Temlakos

Only a cynic can explain this By Terry A. Hurlbut “Resident” Joe Biden has decided to stay in the race, though even he knows he performed disastrously in The Debate. Or rather, his family – his venal and power-hungry family – has decided for him. Only a cynic can explain their conduct – for a cynic knows what most on the left want you to forget. Which is that every person on Earth acts in his or her self-interest. They might try to hide it, but a close-enough examination of their drive reveals the self-interested motive. Every other analysis of this appalling situation is pretense, and pretentious. The only way those making that decision can keep an ounce of respect from anyone, is to drop all pretense. How the Cynic school got its name Our English word cynic comes from the Cynic School of Greek philosophers, which Antisthenes, contemporary with Plato, founded. (His name, incidentally, translates as “a replacement for vigor.”) Antisthenes taught at a gymnasium (literally, place of physical training, or place of nudity) called the Kynosarges – a name meaning “dog flesh.” How the Dog Flesh Gym got its name, no one knows. But decades after Antisthenes came Diogenes of Sinope, who declared that anything natural and easy should be allowed. In other words, Diogenes did not care where he did what he did. His fellow Greeks called him ho kyōn (Ho KOO-own) – The Dog. Thus, Cynic came to mean “one who lives like a dog and doesn’t care who sees it or how they see it.” But more important than Diogenes’ in-your-face lifestyle was his declaration that no one is ever completely honest. His “search for the one true honest man” is proverbial. Diogenes laid it on the line: everyone acts in his own self-interest. Centuries later, Robert J. Ringer would articulate Cynicism as no one else did before or has done since. In Winning Through Intimidation (1977) he described “Screw U.”, the School of Experience. He also described “Three Unforgettable Professors,” each of whom exemplified three types of people he met in “the business world.” Three years later, in Looking Out for Number One, he expanded on that thesis. Those Three Types are in fact Three Types of people you meet in all of life. To quote: Type Number One understands, and lets you know up-front, that he acts in his own self-interest. Type Number Two also understands that he acts in his own self-interest, but tries to make you believe otherwise. Type Number Three either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand that he acts in his own self-interest. His blandishments, which happen to be sincere, will then put you off guard. In short: Type Number One tries to deceive no one; Type Number Two tries to deceive you, and Type Number Three deceives himself first and tries to deceive you second. Is everyone, then, a cynic at heart? No. Type Number Three is not a cynic; he is simply naive. Type Number Two is the worst kind of cynic, because he pretends to be your friend. Type Number One won’t pretend – so you know where you stand with him at all times. Ringer, in Winning, announced he had found, in Type Number One, Diogenes’ truly honest man: Not only is Type Number One not crooked, but he is the most honest (by my own standard: “straightforwardness”) of the three types of people you meet in the business world. Or in other areas of life. Type Number Two – there is the crook. He is the virtue signaler, and that’s part of his act. Type Number Three signals virtue also, but in one way he is more dangerous – he means what he says. (At least until Decision Time.) Self-interest manifests in two goals: money and power. Capitalism harnesses the money self-interest, by setting up a system of honest trade. Thereafter, “those who stand to gain from your earning and receiving income” won’t stop you, and might even support you. Those who do not so stand to gain, will oppose you, openly (Type Number One) or secretly (Type Number Two/Three). The power interest is the most dangerous. George Washington was right: Government is a fearsome servant and a dangerous master. Power comes with trappings and privilege, and that might be enough for some people. But power is also a means by which either to: 1. Steal large sums for oneself, or 2. Revenge oneself against the world, certain types of people in it, or even specific enemies, real or imagined. A cynic is a dog barking at society, warning against power seekers and thieves. Arf, arf. Or increasingly: Gr-r-r-r! Explaining the decision to keep Biden in the race Once again, everyone in this drama has a self-interest to serve. Yesterday, the Biden family convened at Camp David, the official publicly owned Presidential retreat, to talk about The Campaign. Everyone at that confab knew that Biden had hurt himself badly. The only question for the family was: could he recover from that? But that’s not the question any of them asked. Someone – probably a member of Camp David staff – has tattled on that conversation already. This source told The New York Times that Hunter Biden raised the loudest voice: “Daddy, please run!” First Lady Jill Biden echoed that refrain – and then told her husband that his poor performance was not his fault. She lays the blame on his advisers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI1-goBEVcQ A top donor to the campaign shares that last sentiment – blaming the advisers and preparing to fire them all. https://x.com/JohnMorganESQ/status/1807453402282004543 Other prominent Democrats do not share the family’s attitude. CBS News’ latest poll of the rank-and-file shows their fear. Democrat voters, citing Biden’s age, want a younger man to carry their standard. (Age is never a factor if a President can perform. The problem for Biden is that he can’t perform.) Among the leadership, dissension is growing in the top rank. Tucker Carlson reported early Monday morning that Barack Obama wants “an open convention.” https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1807682297862172999 Only if Biden releases his delegates will that happen. But another influencer, replying to the above, left two posts explaining something else: Obama is running the country. https://x.com/3Sandy7_/status/1807685260530102342 https://x.com/3Sandy7_/status/1807684488295850415 Numbers behind the discontent Laura Loomer, over the weekend, shared several posts showing the attitudes of various Democrats at different times. Here are some posts and reposts: https://x.com/ajc/status/1807151882785444184 https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1807188005611831549 https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1807257771953266773 https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1807400905014231430 https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1807660203220836468 https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1807581829303579057 William Stevenson, Jill’s ex, gave an interview to The New York Post over the weekend, according to Fox News. He told the Post that he doesn’t recognize his ex-wife anymore, that she’s a completely different person. The Jill Stevenson Biden of today is a driven woman – driven by ambition. It’s as if she “wants to be … President now,” Stevenson said. He also said Jill let Joe Biden steal her away from him, beginning in 1972. The Post covered that four years ago. Still, Stevenson supported Democratic candidates and causes – until 2020. Now he supports Trump all the way. For all the considerations of Biden’s failing health, the family announced yesterday morning that he was staying in the race. Yesterday afternoon the Democratic National Committee decided to stand by Biden. They now want to nominate Biden on July 21 – in the Credentials Committee. https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1807865101095166119 That could solve some ballot access problems – but not the basic health problem. Big-money donor Bill Ackman – famous for refusing to hire anyone from Harvard who signed onto a letter blaming Israel for the atrocities its people suffered on October 7, 2023 – observed that the Democratic Party is now destroying itself. https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1807867087173374072 Analysis Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence! Robert Browning, from Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister Ask any cynic: everyone acts in his own self-interest. Barack Obama’s interest is power, and so is Jill Biden’s interest. But Barack Obama knows that, if Joe Biden stays in the race, he (Obama) will lose his power. Jill Biden knows that, if Joe drops out of the race, she loses power – perhaps immediately. Dare she breathe the phrase lame duck? And Hunter knows that, once his father is out of office, he goes to prison. The Democrats know they’re stuck with Biden; it’s too late to put another name onto the ballot. It was all very well for New Jersey Democrats, in 2002, to replace Robert G. Torricelli after the ballot deadline with Frank Lautenberg after Torricelli got into a scandal he couldn’t spin away. But New Jersey was and still is Democrat country, and Democrats controlled the Secretaryship of State and Division of Elections. This year the Democrats have to deal with Republican State Departments of State and Divisions of Elections. Riff Raff Raffensperger might agree to that double switch, but not any other Republican Secretary of State. Or at least not every other Republican Secretary of State. So the Democrats are going to nominate Biden early, in the Credentials Committee. Barack Obama must be doing a slow burn. Biden should release his delegates and open the convention. But he won’t, because his wife, and his own bitterness, say not to. That combination of venom and ambition might kill him – if someone else doesn’t. (And we know who.) Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/07/02/news/cynic-only-explain/ Video: Jill blaming Joe’s advisers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI1-goBEVcQ John Morgan saying the Bidens ought to fire everybody: https://x.com/JohnMorganESQ/status/1807453402282004543 Tucker Carlson’s scoop: https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1807682297862172999 Two replies: https://x.com/3Sandy7_/status/1807685260530102342 https://x.com/3Sandy7_/status/1807684488295850415 Biden, step aside! – Atlanta Journal-Constitution https://x.com/ajc/status/1807151882785444184 Laura Loomer’s posts: https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1807188005611831549 https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1807257771953266773 https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1807400905014231430 https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1807660203220836468 https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1807581829303579057 Collin Rugg: DNC plans to summon the Credentials Committee: https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1807865101095166119 Bill Ackman: the Democrats are destroying themselves: https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1807867087173374072 Robert Browning, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister: https://poetryconnection.net/poets/robert-browning/soliloquy-of-the-spanish-cloister/ Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Presidential immunity exists – SCOTUS By Terry A. Hurlbut Today the Supreme Court wrapped up the 2023 Term by deciding, definitively, the question of Presidential immunity. They held that that Presidential immunity does exist for certain things a President does while holding office. Those acts touching on a President’s core Constitutional and (as authorized) statutory powers, are absolutely immune from prosecution. Acts within the “outer perimeter” of a President’s authority are presumptively immune. As common sense dictates, not all acts are official, and Presidents do not enjoy immunity for their unofficial acts. This case already is causing howls of anguish, but none as strident as the two dissenting opinions. Happily, the Court has a majority of Justices who understand what the Constitution and law are and ought to be. How the Presidential immunity question arises The very reason the Court had to consider Presidential immunity is that Special Counsel Jack Smith saw fit to prosecute President Donald J. Trump for certain things he did toward the end of his term in office. (United States v. Trump, before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan presiding.) Smith obtained an indictment from a D.C. grand jury, alleging a “conspiracy” to “overturn” the Election of 2020. The Supreme Court took due cognizance of the indictment and its specifications, which were that Trump and/or his associates: 1. Tried to persuade certain States to change election results, based on allegations of election fraud Trump allegedly knew were false, 2. Organized the appointment of alternative slates of electors in the States involved, which slates the indictment called fraudulent, 3. Tried to have the Justice Department investigate those State Presidential elections for fraud, 4. Tried to have then-Vice-President Pence disallow the election certification and send seven lists of electoral votes back to their States, and finally 5. Raised a group of supporters to come to Washington on January 6, 2021, a significant number of whom then breached the Capitol. Trump moved to quash the indictment, asserting Presidential immunity. Judge Chutkan denied the motion, and a D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel voted 3-0 to affirm that denial. So Trump’s team asked the Supreme Court to review the question of Presidential immunity. The Court granted that petition, and effectively stayed all proceedings pending that review. Argument On April 25, the last Argument Day, the Court heard argument on the case. Trump’s lawyer probably could have argued the inherent power of any executive to enjoy immunity from prosecution for his acts. Instead he cited the Executive Vesting Clause (Article II Section 1 Clause 1) and multiple precedents. Key to understanding the opinion, Trump’s counsel conceded that some Presidential acts were private to him as a person. Such acts, he conceded, would not enjoy Presidential immunity. The opinion The opinion the Court released today conformed to every reasonable prediction of the Court’s ruling, after the argument session. As anyone would expect, the Originalists sided with Trump, and the Liberals with Smith. The Moderates also sided with Trump – with one exception Justice Amy Coney Barrett would have made. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the Opinion of the Court. Justices Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas – the Originalists – all joined it in full. So did Moderate Justice Brett Kavanaugh – and again, Justice Barrett joined the opinion in part. All opinions come with case-specific orders – and in this case the Court: • Vacated the D.C. Circuit panel’s affirmation of Judge Chutkan’s denial of the motion-to-dismiss, and • Remanded the case to that Court of Appeals for “further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” Justice Thomas wrote a concurrence that called the very appointment of Jack Smith into question. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a scathing – and off-the-rails – dissent in which Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan joined. In addition, Justice Jackson wrote a dissent of her own. Carefully delineating Presidential immunity Chief Justice Roberts never once treated the questions of Trump’s mens rea (state of mind) on his last Presidential days. Neither did he pass judgment on anyone’s Election of 2020 claims. That’s because the Supreme Court is not a trier of fact. That’s why Roberts also left careful and extensive instructions for the District Court to develop a more complete factual record. Everyone has agreed that Presidents enjoy immunity from civil suit for monetary or other damages. Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 731, 750. This case involves criminal prosecution, and is the first such case on historical record. A President does what he does under the authority of statute, Constitution, or both. Furthermore, Constitutional authority is considered conclusive and preclusive. Therefore, says Roberts, neither Congress nor the courts may examine a President’s conduct under Constitutional authority. (If Congress does want to examine a President’s conduct in this area, Congress has the means: impeachment.) When a President acts under statutory authority, then he shares that authority with Congress. Under those circumstances, a court might examine some of his actions, in addition to the Congressional impeachment power. But a President is entitled to presumptive immunity for such acts. The prosecution then has the burden of proof that the acts were of a kind Congress never authorized. Furthermore: Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial. But a President’s private acts are subject to examination and prosecution. Thus when Bill Clinton asserted “temporary immunity” from a lawsuit by Paula Jones, the Supreme Court rejected that notion. About that indictment Roberts turned to the indictment and found every reason to vacate the blanked judgment of the D.C. Circuit. Then he went over the indictment, point by point, to decide which of those points could even stand. Point 3 falls immediately. Presidents have the authority to decide which crimes to investigate, and to decide on Justice Department leadership. He may fire an Attorney General, with the understanding that his replacement must pass Senate muster. Conclusion: a President enjoys absolute Presidential immunity from prosecution for the acts under Point 3 above. (Point 2 might be a private act, but so far not every prosecution over so-called “fake electors” has succeeded significantly.) Point 4 involves a Vice-Presidential duty under Article I, not II. This point falls in the “outer perimeter,” so Roberts instructed the District Court to inquire whether a prosecution under this point “would pose any dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” Points 1 and 2 might be official or unofficial. Roberts concluded that the Court did not have enough facts before it to determine that. Developing a factual record to answer those questions became another instruction on remand. Point 5 covered Trump’s invitation to his Twitter (now X) followers to come to Washington, and his speech to the crowd. Here Roberts charged that the indictment selected certain X posts and speech excerpts out of context. So he instructed the District Court on remand to provide, and examine, that context. Authority of the Special Counsel’s office Justice Thomas, in concurrence, sees a worse problem. He questions the very existence of the Special Counsel’s office, because he finds no statutory authorization for it. In Thomas’ view, no specific law creates an Office of Special Counsel. Unless and until the Justice Department can show which statute creates the office, Jack Smith is a private citizen. As such he has no authority. Such statutes have existed in the past. Congress wrote the first such statute after the Teapot Dome scandal broke. But all such statutes have lapsed. Nevertheless, Attorney General Merrick Garland created a Special Counsel’s office under highly dubious authority. Worse, he appointed Jack Smith to head that office without any input from the Senate. • Under the Constitution (Article II Section 2), Congress must by law: • Establish any office other than a few the Constitution names, and • Specifically vest the appointment of inferior officers of any kind, in: ◦ the President alone, ◦ the law courts, or ◦ heads of departments. Congress has done none of these things in Jack Smith’s case. Therefore Merrick Garland acted illegally, or at least extralegally. In fact, three prominent legal theorists briefed the Court on this very issue. They did so when Jack Smith sought (and lost) a writ of review before judgment. They did not re-brief the Court in the present case, but Justice Thomas did not let that matter rest. Concurrence and dissents on Presidential immunity Justice Barrett concurred in part and dissented in part. The Opinion of the Court says that the private notes and testimony of a President or his advisers would be inadmissible in evidence. Roberts ruled that way to protect those private notes and recollections as part of Presidential privilege. Amy Coney Barrett disagrees. Concerned as she is with institutional and especially judicial integrity and prerogative, Barrett wants that evidence admitted. In fact she appears to want motive to come into any evaluation of a President’s conduct. Of course, she cannot prevail on that point. Four Justices joined the Chief Justice’ opinion in full – and that makes for five votes. Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson both dissent here. They hold that a President rates no immunity for his acts. Their treatment of the indictment is the key to their writings. While Roberts properly refuses to rule on the guilt or innocence of Trump as President, Sotomayor and Jackson assume guilt. It never occurs to them that a President more to their liking might face the same treatment. (The only reason no Democrat has come in for such treatment, is that Republicans are polite to a fault and won’t begin such a campaign.) The Court saved the Republic! More to the point, the dissenters don’t realize that The Supreme Court has just saved the Republic. Recall again the dilemma that faced the great Julius Caesar. In 49 B.C., junior consul Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus introduced an emergency resolution against the intercessory powers of Tribunes of the Plebs. Mark Antony shouted, “I forbid that!” (In literal Latin, Veto!) Lentulus Crus ordered the sergeants-at-arms – the lictors – to eject Antony and another angry tribune from the Senate meeting hall. Antony led his friend to the Well of the Comitia, and made an angry speech protesting the ejection. The two then left Rome – but sent a fast horseman to take a message to Caesar, waiting just across the Rubicon. That is when Caesar crossed the Rubicon. He crossed the Rubicon because the Senate of Rome clearly were setting up a prosecution of him. Today the Supreme Court removed any excuse for a President to “cross the Potomac.” With Presidential immunity extending after he has left office, he has no legitimate reason so to act. Other cases besides Presidential immunity The Supreme Court released two more opinions, including one in two consolidated cases involving States’ efforts to require social-media moderators to act more like Constitutional judges. In essence, Florida and Texas are trying to write Fifth and Sixth Amendments for social-media users. A company called NetChoice challenged both laws – on their face. Two District Courts entered preliminary injunctions against the Florida and Texas laws. Their respective attorneys general appealed. While the Eleventh Circuit sustained the Florida injunction, the Fifth Circuit reversed the Texas injunction. The Court – unanimously – vacated both Appeals Court judgments and remanded their respective cases. In doing so the Court criticized both Appeals Courts for failing to evaluate their cases for what they were: facial challenges to the respective State laws. A facial challenge is a challenge to the entire law, not merely its applicability in one set of circumstances. Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton. Separately the Court held that the clock doesn’t start ticking on the six-year statute of limitations for suing a regulatory agency until final agency action against a particular plaintiff. Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. The vote on that was 6-3, and again the Moderates gave that victory to the Originalists. Amy Coney Barrett wrote that opinion. The Liberals raised a curious lament: this is yet another wing-clipping of the Administrative State. This case shows that the Moderates do not like quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial executive agencies that usurp legislative and judicial powers. Summary This case shows one line of deep division of the Court. Clearly members of the Liberal Bloc now suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. This bias prompted the Chief Justice to remind them, in his Opinion, that the Court must treat what might happen to all Presidents. Making law to cover one person, however egregious might be his alleged offenses, is worse than bad law. It is unconstitutional – on its face. No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed. Article I Section 9 Clause 3 In that spirit, no one can criticize Chief Justice Roberts with any justice for the opinion the Court released today. Clarence Thomas raised a more serious objection. Jack Smith shouldn’t be in business. As far as Thomas is concerned, Smith’s office is unlawful and his appointment is still less lawful. Again, Thomas brought up a question Biden’s media allies would just as soon forget. Namely that Merrick Garland took it upon himself to create Office of Special Counsel, and to appoint Smith. Ironically this means that only the Florida Documents Case against Trump remains at all viable. The problem for Jack Smith is that Judge Aileen M. Cannon has different judicial temperament from Judge Tanya S. Chutkan. She is also made of sterner stuff than Smith or his team bargained for. All of which means that Trump will remain free – and likely win reelection. Then he can continue to improve the national judiciary, one appointment at a time, from the Supreme Court down. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/07/01/news/presidential-immunity-exists-scotus/ The opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf The other two opinions: NetChoice: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-277_d18f.pdf Corner Post: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-1008_1b82.pdf Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Theocracy – is James Carville serious? By Terry A. Hurlbut James Carville, adviser to two Democratic Presidents, was always more partisan than most leftists. This month he has shown himself more vindictive – and maybe more paranoid in his ideas – than Biden. That’s a tall order, because Biden has governed as a bitter, vindictive old man from his first day. But now James Carville says that if his favorite candidates lose, America becomes a theocracy. Either he is not serious – that is, employing deliberate hyperbole – or his soul has entered a very dark place. What did Carville say about theocracy? Louisiana’s new law mandating a large and easily legible display of the Ten Commandments in every government-funded classroom, from kindergarten all the way through university, seems to have pushed him over the edge. The Daily Caller shared video of him, wearing a Louisiana State University semi-turtleneck, holding forth about theocracy in America. In addition to the Ten Commandments controversy, he worries about the precarious health of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/1805336642703573239 In a separate article The Daily Caller provided a partial transcript. Here is the full transcript: I can assure you, if Trump wins and he names a replacement for Sotomayor, it’s game, set, match. There’s no more Constitution, there’s no more religious freedom. We’re now going to officially move into a theocracy. And so, I hear young people say, “Well I don’t feel like I have a stake in this.” Well. you got a h*** of a stake coming up. So let’s everybody remember what’s really really at stake here. What this is really really about. And it’s about imposing a theocracy on other people and the fools and tools that are being used for this opening salvo, this Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor, whatever you want to call it, is in Louisiana and they’re being exploited by people who really have, which I think is an odious and insidious agenda for the United States of America. So let’s fight this thing like our country depended on it because it does. Let’s remember the words of Roger Williams, and let’s team up and have George Washington in our huddle. James Carville should mind whose names he is invoking. Roger Williams did flee to the place that became the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He did so to get away from the Puritans who ran the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Most notably, he founded America’s first Baptist Church in the colony he founded. Baptists are famous for separating church and state – but that means only that the government ought not actually run the church, appoint bishops, etc. (In fact, Baptists recognize no such office as “bishop,” but only pastors and deacons.) But James Carville makes Roger Williams sound like an atheist! And George Washington? Carville has evidently forgotten how Washington prayed earnestly at Valley Forge for ultimate victory. Neither man would want anything to do with the modern Democratic Party or the secular humanist state they plan. Typical Carville of today? This is only the latest appalling and sick “Carville-ism.” On June 6 – the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord (“D-Day”), Carville encouraged news organs to abandon objectivity in reporting. https://rumble.com/v4zxhdk-fck-your-objectivity-james-carville-calls-on-media-to-ramp-up-slanted-cover.html?mref=4teej&mc=88ce6 Now you have Joe Kahn, the new editor or publisher, whatever he is at The New York Times, saying, “We’re just going to cover this down the middle. We’re going to cover what it is.” I don’t think that’s the role of the news media at a time when the entire Constitution is in peril. I don’t have anything against slanted coverage. I really don’t … I would have something against it at most other times in American history, but not right now. [Forget] your objectivity. The real objectivity in this country right now is we’re either going to have a Constitution or we’re not. And everything else, from Hunter Biden’s gun application to Judge Merchan’s, I don’t know, $35 contribution to all of the [useless drivel] that the professional center feels like they got to put out. I can’t tell you that these are bad people. They’re extremely naive people who have no idea what’s at stake in this election. So I think we need slanted coverage, more slanted coverage and I think we got to recognize the threat that this guy and the MAGA, not just him, the entire MAGA movement, from Alito and Trump on down is a serious, clear and present danger to the existence of the Constitution in the United States. And I mean that. Shades of Saul Alinsky – or else galloping paranoid ideation. One would expect his wife, Mary Matalin, to smooth over his rough edges – but he seems incapable of listening to her now. But more recently he has told the country what he means – except maybe he doesn’t know what theocracy means. Theocracy means “rule by God,” and that will not happen until Christ returns to Earth. Nor do more than a literal handful of people want a “Church of America”; that wouldn’t even remain stable. Nor can we guarantee that replacing even the rudest, most contentious member of the Liberal Bloc will change the Court. Expanding the Moderate Bloc from three members to four would place them firmly in control. Replacing Sotomayor with another Originalist might work better – but would be far from Carville’s “game, set, match.” The Court would, instead of 6-3 decisions either way, produce 7-2 Originalist or 5-4 Liberal decisions most of the time. Only if Trump manages to replace two Liberals could he cement a permanent Originalist majority. Justice Sotomayor is indeed in poor health, but Justice Elena Kagan is in better health. And Ketanji Brown Jackson only recently joined. The only way she is getting off the bench any time soon is on impeachment for, and conviction of, infidelity to the Constitution. What does he mean by theocracy? As mentioned, theocracy strictly means “rule by God.” Christian prophecy, still outstanding, states that this will come eventually (and perhaps very soon, but that’s for another day). Carville probably is defining theocracy in the more common sense: rule according to religious precept. Because Carville cited the Ten Commandments (and Louisiana’s law), these become the best reference point. You shall have no other gods before Me. Exodus 20:3 (all citations from NASB) Carville might answer that he wants no gods at all. One can only infer his political positions, because he has never stated them for the record. Nevertheless one may easily infer his atheism, secular humanism, or Earth-worshiping environmentalism, from his historical client list. In any case, everyone has a god, even if it’s merely self, or “all of humanity,” or the Earth herself. Where exactly he comes down, is difficult to say. “Progressive” policy (see We’re Right, They’re Wrong: a Handbook for Spirited Progressives, 1996) encompasses all these things. (Yes, even self, as in “pleasures and desires of the moment.” Regarding the net worth of oneself or others, that touches on covetousness, a persistent Progressive ailment.) What does God ask of one believing in Him, except fair treatment of fellow humans, and stewardship of the Earth? What could be wrong with that? Those who oppose theocracy won’t say. Actually God asks one other thing: that we not place mere human knowledge above Him. But as CNAV recently noted, we do that all the time, by elevating modern medicine to Divine status. Concerning idolatry and false swearing You shall not make for yourself [any] idol, [nor] worship them or serve them. Exodus 20:4-5, partial paraphrase Modern American society has idolatry as its middle name. America creates idols all the time, and it’s unhealthy. These are typically movie, TV, and popular music stars. (Classical music does not lend itself to idolatry. Even Van Cliburn, the great classical pianist, didn’t have a fawning entourage to rival that of Taylor Swift.) The anti-theocrats, for their part, want to substitute their idols for the ones now strutting and preening and bragging. Christians – and observant Jews – want to abolish idolatry. You shall not take the Name of the LORD your God in vain. Exodus 20:7 James Carville earned the nickname Ragin’ Cajun by his foul mouth and his Louisiana background. (Though whether he actually descends from the Acadians whom the British transported from Nova Scotia in 1755 is not established.) In any event, the Third Commandment is as much a prohibition against perjury as against profanity. (That’s why the rest of that verse speaks of God not acquitting someone who swears falsely in His Name.) How could anyone object to that prohibition? Concerning the Sabbath Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male slave or your female slave, or your cattle, or your [roomer, boarder, or lodger] who stays with you. Exodus 20:8-10 The Sabbath involves two very salient issues: 1. Regular rest from one’s labors, and 2. The origin of the universe, the Earth, and life. During the French Revolution, Joseph Lagrange’s Revolutionary Committee on Weights and Measures redesigned the calendar, along with much else. Relevant to this discussion, the Republican Calendar sported three ten-day intervals per month – ten days, not seven. (Lagrange rounded out the year with five specially named days – six during leap years – before the Autumnal Equinox.) That calendar didn’t last, because human beings could not adjust well to a ten-day work-rest cycle. Seven days – God’s favorite number – provide the best such cycle. Accordingly, Emperor Napoleon I reinstated the Gregorian Calendar shortly after taking his crown. The Paris Commune would experiment with the Republican Calendar toward the end of the nineteenth century. All such experiments ended with the Paris Commune. But God explained to Moses the real reason for the seven-day interval: For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; for that reason the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Exodus 20:11 That goes to James Carville’s real grievance against what he calls theocracy – in addition to having to mind his language. More than any other passage, this tells us that God exists, and created everything. Thomas Jefferson, “deist” that he was, admitted – in the Declaration of Independence – that humans had a Creator. Perhaps in Carville’s mind, the alternative to theocracy would be sanitizing the Declaration to remove all references to “nature’s God,” “their Creator,” “the Supreme Judge of the world,” and “Divine Providence.” But he might want to consider an increasing body of hard evidence for creation, like these three examples. Concerning parents – and murder Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be prolonged on the land which the Lord your God gives you. Exodus 20:12 The land reference was to ancient Israel – but, given the Mayflower Compact, it could also apply to these United States. In God’s scheme, parents deserve honor – and have certain responsibilities, and with them, authority. Maybe that’s another Progressive problem with God – that He forbids them to substitute the government for the parents, diminish their authority, keep secrets from them – and cause their children to mutilate their bodies and poison themselves with hormones in order to satisfy the Depopulation Agenda. (That’s another thing that God forbids; he tells us to “be fruitful and multiply.” You shall not [commit] murder. Exodus 20:13 A prohibition against murder is basic to any civilized society. Western society abolished duelling at about the time it abolished slavery, and on much the same grounds. But to a Progressive, a murderer is an irregular population thinner. That goes double with abortion. Unfortunately, some Justices of the Supreme Court concern themselves more with maintaining existing institutions than with judging them as to whether they endorse or otherwise encourage murder, in this case, abortion. Let us anticipate James Carville’s objection: “I don’t need a theocracy to tell me murder is wrong!” Why not? How can anyone know, apart from instruction from God, that murder is inherently evil? At best, laws against murder in a Godless society become a mutual nonaggression pact. At worst, no one writes those laws, and murder becomes just another hazard of human company. (To say nothing of the murders of political opponents, inconvenient witnesses, and righteous judges, all in the name of expediency.) Concerning adultery, larceny, and perjury – theocracy backs criminal law You shall not commit adultery. Exodus 20:14 The United States has never executed anyone for adultery – although the witchcraft tribunals in Salem and other Massachusetts cities came close, during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell in England. But until the twentieth century, adultery had legal and other consequences. Typically these included divorce, and forfeiture of assets to the “cheated-on” spouse, usually the wife. James Carville is still married to his once-conservative, now libertarian, wife Mary Matalin. As old as he is, people might not expect him to cheat. But no one, especially no man, is ever too old to cheat. Furthermore, the removal of consequences for cheating – adultery – has brought more of it, with consequent harms. Harms to the cheated-on spouse, and harms to the children, if any. Just because Carville doesn’t appreciate them, doesn’t negate them. You shall not steal. Exodus 20:15 Oh, yeah. A thief is an irregular wealth-redistribution agent. Easy question. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. Exodus 20:16 Same thing. Half the Democratic platform since 2020 has been about giving false testimony against Donald J. Trump and all his supporters. The other half has been about fraud, through misinformation – of which they accuse others, another kind of direct false testimony. Furthermore, when James Carville calls for slanted news, he calls for more false testimony against half the country (or more). (And when he calls for more unrighteous judges, like Sonia Sotomayor, now he sacrifices judgment to expediency.) Concerning covetousness – and summing up You shall not covet. Exodus 20:17 Entitlement programs are all about covetousness. “Why should we starve when such-a-one has supplies to last a week?” a Democratic activist, especially a Squad member, asks. If “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil,” covetousness is the root of all kinds of crime. These include all the crimes against fellow human beings mentioned thus far – murder, adultery, larceny, and perjury. Again, we do need what James Carville calls theocracy to tell us that covetousness is wrong. Otherwise, there never is a law against it, only against acting on it. But eventually one does act on a sinful thought – which is the entire point of taming one’s thoughts. As Jesus Christ said several times on the Mount of the Beatitudes. Suddenly theocracy – by Carville’s crude definition – doesn’t sound so unattractive. In fact, compared to it, human institutions are sorely lacking. “Resident” Joe Biden in America, and other leftist “leaders” abroad, have brought humanity to the dead end of Godless living. A return to theocracy, if that’s what one wants to call obeying Divine precept, is just what the Doctor, and Chief Architect, ordered. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/30/foundation/constitution/theocracy-james-carville-serious/ Video: James Carville fears theocracy: https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/1805336642703573239 Video: James Carville urges slanted news: https://rumble.com/v4zxhdk-fck-your-objectivity-james-carville-calls-on-media-to-ramp-up-slanted-cover.html?mref=4teej&mc=88ce6 Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Debate, disaster, and dilemma By Terry A. Hurlbut On Thursday (June 27), the Democrats played out their Big Gamble – and lost. “Resident” Joe Biden shuffled onto a stage for his much-promoted debate with the real President, Donald J. Trump. He had the rules stacked in his favor, including muting Trump’s microphone so he couldn’t interrupt. But because CNN insisted on offering a live stream to their legacy media buddies, they couldn’t delay the feed. Result: as time wore on, Biden faded quickly. By the end of the evening, he had all his legacy-media pundit friends suggesting he should bow out. That alone is a disaster from which their Party might never recover, and certainly won’t recover in time. Worse, it leaves them with a dilemma they might never solve. How the debate went His mere taking of the debate stage set the wrong tone. A candidate for President should stride onto the stage, head high, eyes front, ready to take on the world. (Which Presidents of the United States normally do all the time.) And his is a purposeful stride, the stride of a man who has places to go and things to do. Trump delivered that stride; Biden did not. He always shuffles, and he shuffled this time. The only thing he didn’t do was fall down. Someone must have taught Donald Trump the patience of Job, because as the split-screen footage shows, Trump simply stood where he was, taking his adversary’s measure, and biding his time while Biden tried to speak. Yes, tried to speak. His voice came out raspier than that of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He didn’t quite lapse into his trademark word salad, but he came painfully close several times. Several times he seemed to forget his talking points. At one point Trump made this statement that said it all: I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either. https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1806500027835240489 But the not-so-grand finale was the worst. His wife Jill, and a male employee, literally helped him down three steps at the foot of the stage. And they did it in front of millions of people. Afterward, the Democrats put out this Lord Haw-Haw-ism: https://x.com/TheDemocrats/status/1806521190086742516 Except, as Erick-Woods Erickson pointed out, the picture was from 2021. https://x.com/EWErickson/status/1806523723115012177 Everyone cries “Disaster!” The only person, besides the official Democratic X account, who tried to spin Biden’s debate performance positively, was Kamala Harris. CNN’s Anderson Cooper was having none of it, and said so – loudly – again for millions of people to hear. https://x.com/TomEllsworth/status/1806641643824484641 Likewise, Van Jones actually called the debate “painful” to watch. https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1806522140830716032 Philip Melancthion Wegmann said it best: Biden said, “Watch me!” The country just did. David Axelrod reported, before the night was out, that the Democratic leadership was panicking. (But even then, he and all other commentators on the left are living in a world of their own. More on that later.) Most legacy media commentators reacted in shell shock, all of them admitting the bad performance, and the damage. “Joyless” Reid made an almost iconic statement from the dais at MSNBC. https://x.com/Motabhai012/status/1806525610489221621 The Washington Examiner embedded video of her pronouncements – and much else. Here is their partial transcript: I was on the phone throughout much of the debate with Obamaworld people, with Democrats, with people who are political operatives, and with campaign operatives. My phone really never stopped buzzing throughout. And the universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic. Biden, said Reid, had “one job” to do: to “reassure” his Party and base. Instead he showed himself incapable of carrying on any further. CNN’s Kasie Hunt had this remarkably frank assessment: https://x.com/kasie/status/1806504918427013329 And from Ben Rhodes: https://x.com/brhodes/status/1806531270295372236 Note: many suggested that Biden was on drugs, like Adderall®, a “mixed amphetamine salts” cocktail. https://x.com/AlphaLiger/status/1806528203978149986 But Biden has delivered angry speeches before, and gotten through them. Witness his divisive September 2, 2022 speech. He didn’t need drugs; he was keyed up and full of adrenaline. But an adrenaline rush couldn’t last for 90 minutes, and didn’t. Adderall® normally lasts for hours, so he probably was not on that. The dilemma(s) For all that, the Democrats cannot replace Joe Biden even if they try. To be sure, many on the right are bragging that Joe Biden will not be the candidate anymore. Recall what Tom Ellsworth said in his X post embedding Kamala Harris’ laughable interview with Anderson Cooper: If you don’t think DNC hot swap is going to be Gavin or Michelle you’re not paying attention. One wag shared video of a Major League Baseball pitcher warming up and captioned it, “Gavin [Newsom] stretching in the bullpen.” https://x.com/IFNY2775/status/1806510792654618999 According to RealClearPolitics’ Susan Crabtree, a short list of replacements already exists. In addition to Newsom, she named Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.), J. B. Pritzker (D-Ill.), and Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.). She also named Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. But would the Democrats consider her, after she lost a Big Case at the Supreme Court yesterday? But Erick-Woods Erickson and Dr. Steve Turley both discounted any possibility of replacing Biden. Lay aside Erickson’s usual snidery against fellow conservative commentators. He raises these points that none can dispute. First, the only candidate who could somehow “inherit” Biden’s campaign cash (and credit) is Kamala Harris. The Democrats will not pick her; she is a raving maniac, and they know it. She’s also less popular even than Biden, if one can imagine that. Second, by law and Convention rules, Biden’s delegates must vote for him on the first ballot. Only if he releases them will they vote any other way. And he will not release them. Did everyone think Hillary Clinton insisted it was her turn in 2016? Biden insists it’s his turn. Debate or no, Biden is possibly deluded, definitely determined Yesterday Biden was already trying to quash any talk of replace him. To do that, he conceded that he was off his game during the debate. He made those remarks at a post-debate rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. His wife, wearing a dark blue dress festooned all over with the word VOTE, flanked him. Of course, Biden, and every other Democrat, are living in a world of their own. In their world, as James Carville has said in the titles of two books, they’re right, and we’re wrong. Everything they say is true; everything Trump says is a lie. Nothing and nobody will change that. Barack Obama shared another concession that the debate was not what the Democrats wanted. https://x.com/BarackObama/status/1806758633230709017 Switch the identities of the two candidates Barack Obama was talking about, and the above statement is true. That aside, no one wants to think of replacing Biden. Gavin Newsom made a big show of disclaiming any ambitions along that line: I think it’s unhelpful – and I think it’s unnecessary. We’ve got to keep our head high, and as I say, we’ve got to have the back of this president. You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that? Not that anyone would pick Gavin Newsom anyway. He has made a first-class jerk of himself, and every other Democratic governor knows it – and says it. He’s also gone further to the left than most rank-and-file Democrats want to go. Evidently his ridiculous abortion political ads didn’t help. (Furthermore, the U-Haul Truck Finder says it’s 2.5 to 3 times as expensive to rent one-way from Los Angeles, California, to New Braunfels, Texas, as to rent the other way.) But what about RFK? On the other hand, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now an independent candidate, declared himself “open” to replacing Biden. That could be nothing more than presumptuous wishful thinking on his part. Too many Democrats think he has betrayed the legacy of Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr. and his sons. (Of those sons, the only one to come close to current Democratic Party orthodoxy is RFK Jr.’s Uncle Ted.) In fact, MSNBC panelists were desperately trying to persuade Biden to release his delegates. “Joyless” Reid talked about someone having sent her a copy of the rules. Nicole Wallace insisted a legal pathway did exist. But Rachel Maddow gave the hard truth: that will not happen. She went further, trying to get her fellow panelists to stop talking about it. Indeed it’s too late, anyway, in a large number of States, as Charlie Kirk pointed out: https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1806720078920241396 In Wisconsin, in particular, a nomination switch happens only in the event of death. Is Biden that close to death? No one knows. But if he dies, say hello to President Kalamity Kamala, Kamala the Maniac. Advice for Trump At the same time, whoever is advising Trump, gave him some bad advice for the debate. Holding his peace while Biden almost made word salad, and displayed his infirmity for all to see, was good advice. But holding back on “red meat issues” on the right – that was bad advice. For instance, he expressed support for the Supreme Court’s “punt” on mifepristone, the abortifacient sent through the mail. That pill stays on the market, all right, but it is still illegal to send through the mail. For Trump to wink and nod while Biden refuses to enforce the Comstock Act (and Democrats introduce bills to repeal it), is inappropriate. Trump needs to own the issue, up front. If he doesn’t, he risks watching people stay home and sit on their hands. Especially since the Court has restrained some of Biden’s worst excesses in recent decisions. (Yes, Biden would retain the power of nomination, and yes, Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito are getting old. But conservative voters aren’t thinking about that.) More broadly, Trump needs to look forward, not backward. He should give voters – many of whom did vote for Biden, or sat on their hands in 2020 – a reason to vote for him. Furthermore, the same voters who took bribes from Democrats to give them their absentee ballots will do so again. Unless Trump gives them a reason not to – and the best reason is how he will “Make America Great Again.” Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/29/news/debate-disaster-dilemma/ “I really didn’t understand that last, and neither did he”: https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1806500027835240489 Democrats running a picture from 2021: https://x.com/TheDemocrats/status/1806521190086742516 https://x.com/EWErickson/status/1806523723115012177 Anderson Cooper, Van Jones: https://x.com/TomEllsworth/status/1806641643824484641 https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1806522140830716032 “Joyless” Reid commenting on panic: https://x.com/Motabhai012/status/1806525610489221621 Three other observers: https://x.com/kasie/status/1806504918427013329 https://x.com/brhodes/status/1806531270295372236 https://x.com/AlphaLiger/status/1806528203978149986 Gavin Newsom warming up? https://x.com/IFNY2775/status/1806510792654618999 Barack Obama saying bad debates happen: https://x.com/BarackObama/status/1806758633230709017 Too late! https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1806720078920241396 Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Supreme Court rules for liberty, not license By Terry A. Hurlbut Today the Supreme Court released three more cases, leaving at least three to announced Monday of next week (July 1). These three cases have one thing in common: in each, the Moderates accepted the perspective of the Originalists. (With one exception, which CNAV will describe in greater detail below.) In so doing, the Moderate Bloc would appear to be redeeming itself – except that one must remember that the Supreme Court has already decided weeks ago the cases they announce in June. Two of these cases strike blows for liberty; the third, a blow against license. One case corrects a serious error of judgment, not of the Court only, but of the Reagan administration. Another gives a hint – though not completely reliable – that the Court will not sympathize with January 6 related prosecutions. No more public camp-outs Grants Pass, Oregon (in Josephine County), has always had a problem with homeless people. According to the Syllabus, 600 people might be homeless at any given time. Grants Pass has laws against camping on public property or parking overnight in a city park. As to the homeless, Grants Pass tries to shelter them. The problem: they can’t shelter all the homeless in their city all the time. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals always had a somewhat crazy bench before Donald Trump tried to solve the problem. In Martin v. Boise, that Circuit held that enforcing the no-camping law against the homeless constituted “cruel and unusual punishment” if, at any given time, even one homeless person couldn’t find “practically available” shelter. Naturally, homeless people started suing Western cities left and right. In this case, the plaintiff-respondents won certification as a class and got what the Supreme Court called a Martin injunction against the city. Here the Syllabus reveals an interesting twist: class members were not willing to use the city’s available shelter. That shelter has rules, among them: • No smoking, and • Persons seeking shelter must attend religious services. Grants Pass appealed to the Ninth Circuit, and drew a panel that voted 2-1 to affirm the injunction. The city sought a hearing en banc, and didn’t get it, so it went straight to the Supreme Court. Apparently several other cities briefed the Court as friends of the court, to urge a reevaluation of the Martin case. Supreme Court holding The Supreme Court held that laws against public camping and overnight parking do not constitute cruel or unusual punishment. Not, at least, when they apply with equal force to everyone. Grants Pass v. Johnson et al., 603 U.S. ____ (2024). First, the Eighth Amendment applied to the kind of punishment prescribed for criminal offenses. It did not apply to the kinds of behavior a government might deem criminal. But the plaintiffs relied on one exception: Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660 (1962). In that manner, the Supreme Court (under Chief Justice Earl H. Warren) held that a State may not punish someone merely for being addicted to a controlled substance, unless and until the addict committed crimes, either to feed his addiction or for some other motive(s). But after handing down that case, the Supreme Court never respected it as a precedent. In this case, Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said the no-camping and no-parking laws in Grants Pass were nothing like the old California law against addiction to narcotics. Those laws do not say, “No person shall be homeless,” but merely, “No person shall camp on public land.” (Nor park overnight in a public park.) Therefore, Robinson doesn’t apply. Furthermore, several Ninth Circuit judges, dissenting from the decision to deny the en banc hearing, roundly criticized the Martin case. Armed with this intellectual ammunition, Gorsuch firmly said the Martin case must fall before the Supreme Court’s precedents and the true meaning of the Constitution. Votes, concurrence, and dissent Gorsuch carried with him the two other members of the Originalist Bloc: Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito. He also won the Moderate Bloc – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh – to his side. Predictably, the Liberal Bloc – Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor – dissented. Clarence Thomas, in concurrence, wrote that Robinson “was wrongly decided.” He made abundantly clear that, as soon as a case on point reaches him, he will vote to overrule Robinson. He also reiterated the principle he introduced in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen – namely that one must interpret the Constitution according to the fixed meaning of the original text. Modern public opinion is not an appropriate metric for interpreting the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause—or any provision of the Constitution for that matter. Much of the Court’s other Eighth Amendment precedents make the same mistake. Rather than interpret our written Constitution, the Court has at times “proclaim[ed] itself sole arbiter of our Nation’s moral standards,” Roper v. Simmons, 543 U. S. 551, 608 (2005) (Scalia, J., dissenting), and has set out to enforce “evolving standards of decency,” Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 101 (1958) (plurality opinion). “In a system based upon constitutional and statutory text democratically adopted, the concept of ‘law’ ordinarily signifies that particular words have a fixed meaning.” Roper, 543 U. S., at 629 (opinion of Scalia, J.). I continue to believe that we should adhere to the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause’s fixed meaning in resolving any challenge brought under it. Justice Sotomayor, in dissent, essentially said it would be cruel ever to regulate where one might sleep at night. The details of her dissent scarcely matter. Throughout, she seems to hold that what local governments need is taxpayers’ money to build more shelters. Presumably those shelters would not have no-smoking or other rules. CNAV has noted before how she treats the Supreme Court as a court of equity, not law. Here she openly supports lawlessness, and any attempt to impose order. Finally, one more thing is instructive to observe. The cure for “the homelessness crisis” is to remove impediments to the development of an economy that might provide gainful employment to everyone, to the extent that they can afford, and pay for, their own shelter. It is not to provide shelter at public expense without limit. The Supreme Court strikes a blow for January 6 convicts Joseph Fischer was one of perhaps 200 people who gained entry into the Capitol on January 6, 2021. They did so after elements of the Capitol Police fired rubber bullets at an inoffensive crowd. Fischer, for his part, never actually entered the Capitol until after the joint session of Congress had already recessed. The question of the Capitol Police’ conduct didn’t come before the Court. Rather, the attempt by a vindictive – and selective – prosecuting authority to charge Fischer with an offense more appropriate to financial crime, did. The government charged him under, among other laws, 18 USC section 1512(c)(1 and 2). This title, part of the Sarbanes-Oxley law, reads in relevant part: (c) Whoever corruptly — (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. That word otherwise caused a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse an earlier dismissal of that charge at trial level. But in his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts disagreed. According to the CJ, otherwise means any act similar in kind or degree to elements of a preceding list. It does not mean positively any other kind of obstruction anyone could invent or attempt. Justice Jackson surprised everyone with her vote for the majority! Putting on her adult clothes for once, she wrote a separate, detailed treatment of those two sections that clearly precluded any extension of that word otherwise to include unlawful entry, unlawful presence, etc. A shocking dissent Justice Amy Coney Barrett surprised everyone with equal force – by dissenting from the majority opinion. CNAV noted, after the oral argument, that Justice Barrett might present a problem for Fischer. She, more than any other member of the Moderate Bloc, took pains to include the vote count session as “an official proceeding.” In her dissent, she returned to that theme – and used that word otherwise to include conduct bearing no relation to the destruction, mutilation, alteration – or fraudulent substitution – of documents. Justice Jackson, in her concurrence, did say that the charge under 1512(c)(2) could come back if anyone showed that Joseph Fischer laid hands, or tried to lay hands, on the lists of electoral votes that Electoral College members “transmit” to Congress. But Justice Barrett insisted that the riot qualified as obstruction. (Never mind that Fischer didn’t enter the Capitol until after the recess had already taken place. That seems to have borne no mention in any of the opinions. Then again, the Supreme Court is not a trier of fact.) One thing only can explain Barrett’s attitude: she has a very serious problem with January 6 participants. On the fateful day in which the Court denied the appeal of the State of Texas for intervention in the certification of elections in Pennsylvania, hallway bystanders caught her smiling like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa when exiting the conference room. What could have turned a mild-mannered mother of seven into a “hanging judge”? That might prove impossible to determine. The Big One: Chevron Deference dies! CNAV turns now to the last two cases, which the Court consolidated: Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Raimondo. The “Raimondo” in view here is Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce. The petitioners in the two cases operate fishing boats in the Atlantic Fishery, which extends 200 nautical miles offshore. Cases involving fishing vessel regulation might not seem important. But they are when they involve principles that go to other economic areas of federal regulation. Both cases involve a peculiar doctrine that has given quasi-legislative, quasi-judicial executive agencies an overweening power: Chevron deference. That doctrine came from a misguided attempt to discipline the national judiciary and prevent judicial activism. During the Reagan administration, Ann Gorsuch (Neil’s mother), as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, sought to loosen some regulations on oil refining. Chevron USA, one of the Big Oils, moved forward on that basis. The National Resources Defense Council sued them, and in court argued that the EPA had no authority to loosen regulations to the degree contemplated. The Reagan administration’s relations with Congress were strained, in that while Republicans held the Senate, Democrats held the House. So President Reagan couldn’t get a law to deregulate the leases involved. Instead, when Chevron took the matter to the Supreme Court, the administration filed a friend-of-the-court brief to support Chevron’s position. The original Chevron holding The Supreme Court held that, given certain conditions, unless Congress has “directly spoken to the precise question at issue,” courts must defer to an agency’s reasonable determinations of fact, and the rules they make with those determinations in mind. This effectively precludes judicial review of regulatory agencies. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984). It also violates the basic framework that, since 1946, has governed how regulatory agencies operate: the Administrative Procedure Act. That Act specifically makes executive agency rules subject to judicial review against the enabling statute, other laws, and the Constitution. But the Chevron case carves out an exception. In their attempt to stop a rogue court from obstructing Ronald Reagan’s plan for energy independence (and to address an energy shortage), the Reagan administration, with their brief, prompted the Supreme Court to set the stage for the opposite problem. The minute the administration of the Executive Branch changed parties, agencies produced a blizzard of left-friendly rules. Those rules proceeded from a mind-set only the NRDC and similar activist groups could love: leave it in the ground! Or in other contexts, build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody! Two cases In the cases at hand, the National Marine Fisheries Service had always placed observers aboard fishing vessels. Within the particular fishery at issue (Atlantic herring), the agency paid for the observers – until 2013. Suddenly the agency told the fishermen that they must pay for the observers. Loper Bright challenged the new rule in February 2020. Relentless, Inc. made a similar challenge. Both petitioners argued that the original act creating the agency did not authorize it to force fishermen to pay any wage or fee to or for observers. The government, on behalf of the agency, demanded Chevron deference from the courts. The lower courts agreed, dutifully applying “the Chevron Doctrine” and saying that what the agency said, went – within reason. When the petitioners came to the Supreme Court, one of their lawyers said the basic problem was the Chevron Doctrine itself. Dan Greenberg at the Competitive Enterprise Institute described the oral argument in the Loper Bright case. Apparently Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh both questioned the validity of the Chevron Doctrine. Kavanaugh lamented that, every four years, rules change – with the President. Gorsuch lamented that agencies might make rules in agency self-interest, that shortchange persons their rules affect. Greenberg predicted the Court would overrule Chevron. Two years ago, Darrell L. Castle observed that the Court virtually overruled Chevron in its West Virginia v. EPA case. Castle might have been correct – or not – but Greenberg definitely proved correct. The Supreme Court buries Chevron Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion, in which the entire Oroginalist and Moderate Blocs joined. Justice Kagan, writing for the Liberal Bloc, dissented. Roberts firmly and decisively defended the prerogatives of the courts. In reviewing the history of the Administrative State – including before and after the New Deal – Roberts observed that courts often deferred to agencies on questions of fact (given sufficient evidence) but never on questions of law. In 1946, Congress passed the Administrative Procedure Act to make abundantly clear that courts were the final arbiters of law. That is, until Chevron, which superseded judicial review and effectively canceled it. At first the Supreme Court didn’t recognize what a bomb it had built – until it went off. After a plethora of rules taking advantage of the new paradigm, the Court started limiting Chevron – piecemeal. One can understand West Virginia v. EPA in that light. Finally, Roberts anticipates another objection: stare decisis (let it stand as decided). He rejects that, finding that Chevron is erroneous and “unworkable.” Those considerations alone were enough to reverse the two Courts of Appeals in the two cases. But Justice Thomas, concurring, went further: Chevron, he held, violates separation of powers. None of the co-equal branches of government should ever delegate its fundamental powers to either of the others. Neil Gorsuch wrote of the basic role of a judge, and offered further weakening of the stare decisis principle. Precedent, he pronounced, is not law, and therefore cannot be forever binding. Kagan: defer to the experts! Justice Kagan – exactly as she did in West Virginia v. EPA – dissented, on this principle: courts should defer to experts. She defended Chevron as vesting in the “expert” agency the task of resolving ambiguous statutory language. This echoes her dissent in West Virginia: Members of Congress “don’t know enough.” For that matter, it echoes her concurrence in Moyle v. USA, announced yesterday. As in the cases at hand, and in West Virginia, she always demands deference to expert opinion. Kagan evidently doesn’t understand what a republic is – and certainly would rather not live under it. She plumps for a technocratic elite, which in this case would staff and run quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial executive agencies. In West Virginia she cried the globe is warming, the globe is warming – because EPA said so. In Moyle she upbraided her colleague Justice Alito for daring “dispute medical fact.” Now she says the Atlantic will be overfished because the Fisheries Service can’t afford to put observers aboard every fishing boat. More broadly she asks experts to rule. But as Darrell Castle frostily observed two years ago, we don’t live under a technocracy. Ours is a republic – a nation-state of law, not expert opinion. Courts, recognizing their limited funds of knowledge, rely on expert witnesses. So does Congress. And as CNAV said yesterday: experts can be wrong. Sometimes they can be dead wrong. Final analysis The Supreme Court redeemed itself today, while also correcting a forty-year-old error. (Actually Justice Kagan totally missed the first purpose of Chevron: to stop an activist judge from forcing an agency to make people’s lives more miserable, not less.) But the glaring weaknesses of understanding of at least two members of the Liberal Bloc were on full display. Justice Sotomayor calls essentially for anarcho-communism, by saying the law should let people sleep anywhere, anytime. Justice Kagan plumps for a technocracy in which expert opinion – medical and other kinds – carries the force of law. Justice Barrett presents a puzzle. Why should she, alone among Moderates, have such a visceral reaction against any January 6 defendant? How might anyone convince her that January 6 – at least the “Capitol breach” part – was a false-flag pseudo-operation? Hasn’t she shown prejudice? (Or has someone threatened her or her family with death if she makes one move to let a January 6 prisoner go free? As a mother of seven small children, five of them biological, she remains vulnerable to such threats.) Thus far, two cases cast doubt on the record of this Court Term: Murthy v. Missouri and Moyle v. USA. On Monday the Court must announce its decision in Trump v. USA and the two NetChoice cases. Fittingly, the last case argued is the last case decided. The country – and the world – waits to see how the Court has decided. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/28/news/supreme-court-liberty-license/ The opinions, in order discussed: Grants Pass v. Johnson et al. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf Fischer v. United States https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-5572_l6hn.pdf Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Raimondo (consolidated) https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Idaho abortion case punted By Terry A. Hurlbut Today the Supreme Court released an opinion in two consolidated cases out of Idaho having to do with abortion. At issue: whether the Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act (EMTALA) ever requires abortion, and if so, when. A federal district judge in Idaho, saying Yes, enjoined enforcement of Idaho’s law forbidding abortions. Or rather: he enjoined the law as it applied to women presenting in a hospital emergency room with “high-risk” pregnancies. The Ninth Circuit – after hearing the case en banc – affirmed the injunction. The Supreme Court stayed the injunction on January 5, then granted full review before judgment. Today the Court dismissed the review petitions as “improvidently granted,” and vacated the stay of injunction. From the opinion, the Liberals and the Originalists voted in their usual way – and the Moderates “split the baby.” As a result, no one is happy. Review of the Idaho abortion cases The cases are called Moyle v. United States (23-726) and Idaho v. United States (23-727). The “Moyle” here is Rep. Mike Moyle (R-Star, Idaho), Speaker of the Idaho House. Idaho has no fewer than four “abortion tourist trap” States bordering it – but stubbornly insists that abortion is wrong. That State passed its Defense of Life Act, Idaho Code Section 18-622, while the Dobbs case, “the case that overturned Roe,” was working its way to the Supreme Court. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022). Two years ago yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down its 6-3 decision that abortion should not be a federal matter. The Biden Administration will see no abortion unperformed. So they sued the State in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho. U.S. v. Idaho, 1:22-cv-00329, Barry Lynn Winmill presiding. The government alleged that Section 622 conflicted directly with the Federal Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act (EMTALA). In their complaint, the government essentially said that, without abortion available as an option, women would die in emergency rooms. At issue before the Court was: 1. Does EMTALA ever require abortion as “the only stabilizing treatment”? 2. Does the law actually forbid abortions, regardless of any medical emergency? For further historical details, see here. More to the point, the case came to oral argument on April 25. Elizabeth B. Prelogar, Solicitor General, argued the government’s case. She made one thing abundantly clear: she wants the freedom to get an abortion. Anytime, anywhere. The Supreme Court punts the case In a terse per curiam order, the Court dismissed the review petitions in the consolidated cases, and vacated all stays. That means the preliminary injunction by Judge Winmill goes back into effect. So why does this “slip opinion” run to 48 pages? Because 47 pages include two full concurrences, one partial dissent, and one complete dissent. From the concurrences, dissents, and the names of the Justices writing or joining each, one may infer that: • Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor voted for the vacaturs, and • Justices Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas voted against. In short, this is a Moderates’ decision, as CNAV predicted earlier this week. The Liberals went along for expedience’ sake (though Justice Jackson vehemently lamented the lack of a decisive blow for abortion). For their part, the Originalists stood on Idaho’s reading of EMTALA, which is different from everyone else’s. The opinion document contains four opinions, appearing in this order: 1. Concurrence by Justice Kagan, in which Justice Sotomayor joins completely, and Justice Jackson joins in part, 2. Concurrence by Justice Barrett, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh join, 3. Dissent by Justice Jackson, saying the Court should have struck down Idaho’s law forthwith, and 4. Dissent by Justice Alito, in which Justice Thomas joins fully and Justice Gorsuch joins in part. Substance of the opinions Actually, the Clerk of the Court would have done better to put Justice Barrett’s concurrence first. It gives the closest to a logical explanation for summarily dismissing the case. In fact, this should have been the Opinion of the Court, except that the Moderate and Liberal Blocs differed 3-3 in their reasoning. Because an irreconcilable tie existed, the Court delivered an unsigned order. Therefore CNAV will take up Barrett’s concurrence first. Barrett concludes that, since Rep. Moyle and the State of Idaho applied separately for a stay of the injunction, circumstances have changed. The changes consist, she asserts, of amendments to the Defense of Life Act to address, for example, the fear that it forbade removal of ectopic or molar pregnancies. Furthermore the Idaho Supreme Court, after Judge Winmill handed down his injunction, construed the Act to allow for abortions in the dire cases the government mentioned. In addition to ectopic pregnancies, they included: • Toxemia of pregnancy, with or without seizures, once known as pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, • Pre-term premature rupture of membranes (meaning if “the waters break” earlier than the 37th week), • Sepsis, and • Abruptio placentae, in which the placenta tears itself away from the wall of the womb. But Barrett also includes this key observation: that the federal government issued a new guidance on EMTALA. Quoting from the opinion: If [physicians] believe that “abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve” a pregnant woman’s emergency medical condition, they “must provide that treatment.” Id., at 1 (italics and emphasis deleted). Any contrary state law, the guidance continues, is “preempted.” Ibid. (italics and emphasis deleted). Assumption: the law forbids abortion even in cases of ectopic pregnancy Judge Winmill granted his injunction, says Barrett, on three assumptions: 1. The Defense of Life Act (as then written?) forbids removing an ectopic pregnancy, 2. The woman would “imminently” or “certainly” die without an abortion, and 3. Any necessity to prevent the death of the mother would only be an affirmative defense at trial. Shortly thereafter the Idaho Supreme Court, in a separate case, invalidated all three assumptions. Planned Parenthood of the Greater Northwest v. State of Idaho, 171 Idaho 374, 445, 522 P. 3d 1132, 1203 (2023). No matter, said Judge Winmill; the injunction remains in effect. This next part is key: Idaho’s legislature went back and changed their law to reflect the Idaho Supreme Court’s construction. Barrett then asserts that, after briefing and argument, the two parties turned out to be closer together than they appeared. The key sticking point was whether a mental health exception existed. Solicitor General Prelogar insisted that it did not, and Barrett seems to have accepted that notion uncritically. Again, quoting her opinion: At the merits stage, however, the United States disclaimed these interpretations of EMTALA. First, it emphatically disavowed the notion that an abortion is ever required as stabilizing treatment for mental health conditions. Brief for United States 26, n. 5; Tr. of Oral Arg. 76–78. That is an important concession: If restricted to conditions posing serious jeopardy to a woman’s physical health, the Government’s reading of EMTALA does not gut Idaho’s Act.