“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) applauded the “righteous anger” of abortion rights activists in a letter sent on Monday to fellow House Democrats to encourage them to carry on the fight against the pro-life movement.
Pelosi’s letter was sent just one week after a leaked majority opinion from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was published, revealing a potential overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.”
—
“Pelosi referred to expressions by pro-abortion rights activists over the past week as righteous anger.
“While we have seen and heard extraordinary anguish in our communities, we have been moved by how so many have channeled their righteous anger into meaningful action: planning to march and mobilize to make their voices heard,” Pelosi wrote.
Pelosi also thanked House Democrats for their commitment to abortion.
“Thank you for your powerful commitment to carrying on the fight for the rights of all Americans,” she concluded.
The letter was sent just one day after the headquarters of a pro-life organization in Wisconsin was set on fire in what appears to be a politically-motivated attack.
The attack on Wisconsin Family Action, located in Madison, came days after the Supreme Court leak.”
———–
And another example….
“Georgetown Law Professor Appears To Endorse Mob Violence Against SCOTUS On Twitter”
“Chafetz continued by arguing that some “aggressive tactics are justified” when “the mob is right.”
“And before the ‘oh so you support J6 lmao!’ trolls show up: the difference is *substantive*. When the mob is right, some (but not all!) more aggressive tactics are justified. When not, not,” Chafetz said.
The law professor’s tweets come as the group “Ruth Sent Us” published the addresses of Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and John Roberts, seemingly in response to a leaked draft opinion.”
“Yesterday the President of NARAL claimed the leaked draft decision would be a “major motivator” for women going to the polls this fall.
Asked by ABC’s Martha Raddatz if she thinks abortion will be “the issue” in the upcoming midterm elections, [Mimi] Timmaraju said, “This issue is a major motivator not only for Democratic base voters, not only for women but for Americans overall.”
“We have to explain to the American people that we can’t rely on the court anymore to protect our constitutional rights. We have to go to Congress, governors races, attorneys general who enforce these laws,” Timmaraju later added.
That’s clearly what Democrats and pro-choice leaders are hoping will be the case but we’re not seeing a lot of evidence to support it so far. Today Reuters has a story that suggests the leaked draft decision isn’t having much if any impact even among pro-choice suburban women. The sample size here is small but women Reuters spoke to in Phoenix, Arizona said they were more concerned about inflation than abortion.
[Laura] Wilson, 61, is pro-choice, voted for Democratic President Joe Biden, and knew all about the news last week that the U.S. Supreme Court is likely poised to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision giving women the right to an abortion.
Yet Wilson said she is undecided about who she will vote for this November, and abortion rights are not a priority for her.
“It’s the economy and jobs,” Wilson said. She said she was disappointed in Biden, because of high inflation and “too many homeless people on the streets.”
Reuters spoke to a total of 21 women looking for indications of the kind of groundswell of support that Democrats are counting on. They didn’t find it.
Maria Alvarez, 46, a mother and a realtor, said she is pro-choice, but “I really don’t have a strong opinion on it.” She wants politicians who will take care of pocketbook issues. She had just completed a grocery shop that cost her $400, twice what she used to pay a year ago.
Of the 21 women interviewed by Reuters, five said they were pro-life and Republican, while 16 said they were pro-choice. Just two of the 16 said the issue was the top priority for them when voting this November, while half of the 16 were undecided about who to vote for in the Senate race because of concerns about the economy. The other half said they would likely vote Democrat.
So out of 16 pro-choice women, only half were willing to say they would vote Democrat this fall despite the draft decision overturning Roe. That’s the opposite of a groundswell of support. It’s a collective shrug.”
Oh, and righteous, right Nancy? That must be why he deleted his tweet calling for protesters to steal Kavanaugh’s stuff from his house and burn it in front of the hotel the family had to flee to.
@FBI@DHSgov This verified account is inciting Home Invasion, Larceny, and Arson directed at a Justice of the Supreme Court.
“But this reminds me of the debate with Robert Bork. Bork believed the only reason you had any inherent rights was because the government gave them to you. If you go back and look at the opening comments from — by the Bork-Biden — when I was questioning him as chairman, I said, “I believe I have the rights that I have not because the government gave it to me, which you believe, but because I’m just a child of God; I exist.”
Needless to say, Robert Bork did not believe that government confers rights. In fact, Biden got this backwards — Bork believed rights descend from natural law and are protected by the Constitution from encroachment by government. It’s Biden and his team that believes that rights are conferred by government, and that government can therefore create and destroy such rights as it sees fit. That is, in fact, their entire justification for defending Roe — that the Supreme Court created that right, and therefore it can never be contradicted even by a subsequent Supreme Court.
As dumb as this argument from Biden was, the argument that the current conservative justices somehow committed perjury during their confirmation hearings is absolutely absurd. Bork thought that he could have an honest and open colloquy with senators determined to demonize him and destroy his chances for confirmation. After seeing how well that worked out, nominees to the Supreme Court and largely also to the appellate courts have adopted the so-called Ginsburg Rule and refuse to get specific on any point.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the first to apply this approach. In her 1993 confirmation hearing, Ginsburg wisely chose not to answer specific questions about hot-button issues, arguing that she would likely have to hear such cases in the future. Edwin Meese pointed out specific examples from her testimony when John Roberts similarly demurred in 2005 and got criticized for it:
Biden warned senators not to ask questions about “how [Ginsburg] will decide any specific case that may come before her.” Ginsburg, then serving on the same court as Judge Roberts does today, followed Biden’s roadmap.
Sen. Leahy asked about the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Ginsburg responded simply: “I prefer not to address a question like that.” Leahy pressed for her interpretation of Supreme Court precedent on the subject, but Ginsburg again demurred: “I would prefer to await a particular case.” Leahy finally backed off: “I understand. Just trying, Judge. Just trying.”
Sen. Strom Thurmond asked whether Ginsburg thought states could “experiment with and provide for diverse educational environments aided by public funding.” Ginsburg refused to give an answer: “Sen. Thurmond, that is the kind of question that a judge cannot answer at-large.” The senator asked a narrower question about the “constitutionality of some form of voucher system.” Ginsburg replied, “Sen. Thurmond, aid to schools is a question that comes up again and again before the Supreme Court. This is the very kind of question that I ruled out.”
Ginsburg refused two senators’ requests to address homosexual rights. “[A]nything I say could be taken as a hint or a forecast on how I would treat a classification that is going to be in question before a court.” In fact, she exercised the Rule to avoid answering any questions relating to sexual orientation: “I cannot say one word on that subject that would not violate what I said had to be my rule about no hints, no forecasts, no previews.”
When pressed on another issue, she refused to discuss her “personal reactions” to a particular Supreme Court case. “I have religiously tried to refrain from commenting on a number of Court decisions that have been raised in these last couple of days.” Indeed.
Ginsburg certainly answered many of the questions asked of her, but nothing of substance to lock her into particular policy positions. The same has been true of every subsequent nominee from presidents of both parties. No one lies in Senate Judiciary confirmation hearings about their approach to hot-button issues, because no nominee ever says anything specific or makes even veiled promises on their future decisions.
That’s even true on the use of stare decisis, the basis on which Democrats are now levying allegations of perjury. Every nominee, whether from Republican or Democratic presidents, promises to respect stare decisis, but no one ever pledges that stare decisis will be the highest value they consider while deciding cases. Nor should they, especially at the Supreme Court, where reversals occasionally do happen. Plessy and Korematsu are the most noted these days, but Roberts himself authored Citizens United, which overturned two previous Supreme Court precedents, and this court overturned others in Janus two years ago. There are other examples, and there will be in the future as well.
