Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.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.
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows joined Maria Bartiromo yesterday on Sunday Morning Futures. During their discussion, Mark Meadows dropped this BOMB on the power-drunk Democrats who are out for blood.
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According to Mark Meadows President Trump offered Capitol Police, national guard and even offered the Department of Defense to help protect Washington DC prior to the January 6th protests.
Via The Palmieri Report:
Meadows told Bartiromo “we also know that in January, but also throughout the summer, that the president was very vocal in making sure that we had plenty of National Guard, plenty of additional support because he supports our rule of law and supports our law enforcement and offered additional help.”
“Even in January, that was a given, as many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the Secretary of Defense” Meadows added “That was a direct order from President Trump and yet here is what we see, all kinds of blame going around but yet not a whole lot of accountability.”
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“That accountability needs to rest where it ultimately should be and that’s on capitol hill” he added.
Someone needs to shoot this off to that nasty liar Liz Cheney.
Speaking with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Bruce Castor, the former acting attorney general of Pennsylvania, confirmed that he will use “dueling video” to combat evidence that Trump’s rhetoric about the election incited the deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Lead Trump impeachment attorney Bruce Castor. (Image source: Fox News screenshot)
After predicting that Democrats plan to use video of Trump during his Senate trial, Ingraham asked, “Will you then respond with Maxine Waters, a number of other Democrat officials not speaking out about the Antifa and other extremist rallies over the last summer?”
“I think you can count on that,” Castor responded. “If my eyes look a little red to the viewers, it’s because I’ve been looking at a lot of video.”
Earlier in the interview, Castor explained that there is plenty of evidence showing Democrats are essentially guilty of what they claim Trump should be convicted in the Senate over.
Well, 2020 was somewhat of an unusual year, and it wasn’t all due to COVID. And there’s an awful lot of a tape of cities burning and courthouses being attacked and federal agents being assaulted by rioters in the street cheered on by Democrats throughout the country, and many of them in Washington, using really the most inflammatory rhetoric that’s possible to use. And certainly, there would be no suggestion that they did anything to incite any of the actions. Certainly, there wasn’t any anyhow.
But here, when you have the president of the United States give a speech and says you should peacefully make your thinking known to the people in Congress, he’s all of a sudden a villain. So you got to better be careful what you wish for. It’s all prosecutors trick. When you don’t have a good enough case, you just put up all the really flashy stuff, and then kind of smooth over the fact that it doesn’t really connect up to the guy that’s on trial.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) argued Sunday that Republicans should apply the same impeachment standard to Democrats that they are using against Trump. In fact, Paul explained that if the standard Democrats use is applied fairly, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should be impeached.
“If we’re going to criminalize speech, and somehow impeach everybody who says, ‘Go fight to hear your voices heard,’ I mean really we ought to impeach Chuck Schumer then,” Paul argued on “Fox News Sunday.”
“He went to the Supreme Court, stood in front of the Supreme Court and said specifically, ‘Hey Gorsuch, Hey Kavanaugh, you’ve unleashed a whirlwind. And you’re going to pay the price,'” Paul continued. “This inflammatory wording, this violent rhetoric of Chuck Schumer was so bad that the chief justice, who rarely says anything publicly, immediately said this kind of language is dangerous as a mob tried to invade the Supreme Court.”
“About 20 million American children have not been in the classroom for nearly a year. There’s a mental health crisis happening. Women are dropping out of the workforce,” O’Donnell started.
“Is this a national emergency?” she asked Biden to which the President replied, “It is a national emergency.”
O’Donnell followed up, and asked, “Do you think it’s time for schools to reopen?” Her question striking an issue that is of maximum contention right now in many cities across America, namely Chicago, where teacher’s unions are squared off in tense negotiations with city officials who are pressing to reopen classrooms.
“I think it’s time for schools to reopen safely. Safely,” Biden answered. “You have to have fewer people in the classroom. you have to have ventilation systems that have been reworked. Our CDC commissioner is going to be coming out with science-based judgement, I think as early as Wednesday, to layout what the minimum requirements are,” Biden explained.
Youth mental health reports have shown an alarming phenomenon of rising depression and suicide during the COVID-19 shutdowns. A recent American Psychology Association study found 7 of 10 members of Generation Z, were most likely to report experiencing symptoms of depression, USA Today reports.
As high as 25 percent of people aged 18-24 say that they have “seriously considered” suicide in the month of September, 2020, according to a CDC survey. “It’s so hard with kids not being able to play sports now,” O’Donnell commented.
Biden replied, “It really is. I think about the price so many of my grandkids and your kids are going to pay for not having had the chance to finish whatever it was. That graduation where you didn’t get to walk across the stage.”
“I think they’re going through a lot these kids,” Biden added.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.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 report from the BBC highlights interviews from several former detainees and a guard who shared firsthand accounts of their horrific experiences in China’s internment camps in the Xinjiang region. Estimates suggest that over 1 million to as many as 3 million Uyghur Muslims and other minority groups in Western China have been subject to these internment camps, which are intended to strip Uyghurs and other minorities “of their culture, language and religion, and indoctrinate them into mainstream Chinese culture.”
Tursunay Ziawudun, a woman who spent nine months inside one of these camps before fleeing to the U.S., told the BBC that women were removed from the cells “every night” and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She said she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men. She also recalled how police tortured her with electric shocks and, in one instance, violently abused her when she was unsure of her husband’s whereabouts, kicking her with their heavy boots. Because of the severity of the abuse, rape, and torture, Ziawudun said that there were “many people in those cells who lost their minds.”
“Their goal is to destroy everyone,” she said. “And everybody knows it.”
Gulzira Auelkhan, a Kazakh woman from Xinjiang who was detained for 18 months in the camp system, recounted how she was forced to strip Uyghur women naked and handcuff them before leaving them alone with Chinese men.
“My job was to remove their clothes above the waist and handcuff them so they cannot move,” she recalled. “Then I would leave the women in the room and a man would enter — some Chinese man from outside or policeman. I sat silently next to the door, and when the man left the room I took the woman for a shower.”
The Chinese men “would pay money to have their pick of the prettiest young inmates,” she said, stressing that the physical violence she witnessed amounted to “rape.”
Qelbinur Sedik, an Uzbek woman from Xinjiang, who was forced to give language lessons to the detainees, said the women’s camp was “tightly controlled.” She said there were “four kinds of electric shock” women would be subjected to — “the chair, the glove, the helmet, and anal rape with a stick.”
“The screams echoed throughout the building,” she told the BBC. “I could hear them during lunch and sometimes when I was in class.”
Sedik said that one time, she asked a Chinese camp policewoman about the rumors of rape. The women replied, “Yes, the rape has become a culture. It is gang rape and the Chinese police not only rape them but also electrocute them. They are subject to horrific torture.”
Interviewees also shared how they were required to watch propaganda videos praising Chinese President Xi Jinping and sing patriotic songs. They were also forced to undergo medical tests, take pills, and were forcibly injected every 15 days with a “vaccine” that brought on nausea and numbness. Women were also forcibly injected with IUDs or sterilized.
One former prison guard shared how women were forced to memorize books about Xi Jinping. Those who failed to complete the task were punished with food deprivation and beatings.
“I entered those camps. I took detainees into those camps,” he said. “I saw those sick, miserable people. They definitely experienced various types of torture. I am sure about that.”
China has repeatedly denied that it is persecuting ethnic groups in Xinjiang; however, reports reveal it is actually expanding its network of detention facilities.
An earlier report documented how hospitals in Xinjiang were ordered to abort and kill all babies born in excess of China’s mandated family planning limits — including newborns born after being carried to full term. The orders were part of strict family-planning policies intended to restrict Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities to three children.
In January, the former Trump administration officially designated China’s persecution of minorities in western Xinjiang Province as “genocide” and “crimes against humanity.”
“I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the time, adding that the Chinese Communist Party — which he described as a “Marxist-Leninist regime that exerts power over the long-suffering Chinese people through brainwashing and brute force” — is “engaged in the forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group.”
The Biden administration has not stated whether it would maintain the previous administration’s declaration that China is committing genocide against its Uyghur population. White House Press Secretary Psaki told reporters at a press briefing that Biden has “spoken before to the horrific treatment” of Uyghurs, but she will “check” what the Biden administration’s policy will be, RCP previously reported. However, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that he believes genocide had been committed against the Uyghurs.
Christian leaders have urged Christians in the West to care about the persecution of Uyghur Muslims and other minorities. In September, Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore said that the crimes being perpetrated against religious minorities in China and elsewhere rely on invisibility “where the rest of the world doesn’t pay attention” and “tribalism.”
“The way of Jesus Christ says that we pay attention to our neighbor on the side of the road who is persecuted, who is being beaten,” he said. “So let’s pray for the Uyghur [and] for other persecuted peoples. Let’s pray not just individually, but together, and pray for them by name.”
“Let’s be the people who stand up for whoever is being made invisible, whoever is being intimidated and bullied in our own neighborhoods and in our own communities because we’re the people of Jesus Christ.”
Ann Coulter | Posted: Feb 03, 2021
Source: LightFieldStudios/iStock/Getty Images Plus
I assume it’s overkill to continue listing the evidence against death row inmate Kevin Cooper, duly convicted of committing a quadruple murder back in 1983. The blinding proof of his guilt was covered in last week’s column. To review, this included shoeprint evidence, footprint evidence, cigarette and tobacco evidence, blood evidence and DNA evidence, proving that this violent rapist and mental hospital escapee:
— hid out in a house next to Doug and Peggy Ryen’s Chino Hills, California, home for two days after escaping from prison;
— used a hatchet and hunting knife taken from his hideout to hack to death two adults and two children at the Ryen home and critically wound a third child;
— stole the family’s station wagon and later abandoned it in Long Beach, along with his DNA on prison-issued cigarettes, before escaping to Mexico;
— returned to California, where he raped a woman at knifepoint, leading to his capture.
This week, we’ll consider the specific claims made by The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof purporting to raise doubts about Cooper’s guilt.
Kristof’s special pleading proves that no one on death row is innocent. I didn’t pick this case. The anti-death penalty zealots picked it, splashing it across the “Newspaper of Record.” I have to believe they didn’t choose their worst example to showcase, so let’s look at the honesty of their arguments about Kevin Cooper.
KRISTOF:
“Although Josh [the 8-year-old who miraculously survived the hatchet attack] had indicated that the attack was committed by several white men, the sheriff announced just four days after the bodies were found that the sole suspect was Kevin Cooper …”
First of all, eyewitness testimony is the least credible evidence, particularly in the case of children — as the child molestation hysteria of the 1980s demonstrated — and even more particularly in the case of a child who’s found lying in a bloody mess surrounded by his murdered family members after having his throat slit and being attacked with a hatchet.
In any event, Josh never said he saw three men. He said he initially “thought” it must have been the three “Mexicans” who had stopped by the house looking for work earlier in the evening. But even in his initial interviews from his hospital bed, he said he only saw one assailant in the house: “a man with bushy hair.”
