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White House tells media how to cover Biden impeachment

RT | September 13, 2023

White House lawyers have reportedly written a letter directing CNN, the New York Times and other US media outlets to scrutinize Republican lawmakers more aggressively as they try to impeach US President Joe Biden.

CNN and other recipients of the letter acknowledged getting the missive on Wednesday. “It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter. He added that the impeachment efforts should “set off alarm bells for news organizations.”

US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) launched the impeachment effort on Tuesday, directing committees of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to open a formal inquiry. He said allegations of influence-peddling and solicitation of bribes by the Biden family “paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”

Even before receiving any guidance from the White House, some US media outlets already appeared to be trying to protect the president. CNN and Associated Press, for instance, suggested that Republicans were trying to prosecute Biden without having evidence to justify their investigation.

Those outlets apparently ignored such evidence as the sworn testimony of IRS whistleblowers and the records of bank transfers that lawmakers have already revealed. By launching impeachment proceedings, congressional committees will gain more power to subpoena documents that could help prove or debunk the allegations.

Veteran US journalist Matthew Keys, who has worked for such outlets as Reuters and Fox News, said the White House directive on impeachment coverage was “not OK.” He added, “The White House should not be encouraging, influencing or interfering in the editorial strategies of America’s newsrooms, including CNN and the New York Times.” The letter could backfire, Keys said, because “any time the media does try to hold Republicans to account, those lawmakers can simply counter by questioning whether it’s actual journalism or something encouraged by the Biden administration.”

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University, said the directive “has an uncomfortable feeling of marching orders to the media.” By trying to influence coverage of the impeachment inquiry, he argued, the administration “removes any pretense of separation between the Biden personal legal team and the White House Counsel’s Office.”

Sams, who also serves as a senior adviser to Biden, claimed that Republicans had failed in nearly nine months of investigation to “turn up any evidence of the president doing anything wrong.” He added that impeachment is “grave, rare and historic,” and the press must treat the claims of Republicans with “appropriate scrutiny.” The White House official attached a 14-page appendix to his memo providing talking points to address Republican “lies.”

Democrats previously controlled the House and twice impeached then-President Donald Trump.

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

CDC Recommends New Covid Boosters to Everyone Over Six Months of Age

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | September 13, 2023

While Europe has now largely confined Covid vaccination to older and vulnerable groups, the American Centers for Disease Control have chosen a different path. Yesterday, they accepted the advice of an advisory panel and recommended the XBB.1.5 jabs to everyone six months and older. They insist that “the benefits of vaccination exceed the risks for everyone,” and hope vaguely that their “universal recommendation” will “ease the rollout of the vaccine and improve access and equity.”

“Let’s keep America strong, healthy,” said Dr. Camille Kotton, a panel member who voted in favor of the recommendation and who is an infectious disease specialist at Harvard Medical School. “Let’s do away with COVID-19 as best we can by prevention of disease through vaccines. Let’s make things clear.”

The argument is not easy to parse. First, the vaccines are alleged to be universally beneficial, although no studies beyond a “CDC analysis” exist to support this broad claim. Second, the universal recommendation is necessary to ensure “equity” and “make things clear.” In other words, more targeted recommendations would sow confusion and limit their uptake among those groups who would benefit from them. Finally, our Dr. Kotton still hopes that the vaccines can “do away with COVID-19.” Either she knows better or she is stupid, but once again, in the striving after an upside beyond benefits to the individual, we see an implicit acknowledgment that the vaccines aren’t universally beneficial after all.

An important consequence of the pandemic in the United States has been the alienation of a great part of the population from the project of public health in general on the one hand, and the overt politicisation of the CDC on the other. Before 2020, American medical mandarins at least claimed to work on behalf of society as a whole; now and again, they even found occasion to worry about how their recommendations would effect their credibility among the entire population. They have since abandoned this mission, adopting a narrow, much more politicised hygiene extremism. Now they have dropped all pretence, appealing only to the highly radicalised Covidians and the pharmaceuticals. Thus their rhetoric and their advice grows steadily more divorced from reality and reason, even as the actual threat of Covid recedes.