Jonathan Turley wrote last week to rebut the allegations of perjury, still worth reading now. Rather than finding perjury in the transcripts, Turley instead found a lot of selective hearing:
The one exception to this pattern of confirmation nonspeak was Barrett. At the time, I wrote that Barrett was refreshingly and surprisingly honest about her judicial philosophy and approach to Roe. She specifically rejected the claim that Roe constitutes “super precedent.” Barrett said that this term “define[s] cases that are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling. And I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates that Roe doesn’t fall in that category.” (Notably, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson took the same position against Roe as super precedent.).
What is most striking about these claims that the justices lied is that most of these critics insisted during their confirmations that they were clearly antagonistic toward Roe. Nothing that they said changed any minds on their judicial philosophy as hostile to the logic of Roe.
Notably, liberal nominees have used the same language about cases like District of Columbia v. Heller, supporting gun rights. They acknowledge that it is a settled precedent but that does not guarantee that they will vote to preserve it. Indeed, they have voted to limit or overturn past cases with which they disagree. No one called for perjury prosecutions or denounced them as liars.”
“In the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court discovered a woman’s right to abortion hidden in the unwritten “penumbras” of the Constitution. Prior to this judicial magic trick, abortion had been subject to laws enacted by the people’s elected representatives. At the time Roe was decided, thirty states outright prohibited abortion while a minority allowed it for limited purposes. But Roe effectively struck down all of those laws and, in an exercise of what dissenting Justice Byron White called “raw judicial power,” took the issue of abortion away from the state legislatures.
Having peremptorily overruled the will of the people as expressed through their elected state governments, Roe set off an angry national dispute that has ever since bitterly divided America.
Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization sets forth a scholarly and compelling basis for overturning Roe as well as the later abortion rights case of Casey v. Planned Parenthood. Politico’s publication of a purloined copy of the draft has set off a firestorm of protest by abortion advocates who wrongly and hysterically equate overturning Roe and Casey with banning abortion. To the contrary, here in relevant part is what Alito’s draft actually says:
Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.
It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” [Citation omitted] That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand.
Imagine that. The draft opinion calls for allowing Americans to decide this vital and divisive issue through the legislative process. What a novel and radical concept.
Nevertheless, the abortion industry and its adherents have gone into full meltdown mode. Within hours of Politico’s publication of the draft opinion, agitated protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court building. This required the erection of protective fences around the courthouse.
Then the home addresses of Justices Barrett, Alito, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Chief Justice Roberts were made public. This doxing was promptly followed by angry, shouting pro-choice demonstrators picketing the residences of Justice Kavanaugh and Chief Justice Roberts.
One protester, a 39-year-old female, was quoted as saying “The time for civility is over, man. Being polite doesn’t get you anywhere.” Others chanted “The whole world is watching!”; “We will not go back,” and “My body, my choice.”
The clear purpose of these protests at the Supreme Court building and the Justices’ homes was to influence, intimidate, and discourage the Court from overturning Roe.
And this is where things get interesting.
18 U.S.C. § 1507 provides, in relevant part, the following:
“Whoever … with the intent of influencing any judge … in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge … or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
Similarly, 18 U.S.C. § 1503 provides, in relevant part, the following:
“Whoever … by any threatening … communication, endeavors to influence, intimidate or impede any … officer of any court of the United States … in the discharge of his duty … or by any threatening … communication … endeavors to influence, obstruct or impede, the due administration of justice” shall be fined or subject to “imprisonment for not more than 10 years” or both.
And then, there is 18 U.S.C. § 371 which makes it a crime for two or more persons to conspire to commit any offense against the United States. If such persons conspired to violate § 1503, they face imprisonment for a term up to 5 years. For conspiracy to violate § 1507, they face imprisonment up to 1 year.
Based on what we know so far, it appears that the demonstrators, those who organized the demonstrations, the person(s) who doxed the Justices, the person(s) who provided Alito’s draft opinion to Politico, and the person(s) at Politico who published the opinion face arrest and prosecution under the foregoing statutes. All of them appear to have acted and conspired to influence, intimidate, and impede Justices of the Supreme Court as they adjudicate a case pending before them.
In short, these conspirators appear to have made history by endeavoring to obstruct justice at the highest possible level of the judiciary.”
——–
But Slow Joe and Garland will do nothing, as usual.
Every one of these statements is a factual positive statement, and none of them are inconsistent with Alito’s draft opinion, regardless of whether you agree with Alito’s reasoning. Plessy v Ferguson was an important settled precedent and the law of the land, too. https://t.co/YTEPoa9LQA
Not a drill. Republicans are coming for your contraception. They will shush you and tell you that claim is ridiculous. Except, it is happening. They see women as “domestic suppliers of infants.” We can turn back the clock to the dark ages or we can mobilize & save freedom. #Votehttps://t.co/yaTUmzfVmO
“But Gorsuch highlights another reason why Lemon won’t go away, at least in places like Boston. The problem with Lemon is that it makes subjectivity easier; in other words, it’s far easier to render subjective judgments in the service of partisan goals than it is to look to the original history and meaning of the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Indeed, Gorsuch notes that some would like to “lump in religious speech with fighting words and obscenity.” Moreover, these same people wish “to celebrate only a ‘particular’ type of diversity consistent with popular ideology.””
—
“Thus, we see these justices pushing back against attempts to take the cultural animosity against religion and turn it into legal discrimination. For a constitution that gives so much attention and protection to religion, this defense is right and necessary. Codifying religious animosity might be a goal, especially for the current political Left. It can legally occur only over the Constitution’s dead (or greatly amended) body. Unfortunately for those who wish to do so, as Gorsuch notes, “the First Amendment is not exactly your friend.”
Religious conservatives have yet another judicial victory to celebrate. And celebrate they should. But they also have work to do, and Justices Alito and Gorsuch have given them sound advice on how to proceed. Religious conservatives should listen and act. Unless, of course, they’re tired of winning.”
“The Obama-appointed judge presiding over the criminal case against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann let politics trump the law when he declared in a weekend opinion he would not rule on whether the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee conspired with others to peddle the Russia collusion hoax.
Special Counsel John Durham charged Sussmann last September in a one-count indictment with making a false statement to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker when Sussmann provided Baker data and “whitepapers” purporting to show a secret communication network between Donald Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank. According to the indictment, Sussmann told Baker he was sharing the information on his own, when, in fact, Sussmann represented both tech executive Rodney Joffe and the Clinton campaign.
With trial set to begin in one week, the last month has seen a flurry of pretrial motions—called “motions in limine”—seeking pretrial rulings on the admissibility of evidence. The court previously ruled on several of the issues the parties presented, holding in many cases that a final decision must await trial. Then, late Saturday, presiding Judge Christopher Cooper issued a further opinion resolving many of the still-outstanding evidentiary challenges.
Overall, Cooper’s Saturday night opinion, like his previous rulings in this case, represented a studious and a balanced approach to the legal issues, with Sussmann prevailing at times, but the special counsel succeeding on other issues. For instance, in a victory for Durham, the court ruled that prosecutors could present evidence concerning how the Alfa Bank “data came into being and who was involved in its collection and analysis, as well as how Mr. Sussmann came to possess the data, what he did with it, and why.”
But the court also ruled in Sussmann’s favor, first reiterating its previous holding that unless Sussmann claims at trial that the Alfa Bank data is accurate, the government may not present evidence challenging its validity. Cooper further held that the government could not present evidence that Joffe inappropriately accessed proprietary or sensitive government information to gather the data or write the whitepapers, absent some evidence “showing that Mr. Sussmann had concerns that the data was obtained inappropriately.”