KRISTOF:
“Sadly, a tan T-shirt believed to have been worn by one of the killers didn’t produce enough DNA to provide a profile. …”
That IS sad. Luckily, it’s also not true. The Department of Justice DNA lab at UC Berkeley did find Cooper’s DNA on the tan T-shirt discarded near the murder house, which also contained partial DNA profiles of two of the victims, Doug and Peggy Ryen.
KRISTOF:
“Could the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office really have planted evidence, including placing Cooper’s blood on the tan T-shirt? We do know that the sheriff’s office had a history of going rogue. Floyd Tidwell, the sheriff, was himself later convicted of four felony counts for stealing 523 guns from the evidence room” … [further denunciations of the sheriff’s department].
The “planted evidence” ruse is a popular one for springing murderers, except — oops! — the T-shirt tested by the Berkeley DNA lab wasn’t in the possession of the sheriff’s office. The tan T-shirt, along with the cigarette butts from the Ryens’ station wagon, had been in the custody of the San Diego Superior Court Evidence Clerk from the end of the trial right up until 2001, when they were shipped directly to the Berkeley DNA Laboratory for testing.
KRISTOF:
“Likewise, hairs found clutched in the victims’ hands weren’t Cooper’s (no hairs from an African-American were found at the crime scene) but didn’t lead to a match with a suspect, either.”
While I love the idea of a 10-year-old girl ripping an African American’s hair out by the root as he came at her with a hatchet, the “clutched hair” nonsense has already been thoroughly investigated and dismissed by the courts.
A team of DNA experts spent weeks testing hairs from Jessica’s hands, as well as two hairs found on Doug Ryen’s right hand and one hair from Christopher Hughes’ arm. Their conclusion? “The testing failed to identify another assailant and confirmed that all tested hairs most likely came from one or more of the victims.”
As U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn L. Huff explained:
“This should not be surprising. The hairs adhered to the victims’ bodies, including their hands, because there was a large amount of blood on the victims and a large amount of hair on the debris-ridden carpet. Also, the victims each sustained hatchet wounds to the head, causing clumps of cut hair to fall to the ground. Both animal and human hair were recovered from the hands of the victims. Just as with the animal hairs, the cut and shed human hairs adhered to the bloodied victims’ hands because the victims came in contact with the carpet when they were dying on the floor.”
Finally, Kristof tries to pin the murder on other “suspects” (whom we know aren’t guilty or he’d be defending them).
KRISTOF:
“A different longtime suspect in the case recounted, not long after the murders, how he had killed the Ryens and Chris Hughes.”
I guess “confessions” are only questionable in the case of the Central Park rapists. Kristof doesn’t say who the confessor is specifically, but it sounds like the one repeatedly put forward by Cooper’s lawyers. Courts have characterized this so-called “confession” as “a mental patient’s secondhand version of a confession.”
KRISTOF:
“This other suspect is a white man whom I’ll identify just by his first name, Lee, for he must be presumed innocent …
“Lee came to the attention of the authorities during the investigation after his girlfriend, Diana Roper, fingered him as the killer: She reported that he had returned home late on the night of the killings wearing bloody coveralls, in a car that resembled the Ryens’ station wagon.
“Roper turned Lee’s bloody coveralls over to the sheriff’s office — which eventually threw them away without testing them. By then, the sheriff’s office had arrested Cooper, and deputies didn’t want a complication.”
Don’t be fooled by Kristof’s fake humility — “he must be presumed innocent” — all that blather about what Roper said was invented by defense attorneys.
Roper was not technically Lee’s “girlfriend”: She was his bitter ex. Far from “bloody,” the few red splotches on the coveralls were most likely paint (along with manure and dirt). Roper told investigators that she didn’t even know if the coveralls belonged to Lee.
But let me quote from the court that reviewed the coveralls evidence: “[I]ssues of guilt, innocence and sentence should never be decided on information obtained from persons who believe they are witches and believe an article of clothing is connected to a crime because of a ‘vision’ they receive during a ‘trance.'” (Emphasis mine.)
Yes, Roper’s evidence was based on a vision she had during a trance because she believed she was a witch. These facts are exhaustively detailed in court orders and opinions — but are entirely absent from the vast news coverage of Cooper’s case. Might distract from the claim that the sheriff’s office tossed the coveralls only to avoid “a complication” in their single-minded pursuit of the wrong man — as Kristof claims.
No one on death row, not one person, is innocent. Believe nothing you read in the media about their putative “innocence.” It’s always lies and nonsense, as with Kristof’s pet murderer, Kevin Cooper.
Doug Domenech | FEBRUARY 4, 2021Over the last month, the White House and federal agencies go through the same ritual of preparing accomplishment reports. And they should. My office prepared one. The secretary’s office prepared one. After all, we are proud of delivering for the American people. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which is part of the Executive Office of the President, has produced “The Trump Administration’s Environmental Accomplishments.” Here are a few of the highlights you might not know about, especially since the Biden administration immediately removed this government report from the White House website.
These are only some of the accomplishments listed in the report the Biden administration has removed from the White House website. Click here to view or download the full report in its entirety.
Tucker Carlson (Screenshot/Fox News)
Carlson said on his broadcast of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that he exclusively obtained the evidence of Bank of America’s activities and described how the bank was assisting federal investigators in their investigation following the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
“This show has obtained, exclusively, evidence that Bank of America, the second largest bank in the country with more than 60 million customers, is actively, but secretly, engaged in the hunt for extremists in cooperation with the government,” Carlson said. “Bank of America is, without the knowledge or the consent of its customers, sharing private information with federal law enforcement agencies. Bank of America, effectively, is acting as an intelligence agency. But they are not telling you about it.”
Carlson went on to detail the transaction data requests from the federal investigators and noted that the profile was “remarkably broad,” but that the bank identified 211 customers who fit all of the data points. He then stated that the bank turned over the transaction data of those customers without notifying them. “Federal investigators then interviewed at least one of these unsuspecting people. And that person, we learned, hadn’t done anything wrong and in the end was cleared,” he said.
“Imagine if you were that person? The FBI hauls you in for questioning in a terror investigation. Not because you have done anything suspicious. You haven’t,” Carlson continued. “You bought plane tickets and visited your country’s capital. You thought you could do that. You thought it was your country. Now they are sweating you because your bank, which you trust with your most private information, information of everything you buy, has ratted you out to the feds without telling you, without your knowledge.”
Carlson then stated that his team asked Bank of America about the actions and said “they confirmed it actually happened by not denying it.” He read the bank’s statement in full, which claimed that they had “responsibilities under federal law to cooperate with law enforcement inquiries in full compliance with the law.”
“But that’s not true. Bank of America did have a choice. The bank could have resisted turning over information on its innocent customers to federal investigators. But Bank of America did not do that,” Carlson claimed.
He went on to say that his team spoke to “a number of lawyers” who said that what the bank allegedly did might not be legal and could be challenged in court.
“The question is, legally, what constitutes information that may be relevant to a possible crime? Buying a muffin in Washington, D.C. on January 5th? Does that make you a potential domestic extremist? According to Bank of America, yes, yes, it does,” Carlson concluded.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco.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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“If you offset your carbon, it’s the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle,” Kerry said.
John Kerry “offsets his carbon” by owning several mansions, a private jet and a mega yacht.
“I negotiated the Paris Accords for the United States. I’ve been involved in this fight for years. I negotiated with President Xi to bring President Xi to the table so we could get Paris,” he said.
John Kerry said he’s just too busy to ‘sail across the ocean’ and flying commercial isn’t even an option for someone like him.
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“I believe the time it takes to get me somewhere, I can’t sail across the ocean. I have to fly to meet with people and get things done,” Kerry said.
“But what I’m doing, almost full time, is working to win the battle of climate change and in the end if I offset and contribute my life to do this, I’m not going to be put on the defensive,” he said.
WATCH:
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John Kerry is also waging a war on the energy business as he’s busy flying around on private jets.
Kerry is so out of touch with the common American worker that he recently told unemployed Keystone XL pipeline workers to “go make solar panels.”
“These are really difficult times in a pandemic, exacerbated by the incompetence of the previous administration that didn’t leave us with enough vaccine to really quickly get to the entire population in our city that needs it. But we’re going to keep working hard recognizing the concern that, really, all of our residents have regarding COVID-19,” Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot continued, “I think it’s important for both sides to come to the table in good faith, recognize that we’re both trying to work through a very challenging situation, but we must get a deal done.”
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have been trying to come up with a plan to return to in-person learning but have been blocked by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). The union is demanding that CPS and Mayor Lori Lightfoot “set clear and responsible public health criteria by which to honestly judge student and educator safety.” Among these demands are Personal Protection Equipment, smaller class sizes, support for traumatized students, COVID-19 testing, and upgraded ventilation.
CTU President Jesse Sharkey claimed that “CPS has stonewalled us for months as we’ve been trying to bargain enforceable safety standards for our district-run schools. We want our schools open as well, but we want it done safely, and not on the backs of the majority Black and Latinx students we serve.”
The most shocking demand of all is that the CTU wants the city to create better infrastructure for remote leaning instead of schools reopening. This is not surprising considering Sarah Chambers, an executive with the Chicago Teachers Union, went on a lavish vacation to the Caribbean while encouraging teachers to stay-home, claiming it was unsafe for them to go back to school amid the pandemic. While on her Caribbean vacation, Chambers threatened a strike if teachers returned to the classroom because ‘it’s unsafe.’
Striking is nothing new for Chicago Teachers Union. Chicago Public Schools hoped to reopen schools for in-person learning in January but CTU claimed that date is “arbitrary,” threatening a strike if schools reopened that soon.
Lightfoot and CPS CEO Janice Jackson threatened to take away teachers tools and deny access to programs for remote learning if the teachers refused to return to the classroom. The pair has since issued a joint statement retracting those claims.
The union threatened to strike if they were denied access to programs they have been using to instruct students remotely.
Time will tell, but it seems as if CTU has no plans to send their teachers back to school anytime soon. Chicago Public Schools have been closed for in-person learning since March 17, 2020.
“It’s high time that we step up to the plate to ensure the protection of the people and their rights,” DeSantis proclaimed, speaking to reporters at a press conference with Republican leaders from the state legislature.
The governor announced a new legislative effort to crack down on Big Tech, intending to limit social media companies’ ability to sell user information to advertisers for a profit and taking action to protect social media users amid accusations that Facebook and Twitter engage in censorship of certain viewpoints or information.
“At the turn of the 21st century, online technology represented tools to liberate Americans from reliance on distrusted legacy media outlets. As social media proliferated over the past decade, citizens could directly connect with large numbers of people and could cut out corporate media outlets entirely,” DeSantis said. “Over the years, however, these platforms have changed from neutral platforms that provided Americans with the freedom to speak to enforcers of preferred narratives.”
He added, “These platforms have played an increasingly decisive role in elections and have negatively impacted Americans who dissent from orthodoxies favored by the Big Tech cartel.”
DeSantis voiced concerns shared by many conservatives and Republicans that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have grown too powerful and have too much control over the spread of information on the internet. He criticized these websites for their seemingly arbitrary enforcement action against conservative content, for deplatforming users secretively without telling them which terms of service they violated beforehand, for engaging in “viewpoint discrimination” and holding double standards for content moderation, and for potentially manipulating elections by controlling the spread of information.