Ironically, the radicalism of the CDC arises from the success of the pandemicist opposition in the United States. America was one of the few Western countries that saw genuine resistance to the lockdowners and the vaccinators, extending even to elements of the political establishment. This opposition did serious damage to the entire enterprise of public health, and now millions of Americans will never care what the CDC says about anything ever again. In Europe, the mainstream parties formed a united front in support of the hygiene dictatorship, permitting our public health institutions to retain some claim to social consensus, however tenuous. On this side of the Atlantic, they still have something to lose, which is an incentive towards moderation.

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Shocking Failures of Climate and Covid Science Highlighted by Critical New Report

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

The recent and concerning collapse of the once revered scientific process in large parts of the climate change and medical community is detailed in a highly critical ‘open review’ paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Someday, charge the authors, there will need to be an inquiry into how so many scientific bodies abandoned core principles of scientific integrity, took strong positions on unsettled science, took people’s word for things uncritically, and silenced those who tried to continue the scientific endeavour.

Universities have abandoned their historical role of open and disinterested enquiry on behalf of humanity, and “should be sanctioned for this by revoking their charitable status”. Group-think that maintains prevailing fads and supresses dissent on behalf of alleged ‘consensus’ is the opposite of the central purpose of universities. Mainstream media have long been uncritical receptacles for alarmist ‘clickbait’ political scare stories, and this, it might be added, encourages self-promotion among aggressive publicity-hungry scientists. There are many errors and deceptions and much censorship, state the authors, blighting the complete story being told in an unbiased manner. Singling out the behaviour of state broadcaster the BBC, they note: “Any reasonable observer will wonder whether Ofcom [the state regulator] is asleep at the wheel, not requiring the BBC to correct the errors it has been made aware of by experts, nor return to some form of neutrality.”

The report is mainly written by Professor Michael Kelly, the former Prince Philip Professor of Engineering, Trinity Hall, Cambridge University, and Clive Hambler, Science Lecturer at Hertford College, Oxford. There is also economic input from Professor Roger Koppl from Syracuse University. The full GWPF report is due to be published in December and the paper is currently open for review, comments and contributions from other academics. The GWPF notes habitual attacks on its work from activists, and its ‘open review’ policy is explained here.

The realisation that genuine free speech and scientific enquiry is being replaced by strict politicised requirements to adhere to orthodoxy and pre-set narratives grows with every appalling ‘climategate’-style scandal. Regular readers will need little reminding of the recent retraction of the Alimonti et al. paper by Springer Nature following a year-long campaign by a small group of activist scientists and journalists. The paper, whose lead author was Professor of Physics Gianluca Alimonti, reviewed past weather trends and found no data to support the politically-termed ‘climate emergency’. World headlines have also been devoted to the astonishing story of Dr. Patrick Brown of Johns Hopkins University, who blew the whistle on his recent paper published in Nature on California wildfires. He said he wrote it according to the approved script boosting the role of ‘climate change’ and downplaying any natural causes and the horrendous role played by arsonists.

The full publication of the GWPF paper will add to the growing concern and alarm about the science advice given to governments and the media for onward distribution to the public. The corruptions involved in this process are seemingly built into the current system. Trillions of dollars now back the Net Zero collectivisation project across the world, and most scientists, largely paid for by politicians and wealthy green elites, are fully onboard the gravy train.

The GWPF authors aim to push back by maximising the diversity of advice, challenging advice through opposing ‘red’ teams, ensuring a reasonable level of accountability for scientists to discourage hype, and protecting scientists from career damage if they rationally disagree with mainstream views. Institutions should not take official positions on scientific issues, “since this stifles diversity of thought, freedom of speech and the reliability of advice”. Scepticism must be recovered as a respectful term for scientific behaviour from its present position as an insult, “and reinstated as a core duty of universities and learned societies”, demand the authors.

The authors are particularly dismissive of the role of computer models in the recent Covid pandemic and the promotion of climate change alarm. In the U.K., the “gross misuse” of Covid computer models in the absence of robust data to measure them against is noted. Along with a “paucity of challenge” to scientific advice, this may have contributed to “death tolls, economic decline and societal ills”.