Judge Cooper further demonstrated his baseline when he confronted two more significant issues presented by the opposing parties. Sussmann scored a victory when the court held the government could not admit evidence concerning notes taken by former FBI Assistant Director Bill Priestap and former Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson unless they testified about their previous conversations with Baker. Even then, Judge Cooper indicated that at most the jury would likely only be read the contents of the notes, as opposed to receiving the notes themselves as exhibits to view.
Such a limitation will surely inure to Sussmann’s benefit because seeing in writing Priestap’s notation, “Michael Sussman[n]—Atty: Perkins Coie—said not doing this for any client” and Anderson’s note, “Sussman[n] Mtg w/ Baker,” “No specific client but group of cyber academics talked w/ him abt research,” would likely strike a more solid punch than merely hearing their testimony.
Sussmann, however, failed in his attempt to force the government to provide Joffe immunity so Joffe would be willing to testify in Sussmann’s defense. Sussmann had argued that the government had no reasonable basis to claim that Joffe remained a target of a criminal investigation given that the five-year statute of limitations for false statements had run, and that therefore the special counsel’s threat of prosecution served solely to induce Joffe to plead the fifth and refuse to testify on behalf of Sussmann.
Not only did the court reject this argument, in doing so the court stated—simply and without commentary—that “the Special Counsel’s continued representation that Mr. Joffe is a subject of its investigation, rather than simply a witness, does not amount to prosecutorial misconduct on this record.” Given that Sussmann framed the government’s claim that Joffe remained a target as unbelievable, the court’s refusal to question the special counsel’s representation illustrates Judge Cooper’s baseline apolitical equilibrium.
The Obama appointee faltered, however, on the Clinton campaign and handling the special counsel’s argument that various emails, even if they were hearsay, were admissible under the “co-conspirator statement” exception to the hearsay rule. At issue were emails between Joffe and the Georgia Tech researchers Manos Antonakakis, Dave Dagon, and April Lorenzen, the “originator” of the Alfa Bank data whom Joffe had allegedly tasked to mine internet data to find a Trump-Russia connection.
After concluding some, but not all, of the emails were hearsay, the court addressed the government’s argument that the emails were admissible under federal rules of evidence as “a co-conspirator statement.””
They’re broken. Time to disband and rebuild the FBI, starting with “leadership”….
This is from Mary McCord's notes of a March 2017 FBI briefing that was just released in the Sussmann case. McCord is a former DOJ official and all out anti-Trump Resistance operative.https://t.co/LLxEbCE4WK
All this is correct and the special counsel appointment was simply to whitewash what they were up to. It becomes ever more disgraceful the more we learn.
Another criminal who will get away with everything he did. Why is justice so double souled? Why is equality before the law and indeed the rule of law itself near extinction in modern America? Because the DOJ and FBI HQs are full of such scheming political hacks as Strzok.
The head of Biden’s Ministry of Truth spreading actual disinformation back in 2017 — Clinton and the DNC were fined by the FEC in March for not disclosing that they funded the dossier. Did Nina ever correct this?
According to the new White House Press Secretary, the 2016 election and 2018 Georgia gubernatorial elections were both stolen pic.twitter.com/Ex8QyjHjZh
“But abortion, even for its proponents, involves very specific ideas about when a human fetus becomes worthy of protection by the state, and the dubious notion of “viability.” It involves distasteful realities that cannot be elided via euphemism. Today’s abortion rights absolutists insist on a right to terminate a developing fetus well past the point of “viability,” and become incensed by any mention of what would be involved in terminating a fetus at 40 weeks.
While abortion remains one of the few issues still framed by progressives as central to the interests of “women” in the old sense, it is also one of the few issues in which race cannot be centralized and the logic of disparate impact cannot be readily employed. The reality that black women get more abortions per capita than anyone else would be widely known if abortion supporters thought it supported their case. But mentioning the prolific number of terminated black pregnancies is not a politically palatable injustice to raise in defending legal abortion.
Fewer black births may not be the intended result of those in favor of upholding Roe, but it was an explicit desire for early American advocates of family planning, including Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg alluded to the eugenic roots of abortion in a 2009 interview, when she remarked that, “at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
As noted in the leaked draft, many of the favorite arguments of pro-abortion activists have grown stale. Single mothers are no longer stigmatized in America in any significant way; about a third of children under 18 live in single-parent households, 75 percent of which are headed by mothers. An astounding 72 percent of black American households are single-parent, so the implied suggestion in the old pro-Roe arguments that single-parenthood is less than optimum is a fraught third rail for abortion advocates, who don’t want to be seen as stigmatizing a way of life that characterizes most black children.
As for employment-related consequences for working mothers, women are protected from employer discrimination based on pregnancy, paid family leave is increasingly common. There are protections for women who wish to give up a child they don’t wish to raise themselves, and adoptions are closely monitored and potential adoptive parents extensively vetted.
Even the reliable slogan, “My Body, My Choice” has lost some of its logical grip, given the recent dedication to vaccine mandates by many of the same activists alarmed by the return of abortion regulation to the states. Indeed, the standby position of the feminist movement, that abortion laws are designed to control women’s bodies, becomes “problematic” for a Democrat party that asserts men can become pregnant, too. California Governor Gavin Newsom forgot this new doctrine when repeating a trope popular among older abortion enthusiasts, “If men could get pregnant, this wouldn’t even be a conversation.” And so the preferred euphemism employed by Democrats for decades when discussing abortion, “women’s health,” is invalidated two ways: abortion is obviously not healthy, and according to the Left’s own standards, it’s not exclusive to women.
But the most problematic aspect of dusting off their old pro-abortion talking points is the lack of a racial angle. The Democrat Party is struggling to portray the opponents of mass abortion in the black community as white supremacists. But complaining that blacks will lose access to a system facilitating the large-scale erasure of their pregnancies does not strike the right note. Worrying that lack of access to abortion in the later trimesters will result in more “unwanted” children (disproportionately black) begs the question of who doesn’t want them. Liberal economist Steven Levitt famously argued that legal abortion led directly to a reduction in the crime rate a generation later; blacks may not be quite as enthused at this clever approach to crime reduction as the Freakonomists.
Many abortion advocates have objected to a potential overturn of the “settled” issue of abortion. But even as blacks continue to experience abortions at a rate that elsewhere might be described by progressives as a disparate impact, the overall abortion rate in the U.S. is falling. The abortion rate increased from 1973, the year of the Roe decision, to 1980, but never reached that level again and is now lower than at any time since Roe. One might infer that the popularity of abortion with the American people is not completely settled.
The vehemence of the arguments in its favor has never been able to conceal the reality that abortion is deeply unpleasant. The Mississippi law referenced in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health prohibits abortion after 15 weeks. It is not a heartbeat law, as heartbeats are discernible much earlier. The 15-week standard comes from the understanding that most abortions after 15 weeks require “dilation and evacuation procedures which involve the use of surgical instruments to crush and tear the unborn child.” It is no surprise that advocates shy from discussing these devilish details.
“With the perilous state of the U.S. economy and looming threat of a recession at some point over the next year, the American Middle Class finds itself in a historically vulnerable financial position. But while the threat of hard economic times is by now obvious, Middle Class Americans are also facing a hidden health crisis that isn’t making headlines.
“Under the radar” is how Casey Mulligan, former Chief Economist for the Council of Economic Advisors under President Trump, described the alarming rise in health issues for Middle Class Americans in an interview with AMAC Newsline. While the media largely ignores the problem, the numbers tell an alarming story.
“People’s health is in bad shape by the standards of, I’d say, three years ago,” he said. According to data that goes through the end of 2021, Mulligan explained, the nation has suffered from “an abnormally high rate of death from motor vehicle accidents, from homicide, from diabetes, heart [disease], stroke—that type of thing—drugs, alcohol. These are all abnormally high.”