DeSantis cited multiple examples of overreach by social media content moderators, including the censorship of criticism of coronavirus lock downs, banning the sitting U.S. president, the suppression of the New York Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden story, and the “decapitation” of Parler, a Twitter alternative popular with President Donald Trump’s supporters that was kicked offline by Amazon Web Services for purportedly failing to impose satisfactory content moderation.
“Big tech has come to look more like Big Brother with each passing day,” DeSantis remarked, accusing tech companies of holding “monopoly power over a centrally important forum of public discourse.”
“Nameless, faceless boards of censors” are violating the free speech rights of Floridians, and Big Tech is “not entitled to track your every move,” he declared.
“Our Founding Fathers were deliberate in the enshrinement of our rights in the Constitution to ensure that we the people were guaranteed protection against those wishing to violate our rights,” he said.
“Ironically, our early founders were most concerned with the tyranny of government in deciding these rights, but today the Big Tech oligarchy has in many ways become a clear and more present danger to the restriction of the right to free speech than the government itself,” DeSantis continued.
He went on to say, “Silicon Valley CEOs wield extraordinary power, to the point of holistically controlling the flow of vast swaths of information in our country. In a matter of hours, a business can be dismantled, a community of friends and colleagues canceled, and even a sitting president of the United States silenced.
“By their own admission, social media companies view themselves as platforms of global, regional, and local connectivity. Make no mistake, they are nothing more than advertising conglomerates, and I’m not interested in handing over the keys to the public square to a bunch of companies whose economic interests are not aligned with the public interest.”
The governor unveiled several legislative proposals that state Republicans will attempt to pass to crack down on unfair practices by big tech companies. They include:
“Web hosting, the payment processing, take away your email, your text, you could totally neuter a candidates ability to communicate and execute a campaign plan,” DeSantis warned.
His proposals include:
“The message is loud and clear: When it comes to elections in Florida, Big Tech should stay out of it,” DeSantis said.
Lindell was appearing on “American Agenda” to discuss the fact that he and his company were both recently banned from Twitter. The segment was supposed to be focusing on big tech tyranny and censorship, but Sellers ultimately ended up doing the very thing that his show was attempting to criticize.
As Lindell began to explain why he was silenced on social media — his belief that the election was rigged and that Dominion Voting Machines played a role in it — Sellers promptly jumped in to read a prepared statement about how Newsmax accepts the election results.
“What happened with your Twitter account and the company page?” the show’s co-host asks.
“Well, first mine was taking down because we have all this election fraud with these Dominion machines — we have 100 percent proof —” Lindell began before Sellers interjected to cut him off.
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“Mike, thank you very much, Mike, Mike — you’re talking about machines that we at Newsmax have not been able to verify any of, uh, those kinds of allegations. We just want to let people know that there’s nothing substantive that we have seen. Let me read you something there,” Sellers says as Lindell attempts to continue speaking.
Sellers proceeds to read off a statement saying “there were some clear evidence of some cases of vote fraud and election irregularities, the election results in every state were certified and Newsmax accepts the results as legal and final. The courts have also supported that view.”
After silencing his guest, Sellers has the audacity to say that he wants to talk to Lindell about cancel culture.
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“We don’t want to relitigate the accusations that you’re making Mike,” Sellers asserts as Lindell gets increasingly agitated by the interruption.
“You’re going to suppress, just like Twitter,” Lindell says as the host continues to speak over him.
Sellers then asks if Lindell thinks it will be a temporary ban, and the MyPillow owner attempts to explain that he is reviewing more evidence of fraud on Friday.
“Can we ask our producers, can we get out of here please?” Sellers says before getting up and walking off air.
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It is highly likely that they are attempting to avoid a lawsuit, which Dominion has been handing out left and right, but silencing their guests leaves them little room to critique censorship by others.
On Tuesday, Newsmax host Bob Sellers had Lindell on his show “American Agenda” to talk about big tech censorship — then ended up censoring him as well. As Lindell began to explain why he was silenced on social media — his belief that the election was rigged and that Dominion Voting Machines played a role in it — Sellers promptly jumped in to read a prepared statement about how Newsmax accepts the election results.
The wild interview prompted a significant amount of backlash against Sellers for his behavior — which was really no different than what they were attempting to criticize Twitter for. Following the failed segment, Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt brought him back on for another discussion about cancel culture.
The interview avoided discussion about Dominion, which is the reason why Lindell was banned from Twitter — and what caused the previous segment to spiral.
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Mike Lindell told Rob Schmitt that he will release a video on Friday on the 2020 election.
It is highly likely that they are attempting to avoid a lawsuit, which Dominion has been handing out left and right, but many have noted that censoring their guests leaves them little room to critique censorship by others.
Here is the full video.
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Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.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.
Under the new law, possession of small amounts of the drugs is no longer a criminal offense. Rather, it is a civil offense that carries a $100 fine, which can be paid by undergoing a health assessment. The new law, Measure 110, also uses tens of millions of dollars from Oregon’s marijuana tax to fund addiction treatment for violators. Advocates of the new law believe there will be significant savings from the reduction of arrests and incarceration.
The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission projects that convictions for controlled substances each year will decrease by about 3,600 — more than 90%.
“Possession of larger amounts of drugs, manufacturing and distribution are still crimes,” Oregon State Police Capt. Timothy Fox said. “With a crime, there is the possibility of fines and jail time. [With civil] violations, there is only the possibility of fines.”
The law decriminalizes heroin possession under 1 gram; less than 2 grams of methamphetamine; less than 2 grams of cocaine; under 40 units of LSD; less than a gram of MDMA, or Ecstasy; less than 12 grams of psilocybin; less than 40 units of methadone and less than 40 oxycodone tablets. The new law also reduces larger amounts of cocaine, heroin, MDMA and methamphetamine from a felony to a simple possession misdemeanor.
While many states have decriminalized and fully legalized marijuana, none before Oregon have decriminalized harder street drugs like cocaine and heroin. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., said she hopes Oregon’s move will be an example for the country in dealing with drugs.
“I hope that we all become more enlightened across this country that substance abuse is not something that necessitates incarceration, but speaks to other social ills — lack of healthcare, lack of treatment, things of that nature,” Watson Coleman said.
The Oregon District Attorney’s Association — a group of 36 district attorneys, deputy district attorneys, assistant attorneys general, district attorney office managers and U.S. Attorneys serving in Oregon — opposes the law. It called the move a “dangerous approach” to the drug addiction crisis and said the measure “recklessly” decriminalizes the “most dangerous types of drugs.”
“Oregon leads the country in pain reliever misuse, methamphetamine use, prevalence of mental illness and cocaine use and yet we are nearly last in access to treatment,” the group said.
“Decriminalization will lead to an increase in acceptability of dangerous drugs, normalizing hazardous experimentation for our youth and increasing accessibility, surging supply and lowering costs of dangerous street drugs.”
A U.S. Army chaplain based in Texas faces an investigation after he made a social media post suggesting that transgender individuals are “mentally unfit” to serve in the military.
In a Jan. 26 tweet, the Army’s Security Force Assistance Command announced that “the recent comments posted to the Army Times Facebook page by Maj. Andrew Calvert regarding President Joe Biden’s policy on transgender service members are “under investigation.”
“How is rejecting reality (biology) not evidence that a person is mentally unfit (ill), and thus making that person unqualified to serve?” asked Calvert as he commented on a Facebook post from the Army Times.
A Twitter user flagged Calvert’s posts and argued that Calvert “cannot be trusted to support soldiers for another minute.”
In his post, Calvert argued that there is “little difference” between those who believe in transgenderism and “those who believe and argue for a ‘flat earth’ despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
“The motivation is different, but the argument is the same,” the chaplain stated. “This person is a MedBoard for Mental Wellness waiting to happen. What a waste of military resources and funding!”
In his Facebook profile, Calvert describes himself as a “Christian, Husband, Father, Pastor, Army Chaplain.” His profile also notes that he is employed as a brigade chaplain at the 3rd Security Force Assistance Brigade, located in Fort Hood, Texas. In a subsequent Facebook comment, Calvert argued that his position was “not extreme in the slightest.”
“The most nurturing counsel I can give to someone who is under the delusion of transgenderism (gender dysphoria) is to recommend professional counseling to assist in the healing process,” Calvert reportedly wrote in the post. “To not do so, and merely pander to make-believe social whims of the moment, is not only damaging but idiocy.”
Calvert’s Facebook posts came after Biden, who took office on Jan. 20, announced the reversal of President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military. The former president cited the “tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail” as the justification for his decision. By doing so, Trump reversed an Obama-era policy allowing openly transgender individuals to serve in the Armed Forces.
Additionally, the Security Force Assistance Command’s post instructed members of the Army to “Always remember to ‘Think, Type, Post’ when it comes to engaging in conversation on social media platforms.”
“We are soldiers 24/7 and that means always treating people with dignity and respect,” the tweet reads.
A Christian professor has also faced consequences for his criticism of Biden’s reversal of Trump’s military transgender policy. Professor Robert Gagnon of Houston Baptist University was locked out of his Facebook account for 24 hours after referring to transgender ideology as a “religious cult” and a “pseudo-science” in a comment defending a friend’s satirical commentary about Biden’s reversal of the transgender military ban.
In addition to Calvert and Gagnon, prominent conservative organizations were also quick to criticize Biden’s executive order. Tony Perkins, president of the socially conservative activist organization Family Research Council, asserted that by signing the executive order, Biden was “diverting precious dollars from mission-critical training to something as controversial as gender reassignment surgery.”
Perkins added that “the military cannot focus its efforts on preparing to fight and win wars when it is being used as a vehicle to advance the far-left agenda.”
“After considerable study, the previous administration found gender dysphoric people attempt suicide at about nine times the rate of the general population,” said Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr, the director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.
“Service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria are also nine times more likely to have mental health encounters with a professional.”
Spoehr contends that it would be “immoral” to place individuals at higher risk from mental injury in situations “where they are likely to experience extraordinary stress.”
Calvert is hardly the first Army chaplain to face the prospect of punishment for holding to biblical Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality. Scott Squires, who served as an Army chaplain at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, faced the possibility of “career-ending punishment” in 2018 after telling a lesbian couple that they could not participate in a marriage retreat he was hosting because his religious beliefs taught him that marriage was a union between a man and a woman.
Ultimately, the couple was allowed to attend the retreat after another chaplain was tapped to host the event. While the U.S. Army initially recommended that Squires be charged with dereliction of duty, the chaplain was cleared of all charges a year later.
An email sent to parents refers to children as “communal children” and prioritizes “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.”
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According to a report from the Daily Wire, who obtained the email, the program calls for allowing everyone to “choose their own gender,” even children in elementary school.
The critical race theory-based curricula uses Black Lives Matter’s “13 Guiding Principles,” which the Wire reports pushes for “queer and transgender affirmation and ‘restorative justice,’ among other priorities. The guide calls for the dismantling of the ‘patriarchal practice’ of requiring mothers to parent their children while also participating in ‘justice work.’”