On the climate side, the models have produced temperature forecasts two to three times higher than the actual data eventually showed. What is worse is that the results are getting more inaccurate. If the models were actually modelling the evolving climate, the gap would be narrowing. The inaccuracy is a “major embarrassment” and would not be tolerated in any other field of science, and certainly not in engineering. Separation of human-induced warming from natural temperature variation is far more difficult than that portrayed by the UN-funded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC), since experimentation and replication is “simply not possible”. The inability to model significant parts of the atmosphere are “fatal flaws” in any system that is supposed to be predicting future climate change.

Yet, as regular readers will again recall, computer models play a vital part in promoting the unhinged Thermogeddon fantasies of people like the UN Secretary-General Antonio ‘global boiling’ Guterres. The UN-backed IPCC seems addicted to using computer models incorporating a ‘pathway’ of 5°C global warming within less than 80 years. Over 40% of its impact predictions are based on this forecast, despite an admission it is of “low likelihood”. According to a recent Clintel report, over 50% of clickbait climate science papers incorporate this pathway in a seemingly desperate attempt to attract the attention of activists writing in the mainstream media.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic‘s Environment Editor.

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The inevitable EV implosion

By Ron Ross | American Thinker | September 12, 2023

The electric vehicle honeymoon is over. Don’t expect the marriage itself to last much longer either.

The mass conversion from internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEs) to electric vehicles was never more than a Democrat/environmentalist hallucination anyway. It was the most ill-conceived government policy objective in modern history.

The transition should have been a non-starter. It’s riddled with numerous deal killers. It’s like having a dozen fatal diseases all at the same time.

Any goal as massive as a total conversion from ICE vehicles to EVs requires careful planning and infrastructure preparation. It would necessitate a rapid doubling of electricity generation and grid expansion. In today’s world that’s impossible.

EV promoters could never deliver on their promises. Their grandiose assurances were nothing more than wishful thinking.

There was no market research. Hmm — I wonder why. There were no feasibility studies. Hmm — I wonder why. Did they actually believe everyone would tolerate spending hours to charge their vehicles rather than the minutes they were accustomed to?

Car dealers are resisting further deliveries of EVs because of swelling inventories. Avis and Hertz can’t even get people to rent EVs! Yet, manufacturers are ramping up production just as consumers are balking. Something will have to give, and soon. EV makers and their shareholders will tire of pouring money down a rathole.

We are spending trillions of dollars on a fabricated dream, all for imaginary payoffs decades in the future.

When the EV house of cards collapses what will the reaction be? Ordinarily, for normal persons, it would be a time for regret, rethinking, and humility.

It would be good if the Democrat/environmentalist true believers learned something from the EV debacle. However, the same utopian blindness that caused this fiasco will prevent any lesson-learning on their part. We are more likely to see them doubling down instead.

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. He resides in Arcata. California and can be reached at rossecon@aol.com.

His website is rossecon.com.

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Vietnam prioritizes Russian ties despite US attempts to pull it into its orbit

By Drago Bosnic | September 13, 2023

On September 11, Joe Biden concluded his visit to Vietnam, often hailed as an historic one by the mainstream propaganda machine. For instance, the BBC claims that “more than 50 years since the last American soldier left Vietnam, Mr Biden travelled to Hanoi to sign the agreement that will bring the former foes closer than ever before”. The troubled Biden administration hailed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Vietnam as a major upgrade in relations with Hanoi and the culmination of efforts Washington DC invested in over the last several years. Biden also tried to present the rapprochement as having nothing to do with containing or isolating China, but about “maintaining stability in accordance with international rules”.

“I think we think too much in terms of Cold War. It’s not about that. It’s about generating economic growth and stability,” Biden told reporters on September 10, adding: “I want to see China to succeed economically, but I want to see them succeed by the rules.”

Obviously, this is a laughable claim for anyone remotely familiar with the rabidly Sinophobic policies the United States keeps escalating, be it the strategic containment of China, the never-ending stoking of tensions in Taiwan, attempts to prevent or at least derail Beijing’s technological development, etc. And to say nothing of the vaunted “rules-based world order”, as nobody actually knows what “rules” Biden is referring to. Not even Western leaders could pinpoint or even broadly explain the meaning of this pointless phrase, as the “rules” they keep parroting about are not defined. Essentially, they just make them up as they go, depending on the geopolitical circumstances, only later trying to present them as “in line with the international law”.