Though deaths resulting from these causes have long been problematic, “they’re a lot higher” than they once were and are now disproportionately affecting Middle Class Americans in noticeable ways that are looming “just as large”—if not larger—than any setbacks from inflation. Many of these trends, Mulligan continued, can easily be traced back to Covid-era restrictions and prolonged lockdowns and quarantines. “Typically,” Mulligan explained, Middle Class Americans “aren’t happy” with indeterminate lockdown states, which contribute in no small part to deteriorating qualities of health. A survey by the American Psychological Association, for instance, found that a whopping 42 percent of Americans gained weight since the start of the pandemic, with an average gain of 29 pounds. These forces, Mulligan said, put Middle Class individuals “that much further behind when we get back to normal.”
“There’s a lot of people in America, and they have unique circumstances, and the government—Fauci and those types of people—can’t even begin to comprehend, let alone direct” struggling Americans out of their adverse situations, thus keeping them effectively cemented in “abnormal” and unhealthy lifestyles. “We could have dealt with that pandemic with a more normal lifestyle like Sweden did,” Mulligan noted. “Their Coronavirus deaths are kind of in line with ours, but we don’t see these deaths from all these other causes… Obviously nobody lives forever in any country, but these abnormal deaths” simply haven’t occurred because “Sweden kept life pretty normal.”
“People had to reinvent their lives, and any time you have to reinvent something, the first rendition is not going to be so great. So, the policy would be to avoid [forcing] people to reinvent their lives, and allow them to continue with what worked for them before,” Mulligan said. “And there’s still, in Chicago, in New York—people are not living as normal. Their offices aren’t open, a lot of them—either one or two days a week—it’s still not normal life.”
“A lot of these politicians are actively preventing us from going back to normal,” he continued, referring to Biden’s attempt to prolong mask mandates on airplanes and extend other restrictions. “And I don’t see why we should expect health to get back to normal when everything else isn’t allowed to get back to normal.”
The first step in returning back to any sort of normalcy, Mulligan said, would be a simple acknowledgement from government leaders of the conditions they themselves have created. “They’re clueless. Some of them insisted that—if you go back a year and a half—they insisted that this wasn’t happening.”
By contrast, Mulligan claimed, former President Donald Trump had the right instinct by urging Americans to return to a normal lifestyle as quickly as reasonably possible. Biden, he said, should take a page out of his predecessor’s book and start “making people aware of the sacrifices that we continue to make as long as we are not back to normal.”
Covid-related lockdowns have also led to a handful of significant disparities between red states and blue states, Mulligan observes—particularly when it comes to homicide rates. According to his research, during the pandemic, homicides surged 25 percent in red states and 50 percent in blue states—a trend that continued at least through the end of 2021. The increase in homicides and other crimes resulting from lockdown policies has “affected the Middle Class in ways even more shocking because they’re not used to it,” he said.
Coupled with other pandemic-era setbacks like school closures, Mulligan continued, unnecessarily drawn-out lockdown policies have led to a marked decline in the health and economic wellbeing of Middle Class families.
For someone who has conceitedly referred to himself as “Middle Class Joe” for the duration of his near-half-century in the United States government, one would think that President Biden would be more worried than anyone about the current predicaments of Middle Class Americans. As Mulligan noted, the solutions for solving the problems facing the Middle Class remain readily available, but Biden has thus far failed to reach for them.”
At a minimum I expect @ArizonaMirror to retract the defamatory claims, correct the piece, and fire @DillonReedRose. The days of the left-wing media lying without consequence are over.
“The Arizona Mirror is a Soros-tied 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that funnels money to Democratic campaigns by positively promoting their ideas while slandering conservative Republican candidates like Blake Masters.”
“Walgreens publishes data on their Covid-19 tests. When people take the test, they are asked about vaccination status. In both of the last two updates, the unvaccinated tested positive at the lowest rate. People with three doses tested positive at the highest rate.
Rates of COVID Positivity 4/27 – 5/3
Not Vaccinated – 16.3%
1 Dose – 21.5%
2 Dose > 5m ago – 26.7%
2 Dose 5m ago – 30.1%
3 Dose <= 5m ago – 20.8%"
The death toll from mental illness and drug abuse caused by closures during COVID are going to far outpace actual deaths directly from COVID in patients less than age 25.
1/2 tank fill up today on 93 octane in all places , Louisiana where gas is usually cheaper than the country as a whole ..#FJBpic.twitter.com/Do3sbzJDKt
“Some US States have specific legislation against it like New York; PEN § 240.70 Criminal interference with health care services or religious worship in the second degree
1. A person is guilty of criminal interference with health services or religious worship in the second degree when:
(c) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, he or she intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with, or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with, another person because such person was or is seeking to exercise the right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”
——
The same law (FACE Act) that protects abortion providers protects churches you idiots.
(1)by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services;
(2)by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship; or
(3)intentionally damages or destroys the property of a facility, or attempts to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship,
shall be subject to the penalties provided in subsection (b) and the civil remedies provided in subsection (c), except that a parent or legal guardian of a minor shall not be subject to any penalties or civil remedies under this section for such activities insofar as they are directed exclusively at that minor.”
——
Where’s Garland?
“(2)Action by attorney general of the united states.—
(
A)In general.—
If the Attorney General of the United States has reasonable cause to believe that any person or group of persons is being, has been, or may be injured by conduct constituting a violation of this section, the Attorney General may commence a civil action in any appropriate United States District Court.
(B)Relief.—In any action under subparagraph (A), the court may award appropriate relief, including temporary, preliminary or permanent injunctive relief, and compensatory damages to persons aggrieved as described in paragraph (1)(B). The court, to vindicate the public interest, may also assess a civil penalty against each respondent—
(i)in an amount not exceeding $10,000 for a nonviolent physical obstruction and $15,000 for other first violations; and
(ii)in an amount not exceeding $15,000 for a nonviolent physical obstruction and $25,000 for any other subsequent violation.”
Wandering Views 
If your anger is over the fact that you can’t kill so many children, it’s not at all righteous you clown.
Democrats are now applauding violence against those who disagree.
“Nancy Pelosi Applauds ‘Righteous Anger’ Of Abortion Rights Activists In Letter To Fellow Democrats”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/nancy-pelosi-applauds-righteous-anger-of-abortion-rights-activists-in-letter-to-fellow-democrats
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) applauded the “righteous anger” of abortion rights activists in a letter sent on Monday to fellow House Democrats to encourage them to carry on the fight against the pro-life movement.
Pelosi’s letter was sent just one week after a leaked majority opinion from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was published, revealing a potential overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.”
—
“Pelosi referred to expressions by pro-abortion rights activists over the past week as righteous anger.
“While we have seen and heard extraordinary anguish in our communities, we have been moved by how so many have channeled their righteous anger into meaningful action: planning to march and mobilize to make their voices heard,” Pelosi wrote.
Pelosi also thanked House Democrats for their commitment to abortion.
“Thank you for your powerful commitment to carrying on the fight for the rights of all Americans,” she concluded.
The letter was sent just one day after the headquarters of a pro-life organization in Wisconsin was set on fire in what appears to be a politically-motivated attack.
The attack on Wisconsin Family Action, located in Madison, came days after the Supreme Court leak.”
———–
And another example….
“Georgetown Law Professor Appears To Endorse Mob Violence Against SCOTUS On Twitter”
https://dailycaller.com/2022/05/09/georgetown-law-josh-chafetz-mob-violence-scotus/
“Chafetz continued by arguing that some “aggressive tactics are justified” when “the mob is right.”
“And before the ‘oh so you support J6 lmao!’ trolls show up: the difference is *substantive*. When the mob is right, some (but not all!) more aggressive tactics are justified. When not, not,” Chafetz said.