“We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another,” the guide reads. “Especially ‘our’ children.”
The Nationalist Review reported on this curriculum back in August, reporting that “schools in Massachusetts, Maryland, California, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina and many more have all signed onto the effort. Multiple teachers’ unions have signed onto the effort as well.”
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The NR also notes that it directly pushes globalism.
“Globalism means that we are thinking about all the different people all over the world, and thinking about the ways to keep things fair everywhere,” their guide states.
The school district’s email also linked parents to Teaching Tolerance, which is a branch of the activist Southern Poverty Law Center network.
Dozens of people were killed and thousands of businesses were destroyed during Black Lives Matter’s violent riots in 2020.
The City of Olympia released a statement on the Red Lion occupation:
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At about 11 a.m. today, people inside the Red Lion began calling 911 to report a group was attempting to forcibly take over the hotel. OPD received reports that the employees felt under threat from the group, and that an employee was allegedly assaulted.
Employees reported that some members of the activist group inside the hotel were armed with items such as hatchets, batons, knives and had gasmasks, helmets and goggles apparently in preparation for a confrontation. OPD estimated about 45 members of the group inside and outside of the hotel.
At the time of the occupation, approximately 40 rooms in the hotel were booked with guests who were bystanders to the incident. Those guests sheltered in their rooms during the occupation, and OPD is providing a safe place for them as the hotel is cleared.
Police moved in to secure the Red Lion Hotel after the siege.
WATCH (language warning):
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Violence broke out as police made arrests.
WATCH (language warning):
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At least 12 people have been arrested as of Monday morning.
Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump enters the debate hall during the Republican presidential debate sponsored by CNN, Salem Media Group and the Washington Times at the University of Miami, Thursday, March 10, 2016, in Coral Gables, Fla. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
Trump tweeted this out:
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The Fake News Media is going CRAZY! They are totally unhinged and in many ways, after witnessing first hand the damage they do to so many innocent and decent people, I enjoy watching. In 7 years, when I am no longer in office, their ratings will dry up and they will be gone!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2018
Twitter has since eliminated President Trump’s account and banned several prominent Trump-supporters.
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While January 2021 will go down in the ratings record books for CNN, the last week of the month may offer a portent of what the post-Trump era will be like for the network.
In the first week of the Biden administration, the AT&T-owned news channel saw the audiences that had been flooding into primetime recently drop precipitously on Jan. 25-29 compared with the highs of previous weeks. Meanwhile, rival Fox News Channel saw its own ratings only dip slightly after weeks of registering its own sharp declines.
Another network that has been characterized as left-leaning, MSNBC, has also seen significant declines but nowhere near as steep as what has hit CNN: Variety Intelligence Platform’s analysis of the viewership data across two key metrics—the target news demographic for people ages 25-54, and the total audience watching—shows that CNN ended the final week of January with ratings dropping roughly 44% for total audience versus the prior week across all three hours of primetime.
While it’s too early to conclude any longer-term direction for news ratings after just one week, the downturn could be interpreted as an indicator of what many industry observers had anticipated: With Biden in the White House, networks that have spent the last four years railing consistently against Trump have lost the main attraction that energized their audience bases, making it difficult to hold onto the elevated viewing levels.
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The Farmer Hater-in-Chief
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The Trump Administration left $30 billion to help farmers suffering from the trade wars but Biden is going to divert the money to climate change pet projects. Biden’s plan is to create a “carbon bank” to pay farmers for using “sustainable farming practices” to “capture carbon in soil.” This is extremely dangerous and will only put smaller, family-owned farms out of business.
Politico reported:
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The Trump administration used it to bail out farmers suffering from its trade wars. Now the Biden administration wants to deploy a $30 billion pot of money in the Agriculture Department to tackle climate change, support restaurants and kickstart other programs without waiting for Congress.
Long hidden in obscurity as a Depression-era financial institution, the Commodity Credit Corp. is shaping up as one of the first focal points for how the Biden administration is quickly revamping flexible programs left behind by former President Donald Trump.
Biden officials have their own ideas about how the money should be spent, setting up a tug of war over its limited resources. The trick will be convincing Congress that the USDA has the authority to use funds from the CCC to create a “carbon bank” to pay producers for using sustainable farming practices to capture carbon in soil.
“Secretary Sonny sure made a strong play for the CCC, and it certainly seems like Secretary Vilsack ought to have that kind of influence on how it’s spent,” an agriculture lobbyist told POLITICO who was granted anonymity in order to speak freely.
Recall, Julie Masser Ballay, a CFO of her family’s potato farm and member of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau who said she voted for Trump in 2016 confronted Joe Biden during a CNN town hall. Ballay expressed her concern about Biden’s Green New Deal crushing small farms with overregulation.
Biden said he will pay farmers to put their land into “land banks” and “pay farmers for planting certain crops” that could “absorb carbon from the air.” This is straight Communism and could lead to food shortages.
Jeff Zients (White House)
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 31: The White House ground are covered in snow during a snow storm on January 31, 2021 in Washington, DC. Washington is expecting 3 to 5 inches of snow during the first major snow storm of the year. (Photo by Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)
In addition to the new vaccine pilot program, Zients told reporters during a White House coronavirus briefing that the government is again increasing the amount of vaccines shipped to states and territories every week. This roughly 5 percent increase follows a 16 percent weekly increase announced in late January. (RELATED: Biden Reimposes Trump’s Aluminum Tariff On United Arab Emirates)
Furthermore, Zients noted that President Joe Biden has approved Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to backdate reimbursement for states’ pandemic responses dating back to the beginning of the pandemic. He estimated the policy change would cost between $3-5 billion, but would not require Congress to allocate additional funds in the next coronavirus stimulus package.
WATCH:
During a question-and-answer session following the announcement, Zients clarified that roughly 6,500 pharmacies will receive a total of 1,000 vaccine doses when the program launches Feb. 11. The government chose the initial participating pharmacies based on location. The administration is targeting areas far removed from current vaccination sites, and will plan on increasing both the amount of doses shipped to pharmacies and the total number of pharmacies in the program as Pfizer and Moderna scale up vaccine production.
The issue was reportedly discussed during a White House Correspondents Association meeting last Friday. Reporters are allegedly upset over the White House’s request, fearing it plays into the perception of coordination between the West Wing and media.
“That’s not really a free press at all,” one White House reporter said, according to the Daily Beast.
“While it’s a relief to see briefings return, particularly with a commitment to factual information, the press can’t really do its job in the briefing room if the White House is picking and choosing the questions they want,” the reporter added.
Indeed, WHCA leaders instructed to reporters to either “push back” against the requests or not comply altogether.
In contrast to the Trump administration, which jettisoned daily White House press briefings almost completely, Biden and his communications team promised to restore the daily briefings and have thus far delivered on that promise.
Biden’s administration claimed that asking reporters for their questions ahead of time is not an attempt to dodge questions, but rather to understand the pulse of reporting on any given day.
“Our goal is to make the daily briefing as useful and informative as possible for both reporters and the public,” a spokesperson told the Daily Beast. “Part of meeting that objective means regularly engaging with the reporters who will be in the briefing room to understand how the White House can be most helpful in getting them the information they need. That two-way conversation is an important part of keeping the American people updated about how government is serving them.”
Meanwhile, Eric Schultz, who served as a deputy press secretary in the Obama administration, claimed the Biden communication team’s request is fairly normal, allowing staff adequate time to prepare for the daily briefing.
“This is textbook communications work. The briefing becomes meaningless if the press secretary has to repeatedly punt questions, instead of coming equipped to discuss what journalists are reporting on,” Schultz told the Daily Beast. “In a non-COVID environment, this would happen in casual conversations throughout the day in lower and upper press. One of the few upsides to reporters hovering over your desk all day, is that you get a very quick sense of what they’re working on.”
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.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.
Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2021/01/29/black-lives-matter-nominated-nobel-peace-prize/
“They have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice,” Eide said. “They have been able to mobilize people from all groups of society, not just African-Americans, not just oppressed people, it has been a broad movement, in a way which has been different from their predecessors.”
In terms of whether or not the movement has actually been peaceful, Eide claimed that “studies have shown that most of the demonstrations organized by Black Lives Matter have been peaceful. Of course there have been incidents, but most of them have been caused by the activities of either the police or counter-protestors,” according to The Washington Examiner.
However, the Insurance Information Institute reported on Property Claim Services (PCS), a company that tracked insurance claims during the Black Lives Matter riots that took place from May 26-June 8, 2020, caused the most costly damage of any civil disorders in U.S. history. According to PCS, the riots amassed an enormous amount of damage that caused between $1-2 billion in insurance claims from property owners. Despite claims of few “incidents,” the facts show that several of these protests, namely the ones that took place in Minneapolis, MN, and Kenosha, WI, resulted in massive damages and financial losses.
FOX news commentator Katie Pavlich pointed out the apparent disconnect between Eide’s claims of peacefulness and the level of destruction during the riots of 2020 in a tweet.
The winner of the Nobel peace price will be decided by the committee in October, and the prize itself will be awarded this December.
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Ensing posts pretty standard beauty content mixed with some posts about her pretty standard conservative views — such as her support for the Second Amendment.
“Thank you for reaching out and bringing this to our attention. We were made aware that Amanda Ensing, an influencer contracted through one of our external vendors’ campaigns, recently shared content on social media that is not aligned with Sephora’s values around inclusivity. As soon as we were informed, we made the decision to cease all programming with Amanda and will not be engaging her for future partnerships,” Sephora wrote in a response to a social media activist.
Now, conservative women are rallying to Ensing’s defense.
“To any conservative woman out there that shops at Sephora …Take your money elsewhere,” Republican political commentator and activist Courtney Holland wrote. She added that Ensing has “brought LOADS of business to them over the years with her millions of followers across her platforms and promotion of their products.”
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cc: @Sephora cancel culture much? Did you also let go of all your conservative employees in your stores or warehouses because they associate with a political party in the FREE land? This is sick. https://t.co/nCdlRA6Kjx
— a (@allxdvs) January 30, 2021
Ensing tweeted on Friday night that her legal team has asked the company for more information as to why they are ceasing the relationship.
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“I am disappointed that a brand that claims to be inclusive seems to be excluding conservative voices,” Ensing wrote.
Board chairman Jack Sellers explained in a statement that the audit is necessary to provide Maricopa County voters with “additional assurance” of election integrity.
“Maricopa County elections were administered with integrity throughout 2020. That’s a fact. Multiple audits to date have proved as much, and multiple court rulings have concurred,” Sellers said.
“It’s also true that a significant number of voters want the additional assurance that a full forensic audit of tabulation equipment might bring, especially given all the misinformation that spread following the November 3 election. This audit shows our commitment to providing that assurance,” Sellers added.
More from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors:
The multi-layered forensic audit will dive into the tabulation equipment to analyze its hacking vulnerability, verify that no malicious malware was installed, and test that tabulators were not sending or receiving information over the internet. As an added layer of assurance, the county will hire two independent firms certified by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, to each independently audit the tabulation equipment: Pro V&V and SLI Compliance.