Still, even the BBC had to admit that Vietnam sees this rapprochement as nothing more than symbolic. According to Le Hong Hiep from Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, “Hanoi has thought this through”, as the aforementioned agreement with the US is “symbolic rather than [one of] substance”. Washington DC was hoping to use the sizeable investments of various American corporations in Vietnam for geopolitical purposes, including the reduction of China’s economic influence and Russia’s close military cooperation with Hanoi. However, both attempts are bound to fail, as Vietnam will certainly not break close ties with either for the sake of US interests in the region, particularly not with Moscow, one of its closest allies.

Namely, on September 9, the New York Times published the contents of a leaked document issued by the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance, revealing a plan to covertly acquire advanced Russian weapons. It should be noted that the US would have to impose sanctions in the case that Hanoi goes through with the deal, which is not exactly a very good message if Washington DC wants a strategic rapprochement with Vietnam. The NYT complains that “even as the United States and Vietnam have nurtured their relationship over recent months, Hanoi is making clandestine plans to buy an arsenal of weapons from Russia”. This only reinforces the notion that the “upgraded US-Vietnam relations” are indeed largely symbolic.

“The Ministry of Finance document, which is dated March 2023 and whose contents have been verified by former and current Vietnamese officials, lays out how Vietnam proposes to modernize its military by secretly paying for defense purchases through transfers at a joint Vietnamese and Russian oil venture in Siberia,” the NYT reports, adding: “Signed by a Vietnamese deputy finance minister, the document notes that Vietnam is negotiating a new arms deal with Russia that would ‘strengthen strategic trust’ at a time when ‘Russia is being embargoed by Western countries in all aspects’.”

In other words, Vietnam is clearly determined not to turn its back on one of its oldest and closest allies. Hanoi could certainly get concessions from the US, including advanced weapons, but its leadership is perfectly aware that this would be unwise, to say the least. Russian weapons haven’t only been proven as much more robust and equally or more advanced than American equivalents, but also much more affordable and logistically less strenuous. To say nothing of the history of US aggression in Indochina, where the belligerent thalassocracy killed up to four million people in Vietnam alone. And yet, the casualties would’ve been a lot worse had it not been for Moscow’s extensive aid, both economic and military.

It was Russian SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems that brought down thousands of American aircraft, saving millions of civilians in the process. Without Russian assault rifles, tanks, artillery and other weapons, Vietnam’s chances of driving out American invaders would’ve been slim to none. Hanoi never forgot that and continues fostering close ties with Moscow. The document cited by the NYT states precisely that – “Our party and state still identify Russia as the most important strategic partner in defense and security.” Vietnam’s reliance on Russian weapons is the most geopolitically sound, as Hanoi’s complicated relationship with both the US and China prevents it from relying on either militarily. This is highly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Hungarian left accused of treason for accepting US campaign money to remove Orbán from power

MAGYAR NEMZET | SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

A private Hungarian citizen filed a complaint with both Hungarian police and prosecutorial authorities after a former CIA analyst went public with a statement that the CIA attempted to interfere in the 2022 Hungarian elections and remove Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from power.

Former analyst Larry C. Johnson said in a podcast at the beginning of September, “It is interesting that although in 2016 the Americans were deeply outraged by the alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election campaign, in 2022 we directly interfered in the Hungarian elections, which Viktor Orbán won again.”

Asked whether the CIA intervened to stop Orbán, Johnson, said “Yes, to defeat him, which, among other things, America was trying to achieve by funding Orbán’s opponents.”

Private Hungarian citizen István Tényi wrote to the police and the prosecutor’s office that they should investigate whether the crime of treason could be suspected against Hungarian citizens who, through the Action for Democracy foundation, may have been involved in influencing the parliamentary elections through a foreign government or organization.