The law professor’s tweets come as the group “Ruth Sent Us” published the addresses of Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and John Roberts, seemingly in response to a leaked draft opinion.”
LikeLike
I say keep it up, it’s working so well.
“Reuters: Suburban women in Phoenix, AZ care more about inflation than abortion”
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2022/05/09/reuters-suburban-women-in-phoenix-az-care-more-about-inflation-than-abortion-n468042
“Yesterday the President of NARAL claimed the leaked draft decision would be a “major motivator” for women going to the polls this fall.
Asked by ABC’s Martha Raddatz if she thinks abortion will be “the issue” in the upcoming midterm elections, [Mimi] Timmaraju said, “This issue is a major motivator not only for Democratic base voters, not only for women but for Americans overall.”
“We have to explain to the American people that we can’t rely on the court anymore to protect our constitutional rights. We have to go to Congress, governors races, attorneys general who enforce these laws,” Timmaraju later added.
That’s clearly what Democrats and pro-choice leaders are hoping will be the case but we’re not seeing a lot of evidence to support it so far. Today Reuters has a story that suggests the leaked draft decision isn’t having much if any impact even among pro-choice suburban women. The sample size here is small but women Reuters spoke to in Phoenix, Arizona said they were more concerned about inflation than abortion.
[Laura] Wilson, 61, is pro-choice, voted for Democratic President Joe Biden, and knew all about the news last week that the U.S. Supreme Court is likely poised to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision giving women the right to an abortion.
Yet Wilson said she is undecided about who she will vote for this November, and abortion rights are not a priority for her.
“It’s the economy and jobs,” Wilson said. She said she was disappointed in Biden, because of high inflation and “too many homeless people on the streets.”
Reuters spoke to a total of 21 women looking for indications of the kind of groundswell of support that Democrats are counting on. They didn’t find it.
Maria Alvarez, 46, a mother and a realtor, said she is pro-choice, but “I really don’t have a strong opinion on it.” She wants politicians who will take care of pocketbook issues. She had just completed a grocery shop that cost her $400, twice what she used to pay a year ago.
Of the 21 women interviewed by Reuters, five said they were pro-life and Republican, while 16 said they were pro-choice. Just two of the 16 said the issue was the top priority for them when voting this November, while half of the 16 were undecided about who to vote for in the Senate race because of concerns about the economy. The other half said they would likely vote Democrat.
So out of 16 pro-choice women, only half were willing to say they would vote Democrat this fall despite the draft decision overturning Roe. That’s the opposite of a groundswell of support. It’s a collective shrug.”
LikeLike
Besides, they’re such nice people…
Oh, and righteous, right Nancy? That must be why he deleted his tweet calling for protesters to steal Kavanaugh’s stuff from his house and burn it in front of the hotel the family had to flee to.
——–
The now deleted tweet….
“When he moves his family to a hotel, empty his house and burn his $#@% in front of the hotel. https://t.co/eVLhLEppvR
— Steve Cox (@RealSteveCox) May 9, 2022″
LikeLike
Sure hacks…..
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2022/05/09/dems-deeeeep-thought-kavanaugh-and-barrett-committed-perjury-in-confirmation-process-n468040
“But this reminds me of the debate with Robert Bork. Bork believed the only reason you had any inherent rights was because the government gave them to you. If you go back and look at the opening comments from — by the Bork-Biden — when I was questioning him as chairman, I said, “I believe I have the rights that I have not because the government gave it to me, which you believe, but because I’m just a child of God; I exist.”
Needless to say, Robert Bork did not believe that government confers rights. In fact, Biden got this backwards — Bork believed rights descend from natural law and are protected by the Constitution from encroachment by government. It’s Biden and his team that believes that rights are conferred by government, and that government can therefore create and destroy such rights as it sees fit. That is, in fact, their entire justification for defending Roe — that the Supreme Court created that right, and therefore it can never be contradicted even by a subsequent Supreme Court.
As dumb as this argument from Biden was, the argument that the current conservative justices somehow committed perjury during their confirmation hearings is absolutely absurd. Bork thought that he could have an honest and open colloquy with senators determined to demonize him and destroy his chances for confirmation. After seeing how well that worked out, nominees to the Supreme Court and largely also to the appellate courts have adopted the so-called Ginsburg Rule and refuse to get specific on any point.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the first to apply this approach. In her 1993 confirmation hearing, Ginsburg wisely chose not to answer specific questions about hot-button issues, arguing that she would likely have to hear such cases in the future. Edwin Meese pointed out specific examples from her testimony when John Roberts similarly demurred in 2005 and got criticized for it:
Biden warned senators not to ask questions about “how [Ginsburg] will decide any specific case that may come before her.” Ginsburg, then serving on the same court as Judge Roberts does today, followed Biden’s roadmap.
Sen. Leahy asked about the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Ginsburg responded simply: “I prefer not to address a question like that.” Leahy pressed for her interpretation of Supreme Court precedent on the subject, but Ginsburg again demurred: “I would prefer to await a particular case.” Leahy finally backed off: “I understand. Just trying, Judge. Just trying.”
Sen. Strom Thurmond asked whether Ginsburg thought states could “experiment with and provide for diverse educational environments aided by public funding.” Ginsburg refused to give an answer: “Sen. Thurmond, that is the kind of question that a judge cannot answer at-large.” The senator asked a narrower question about the “constitutionality of some form of voucher system.” Ginsburg replied, “Sen. Thurmond, aid to schools is a question that comes up again and again before the Supreme Court. This is the very kind of question that I ruled out.”
Ginsburg refused two senators’ requests to address homosexual rights. “[A]nything I say could be taken as a hint or a forecast on how I would treat a classification that is going to be in question before a court.” In fact, she exercised the Rule to avoid answering any questions relating to sexual orientation: “I cannot say one word on that subject that would not violate what I said had to be my rule about no hints, no forecasts, no previews.”
When pressed on another issue, she refused to discuss her “personal reactions” to a particular Supreme Court case. “I have religiously tried to refrain from commenting on a number of Court decisions that have been raised in these last couple of days.” Indeed.
Ginsburg certainly answered many of the questions asked of her, but nothing of substance to lock her into particular policy positions. The same has been true of every subsequent nominee from presidents of both parties. No one lies in Senate Judiciary confirmation hearings about their approach to hot-button issues, because no nominee ever says anything specific or makes even veiled promises on their future decisions.
That’s even true on the use of stare decisis, the basis on which Democrats are now levying allegations of perjury. Every nominee, whether from Republican or Democratic presidents, promises to respect stare decisis, but no one ever pledges that stare decisis will be the highest value they consider while deciding cases. Nor should they, especially at the Supreme Court, where reversals occasionally do happen. Plessy and Korematsu are the most noted these days, but Roberts himself authored Citizens United, which overturned two previous Supreme Court precedents, and this court overturned others in Janus two years ago. There are other examples, and there will be in the future as well.
Jonathan Turley wrote last week to rebut the allegations of perjury, still worth reading now. Rather than finding perjury in the transcripts, Turley instead found a lot of selective hearing:
The one exception to this pattern of confirmation nonspeak was Barrett. At the time, I wrote that Barrett was refreshingly and surprisingly honest about her judicial philosophy and approach to Roe. She specifically rejected the claim that Roe constitutes “super precedent.” Barrett said that this term “define[s] cases that are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling. And I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates that Roe doesn’t fall in that category.” (Notably, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson took the same position against Roe as super precedent.).
What is most striking about these claims that the justices lied is that most of these critics insisted during their confirmations that they were clearly antagonistic toward Roe. Nothing that they said changed any minds on their judicial philosophy as hostile to the logic of Roe.