…
In addition to the software and malware tests, one firm will also perform a logic and accuracy test of the county’s tabulation equipment to ensure it accurately counted ballots and confirm that no vote switching occurred. As an added measure of transparency, the Board hired a reputable Certified Public Accountant firm to review county contracts with Dominion Voting Services and verify that the county leased the tabulation equipment according to state and county procurement regulations.
The first audit will begin on Feb. 2, and the second audit will begin on Feb. 8.
The board’s decision comes after the Republican-controlled Arizona state Senate, which is seeking to conduct its own election audit, “issued subpoenas to the county in mid-December seeking access to copies of ballots, software used in vote tabulation machines and the machines themselves, among other items,” the Associated Press reported.
The board initially fought the subpoenas in court, but is now cooperating with Senate attorneys, the AP noted.
According to KNXV-TV, nearly a dozen complaints were filed against the board following the election in November, but all were withdrawn or dismissed. No allegations of widespread voter fraud were ever confirmed.
“Prior to November, there were no complaints about the accuracy of the county’s tabulation equipment, which was also used in elections in March, May and August,” officials said, KNXV reported.
Despite months of fawning over the governor, the left-leaning outlet’s editor-at-large finally delivered a stunning repudiation of Cuomo’s performance on Thursday, admitting that “all the hype” surrounding his handling of the pandemic “obscured a troubling reality.”
The troubling reality he referred to is that under Cuomo’s leadership, the state of New York failed to protect its most vulnerable residents from the virus and in fact may have actively endangered them through a deadly and misguided policy that forced nursing home facilities in the state to accept patients who had tested positive for the virus but had been discharged from the hospital. The policy remained in place for nearly two months and is estimated to have resulted in thousands of deaths. Even worse, the administration and Cuomo himself refused to take responsibility, attempting to bury the egregious mistake from public view and instead shift blame to then-President Trump and the Republican Party.
The tipping point for Cillizza was the release of a scathing new report from New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James that revealed the Cuomo administration had undercounted COVID-19 nursing home deaths by 50%.
The report determined that the state Department of Health misrepresented the dire situation by only reporting deaths that occurred at actual nursing home facilities, leaving out deaths that occurred at hospitals after sick residents were transferred there to receive more care.
It is good for Cillizza to take notice and inform his readers, however, the fact of the matter is that Cuomo’s failed leadership has been well-documented in conservative circles for months. While Cuomo was sending in tapes of his daily briefings to be recognized by the Emmys and liberals were fawning over the governor’s “New York Tough“ public persona, conservative media outlets were raising the alarm about his missteps. Besides, it had been known for months that the Cuomo administration — while under the spotlight for its suspect nursing home practices — was curiously only counting in-facility deaths toward its nursing home total, as opposed to including hospital deaths like most states.
in August, the Associated Press covered the action, slamming the administration for keeping the true death count “cloaked in secrecy.” Included in the article is a quote from state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat, who during a legislative session called out New York Health Commissioner Howard Zucker for what seemed obvious to most — the administration was purposefully obscuring the death toll.
“That’s a problem, bro,” he said. “It seems, sir, that in this case you are choosing to define it differently so that you can look better.”
In response to the attorney general’s report, Zucker defended the administration’s actions in a statement essentially arguing, “We’re not undercounting; we’re just counting differently.”
“The OAG’s report is only referring to the count of people who were in nursing homes but transferred to hospitals and later died,” Zucker said. “The OAG suggests that all should be counted as nursing home deaths and not hospital deaths even though they died in hospitals. That does not in any way change the total count of deaths but is instead a question of allocating the number of deaths between hospitals and nursing homes.”
Cillizza made note of Zucker’s response and rounded out his report by saying, “There’s much we still don’t know. But here’s something we do know: Should James’ report be borne out, it would occasion a serious reexamination of Cuomo’s performance during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
We look forward to it.
Last week news broke that Dominion Voting Systems threatened My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell with a letter dated December 23, 2020, from defamation lawyers. In the letter, Dominion lawyer Thomas A. Clare called Lindell’s attacks on the voting company used in all six contested states “implausible,” adding they have “no basis in reality.”
100 Percent Fed Up later reported – Mike Lindell is not the only person who received a threatening letter from Dominion—at least one GOP poll challenger in Michigan (who never even mentioned Dominion in her affidavit) received a threatening letter from Dominion.
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Mike Lindell, a devout Christian, is not worried about a letter from Dominion lawyers threatening defamation. Like President Trump, Lindell is a fighter and is vowing to fight back, telling Axios that he’s looking forward to Dominion’s lawsuit. “I want Dominion to put up their lawsuit because we have 100% evidence that China and other countries used their machines to steal the election.”
Also last week Bed, Bath and Beyond issued a statement saying the company will no longer sell “My Pillow” products after Mike Lindell challenged the election results. You are no longer allowed to question election fraud in the United States of America.
This did not stop Mike Lindell from speaking out. Mike Lindell now has social media accounts on Gab and Telegram. But Mike Lindell’s company is doing well. If you ordered products from My Pillow this week you may have received this email. They are looking at two-week delays in orders due to the volume of orders at the company. Americans support Mike Lindell. Americans support good men who speak the truth.
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Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.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.
Robert Gagnon, who teaches New Testament theology at Houston Baptist University and is a renowned scholar on the subject of sexuality, was locked out of his Facebook account for 24 hours on Tuesday after he posted a comment in defense of a friend who posted a satirical commentary about Biden’s executive order. Facebook suspended Gagnon’s account for what it deemed as “incitement” to violence.
In his post, Gagnon said the executive order will endanger women, and noted that those who promote transgenderism are allowing males to invade women’s athletics and shelters. He also likened transgender ideology to a “religious cult” and said it “is indeed a pseudo-science,” in that it forces people to reject basic biology. That Facebook suspended his friend for similar comments proves the cult-like dimension, he said.
Facebook subsequently sent Gagnon a notice, informing him that his words violated their “Community Standards on violence and incitement.”
“There was absolutely no incitement to violence on our part. We abhor violence done to any person,” Gagnon told PJ Media on Tuesday. “This is just a thinly veiled and pathetic excuse for censorship of any critical views toward trans-tyranny over our consciences, religion, and reason.”
“Only one point of view is being allowed,” he continued. “Trump was not the great danger to the Republic. Left-wing canceling is.”
After the day-long Facebook suspension was lifted, Gagnon posted on his page Thursday: “We are in the midst of rapidly accelerating public censorship of our views (with compelled speech) but we are not the victims. Neat trick.”
Gagnon’s friend, Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute, who was also banned from Facebook, had expressed her exasperation in a Facebook comment in which she pointed out that women who signed up to serve in the Armed Forces will now have to shower and bunk with males as a result of the executive order. Higgins referred to transgender advocacy as a “cult” whose goal is to spread “alchemical pseudo-science” globally “before the truth can pull up its pants” and continue to accuse Republicans as being “science-deniers.”
Higgins was banned from the social media platform for seven days and remains locked out of her account as of Thursday. The Christian Post reached out to Gagnon for additional comment on this article but did not receive a response by press time.
Conservative critics of Biden’s executive order have said that the change in policy imperils military readiness and that it’s tantamount to “social engineering.” Opposition to the order, however, spans the political spectrum.
In comments sent to CP earlier this week, Miriam Ben-Shalom, the first lesbian to ever be reinstated to the U.S. Army after being dismissed from service on the basis of sexuality, said she would “bet that no one thought to ask military women how they’d feel having an intact [male] in their barracks, showers, etc.”
“Military women already face difficulties when they serve — witness the recent spate of murders and the shocking statistics on rape in the military. Now, men have had the lack-witted brainlessness to add to the burden of military women. And wait until a female to trans wants to serve in the men’s barracks. What will the military do when such a woman is raped or assaulted — or killed?” she said.
Ben-Shalom, who describes herself as a “moderate independent” added that the move is a “slap in the face” to the military.
“This is pandering to a community that has many, many problems in terms of mental health and stability. This is pandering to Big Medicine, Big Pharma, and Big Money,” she said.
The Pentagon has said that approximately 9,000 service members identify as transgender, though independent estimates have put the number at around 16,000, according to The Wall Street Journal. Fewer than 1,000 have received a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
In 2016, the RAND Corporation published a study on Pentagon medical expenditures and found that the costs incurred by U.S. taxpayers to pay for trans-identifying service members’ medical costs fell somewhere between $2.4 million and $8.4 million each year.
The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?” ~James Madison, Federalist No. 62
If you are not a member of the ruling oligarchy, you can buy a stock only when it benefits the ruling oligarchy, but not when the oligarch shorted the stock and will lose money. In that case, you can only sell. They, the esteemed members of the system, on the other hand, can do what they want at any point to win the rigged game.
That was essentially the lesson the American people learned this week about our government-corporate manipulated economy when the oligarchs got together to block people from buying stocks like GameStop after the well-connected Wall Street hedge funds were slated to lose billions on their short-sale gamble. However, what happened this week was emblematic of a broader trend that has taken over our economy this past generation, but should have become patently obvious to the American people since the unconstitutional lockdowns began last March. The oligarchs in charge of our country have manipulated the entire economy in a way that arbitrarily weighs down individual risk-takers and business owners in order to benefit the ruling class, which includes large corporations like Walmart and Amazon.
In the ultimate unconstitutional market distortion, the government refashioned life itself with its draconian lockdowns in a way that forced entire chains of commerce only through narrow, well-connected giant companies while crushing small businesses. Just like the GameStop investors on Reddit who were shut down from making profit and could only take a loss in order to transfer wealth to the hedge funds, small businesses were shut down so that the consumer capital would flow to Zoom, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix. Amazon’s stock price has nearly doubled since the lockdowns began last March.
The difference between who was shut down and who was given a waiver to open their business was so arbitrary in Pennsylvania that the auditor general wrote in a report, “The waiver process appeared to be a subjective process built on shifting sands of changing guidance, which led to significant confusion among business owners.” He observed, “Some owners of small businesses may not have had the knowledge to use the right ‘buzzwords’ in their justification for remaining open, or realized they could ask a legislator for help to navigate the process.”
It’s not only the fact that the government criminalized commerce through traditional means, forcing consumers into “high tech” commerce; it’s that they benefited from the trillions the Federal Reserve artificially injected into the economy. They had the economies of scale to borrow record amounts of cash at dirt-cheap interest rates.
So while small businesses owners are shedding tears and committing suicide at record rates, Wall Street and Silicon Valley are cashing out on the ultimate venture socialist scam of the government – in which politicians criminalize traditional commerce and property rights and then throw trillions of dollars of cheap money at the people who just benefited from the ultimate form of communism. Who made or lost money this past year, for the first time in history, had zero to do with smart investment, innovation, or even risk-taking, and everything to do with the luck of the government’s venture socialist draw.
Or perhaps it wasn’t luck at all. It was systemized and arranged based on who built up connections with the government over the years.
Unlike the left, which seeks to “rectify” this broken system it supported by throwing endless free money at people, we seek to reset the economy to what it’s supposed to be without any government intervention. That begins by ending all COVID restrictions and allowing all those businesses harmed by the illegal lockdowns to go five years without paying taxes or being subjected to costly regulations. It’s time to even the playing field that government distorted.