Remix News reported on the funding scandal last year, in which Hungary’s leading left-liberal opposition candidate, Péter Márki-Zay, admitted himself in August 2022, during his podcast Gulyáságyú (Goulash Cannon), that his campaign was still receiving funds from the U.S. foundation Action for Democracy. The shadowy group sent HUF 1.8 billion (€4.48 million) in mostly U.S. donations through an NGO with close ties to billionaire oligarch George Soros, officials connected with Hillary Clinton, and a number of leading transatlantic organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations.

Márki-Zay revealed that Action for Democracy, which is headed by Dávid Korányi, a former adviser to Gergely Karácsony, sent the money in one batch, but he claimed that other transfers had also come from this organization in the past.

Since then, a new declassified intelligence document has come to light, revealing that there is not one but two major foreign donors to the “dollar left,” which is the term increasingly used within the Hungarian media. In addition to the American Action for Democracy, a Swiss foundation has also transferred nearly HUF 1 billion. The Swiss transfers were made in five installments from the beginning of the left-wing primaries, between September 2021 and February 2022.

Open investigations have also been launched in the above cases, with the police investigating the misuse of personal data and the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) looking into budget fraud. The National Bureau of Investigation (NNI) launched an investigation into money laundering and embezzlement as well, which has since been taken over by the tax authorities.

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Enrique Tarrio: Feds Tried to ‘Coerce Me’ into Implicating Donald Trump

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | September 13, 2023

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio claimed federal prosecutors tried to “coerce” him into implicating former President Donald Trump in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced Tarrio to a record-high 22 years in prison despite not being in Washington, DC, on January 6.

“I don’t know what instructions I would give somebody at that point … I’m not speaking. I have no function. So there was no communication,” Tarrio said in a phone interview with the Washington Post.

Tarrio revealed that federal prosecutors tried to “coerce” him into implicating Trump during a phone interview from the D.C. jail.

“I was looking and seeking what the plea offer would look like, right?” Tarrio told the Washington Post. “They didn’t want to give me a number. I need a number. To me, the most important thing is when I get home to my family.”

As the Post reported:

Instead, Tarrio said, the prosecutors asked him what role then-President Donald Trump played in getting the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol. He said the prosecutors, accompanied by FBI agents in the Miami jail where Tarrio was being held at the time, showed him messages that he exchanged with a second person, who in turn was connected to a third person who was connected to Trump. Tarrio said he told the investigators that he didn’t know the third person. He refused to name the people who prosecutors said allegedly connected him to Trump.

“They weren’t trying to get the truth,” Tarrio continued. “They were trying to coerce me into signing something that’s not true.”

Tarrio said, “there was never an open-ended question after” federal prosecutors tried to implicate Trump.

The Post further detailed:

Tarrio said prosecutors in Miami last fall did not ask him about Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant who was an acquaintance of Tarrio’s, or Ali Alexander, a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” rally. He said the federal visitors did not ask him questions about his knowledge of Jan. 6 beyond the theorized connection to Trump. “There was never an open-ended question after that,” Tarrio said.

Prosecutors did later offer Tarrio a deal: nine to 11 years in prison if he pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, according to court records. Tarrio declined.

Read more

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

The Not So Occult Symbolism at Burning Man 2023

Truthstream Media | September 11, 2023

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September 13, 2023 Posted by | Video | , | Leave a comment

CIA whistleblower: Significant monetary incentive given to Covid investigation team to change their position on lab leak

Letter to Director of the CIA

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | September 12, 2023

Today, Brad Wenstrup, Chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Mike Turner, Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence wrote to William J. Burns, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (Agency).

They wrote to Director Burns because they “have received new and concerning whistleblower testimony regarding the Agency’s investigation into the origin of COVID-19”.

According to the letter “a multi-decade, senior-level, current Agency officer has come forward to provide information to the Committees regarding the Agency’s analysis into the origins of COVID-19. According to the whistleblower, the Agency assigned seven officers to a COVID Discovery Team (Team). The Team consisted of multi-disciplinary and experienced officers with significant scientific expertise. According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis. The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position”.

As a result, they have requested further documents and communications, no later than September 26 2023, including information on financial or performance based incentives or financial bonuses given to members of the Team.

Whilst this may be shifting the blame on to China, the letter does say that the Select Subcommittee is authorised to investigate “the origins of the Coronavirus pandemic, including but not limited to the Federal Government’s funding of gain-of function research”.