Notably, liberal nominees have used the same language about cases like District of Columbia v. Heller, supporting gun rights. They acknowledge that it is a settled precedent but that does not guarantee that they will vote to preserve it. Indeed, they have voted to limit or overturn past cases with which they disagree. No one called for perjury prosecutions or denounced them as liars.”
LikeLike
Of course not, that would be an indictment of one of their own.
“Obstruction of Justice at the Supreme Court
The Biden regime has made it absolutely clear there’ll be no justice in the leak case.”
https://spectator.org/obstruction-of-justice-at-the-supreme-court/
“In the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court discovered a woman’s right to abortion hidden in the unwritten “penumbras” of the Constitution. Prior to this judicial magic trick, abortion had been subject to laws enacted by the people’s elected representatives. At the time Roe was decided, thirty states outright prohibited abortion while a minority allowed it for limited purposes. But Roe effectively struck down all of those laws and, in an exercise of what dissenting Justice Byron White called “raw judicial power,” took the issue of abortion away from the state legislatures.
Having peremptorily overruled the will of the people as expressed through their elected state governments, Roe set off an angry national dispute that has ever since bitterly divided America.
Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization sets forth a scholarly and compelling basis for overturning Roe as well as the later abortion rights case of Casey v. Planned Parenthood. Politico’s publication of a purloined copy of the draft has set off a firestorm of protest by abortion advocates who wrongly and hysterically equate overturning Roe and Casey with banning abortion. To the contrary, here in relevant part is what Alito’s draft actually says:
Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.
It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” [Citation omitted] That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand.
Imagine that. The draft opinion calls for allowing Americans to decide this vital and divisive issue through the legislative process. What a novel and radical concept.
Nevertheless, the abortion industry and its adherents have gone into full meltdown mode. Within hours of Politico’s publication of the draft opinion, agitated protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court building. This required the erection of protective fences around the courthouse.
Then the home addresses of Justices Barrett, Alito, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Chief Justice Roberts were made public. This doxing was promptly followed by angry, shouting pro-choice demonstrators picketing the residences of Justice Kavanaugh and Chief Justice Roberts.
One protester, a 39-year-old female, was quoted as saying “The time for civility is over, man. Being polite doesn’t get you anywhere.” Others chanted “The whole world is watching!”; “We will not go back,” and “My body, my choice.”
The clear purpose of these protests at the Supreme Court building and the Justices’ homes was to influence, intimidate, and discourage the Court from overturning Roe.
And this is where things get interesting.
18 U.S.C. § 1507 provides, in relevant part, the following:
“Whoever … with the intent of influencing any judge … in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge … or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
Similarly, 18 U.S.C. § 1503 provides, in relevant part, the following:
“Whoever … by any threatening … communication, endeavors to influence, intimidate or impede any … officer of any court of the United States … in the discharge of his duty … or by any threatening … communication … endeavors to influence, obstruct or impede, the due administration of justice” shall be fined or subject to “imprisonment for not more than 10 years” or both.
And then, there is 18 U.S.C. § 371 which makes it a crime for two or more persons to conspire to commit any offense against the United States. If such persons conspired to violate § 1503, they face imprisonment for a term up to 5 years. For conspiracy to violate § 1507, they face imprisonment up to 1 year.
Based on what we know so far, it appears that the demonstrators, those who organized the demonstrations, the person(s) who doxed the Justices, the person(s) who provided Alito’s draft opinion to Politico, and the person(s) at Politico who published the opinion face arrest and prosecution under the foregoing statutes. All of them appear to have acted and conspired to influence, intimidate, and impede Justices of the Supreme Court as they adjudicate a case pending before them.
In short, these conspirators appear to have made history by endeavoring to obstruct justice at the highest possible level of the judiciary.”
——–
But Slow Joe and Garland will do nothing, as usual.
LikeLike
David Frum is still a clown….
——–
https://twitter.com/RobertGSilvermn/status/1523313595890679808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1523313595890679808%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fsamj-3930%2F2022%2F05%2F09%2Fdavid-frums-lame-claim-scotus-justices-lied-to-senators-about-roe-beautifully-debunked-by-ted-frank-in-short-receipt-filled-thread%2F
——-
https://twitter.com/YossiGestetner/status/1523285617102057472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1523285617102057472%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fsamj-3930%2F2022%2F05%2F09%2Fdavid-frums-lame-claim-scotus-justices-lied-to-senators-about-roe-beautifully-debunked-by-ted-frank-in-short-receipt-filled-thread%2F
LikeLike
Speaking of clowns…..
Somewhere in China, a Chinese spy is missing her idiot…
——-
https://twitter.com/irtated_bowels/status/1523707130661900289?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1523707130661900289%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fsamj-3930%2F2022%2F05%2F09%2Fthis-is-not-a-drill-eric-swalwell-out-stupids-himself-with-claim-republicans-are-coming-for-your-contraception%2F
LikeLike
And another clown…..
No, except for maybe the Clintons….
——-
——-
https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/1523664968776056832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Gotta love these cultists….
LikeLike
They hate that. 🙂
“Religious conservatives can’t stop winning at the Supreme Court”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/religious-conservatives-cant-stop-winning-at-the-supreme-court/
“But Gorsuch highlights another reason why Lemon won’t go away, at least in places like Boston. The problem with Lemon is that it makes subjectivity easier; in other words, it’s far easier to render subjective judgments in the service of partisan goals than it is to look to the original history and meaning of the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Indeed, Gorsuch notes that some would like to “lump in religious speech with fighting words and obscenity.” Moreover, these same people wish “to celebrate only a ‘particular’ type of diversity consistent with popular ideology.””
—
“Thus, we see these justices pushing back against attempts to take the cultural animosity against religion and turn it into legal discrimination. For a constitution that gives so much attention and protection to religion, this defense is right and necessary. Codifying religious animosity might be a goal, especially for the current political Left. It can legally occur only over the Constitution’s dead (or greatly amended) body. Unfortunately for those who wish to do so, as Gorsuch notes, “the First Amendment is not exactly your friend.”
Religious conservatives have yet another judicial victory to celebrate. And celebrate they should. But they also have work to do, and Justices Alito and Gorsuch have given them sound advice on how to proceed. Religious conservatives should listen and act. Unless, of course, they’re tired of winning.”
LikeLike
Another fraud activist judge doing the Clintons bidding….
“Spygate Judge Tries To Protect Hillary Clinton In Latest Pre-Trial Rulings”
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/09/spygate-judge-tries-to-protect-hillary-clinton-in-latest-pre-trial-rulings/
“The Obama-appointed judge presiding over the criminal case against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann let politics trump the law when he declared in a weekend opinion he would not rule on whether the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee conspired with others to peddle the Russia collusion hoax.
Special Counsel John Durham charged Sussmann last September in a one-count indictment with making a false statement to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker when Sussmann provided Baker data and “whitepapers” purporting to show a secret communication network between Donald Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank. According to the indictment, Sussmann told Baker he was sharing the information on his own, when, in fact, Sussmann represented both tech executive Rodney Joffe and the Clinton campaign.
With trial set to begin in one week, the last month has seen a flurry of pretrial motions—called “motions in limine”—seeking pretrial rulings on the admissibility of evidence. The court previously ruled on several of the issues the parties presented, holding in many cases that a final decision must await trial. Then, late Saturday, presiding Judge Christopher Cooper issued a further opinion resolving many of the still-outstanding evidentiary challenges.
Overall, Cooper’s Saturday night opinion, like his previous rulings in this case, represented a studious and a balanced approach to the legal issues, with Sussmann prevailing at times, but the special counsel succeeding on other issues. For instance, in a victory for Durham, the court ruled that prosecutors could present evidence concerning how the Alfa Bank “data came into being and who was involved in its collection and analysis, as well as how Mr. Sussmann came to possess the data, what he did with it, and why.”