Take stock for a moment of just a few of the appalling double standards we are witnessing in our economy, government, and society today:
In all these examples, it’s not that the ruling oligarchs inherently care more about black people, illegal aliens, foreign workers, the poor, or any other class about which it is easy to virtue-signal. It’s that they built a rigged system in which they are empowered by promoting or elevating the plight of those celebrated classes over the whole of the people. If they lost power by doing so – for example, if illegal aliens were conservative – we would see the opposite policies emanating from their citadels.
Article 7 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, which was written by John Adams, states: “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.”
What we witnessed this week in the stock market and what will only intensify in the coming weeks is the inevitable endgame of a system that arbitrarily picks winners and losers and uses the boot of government, culture, and economy to confront the “losers” with a checkmate, one-way street, and dead end at every turn. The losers will revolt. As it states in the next passage of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights: “Therefore the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity and happiness require it.”
Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2021/01/29/kevin-clinesmith-sentencing-carter-page-john-durham/
U.S. Attorney John Durham (Youtube screen capture/Fox News)
Clinesmith, who was an assistant general counsel in the FBI’s cyber law branch, pleaded guilty on Aug. 19, 2020 to altering a June 2017 email he received from a CIA employee regarding Page. The CIA employee wrote that Page had been “a source” for the spy agency through 2013. Clinesmith forwarded the email to FBI colleagues but altered the document to say that Page was “not a source.” (RELATED: Carter Page Wants A Say At Kevin Clinesmith’s Hearing)
Clinesmith helped the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team, which investigated possible links between the Russian government and Trump campaign, draft applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants on Page. He later joined the special counsel’s team, but was removed after the Justice Department inspector general found that he sent text messages criticizing President Trump following the 2016 election.
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 02: Carter Page, former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, speaks to the media after testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on November 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. The committee is conducting an investigation into Russia’s tampering in the 2016 election. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Boasberg said that Clinesmith’s actions “undermined the integrity of the FISA process,” but that he believed that Clinesmith was remorseful and did not alter the email to harm Page. Boasberg said that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court’s “reputation has suffered from this incident.”
The IG blasted the FBI for providing misleading information to the FISA Court in order to obtain warrants on Page, a former Navy officer who joined the Trump campaign in March 2016. The Crossfire Hurricane team relied heavily on unverified and since-debunked allegations from Christopher Steele, a former British spy who investigated the Trump campaign on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC. Prosecutors asserted that Clinesmith had not taken full responsibility for his actions. They noted that he has claimed that he believed the alteration to be accurate at the time.
Anthony Scarpelli, an assistant U.S. attorney, said during the hearing that Clinesmith’s lies about Carter Page were “more egregious” than those told by George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide who pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to the FBI. Speaking at Clinesmith’s hearing, Page said that the “manufactured scandal and associated lies caused me to adopt the lifestyle of an international fugitive for years.”
“I often have felt as if I had been left with no life at all. Each member of my family was severely impacted.”
Page has sued the Justice Department, FBI, Clinesmith and other current and former FBI employees over the inaccurate FISA applications.
Ann Coulter | Posted: Jan 27, 2021 5:00 PM
Source: AP Photo/File
Having run out of international con women to promote or innocent biological weapons researchers to accuse, The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof is banging on about a spectacularly guilty quadruple murderer who — according to Kristof — “is very likely innocent.”
In this belief, he is opposed by more than a dozen courts, including the California Supreme Court, the infamous 9th Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court. Joining Kristof’s crusade are Kim Kardashian and the usual pro-criminal misfits. (At least Ivanka is no longer making criminal justice decisions for the White House!)
Christopher’s father discovered the nightmarish scene the next morning, when he came to pick up his son for church.
In 1985, a unanimous jury convicted Kevin Cooper, a violent rapist, career criminal and escaped mental patient, of the murders and sentenced him to death. His story illustrates why more prisoners on death row die of natural causes than execution.
One year before the Chino Hills slaughter, Cooper was released from a Pennsylvania prison, where he’d been serving time for a string of burglaries. In short order, Cooper violently kidnapped and raped an underage girl who’d interrupted him in the middle of yet another burglary, stabbing her in the eye with a screwdriver.
He was sent to a state psychiatric hospital, escaped and fled to Los Angeles, where he was soon convicted of two more burglaries and incarcerated in a men’s prison in Chino. Unaware of his criminal and psychiatric history, prison authorities mistakenly housed Cooper in a low-security wing. He escaped on June 2, 1983, and made his way to a furnished, unoccupied house just 50 yards from the Ryens’ home. There, he spent two days hiding out, watching the news about his escape, and calling friends, asking for money to get out of Chino.
On June 4, the night of the murders, Cooper fled to Mexico, checking into a hotel in Tijuana, about 130 miles south of Chino Hills, at 4:30 p.m. the next day. A few days after the murders, the Ryens’ stolen station wagon was found in a church parking lot in Long Beach, California. Cigarette butts in the car were identified as prison-issued Role-Rite tobacco and rolling papers, unique to the Chino prison. The butts also matched those found in Cooper’s hideaway house.
In Mexico, Cooper introduced himself to an American couple as “Angel Jackson,” and became a deckhand on their sailboat for a trip up the California coast. At a stop in Pelican Cove, near Santa Barbara, the three of them joined another couple for dinner on their sloop. Later that night, “Angel” returned to their hosts’ boat and raped the wife at knifepoint.
The rape victim and her husband called the police, and “Angel” was arrested. (He said the sex was consensual.) While at the sheriff’s office to give her statement, the wife noticed a “Wanted for Murder” poster with a picture of her rapist. “Angel Jackson” was identified as Kevin Cooper and sent back to San Bernardino to face charges for the Chino Hills massacre six weeks earlier.
Among the hundreds of pieces of evidence used to convict Cooper for the Ryen murders were:
— Shoe prints on a sheet in the Ryens’ master bedroom and on a spa cover outside the house. The prints, in Cooper’s shoe size, were made by a Pro-Ked Dude shoe — the shoes issued to Chino prison inmates and not available to the general public. They matched footprints in the unoccupied house where Cooper had been squatting for two days before the murders.
— A bloody hatchet found near the Ryens’ home that was identified by two of the absentee homeowners as having come from their house. The sheath to the hatchet was still in the bedroom where Cooper had slept for two nights.
— A drop of blood in the Ryens’ hallway that was consistent with Cooper’s rare blood type, establishing that the murderer was an African American.
— Luminol tests revealing a large quantity of blood in a shower where Cooper had been hiding.
Cooper’s groupies ignore all this evidence — and more! — and invent fanciful alternative theories of the crime. As always, they demand endless DNA testing.
Why not? DNA’s use for identification purposes wasn’t discovered until 1984. The first time DNA evidence was ever admitted in an American courtroom was in 1987. Consequently, if a single piece of evidence that was merely “consistent” with the defendant’s profile in the 1980s turns out not to match the defendant under more rigorous testing 40 years later, it’s a cheap Get Out of Jail Free card. And if the DNA matches? No harm, no foul.
So, in addition to nonstop frivolous appeals, Cooper’s advocates took up the cry for DNA testing, insisting that the DNA would prove him an innocent man, “framed” for murders he did not commit! Asked by CBS News if he would stop fighting and submit to his execution if the DNA was his, Cooper said, “That’s right. Because see, I say this with all the confidence in the world: I, Kevin Cooper, was never inside the home that I now know is the Ryen home.”
Guess whose DNA it was?
The California Department of Justice DNA Laboratory at Berkeley definitively established that Cooper’s DNA was in:
— a bloodstain inside the Ryen home;
— the cigarette butts found inside the Ryens’ stolen station wagon;
— a bloody T-shirt found near the Ryen home, which also contained Doug Ryen’s DNA.
And guess who hasn’t given up demanding more tests, more appeals and more investigations of their preposterous theories of the crime? Well, yes, obviously Kevin Cooper, the mass murderer himself, but also, Nick Kristof, the most easily fooled man in America.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.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.
Recently the Huffington Post ran an article that was extremely hostile to Christian education here in the United States. The overall implication of the article was that the January 6 rioting at the Capitol building was directly tied to the government allowing and possibly funding conservative Christian education in the US. Specific curricula were cited and quoted (specifically, A-Beka, Bob Jones and Accelerated Christian Education) and blame was explicitly and carelessly lobbied at these schools and curriculum.
“Their religion-centered, anti-Democrat, anti-science, anti-multicultural message mirrors the Christian nationalism seen at the U.S. Capitol riot.”[1]
Such brash and unfair bias cannot go unanswered. The overwhelming majority of schools using these curricula are highly civic-minded American patriots. They love God and their country and deplore violence of any kind. Painting an entire demographic with a wide brush based on hear-say alone is slanderous. It is also disingenuous. The year 2020 was filled with leftist progressives rioting and looting all over the country in response to their own perceived inequities, yet none of that is alluded to in the Huffington Post article. If the author was seeking to be equitable, would she not have to acknowledge the possibility that government schools and their curriculum might bear some blame for those riots? Indeed the article concludes with just the opposite reaction.
The following statement from the article claims to have intellectual authority but is severely lacking in credulity.
“Scholars say textbooks like these, with their alternate versions of history and emphasis on Christian national identity, represent one small part of the conditions that lead to events like last week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, an episode that was permeated with the symbols of Christian nationalism.”[2]
Exactly who are these scholars that the author is referring to? There are no footnotes or cited sources for this particular example, and of the three “scholars” quoted within this article, only one implies this thought process. Therefore, the reader’s only recourse is to give full trust to the statements of the author or practice intellectual independence and question the statements and opinions as presented. We choose the latter.
Linking terrorism to Christian education and its biblical worldview being communicated is grossly misleading. Consider Franklin Graham and the work of Samaritan’s Purse, which has helped countless suffering and needy people in the US and abroad. It is the same worldview that these schools and curricula seek to advance. American students using the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum annually donate to the BLESS outreach, which sponsors literacy programs in third-world countries, giving thousands of children the opportunity for advancement through education. Consider a very large Florida Christian school that utilizes A Beka and Bob Jones curricula, and funnels all the profit from that school and a thrift shop to help to fund a completely free medical clinic, two homeless shelters, and a food pantry. These are only a few examples. Conservative Christians and their churches and schools are not promoting or involved in riotous activity, but rather in activities that fulfill the Greatest Commandment to love God and neighbor. Students are taught to be contributing members of society who work for the common good of the nation around them. This is an accurate representation of conservative Christian education in America.
A Clash of Worldviews
At its core this article is about a clash of worldviews. The author is a committed progressive and is defending her ideology. She feels that conservative Christian schools are seeking to undermine evolution and far-left progressive policies and therefore attempts to expose them as such. And this we have in common with her because Christians feel the same exact way. Why? Because it is true. This is the clash of worldviews that the apostle Paul so brilliantly contrasts in 1 Corinthians 2:14.
