here and below is added). HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra reinforced the theme: “Admiral Levine’s historic appointment as the first openly transgender four-star officer is a giant step forward towards equality as a nation.” The U.S. surgeon general touted Levine as “first openly transgender four-star officer to serve in any of the uniformed services.”
The media parroted the party line. Here is The New York Times: “She [sic] is also the first openly transgender person to become a four-star officer in any of the nation’s eight uniformed services.” USA Today’s contribution was virtually indistinguishable: “Rachel Levine becomes first openly transgender 4-star officer across uniformed services.”Here’s The Washington Post: “Rachael Levine, openly transgendered health official sworn in as four-star admiral in Public Health Service.”
This roll-out and publicity barrage leave little doubt that Levine’s primary qualification for his instant promotion is his transgender status. What’s worse, it will damage U.S. military recruitment and morale, thus damaging U.S. national security.
Yes, the Public Health Service is one of the eight “uniformed services” but, notwithstanding the uniforms and its bureaucrats designated as “admirals,” it is not part of the “armed forces.” The U.S. armed forces are the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Space Force. The other two government departments in the category of “uniformed services” are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps and the Public Health Services Commissioned Officer Corps. In addition to their Navy-like uniforms, these two also are headed by bureaucrats designated “admirals.”
Four-star is the highest rank in the U.S. military. Although nine five-star admirals and generals served in World War II, the five-star rank was retired upon the death of Gen. Omar Bradley in 1981, leaving four-star generals as the highest rank. The four-star designation calls to mind such historical and accomplished military men as Admiral William Halsey Jr., who commanded the Pacific Fleet in the fight-to-the-death against Japan (and was promoted to five-star rank only after the end of the war), and such notables as Gen. George Patton, recipient of two distinguished service crosses for heroism in battle and the American commander most feared by the Germans in World War II.
Even Patton was a “mere” three-star general when he commanded the Third Army in its drive through Europe into the heart of Germany, and was only awarded his fourth star less than a month before the war’s end. Thus, while maneuvering his Third Army to relieve Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, Patton would have been outranked by now-Admiral Levine.
In short, promotion to the four-star level normally indicates decades of military service, often in dangerous and life-threatening circumstances, and military achievements of the highest order. Levine does not remotely merit any comparison with these or any of the other accomplished four-star officers, whether admirals or generals.
The administration’s publicity campaign seeking to present Levine as an accomplished four-star admiral is a fraud, particularly coupled with the references to all the uniformed services, as if they are somehow comparable. Although now designated as an “admiral,” Levine commands no sailors, no submarines, and no ships. At least the admiral managing the NOAA has ships and aircraft to command.
Unlike Navy admirals, Levin did not become an admiral after decades of service, including overseas deployments, time away from family, and the hazards that accompany military service. Nor did he attend Annapolis or any other service academy, or even Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) or officer candidate school. He was never an ensign, lieutenant, commander, captain, or even a vice admiral.
Others have documented Levine’s failures in the public health arena. In view of that record, no one can even claim that he is the best person to head PHS out of the hundreds of thousands of physicians in the United States. That is why the PR campaign emphasized his purported gender status. There is no doubt that he is most famous for claiming to be a woman, after 33 years of marriage and fathering two children with a real woman.
Americans should consider the cumulative effect that this and similar boneheaded decisions have on military retention and morale and whether they are done by design. Consider for a moment the perspective of, for example, an Army major or Navy lieutenant commander with 10 to 15 years of service. Or perhaps consider a Marine gunnery sergeant or Army master sergeant with the same amount of service.
Let us assume that he is in one of the special operations units, such as the Army Special Forces, Recon Marines or SEALS, since they are still engaged in combat. Such an officer or NCO has worked extremely hard to receive each promotion. He has been at war for his entire adult life and probably has between 6 and 10 combat deployments, which amount to years away from his family. He may have been wounded, perhaps multiple times. At the bare minimum, he and his family have had to cope with horrendous personal and family stress, among other issues. Now he sees a man with no military experience summarily appointed to six grades above him to the rank of four-star admiral—the equivalent of General Patton, for Pete’s sake—purely as a political sop.
Does anyone in this administration conceive of the damage to morale that this can cause? Do they care? This tells American servicemen and women that their sacrifices are not appreciated, their service is not valued, and that they will not be treated with equal fairness.
Are we going to see a rash of resignations in reaction to this one incident? No. But it most assuredly is another blow at the foundation of the military, another effort to use it as a lab for social experimentation and to force political conformity upon those who remain.
This is part of the effort to purge the military of non-leftists and to seed the ranks with “woke,” politically conscious officers and NCOs who will hew to the “progressive” party line. It is part of the pattern that includes Biden’s purge of Trump appointees from the service academies’ boards, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s search for alleged“domestic terrorists” in the ranks, and Gen. Mark Milley’s focus on the“white rage” supposedly permeating the services. It is part of leftist ideology’s ever-growing danger to the U.S. military and therefore to the country.
John Lucas is a practicing attorney in Tennessee who has successfully argued before the U. S. Supreme Court. Before entering law school at the University of Texas, he served in the Army Special Forces as an enlisted man and then graduated from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point in 1969. He is an Army Ranger and fought in Vietnam as an infantry platoon leader. He is married with four children.
The Biden gang claims climate change caused the immigration crisis leading illegal immigrants to sneak into the US. (It has nothing to do with liberal manipulation or policies.)
The Biden gang came out with its latest report on climate change. This report claims climate change led to immigration.
In the ‘Introduction’ to the manuscript, Biden’s gang claims the climate is changing more than ever before (something that is impossible to measure) and it is intensifying more than ever before (also can’t be measured). And to top it all off, Biden’s gang reports that climate change has led to immigration.