But the court also ruled in Sussmann’s favor, first reiterating its previous holding that unless Sussmann claims at trial that the Alfa Bank data is accurate, the government may not present evidence challenging its validity. Cooper further held that the government could not present evidence that Joffe inappropriately accessed proprietary or sensitive government information to gather the data or write the whitepapers, absent some evidence “showing that Mr. Sussmann had concerns that the data was obtained inappropriately.”
Judge Cooper further demonstrated his baseline when he confronted two more significant issues presented by the opposing parties. Sussmann scored a victory when the court held the government could not admit evidence concerning notes taken by former FBI Assistant Director Bill Priestap and former Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson unless they testified about their previous conversations with Baker. Even then, Judge Cooper indicated that at most the jury would likely only be read the contents of the notes, as opposed to receiving the notes themselves as exhibits to view.
Such a limitation will surely inure to Sussmann’s benefit because seeing in writing Priestap’s notation, “Michael Sussman[n]—Atty: Perkins Coie—said not doing this for any client” and Anderson’s note, “Sussman[n] Mtg w/ Baker,” “No specific client but group of cyber academics talked w/ him abt research,” would likely strike a more solid punch than merely hearing their testimony.
Sussmann, however, failed in his attempt to force the government to provide Joffe immunity so Joffe would be willing to testify in Sussmann’s defense. Sussmann had argued that the government had no reasonable basis to claim that Joffe remained a target of a criminal investigation given that the five-year statute of limitations for false statements had run, and that therefore the special counsel’s threat of prosecution served solely to induce Joffe to plead the fifth and refuse to testify on behalf of Sussmann.
Not only did the court reject this argument, in doing so the court stated—simply and without commentary—that “the Special Counsel’s continued representation that Mr. Joffe is a subject of its investigation, rather than simply a witness, does not amount to prosecutorial misconduct on this record.” Given that Sussmann framed the government’s claim that Joffe remained a target as unbelievable, the court’s refusal to question the special counsel’s representation illustrates Judge Cooper’s baseline apolitical equilibrium.
The Obama appointee faltered, however, on the Clinton campaign and handling the special counsel’s argument that various emails, even if they were hearsay, were admissible under the “co-conspirator statement” exception to the hearsay rule. At issue were emails between Joffe and the Georgia Tech researchers Manos Antonakakis, Dave Dagon, and April Lorenzen, the “originator” of the Alfa Bank data whom Joffe had allegedly tasked to mine internet data to find a Trump-Russia connection.
After concluding some, but not all, of the emails were hearsay, the court addressed the government’s argument that the emails were admissible under federal rules of evidence as “a co-conspirator statement.””
LikeLike
They’re broken. Time to disband and rebuild the FBI, starting with “leadership”….
——–
——–
——-
——-
LikeLike
Just another gaslighting fraud, so she’s perfect for the Biden admin.
——–
——–
Nope.
——-
——-
No, she did not.
LikeLike
Another Biden fraudster….
‘Sounds insurrectiony’
——–
——-
——-
So she’s perfect for the Biden admin…
LikeLike
If they discuss the details, they lose.
And they know it.
“The Devil is in the Details, so Let’s Avoid the Details”
“The pro-abortion party tries to defend the practice by not talking about it.”
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-devil-is-in-the-details-so-lets-avoid-the-details/
“But abortion, even for its proponents, involves very specific ideas about when a human fetus becomes worthy of protection by the state, and the dubious notion of “viability.” It involves distasteful realities that cannot be elided via euphemism. Today’s abortion rights absolutists insist on a right to terminate a developing fetus well past the point of “viability,” and become incensed by any mention of what would be involved in terminating a fetus at 40 weeks.
While abortion remains one of the few issues still framed by progressives as central to the interests of “women” in the old sense, it is also one of the few issues in which race cannot be centralized and the logic of disparate impact cannot be readily employed. The reality that black women get more abortions per capita than anyone else would be widely known if abortion supporters thought it supported their case. But mentioning the prolific number of terminated black pregnancies is not a politically palatable injustice to raise in defending legal abortion.
Fewer black births may not be the intended result of those in favor of upholding Roe, but it was an explicit desire for early American advocates of family planning, including Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg alluded to the eugenic roots of abortion in a 2009 interview, when she remarked that, “at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
As noted in the leaked draft, many of the favorite arguments of pro-abortion activists have grown stale. Single mothers are no longer stigmatized in America in any significant way; about a third of children under 18 live in single-parent households, 75 percent of which are headed by mothers. An astounding 72 percent of black American households are single-parent, so the implied suggestion in the old pro-Roe arguments that single-parenthood is less than optimum is a fraught third rail for abortion advocates, who don’t want to be seen as stigmatizing a way of life that characterizes most black children.
As for employment-related consequences for working mothers, women are protected from employer discrimination based on pregnancy, paid family leave is increasingly common. There are protections for women who wish to give up a child they don’t wish to raise themselves, and adoptions are closely monitored and potential adoptive parents extensively vetted.
Even the reliable slogan, “My Body, My Choice” has lost some of its logical grip, given the recent dedication to vaccine mandates by many of the same activists alarmed by the return of abortion regulation to the states. Indeed, the standby position of the feminist movement, that abortion laws are designed to control women’s bodies, becomes “problematic” for a Democrat party that asserts men can become pregnant, too. California Governor Gavin Newsom forgot this new doctrine when repeating a trope popular among older abortion enthusiasts, “If men could get pregnant, this wouldn’t even be a conversation.” And so the preferred euphemism employed by Democrats for decades when discussing abortion, “women’s health,” is invalidated two ways: abortion is obviously not healthy, and according to the Left’s own standards, it’s not exclusive to women.
But the most problematic aspect of dusting off their old pro-abortion talking points is the lack of a racial angle. The Democrat Party is struggling to portray the opponents of mass abortion in the black community as white supremacists. But complaining that blacks will lose access to a system facilitating the large-scale erasure of their pregnancies does not strike the right note. Worrying that lack of access to abortion in the later trimesters will result in more “unwanted” children (disproportionately black) begs the question of who doesn’t want them. Liberal economist Steven Levitt famously argued that legal abortion led directly to a reduction in the crime rate a generation later; blacks may not be quite as enthused at this clever approach to crime reduction as the Freakonomists.
Many abortion advocates have objected to a potential overturn of the “settled” issue of abortion. But even as blacks continue to experience abortions at a rate that elsewhere might be described by progressives as a disparate impact, the overall abortion rate in the U.S. is falling. The abortion rate increased from 1973, the year of the Roe decision, to 1980, but never reached that level again and is now lower than at any time since Roe. One might infer that the popularity of abortion with the American people is not completely settled.
The vehemence of the arguments in its favor has never been able to conceal the reality that abortion is deeply unpleasant. The Mississippi law referenced in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health prohibits abortion after 15 weeks. It is not a heartbeat law, as heartbeats are discernible much earlier. The 15-week standard comes from the understanding that most abortions after 15 weeks require “dilation and evacuation procedures which involve the use of surgical instruments to crush and tear the unborn child.” It is no surprise that advocates shy from discussing these devilish details.
LikeLike
“The Other Crisis Facing the American Middle Class”
All built by Biden and his policies…
https://amac.us/the-other-crisis-facing-the-american-middle-class/
“With the perilous state of the U.S. economy and looming threat of a recession at some point over the next year, the American Middle Class finds itself in a historically vulnerable financial position. But while the threat of hard economic times is by now obvious, Middle Class Americans are also facing a hidden health crisis that isn’t making headlines.