But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Conservative Christians can and most certainly have gone through the curriculum of the government schools and point out all the issues that we have with the worldview being presented. Whether it be evolutionary history[3], radical revisions of history (i.e., the 1619 Project), sex-education curriculum developed by Planned Parenthood, transgender and homosexual ideology, etc., etc., etc. But that would be a relatively futile tit-for-tat approach.
The most fundamental issue at stake is that progressives are now openly contending that one worldview is dangerous and are laying a foundation for the ostracization of the religious freedoms of anyone who disagrees.
Freedom of Speech First Requires Freedom of Thought
Those Christians that believe they have a responsibility to educate their child with a biblical worldview cannot consider public education a valid option. The courts have been clear over the years that there is no freedom of religion in a public school, nor is there freedom of speech for students or teachers regarding content that contradicts their sincerely held religious beliefs. Here are just some examples from the past 30 years.
It is of great concern that the Huffington Post (and they are not alone in this sentiment) considers the worldview of conservative Christians as dangerous and worthy of suppression. The tone of the article is clear that Christian education in the United States is a danger to our democracy. For example, a previous student of a Christian school was interviewed and the following summation was offered:
Last week’s insurrectionists could have been her classmates, her teachers, her pastors. She felt a wave of recognition as she watched the pictures on social media.[4]
One of the grossest misrepresentations is embodied in this quote:
“That whole belief system revolves around the idea that you want the rest of the world to think like you,” said Garman, who is now a social worker. “It’s a ‘the ends justify the means’ type of thing.”[5]
But isn’t the whole point of the article that the author takes issue with the way conservative Christian educators think? That their worldview is inferior and dangerous? Doesn’t she intimate that allowing this thinking to continue is dangerous to our society? It’s the same old progressive logical fallacy – tolerance is only extended to those that agree with them.
Perhaps the greatest danger to our first amendment right of free speech are the intellectual chains that are being forged around minds. If there is not freedom of thought then there cannot really be any freedom of speech. Consider these words from Richard Dawkins, arguably one of the secularist’s most staunch apologists:
“How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents? It’s one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods? Isn’t it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought out?” [6]
Do Christian parents still have freedom of thought and speech to impart those beliefs to their children? So long as America is a free nation they do, but it is quite clear that the secular, progressive worldview would like to eliminate those freedoms.
The Real Threat
Christian education is not a threat to the safety and well-being of our democracy nor is it a driver of terrorist threats. The real threat of Christian education is that it provides a viable alternative to the progressive worldview, and that terrifies the left. Their philosophies, which are built upon the sand of humanism, are so fragile that they cannot allow anyone to counter them.
[1] Klein, R. (2021). These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points. Huffington Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/christian-textbooks-trump-capitol-riot_n_6000bce3c5b62c0057bb711f
[2] IBID
[3] See Evolution Exposed: Biology from Answers in Genesis: https://answersingenesis.org/store/product/evolution-exposed-biology/?sku=10-2-261&
[4] Klein, R. (2021)
[5] IBID
[6] Cited by Ken Ham and Greg Hall, Already Compromised, Master Books, June 2011; Richard Dawkins, The God Delusions (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 2006, 2008), p. 315
Dr. Adam Rondeau has served as a Christian educator and administrator as well as a pastor for over two decades. He is an author, adjunct professor of the Bible and currently serves as the director of ViewPoint Christian Academy in Southbridge, Massachusetts as well as the Assistant Administrative Director of Global Christian Educators Association. He holds three earned degrees in Christian Education, Theology and Leadership.
Emory Thompson is the Administrative Director of Global Christian Educators Association with experience working for a Christian curriculum company. A fourth-generation preacher, he has a heart for Christian Education and for the people of the world. He is senior pastor of Golden Mountain Ministries in Sparta, Tennessee.
Angel Parrish is a Christian educator, writer, and editor living in The Villages, Florida. She has written curriculum for several Christian and conservative education companies for 25 years. She is the Director of Educational Services for Global Christian Educators Association.
A congregation in Pennsylvania recently gave out gift cards worth $50 each to all the employees of a local grocery store, while also helping to pay the bills of 200 customers. Macedonia Church of Pittsburgh, a predominantly African American congregation founded in 1903, held what it called a “grocery store takeover” on Saturday at a local Giant Eagle.
In addition to the $50 gift cards given to the Giant Eagle employees, the church also paid upwards of $50 of each grocery store bill for patrons of the store.
“We wanted to recognize these frontline workers and show them that we appreciate all they do in this season,” said the church in a statement posted to Facebook on Saturday.
“We’re able to be a blessing in our communities because of faithful givers like YOU! Thanks to all staff & volunteers as well as the management at Southside Giant Eagle for making this an excellent initiative.”
Pastor Brian James Edmonds, senior pastor of Macedonia Church, told The Christian Post that his congregation decided to do this event because “our world is hurting right now.”
“We are battling multiple pandemics, people are grieving lost loved ones, and frontline workers are putting their lives on the line. We thought this would be a powerful way to give people hope and demonstrate the love of Christ during uncertain times,” said Edmonds.
The total cost for the event was around $13,000, with Edmonds telling CP that it was “rooted in our understanding that the church should also tithe into the communities that it serves.”
“This is what it means to be a good neighbor. As a part of this particular outreach, we also gave $40,000 to local nonprofits who are doing transformative work,” he continued.
“For the past couple years, we have taken an entire weekend offering and devoted it to local nonprofits. We call it ‘Give100,’ since we are giving away 100% of what comes in.”
Ultimately, Edmonds told CP that he hoped the church taught people “that they are not alone, that they are appreciated, and that the love of God just might surprise you at the grocery store.”
“Our prayer is that someone’s faith is birthed, strengthened, or restored, as we are faithful to our calling to be the church,” he added.
As the United States continues to reel from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn, many churches are ramping up their charitable efforts to help the needy. Last year, One Church, a multisite congregation based in Ohio, held a fundraiser aimed at providing gift cards to every foster teenager in the state, or approximately 5,300 individuals.
One Church Lead Pastor Greg Ford told CP in an interview last month that the idea for the gift card charity drive stemmed from a meeting with Franklin County Children Services last year.
“They shared with us that typically during the holidays, many donors want to provide toys and gifts for little kids but the teens are usually left out since they’re typically not interested in toys at that stage,” Ford said.
“They said if we could provide gift cards for local fast food restaurants or retail stores, that gives the teens a sense of independence. When they’re out with their friends, they can have a meal and enjoy themselves.”
Antony Blinken, who was confirmed 78-22 by the United States Senate Tuesday, shared his thoughts about LGBT issues during his Senate confirmation hearing last week, which took place before President Joe Biden took office. As he questioned Blinken, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “You and President-elect Biden have indicated that you’re going to support, appoint a new special envoy for human rights on LGBTI people, a position that I’ve been pushing to make permanent through the International Human Rights Defense Act.” As a presidential candidate, Biden vowed to make LGBT activism a centerpiece of his foreign policy.
“After four years of Trump administration efforts to specifically marginalize, minimize, do damage to the rights of the LGBTI people, I think it’s going to be vital to appoint a seasoned expert on this issues. Are you going to move forward towards a speedy appointment towards an LGBTI envoy and would you consider raising it to an ambassadorial level?” Markey asked.
Blinken answered in the affirmative: “This is a matter, I think, of some real urgency, we’ve seen violence directed against LGBTQI people around the world increase. We’ve seen, I believe, the highest number of murders of transgender people, particularly women of color, that we’ve seen ever and so I think the United States playing the role that it should be playing in standing up for and defending the rights of LGBTQI people is something the Department is going to take on and take on immediately.”
Markey also asked Blinken if he would “repudiate the findings of the report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights and reaffirm the United States’ acceptance and adherence to the human rights laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and whether he would “ensure that ambassadors are able to fly the pride … flag at our embassies around the world.”
“Yes to both,” Blinken replied.
The Commission on Unalienable Rights was created by the State Department under then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in July 2019. In a press conference announcing the State Department Commission, the secretary of state argued that “international institutions designed and built to protect human rights have drifted from their original mission.” According to Pompeo, “As human rights claims have proliferated, some claims have come into tension with one another, provoking questions about which rights are entitled to gain respect.”
Democrats and progressive advocacy groups quickly criticized the move to create the commission, warning that it constituted an attempt to remove LGBT rights and abortion from the consensus definition of human rights. During the Trump administration, the United States signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which declared that “there is no international right to abortion.”
During the Trump administration, U.S. embassies were told not to fly the pride flag, which consists of the rainbow colors and is designed to show support for LGBT rights. Then-Vice President Mike Pence defended the State Department’s declaration that “on the flagpole of our American embassies that one flag should fly and that’s the American flag,” saying “I support that.”
As Markey explained, the special envoy for the human rights of LGBTI persons was “left vacant in the Trump years.” The position was created during the latter part of the Obama administration. The first special envoy for the human rights of LGBTI persons was Randy Berry, who served in the position from 2015 to 2017 before former President Donald Trump appointed him to the position of United States Ambassador to Nepal.
While Markey contended that “the Trump administration rolled back much of the United States’ previous efforts to support and promote LGBTI rights around the world,” the previous administration pushed 69 countries to decriminalize homosexuality and same-sex relationships.
Blinken is the fourth member of Biden’s cabinet that has been confirmed by the Senate. The others are Director of Intelligence Avril Haines, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen. 
Photo by Samuel Corum: Getty Images 12121121111
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and a majority of Republicans voted Tuesday in favor of Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s motion to dismiss the impeachment trial against former President Donald Trump. As senators prepared for the impeachment trial, Paul introduced a motion arguing that the trial is unconstitutional since Trump is now a private citizen and exempt from facing removal from office. However, five Republican senators and every Senate Democrat voted to table the motion, pushing Trump’s impeachment trial forward.
THESE FIVE GOP SENATORS VOTED TO TABLE THE MOTION:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) heads to the Senate floor before being called into session on January 26, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
“I think there will be enough support on it to show there’s no chance they can impeach the president,” Paul told reporters before the vote. “If 34 people support my resolution that this is an unconstitutional proceeding, it shows they don’t have the votes and we’re basically wasting our time.” (RELATED: Rand Paul Will Force Vote On The Constitutionality Of Trump’s Upcoming Senate Trial)
In order to convict Trump in the Senate, Democrats will need 17 Republican senators to side with every Democrat. (RELATED: Schumer Says Impeachment Trial Will Move Quickly, Won’t Need A Lot Of Witnesses)
Members were sworn in for trial on Tuesday. The arguments will start the week of Feb. 8, Schumer announced.
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.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
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard issued a dire warning to the American people on Tuesday, expressing concern that “domestic enemies” of the United States, in the national security community and Big Tech industry, are plotting to create a “police state” in America.
Gabbard, who served as the U.S. representative for Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District from 2013 to 2021, posted a video to social media in which she spoke out against efforts to expand the federal government’s national security powers after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. In the video, she called out former CIA Director John Brennan and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), two leading proponents of expanding national security powers, labeling them “domestic enemies” of the country.
“The mob who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country,” Gabbard said. “But let’s be clear, the John Brennans, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance are also domestic enemies — and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob that stormed the Capitol.”