Hopefully, even if they conclude that the virus originated in Wuhan, they will still investigate how the research was funded and by whom.

 

September 12, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

David v. Goliath in New York

Brownstone Institute | September 12, 2023

There is a battle going on for our freedoms this week. And very few Americans are even aware of what is at stake.

New York attorney Bobbie Anne Cox single-handedly goes up against the State of New York this week, after the state appealed a New York State Supreme Court ruling that a so-called “quarantine camp” regulation (“Isolation and Quarantine Procedures”) issued by Governor Kathy Hochul was unconstitutional.

The order concerns quarantine of citizens by the state government. Like other states, New York already has in place laws regarding quarantine of the citizenry – laws duly passed by the elected state representatives. Those laws were crafted by legislators (whose job it is to do this work) and passed by a majority vote of both Assembly and Senate and signed by the governor. That law not only provides for protecting the public by use of quarantine, but also includes protections for individual rights.

There are problems with the governor’s action.

  • The executive branch does not have the power to make laws under the constitution. That is reserved to the legislature.
  • With one state executive branch taking power not given to them constitutionally, it creates a precedent that could be used similarly for other issues to violate the rights of citizens on a host of other issues – not only in New York, but in all the other states as well.

So, what is in this regulation, you ask? It has to do with quarantine of the citizenry. There is a history of government-mandated quarantine during times of epidemics in our country. Whether or not the existing laws have been misused against individuals is another debate (see the case of Typhoid Mary, for example, who was imprisoned for more than 23 years under the quarantine law of the time).

This governor’s regulation puts the power at the highest levels of the state government – centrally controlled. The governor’s regulation not only circumvents the legislature’s power and responsibility to enact appropriate laws for the citizenry, but it also takes that power beyond the local level, where it can most appropriately be considered, and completely fails to protect the rights of the individuals against misuse or mis-application by the state officials.

In this regulation, there is no requirement for the state government to prove that the targeted individual is infected, has been exposed to an infectious disease, or poses any actual risk to his/her fellow citizens. The application of the regulation is broad – not just limited to Covid cases. There is no limit regarding the age or medical condition of the individual (it could be imposed on a child or a very elderly person), and there is nothing specified as to the duration of the quarantine, or how that duration would be determined. Most concerning: there is no mechanism provided for the individual to be released.

During the initial court case, it was clearly stated that the only possible mechanism for release was for that individual to sue the state, unless the state officials decided to lift it of their own accord.

Under the provisions of the governor’s regulation, the state government can use law enforcement to forcibly remove citizens from their homes or businesses against their will to place them in unspecified quarantine locations for an indeterminate period with no mechanism for release!

This terrible infringement on citizens’ rights, however, doesn’t stop here. It sets a precedent for more executive branch overreach. If it is not overturned in the appellate court, it will embolden other governors to make more forays into the realm of executive usurpation of the legislative branch of government (see the recent NM Governor’s action to remove 2nd Amendment rights by executive order).

There is no doubt that those who take this type of executive action (Lujan Grisham in New Mexico and Hochul in New York) know that this is outside their scope of power within our governmental system. They also know that, until someone files a lawsuit and prevails against them, they have a period of time when these executive regulations and orders will be in place.

It is essential that the appeals court upholds the ruling in the case of this regulation by Governor Hochul – for the good of all the people of New York, but also for all of us in other states.

This passionate, articulate, brilliant lawyer is fighting for all of us.

And Bobbie Anne Cox has suffered for it. She has set aside her normal legal practice to pursue this effort and has been focusing solely on this case for an extended period. She has sacrificed valuable time with her family, spending countless hours in the maze of motions, filings, dockets, scheduling, and research that are part and parcel of the legal system with all its complexities.  The work has been arduous, solitary, and, to some extent, thankless. If she wins the appeal, there is no financial benefit to her or any of the plaintiffs that will be realized.

She has no large staff of paralegals and junior attorneys assisting her to put this case together. She has not had assistance from her other colleagues in New York in fighting this battle.

And, because it has to do with complexities of the legal system, it gets little coverage in the media. Perhaps it is so difficult to imagine just why a state government even wants this type of power over the citizenry, that people find it very hard to grasp that it is really just what Bobbie Anne describes in terms of the potential abuse of individual rights.