“Under the radar” is how Casey Mulligan, former Chief Economist for the Council of Economic Advisors under President Trump, described the alarming rise in health issues for Middle Class Americans in an interview with AMAC Newsline. While the media largely ignores the problem, the numbers tell an alarming story.
“People’s health is in bad shape by the standards of, I’d say, three years ago,” he said. According to data that goes through the end of 2021, Mulligan explained, the nation has suffered from “an abnormally high rate of death from motor vehicle accidents, from homicide, from diabetes, heart [disease], stroke—that type of thing—drugs, alcohol. These are all abnormally high.”
Though deaths resulting from these causes have long been problematic, “they’re a lot higher” than they once were and are now disproportionately affecting Middle Class Americans in noticeable ways that are looming “just as large”—if not larger—than any setbacks from inflation. Many of these trends, Mulligan continued, can easily be traced back to Covid-era restrictions and prolonged lockdowns and quarantines. “Typically,” Mulligan explained, Middle Class Americans “aren’t happy” with indeterminate lockdown states, which contribute in no small part to deteriorating qualities of health. A survey by the American Psychological Association, for instance, found that a whopping 42 percent of Americans gained weight since the start of the pandemic, with an average gain of 29 pounds. These forces, Mulligan said, put Middle Class individuals “that much further behind when we get back to normal.”
“There’s a lot of people in America, and they have unique circumstances, and the government—Fauci and those types of people—can’t even begin to comprehend, let alone direct” struggling Americans out of their adverse situations, thus keeping them effectively cemented in “abnormal” and unhealthy lifestyles. “We could have dealt with that pandemic with a more normal lifestyle like Sweden did,” Mulligan noted. “Their Coronavirus deaths are kind of in line with ours, but we don’t see these deaths from all these other causes… Obviously nobody lives forever in any country, but these abnormal deaths” simply haven’t occurred because “Sweden kept life pretty normal.”
“People had to reinvent their lives, and any time you have to reinvent something, the first rendition is not going to be so great. So, the policy would be to avoid [forcing] people to reinvent their lives, and allow them to continue with what worked for them before,” Mulligan said. “And there’s still, in Chicago, in New York—people are not living as normal. Their offices aren’t open, a lot of them—either one or two days a week—it’s still not normal life.”
“A lot of these politicians are actively preventing us from going back to normal,” he continued, referring to Biden’s attempt to prolong mask mandates on airplanes and extend other restrictions. “And I don’t see why we should expect health to get back to normal when everything else isn’t allowed to get back to normal.”
The first step in returning back to any sort of normalcy, Mulligan said, would be a simple acknowledgement from government leaders of the conditions they themselves have created. “They’re clueless. Some of them insisted that—if you go back a year and a half—they insisted that this wasn’t happening.”
By contrast, Mulligan claimed, former President Donald Trump had the right instinct by urging Americans to return to a normal lifestyle as quickly as reasonably possible. Biden, he said, should take a page out of his predecessor’s book and start “making people aware of the sacrifices that we continue to make as long as we are not back to normal.”
Covid-related lockdowns have also led to a handful of significant disparities between red states and blue states, Mulligan observes—particularly when it comes to homicide rates. According to his research, during the pandemic, homicides surged 25 percent in red states and 50 percent in blue states—a trend that continued at least through the end of 2021. The increase in homicides and other crimes resulting from lockdown policies has “affected the Middle Class in ways even more shocking because they’re not used to it,” he said.
Coupled with other pandemic-era setbacks like school closures, Mulligan continued, unnecessarily drawn-out lockdown policies have led to a marked decline in the health and economic wellbeing of Middle Class families.
For someone who has conceitedly referred to himself as “Middle Class Joe” for the duration of his near-half-century in the United States government, one would think that President Biden would be more worried than anyone about the current predicaments of Middle Class Americans. As Mulligan noted, the solutions for solving the problems facing the Middle Class remain readily available, but Biden has thus far failed to reach for them.”
LikeLike
Joe built this.
Enjoy!
“Bidenomics in Action: Gas Prices Reach All-Time High on Monday — Up 20 Cents in One Week and DOUBLE the Price Since 2020 Election”
LikeLike
Here’s an update from yesterday.
Nice. 🙂
And in case you were wondering….
“The Arizona Mirror is a Soros-tied 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that funnels money to Democratic campaigns by positively promoting their ideas while slandering conservative Republican candidates like Blake Masters.”
LikeLike
Just gonna leave this here….
“Walgreens – Unvaxxed are testing positive for Covid-19 at the lowest rate, Triple Vaxxed at the highest”
https://national-conservative.com/walgreens-unvaxxed-are-testing-positive-for-covid-19-at-the-lowest-rate-triple-vaxxed-at-the-highest/
“Walgreens publishes data on their Covid-19 tests. When people take the test, they are asked about vaccination status. In both of the last two updates, the unvaccinated tested positive at the lowest rate. People with three doses tested positive at the highest rate.
Rates of COVID Positivity 4/27 – 5/3
Not Vaccinated – 16.3%
1 Dose – 21.5%
2 Dose > 5m ago – 26.7%
2 Dose 5m ago – 30.1%
3 Dose <= 5m ago – 20.8%"
https://twitter.com/backtolife_2022/status/1522647371783548932?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1522647371783548932%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnational-conservative.com%2Fwalgreens-unvaxxed-are-testing-positive-for-covid-19-at-the-lowest-rate-triple-vaxxed-at-the-highest%2F
—-
Here's Walgreens numbers. This is 1 of 5 pages, arrow them at the bottom of the diagram to view them all.
https://www.walgreens.com/businesssolutions/covid-19-index.jsp
LikeLike
Sorry kids, you’re just collateral damage in Dem’s war for control of the population…
——–
LikeLike
———-
LikeLike
The stupid…. it hurts….
——–
LikeLike
—–
LikeLike
Just another Dem calling for violence….
Rhetorically, I’m sure….. 🙄
———
LikeLike
Just a reminder…..
Then….
Now….
Enjoy!
LikeLike
Now to be fair, they all suck.
LikeLike
Good news.
———-
LikeLike
Do you understand they committed a crime you hack?
——-
“Some US States have specific legislation against it like New York; PEN § 240.70 Criminal interference with health care services or religious worship in the second degree
1. A person is guilty of criminal interference with health services or religious worship in the second degree when:
(c) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, he or she intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with, or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with, another person because such person was or is seeking to exercise the right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”
——
The same law (FACE Act) that protects abortion providers protects churches you idiots.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/248
“(a)Prohibited Activities.—Whoever—
(1)by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services;
(2)by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship; or
(3)intentionally damages or destroys the property of a facility, or attempts to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship,
shall be subject to the penalties provided in subsection (b) and the civil remedies provided in subsection (c), except that a parent or legal guardian of a minor shall not be subject to any penalties or civil remedies under this section for such activities insofar as they are directed exclusively at that minor.”
——
Where’s Garland?
“(2)Action by attorney general of the united states.—
(
A)In general.—
If the Attorney General of the United States has reasonable cause to believe that any person or group of persons is being, has been, or may be injured by conduct constituting a violation of this section, the Attorney General may commence a civil action in any appropriate United States District Court.
(B)Relief.—In any action under subparagraph (A), the court may award appropriate relief, including temporary, preliminary or permanent injunctive relief, and compensatory damages to persons aggrieved as described in paragraph (1)(B). The court, to vindicate the public interest, may also assess a civil penalty against each respondent—
(i)in an amount not exceeding $10,000 for a nonviolent physical obstruction and $15,000 for other first violations; and
(ii)in an amount not exceeding $15,000 for a nonviolent physical obstruction and $25,000 for any other subsequent violation.”
LikeLike