The video cuts to a clip from MSNBC of Brennan saying that members of the Biden administration “are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we see overseas.” Brennan was speaking of individuals and groups like those that formed the mob that laid siege to the Capitol.
The events of Jan. 6 have been compared in the media to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a comparison some have used to call for a “Domestic War on Terror,” demanding that the U.S. employ strategies here at home akin to those used against ISIS and al-Qaeda abroad. Rep. Schiff in 2019 introduced legislation that would create a federal domestic terrorism criminal statute. A similar bill sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) would establish new offices in the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the FBI to investigate domestic terrorism in the U.S.
Civil liberties advocates like Gabbard have spoken out against a war on terror here at home. A group of progressive representatives, led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), last week called on congressional leaders to reject efforts to pass Durbin’s Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act and oppose new legislation that would expand the national security state.
Gabbard is calling on President Joe Biden and the Congress to defend American civil liberties.
“President Biden, I call upon you & all of Congress from both parties to denounce efforts by Brennan & others to take away our civil liberties endowed to us by our Creator & guaranteed in our Constitution. If you don’t stand up to them now, then our country will be in great peril,” she said.
Elana Yaron Fishbein started an organization called “No Left Turn in Education” to help parents take the lead in the education of their children and to show people who oppose critical race theory that they have allies. Among its slogans is “education, not indoctrination.” In only a few months since its beginning in August 2020, her Facebook group grew dramatically. Today, her group has chapters in 18 states.
“Many parents say ‘how can you be against it (CRT)?’ until you open it and see what’s in it. It’s the exact opposite [of what it says,]” said Fishbein to The Christian Post.
Fishbein’s own courage in fighting critical race theory comes from her Jewish faith background, she said.
Originally from Israel, she noted, “It’s Jews, more than any other group in the history of the world, who have suffered from racism and the consequences of racism. Am I going to sit down and watch what they’re doing, turning this country into a racist country? Blaming all the whites for being racist and privileged? As an Israeli, I know if I don’t stand up and fight, we’ll be gone.”
She sounded the alarm that both public and private schools have begun teaching CRT as well as comprehensive sexual education, which instead of encouraging abstinence, focuses on normalizing sex outside of marriage and encourages confused kids to question whether they are male or female.
Critical race theory has varied definitions. Oxford Reference notes: “CRT regards the privileged position occupied by mostly White, middle-class academics as a major obstacle to a comprehensive exposure of the racism that is seen to permeate the law, its rules, concepts, and institutions.”
Conservative website Pulpit & Pen argues that CRT is dangerous in that it is “fundamentally opposed to the American Civil Rights Movement,” as it does not advocate for treating people equally but rather that “the law may actually need to [be] biased in favor of minority identity groups” to redistribute power. Race is the defining feature of human identity, Pulpit & Pen states, and every person is part of either an oppressor race that holds power, or an oppressed race that oppressors abuse.
Fishbein argued, “They attach to critical race theory a lot of beautiful names, but they mean the opposite. Of course, we are ‘anti-racist.’ Of course, we are ‘for diversity.’ But they mean the opposite.”
Churches and Christian schools are teaching children how to classify each other by race and see color instead of character, she said. It’s not only being taught in public schools but “it’s very, very pervasive in Catholic schools, Episcopalian schools, charter schools, we’re getting a lot of references from most private schools,” she maintained.
“The majority of private schools are in bed with all this too. It is very common even in religious schools and in a lot of churches. A lot of synagogues have gone totally woke.”
These incidents aren’t isolated. According to The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy Director Lindsey Burke, many of America’s 14,000 public school boards are embracing CRT. One key driver of this educational change is The New York Times’s 1619 Project, which promotes the ideology.
“More than 4,500 classrooms around the country have begun to incorporate the 1619 Project curricular materials into their content,” she said.
Burke and her colleagues specifically asked school board members and families across the country about the 1619 Project and 50% of all parents and 70% of school board members said that they do not want schools to use the instructional materials rooted in the idea that slavery is the center of the national narrative. Likewise, 70% of parents and 74% of school board members believe that slavery is a tragedy that harmed the nation but freedom and prosperity represent who Americans are.
Their data showed that only 25% of parents and 17% of school board members believe that students should be taught that the founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written and that U.S. history must thus be reframed.
Fishbein believes that critical race theory often goes unopposed because its opponents feel too afraid to fight it. She often meets people who don’t tell even their close friends that they oppose the ideology.
One woman she met had a close friend who would host sleepovers with her children. For years, she felt too afraid to say she opposed CRT developments at the school their children attended. When she finally spoke up to her friend, her friend agreed with her and said that she also had felt too afraid to share her real beliefs.
When Fishbein first objected to CRT at her own school, parents weren’t willing to stand with her. Several people loudly condemned her, she said.
“The lynching was public, but the support was private,” she said. “I was really concerned about the people being afraid to talk. People say they are 100% with me and they agree, but they’re afraid to talk. It blew my mind. How in this country with First Amendment rights people are afraid to talk?”
Fishbein encouraged parents to run for school boards, form networks, and use resources on No Left Turn in Education’s website to fight back against the teaching of CRT.
“The school board dictates the curriculum,” she said. “Do you care about your kids, do you care about your family, do you care about your nation? You have to start getting involved.”
“We had for decades, people trying to create a cultural Christianity that would appeal to nonbelievers, that was accepting of immorality, accepting of homosexuality, accepting of racial hatred. There was a kind of superficial, shallow Christianity that watered down the Gospel, didn’t talk about sin, tried to have a positive message. And it was very successful. And I get it because I fought that battle well for almost all the time I’ve been here,” he told his congregants in a sermon just over a week ago.
He explained that one of the things he likes to do is to call the church to repentance but it was a tough call because “superficial Christianity made a lot of money” and “elevated a lot of charlatans.”
“It was successful. The biggest churches in America are part of it. It was very hard to call people to faithfulness when you could be so corrupt and so successful in Christian religion. That was the battle. Now I think there’s a sifting and a shifting,” he said before alluding to sex scandals surrounding prominent Christian figures like late apologist Ravi Zacharias and former Hillsong Church Pastor Carl Lentz without mentioning their names.
“First of all, phonies are going to have a hard time hiding with the internet. We’re seeing one after another after another. Dead ones and alive ones. This dead apologist had a deviant sex life. This cool dude rock and roll pastor was immoral with multiple women for years and years,” MacArthur said.
“I look at all that and my thoughts were I don’t think if it weren’t for Jesus Christ that I could sell anybody on Christianity. We preach Christ, right? And you’re attracted to Him, right? But if there are people out there looking at Christianity, it has to be uninviting, maybe even repulsive. Who are these people? Filthy rich, immoral, corrupt, narcissistic. If it weren’t for Jesus Christ, Christianity would have no appeal,” he said.
MacArthur also explained that despite efforts by government authorities to shutter his church during the pandemic, he has managed to defy every restriction and remain open regardless of fines and court actions against his church.
“They tried every way to close Grace Church. And I think it is true that there is no more scrutinized church in the United States of America than Grace Community Church,” he said, calling out major media organizations like ABC, CNN and the Los Angeles Times as well as “ungodly bloggers” who tried to discredit his church.
“I’m still here,” he said.
MacArthur said the decision to remain open in defiance of government restrictions has been a blessing to his church. He said even though the church had not collected an offering in the last 10 months, congregants “have given more in the last 10 months than any 10-month period in the history of this church.”
MacArthur fought for his church’s legal right to hold indoor worship services amid the pandemic and said even though his church has faced fines each Sunday for their defiance, the congregation has only continued to flourish.
“In the middle of the lawsuit, the Lord has grown our church. So this was a very small tiny local church until COVID. One thousand new members, baptisms,” he said, calling his new members “Grace refugees.”
“Did you hear the testimonies in baptism Sunday night? There’s a new evangelical term. I love it. It’s ‘Grace refugees,’” he said as his congregation laughed.
“It’s the people who had no other church to go to so they came here as church refugees,” he said to more cheers.
“And aren’t we happy about that? Aren’t we blessed? We’ll take you whoever you are even if you’re a Presbyterian refugee. People have flown in from all across America, driven in from all across the West every Sunday to be with us. Some of you only came here because it was the only church open and you found it wasn’t just a church that was open. It was a church that was presenting the Gospel and the Word of God,” he said.
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 25: U.S. President Joe Biden pauses while speaking after signing an executive order related to American manufacturing in the South Court Auditorium of the White House complex on January 25, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden signed an executive order aimed at boosting American manufacturing and strengthening the federal governments Buy American rules. / Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Josh Senk, general manager of Michels Corporation, slammed Biden during a press conference in Wisconsin, saying, “The recent actions of President Joe Biden, the Executive Order halting the construction of the Keystone pipeline has effected Michels, thousands of union trade members across the country, and hundreds of guys that specifically work in Wisconsin.”
Senk later said that “hundreds of guys” have already been laid off.
The Associated Press noted that local leaders in New Mexico were worried about the impact that Biden’s decisions on placing a moratorium on drilling on public lands would have on their state and leaders in Utah have asked Biden to reconsider his decision.
“During his inauguration, President Biden spoke about bringing our nation together. Eliminating drilling on public lands will cost thousands of New Mexicans their jobs and destroy what’s left of our state’s economy,” Carlsbad Mayor Dale Janway told the AP. “How does that bring us together? Environmental efforts should be fair and well-researched, not knee-jerk mandates that just hurt an already impoverished state.”
Native American tribes have also reportedly been angered by Biden’s decision to cancel the pipeline. In a letter to the Biden administration, Luke Duncan, the chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee, wrote:
The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation respectfully requests that you immediately amend Order No. 3395 to provide an exception for energy permits and approvals on Indian lands. The Ute Indian Tribe and other energy producing tribes rely on energy development to fund our governments and provide services to our members.
Your order is a direct attack on our economy, sovereignty, and our right to self-determination. Indian lands are not federal public lands. Any action on our lands and interests can only be taken after effective tribal consultation.
Order No. 3395 violates the United States treaty and trust responsibilities to the Ute Indian Tribe and violates important principles of tribal sovereignty and self-determination. Your order was also issued in violation (of) our government-to-government relationship. Executive Order No. 13175 on Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments, and Interior’s own Policy on Consultation with Tribal Governments.
The order must be withdrawn or amended to comply with Federal law and policies. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. We look forward from hearing from you.
Multiple unions that endorsed Biden during his presidential campaign — including the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) and the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters — have since slammed Biden for canceling the pipeline. LIUNA said that the decision would “kill thousands of good-paying UNION jobs!”
“In revoking this permit, the Biden Administration has chosen to listen to the voices of fringe activists instead of union members and the American consumer on Day 1,” Mark McManus, General President of the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters. “Let me be very clear: When built with union labor by the men and women of the United Association, pipelines like Keystone XL remain the safest and most efficient modes of energy transportation in the world. Sadly, the Biden Administration has now put thousands of union workers out of work. For the average American family, it means energy costs will go up and communities will no longer see the local investments that come with pipeline construction.”
Local media organizations across the country have also reported on the negative impacts that Biden’s executive orders on energy have had on their states.
This article has been revised for clarity and emphasis.
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on January 27, 2021