No public outcry has occurred. No groundswell of support for her work has happened. And while many are supportive of the great work she has done and were so relieved when she won the case initially, the vast majority of people who stand to benefit from her work will never know they owe her a debt of gratitude.

On Wednesday, September 13, 2023 at 10:00 am EST (at the courthouse in Rochester, NY, located at 50 East Avenue), Bobbie Anne Cox goes forth as a sort of David to meet Goliath, depending on her knowledge of the law rather than a slingshot and stones. She is relying on the New York panel of judges to truly prove that there still exists blind justice in New York.

The merits of her case are clear – even to people not that familiar with the law. Basic Civics shows us the correctness of her contention. This is not a partisan issue. While she is representing Republican plaintiffs, she is not one herself.

If you are able to support her by physically attending the hearing, do so. Perhaps by your presence you can be a silent reminder to the court that New Yorkers are interested in this and are supportive of her efforts.

If you cannot be there in person, consider watching the oral arguments live on the court’s website at: https://ad4.nycourts.gov/go/live/. Please also keep her and the court judges in your thoughts and prayers and share this information with your circle of friends and colleagues.

May she prevail.

September 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Biden’s Department of Education Is Investigating Christopher Rufo For “Misgendering”

Listed among many allegations

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 11, 2023

The Department of Education, under President Joe Biden’s administration, is wielding its influence against Christopher Rufo, a conservative advocate and the New College of Florida.

Allegedly, the civil liberty offenses committed by Rufo include the “misgendering” of certain individuals and the closing down of the university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) division within the school.

…

Screenshots of Rufo’s posts were used as evidence.

The allegations began unfolding on social media, where Rufo publicized the supposed evidence used against him. Among the charges was the allegation that Rufo had addressed the former head of the school’s DEI, Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez, as “she” or “her.” Noteworthy is that Rosario-Hernandez, a biological woman, chooses the pronouns “ze/zir.”

Moreover, Rufo is accused of referring to a student, who prefers to be called “they/them,” as “her.”

Chiming in on this development, Rufo intensified the debate by posting, “President Biden’s Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into New College of Florida, following a complaint that, in part, alleged that I ‘misgendered’ the college’s former DEI director, who uses ‘ze/zir’ pseudo-pronouns. This is madness.”

The complaint further extends to accuse Rufo of violating civil rights by withdrawing funding from the DEI department and the Gender Studies Program. As per the Department of Education’s guidelines, the gravity of the situation could escalate, assuming it substantiates the claim and the accused parties choose to disregard any determined ruling — escalating into a potential implication with the Department of Justice.

September 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Trump charges are political persecution – Putin

RT | September 12, 2023

The numerous criminal charges against former US President Donald Trump amount to persecution and showcase the “rot” in the American political system, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated.

The US in its current state “cannot claim the right to teach others democracy,” the Russian leader said on Tuesday during a panel discussion at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

“The things that are happening to Trump are persecution of a political competitor… That is what it is. And it is done in the full view of the US public and the entire world,” he added.

The controversy is beneficial to Russia in the sense that it “exposes” Washington ”for what it is,” according to Putin. The US government chose to be hostile to Moscow and has propagandized its population into perceiving it as such, he argued.

“[The US] demonstrates what they called in Soviet times ‘the bestial scowl of imperialism’,” he joked.

Moscow does not expect any substantial change in US foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia, regardless of who takes the White House after next year’s election, the president said.

“[Trump] was accused of having a special relation with Russia, which is total nonsense and bulls**t. But he was the president who introduced the most sanctions against Russia,” Putin noted.

The American elites predominantly perceive Russia as an existential enemy, Putin believes. The country also has friends in the US, who want good relations and share Russia’s views on traditional values, the president added, but those voices are being suppressed.

Since leaving office, Trump has been charged with numerous crimes at both the federal and state level, ranging from election tampering to inciting the January 6 Capitol riot to financial improprieties.

The businessman-turned-politician, who is considered the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for presidency, has said that his legal woes amount to a “witch hunt” by his opponents.

September 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

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