In addition, the report claims that anti-immigration political actors are using real and perceived challenges with ‘climate changed immigration’ to contribute to xenophobia and political tensions.
Summary Recent Posts ContactJoe Hoft is the twin brother of TGP’s founder, Jim Hoft, and a contributing editor at TGP. Joe’s reporting is often months ahead of the Mainstream media as was observed in his reporting on the Mueller sham investigation, the origins of the China coronavirus, and 2020 Election fraud. Joe was a corporate executive in Hong Kong for a decade and has years of experience in finance, IT, operations and auditing around the world. The knowledge gained in his career provide him with a unique perspective of current events in the US and globally. He has ten degrees or designations and is the author of three books. Joe is currently co-host of the morning radio show in St. Louis at 93.3 “Tomorrow’s News Today”. His new book: ‘In God We Trust: Not in Lying Liberal Lunatics’ is out now – please take a look and buy a copy.
Authorities arrested a “reformed” child sex offender after he was busted for a variety of child sex abuse crimes that purportedly took place as late as 2020. The suspect, 45-year-old Derrick Crooms, was previously placed on a child sex abuse registry following similar convictions in 1996, but was able to persuade a judge to remove his name from the registry in 2017 after claiming he was reformed and led a good and decent life.
Earlier in October, federal marshals in conjunction with the Newton and Oconee County Sheriff’s offices took Newton County, Georgia, resident Crooms into custody and charged him with two counts each of incest, aggravated sexual battery, aggravated child molestation, and child molestation, plus one count of enticing a child for indecent purposes. He is being held without bond in the Newton County Detention Center at the time of this reporting.
In a statement on the arrest, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Assistant Special Agent in Charge Lindsay Marchant said that the agency began investigating Crooms in December 2020.
“In December 2020, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit received a request for assistance from the Oconee County Sheriff’s Office in the investigation of numerous sex offenses against children by Crooms,” Marchant said in the news release. “The investigation revealed that these crimes allegedly occurred in Newton County, Georgia, as well as several different locations throughout the United States.”
One of Crooms’ previous victims — who was instrumental in helping capture him in 2020 — spoke out in response to the new charges, according to WAGA-TV.
Jeanie Fulcher, now 34, said, “He took my innocence when I was seven. I don’t know if you can ever really heal from that.”
Fulcher said that in 2017, Crooms was successfully able to petition a judge to remove his name from the sex offender list despite her begging and pleading otherwise.
“Their argument was that he was a changed man and he was a model citizen that didn’t get in trouble anymore, hasn’t committed crimes since,” she said.
She added, “I do think that our justice system has failed us. I believe that once you plead guilty to raping children, molestation charges, you shouldn’t get out of prison at all. You shouldn’t get a second chance.”
Crooms served just four years of his 20-year sentence before being released from prison in connection with the 1996 convictions.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that Democrats were close to reaching a deal on the contested $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act. Pelosi appeared Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” where she claimed that Democrats had “90% of the [reconciliation] bill agreed to and written,” having overcome longstanding disagreements between the moderates and the left flank of the Democratic Party.
Host Jake Tapper asked the Pelosi if the deal would be finalized before President Joe Biden leaves for Europe at the end of the month. Biden is scheduled to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican Oct. 29.
“You’ll have a deal by Thursday or Friday?” he asked the show’s guest.
“I think we’re pretty much there now,” Pelosi responded. “We’re almost there. It’s just the language of it.”
Pelosi noted that the size of the social spending bill was turning out to be less than projected, but still sufficient to bolster the president’s economic agenda.
Tapper then remarked that two deadlines on a House vote on the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) had been “missed because of the progressives” who held the bill hostage until there was an agreement on the larger package.
“Wait a minute,” Pelosi interrupted the host. “There was no deadline that was missed because of the progressives. The deadline was missed because they changed from 3.5 [trillion] to one-half of that, and we’ve had to go in.”
Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin was set to meet Sunday with Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in Delaware to discuss the fate of the spending bill.
The woman responsible for the weapon used by Alec Baldwin in a tragic film set accident this week had said she was “really nervous” about her ability to work with prop guns.
Baldwin’s prop firearm discharged during the filming of the movie “Rust” in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Thursday. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, was killed. Director Joe Souza, 48, was injured and taken to a nearby hospital.
Hannah Reed, the film crew’s armorer, last month admitted that she was unsure of her ability to do her job.
“You know, I was really nervous about it at first, and I almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready. But doing it, like, it went really smoothly,” Reed said on the “Voices of the West”podcast on Sept. 11.
Reed was then working on a movie called “The Old Way.” She said it was her first time as a head armorer. Loading blanks was the “scariest” part of the job, Reed said. She said her father, fellow Hollywood armorer Thell Reed, helped show her the ropes.
According to CNN, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department has issued a search warrant for the property where “Rust” was being filmed.
Steve Wolf, a theatrical firearms safety expert, said “there is no excuse for something like this to happen.”
“The physics of how bullets enter people has been known for about 5,000 years,” he added.
Armorers should always look inside the cylinder of a weapon to ensure “there is nothing in the gun that could come out,” Wolf said.
“If you put a blank in there, you make sure there is a blank, no bullet on the end of it.”
Baldwin tweeted his condolences to Hutchins’ family and friends after the accident.
“There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours,” Baldwin wrote. “I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family.‘
“My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.”
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
NEWSMAX
News, Opinion, Interviews, Research and discussion
Spiritual
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
Bible Gateway
The Bible Gateway is a tool for reading and researching scripture online — all in the language or translation of your choice! It provides advanced searching capabilities, which allow readers to find and compare particular passages in scripture based on
What Did You Say? 
Written
on November 2, 2021