* Second, the United States clarified that federal conscience protections, for both hospitals and individual physicians, apply in the EMTALA context. Tr. of Oral Arg. 87–89. That is another critical point: It alleviates Idaho’s concern that the Government’s interpretation of EMTALA would strip healthcare providers of conscience protections. And here is the asterisked footnote: The United States also clarified that if pregnancy seriously jeopardizes the woman’s health postviability, EMTALA requires delivery, not abortion. Brief for United States 10; Tr. of Oral Arg. 75. And it emphasized that EMTALA requires abortion only in an “emergency acute medical situation,” where a woman’s health is in jeopardy if she does not receive an abortion “then and there.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 79–80. These two temporal points also narrow the scope of EMTALA’s potential conflict with Idaho’s Act. Barrett also observed that petitioner’s counsel said Idaho would not prosecute doctors who performed abortions in the Four Hurry Cases. Given these things, says Barrett, what is either side worried about? She also wished to let the Ninth Circuit decide, at their oral argument, whether Congress may, through any Spending Clause statute, compel recipients of federal funds to violate State law as a condition of such funding. Justice Alito’s dissent Justice Alito did not agree. He rejected out-of-hand the interpretation of EMTALA that Barrett has seen fit to accept. Indeed he flat-out accused the Biden administration of looking for “ways to limit [the] reach” of his landmark anti-abortion decision. The idea that EMTALA requires all Medicare-funded hospitals to perform abortions under any circumstances strikes him as “novel.” Clearly he reads the text differently from Justice Barrett – and from Judge Winmill back in Idaho. Both the woman and the unborn child rate due consideration in his view. But he also – within the limits of Justicial etiquette, for which he is a stickler – accused his colleagues of cowardice. Apparently, the Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents. That is regrettable. He could not have rebuked his colleagues any more severely even by saying The Word. What follows that provocative statement, is, first, a detailed treatment of the statutory text. Nowhere in that text does the word abortion appear. Furthermore, a woman may refuse treatment but may not demand an abortion, if that violates State law. Next, Alito treats the political climate during the Reagan Administration, and the real reason for EMTALA: to stop the “dumping” of charity patients by fee-requiring hospitals when a transfer would make their clinical problems worse. In the debate on EMTALA, several Reagan administration officials assured people that EMTALA would not require abortion under any circumstances. Beyond that, Alito observes that Spending Clause legislation, like EMTALA, cannot bind anyone to conditions they never accepted. This rule applies to the State of Idaho, which desires to ban elective abortion. Idaho does have to worry about whether its abortion law is enforceable In criticizing the vacatur of the stay of injunction, Alito rejects the notion that the Defense of Life Act remains enforceable apart from emergency cases. He finds it absurd to suggest, as Barrett does, that the two sides are closer together than they thought. And he accepts Idaho’s fear of a federal mental-health exception – based on a statement by the American Psychiatric Association. Freedom to act to interrupt pregnancy must be considered a mental health imperative with major social and mental health implications. That comes from a 2023 APA position paper. Furthermore, Alito cites Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade. That case specifically allowed for a mental-health ground for abortion, even in the third trimester. For that reason, jurists always understood the United States to permit abortion on demand, for any reason or no reason. The Liberal Concurrence – and Dissent The Liberal Bloc opinion came from Justice Kagan, who accepted uncritically the: • Government’s interpretation of EMTALA, and • Assurances that EMTALA would not open the gate for elective abortions. She also rounded on Justice Alito, asking him how he dared “dispute … medical fact.” From her opinion: EMTALA unambiguously requires that a Medicare-funded hospital provide whatever medical treatment is necessary to stabilize a health emergency—and an abortion, in rare situations, is such a treatment. She arrives at that conclusion only indirectly, by observing that EMTALA never enumerates other stabilizing treatments. That “abortion, in rare situations, is such a treatment” is only an inference from prevailing medical opinion. Therein lies her greatest weakness: she accepts prevailing medical opinion as indisputable fact. Justice Jackson dissents from one part of the result: dismissing the writ of review. (So the vote was actually 5-4 to dismiss the writ, but 6-3 to vacate the stay of injunction.) She wanted the Court to rule definitively that EMTALA does mandate abortion. She didn’t get that result – and she threw a Jacksonian tantrum as a result. Liberty One News reported yesterday that someone – presumably on the Supreme Court Clerk’s staff – inadvertently released this decision yesterday. However that happened, Clerk’s staff promptly removed it – but not before Bloomberg Law obtained a copy. Liberty One quoted NBC News as repeating a quote by Justice Jackson at the end of her dissent: Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay. While this Court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires. This Court had a chance to bring clarity and certainty to this tragic situation, and we have squandered it. And for as long as we refuse to declare what the law requires, pregnant patients in Idaho, Texas, and elsewhere will be paying the price. Because we owe them—and the Nation—an answer to the straightforward preemption question presented in these cases, I respectfully dissent. Note carefully: another case on point is making its way through Texas courts, and presumably the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That is likely to produce a split in the circuits, and then the Court will have to act definitively. Abortion is definitely an election issue The outcome today definitely makes abortion an issue in the Election of 2024, for two reasons. First, a second Trump administration could reverse the guidance by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regarding EMTALA requirements. Trump’s ordering this would be consistent with his declaration of leaving abortion to the States. (That guidance demonstrably violates States’ rights, as the Liberal Bloc wants.) Second, Sonia Sotomayor, requiring as she does a doctor to attend her in her travels, might not last Trump’s term. Therefore – as many leftists worry – Trump will replace her. Justice Alito is right: the Moderate Bloc has turned cowardly. The relative youth of Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh – and Barrett being a mother of seven children, five biological and two adopted – makes them vulnerable to blackmail. Kavanaugh in fact has been a direct target of Justicial assassination. As may be, this is the second case this Term that the Court, per the Moderate Bloc, has punted. (The first was Murthy v. Missouri, decided yesterday.) CNAV pointed out, after the argument, the salient weakness of Supreme Courts everywhere. They rely on lower courts to develop trial records, and have no investigative powers of their own. But they also rely on expert testimony, or rarely on Special Masters. And they can often appoint the wrong Special Masters. Or, as in this case, they accept uncritically the consensus position of a scientific establishment that suffers from ideological corruption. The medical establishment and its abortion problem Too many clinical practitioners look upon non-practitioners as “blobs of humanity.” As Luke of Antioch, Patron Saint of Physicians, might have observed, such hubris is most dangerous in the healing arts. Therefore the conservative – and especially the Christian – community needs its own alternative medical academy and establishment. Idaho, in particular, has one medical school (at the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho). It could use another – at any of several Christian colleges and universities in Idaho. The value of – and need for – a Christian medical network makes itself manifest in the opinions released today. If Justices of the Supreme Court will accept uncritically the arrogant proposition that terminating a pregnancy is the definitive, don’t-ask-questions solution for toxemia of pregnancy, for example, then this country has a very serious clinical, scientific – and spiritual – problem. Experts can be and have been wrong. Our society faces momentous decisions – decisions about the right to die, about abortion, terminal illness, prolonged coma, transplantation – decisions about life and death. But society isn’t deciding. Congress isn’t deciding; the courts aren’t deciding; religion isn’t deciding. Why? Because society is leaving it up to us – the experts – the doctors…. Americans believe in medical care. These great hospital complexes are the cathedrals of our modern age. Actor Richard Widmark, as George A. Harris, M.D., in Coma (1978) When he spoke those lines, Richard Widmark convicted Americans of violating the First Commandment. You shall have no other gods before Me. Exodus 20:3 But Americans have taken a god ahead of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – a nondescript, blank-faced god in a white smock. Decisions – or non-decisions – like today’s are the result. Maybe if we start educating humble doctors, who respect the lives of the smallest and most vulnerable among us, America will come to a better place than the Supreme Court showed it to be in today. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/27/news/idaho-abortion-case-punted/ The order, concurrences, and dissents: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-726_6jgm.pdf Interactive abortion law map: https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/abortion-state-tracking-trigger-laws-bans-restrictions-rcna36199 Position paper of the American Psychiatric Association: https://www.psychiatry.org/getattachment/2f2371ac-307e-4889-bdb2-f9bf0a12d401/Position-Abortion-Reproductive-Rights.pdf Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Censorship injunction vacated By Terry A. Hurlbut The United States Supreme Court today effectively vacated all remaining parts of the Big Censorship Injunction in Missouri v. Biden. That is, they vacated all parts of the injunction the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had left in force. As in the earlier mifepristone case, the decision turned on standing. Courts never tell parties to whom they have denied standing, who would have standing instead. But clearly the only parties this Court – or rather the Moderate Bloc – will recognize as having standing, are the social media platforms themselves. One platform released a subtle gloat over this result, because it enhances their marketability to those concerned about free speech. But users everywhere understand that the Court has put them on notice: if you will not obey the Trust and Safety Team, take your activities elsewhere. History of the censorship injunction The case that began under the name Missouri v. Biden began in 2022. (Today it is called Murthy v. Missouri, because Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, was lead petitioner to the Supreme Court.) Last year – indeed on the Fourth of July itself – Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana (Monroe Division) handed down a sweeping injunction against all government communications with social media platforms and their moderational authorities – which they call Trust and Safety Teams. The federal government appealed, and eventually the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court – but not entirely. At first they affirmed the injunction only as it applied to the: • White House, • Surgeon General’s Office, • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and • Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The plaintiff-appellants petitioned for an en banc rehearing – always a risky proposition in the Fifth Circuit. (They state in their rules that they frown on such petitions.) The Fifth Circuit granted the rehearing, and then affirmed the censorship injunction as to the offices named, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Nevertheless the federal government applied to the Supreme Court for a stay of the injunction. The Supreme Court granted the stay, treated the application as a petition for full review, then granted that review. The case came to oral argument in March. https://rumble.com/v4ka6ar-supreme-court-divides-on-first-amendment.html?mref=4teej&mc=88ce6 Review of weaknesses in the case CNAV said then (through the above video) and says again: the Missouri plaintiffs presented a weak argument. To begin with, someone tried to file for divided argument and for extension of time. But they filed too late, and the Court denied that motion. So the plaintiff-respondents chose J. Benjamin Aguinaga, Solicitor General of Louisiana, to argue their case. That turned out to be a fatal mistake. He conceded far too much, especially to the Liberal Bloc. By the time they got through with him, they wrung from him concessions on “compelling State interests” and “emergency powers” that attorneys for the private plaintiffs might not have offered. Furthermore, because the case turned on standing, it was to the advantage of the Missouri plaintiffs to divide their argument. As Justice Samuel A. Alito would say in his dissent, if one plaintiff established standing, the entire case moved forward. Instead, one attorney, and that for the plaintiff having the weakest case, pleaded for all plaintiffs. They should have selected Jill Hines’ attorney to argue – for as Justice Amy Coney Barrett observed in the Opinion of the Court, Jill Hines had the strongest claim to standing of any of the plaintiffs. But the case had another weakness, which neither Justice mentioned. This case turned on the coercion of social-media platforms. But Gab Social has from its inception defied the threats of governments everywhere. X stopped cooperating when Elon Musk bought it. On that ground alone the entire government coercion case fails. How exactly the censorship injunction failed The Supreme Court voted 6-3 for the government – that is, to vacate the injunction completely and remand the case. Coverage from conventional outlets might have misstated the effect of this ruling. All that has happened is that the Court refused a preliminary injunction. Judge Doughty still has time to bring this case to a full trial. No doubt the government will file a motion to dismiss on the basis of lack of standing. That’s a decision for Judge Doughty, as the trial judge, to make. The voting fell out thus: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor to vacate the censorship injunction, and Justices Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas to let the injunction stand. Thus the Moderates all joined the Liberals and overruled the Originalists. (More likely, Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh both voted to vacate, and Roberts simply fell in, acknowledging a fait accompli. Recall that the Chief Justice always votes last.) Justice Barrett wrote the opinion. She carefully examined the evidence for and against standing for each plaintiff, and rejected standing for all of them. She also rejected the parens patriae theory that Missouri and Louisiana advanced, and the “right to listen” theory. As to the individual plaintiffs, she held that the pattern of censorship activities at all social-media platforms began before the government even started conversing with anyone’s Trust and Safety Teams. Therefore the plaintiffs could establish no injury to them on the government’s part. Is that strictly true? Justice Barrett relied on one salient common fact: all social media platforms moderate or block content on some grounds. She confined her analysis to Twitter (pre-Musk), Meta (Facebook, Instagram), and Alphabet (Google, YouTube). All have always had the most complex content guidelines of any social-media platforms. They block or restrict things like pornography and the kind of gratuitous insults people commonly call “cyberbullying.” In addition, Alphabet, Meta, and the Spotify family routinely block conservative, patriotic, and alternative-medical content, regarding it as inherently dangerous. Since Donald Trump first ran for President, these policies have become more insultingly obvious than ever. That doesn’t matter to Justice Barrett, and presumably not to Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Kvanaugh either. What matters is whether the government ever coerced or induced these platforms to do these things. As Barrett sees it, the record does not show that yet. The biggest issue for the Missouri plaintiffs to raise at trial (which still has not happened), is the time sequence. Barrett accepted uncritically the assertion that the Meta-Alphabet-Spotify-Twitter Axis (as it then existed) began their censorship of conservative content before the government acted. Justice Sam Alito, dissenting and writing for the Originalists, appears to dispute that notion. That, therefore, is the wedge issue for the Missouri plaintiffs to raise at trial – unless Judge Doughty dismisses the case. Justice Alito expresses his disappointment At oral argument, Justice Alito showed the least patience with the government, and the greatest sympathy for the plaintiffs. He showed it again in his dissent, taking great care to parse the record of injury-in-fact to Jill Hines. (Again, he and Barrett agreed that she had the strongest case for standing of any plaintiff.) Alito held that the communications of government officials with Meta, Inc. (specifically Facebook) possess all the hallmarks of coercion that we identified in Bantam Books [v. Sullivan] and [National Rifle Association v.] Vullo. The Bantam case involved the publication of pornographic books. In Vullo, a New York State officer was calling banks and ordering them to debank the NRA, or else. The Court unanimously found for the NRA, and Sonia Sotomayor, as noted here, wrote the Court’s opinion in that case. Alito drew on the Vullo case as setting forth three grounds to suspect government coercion: (1) the authority of the government officials who are alleged to have engaged in coercion, (2) the nature of statements made by those officials, and (3) the reactions of the third party alleged to have been coerced. In this case, said Alito, we deal with the highest executive authorities – the White House – making, not statements, but orders. And Facebook, at least in Jill Hines’ case, obeyed. That was enough for Alito. Actually, Alito presented his best summary at the beginning: This evidence was more than sufficient to establish Hines’s standing to sue,… and consequently, we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents. The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think. That is regrettable. What the officials did in this case was more subtle than the ham-handed censorship found to be unconstitutional in Vullo, but it was no less coercive. And because of the perpetrators’ high positions, it was even more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so. Officials who read today’s decision together with Vullo will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send. But was that all there was to it? But neither Barrett nor Alito treat the two social-media platforms that blow this analysis up. Gab Social, as mentioned, never obeyed the government. Nor have they seen fit to sue over the trials and tribulations they have endured over that disobedience. Host after host disallowed them, both Google and Apple threw them off their respective “app stores,” and even the payment processors refused to deal with them. In response, Andrew Torba self-hosts on a server farm he built. He further developed a simple browser shortcut and made sure his platform would fully adapt to a mobile browser. Finally he built his own payment processor, called Gab Pay, to process payments for subscriptions and merchandise. Elon Musk, recognizing the censorship problem at Twitter, bought the company. In this he clashed directly, not only with Twitter’s board, but also with BlackRock and Vanguard, who owned significant stakes. Today Twitter – or X as he renamed it – is a freer platform than it ever was. But not entirely free! Musk fired eighty percent of its staff, but still has troublemakers on its Trust and Safety Team. Nevertheless the cozy relationships with the government are at an end – because Elon Musk put an end to them. Parag Agrawal and Jack Dorsey did not end the relationships because they did not want to end them. The same holds for Mark Zuckerburg at Meta, and the Three Monkeys at Alphabet. And, one presumes, their counterparts at the Spotify family. Reaction to the censorship injunction going down Reaction – freely expressible on X – was swift and included much weeping and gnashing of teeth. https://x.com/LoomerReport/status/1806038627325198774 https://x.com/LoomerReport/status/1806025250704159116 https://x.com/OperDJT/status/1805968066376761691 https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1805994126623535240 https://x.com/RepDanBishop/status/1805972658787389832 https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1805972571243892971 Andrew Torba, head of Gab, released this statement this morning, following the Court’s announcement. In the first half, Torba clearly condemned, not so much the decision, as what it now allows. The Supreme Court’s ruling has significant implications for the ongoing debate surrounding the role of the government in regulating online speech. The Biden administration has been proactive in attempting to address the spread of what they deem to be “misinformation” on social media, particularly in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and election integrity. This ruling bolsters the administration’s ability to continue these efforts, which may involve requesting social media platforms to remove certain posts or accounts that are deemed to be spreading what they claim to be “false information.” But next, Torba seems to corroborate the threat of future censorship, and indicate that resistance is possible and imperative. Since our inception in 2016, Gab has been a bastion for free speech, providing a safe haven for those who have been silenced by mainstream social media platforms. We firmly believe that the right to free speech is essential for a healthy and functioning society, and we will continue to resist any attempts by the Biden Administration to infringe upon this fundamental right. The Biden Administration’s recent censorship requests have targeted a wide range of content, including discussions about the COVID-19 vaccine, election integrity, and criticism of government policies. These attempts to suppress dissent and control the narrative are a direct attack on the First Amendment and the values upon which our nation was founded. Gab will not bow to these censorship demands. We will continue to stand with our users, ensuring that their voices are heard and their ideas are shared, even in the face of government pressure. As a platform committed to free speech, we believe that it is our duty to protect the rights of all Americans, regardless of their political beliefs or ideologies. In other words: 1. Yes, the Biden administration is guilty as charged in the complaints, responses to Adm. Murthy’s petition, and at argument, and: 2. Resistance is not only “not futile” but something that everyone can do – whether that means building one’s own platform or repairing to a platform they can trust. Andrew Torba knows he must gain people’s trust. He has made certain statements that might put off some people, particularly Jews and citizens of the State of Israel. But he pledges “to protect the rights of all Americans, regardless of their political beliefs or ideologies.” The Christian faith does not allow lying. (But recall: he gave Laura Loomer an account when no one else, except Telegram, would.) At the same time, he might have completely vitiated the case of the Missouri plaintiffs. He has in effect told them that their best – if not only – recourse is to join his platform. What next? As mentioned, this ruling does not “kill” the case of Missouri v. Biden. It vacates a preliminary injunction, so the government’s bad acts may continue indefinitely. But now the case proceeds to trial – and at trial, the plaintiffs might establish a fuller and more complete record. The House Judiciary Committee and its Weaponization Subcommittee will continue their own investigation. But if Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) is at all correct, the people must keep calling their Representatives to make sure something beyond pretty speeches and high drama come of that investigation. The Stanford Internet Observatory has already all but shut down. But might they start up again, under a false sense of triumph? Only time will tell. For the moment, the social media space will divide into two distinct and parallel – therefore non-intersecting – axes: 1. The Meta-Alphabet-Spotify-Amazon Axis, which is more than willing to obey not so much the government as the Deep State, and 2. The X/Rumble/Gab Axis, with far simpler content standards, which will not give place to the government or the Deep State. Furthermore, Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) is correct. It does fall to Congress and the President to stop these abuses. That requires a new President, and enough Congress Members having the courage to combat them. This could mean creating standing, and prosecuting Biden administration and/or Deep State officials to the fullest extent of the law. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/26/news/censorship-injunction-vacated/ The opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf Video: analysis of oral argument: https://rumble.com/v4ka6ar-supreme-court-divides-on-first-amendment.html?mref=4teej&mc=88ce6 Reactions: https://x.com/LoomerReport/status/1806038627325198774 https://x.com/LoomerReport/status/1806025250704159116 https://x.com/OperDJT/status/1805968066376761691 https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1805994126623535240 https://x.com/RepDanBishop/status/1805972658787389832 https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1805972571243892971 Statement of Andrew Torba: https://news.gab.com/2024/06/the-supreme-court-rules-that-biden-can-pressure-social-media-companies-to-censor/ Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Deep State Diaries By Terry A. Hurlbut Seven months ago, America First Legal (AFL) – no stranger to legal controversy – took the Department of Homeland Security to court. Two months earlier, that Department had formed a Homeland Intelligence Experts Group, ostensibly tasked with finding politically motivated murderers and/or saboteurs operating within the United States. A mission like that would naturally evoke memories of suspected “Fifth Column” activity during the Second World War. But this group had a mission straight out of movies like Fahrenheit 451: to spy on Americans and detect dissidents. Toward the beginning of last months, AFL announced victory: the Department had to shut down the Homeland Intelligence Group. But the game did not end there. Now AFL is releasing the Deep State Diaries, now in their fourrth installment. The reading is even more chilling than the Twitter Files ever could have been. Origin of the Deep State Diaries Again: in September of 2023, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) formed the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group (HIEG). Its ostensible mission: “to provide advice and perspectives on intelligence and national security efforts.” But why homeland intelligence? Even at its most charitable, such a group and mission proceeds from the tired assumption of governments everywhere. Which is: private subjects (or “citizens”) are not qualified to detect or defend against groups planning sabotage or mass murder. Such things are public hazards and require a public response. But HIEG was worse. First, DHS formed it in violation of the Federal Advisory Committees Act. Second, SecHomeSec Alexander Mayorkas hand-selected its members and chose them for their partisanship. It had no former Trump Administration members – and at least two of them were among the fifty-one “intelligence professionals” who signed a letter denouncing the Hunter Biden Laptop as a Russian-planted fraud. These were John Brennan, former director of the CIA, and James Clapper, Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence. Outraged, AFL sued the Department in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. They listed Ambassador Richard Grenell, former Acting Director of National Intelligence, as co-plaintiff. When they did, they dropped this thread: https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721649438085562640 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721649455135408156 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721649463549128758 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721650063003271457 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721650354520014918 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721650558967148993 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721651518330261883 The thread names a few other names, all with a history of almost-all Democrat political campaign contributions. This so-called “Experts Group” is another example of partisan lawlessness at DHS. It is an effort by the Biden Admin to cover their tracks and obfuscate their ongoing efforts to censor the online political speech of Americans, maintain an open border, and target law enforcement at political opponents rather than criminals and illegal aliens. A year ago, AFL had sued the Department of Education and won an injunction to shut down the equally partisan National Parents and Families Engagement Council. Disbanding the group to dismiss the suit On May 3, AFL triumphantly announced that DHS agreed to disband HIEG in order to dismiss the lawsuit. Why they folded their tent so abruptly, AFL did not speculate. But another part of the “Stipulation of Dismissal” was for DHS to turn over all internal HIEG documents to AFL. https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786469994328428890 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786470146875228270 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786470153363870019 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786470196581912870 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786470930606129210 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786472336771682557 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786472815111065611 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786473698406351022 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786479568703893908 This thread reviews the material in the thread announcing the lawsuit. It also includes a letter from Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), and Roger Marshall (R-Kansas). That letter demanded rescission of all appointments to HIEG. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) separately demanded disbanding HIEG, as did Reps. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and August Pfluger (R-Texas). Rep. Pfluger, as Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, introduced a bill (H.R. 5729) to defund HIEG or any group like it. The Deep State Diaries are the internal documents AFL wrung from DHS in their Stipulation of Dismissal. Finally, on June 20, AFL released the first installment of the Deep State Diaries to Platform X. Deep State Diaries – their true purpose https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872595646755048 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872600851915053 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872606652895581 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872661363102004 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872859670089931 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872987264782770 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803873123206332836 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803873246078554426 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803873429495648349 This installment revealed the true purposes of HIEG, which were to: • Encourage Americans to report their dissident neighbors to federal agents, authorities, and officials, and: • Reclassify political dissent as a public health hazard. They proposed the second part to encourage mothers and former teachers to “come forward.” The phrase “public health catcher’s mitt” appears in one of the photographed documents. When DHS announced HIEG, this group had already been meeting for four months. But in their September 2023 meeting, its members knew they had a problem. They had no credible mandate to encourage the cooperation of State or local officials. But those documents also reveal that “support” for this mission escalated after the January 6 Event. Even so, HIEG members knew that Americans didn’t like to tell on one another. They had seen this during the “See Something, Say Something” campaign after the Attacks on September 11, 2001. That’s why they decided to couch the problem as a public health hazard. The public health hazard was mental – in other words, dissent from the government was a problem of paranoid ideation. Paranoid (literally, “beside one’s mind”) means believing that one is more important than he is – and a target. And if that did not suffice, say the documents, the Group would turn to “corporate America.” That presumably includes customer data that large consumer-oriented corporations always collect on their customers. We are domestic terrorists? The next day, AFL released the second Deep State Diaries installment. https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1804115251513753885 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1804115255875801282 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1804115263689740466 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1804115403808928097 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1804115543382745426 This relatively short thread reveals that DHS now considered supporters of President Trump to be domestic terrorists. Or at minimum, they were going to treat Trump supporters as such. In addition, DHS suspected active-duty or discharged military and “religious” people to be their enemies. Once again, this is typical tyrannical boilerplate. It now begins to resemble Ned Young and Matt Rapf’s failed pilot, Shadow on the Land (1967). In that project, inner-city riots have led a panicked American populace to embrace the “Leadership” of a neo-Nazi regime. Or consider Blue Thunder (1983), featuring the deliberate fomenting of inner-city riots to justify creating an airborne SWAT force. Imagine helicopter gunships “restoring” order – in American cities. Yesterday AFL released the third installment of the Deep State Diaries. https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805284552954310927 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805284560436854957 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805284564849357100 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805284745175056510 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805284971420025208 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805285175934566845 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805285782397112761 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805286097783513142 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805286284019015990 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805286611850305938 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805286762652082319 According to this, HIEG used two events that the government itself created to justify surveillance of political dissent. The first of these was, of course, the January 6 Event – which we can confidently regard as a false-flag pseudo-operation. That Event convinced many career analysts to accept political surveillance as necessary to good civil order. From that day forward, the FBI and other agencies cast aside all doubts about the scope of their authority. Using the Mar-A-Lago Raid And the second? That was the Mar-A-Lago Raid. We now know that the FBI “staged the scene” of the mess of “classified documents” on a floor. These documents show “concern” about a “violent reaction” to the raid. They need never have worried – if they really did worry. Republicans are polite to a fault; Democrats are brazenly rude. Furthermore, many of their nominal constituents are as violent as they are rude. All the riots have been by Democrat nominal constituencies. Yet this group took no action in response to them. Nor did they respond to multiple shootings in Washington, D.C., and Chicago, Ill. And perhaps these spooks know this. What they really worried about was how to distinguish political hyperbole from real plans for sabotage or an armed strike. Today AFL released their fourth installment, focusing on a favorite HIEG catch phrase: “quietly making democracy work.” https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805601868862660950 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805601873530872195 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805601879939772757 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805601890329059817 The documents in this fourth part reveal that these Deep State minions embraced their dubious distinction. They also specifically identified supporters of Donald Trump as domestic terrorists. Indeed they reveled in the initials “DT” which could stand either for “domestic terrorism” or for Donald Trump. A far cry from The Washington Post’s longtime slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” the Deep State now appears to claim that darkness and secrecy are necessary parts of “making democracy work.” Analysis: the Deep State Diaries reveal paranoia So now who are the paranoiacs? The trouble with spinning a narrative about your opponents indulging in paranoid ideation, is that you yourself start falling into paranoid ideation. That goes double when your actions, or the policies you support, induce paranoid thinking. (The difference is that, in this case, those who think they are targets, really are targets.) Such seems to be the case with these career intelligence types. Indeed such has been one of two possible weaknesses of the security apparatuses of tyrannical governments everywhere. The other is that those whose stock-in-trade is live-action roleplay and similar fiction, can no longer tell fact from fiction. Neither can they really know whom they can trust. No doubt some Americans remain who could never imagine that their government – of the people, by the people, and for the people, to quote Abraham Lincoln – was capable of such action as America First Legal reveals. That is, until today. But a certain civilization set the precedent for it thousands of years ago. Historical perspective Emperor Augustus, or so the late Colleen McCullough theorized, invented the concept of organized military espionage. He had “agents” in the camp of his target Marcus Junius Brutus, and also of his nominal ally, Mark Antony. This led to victory at Philippi, and eventually in Alexandria. But it also set the most dangerous precedent the United States ever inherited from the Roman Republic and Empire. Most people look to the old Soviet Union with its Ministry – later Committee – for State Security. Or they look to Nazi Germany with its Gestapo and Schutzstaffel (SS). But this kind of spying has been with us at least since ancient Rome. Another historical precedent should help make sense of the Deep State Diaries. Those who, like the Deep State, set out to ruin large numbers of lives, live in constant fear of their targets finding them out. That fear is now realized, and the evidence laid out here – with more to come – is all we need to know to tell us how we must vote. But Joe Biden seems unable even to plan to see to his bodily needs. Therefore this did not come from Joe Biden, and perhaps not even (originally) from Barack Obama. It comes from other, hidden authorities, who will simply discard their failed operatives and recruit new ones. Defeating them will require imagining doing for ourselves, what the Deep State promises to do for us – while doing it to us instead. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/25/news/deep-state-diaries/ America First Legal threads: Their lawsuit: https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721649438085562640 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721649455135408156 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721649463549128758 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721650063003271457 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721650354520014918 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721650558967148993 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1721651518330261883 The Stipulation of Dismissal: https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786469994328428890 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786470146875228270 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786470153363870019 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786470196581912870 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786470930606129210 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786472336771682557 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786472815111065611 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786473698406351022 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1786479568703893908 Deep State Diaries, Part One: https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872595646755048 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872600851915053 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872606652895581 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872661363102004 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872859670089931 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803872987264782770 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803873123206332836 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803873246078554426 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1803873429495648349 Part Two: https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1804115251513753885 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1804115255875801282 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1804115263689740466 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1804115403808928097 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1804115543382745426 Part Three: https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805284552954310927 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805284560436854957 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805284564849357100 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805284745175056510 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805284971420025208 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805285175934566845 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805285782397112761 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805286097783513142 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805286284019015990 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805286611850305938 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805286762652082319 Part Four: https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805601868862660950 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805601873530872195 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805601879939772757 https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1805601890329059817 Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Supreme Court Friday dump By Terry A. Hurlbut On Friday, June 21, 2024, the United States Supreme Court released opinions on five cases. Only one of these cases had any breathless commentary in advance. But all five allowed the Originalists and the Moderates to clarify their positions on immigration and basic civil liberties. The Court has five or six Big Cases still on its docket and will release those, starting in two days. Indeed they have already added two more Non-Argument Days to their calendar. But the cases they “dumped” to the news media last Friday will tell us how Originalists and Moderates think. Supreme Court upholds a federal enhancement to State domestic-violence protection orders The case of United States v. Rahimi was one of five Big Cases CNAV noted that was still on the docket early Friday morning. John R. Lott, Jr. gave his opinion last fall that he didn’t think the United States government had any business denying a person the right to carry a firearm, just because some State had slapped a domestic-violence protection order on him. The problem, for Lott, is that domestic violence protection orders are civil matters, not criminal. As such, an applicant for such an order need only establish the usual elements for a preliminary injunction: • Likelihood of proving, on the merits, that the respondent is a positive menace to the applicant, • Very likely irreparable harm if the respondent is allowed to have a firearm, • Comparatively little harm to the respondent if he loses his right to carry, and • A public-interest imperative. Even the final verdict in most domestic-violence cases (which are nasty divorces) requires proof by a preponderance of the evidence. It does not require proof beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. Lott furthermore opined that telling a dangerous person he may not have a firearm is useless. He’ll get one anyway. He left unsaid what he expects the applicant to do, but CNAV can guess: get a gun herself. (And if the law doesn’t allow that, then that gives the applicant cause of action against the State for violation of her rights under the Second Amendment.) But… The Supreme Court disagreed, holding that: When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. Furthermore, the Court voted for this holding eight to one. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion, in which every one of his associates, except only Clarence Thomas, joined. This was a Moderates’ opinion, in which the Liberals joined. In fact this case had a plethora of concurrences, in addition to Thomas’ dissent. What seemed to tip the scale for the Chief Justice is that Mr. Rahimi had already demonstrated the threat he posed to his significant other. He fired on her in public. Actually he might also have been firing at a witness he caught staring at the altercation. No matter – for that offended Roberts’ sensibilities about good public order and safety. Worse, Rahimi never contested that account, and legally that’s just as good as admitting to it. In no reasonable universe was the Chief Justice going to let this man get away with what he did, or leave him free to pull a stunt like that again. John Lott would likely argue – and CNAV finds that argument valid – that the CJ was engaging in magical thinking. CNAV imagines a hypothetical Justice Lott writing a dissent that would run like this: better to enroll the significant other in a firearm proficiency and safety course at State expense, then issue her a standard-issue police revolver, or whatever other handgun the local Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association would recommend. Judges don’t approve of telling women to arm themselves with deadly weapons But most judges haven’t the imagination to think that way. And apart from famous women like Annie Oakley and “Belle Starr,” American Western lore is short on female gunslingers. More to the point, the CJ found ample historical precedent for taking people’s guns away when they threaten others. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, applying her usual vituperative mind-set, found no reason even to think about taking the gun away. Furthermore, she makes the same mistake gun grabbers everywhere make: “Weapons have evolved dramatically” since the 18th century. And, of course, she took a swipe at New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. Remember: she, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, want guns out of the hands of civilians, without exception. Justice Neil Gorsuch showed the split among the Originalists. He gave a backhanded compliment to Rahimi’s lawyers for attempting to challenge on its face the federal law under which Rahimi lost his right to carry a gun. To prevail, he must show that under no circumstances can the government enforce that law without violating the Second Amendment. Sorry, says Gorsuch, but these circumstances allow enforcement. Rahimi took a potshot at his girlfriend. Not only that, but he threatened her afterward. Quod erat demonstrandum. A new Supreme Court primer on Constitutional jurisprudence Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in twenty-three pages of concurrence, set forth his standards for applying text and history to Constitutional interpretation. In the process he rejected out-of-hand any attempt to give primacy to public policy as a reason to uphold or strike down a law. As most of his colleagues said, the Constitution determines. If the Constitution allows bad public policy, then that’s for the people, through their elected representatives, to decide. This opinion establishes Brett Kavanaugh as a true heavyweight. Memo to the Supreme Court bar: don’t ever try to get an outlandish legal theory past him. Not without doing your homework, of which this opinion will be a vital part from now on. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in five pages, raised a minor issue of how long post-ratification does one examine history to determine whether it applies or not. Justice Ketanji Brown Jasckson, in seven pages, tried even harder than Sotomayor did to invalidate Bruen. “[L]ower courts are struggling” to apply history correctly, she says – for which she blames the Court. (She said nothing about the Supreme Court of Hawaii defying the Bruen holding on its face, by rejecting historical analysis.) The Thomas dissent And so we come to Justice Thomas’ dissent. He objected that Zackey Rahimi had no opportunity to plead for his Second Amendment rights in federal court. The process in the Texas court doesn’t satisfy the Justice. The federal government has no history of taking people’s guns away for threatening a fellow member of the community. So Justice Thomas concludes. True, the government relies on pre-Revolutionary English laws allowing the government to seize weapons from “dangerous persons.” Thomas answers that the American Revolution was a revolt against that sort of law. In particular, those laws existed to prevent treason – and not simple murder. In the United States, the response of the government to one who threatened another, was the surety law. Threaten someone, and you must either keep the peace or pay a fine. That was the only recourse from government open to one under threat. The government itself had one other recourse – the affray law – against someone posing a public nuisance. Justice Thomas doesn’t seem to believe that threatening one specific person constitutes such a nuisance. Therefore, under Justice Thomas’ analysis, the only sure way to stop this man from killing either the one he threatened, or anyone else, is to harden all targets. Justice Thomas never says that, but that logically follows from what he did say. Preempting the Texas authorities? Except for one thing: if Mr. Rahimi acted as his significant other alleges, then he committed aggravated assault. (And assault with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to commit murder, and possibly attempted murder.) A Texas public prosecutor could and should have tried him on these charges. Upon conviction for it, a Texas court could then send him to prison for his pains. Depriving him of firearms only, while letting him run free, is worse than sloppy. Magical thinking again: Zackey Rahimi could harm someone at least as direly with a knife, or with his bare hands, as with a firearm, if he got close enough. More to the point, the federal government might have preempted State police and trial process with its prohibition. In short, not even Justice Thomas is suggesting that Zackey Rahimi should be set free to “try it again.” He’s saying the federal government, in making sure to stop the Rahimis of this country, has violated the rights of lesser offenders or non-offenders. Better to let the State courts handle his case properly and charge him with crimes he doesn’t even deny committing. (The women’s-rights advocates of the Sixties and Seventies might protest that a jury of men would excuse Zachey Rahimi’s conduct. As courts in Brazil have done, following the “Code of Machismo.” In that case, Justice Thomas and a hypothetical Justice Lott would say, let the woman arm herself. But: cue the retort that vigilantism is never an acceptable substitute for “reasonable” public-safety measures.) Other Supreme Court cases released Friday The Supreme Court also decided four other cases, and some of them offered far less valuable scholarship than does Rahimi. In Texas v. New Mexico, a badly divided (5-4) Court refused to enter a consent decree between Texas and New Mexico regarding rights to the waters of the Rio Grande. They refused on the grounds that the federal government, recognized as an intervenor, had its own interests at stake. All three Liberals, plus Brett Kavanaugh, “found” for the federal government – so the Chief Justice sided with the Liberals. All three Originalists voted to accept the consent decree, but of the Moderates, only Amy Coney Barrett joined them. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the dissenters, held that the United States had no further jurisdiction in light of the consent decree. In Department of State v. Munoz, the Supreme Court held that a U.S. citizen had no standing to stop the deportation of his or her immigrant spouse. The vote was six to three, with Originalists and Moderates overruling all the Liberals. Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the court, held that historically Congress has always made law regulating who may “marry into” United States citizenship or lawful residency. The U.S. Consul’s office, in this case, found that the immigrant spouse was a member of MS-13. Justice Gorsuch urged the citizen spouse to reapply for an entry visa for the immigrant, responding to that revelation. But Justice Sotomayor, leading the Liberals, said membership in MS-13 was not enough reason to bar the immigrant. Cases involving the Sixth Amendment Two other cases turned on Americans’ Sixth Amendment protections. In Erlinger v. United States, a 6-3 Court majority found that a jury must agree unanimously, and beyond a reasonable doubt, that the past offenses of a criminal defendant occurred on separate occasions for purpose of the Armed Career Criminal Act. But this time the decision split all three Blocs. The six-member majority consisted of: • Gorsuch and Thomas for the Originalists, • Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett for the Moderates, and • Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor for the Liberals. Justice Gorsuch asserted this enhanced role for juries. Justice Kavanaugh dissented, trying to protect the powers of judges. In addition, Justice Jackson raised an additional technicality in dissent. In Smith v. Arizona, a unanimous Supreme Court held – on differing grounds but all arriving at the same answer – that when an expert witness relies on statements by an absent analyst, those statements come into evidence. When they do, a defendant (through his attorneys) has the right to “confront” said analyst, like any other “accuser.” In this case, when a forensic pathologist offers his laboratory’s results into evidence, every technician who worked on that sample must also testify and submit to cross-examination. Justice Kagan set forth this principle, setting forth four reasons. While not all Justices could agree on all four reasons, enough agreed on three to sustain the basic holding. Justice Sam Alito thought the opinion needlessly trashed recent reforms to the Federal Rules of Evidence. Analysis Clearly the Moderates rule at this Supreme Court, and will not allow outlandish theories to prevail. Observers saw that in Moore v. Harper. The only problem is that the Moderates might be short on imagination. Justice Clarence Thomas, more so than any other Originalist, challenges this Court to imagine a society in which: • Persons under even a credible threat take care of their own defense, just as they did in the “Wild West,” • No court ever finds a person “dangerous” to another, or to society, without a trial on a specific charge, and • Neither does the worst actor “ruin it for everybody else” in the eyes of the law. Justice Thomas is a true legend, last of his class. He is the senior Justice in service by fourteen years, the longest interval between appointments to the current Court. This is his only real point of dispute with his fellow Originalists. The Moderates simply cannot imagine a society that protects centuries-old liberties as well as Thomas exhorts them to. Of course, the Liberals do not believe in individual liberty. To them, self-defense is vigilantism, and magic legitimately operates. For the Liberals not only cannot imagine liberty, but neither can they imagine anyone willfully disobeying their orders. Or those of an all-powerful federal government. Beyond that, Justice Kavanaugh loves to protect the prerogatives of judges. And in Texas he seemed equally eager to protect the prerogatives of the federal government. Roberts, of course, loves to split the difference. What will the Supreme Court do next? At least six Big Cases remain for the Supreme Court to decide: • Trump v. United States, asking whether former Presidents of the United States are immune from prosecution for acts in office. Furthermore the case asks what limits attach to that immunity, if it exists. • Murthy v. Missouri, the Great On-line Censorship Case, formerly Missouri v. Biden. • Fischer v. United States, by a “January Sixer” alleging selective prosecution of himself and others over January 6 activities. • Moyle v. United States, asking whether the Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act (EMTALA) forbids a State to forbid abortion in its hospitals. • Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, two cases out of Florida and Texas asking how much power social media Trust and Safety Teams have over political content on the platforms they run. Everything will depend on Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. If they both side with the Originalists, then: • Trump goes free, • The government’s public-private partnership with Big Tech comes to an immediate end, • Fischer goes free (and Trump could stay free even if he doesn’t prevail in his Immunity Case), • Abortion remains illegal in Idaho, and • The Attorneys General of Texas, Florida, and other States may forbid Big Tech to violate the free-speech rights of their respective residents. But if either or both side with the Liberals, these outcomes are not to be. Understandably, all eyes are glued to the Court as the remaining Non-argument Days approach. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/24/news/supreme-court-friday-dump/ The opinions: United States v. Rahimi: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-915_8o6b.pdf Texas v. New Mexico: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/141orig_d18f.pdf Department of State v. Munoz: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-334new_hfci.pdf Erlinger v. United States: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-370_8o6a.pdf Smith v. Arizona: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-899_97be.pdf Belle Starr – entry in The Encyclopedia of Arkansas: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/belle-starr-2406/ Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Lynchburg, Virginia – RINO Central? By Terry A. Hurlbut The RINOS (Republicans In Name Only) would appear to be in the saddle in Lynchburg, Virginia. Poll watchers have alleged widespread election fraud in the dual primary held there and elsewhere in Virginia last Tuesday. Problems involving a City Council primary have “gone national,” but one other problem hasn’t – the Fifth Congressional District primary race. In fact, national newshounds watching that city council race might be looking at the shiny object. The real story is the primary contest between Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.-5th) and Virginia Sen. John McGuire (R-10th). Allegations out of Lynchburg On Tuesday, June 18, 2024, Virginia held a dual primary, with Republican and Democratic races taking place in most jurisdictions. Republicans ran a Senate primary in every jurisdiction – called a unit in Virginia, which could be either a county or an independent city. (Capt. Hung Cao USN won the nomination to challenge Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., with 61 percent of the vote.) In addition, every U.S. Congressional district had a primary to nominate a challenger of the opposite party to the incumbent. The Fifth U.S. Congressional District was the notable – and bitterly contentious – exception. Was? Make that is. For in addition to a primary to select a Democrat seeking to pick up that seat, a Republican State Senator challenged the incumbent U.S. Representative. Lynchburg, Virginia is an independent city, hence a unit unto itself. Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit carried detailed allegations of election irregularities that could amount to election fraud. X influencer George Behizy carried the most sensational allegations. https://x.com/BehizyTweets/status/1804718604904005701 Hoft concentrated on the City Council primary race between Peter Alexander and Chris Faraldi, contending for the Republican nomination for Ward Four. This morning Faraldi led Alexander, 1023 to 1002 – a margin of twenty-one votes. But both campaigns expressed outrage at things their respective observers had seen, and how the Election Board treated them. But George Behizy concentrated on the bigger meat: the Good-McGuire race. BREAKING: Poll watchers in Lynchburg, Virginia have released BOMBSHELL proof of fraud that took place in Tuesday's election. They were prevented from seeing mail-in ballot processing and records show ballot box seals broken and ballots counted without anyone watching. Election officials also admitted to violating state law, “Election staff confirmed that it had been standard practice to allow the ballot drop box to be stuffed until Friday, which violates Virginia law.” They also tried to silence the observers at the Friday Election Board Emergency Meeting by telling them not to discuss the events with the media. “Staff also stated the drop box was emptied Friday morning, but did not produce records documenting access to the drop box until nearly an hour after our observer requested receipts. It is still unclear how many ballots were collected from the drop box, and we may never know how many were stuffed in the drop box after the polls closed.” It looks like the Republican establishment cheated to take Bob Good out of [C]ongress. Lynchburg is the biggest city in Virginia's 5th congressional district and allegations just like this forced Bridgeport, Connecticut to redo the Democrat primary. STOP THE STEAL! Justice for Bob Good. Further allegations by Bob Good and others WTVR-TV (Channel 6, CBS-TV, Richmond, Virginia) has a running tally of primary results in the Senate race and all districts. (The Democrats did not have a Senate primary, because no one dared challenge Tim Kaine for renomination.) At present, State Sen. McGuire leads Rep. Good 31,459 to 31,126 – a margin of “victory” of 333 votes. Because this is less than one percent, Rep. Good has the right to demand a recount. He has announced his intention to do so, as soon as all units finish tallying mail-in ballots. Not one media organ, legacy or alternative, has called the race. On Thursday, Rep. Good announced that he would demand not only a full recount but also a full investigation. Your editor ran the primary in a precinct in the First Congressional District as Chief of Precinct. While there, he overheard several voters wondering why Rep. Good was not on the ballot. Your editor and his crew explained that the precinct involved was in a different District. In fact, the Fifth District includes the westernmost quarter of Hanover County; the First District includes the rest. Virginia Tea Party Summit Yesterday your editor attended the Virginia Tea Party Summer Summit – where Rep. Good, on a last-minute invitation, addressed the meeting. There he told the same story George Behizy told: that election officials left ballot drop boxes unattended through Friday. Good spoke of more than one drop box, instead of the one of which Behizy quoted “election staff” as speaking. Good also made other, more serious allegations of election equipment connected to Wi-Fi networks. This violates every standard with which your editor is familiar. He also spoke of “hidden modems,” and “alarms” that his accredited poll watchers sounded. Wireless modem connections to election equipment have been a consistent allegation since the Election of 2020. Lynchburg buys its electronic voting machines (ballot marking devices, scanner-tabulators, and electronic pollbooks) from Unisyn Voting Solutions. They boast a 2005 certification from the Election Assistance Commission and prominently advertise the security of their system. Among other things, they boast of using the Linux open-source operating system and not a proprietary system like Microsoft Windows. Multiple persons connected, directly or indirectly, with the Bob Good campaign confirm that Rep. Good will look hard for solid evidence of fraud. If he finds any, then he will seek to have a judge order a rerunning of the primary. More details from Lynchburg The Fifth Congressional District is a large, rectilinear district that includes Lynchburg (the largest city) and about twenty counties or parts of counties. Bob Good expressed concerns not only out of Lynchburg bur also out of Albemarle County, another Fifth District county. Virginia’s primaries are open, so a voter may vote in either primary merely by asking for either Party’s ballot. Peter Alexander’s campaign complained specifically about “crossover” voting – Democrats voting in the Republican primary. The Democratic primary in the Fifth District saw fewer than 25,000 votes, compared to more than 62,500 Republican primary voters. Chris Faraldi seemed to echo Peter Alexander’s concerns. But he also credited the John McGuire campaign with alerting them to the problem. That might or might not be a code phrase indicating mutual cooperation where the voters might not appreciate it. Alexander accuses Faraldi, the Mayor of Lynchburg, of running a “tax-and-spend” administration. John McGuire, for his part, gets his financing from donors allied with former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), former Speaker of the House. McCarthy allegedly is on a “revenge tour” to punish those (including Bob Good) who ousted him from the Speakership. More from the Virginia Tea Party Summit In his remarks to the Virginia Tea Party Summit, Bob Good did more than allege election irregularities in Tuesday’s primary. He also alleged that McGuire belongs to a Republican establishment that is more interested in winning elections than in winning “The Game.” Democrats, he said, are more than willing to lose elections by aggressive pursuit of their socialistic policies. This is because Republicans, even if they were to win the “trifecta” of House, Senate and White House, would not be willing to reverse socialistic and “woke” policy initiatives of Democrats. Republicans, he said, want only “as many people as possible to wear [their] football jersey.” What matters to the Republican establishment is not now people vote but how they identify. They seek power, but are not willing to exert it for the country’s good. (Perhaps they exert it merely to shake down lobbyists, and occasionally “cause oriented” organizations, for campaign cash.) That, says Good, is why Republicans will never press for a bill to forbid abortion nationwide, or even to secure the border. And it is why they have regarded the House Freedom Caucus as thorns in their sides. If my opponent is elected this fall, the Establishment will put him on a lot of committees designed to steer money his way. And if somebody is willing to spend that amount of money, they’re going to expect my opponent to fall in line – and he will. Analysis Bob Good is seeking his third term in Congress and is chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. John McGuire won election to the Virginia Senate last November and unpleasantly surprised everyone by challenging Good in the primary. The major complaint: John McGuire has not established himself as a State Senator before seeking election to Congress. Worse, he announced his primary challenge when the General Assembly session had barely begun. Some witnesses have compared this to landing a non-ranking executive position at a company and abruptly seeking its presidency on one’s first day. McGuire has somehow wangled an endorsement from Donald Trump. He did this in part by alleging that Good supported the candidate of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.). McGuire has definitely so alleged in campaign flyers that your editor has received. But in informal remarks at the Republican Party of Virginia Quadrennial Convention, held at Hampton Roads, Virginia on May 31-June 1, 2024, Rep. Good said he only said he would support Gov. DeSantis if the Florida governor received the nomination. Of course, DeSantis withdrew early in Republican primary season. But John McGuire never stopped repeating the Ron DeSantis endorsement allegation. This ugly primary fight concerns Republicans State-wide, and apparently even Virginia’s Republican National Committee representative (female) is involved. At a Party social event last night, RNC Committeewoman Patti Lyman urged attendees to let the “process,” meaning a recount, go forward without recrimination, according to attendees. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/23/news/lynchburg-virginia-rino-central/ Jim Hoft’s article: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/06/allegations-election-fraud-rock-lynchburg-virginia-republican-primary/ George Behizy’s post: https://x.com/BehizyTweets/status/1804718604904005701 Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

The Ten Commandments come back By Terry A. Hurlbut Yesterday (June 19, 2024), Louisiana started requiring prominent Ten Commandments displays in all public-school classrooms. Gov. Jeff Landry (R-La.) signed the bill into law in the afternoon. In so doing he provoked an immediate court fight – to which he is no stranger. (He was the original Attorney General of Louisiana who helped file Missouri v. Biden, the landmark censorship case.) This litigation is welcome – especially if provokes a larger debate on whether the Framers of the Constitution truly intended, as Roger Baldwin (of ACLU fame) alleged, that the Constitution mandates a secular government. History of the Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments, of course, fall within Exodus (in Hebrew, Shemot Names), chapter 20, verses 1-17. Their most concise rendition reads: You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself [any] idol, [nor] worship them or serve them. You shall not take the Name of the LORD your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Honor your father and your mother. You shall not [commit] murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet. The first four of these are the most specific, for they cover man’s relationship with God. Few religious traditions are as specific about this relationship as are Judaism and Christianity. But to the other six, covering man’s relationship with man, none can object to with any justice. Commandment No. 5 is a sensible attitude toward one’s parents or guardians. Each of the next four is a specific prohibition of a recognizable crime. Finally, Commandment No. 10 sets the boundary between neighbor and neighbor, that no one should cross. To covet in this context means to desire to have that specific thing that belongs to someone else. Even Ayn Rand, atheist that she was, held Commandments 6, 8, 9, and 10 as necessary to ordered liberty. The Great Alabama Ten Commandments Monument Case In 2001, Roy Moore, as Chief Justice of Alabama, famously commissioned a heavy granite block to honor the Ten Commandments. This monument rested in the rotunda of the Judiciary Building. On top were the two classic tablets, with semicircular top edges, listing the Ten Commandments in English. Each side of the block bore a simple phrase from one or more of America’s founding documents, as follows: 1. “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” (Declaration of Independence), 2. “In God we trust.” (motto on the nation’s coin and currency), 3. “So help me God” (part of the Presidential Oath of Office, as the Constitution specifies), and 4. The last part of the Pledge of Allegiance, beginning with “One Nation, under God,…” and continuing to the end. Each message had several prominent quotes surrounding it, to amplify its meaning.1 Three Alabama attorneys sued the State, alleging violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Glassroth et al. v. Moore. Three activist organizations supported the plaintiffs: 1. Southern Poverty Law Center, 2. American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, and 3. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. As their Injury in Fact (the prime element of standing), the three said the display of the Ten Commandments showed: • Prejudice against any of their clients who were neither Jew nor Christian, and • Substitution of religious law for Constitutional and statutory law in the decision of their cases. It flunked the Lemon Test Judge Myron Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama agreed. On November 18, 2002, Judge Thompson, citing Lemon v. Kurtzman, found the monument to fail the Lemon Test of Secularity of Purpose. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit ultimately affirmed. Judge Thompson, the affirmation in hand, ordered Judge Moore to remove the block by August 20, 2003. Moore refused, saying that he would be in violation of his oath of office if he so acted. So on August 21 the other eight Justices of the Supreme Court voted to remove the block. The next day, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary filed an ethics complaint against Moore. Workmen, operating under the direction of the rest of the Supreme Court, moved the monument to a back room. Judge Moore lost his job on November 13, 2003. The next day, workmen removed the block from the building entirely. But no one has ever destroyed the block. Moore still goes on the lecture circuit, and takes the block with him on his travels. Fast-forward to today Louisiana’s new law took effect yesterday, according to Charlotte Hazard of Just the News. The Associated Press (per KXAN-TV, Channel 36 (NBC), Austin, Texas) gave the details: The legislation that Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law on Wednesday requires a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” in all public classrooms, from kindergarten to state-funded universities. A four-paragraph statement of context, pointing out that the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American education for almost three centuries,” will accompany each display. These displays must be in place by the beginning of the calendar year 2025. This law also authorizes, but does not require, the display of other supporting documents, including (apparently without limitation) the: • Mayflower Compact (which begins In the Name of God, Amen), • Declaration of Independence (with references to Laws of Nature and Nature’s God, the Supreme Judge of the world, etc.), and • Northwest Ordinance, the first governing instrument for America’s Northwestern territories. Private donations will fund the creation and placement of all such displays. Although this is the first such State law to go into force, it is not the first such law any State legislature has considered. The Texas Legislature considered such a bill last April, in response to a more recent Supreme Court precedent. See Kennedy v. Bremerton School District from the 2021 Term. The lawsuits begin already Already three secularist organizations have vowed to sue the State to negate this law: • American Civil Liberties Union, • Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and • Freedom From Religion Foundation. In a joint statement yesterday afternoon, they said: Even among those who may believe in some version of the Ten Commandments, the particular text that they adhere to can differ by religious denomination or tradition. The government should not be taking sides in this theological debate. That’s actually a significantly weaker statement than the allegations of injury by the three plaintiffs in Glassroth v. Moore. These latest prospective plaintiffs have listed only a philosophical theory. That’s not a true articulation of an Injury in Fact – and without that, they would lack standing. Exactly how they will allege injury, remains for a court to see. But in one respect they have already made an invalid statement. “The government should not be taking sides,” they say. But by refusing any such display, the government is taking the side of declaring them invalid, incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial. Furthermore, the only differences in text arise from differing translations. Those three are alleging that a court will find that the selection of a particular translation will show prejudice against the others. Note that Glassroth and his colleagues did not see fit to argue over translations of the Ten Commandments. True, some church leaders see fit to champion one translation over all others, and even attach theological significance to it. But the real problem with human translation has always been accuracy, and few translations are so inaccurate as to risk disseminating bad doctrine. Thus far, CNAV has seen no official translation that creates a problem with the Ten Commandments. A different legal climate More to the point, the legal climate today is drastically different from the climate in 2003 for the Glassroth case. First and foremost, Lemon v. Kurtzman is no longer operative, because the Kennedy precedent supersedes it. Another superseding case is Carson v. Makin, which forbids the government to discriminate against religious adherents in public programs. The AP article referred to a 1980 Ten Commandments display law in Kentucky, that the then-constituted Supreme Court invalidated. Again: that was before Kennedy and in fact a mere nine years after Lemon. Remember, also, the radically different composition of the Court: • Warren Burger (Chief Justice), • Harry Blackmun, • William J. Brennan, • Thurgood Marshall, • Lewis F. Powell, • William Rehnquist, • John Paul Stevens, • Potter Stewart, and • Byron White. This was a Liberal court by any stretch, so their upholding of Lemon was part for the course. Recall also that the Lemon court decided Roe v. Wade. Today we have three Originalists, three Liberals, and three Moderates. How the Originalists could defend the Ten Commandments Lay aside for a moment the Court’s recent invalidation of Lemon, and their arguable repudiation of James G. Blaine’s principles. The Originalists showed a clear predilection for historical analysis in another, unrelated case. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. That historical analysis would inevitably lead to the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration, both of which documents mention God prominently. Even the Constitution mentions God, in the Presidential Oath of Office. Indeed, the Preambles to the Constitutions of every State in the Union mention God and give Him thanks. Beyond that, nine prominent Americans, all of whom flourished at the time of the establishment of the Constitution, mentioned God prominently in their writings. These included John Adams, second President of the United States, who famously declared that: Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Include also: • Patrick Henry, governor of Virginia, • John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States, • Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, third and fourth Presidents, • Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, • George Washington, the first President, and before that, Commander of the Continental Army, • Noah Webster (the Lexicographer), and • Daniel Webster, United States Senator and Secretary of State. Also include Abigail Adams, John’s wife, who asked pointedly how anyone could be patriotic and not God-fearing. An interesting trial record Add to it: if anyone wants to try the very concept of God, let them call any of several witnesses ready to introduce hard evidence for the Global Flood and even for the historicity of Jesus Christ – Who happens to be the Best-attested Figure in all of human history. Which brings up one other question for everyone reading this. Anyone who questions the importance of creation science, now has the answer to the question. Roger Baldwin founded something he called the American Civil Liberties Union to litigate God out of public life. Before him, James G. Blaine gallivanted across the country passing religious disestablishment amendments that he modeled – in part – on the federal First Amendment. And, of course, Clarence Darrow cleverly argued the case for atheism in the case of Tennessee v. John T. Scopes. Yet not until Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace published their Origin of Species did anyone seriously question God’s Existence. So creation science serves to show that atheism and secularism are utterly without scientific foundation. And while America argues the concept of God and the validity of honoring Him in public policy, maybe someone can prepare to argue for an actual right to life under the Constitution. Imagine… In closing: what can be so important about the Ten Commandments, and the religious traditions from which they come? What does one gain from believing in God, and lose by not believing? Lay aside – but only for a moment – that eternal separation from God will not be a good place to be! The Evangelist and Physician, Saint Luke, gave a description of that place that should make anyone shudder. (Luke 16:19-31.) But for the moment, lay that aside. Now imagine going through life, and finding in it neither meaning nor purpose. Imagine not even having a solid basis for ethics. Ayn Rand tried to work out an ethical system using “man’s life” as a value standard. But under that system, a law against murder is only a mutual decision, to create an ordered society. Suppose your neighbor doesn’t value order, or indeed anything but satisfying his desires of the moment? Upon what basis can you tell him, “You haven’t that right”? The Ten Commandments provide the structure necessary for order in society. It is a set of Rules that apply to everyone. Furthermore, the God in Whom so many would rather not believe, is a Rudder to help one steer through life, and a Wind to fill one’s sails for motive power. In short, humans are better off with God than without Him, even apart from Saint Luke’s dire description of the final destination. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/20/news/ten-commandments-come-back/ Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike 2.0 Generic License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood: http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Elon Musk takes the red pill By Terry A. Hurlbut Anyone familiar with movies from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries knows what a “red pill” is. From the popular franchise The Matrix, a “red pill” is a Moment of Truth, usually about a massive confidence trick that some person or persons, usually in real or pretended authority, have been playing on the person having the Moment of Truth – the person to whom someone offers the red pill. The confidence trick always involves a false version of how the world works and what, if anything, threatens it. Usually the trick also involves the motives of the ones playing the trick. Thus, “to take the red pill” means to realize that someone has been tricking you and “stringing you along.” Elon Musk seems to be getting close to a massive “red pill” moment. The question now becomes: when will he realize the full extent of the deception? How Elon Musk fell for the trick at first Elon Musk – who comes to America from South Africa – has always had a vision for the betterment of humankind. Of course, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations also claim to have such visions. The difference with Elon Musk is that he is sincere, and they are not. (What organization or coalition that promotes normalization of sexual relations between adult and child, could possibly care for humankind? But we digress.) So Elon Musk heard repeatedly that the globe is warming, that the pumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is responsible for that, and that human industry must decarbonize, and fast. So he applied his engineering aptitude to consider what he thought were practical solutions. He came up with one good solution: the Space Exploration Company, with the goal of opening Mars to human settlement. (In a very real sense, he is running his own space program, and has other space program runners as clients.) But he made himself most famous for designing electric vehicles, premium roof tiles that generated electricity from the sunlight that falls on them, and new generations of batteries for single-family houses, office parks, industrial installations, and even grid-level storage. But the powers-that-be have ruined everything at every turn. They have canceled the building of nuclear power plants and shut down existing plants of all types. The grid hasn’t enough power for electrifying the entire vehicle fleet – and already Elon Musk begins to know it. He’s tried to tell them, but… At first he tried to remonstrate with those powers-that-be. To start with, he warned that nuclear power, as a concentrated source of energy, was essential in the early stage. Before his planned mega-solar-battery (in the Mojave or Sahara Desert, to name two examples) can come on-line, nuclear energy must carry the load. But leftist politicians shut down generating capacity while at the same time moving to forbid the building, or driving-in, of conventional vehicles. What Elon Musk did not realize at first, is that the powers-that-be never intended to replace the vehicle fleet. They intended all along to remove it. That’s why many cities have already carved out no-car downtowns. One parks at the border, then walks, or rents a bicycle (or in Washington, D.C., the gyroscope-operated Segway®), while “downtown.” And those electric vehicles? Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) actually told people to refrain from charging them at certain “peak hours.” Obviously no one has thought about making the grid ready to support such a fleet. (To say nothing of the failures of these vehicles in regions that do get cold in some seasons.) His latest realizations Lately, Elon Musk has had four moments that must surely make him realize that the motives of those he tried to work with, are not what he thought. Environmentalists have refused to work with his SpaceX company to find solutions to alleged environmental issues. Apparently his intention to spare the Earth environment by relocating heavy industry, counts for nothing with these people. His idea of creating a second home for humanity counts for even less. “Instead of running away from Earth, why not stop messing the Earth up?” But that also means more than the environmentalists say as well. (More on that below.) Other environmentalists, especially in Germany, have protested his building of a plant in their country to build more electric vehicles. Their complaint – that his plant won’t leave them any water to drink – seems incredible when one remembers that he would regard that as another engineering problem to solve. A man like that thinks of these things ahead of time. But the environmentalists won’t admit that. Two weekends ago, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico held primaries. They used electronic voting machines, which of course are vulnerable to power failure – a frequent issue on the island. In the process of coping with that, election officials discovered that those machines were undercounting ballots and zeroing-out vote totals for disfavored candidates. After Robert F. Kennedy highlighted that issue, Elon Musk agreed: electronic voting machines must go. But why he said that is just as telling: The risk of being hacked by humans or [artificial intelligence], while small, is still too high. Elon Musk sounds another alarm: the birth dearth Also over the weekend, Elon Musk returned to a theme he has sounded before. Human beings are not having enough children to replace the dead and dying. In an interview with a representative from the CATO Institute, he said flatly: If there are no humans, there is no humanity. https://x.com/VigilantFox/status/1802120341768089711 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jb9nSBh_Qg He took note of two things. First, birth rates have fallen below replacement level, not only in the United States, but everywhere in the world. Second – and worse – it has become fashionable with too many people to assume that human beings are a blight on the Earth. He went on: I think at a fundamental level, you can think of things as a fight between expansionist and extinctionist philosophies. And that’s what really matters. If humans go extinct or civilization collapses, whatever policies we may have are irrelevant. He ended with a plain message: “go forth and multiply.” Next question: does he yet realize the full magnitude of the confidence game the powers-that-be have been playing? They do want to extinguish humanity – presumably excepting only themselves. Larry (The) Fink of BlackRock said that quiet part out loud: I could argue [that], in the developed countries, the big winners are countries that have shrinking populations. That’s something that most people never talked about. You know, we always used to think that a shrinking population is a cause for negative growth. But in my conversations with the leadership of these large developed countries that have xenophobic immigration policies, they don’t have anybody to come in, shrinking unemployment (excuse me) tricky demographics. These countries will rapidly develop robotics and AI and technology. And if the promise – I didn’t say it’s going to happen, but – if the promise of all that transforms productivity, which most of us think it will, we’ll be able to elevate the standard of living [of] a country as the standard of living of individuals, even with shrinking populations. And so, the paradigm of negative population growth is going to be changing, and the social problems that one will have, in substituting humans for machines, is going to be far easier in those countries that have declining populations. And so, for those countries that have rising populations, the answer will be education. And so rapidly developing, for those countries that do not have a foundation for the rule of law or education, they’re going to be left [behind]. That’s where the divide [is] going to get more and more extreme. And unfortunately,… Shrinking populations. Robotics and AI – to replace those Great Unwashed Masses. Ironically, Elon Musk has a project to build a humanoid robot – as a domestic servant or factory worker. Even before then, he foresaw SAE Level Five cars functioning as “robotaxis” (his word) to shuttle people point-to-point without drivers. But in all this, he genuinely thought he was paving the way toward a post-scarcity society (if that’s possible). The elites had something else in mind: having the entire planet to themselves. Robots and AI would take care of them. What will the red pill moment look like? If Elon Musk lacks anything, it’s enough information to “connect the dots.” To do that, one must take this time-honored advice from the late Ian Fleming: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third time it’s enemy action. Elon Musk can find plenty of dots to connect in how the elites have twisted most of his versions to suit their real aims. What they haven’t twisted (i.e., SpaceX), they are trying to destroy – happily, without much success. But any astute observer can find more – with the Alphabet Soup movement, which also aims to depopulate the planet. (Promises of enabling “trans” individuals to reproduce are just that: promises, all of them empty. Reproduction in the Alphabet Soup community would still be reproduction. The elites designed the Alphabet Soup community to be sterile by definition.) Musk observed correctly that Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is below replacement in every society. TFR is the total number of children a woman might be expected to have. Replacement-level TFR is 2.1 only in lawful and ordered societies. In lawless, disordered, and war-torn regions, it’s more likely to be 5 or 6. Therefore TFR is likely below replacement everywhere. But hope does remain. Traditionalist societies, especially those (like Old Order Amish) who avoid entangling interconnections (like the electric grid), will continue to reproduce at or above replacement. They might never use SpaceX’ planetary migration technology. But if their enemies voluntarily die off, they won’t need it. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/17/news/elon-musk-red-pill/ Elon Musk interview with CATO: https://x.com/VigilantFox/status/1802120341768089711 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jb9nSBh_Qg Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Assyrian discovery proves Bible again By Terry A. Hurlbut Two weeks ago, a paper appeared in Near Eastern Archaeology describing a very salient find. Archaeologist Stephen C. Compton and his team claim – with much photographic evidence – to have discovered an Assyrian military base. This base is a siege camp, not a garrison – and in fact local evidence places it during Sennacherib’s war against the ancient Kingdom of Judah. This, then, is Sennacherib’s siege camp, where he lost 185 oversized battalions – or undersized regiments – of armed effectives in a single night. If this camp is what Compton says it is, then he has just proved one of the most controversial stories the Bible contains. Role of the Assyrian Empire in Biblical history The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires are nearly coincident in their land placement. In fact, Assyrians and Babylonians underwent at least one cycle of one conquering the other, only to fall victim to that other. For a long time, Kings of Babylon were actually Assyrian princes – until Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar II, rebelled against Assyria and finally conquered it. Until the rediscovery of ancient Nineveh in 1820 by Claudius J. Rich, no one believed that an empire called “The Assyrian” actually existed. That rediscovery changed everything. It also provoked a long-simmering dispute about the chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah. Archbishop James Ussher, Primate of Ireland, stood on one side, and men like Edwin R. Thiele and William Albright on the other. At issue were attempts to synchronize the reigns of the successors of King Solomon (1015-975 BC) with those of Assyrian kings who claimed victory over one or more of these Hebrew kings, especially Ahab and his successor Jehoram (misidentified as Jehu, who destroyed the House of Omri into which Ahab was born). The solution to that riddle is actually quite simple. The Assyrian Eponym Canon, said to have one name per year, was missing 52 names. Martin Anstey showed the spot from which someone chiseled out the missing names – most likely at the orders of Tiglath Pileser III. This story, however, concerns an event happening much later than the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III. Sennacherib, Rabshakeh, and Hezekiah In 751 BC, a prince was born into the House of David under very unusual circumstances. King Jehoram of Judah, witnessing the humiliating quarantine of his father Uzziah, wanted to secure his ground with God. He did not want to end as his father had, stricken with a skin disease (which might or might not have been Mycobacterium leprae) and buried apart from the resting places of the Kings of Judah, with his ossuary or “bone box” bearing the first-ever biological hazard warning! So he proposed a child marriage – his son Jehoahaz to Abiah, daughter of High Priest Zechariah II. Jehoahaz was ten years old and Abiah maybe two years older at the time. What neither father could have predicted was that the randy prince Jehohaz would consummate the union while he and his bride were still children. Abiah gave birth to a son nine months later. Hezekiah was only seven years old when his grandfather Jehoram died, and his father Jehoahaz became king. Jehoahaz had such overweening pride that he dropped the “Jeho” from his name, and called himself simply “Ahaz.” Which name simply means strength, and not God’s strength. Ahaz shut up the Temple and actually imported the religion of a Syrian king he defeated in battle. He also practiced the cult of Molech, and sacrificed some of his children to it. But in 726 BC the thirty-six-year-old Ahaz granted his son a viceroyalty. Soon after, he was dead, and Hezekiah was king. The Great Reformer Hezekiah’s first royal acts were to reopen the Temple and commission a repair of its great doors. Then he ordered the priests and the Levites to start ritually cleansing the Temple. That process lasted so long that the new king had to put off Passover celebration for a month. He invited every tribe, including the tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, to send representatives. After that massive celebration, he saw to the removal of every pagan altar, every Asherah pole, and every “high place.” He also smashed a bronze serpent the people had preserved as a relic of the Wilderness Crossing under Moses, after finding that people had created a cult around it. But in addition to these reforms, Hezekiah suspended payment of a tribute his father Ahaz had agreed to pay the Assyrian ruler, Shalmaneser V. In the sixth full year of Hezekiah’s reign (after the year of his accession), Shalmaneser conquered Samaria, the Northern capital. Four years later, in 717 BC, Shalmaneser was dead. Hezekiah, at some point in that interval, dug a tunnel to the Gihon Spring to ensure Jerusalem’s water supply. Then in 717 BC, he suspended the tribute. Four years later, Sennacherib, the successor (not necessarily immediate) of Shalmaneser, invaded. The Assyrian invasion Hezekiah took time both to repair certain fortifications that had fallen into disrepair, and to have his army properly trained. But after Sennacherib (as king or as Tartan to his father Sargon) captured seven cities, Hezekiah showed weakness. He stripped the Temple of its gold and silver to pay tribute to Sennacherib. As everyone since Aethelred the Unready knows, once you pay Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane. Sennacherib came back, with at least 185 units. The Bible uses the word aleph, plural alpayim, meaning a thousand, to speak of a military unit in those times. It calls the next smaller unit a “hundred.” Most likely, a hundred men formed a company (a century in the Roman Army). Ten companies, perhaps, made a regiment, larger than a battalion but smaller than a modern regiment. (And ten regiments made a division, or a “ten-thousand.”) Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten-thousands! 1 Samuel 21:11 The Assyrian officer Rabshakeh, Sennacherib’s chief of staff, delivered a propaganda speech worthy of “Tokyo Rose” or “Lord Haw-haw.” He displayed tremendous ignorance of the Hebrew faith – for instance, suggesting that the high places Hezekiah had removed were places pleasing to God. Hezekiah refused the surrender demand. By then Sennacherib had moved his camp to Libnah, outside Lachish, the last city he had conquered. Knowing that Ethiopians were about to attack him, he sent a written surrender demand to Hezekiah. Hezekiah’s prayer Hezekiah took that letter, spread it on the altar in the Temple, and asked God directly for help. Shortly thereafter, the prophet Isaiah assured Hezekiah that God had heard everything. He also assured the king that Sennacherib would never enter Jerusalem, nor attack it effectively with any kind of weapon. Worth mentioning here is that even before the letter arrived, Isaiah assured Hezekiah that Sennacherib would return to his own city – where his own flesh and blood would kill him. The day after that second conversation with Isaiah – concerning the written ultimatum – every armed effective in those 185 regiments died. The survivors woke up in Sennacherib’s siege camp to find only dead bodies surrounding them. Sennacherib, with other enemies pressing him, abandoned the siege and returned to Nineveh. Three years later, two of his sons, Adrammelech and Sharezer, murdered him in the Temple of Nisroch. They ran away, never to set foot in Assyria again, and Prince Esarhaddon succeeded to the throne. (Isaiah 37:36-38; see also 2 Kings 19:35 and 2 Chronicles 32:21.) Thus everything played out exactly as Isaiah said it would, even to Sennacherib’s own sons murdering him. They’ve found Sennacherib’s siege camp! Two weeks ago, in Popular Archaeology, Stephen C. Compton announced his triumph: he had found the siege camp of Libnah. He started with a bas-relief in Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh, commemorating his capture of Lachish. By matching the landscape in this bas-relief to aerial photographs of the lands south of Jerusalem, Compton reverse-engineered a map of the area. Following that map, he found ruins similar in size and shape to the camp appearing in the bas-relief. The camp was oval, in contrast to Roman siege camps, which are always rectangular. (Your editor saw at least one Roman camp at the base of Masada in 2011.) Moreover the site already had a reputation. Arabs called the ruins Khirbet al-Mudawwara, Ruins of the Camp of the Invading Ruler. The hill on which Compton found the ruins is named Jebel el-Mudawwara, Mountain of the Camp of the Invading Ruler. Potsherds from the area confirm that it was uninhabited since the siege. The shards date from the date of the invasion, within a few years. Compton’s article does appear in Near Eastern Archaeology, but it is accessible only to members of the American Society for Overseas Research. The first mention of Compton’s find in major media organs was this morning in The Daily Mail. Why no media organ picked up on this story earlier, is impossible to determine. Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit picked up the story and reproduced several photographs of the bas-relief and the area. Further Assyrian finds As further testament to the strategic value of the site, the British, during the Palestine Mandate, built an ammunition depot on the hill in 1930. They named it Ammunition Hill, a name it carries to this day. During the 1948 War the Arab Legion captured it and built several defensive trenches. But in the 1967 War, Israeli paratroopers captured that hill, which now serves as a war memorial. This is the first Assyrian siege camp ever discovered – and Compton expects to find more. In fact he says he already has found more – and used some of those camps to find other ancient cities. These would have been the cities the Assyrians used those camps to besiege. No one knows to this day what wiped out those 185 regiments. Did a plague strike the camp? Or did an army of mice move in, chew through the soldiers’ bowstrings and shield straps, and leave them sitting ducks for Egyptian or Ethiopian attack? Compton’s findings provide no clues. But something happened in that camp to make Sennacherib go back home. Lessons in faith But this story definitely teaches us about faith – and not merely faith in the truth claims of the Bible. Notice that Hezekiah thought it expedient to buy off Sennacherib, by emptying the Temple treasury and stripping off Temple fixtures. That did not work. Indeed appeasement never works. Again: once you pay Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane. Or: once you pay the Assyrian Tax, you never get rid of the Assyrian. Not by paying him off, you don’t. But earnest prayer did the job. God calls us to prayer, not to appeasement of the wicked, whoever they are. CNAV urges everyone to look at Stephen Compton’s findings of that siege camp, remember that it held 185 regiments (ancient regiments, but still) of armed effectives, and remember also that after a single night every one of those effectives was a corpse. The Compton findings show that this battle actually happened. People of faith are experiencing their own Siege of Jerusalem now. If the modern Sennacherib is a doddering old dotard, they have even less reason to pay a cent in tribute. Rabshakeh has his analogs, too, in the shape of the legacy media, Trust and Safety Teams, et al. If the diminution of the Stanford Internet Observatory is any indicator, they are coming to the same sad end. If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31 Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/16/editorial/talk/assyrian-discovery-proves-bible-again/ Press release and other stories containing photo galleries: https://popular-archaeology.com/article/first-ever-discovery-of-ancient-assyrian-military-camps-includes-biblical-site/ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13530311/Ancient-military-camp-mentioned-Bible-discovered-Jerusalem.html https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/06/ancient-military-base-discovered-potentially-corroborate-bible-story/ Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Stanford Internet Observatory shutting down? By Terry A. Hurlbut Is the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) shutting down? Conflicting reports came out yesterday; some say yes, some say no. But on one thing these reports seem to agree: the Stanford Internet Observatory will not continue its “election integrity” work. The U.S. Supreme Court will shortly release an opinion and order in Murthy v. Missouri, the major lawsuit involving the SIO and its role in the Censorship Industrial Complex. At issue is an injunction against the federal government, which injunction would affect the SIO and its election-related activities. Despite apparent attempts to deny the shutdown rumors, the SIO would appear not to want to wait for any injunction to take effect. History of the Stanford Internet Observatory The Stanford Internet Observatory figures prominently in the Twitter Files series of stories. They are the private part of a public-private partnership with the federal government. This partnership existed to “flag” certain assertions as “misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information” and weaken the reach of those who uttered or repeated those assertions. The SIO figures in stories about many famous names, including: • Alex Stamos and Renee DiResta, its head and director of research, and • The Election Integrity Partnership, Virality Project, Graphika, and DFRLab. The SIO is actually under attack from two different directions. First, of course, is the original Missouri v. Biden lawsuit – which, last year, resulted in a massive preliminary injunction. (See here and here for a more detailed treatment.) That injunction is now before the Supreme Court – argued in March, with a decision expected next Thursday. Second are the investigations by the House Judiciary Committee and its Weaponization Subcommittee. About six weeks ago that Subcommittee released an 881-page report on the federal government’s censorship activities. Many of those activities involved the Stanford Internet Observatory and similar organizations. The Committee and Subcommittee have also issued multiple subpoenas asking for documents relating to the SIO and its projects. According to one report, the Subcommittee has occasionally summoned students – graduate and undergraduate – to appear before it. Latest reports First to report on the Stanford Internet Observatory, and to allege that it was shutting down, was The Platformer. Two reporters – Casey Newman and Zoë Schiffer – broke the story. They seem to be sympathetic to the SIO and its aims, for they couch their report in dire terms. According to The Platformer, the SIO originally had a staff of eight (though Thomas Claburn at The Register counted nine). Alex Stamos, the founder, has been gone for seven months; Renee DiResta, the research director, left last week. Rumors have several other members of staff told to seek employment elsewhere. Whether the name Stanford Internet Observatory will remain is an open question. A third outlet, The Verge, stated that they have cited SIO’s work many times. Censoring conservative opinion and protecting an all-right-people-nothing-to-see-here-move-on narrative about elections in America is apparently not all the SIO does. The three outlets mention these other things the SIO team has researched: • Artificial intelligence (AI) and its incorporation into many areas of human endeavor, and • The safety of children on social media and elsewhere on the Internet. In fact SIO gets credit for establishing two initiatives that could be related to child safety, or to censorship generally: • Journal of Online Trust and Safety, which the three outlets say has a peer-review program, and • The Trust and Safety Research Conference. All this work will continue under the Stanford Social Media Laboratory, which Jeff Hancock, Professor of Communications at Stanford, directs. The denial Stanford released this statement after initial publication of the Platformer article, objecting to their use of the verb to dismantle. The important work of SIO continues under new leadership, including its critical work on child safety and other online harms, its publication of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, the Trust and Safety Research Conference, and the Trust and Safety Teaching Consortium. Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, that chill freedom of inquiry and undermine legitimate and much needed academic research – both at Stanford and across academia. In fact, the House Judiciary Committee and Weaponization Subcommittee have never objected to any research on child safety or the protection of children from falling into dangerous relationships with adults. Their sole objection has been to the censorship of politically sensitive messages. That activity, apparently, will cease. Three publications, all sympathetic to the aim of censorship of conservative content, have expressed dismay that these efforts shall cease. See, for instance, this tag line on the Verge article: The Stanford Internet Observatory studied key issues plaguing online spaces, like election and vaccine disinformation. It’s long been a target of Republican lawmakers. Not a word here about preventing the luring, priming, grooming, and abuse of children. That is a legitimate, indeed pressing, area of concern. But CNAV does not recall seeing favorable reviews of Sound of Freedom on its pages, when it out-grossed several Walt Disney films that often had twenty times its total budget, while speaking directly to child trafficking. The Stanford Internet Observatory still has an X profile. But the most recent posts appear to be nearly a year old. For what it’s worth, those recent posts do not concern “election integrity” or “threats to democracy.” They in fact concern access to social media by minors, and a plethora of child porn that users are generating by submitting prompts to AI image generators. The most recent posts on politically sensitive or “partisan” material date back to May 24, 2023. Did the Stanford Internet Observatory redact its X profile? In short this profile has a plethora of child-safety material and relative paucity of politically sensitive material. This suggests either heavy redaction or a strategic decision not to share censorship-related material under that profile. The “Wayback Machine” provides a further clue. A search of “crawls” and “snapshots” of the profile, listed under the twitter.com domain, reveals no snapshot since this one. That snapshot dates from June 29, 2023 and shows the same posts that now show on the profile. Whether someone at SIO anticipated the injunction, and sanitized the site on June 29, 2023, is impossible to determine. But clearly someone decided, even before the injunction came down, to make SIO look as though it did good work. Good work, that is, and not the bad work of which so many conservatives have had cause to complain. Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit provided this summary of the Platformer article. He also reminded his readers that he is one of the lead plantiffs in the Murthy v. Missouri lawsuit. Analysis The actions of the Stanford Internet Observatory, both recent and dating back to last year, bespeak consciousness of guilt. Certainly they bespeak consciousness of likelihood of losing on the merits. Are its staff disappearing, like mice when someone has turned on the light? Might they be trying to “moot the case,” the same as the Los Angeles Unified School District tried when the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard a case against their COVID vaccine mandate? (A three-judge panel not only declared that COVID vaccines did not prevent transmission, but also reprimanded the LAUSD for trying to play games to moot the case.) By no accident, “vaccine misinformation” was also a target of the Stanford Internet Observatory. Their re-emphasis on child sexual abuse only, and on AI-generated child porn, does not ring true. The country – and that House Committee and Subcommittee – are waiting to hear what the Supreme Court has to say. Regardless of that, no one should trust the SIO any further than one could physically launch the building they occupy. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/15/news/stanford-internet-observatory-shutting-down/ Articles about Stanford Internet Observatory scaling back: https://www.platformer.news/stanford-internet-observatory-shutdown-stamos-diresta-sio/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/stanford_internet_observatory/ https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/14/24178375/stanford-internet-observatory-misinformation-covid-vaccines-elections-republicans X profile for the SIO: https://x.com/stanfordio Wayback Machine links: Display of all snapshots in 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230615000000*/https://twitter.com/stanfordio Specific snapshot on June 29, 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230629152832/https://twitter.com/stanfordio Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Bump stocks perfectly legal – SCOTUS By Terry A. Hurlbut The United States Supreme Court today settled the often confusing issue of “bump stocks,” or rapid-fire accessories for semiautomatic rifles. The infamous Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE, or ATF) made a rule calling them machineguns. This was actually a convenient way to ban the accessory, on the theory that it turned a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun. The Supreme Court, with Clarence Thomas writing for the majority, said the accessory did not a machinegun make. Along with the Liberal Bloc, the usual suspects screamed that the Court “want[s] the violence.” In fact the court cast a vote against the expanded administrative state, along with a vote for the Second Amendment. What are bump stocks? Cullen Linebarger offered this summary in The Gateway Pundit – and, of course, the original opinion is also publicly available. The syllabus gives an excellent summary of the issues of the case, with crucial definitions: The National Firearms Act of 1934 defines a “machinegun” as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” 26 U. S. C. §5845(b). With a machinegun, a shooter can fire multiple times, or even continuously, by engaging the trigger only once. This capability distinguishes a machinegun from a semiautomatic firearm. With a semiautomatic firearm, the shooter can fire only one time by engaging the trigger. Using a technique called bump firing, shooters can fire semiautomatic firearms at rates approaching those of some machineguns. A shooter who bump fires a rifle uses the firearm’s recoil to help rapidly manipulate the trigger. Although bump firing does not require any additional equipment, a “bump stock” is an accessory designed to make the technique easier. A bump stock does not alter the basic mechanics of bump firing, and the trigger still must be released and reengaged to fire each additional shot. That’s the key. A machinegun is a fully automatic rifle, that uses the energy of the explosive discharge to chamber each succeeding round. A soldier – or bad actor – firing a fully automatic rifle, fires continuously as long as he keeps the trigger pressed. That can waste a great deal of ammunition, unless one wants to lay down suppressive fire – firing to force the enemy to keep his head down. A well-trained infantryman can last a lot longer in battle if he pulls the trigger with each round. When he “bump fires” a gun, he can fire faster. But that is not the same as spraying an area with bullets just by waving it back and forth. Bump stocks make bump firing easier – but still require you to release, then pull, the trigger for each round. The Las Vegas shooting For many years, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) consistently took the position that semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks were not machineguns under §5845(b). ATF abruptly changed course when a gunman using semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks fired hundreds of rounds into a crowd in Las Vegas, Nevada, killing 58 people and wounding over 500 more. ATF subsequently proposed a rule that would repudiate its previous guidance and amend its regulations to “clarify” that bump stocks are machineguns. 83 Fed. Reg. 13442. ATF’s Rule ordered owners of bump stocks either to destroy or surrender them to ATF to avoid criminal prosecution. In 2017, Stephen Paddock fired hundreds of rounds into a crowd at a music festival on the Las Vegas strip. As the syllabus reveals, he killed 58 people and wounded 500 more, before police cornered him on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino across the street from the festival. Saliently, he used bump stocks on his rifles to make it easier to kill people. Now he’s dead – and no one knows why he committed this atrocity – the worst mass shooting in American history. Of course the usual gun-grabbing Members of Congress proposed laws to outlaw bump stocks. None passed. But ATF was already working on a new rule to say that bump stocks were machineguns. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who notoriously wanted to disarm the American populace while she lived, warned ATF that they lacked the statutory authority to make any such rule. Nevertheless ATF finalized their anti-bump-stock rule in 2018. They warned everyone who owned bump stocks: turn them in or destroy them, or we will prosecute. A citizen challenges the rule Citizen and Texas Resident Michael Cargill turned his bump stocks in, then immediately sued to get them back. The District Court for the Western District of Texas held a bench trial, then entered a judgment for ATF. So Cargill appealed. By bad luck of draw, he drew a three-judge panel that affirmed the District Court. So he took a wild chance and petitioned for a rehearing en banc – and got it. The entire Fifth Circuit found for Mr. Cargill. They said the statutory definition of a machinegun was ambiguous – and when a law or regulation is ambiguous, the regulated party gets the benefit of the doubt. As it happens, eight of the judges said bump stocks unambiguously do not machineguns make. One using a rifle with a bump stock still has to work the trigger for each round. Bump stocks do not change that. Nevertheless, new Attorney General Merrick Garland petitioned for Supreme Court review in 2022. Given the history Justice Clarence Thomas made with New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, he shouldn’t have. Clarence Thomas: bump stocks do not qualify as machineguns! Justice Thomas said unequivocally: bump stocks do not enable a semiautomatic rifle to fire fully automatically. A shooter must still engage the trigger for each round. On that ground alone, ATF had no authority to classify bump stocks as machineguns, or machinegun accessories. Senator Feinstein had been right: it would take an Act of Congress to do that. Thomas included a set of elaborate but still easy-to-read diagrams showing the trigger action for an Armalite AR-15 rifle. That’s the most popular semiautomatic rifle in America today – and the one that Stephen Paddock used on his murderous rampage. Using those diagrams, Thomas patiently showed why an AR-15 is a semiautomatic rifle – requiring a trigger pull for each round. Then he showed that bump stocks do not change the trigger action. All they do is enable the shooter to make the next trigger pull somewhat faster. But don’t bump stocks permit a shooter to keep his finger in one place, so that in effect he need pull the trigger only once? That doesn’t matter. What matters is that the shooter must still re-engage the trigger to fire the next round. Bump stocks make that easier, but do not make that step unnecessary. So says the statute, and the statute defines the regulatory agency’s authority. Other logical inconsistencies Justice Thomas debunked several other propositions ATF made (noting also that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in dissent, advanced the same propositions): • ATF’s Rule defines a “function of the trigger” as either a pull or an analogous motion. But that would mean that every bump during bump firing would qualify as such a “function.” • If a shooter “need only pull the trigger and maintain forward pressure” to fire continuously, then he should be able to do that without a bump stock. • Even if bump stocks do enable continuous fire, such fire cannot be automatic. The shooter must hold his hands just so to keep the fire going. • Even if maintaining a trigger pull also constitutes “continuous human input,” the statute does not allow for that consideration. Finally, Thomas squarely addresses another argument ATF made: a presumption against ineffectiveness. Would Congress write an ineffective law? Actually, though Thomas didn’t mention this, the Antisemitism Awareness Act might be an ineffective law. In any case, merely because the law against machineguns doesn’t cover bump stocks, doesn’t make it totally useless. Traditional machineguns – like the Avtomat Kalashnikova Model 47 – remain unlawful. Furthermore, a shooter with sufficient skill can fire an AR-15 just as rapidly without a bump stock as with one. Justice Samuel A. Alito offered a three-paragraph concurrence to say one thing: if Congress wants bump stocks gone, let Congress outlaw them. The dissent: returning to a tired old theme Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent. As Justice Thomas noted, she largely restated ATF’s arguments against bump stocks as if they were her own. But that kind of soft plagiarism seems to be par for the course, and Thomas did not remark upon it. What makes Sotomayor’s dissent egregious is that, as usual, she totally ignores the purpose of the Second Amendment. Her history of firearms in America before the National Firearms Act illustrates the gun-grabber mind-set perfectly: Machineguns were originally developed in the 19th century as weapons of war. See J. Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun 21–45 (1986) (Ellis). Smaller and lighter submachine guns were not commercially available until the 1920s. See Brief for Patrick J. Charles as Amicus Curiae 5 (Charles Brief ). Although these weapons were originally marketed to law enforcement, they inevitably made it into the hands of gangsters. See id., at 8–9; Ellis 149–165. Gangsters like Al Capone used machineguns to rob banks, ambush the police, and murder rivals. See Ellis 153–154, 157–158. Newspaper headlines across the country flashed “‘Gangsters Use Machine Guns,’” “‘Machine Gun Used in Bank HoldUp,’” and “‘Machine Gun Thugs Kill Postal Employee.’” Charles Brief 9. Oh, horror! Bad guys with guns! We must do something! But the country did the wrong something. CNAV holds that the National Firearms Act of 1934 is unconstitutional on its face. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Amendment II That text admits of one interpretation only. A citizen in good standing may arm himself at least as well as, if not better than, an infantry soldier. Furthermore, the correct counter to a bad guy (or gal) with a gun – even a machinegun – is a preponderance of good guys/gals with such guns. They need not even be machineguns. Any weapon will do, so long as one using it can stop the shooter and cut his spree short. The National Firearms Act was written for sissies, who run crying to law enforcement instead of defending themselves. Sonia Sotomayor continues the dubious process of the sissification of America. The only reason that Act still stands after this case, is that the merits did not reach that point. The sissies cry out against those bogeyman’s bump stocks To correct Cullen Linebarger’s report, Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent actually is tame, in comparison to some of her previous behavior. She made the same errors of logic the ATF made, but did so in a respectful manner. This was not a repeat of her downright rude dissent in 303 Creative v. Elenis, for example. But the X users who reacted to the Court’s decision, definitely were rude: https://x.com/BubblegumOut/status/1801625040913318328 Neither side compensation nor bonus, sir – but merely a strict construction of statute. https://x.com/sellars333/status/1801622547483476479 Also wrong. A similarly equipped person among Stephen Paddock’s targets could have stopped him before he killed 58 people. https://x.com/Monica80213924/status/1801625867551908150 Your understanding does not govern here; statute does. In any case, Justice Sotomayor merely repeated the ATF’s arguments, and Justice Thomas found them just as wrong. The other posts Cullen Linebarger found are not worth mentioning, much less embedding. In any case, the National Firearms Act of 1934 – and U.S. v. Miller, which upheld it – badly need a challenge. The only reason the Supreme Court decided it as they did is that Miller neither showed up nor paid a lawyer to show up. In other words, the National Firearms Act survives by default. Someday, someone will bring a case to challenge it properly. This was not that case, because even that Act did not forbid bump stocks, nor let ATF do that. What needs to happen, is for an honorably discharged veteran to defend his right to keep his government-issue AR-18 or M-16. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/14/news/bump-stocks-perfectly-legal-scotus/ The opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-976new_0971.pdf Reactions: https://x.com/BubblegumOut/status/1801625040913318328 https://x.com/sellars333/status/1801622547483476479 https://x.com/Monica80213924/status/1801625867551908150 Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Mifepristone legal to distribute again By Terry A. Hurlbut The Supreme Court, in an opinion released today, permanently reversed an earlier appellate holding against distribution of mifepristone, an abortifacient. It did so on the ground that an alliance of doctors, who don’t believe any authority should allow that drug, have no standing to challenge its approval. In practical consequence, no judicial authority will have any grounds to enjoin the distribution of mifepristone. So if a woman is desperate enough to take a chemical agent to destroy her unborn child, no court will stop her – because doctors who see the possible bad effects of that drug in their patients, have not themselves suffered a traceable or redressable injury. Now the only way to stop that drug is with your vote. More to the point, a unanimous Court will not allow anyone – especially a private person – to sue for another’s injuries. How mifepristone got to the Supreme Court Any case at law begins with circumstances that precipitated a certain act or acts. In that sense, this case really began with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Before then, the Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey cases governed. Under them, a woman – an adult woman – could seek an abortion at any time, for any reason or no reason. (But even under that regime, minor girls rated some protection from their bad decisions.) Then, of course, the Supreme Court held 6-3 that abortion law would be a State matter, not a federal matter. Furious – and ideologically committed to depopulation – the Biden administration tacitly allowed women to order mifepristone – the abortifacient originally developed by Roussel-UCLAF under the name “Lot 486”) and now distributed by Danco Laboratories – through the mail. This order came through the Food and Drug Administration. Actually it came in December of 2021, before the Dobbs decision. Perhaps conservatives decided to wait until then, hoping to have a stronger case. With Dobbs they had that stronger case – or so they thought. So they objected that sending a chemical abortifacient into a State with an abortion ban violates the Comstock Act. No matter, said Attorney General Merrick Garland; no State may ban such mailings. That he issued that opinion four days after Dobbs cannot be coincidental. In January of 2023, Garland specifically said one could order the drug through the mail, even to States that ban abortion. A matter of intent Garland said it came down to the inability to show specific intent to use mifepristone to cause abortion, because mifepristone has other medical uses. That is debatable, especially given the apparent clearance to women to use this regimen without consulting a doctor. The pro-life community’s next rejoinder was to sue the FDA, seeking to overturn its very approval of the drug. That case (Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA and another consolidated case) came before Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Amarillo Division). Judge Kacsmaryk enjoined the FDA’s approval of the drug, on grounds of patient safety. Immediately the FDA (and Danco Laboratories) appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. They argued that the Alliance had no standing, because neither it nor any of its members could show factual, traceable, or redressable harm. But the Fifth Circuit disagreed. They did modify the injunction, saying the statute of limitations on the initial 2000 approval of the drug had expired. But they enjoined two loosenings of restrictions that happened in 2016 and 2021. Immediately Danco and the FDA ran to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay of the injunction – which they got. The holding Today the Court handed down a thirty-eight-page opinion. FDA v. Alliance and Danco v. Alliance (consolidated), Docket No. 23-235. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for a unanimous court that the Alliance, and its members, lack standing. Key to his reasoning is that the Allied doctors challenged the FDA’s regulation of parties other than themselves. Article III grants no standing to anyone to raise such a challenge. Thus when a woman sees fit to take a dangerous sequence of drugs (first mifepristone and then misoprolol, a prostaglandin analog), any complication she suffers constitutes an injury to herself alone. Having to watch her suffer and possibly die despite “best possible” medical intervention is no skin off another doctor’s nose. It would have been different had any hospital required a physician to prescribe mifepristone as a condition of remaining on staff. Of course, that’s not going to happen in the State of Texas! Even if it did, the Court might say, “So go practice at another hospital.” The only reason that might not happen is that the Certificate of Need program prevents any entrepreneur from establishing his own hospital to rival another in the same region. Nevertheless, no such requirement is happening today, nor is it likely to happen. So again – if a woman foolishly takes these drugs, no one else can do anything but watch. Justice Clarence Thomas offered no solace in his concurrence. He held that even associational standing, not reached here, was subject to abuse. An abuse he wished to stop. So mifepristone remains legally distributable, but… Reaction by the leftist community does not seem to be “Ha, ha” or “Nyah, nyah,” but “Whew!” According to the American Family Radio program Washington Watch, Sen. Charles M. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Majority Leader, apparently said: The only reason this came down as it did, is that [the other parties] didn’t have standing. We’re not out of the woods yet. That raises another question: what does the Senator fear? Can any other party have standing to challenge the FDA’s approval of mifepristone? Not likely – unless a woman dies of complications of its use, and her boyfriend, or family, sues for wrongful death. Even then a court might say, “If she wanted to risk suicide, the injury is to her alone, not to any survivor of her.” But Schumer might have other reason to fear, and not dare to gloat. President Trump, once he returns to office, could appoint another Commissioner of Food and Drugs. That worthy might reopen the approval of mifepristone. Then, depending on his findings, he might reinstate the “in consultation with a physician” restriction. Or he might withdraw the drug from the market entirely. Trump would also appoint another Attorney General, who then might opine that the Postal Service may not carry mifepristone through the mails into States that ban abortion. That worthy might even forbid any shipment of the drug through the mails, and cite the Comstock Act. That Act, still on the books, forbids the sending, through the mails, of any drug or device for “immoral purposes.” That was the then-current euphemism for abortion when Anthony Comstock had the act passed. A longer-term solution The problem with these measures, is that a Democratic President could reverse them immediately. Yet a newer Commissioner of Food and Drugs could deem the drug perfectly acceptable. With the precedent the Supreme Court set today, if he says it’s safe, none may gainsay him. Thus far no one in Congress has had the imagination to remove a Cabinet officer on impeachment for, and conviction of, failure to execute the law. If Republicans were serious, they would have proceeded against Merrick Garland for unilaterally setting the Comstock Act aside. The only way abortion – including chemical abortion by mifepristone or similarly acting abortifacient – goes away is by: 1. Arguing successfully in the federal courts on behalf of an unborn child (and charging murder in its death), or 2. Amending the Constitution to recognize all human life as deserving of protection. CNAV has of course treated the subject of Human Life Amendments. But even these will not pass without another Great Awakening in America. That Great Awakening might be inevitable – in a generation or two, in which the woke-sters literally won’t be born. One can imagine Margaret Atwood screaming her last when she realizes that her abortion-on-demand ideology is a demographic dead end. But if those concerned with the sanctity of life don’t want to wait that long, then they need to start persuading people to re-examine their consciences, and check their premises – as a certain Itinerant Preacher did, two thousand years ago, as depicted in the streaming show The Chosen. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/13/news/mifepristone-legal-distribute-again/ The opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-235_n7ip.pdf Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Democrats are enemies of the people By Terry A. Hurlbut Yes – all Democrats are enemies of the people. The rank-and-file probably don’t know what they signed on for, but their leaders definitely do. This does not follow from their perhaps having stolen the Election of 2020. If that rumor were all that Republicans had against them, they’d have no case. The real case against the Democrats lies in how they have governed, the standards of good government and disinterested judgment they have violated, and what they plan for an increasingly likely electoral outcome this fall. They accuse Republicans of refusing to accept a “democratic” election. In fact they will not accept electoral defeat, and have been governing, and intend to govern, like dictators. For that reason, voters must decide what kind of country they want to live in – and if they value their lives, liberties, and properties, they will vote Republican, not Democratic. The case against the Democrats – thus far Indeed, Democrats hinted in the summer of 2020 that they never intended to accept electoral defeat. Their Transition Integrity Project reeks of that refusal. Recall that they ran four scenarios, and conveniently assumed that Biden would capture the popular vote each time: • A decisive Biden win, the closest to the actual announced results (with no acknowledgment of hacking of electronic voting machines), • A much narrower Biden win, • “The Election That Never Ended” (i.e. an irreconcilable dispute of the electoral vote), and finally: • A decisive Trump win, that in their scenario led to civil war. The Transition Integrity Project was only one of several nefarious Democratic plans to make sure they would never lose an election again. Laying all that aside, observe how the Democrats have governed. On Day One, “Resident” Biden signed a plethora of Executive Orders effectively opening the border. Among others, he ordered contractors then building the “Trump Wall” along the Mexican border to down tools and go home. Elsewhere, the Democrats have supported the election of public prosecutors who refuse to prosecute typical street crime. A thief, to them, is an irregular wealth-redistribution agent – and a murderer is an irregular population thinner. They also supported the “COVID Lockdowns,” that have destroyed the economy and cost schoolchildren a year of instruction. In so doing they revealed to parents that the instruction government school teachers were giving, was not instruction at all, but indoctrination. Throwing the President’s son under the bus? Yesterday Hunter Biden, the “Resident’s” son, was convicted on three felony charges relating to the unlawful purchase of a handgun. Unlawful, that is, because he was habituated to cocaine and lied about it on an application to purchase the weapon. Practically no observer expected the conviction, with the trial happening in Delaware, “where everybody knows everybody else.” Nevertheless the conviction came – and that alone raises the question of whether the Democrats sacrificed the President’s son. The Trump campaign seems to think just that. Within hours of the taking of the verdict, Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s National Press Secretary, poured contempt on the proceedings. This trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine. Crooked Joe Biden’s reign over the Biden Family Criminal Empire is all coming to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell government access for personal profit. In other words, the Biden Justice Department, in the person of the United States Attorney for Delaware, charged Hunter Biden with the wrong set of offenses. Whether ardent Second Amendment advocates would even regard those charges as legitimate, remains an open question. (Most gun-rights advocates believe the best defense against a person of questionable character holding a gun is a preponderance of persons of good character holding guns and standing ready to intervene against him if necessary.) The really serious offenses involved influence peddling on behalf of foreign governments. J. Edgar Hoover would never have bothered charging Hunter Biden with unlawful purchase and possession of a weapon. He would far sooner charge him with failure to register as a foreign agent, if not with espionage. Nevertheless, the Democrats sacrificed the President’s son, to cover for far worse miscarriages of justice. What were they? And what were those miscarriages of justice? How about charging Donald Trump with offenses that should never have been chargeable? And conducting trials with none of the protections that civil or criminal defendants enjoy? The only reason Trump is “a convicted felon” is that a public prosecutor who ran on a platform of “getting Trump,” and a judge with both financial and ideological conflicts of interest, made that happen. When they did that, they gave Trump as much provocation as the enemies of Gaius Julius Caesar gave him. Caesar, of course, threw a set of high-flying dice and crossed an otherwise undistinguished river into southern Italy, and rebellion. Donald Trump does not, so far, seem to have any need to do that. His conviction has made him more popular rather than less – so popular that he might carry New York. Or if he doesn’t, then he’ll carry Virginia, or at least force the Democrats to spend money in both States that they can’t afford to spend. But Biden seemed to act as if Trump were planning to cross the Potomac with an army. Within hours of his son’s conviction, he addressed a gun-control summit. There he repeated a threat he’d made a year and a half ago, and even earlier: If they wanna think to take on government if we get out of line … guess what? They need F-15 [jet fighter]s! They don’t need a rifle! https://x.com/RNCResearch/status/1800601554459807808 Democrats behaving badly Indeed the last twenty-four or more hours have seen shocking reports of bad behavior by Democrats. Some of this behavior confirms Republican suspicions that Democrats like to steal elections. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, a Democratic city councilman, the vice-chair of the city’s Democratic Party chapter, and two campaign workers now face charges of election fraud. This includes unlawful possession of an absentee ballot issued to another voter. In Florida, Clinton-appointed District judge Robert Hinkle struck down an anti-mutilation law that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) had proposed. The judge accepted the dubious “standard of medical care” that judges surgical mutilation and hormonal poisoning of children appropriate. Gov. DeSantis vowed to appeal. Yesterday evening, Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit provided a partial transcript of an interview between John Solomon (just the News) and Grant Stinchfield, concerning reports that the FBI has systematically purged Trump supporters from its ranks. https://rumble.com/v511isu-this-is-going-to-be-a-mushroom-cloud-when-were-done-john-solomon-on-fbi-bia.html?mref=4teej&mc=88ce6 An hour later, TGP’s Mike LaChance reported that House Democrats “are already scrambling … for a Trump victory in November.” https://x.com/politico/status/1800486084771463656 Reaction was, of course, predictable: https://x.com/AAC0519/status/1800491293996720566 https://x.com/c_cgottlieb/status/1800500178534969851 https://x.com/BeAccountable4u/status/1800509346851524845 This morning, Margaret Flavin (TGP) reported on an incredible interview on MSNBC with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). Emphasizing the collateral toll from the IDF’s rescue of four hostages from their Gaza “civilian” keepers was bad enough. (And that he forgot to mention that one of those keepers was an Al-Jazeera journalist.) But then he saw fit to speak of the release of those hostages, not their rescue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lBWlYFRUdo Worse reports This next report is not so much of what Democrats did, as what they refuse to condemn in ideological allies. A group of anti-Israel miscreants saw fit to protest the Nova Exhibition, an exhibit honoring dead or captured Israelis from the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023. https://x.com/AvivaKlompas/status/1800316798698451410 One even said he wished Adolf Hitler were still alive: https://x.com/luketress/status/1800376900692607378 A few protesters took over a New York City subway car and actually demanded that Jewish passengers identify themselves. They then said, “This is your chance to get out.” They don’t seem to have thought their operation through, because when no one raised a hand, they said, “OK, no Zionists; we’re good.” But someone recorded the incident and shared the video to X. https://x.com/AvivaKlompas/status/1800558498989637848 Ask yourselves: where was the outrage in the House Democratic Conference? And are these the kind of people anyone, of either party, should be celebrating? But this afternoon, Christina Laila (TGP) shared the worst report. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) actually said, on Black Entertainment Television, that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) was necessary because black prosecutors and judges were going after Trump. https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1800917526257471678 If we’re ever to change the criminal justice system and get some justice, we’ve got to be in there. First: is this justice? Second: did she just admit that those “black prosecutors and judges” couldn’t qualify absent DEI? Third: did she just plump for bills of attainder and ex post facto laws, and selective application of the law? Can you be a Christian and a Democrat? Donald Trump understands the issue. Twice he has said that no Christian can vote Democratic. He said it first before the National Religious Broadcasters’ convention in Nashville, Tennessee back in February. This week he said it again, in recorded remarks played to the Danbury Institute’s Life and Liberty Forum in Indianapolis, Indiana. If Trump has not exactly led a Christian lifestyle, as two evangelical Christians complained to The Hill on August 31, 2020, that didn’t seem to matter today. It doesn’t matter for two reasons. First, Trump has brought results. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the most concrete result so far. (Those two complainants at The Hill might have misrepresented Trump’s actions regarding human trafficking. They thought they could accuse Trump of reneging on a pledge to combat it. Tim Ballard, the Hero of Colombia of Sound of Freedom fame, would beg to differ with them.) And second, Joe Biden has brought the opposite kind of result. His FBI raids pro-life activists, runs false-flag pseudo-operations, and imprisons people without trial for getting mixed up in them. Venal doctors take his advice and rush to get in on the lucrative practice of surgical mutilation and hormonal poisoning. (Although against that disgusting ruling in Florida, one can count a favorable ruling in Texas against Biden’s butchering of Title IX.) The Democrats changed the game As Yuval Levin says in his latest book American Covenant, Democrats changed, indeed warped, the civics and civil relations game. They plump for a technocratic and iatrocratic (rule by the doctors) elite, whose rulers would have more in common with Viktor Frankenstein than Hippocrates of Cos – or Luke the Physician. Indeed if Franz Kafka collaborated with Mary Shelley on a novel, the result would look remarkably similar to America today. That is why, if you value life, liberty and property – including your own – you must not vote for Democrats. And those of you who have let that Party seduce you with the twin siren songs of covetousness and spite, need to check your premises. Ask yourself how safe you are from having any of the injustices recently reported, happen to you. Civil society requires not only order but also honor. Violate that, and all bets are off, and no one is safe. As many of your fellow citizens have seen. The last primaries still remain ahead of us, and then the conventions begin. As you prepare to cast your ballot this fall, remember what is happening today. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/12/news/democrats-enemies-people/ Biden threatens that his opponents will need F-15 Fighting Falcons: https://x.com/RNCResearch/status/1800601554459807808 Video: Grant Stinchfield and John Solomon interview regarding FBI purge: https://rumble.com/v511isu-this-is-going-to-be-a-mushroom-cloud-when-were-done-john-solomon-on-fbi-bia.html?mref=4teej&mc=88ce6 House Democrats scrambling to act against Trump next year: https://x.com/politico/status/1800486084771463656 https://x.com/AAC0519/status/1800491293996720566 https://x.com/c_cgottlieb/status/1800500178534969851 https://x.com/BeAccountable4u/status/1800509346851524845 Video: Gerry Connolly interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lBWlYFRUdo Video: protests of Nova Exhibition https://x.com/AvivaKlompas/status/1800316798698451410 https://x.com/luketress/status/1800376900692607378 Video: NYC subway car takeover: https://x.com/AvivaKlompas/status/1800558498989637848 Video: interview with Maxine Waters on BET: https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1800917526257471678 Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Alito – a target, and on target By Terry A. Hurlbut Justice Samuel A. Alito, the second-oldest and third-longest-serving Justice on the United States Supreme Court, has come under renewed attack. In fact he’s been a target almost since he first joined the Court, 18 years ago. Controversy has always followed him, and he doesn’t shy away from it. He mainly is a target now because his opinions carry greater weight. Beyond that, the flak is always most dense over your own target, and so it is with Justice Sam Alito. Alito and his controversies Sam Alito has always ruled for the First and Second Amendments, and against the old Roe regime on abortion. But arguably his first great controversy came in response to Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. In that case the court held (5-4) that a corporation’s speech was not subject to limitation. The First Amendment applies to corporations, which are groups of people, the same as to individuals. President Barack Obama, thoroughly steamed, said in an almost deathly quiet snarl in his State of the Union Address in 2010, With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. Alito, sitting in the front row and seeing right through the President’s veneer of pseudo-respectfulness, silently mouthed “That’s not true.” That, for the justice, was only the beginning. In 2022 the learned justice saw his chance to destroy the abortion-on-demand regime, and took it. (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.) So explosive was his opinion in that case that someone in the Supreme Courthouse – we still don’t know who – leaked that decision seven weeks in advance of its official publication. Recall that CNAV thought it was a fraud, until the Court said it was authentic. Justice Alito made a devastating argument, not only against Roe v. Wade but also against the doctrine of stare decisis. Precedent could stand, he said, but not if it was in error and earned five specific strikes against it. His treatment of stare decisis, and of other times the Court has corrected its errors, will stand for years – decades – as a standard for precedential error correction. Particular reasons for the stepped-up attacks Sam Alito has come under attack because certain leftist individuals and groups – like the Brennan Center for Justice – doesn’t like his jurisprudence. He has solidified the Originalist Bloc on the Court, a Bloc that includes himself and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, senior in age and length-of-service to all the rest. Moreover he has proved able – though not with one hundred percent efficacy – to persuade members of the Moderate Bloc. (This Bloc includes Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh.) Even to say that the Liberal Bloc refuses to let him persuade them, would be too facile. Recall that Sackett et uxor v. EPA and more recently NRA v. Vullo were unanimous decisions. (For that latter decision, Justice Sonia Sotomayor donned her adult clothes and wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court.) In short, Sam Alito is a formidable adversary for those who, according to Peter Berkowitz and Yuval Levin, began to import into politics and public discourse in the late 19th century, certain ideas about the function and purpose of democratic government that do not conform to the ideals of the Framers of the Constitution – ideas that explicitly repudiate the Constitution’s spirit of conciliation and intentionally disrupt the intricately organized relations between the legislative, executive, and judicial powers. Thus Alito and his Originalist colleagues stand on one side of an irreconcilable divide. One can no more “square” this dispute than one can settle a dispute between those who hold (correctly) that two plus two make four, and those who, to paraphrase William S. Gilbert, That two and two make five – or three – or seven; / Or five and twenty, if the case demands! Princess Ida, Act II Bear this in mind when evaluating the recent demands for recusal, resignation, or even impeachment in his case. Fear of Alito jurisprudence applied to upcoming cases CNAV discussed various attacks on Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas two weeks ago. More than three years ago, Alito’s wife got into a political spat with a neighbor. In reply, she controversially flew a United States flag, inverted, then the Appeal to Heaven flag from the American Revolution. This has provoked calls for him to abstain from all cases involving those under detention over the January 6 Event. One such call came from a sitting federal district judge in Massachusetts. Another came from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). When two Democratic Senators joined the refrain, Justice Alito gave them his answer: no. The Chief Justice similarly refused to hear of any talk of disciplinary action against Alito. At issue are his positions on: • Trump v. United States, treating Presidential immunity, • Fischer v. United States, concerning the January 6 event, and • Any case that might come before the Court regarding the Election of 2020. That inverted American flag, and the Appeal to Heaven flag, are supposed to represent his bias in favor of Trump and any January 6 defendants, regarding their respective conduct, or whether the Election of 2020 was decided fairly or unfairly. What they actually represent is Alito’s: • Abiding respect for the Constitution, and • Disrespect for those “Progressive elites” with their ideas about substituting a “technocratic elite” for the popular will. Both Trump and Fischer have come to oral argument – as has Murthy v. Missouri, the Big Tech censorship case. An interview under false pretenses Last week (June 3), reporter Lauren Windsor attended the Supreme Court Historical Society. Alito was also present, and she obtained – and surreptitiously recorded – an interview with him. By way of gaining his confidence, she said to him, I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end. I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning. And he said: I think you’re probably right. On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference. How right he is – but of course Lauren Windsor thinks that’s wrong. She published her recordings to X on this thread: https://x.com/lawindsor/status/1800201783945683120 https://x.com/lawindsor/status/1800203891155620038 Rolling Stone rounded out the transcript: Windsor: People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that — to return our country to a place of godliness. Alito: I agree with you. I agree with you. In the first place, this constitutes entrapment. But in the second: what is wrong with returning the United States to a Godly place? Indeed what could be wrong with anything he said? To repeat: one cannot reconcile truth with deliberate falsehood. Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, / in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side. James Russell Lowell One does not compromise between good and evil, any more than one compromises between right and wrong arithmetic. And what does returning the country to a Godly place mean? Start with obedience to the Ten Commandments, six of which specifically treat human relations in a sound society: And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before[a] me. “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. “You shall not misuse the Name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses His Name. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. “You shall not murder. “You shall not commit adultery. “You shall not steal. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Exodus 20:1-17, NASB Continue, ironically enough, with what Alan Jay Lerner jokingly called “The Seven Deadly Virtues”: courage, purity, humility, honesty, diligence, charity, and fidelity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT3x2yi05Hs What is wrong with any of these – apart from Roddy McDowall’s interpretation of Mordred’s scornful attitude: What is virtue, but manly honor? (From the Latin vir a man.) And for championing these honorable qualities, the left calls Alito “not a neutral umpire.” Again, how can anyone be neutral between right and wrong, fact and error, truth and lies, good and evil? A is A The great Aristotle knew the score when he said: The same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect. Or as the late Ayn Rand so ably condensed it, A is A. Bear this in mind when judging MSNBC’s Joy Reid’s evaluation of Justice Alito. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW-uJINwe8M Ben Kew of The Gateway Pundit provided this transcript: It feels like Alito is unrestrained at this point. He doesn’t care who knows that he wants to make the country into a Christian nationalist, you know, ethno-state or whatever it is he thinks he would create under this Handmaid’s Tale vision. He doesn’t care if people know that he takes lavish vacations and the right doesn’t care. Christian nationalism and Caucasion ethno-centrism are mutually incompatible – or didn’t she know that? The careless reference to Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale recalls his ruling in Dobbs, without sharing any of his reasoning. But again: leftists do not reason; they emote. And as for “lavish vacations,” that shameless skank Beyoncé gave concert tickets to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Just in reading through the litany of things that Alito has said in the past, he’s criticized the Warren court that’s the court that gave us all of the civil rights and women, people of color, immigrants, everything, the disabled, all of that came in the 20th century. You’ve now had Clarence Thomas question whether Brown v. Board went too far. This just tells me they’re gonna take a case to overturn Brown v. Board. Justice Alito specifically defended Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka as a necessary correction of an earlier error. That error was Plessy v. Ferguson. If Brown “went too far,” then it was only in exchanging one mandate for another – exit forced segregation, enter forced integration. Both actions violate freedom of association. Integration did not succeed until its voluntary aspect returned – when James Coleman, the “Father of Busing” called for abandoning it. In any event, no imaginable case challenging Brown is likely to come before the Court any time soon. We have decisions coming Thursday and Friday. My assumption is they make Mifepristone illegal and give Trump absolute immunity. That’s my guess because Alito is saying that’s the plan. Mifepristone is already illegal. Sending it through the mail violates the Comstock Act. And what sane black person would plump for letting people send that drug through the mail? That is an anti-black genocide drug. Anyone who has studied the history of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger should realize this. Summing up In any event, Sam Alito said nothing about any “plan.” But if Joy Reid thinks that recognizing Presidential immunity and upholding the Comstock Act is part of any “plan” for a “Godly society,” then her preference for prosecuting Trump because he is Trump, and letting people send abortifacients through the mail, is part of the plan she prefers. And that plan is self-contradictory. Recall that one of her complaints against Sam Alito is that he plumps for white ethno-centrism. Lay aside for the moment that he does not. But if he did, he would vote to let people send the anti-black genocide drug through the mail. Which he almost certainly will not. And a propos of this, let Joy Reid ask herself why Kermit Gosnell, M.D., set up his notorious abortion practice in the Black neighborhood of Philadelphia. Actually, Joy Reid seems to have ignored Kermit Gosnell completely. Perhaps someone should ask her opinion of him and his practice. But that’s neither here nor there. Samuel A. Alito became a target because he is on target. He has attacked the threat that strikes at the heart of our Constitutional republic. For that he deserves high praise, and the continued support – including prayer support – of all who love life and ordered liberty. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/11/news/alito-target-on-target/ Lauren Windsor’s thread: https://x.com/lawindsor/status/1800201783945683120 https://x.com/lawindsor/status/1800203891155620038 Video: Roddy McDowall scorns “The Seven Deadly Virtues” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT3x2yi05Hs Video: Joy Reid’s screed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW-uJINwe8M Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Is the American Covenant broken? By Terry A. Hurlbut Tomorrow a new book will appear in bookstores and become available for online sale, that purports to address the level of disunity and incivility in America today. This book (American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again), as the title implies, discussed the American Covenant. Which, as the author apparently describes it, is the treaty that holds disparate people together under one government. The author – and at least one reviewer – recognize that the American people have split into to opposing factions. One of the two major Parties represents each, which has probably held since before the War Between the States. Now that division has sharpened to a level not seen since that War. Obviously the author, and reviewer, do not want that War to break out afresh. But the solution this book offers might be too little, too late. What is the American Covenant? A covenant, of any kind, is the most solemn kind of treaty any two individuals, groups, nations (here in the literal meaning of ethnic groups, from the Greek ethnos), and nation-states (which the ancients called kingdoms) can make. To seal and demonstrate the deal, the two parties (or their representatives) literally cut two animals in sagittal section. (That is to say, split them down the middle into left and right halves.) They then walked between them, so that each signified to the other that he would submit to just that sort of execution if he violated the treaty. The expression to make a covenant, in the Holy or Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), literally translates as to cut a covenant. To this day, to cut a deal is English speaker’s slang for making an agreement of any kind. The American Covenant, as author Yuval Levin presumably means by that expression, is the agreement holding together disparate groups of people, each with their own interest, under the general category of citizen of the United States. (Lawful residents are guests of the body of citizens and thus, strictly speaking, are not parties to the American Covenant.) The Constitution of the United States is the instrument of the American Covenant. But as many serious thinkers have already observed, an element has taken root in this country, pretending to abide by the American Covenant, with a view to breaking it. They wish to introduce, not a new covenant, but an absolute rulership by themselves. Evidence for the breach of the American Covenant Peter Berkowitz, in his review of Yuval Levin’s book, shows a decent understanding that one side has breached the covenant. He correctly observes that Democrats rejoice in the conviction of Donald Trump on a charge few among them can define. (That holds, in part, because a consistent Democrat does not proceed from logic at all, but from emotion – usually spite.) Republicans, for their part, have rallied to support their standard bearer, to the tune of $53 million in the 24 hours after the reading of the Fearverdict. (That two-thirds of that sum came from small donors bodes even better for Trump – because it represents many more votes.) Berkowitz also lays out these damning facts: 1. District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor, ran for office promising to prosecute Trump. (So did Letitia “Tish” James, the New York State Attorney General.) 2. Matthew Colangelo seconded himself from the Justice Department to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to help prosecute the case. 3. Judge Juan Merchan has a record of making Democratic campaign donations. Furthermore, his daughter is profiting directly from this case, because she has top Democrats as clients. Fear of retribution Berkowitz then observes that adherents of each Party assume those of the other Party are crazy. True enough: Democrats express fear that Donald Trump will take an awesome revenge against them. In fact, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told an interviewer that she was afraid of going to prison if he wins. From New York magazine: I take him at his word when he says that he’s going to round up people. I take him at his word when he threatens journalists. I take him at his word. I feel like what we saw in his first presidency was an amuse-bouche to what his intentions are. He has learned from his mistakes of appointing professionals, and he will not make that mistake next time. … Trump does absolutely have a chance to win. That is why I have thrown my support behind Biden early and I support it vociferously. It is unequivocal that if Donald Trump wins, we are looking at the potential dissolution of democracy in the United States of America and the question about what would happen to me or the Democratic Party is a joke compared to the question of what is going to happen to our country. But Berkowitz neglects to mention the plans certain Democratic Party officeholders and candidates have articulated – plans they have for Republicans. They demonstrably include establishing a network of “re-education camps” for anyone who supports Donald Trump in any way. But they could also include availing themselves of new techniques in the re-establishment of brain plasticity, to reshape people’s brains in an effort to turn them “progressive forever.” Berkowitz does observe that when people on either or both sides believe the worse of their adversaries, civil strife – or worse – can result. But he doesn’t go far enough in observing that one side really does threaten, not democratic government but republican government. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner. Republicanism is: 1. Multi-level government, with each level responsible to the level above and for the level below, and 2. Immutable laws forbidding the government even to contemplate certain kinds of tax, criminal, or other laws. “Representative government” does not a republic make, nor guarantee. To make or guarantee a republic requires Bills of Rights, and the appointment of representatives in a way that respects the boundaries of and between levels. Further evidence for breach of covenant Berkowitz does quote, or paraphrase, Levin in this discussion of how the Progressives subverted the American Covenant. Today, the Constitution accelerates disunity. A prime cause, argues Levin, are ideas about the function and purpose of democratic government that progressive elites began to import into politics and public discourse in the late 19th century. These ideas explicitly repudiate the Constitution’s spirit of conciliation and intentionally disrupt the intricately organized relations between the legislative, executive, and judicial powers. Progressivism aimed to overcome the constitutional separation of powers within the federal government and between the federal and state governments so that a disinterested and unconstrained technocratic elite based in Washington could manage American affairs by directly imposing on the nation its moral views and political preferences. By concentrating power in Washington and expanding the administrative state, progressive elites would replace the messy give and take contrived by the Constitution. No more would representatives of competing constituencies, compelled by their various institutional roles and facilitated by the prerogatives the Constitution attaches to their offices, hammer out agreements that perfectly pleased nobody but satisfied both sides adequately. Instead, well-credentialed experts – equating the progressive view with the complete truth – would decide what is best for the people. The results are in: a nation bitterly divided into self-satisfied experts and resentful ordinary citizens. And there you have it! Neither Berkowitz nor Levin say what those “ideas about the function and purpose of democratic government” were. But anyone of good heart and diligent intellect, can guess. Progressives believed – and still believe – that the “function and purpose” were somehow making “the human condition” better. And of course they proposed to do this without God. That is why men like Roger Baldwin campaigned to drive religion from the public square. Madalyn Murray O’Hair would do the same with her “American Atheists” organization. (Actually, American Atheists began as the O’Hair family scam enterprise. Eventually their bookkeeper scammed the O’Hairs – and worse, kidnapped, extorted the money from, and finally murdered them. After that, American Atheists remade itself as a for-real non-profit – or anti-profit – like Roger Baldwin’s American Civil Liberties Union.) Even long before then, these same cold-hearted revolutionaries took over the Democratic Party in 1972, by nominating George McGovern. Today McGovern would stand in awe of what the Democratic Party has now become. (Though he might gasp to see their current standard-bearer, who doesn’t even know what’s appropriate or inappropriate on State occasions.) So how to solve the problem Thus we can all agree: the American Covenant is in breach. So what do the people do about it? Berkowitz, again quoting Levin, offers a solution: a return to proper civics education. This education would be about more than how our government works. It would be about how it should work, and what it means to be a responsible and engaged citizen. But that’s not going to happen right away in our divided society. The best that can happen is that those of good heart, build the kind of educational system that emphasizes a liberal education – what Thomas Pangle, Ph.D. in 1980 called an education that liberates. Sadly the vituperative and inveterate Progressives will never accept it. They will cling to their ideas, and we must assume they are prepared to kill to perpetuate them. How else can we interpret an actual call for sending all their opponents to re-education camps? This from the same kind of people who fear that we will send them to prison. What should happen Without a doubt, many of the current Democratic officeholders should go to trial – and, if convicted, go to prison. At a minimum, several judges rate removal from the bench on impeachment for, and conviction of, infidelity to the Constitution. This goes double for any judge whom we trust to try the cases of those other officeholders. If this sounds like the same “otherization” of which the Democrats are guilty, so be it. They made themselves “other than Americans,” not we. More to the point, they broke the American Covenant. They did it by setting up colleges and universities as re-education camps with permanent, rather than temporary, buildings. This has been going on since the latter half of the twentieth century, if not earlier. They also did it by placing judges who sought not to obey the Constitution, but to supplant it with a body of case law the Constitution would never support. As Justice Samuel A. Alito so tartly observed in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. So they should consider themselves fortunate that we, the aggrieved parties, do not demand the maximum ancient penalty. (Not, that is, except in self-defense.) If Yuval Levin’s book has one flaw, it is that, having acknowledged that one particular party to the American Covenant breached it, he failed to articulate any good reason why the aggrieved party should ever trust them again. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/10/foundation/constitution/american-covenant-broken/ Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Retiring liberal judge – master of projection By Terry A. Hurlbut A liberal retired judge from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is about to publish his memoir. That story broke Friday in Newsweek, which was quoting The Washington Post. In an apparent interview with the Post, this judge made several serious accusations against the United States Supreme Court. But everything he said, is actually true of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia while he sat on it – and is still true today. Who is Judge David Tatel? Judge David S. Tatel came to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1994 on appointment by President Bill Clinton. Clinton, of course, elevated Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg from that Court to the Supreme Court. He then appointed Judge Tatel to take her place. For twenty-eight years he served as an active judge. In May of 2022 he became a senior judge, which gave him a lighter workload and excused him from en banc hearings. Then in June 2023 he decided to retire permanently and completely from the Court, and rejoin his old law firm. That retirement became effective in January of 2024. More to the point, the United States Supreme Court had finished two momentous terms that evidently caused him great disquiet. The 2021 Term was arguably the more famous, involving as it did a leak of a pending decision. It was also famous for another reason: the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Not only did that decision make abortion no longer “the law of the land,” but also – and perhaps more disquieting to Judge Tatel – it served notice that precedent – or in Latin, stare decisis – would no longer be absolute. Time, in other words, would no longer sanction all Justicial errors. Judge Tatel might have known that time doesn’t sanction all errors with the two rulings in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. That he didn’t know, shows his worst failing: he’s a hypocrite. Our precedents are better than yours! Precedent is venerable – so long as he likes the precedent. On the one hand, he would never defend Scott v. Sandford or Plessy v. Ferguson. But he is perfectly copacetic defending: • US v. Miller (1939), sustaining the National Firearms Act of 1934. • Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing (1947), forbidding government aid to any religious institution because it was religious. (See here for further discussion of that precedent.) • McCollum v. Board of Education of School District 71 (1948), the real School Prayer Case. • Engel v. Vitale (1962), the “School Prayer Case” of legend. The infamous Madalyn Murray O’Hair liked to take credit for that, but she likely didn’t deserve it. The credit – or the blame – goes to James G. Blaine (1875). • Abingdon School District v. Schempp (1963), another explicit prohibition against Bible reading in class. • Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), containing the anti-religious “Test” bearing the name of the petitioner. • Roe v. Wade (1973). • Wallace v. Jaffree (1985), forbidding silent prayer time. • Lee v. Weisman (1992), forbidding baccalaureates or clergy-led prayers during commencement at government schools. (In the USA, a baccalaureate is a religious service for honoring graduates.) • Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (1995), essentially forbidding prayer on school playing fields. • National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius (2012), the Obamacare Case. • Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the “gay marriage” case. How the Supreme Court weakened those precedents In its 2021 Term, the Supreme Court overruled many of these precedents and put others in direct threat. To be specific: Roe v. Wade fell to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. This case occasioned the Great Leak. Every overruling of precedent follows the reasoning in Dobbs. Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing fell to Carson v. Makin. US v. Miller doesn’t quite fall to New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, but it did come under threat. Federal firearms regulation was not at issue. But State “may-issue” licensing schemes that openly invited arbitrariness and caprice, were. Lemon v. Kurtzman fell to Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. In CNAV’s view, this decision invites challenges to the McCollum, Engel, Abingdon, Wallace, Lee, and Santa Fe precedents. Had Coach Kennedy really “pushed” it, he could have knocked out Santa Fe as well as Lemon. In addition to all the above, Clarence Thomas specifically, in his concurrence in Dobbs, invited re-examination of no fewer than three “substantive due process” precedents. Obergefell v. Hodges is one of them. If any precedent will fall from revising out “substantive due process,” it’s that one. (Of the other SDP precedents, Roe has already fallen. The other three precedents will prove much harder to challenge, because they might merely need better reasoning.) The 2022 Term In its 2022 Term, the Supreme Court struck down or weakened yet more precedents. The two Students for Fair Admissions cases overrode Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger. 303 Creative v. Elenis overrode a plethora of precedents asserting that Woke-ism Must Be Obeyed. Biden v. Nebraska didn’t so much override precedent as set one – that Presidents must also obey the Constitution. (Joe Biden, you’re no Andrew Jackson!) And one case – rolling back the absolutism of the government in deciding that a mud puddle was a wetland – was unanimous in its finding for the petitioners. All these decisions represent a rollback of the liberal dominance of federal – especially appellate – jurisprudence after nearly fifty years. The near-absolute liberal dominance dates from Roe v. Wade. Understandably, liberal Court watchers regard Dobbs, which overrode Roe, as the floodgate. This is not correct. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to take her place, was the floodgate. Or perhaps the election of Donald Trump was the floodgate. Either way, Judge David Tatel objected strenuously to the Court’s jurisprudence. Specifically he told the Post that he grew tired of the Supreme Court reversing his rulings on certiorari. He feels the Supreme Court “hold[s] in … low regard the principles to which [he has] dedicated [his] life.” The tragedy is that he fails to recognize that he has devoted his life to principles of social justice and social equity, not to equal justice under law. Judge Tatel makes his complaint The complaint by Judge David Tatel takes the form of a memoir: Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice. And as far as one can determine from the Newsweek piece, Judge Tatel’s major complaint is that the Court kept reversing him. It was one thing to follow rulings I believed were wrong when they resulted from a judicial process I respected. It was quite another to be bound by the decisions of an institution I barely recognized. Just what judicial process does he respect? The judge doesn’t say. The Newsweek piece strongly implies that he objects to Dobbs. Perhaps he also objects to Bruen, Carson, Kennedy, 303 Creative, the SFFA cases, and Biden v. Nebraska. (Whether he would object to Sackett et uxor v. EPA is less clear; the specific judgment that the EPA went overboard in their findings against the Sacketts was unanimous.) But the only grounds one can infer for his objections is that the decisions upheld “conservative” principles. This statement gives a better clue: [While neutral judging] fosters public trust in the rule of law, [judging that could be] based on a preordained agenda, not on text or precedent or deference, depletes the reservoir of public confidence. Whom is he talking about? He could be talking about any of the Originalists, but especially Justices Samuel A. Alito and Clarence Thomas. Well, what’s the problem? Does he really suppose that once the Court, under prior composition, makes a decision, that decision must stand, no matter how much in error it was, and how much violence it did to the Constitution? That was Sam Alito’s problem with the precedent of Roe v. Wade. Who has the preordained agenda? Justice Alito “nailed” the problem with Roe: its majority had a preordained agenda. Why else would they speak so carelessly of “penumbras” of the Bill of Rights? And what was that agenda? Well, Justice William O. Douglas wanted to be able to chase women around his desk in chambers without fear of having to pay child support later. Perhaps that was also the desire of the other six in the Roe majority. Would today’s Supreme Court retain the esteem of the people by upholding a precedent from that kind of ignoble motive? CNAV thinks not. And today, every member of the Liberal Bloc approaches oral argument with a preordained agenda. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor have made that abundantly – indeed nauseatingly – clear; Justice Elena Kagan has perhaps been somewhat less clear. But in fact every one of the three has broken Court etiquette in their dissents, and more than once. Justice Sotomayor did that in 303 Creative v. Elenis. Justice Jackson did it in SFFA v. UNC. And Justice Kagan did it in Biden v. Nebraska, so much so that Chief Justice Roberts actually put into the Opinion of the Court a clear message to her: be careful of your tone in dissent. Only someone having a preordained agenda would break etiquette as all three Liberals have done at least once. Text? Precedent? Deference? We turn now to Judge Tatel’s complaint that this Court ignores “text”, “precedent,” and “deference.” The only text the Court need respect is the Constitution of the United States, and texts of laws that do not conflict with it. Precedent cannot stand if it is erroneous; it must yield to the Constitution if it conflicts with it. And “deference”? To whom? To what? Judge Tatel doesn’t say. (Is he talking about Chevron deference, in anticipation of a ruling abolishing that doctrine?) In fact, the Court’s liberal jurisprudence always based itself on a preordained agenda, and never respected the text of the Constitution. Sometimes (as in Roe) it stretched the Constitution to say what the text does not say. At other times it contradicted the Constitution, especially its Second Amendment and the Free Exercise Clause of the First. Nor has the Court’s faulty jurisprudence limited itself to the latter half of the twentieth century. Witness Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson. Or Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which barely avoided a direct challenge only last week. The judge doth protest too much, methinks Finally Judge Tatel speaks of a jurisprudence that “depletes the reservoir of public confidence.” Who is the public? The public is divided today – as is the American Bar. And what divided the Bar, and the Bench? Critical Legal Studies – the notion that all law is politics. This, of course, blurs the distinction between positive law, that humans make, and natural law, that follows from nature. (Or more accurately, from nature’s God.) Judge Tatel seems to have thoroughly imbibed Critical Legal Studies. His protests against the Court reversing him so often, are petty. But what really “depletes the reservoir of public confidence” is a jurisprudence that makes justice an issue of people, not of law. New York v. Trump is the obvious example, but Roe v. Wade is an even better example. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg found its reasoning faulty, however much she agreed with its conclusion. For a converse example, consider New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen and the dissent. Justice Stephen G. Breyer listed statistic after statistic trying to prove that it’s not safe for any person, except a law-enforcement officer, an active-duty military service member, a Very Important Person, or his bodyguard, to own, carry, or so much as touch, let alone discharge, a firearm. One can imagine him saying to Justice Thomas: Clarence, you … you’re kidding. You’re not kidding? You’re out of your mind! Don’t all these mass shooting statistics tell you that it’s not safe to leave guns in the hands of any but those who are trained, by the exacting standards of the law-enforcement and military professions, to handle firearms responsibly? How can you sleep at night, knowing that a stray bullet, fired by just such an irresponsible civilian as any member of the petitioner organization, might crash through your bedroom window and into your body? What can you be thinking!? ARE you thinking!? Justice Thomas in effect answered: Steve, calm down. And remember that the Second Amendment is scarcely the only Constitutional right, the free exercise of which others have decried as physically unsafe for the public. Judge Tatel would do well to read Justice Thomas’ opinion in Bruen. And maybe he should have read it before he wrote his book. Conclusion Judge Tatel did the country a favor by retiring from the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He actually saved a properly patriotic House of Representatives the trouble of impeaching him for infidelity to the Constitution. In fact he did the country another favor by retiring when the Supreme Court had no openings. Or did he give up after waiting in vain for Congress to pass a measure enlarging the Supreme Court? He must have known that no vacancy would obtain after Republicans “flipped” the House in 2022. CNAV awaits his memoir with no small amount of trepidation, in the belief that his Vision will prove a nightmare. That need not be the case – but his statements on interview are not promising. This illustrates the vital importance of having a cadre of Senators willing to defer to the Constitution, not to a President who violates his oath to it, as it considers judicial nominations – at any level. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/09/foundation/constitution/judge-liberal-retiring-master-projection/ Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Neuropsychological warfare – the Alphabet Soup offensive By Terry A. Hurlbut Fifteen months ago, a little-known conference took place as part of an annual event called the World Science Festival. That conference (March 9, 2023) ran for about an hour and a half, and had a most provocative title: Rewiring the Brain: the Promise and Peril of Neuroplasticity. Few beyond the community of neurophysicists, neurologists, and neurosurgeons gave that conference a moment’s thought. Then this morning, Joseph R. Mercola, D.O., published an analysis on his site, taking note of the praises for this new technique of “rewiring the brain,” and the ethical objections many conferees raised to it. What Dr. Mercola might not appreciate is that he has just articulated the real object of the Alphabet Soup movement. It is nothing less than neuropsychological warfare, with the object of recruiting people of all ages – and forcing “stubborn” non-recruits to hang our heads in shame. Can neurologists rewire the brain? In fact, neurologists have always known that a newborn does not present into the world with a fixed brain. Development of mobility, language – even appreciation of musical pitch – continues after birth. Oscar Hammerstein II famously said, “You’ve got to be taught to hate.” South Pacific, 1949 (Broadway), 1958 (MGM Pictures). In fact “you’ve got to be taught” to do many more things: walk, talk, read, write, even to appreciate music. (“Perfect pitch,” as everyone knows, doesn’t come to everyone, even to every musician. But it comes more easily to those who start their musical training sooner.) Maria Montessori built a reputation from developing methods to stimulate children’s brains to make them learn even faster. (See here for more details – and how some are perverting her work. More on that below.) Neurologist Glenn Doman developed a method to teach reading to neurologically impaired children – that works wonders for neurotypical children. Contrary to popular belief, anyone’s brain can become as “plastic” as in infancy and early childhood, given the right stimulus. When someone suffers a stroke, the sooner the patient starts retraining in speech, walking, etc., the better. (Indeed they should start to retrain at once!) And why shouldn’t the brain regenerate, given that skin or bone can repair itself? Happily, making the brain plastic again (from the Greek plasso I shape and mold) does not absolutely require so drastic an intervention as a stroke. Magnetic fields can do the same – and one participant recounted good results in treating clinical depression. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDVgfFzZVsA Warning! It can destroy your identity! Conferees waxed almost poetic at times, about not only restoring lost brain function after stroke (or concussion?), but enhancing it. They talked about drug therapies to induce brain plasticity – with a view to teaching an adult, who might never have been able to carry a tune, to learn to play or sing beautifully and even have perfect pitch! Furthermore, some of these drugs might already be available – like methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), which goes by the street name Ecstasy. But this carries risks, and the conferees recognized some of them. Make one wrong move, and your patient might develop an Alzheimer-like dementia. Even without that, one participant warned that such intervention could destroy one’s identity. [W]e've all gone through critical periods shaping who we are. Our identities are formed in childhood and our experiences, our cultural background, the languages we speak, the skills we have — if we were to actually be able to reverse all of that, wouldn't we lose our self? Others warned of charlatans selling a false promise of turning someone into a cyborg – with enhancements he might actually desire – or giving someone abilities no one could ever have in real life. Like, for instance, the ability to treat the world as a simulation, as the Matrix franchise depicts. If this were all there was to “neuroplasticity” as an area of clinical inquiry, then existing laws regarding informed consent and truth-in-advertising would apply, perhaps with some refinement. But that’s not all. From the remarks at this conference, scientists have known about neuroplasticity for decades. This discussion will treat the obvious grand-scale misuse of neuroplasticity – as neuropsychological warfare. Neuropsychological warfare – what could that be? Actress Leslie Stephanson (The General’s Daughter, 1999) famously said, when John Travolta asked her to define psychological warfare, Mostly we f*ck with people’s minds. Anyone who has “pranked” someone to scare them – say on Halloween – has engaged in psychological warfare, on a tiny scale. “Fearmongering” is psychological warfare on a grand scale. Neuropsychological warfare combines the usual emotional manipulation with a deliberate attempt to reshape the brain. Now we see the purpose of “Drag Queen Story Hour,” to take only one particularly execrable example. Now we know why, according to Alphabet Soup movement leaders, sexual education – and sexuality education – begins in kindergarten. At such ages, the human brain is naturally plastic, without such interventions as a conk on the head. (Or slipping someone a Mickey Finn consisting of Ecstasy.) Concerning adults, the enemies of America now know they cannot content themselves with waiting for “the old ones” to die. The visceral reaction to the recent verdict in New York v. Trump has told them that. So wouldn’t they just love to use the techniques on display at that World Science Festival conference fifteen months ago? Use them, that is, to erase an adult’s identity and turn him into a slave? Or failing that, simply order him to kill himself? In fact, the medieval order of the Assassins practiced neuropsychological warfare, though in a crude manner. They drugged men with hashish, had prostitutes service them, then told them they had just tasted a jihadi’s version of heaven. Now they were willing to go and kill! Neuropsychological warfare, real and potential Again, thus far the current neuropsychological warfare program is crude. The Alphabet Soup movement urgently desires to start subjecting children to surgical mutilation and hormonal poisoning. Recently a general surgery resident, part of Baylor College of Medicine’s surgical program, exposed a secret “transgender service” at Texas Children’s Hospital, the world’s largest exclusively pediatric hospital (where your editor “rotated” in pediatrics and pediatric surgery). Then, in a scene out of The Trial (with Anthony Perkins and Orson Welles, based on the novel by Franz Kafka), three heavily armed “federal agents” accosted him at home and informed him he already had four indictments against him – for HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) violations. Lacking experience with conditioning an adult’s mind with drugs like hashish or Ecstasy, cultural Marxists do the next best thing. They subject adults to continued stress, especially in college. To members of “protected” groups they feed lurid visions of a return of Torquemada’s Inquisition, Jim Crow, or some such. And to straight white cis-gendered males they feed a steady diet of negative propaganda. “Shame on you!” “Check your privilege!” “You maltreated these people, as surely as your ancestors maltreated theirs!” And other such pleasantries. Eventually other pleasantries succeed to these: “Give your place to the victims of your oppression!” Or: “Stop crucifying your inner [Alphabet Soup] soul! Such feelings are only normal and natural – and only latents object so violently to us!” (As science-fiction author Larry Niven specifically said in his short story, “How the Heroes Die.”) Twisting of popular culture Indeed we see a twisting of the popular culture that even the harshest Elizabethan-era critic of popular drama couldn’t imagine. The cause of plagues is sin, if you look to it well, and the causes of sin are plays; therefore the causes of plagues are plays. The recent premiere of the streaming series The Acolyte, which features parthenogenesis and the violent overthrow of a male-dominated chivalric order (and the summary execution of its male members) is bad enough. But at least its creators do not pretend other than to be encouraging Alphabet Soup-ism. Moreover, viewers are free to view it or not, as they wish, and by all accounts, they aren’t. (Instead they’re accessing the explicitly Christian biographical series, The Chosen, among other uplifting works.) But worse yet, dressed-up characters in theme parks belonging to the grandest theme-park chain in the world, are molesting children. “Drag Queen Story Hour” is exactly what it sounds like: explicitly sexual performance art in front of captive child audiences. And when people do object to any of these spectacles, including The Acolyte, their organizers and creators snarl that the normals are the problem. They are repeating exactly the same shame-on-you message one hears at college or university. Now imagine a new set of experiments on prisoners – like, for example, the January 6 suspects and convicts. Imagine “treatments” with Ecstasy, and a steady diet of Alphabet Soup and anti-American propaganda. Khigh Dhiegh, whether as Yen Lo (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) or Wo Fat (Hawaii Five-O) had nothing on these people! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIm6Lslq-Y0 Not a flight of fancy If that last sounds like a flight of fancy, be assured, it is not. Democrat Paula Collins, running against Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), actually suggested putting Donald Trump’s supporters into re-education camps. That she would say a thing like that, bespeaks a deluded conception of her chances for re-election, and her Party’s chances of recapturing the House. But we can only hope this does represent delusion, and not an accurate assessment of her, and her Party’s chances. More to the point, such re-education camps would be the perfect place to put all those theories about rewiring adult brains to a practical test. In short, they would become laboratories for neuropsychological warfare. Again the enemies of America and civilization have “said the quiet part out loud,” as they did a month ago. They have declared war, and those who love liberty must wage it. A boycott of current popular culture, and the creation of a parallel alternative, becomes not only an operational doctrine but also necessary to psychic and cultural salvation. Such a culture is both shelter against the neuropsychological warfare of the enemy, and staging area for a counterattack. The country has endured another Pearl Harbor. Now comes the time for the Doolittle Raid. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/08/news/neuropsychological-warfare-alphabet-soup-offensive/ Rewiring the brain (World Science Festival conference, March 9, 2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDVgfFzZVsA The Manchurian Candidate – Yen Lo’s lecture on brainwashing, and a murderous demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIm6Lslq-Y0 Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Neuropsychological warfare – the Alphabet Soup offensive By Terry A. Hurlbut Fifteen months ago, a little-known conference took place as part of an annual event called the World Science Festival. That conference (March 9, 2023) ran for about an hour and a half, and had a most provocative title: Rewiring the Brain: the Promise and Peril of Neuroplasticity. Few beyond the community of neurophysicists, neurologists, and neurosurgeons gave that conference a moment’s thought. Then this morning, Joseph R. Mercola, D.O., published an analysis on his site, taking note of the praises for this new technique of “rewiring the brain,” and the ethical objections many conferees raised to it. What Dr. Mercola might not appreciate is that he has just articulated the real object of the Alphabet Soup movement. It is nothing less than neuropsychological warfare, with the object of recruiting people of all ages – and forcing “stubborn” non-recruits to hang our heads in shame. Can neurologists rewire the brain? In fact, neurologists have always known that a newborn does not present into the world with a fixed brain. Development of mobility, language – even appreciation of musical pitch – continues after birth. Oscar Hammerstein II famously said, “You’ve got to be taught to hate.” South Pacific, 1949 (Broadway), 1958 (MGM Pictures). In fact “you’ve got to be taught” to do many more things: walk, talk, read, write, even to appreciate music. (“Perfect pitch,” as everyone knows, doesn’t come to everyone, even to every musician. But it comes more easily to those who start their musical training sooner.) Maria Montessori built a reputation from developing methods to stimulate children’s brains to make them learn even faster. (See here for more details – and how some are perverting her work. More on that below.) Neurologist Glenn Doman developed a method to teach reading to neurologically impaired children – that works wonders for neurotypical children. Contrary to popular belief, anyone’s brain can become as “plastic” as in infancy and early childhood, given the right stimulus. When someone suffers a stroke, the sooner the patient starts retraining in speech, walking, etc., the better. (Indeed they should start to retrain at once!) And why shouldn’t the brain regenerate, given that skin or bone can repair itself? Happily, making the brain plastic again (from the Greek plasso I shape and mold) does not absolutely require so drastic an intervention as a stroke. Magnetic fields can do the same – and one participant recounted good results in treating clinical depression. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDVgfFzZVsA Warning! It can destroy your identity! Conferees waxed almost poetic at times, about not only restoring lost brain function after stroke (or concussion?), but enhancing it. They talked about drug therapies to induce brain plasticity – with a view to teaching an adult, who might never have been able to carry a tune, to learn to play or sing beautifully and even have perfect pitch! Furthermore, some of these drugs might already be available – like methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), which goes by the street name Ecstasy. But this carries risks, and the conferees recognized some of them. Make one wrong move, and your patient might develop an Alzheimer-like dementia. Even without that, one participant warned that such intervention could destroy one’s identity. [W]e've all gone through critical periods shaping who we are. Our identities are formed in childhood and our experiences, our cultural background, the languages we speak, the skills we have — if we were to actually be able to reverse all of that, wouldn't we lose our self? Others warned of charlatans selling a false promise of turning someone into a cyborg – with enhancements he might actually desire – or giving someone abilities no one could ever have in real life. Like, for instance, the ability to treat the world as a simulation, as the Matrix franchise depicts. If this were all there was to “neuroplasticity” as an area of clinical inquiry, then existing laws regarding informed consent and truth-in-advertising would apply, perhaps with some refinement. But that’s not all. From the remarks at this conference, scientists have known about neuroplasticity for decades. This discussion will treat the obvious grand-scale misuse of neuroplasticity – as neuropsychological warfare. Neuropsychological warfare – what could that be? Actress Leslie Stephanson (The General’s Daughter, 1999) famously said, when John Travolta asked her to define psychological warfare, Mostly we f*ck with people’s minds. Anyone who has “pranked” someone to scare them – say on Halloween – has engaged in psychological warfare, on a tiny scale. “Fearmongering” is psychological warfare on a grand scale. Neuropsychological warfare combines the usual emotional manipulation with a deliberate attempt to reshape the brain. Now we see the purpose of “Drag Queen Story Hour,” to take only one particularly execrable example. Now we know why, according to Alphabet Soup movement leaders, sexual education – and sexuality education – begins in kindergarten. At such ages, the human brain is naturally plastic, without such interventions as a conk on the head. (Or slipping someone a Mickey Finn consisting of Ecstasy.) Concerning adults, the enemies of America now know they cannot content themselves with waiting for “the old ones” to die. The visceral reaction to the recent verdict in New York v. Trump has told them that. So wouldn’t they just love to use the techniques on display at that World Science Festival conference fifteen months ago? Use them, that is, to erase an adult’s identity and turn him into a slave? Or failing that, simply order him to kill himself? In fact, the medieval order of the Assassins practiced neuropsychological warfare, though in a crude manner. They drugged men with hashish, had prostitutes service them, then told them they had just tasted a jihadi’s version of heaven. Now they were willing to go and kill! Neuropsychological warfare, real and potential Again, thus far the current neuropsychological warfare program is crude. The Alphabet Soup movement urgently desires to start subjecting children to surgical mutilation and hormonal poisoning. Recently a general surgery resident, part of Baylor College of Medicine’s surgical program, exposed a secret “transgender service” at Texas Children’s Hospital, the world’s largest exclusively pediatric hospital (where your editor “rotated” in pediatrics and pediatric surgery). Then, in a scene out of The Trial (with Anthony Perkins and Orson Welles, based on the novel by Franz Kafka), three heavily armed “federal agents” accosted him at home and informed him he already had four indictments against him – for HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) violations. Lacking experience with conditioning an adult’s mind with drugs like hashish or Ecstasy, cultural Marxists do the next best thing. They subject adults to continued stress, especially in college. To members of “protected” groups they feed lurid visions of a return of Torquemada’s Inquisition, Jim Crow, or some such. And to straight white cis-gendered males they feed a steady diet of negative propaganda. “Shame on you!” “Check your privilege!” “You maltreated these people, as surely as your ancestors maltreated theirs!” And other such pleasantries. Eventually other pleasantries succeed to these: “Give your place to the victims of your oppression!” Or: “Stop crucifying your inner [Alphabet Soup] soul! Such feelings are only normal and natural – and only latents object so violently to us!” (As science-fiction author Larry Niven specifically said in his short story, “How the Heroes Die.”) Twisting of popular culture Indeed we see a twisting of the popular culture that even the harshest Elizabethan-era critic of popular drama couldn’t imagine. The cause of plagues is sin, if you look to it well, and the causes of sin are plays; therefore the causes of plagues are plays. The recent premiere of the streaming series The Acolyte, which features parthenogenesis and the violent overthrow of a male-dominated chivalric order (and the summary execution of its male members) is bad enough. But at least its creators do not pretend other than to be encouraging Alphabet Soup-ism. Moreover, viewers are free to view it or not, as they wish, and by all accounts, they aren’t. (Instead they’re accessing the explicitly Christian biographical series, The Chosen, among other uplifting works.) But worse yet, dressed-up characters in theme parks belonging to the grandest theme-park chain in the world, are molesting children. “Drag Queen Story Hour” is exactly what it sounds like: explicitly sexual performance art in front of captive child audiences. And when people do object to any of these spectacles, including The Acolyte, their organizers and creators snarl that the normals are the problem. They are repeating exactly the same shame-on-you message one hears at college or university. Now imagine a new set of experiments on prisoners – like, for example, the January 6 suspects and convicts. Imagine “treatments” with Ecstasy, and a steady diet of Alphabet Soup and anti-American propaganda. Khigh Dhiegh, whether as Yen Lo (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) or Wo Fat (Hawaii Five-O) had nothing on these people! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIm6Lslq-Y0 Not a flight of fancy If that last sounds like a flight of fancy, be assured, it is not. Democrat Paula Collins, running against Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), actually suggested putting Donald Trump’s supporters into re-education camps. That she would say a thing like that, bespeaks a deluded conception of her chances for re-election, and her Party’s chances of recapturing the House. But we can only hope this does represent delusion, and not an accurate assessment of her, and her Party’s chances. More to the point, such re-education camps would be the perfect place to put all those theories about rewiring adult brains to a practical test. In short, they would become laboratories for neuropsychological warfare. Again the enemies of America and civilization have “said the quiet part out loud,” as they did a month ago. They have declared war, and those who love liberty must wage it. A boycott of current popular culture, and the creation of a parallel alternative, becomes not only an operational doctrine but also necessary to psychic and cultural salvation. Such a culture is both shelter against the neuropsychological warfare of the enemy, and staging area for a counterattack. The country has endured another Pearl Harbor. Now comes the time for the Doolittle Raid. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/08/news/neuropsychological-warfare-alphabet-soup-offensive/ Rewiring the brain (World Science Festival conference, March 9, 2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDVgfFzZVsA The Manchurian Candidate – Yen Lo’s lecture on brainwashing, and a murderous demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIm6Lslq-Y0 Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

The academy and its dishonest games By Terry A. Hurlbut Lately the academy – meaning the community of higher-educational institutions – has suffered a few embarrassments. The latest came from Wiley Publishers, a world-class publisher of scientific journals and textbooks. They recently had to close 19 of the more than 2,000 journals that went out under their imprimatur. But this latest incident highlights a larger problem that has plagued the academy almost since its inception. This problem – fake science – results from an “aristocracy of pull” called “publish or perish,” with almost no accountability for publishing false – or dangerous – scientific insights. Society at large has always known this – but its leaders have never thought to reform the system. What is the academy and how do publishers serve it? The academy refers to the general community of institutions of higher education, and especially to those with research programs. A large number of other institutions, especially publishers, has grown to serve the academy in one way or another. Specifically, academic publishers make available the scientific papers that inform the academy of the latest scientific research. Furthermore, policymakers and legislators rely on academic papers to justify the policies they make, propound, and support. But the academy usually consists of miniature communities that labor in isolation from the larger societies that surround them. In extreme cases, like Harvard University, members of these institutions need never see an “outsider” or “townie.” (Yale University is less isolated, but faculty and students do not normally speak to “townies” even when using city streets to get from one building to another.) This isolation encourages hubris – that unhealthy pride that numbers among the Seven Deadly Sins. “We’re better than you are,” members of a college or university think of townies, at least unconsciously. The larger network we call the academy encourages all its members to consider all the rest of the world as one big “town,” from which they isolate themselves. To any member of the academy, anyone other than a fellow academic is a townie, who rates condescension at best. The extreme case in popular fiction and drama The most extreme, and yet the most popular, hypothetical case of the academy treating its surrounding community with such condescension, is the Star Trek franchise. This gets very little treatment in Star Trek canon, but this condescension – indeed rulership – follows logically from certain canonical statements. Politically, the United Federation of Planets operates under Articles that mirror those of the present-day United Nations. Economically, all industry is under government control. Memorably, a capital-ship captain tells a guest aboard his ship, “Money does not exist in our society.” Elaborating, he says he and his officers and crew work “for the betterment of humankind.” Or rather, all intelligent life-form kinds; the Federation does not discriminate on the basis of species. Who, then, decides what career an individual will pursue? The Star Trek canon is absolutely silent on this point, but only one thing follows from what canon does say. Which is: the academy rules. One can apply to Star Fleet Academy, which has a competitive admissions process familiar to all college and university students. If one doesnt “get in,” only one thing will serve. A Career Placement Board must judge the fitness of every individual for a certain career – from ditch digger to professor. Thus far no real-life society gives the academy that much power – but that hasn’t stopped its leaders from seeking it. The contempt they pour upon “townies” is as old as university culture. For actual history, consult the history of the English city of Oxford, and its venerable university. Publish or perish This overweening arrogance also governs how academy members treat one another. “Publish or perish” is the rule. Author listings on as many published papers as possible are the ticket to promotion, or research grants. Grantors know they cannot hope to gain exclusive access to inventions – for the academy treats all inventions within its laboratories as “in the public domain,” or close to it. So they must want something else. They say they want insight into how the world works. But they actually want respectability for a version of “how the world works” that will benefit them in some way. That benefit could be pecuniary, an appeal to their vanity – or take the form of political power. (Every academic hospital might as well call itself Vanity House. People pay dearly for their names on the wings and their oil portraits in the hallways.) Nowhere is this system more tempting to pride (and many kinds of greed) than in academic medicine. That is also the part of the academy with which your editor is most familiar. Not only does your editor hold a medical degree, but he has also taken an active part in “peer review.” Peer review asks the peers of a scientist to judge his work as deserving of publication – or not. But several memorable cases demonstrate that peer review often fails. Either the peers don’t read the papers carefully enough – or they have agreed to do someone a favor. Latest embarrassment to the academy A certain disreputable industry – disreputable even to the academy itself – has grown to serve scientists grasping for promotions and grants. Paper mills (described here) will literally make up a scientific paper, then sell authorships on it. They will then submit the paper to several journals with lower than usual editorial standards. Wiley Publishers got into trouble by acquiring Hindawi, an Egyptian publishing house that published several journals. They ended up having to shut down 19 of those journals, after finding that they had accepted papers from paper mills, many of which papers were riddled with scientific errors, not all of them honest. Wiley has had to retract 11,300 papers in the last two years, by reason of such errors. The real tragedy is that those putting their names to these papers are getting their promotions and other grants. The Peter Principle – that one gets promoted to the level of his own incompetence – combines with this scandal to cast doubt on all of academic science, and especially academic medicine. Worse yet: a scientist that achieves a certain academic rank faces no accountability for any fraud he has committed. Only when a particularly serious incident brings embarrassment on a given university do any repercussions occur. The world saw this with Claudine Gay, whose “immediate” sin was plagiarism – but whose worse sin was an indirect endorsement of mass murder. A much older problem… Allegedly, the editors of Science, the organ for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (or more accurately, the American Association for the Promotion of Evolution and the Deprecation of Faith-based Origin Theories, but that’s a discussion for another day), spotted this practice eleven years ago. But this problem existed when your editor was in medical school in the early Nineteen Eighties. A medical student named J. R. Darsee published a series of papers in The New England Journal of Medicine. That organ is scarcely a fly-by-night publication like those Wiley recently shut down! Darsee, a student at Duke University School of Medicine, was expounding on a particular theory of the causes and distribution of heart disease. The head of the department – Dr. Eugene Braunwald, who also served on the editorial board of Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, insisted on claiming co-authorship on every paper that went out of his department. Well, J. R. Darsee had performed the clinical-research equivalent of dry-labbing. The Yale Student Handbook, at least in 1976, explained this: The practice known as dry-labbing, constructing observations out of one’s own head or misappropriating the observations of others, is an offense of such gravity that it warrants excommunication from the community of scientists. At Yale the comparable sanction is expulsion. Two years after Darsee’s series appeared, Duke retracted the papers. Obviously they expelled Darsee, and blamed him totally. But did anything happen to Dr. Braunwald? No. Your editor’s preceptor in Medical Information Science, familiar with the situation, had a laugh at Dr. Braunwald’s expense years later. But that was literally all. …and a wider one Nor is outright fraud the only problem. The source that broke the story describes two other problems: “irrelevant and insipid subjects, and incoherent language.” Your editor saw that first-hand. A column announcing recent research grants listed this gem: “Reproduction in women with mammalian reproductive characteristics.” Laboratory staff, commenting on it, noticed the redundancy at once – but the grant stood. And “incoherent language”? Anyone trying to bamboozle an editor – or give that editor plausible deniability – knows how to throw up clouds of terminology. The medical literature today is nauseatingly replete with utterly unreadable papers. (They would never pass the Flesch Reading Ease Test!) Even more harmful to society are the papers that pass muster, not because the editors just want to sell space, but because the editors have an agenda they wish to promote. When legislators, bureaucrats, and ambitious chief executives get hold of such papers, they can work all kinds of mischief while claiming academic support for their policies. Climate-gate was the worst example, fifteen years ago. More recently came another example: the coronavirus and its vaccines. The chief driver of that scam – Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. – practiced a blend of venal and ideological corruption that would have made even J. R. Darsee faint. Has the academy subverted itself in the aid of totalitarianism? Yes, it has – and that’s a worse problem than a few charlatans advancing to the level of their scientific incompetence. The late Ayn Rand, in her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, described the ultimate in scientific horror that the academy, combining with totalitarianism, can produce: [T]he damned and the guiltiest among you, are the men who had the capacity to know, yet chose to blank out reality, the men who were willing to sell their intelligence into cynical servitude to force; the contemptible breed of those mystics of science who profess a devotion to some sort of “pure knowledge” – the purity consisting of their claim that such knowledge has no practical purpose on this earth – who reserve their logic for inanimate matter, but believe that the subject of dealing with men requires and deserves no rationality, who scorn money and sell their souls in exchange for a laboratory supplied by loot. And since there is no such thing as “non-practical knowledge,” nor any sort of “disinterested” action, since they scorn the use of their science for the purpose and profit of life, they deliver their science to the service of death, to the only practical purpose it can ever have for looters: to inventing weapons of coercion and destruction. Among said weapons: a virus giving those who catch it a very bad cold, or an “immunization” that actually kills. Furthermore, some weapons are not physical, but psychological: a convincing but false scenario of a doom for the world that requires the suspension of industry – or literal suicide. This is what Climate-gate was all about. (Definition: a mystic claims secret knowledge of how the world works, or what moves the world.) This is the worst harm the academy is now doing. Redemption will not come easily. It will likely require a completely different “business model,” in which the universities offer courses in – for lack of a better term – the “pure science” that can back new developments in engineering, to those ready to undertake or finance the sort of engineering projects this science can make possible. Or courses in basic biology, to those willing to pay for the basis of new farming, medical, and other techniques. In such a model, fraud would “out” very quickly, as it already does in engineering. And that knowledge wouldn’t go to “gain-of-function research” or creating “cures” that actually kill. Conclusion In whatever way it can happen, the academy badly needs reform. The Wiley scandal is relatively harmless in comparison to the Climate-gate and COVID-19 scandals. Sadly, the academy is set up for scandals of that kind. A “Parallel Academy,” in addition to pledging not to censor contrary opinion (another historical problem), must address such scandals and invent new ways to prevent them. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/07/editorial/talk/academy-dishonest-games/ Wiley publishers retract 11,300 papers, shut down 19 journals https://conservativesdaily.com/academic-publisher-overwhelmed-by-fraud-11300-papers-retracted-19-journals-shut-down The Peter Principle: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/peter-principle-theory-decline The Flesch Reading Ease Test (a description and usage guide from a college editorial help center): https://www.morainepark.edu/help/what-flesch-reading-ease-score-should-my-content-have/ Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Revenge fears become public spectacle By Terry A. Hurlbut To assert – or pretend – that such-a-celebrity vows to leave the country if Donald J. Trump wins re-election, has become fashionable. Such posts appear with annoying regularity on Platform X. Sometimes someone will leave a Community Note saying, in effect, “Believe it when you see it, and not until.” But now a public figure has seen fit to say something like that directly – on a national news outlet. Moreover, this celebrity has expressed a fear that Donald Trump, upon his return to the White House, will exact revenge. The kind of revenge he would seek, would better befit a banana-republic dictator – or a Democrat. Or a man of good heart taking a necessary corrective action against a system that destroyed Constitutional rights, and against those, being part of that system, who effected that destruction. Revenge fear expressions Revenge for real or imagined slights has in fact been a staple of Democratic Party politics since Joe Biden’s inauguration. Or at least, it looks like revenge – when it really is a program to “secure” the country “internally” against dissidents. That is why the FBI continues to arrest suspected “January 6 Event participants” to this day. One such participant, recently released, discussed the implications of his incarceration for civil liberties. This morning, Ben Kew of The Gateway Pundit reported that Andrew McCabe, former FBI Director, said several agents will flee the country if Trump wins re-election. He said it to Kaitlan Collins, reporter for CNN – who famously humiliated herself before Trump at a Town Hall event. Citizen Free Press posted an embedded video segment of that interview: https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1798594572786020673 This comes close to a screed, to paraphrase FDR’s Secretary of State Cordell Hull, so crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions – on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that [an agency of the United States government] was capable of uttering them. Consider: He is not a person who’s driven by principle or ideology. He is someone who’s entirely transactional. “Transactional” thinking confines itself to “tit for tat” and invokes no overarching principle. But Trump does follow a principle and an ideology: respect for life, liberty and property. But Andrew McCabe can’t understand that. Furthermore he serves an elite who themselves follow transactional thinking – or an evil principle that no one but them is fit to live. Projection extraordinaire In the process of seeking [revenge], he runs the risk of dismantling or greatly incapacitating the Department of Justice and the FBI. That is something that Americans on both sides of the political aisle should be worried about. We depend on those institutions to protect us. No, Director McCabe. Only Democrats need have any affection for the FBI or DOJ now. The General Counsel of CPAC and his assistant recently castigated the DOJ for judge-shopping, selective application of the law, and abuse of their public-purse-bolstered staying power. They called, of course, for a new Attorney General, plus reforms that will stop any future AG from turning the DOJ into an instrument of revenge on the part of the party in power. And yes, McCabe did confirm that several FBI and other Intelligence Community agents are thinking of fleeing the country. On a very personal level, I mean, these are tortures discussions with their family members about whether or not they have to leave the country to avoid being unconstitutionally and illegally detained. People were actually worried about being thrown in jail or grabbed in some sort of extra judicial detention. I think it’s crazy as this sounds in the United States of America. I think people should really consider that these are possibilities. Listen to what the man says. Spoken by a man who ordered some of those unconstitutional and illegal detentions, or is simpatico with those who do. This is the very definition of projection. Furthermore McCabe is on record calling Trump supporters “a clear and present danger to our democracy.” He went further, rhetorically accusing every Trump supporter of fomenting or participating in insurrection and rebellion. And he himself ordered his agency to spy on Trump and his administration. He is the very picture of a destroyer of Constitutional rights, and is now throwing off on his erstwhile target. For anything that happens to him in future, he has none to blame but himself. Sean Hannity dares intercede with his own would-be destroyers Trump himself granted an interview to Sean Hannity, who unaccountably tried to intercede for Trump’s tormenters. Jim Hoft, TGP editor, gave the details. In answer to Hannity’s questions, Trump didn’t actually threaten to weaponize his government against those tormenters, nor refuse to pledge not to. But he did make clear that he has every reason to do something, in the interest of objective justice. But I don’t want to look naive. What they’ve done to the Republican Party, they want to arrest on no crime. They want to arrest the person that won the nomination in a landslide. There was nobody even close in a landslide. The person that got millions of votes, more votes than any other sitting president in history in the last election, the person that won an election that he wasn’t expected to win against Hillary Clinton in 2016, they want to arrest that person on no crime. They want to arrest… There was no crime. There was no criminality. There was no crime. And you can go back to all of these legal scholars. They can’t believe what’s happening. Some of them don’t even like me, and they’re saying, “This is a very dangerous thing that’s happening.” No, we can’t let this happen. And I will do everything in my power not to let it. But there’s tremendous criminality here. What they’re doing to me, if it’s going to continue, we’re really not going to have much of a country. https://rumble.com/v4zvdxb-sean-hannity-attempts-to-persuade-trump-to-go-easy-on-bidens-gestapo-doj.html?mref=4teej&mc=88ce6 Three X users reprimanded Hannity, in no uncertain terms, for failing to understand the stakes. https://x.com/LangmanVince/status/1798533375529230840 https://x.com/AllanAronson/status/1798548631324127731 https://x.com/BarbiG_tea/status/1798549730433409079 Sean Hannity can at least claim to be applying the Golden Rule. Chris Matthews cannot. In a particularly fevered rant, Matthews declared it “very reasonable to assume” Trump would assume dictatorial powers. https://x.com/CortesSteve/status/1798448346044195241 Donald Trump … wants to put [his opponents] before firing squads, basically. He wants to put them all in jail. He’s unbelievable the way he talks about his opponents. No, Mr. Matthews. This is how Trump’s enemies talk about him. More on that below, but then Matthews said something that makes even less sense: This election is about more than abortion, it is about the whole question of what kind of government we’re going to have? What kind of country do we want to live in, do we have a dictator who tells the U.S. Congress don’t do anything about the border, don’t do anything, let it rock n roll, let thousands come through between now and election day, it doesn’t matter if they stay here forever, as long as we win the election. Wha-a-t? Has he not been paying attention? Biden tells the Congress not to do anything about the border. Biden sues the State of Texas when its Governor does do what the federal government will not. More to the point, Christina Laila has a treasure trove of murder fantasies about Trump. They come from a former U.S. Attorney, former Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and the leftist “business” newsletter Business Insider. This morning, Hillary Clinton marked the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord (D-Day) with an intended dig at Trump: https://x.com/HillaryClinton/status/1798688498784079878 Actually, that’s truer than she knows – but not for the reason she meant to imply. The people’s revenge Indeed the people must do more than vote. They must vote in greater numbers, and encourage many, who have never voted before, to vote this time. Some of us, as accredited Party polling-place challengers and Officers of Election, must do more. Our job will be to make sure that the theft of the Election of 2020 will not recur. Reelecting Donald Trump is as much revenge as the people must take. In fact, revenge is not the word. Justice is, and the Second Book of the Law (Deuteronomy) instructs us properly: Vengeance is Mine, and retribution; In due time their foot will slip. For the day of their disaster is near, And the impending things are hurrying to them. Deuteronomy 32:35 Or more accurately: “Justice is My job; I will set things right.” But the next parts of that statement are equally important. The foot of the enemies of freedom has slipped, and they know it. They also know that the day of their doom fast approaches. That explains their fevered statements about Trump playing the dictator, and about their leaving the country. Trump would, of course, do well to use the justice system as the Framers meant it to work. But let everyone remember one thing: the enemies of freedom have already convicted themselves. One who frames another, is liable for whatever penalty he tried to make that other pay. So it is with those who pass bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, or apply the law selectively. For them, revenge – or rather, justice – is indeed at hand. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/06/news/revenge-fears-become-public-spectacle/ Video: Andrew McCabe says fellow agents thinking of fleeing the country: https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1798594572786020673 Video: Sean Hannity’s interview with Trump: https://rumble.com/v4zvdxb-sean-hannity-attempts-to-persuade-trump-to-go-easy-on-bidens-gestapo-doj.html?mref=4teej&mc=88ce6 Three X posts reprimanding Hannity for what he said: https://x.com/LangmanVince/status/1798533375529230840 https://x.com/AllanAronson/status/1798548631324127731 https://x.com/BarbiG_tea/status/1798549730433409079 Video: Chris Matthews fears a Trump dictatorship: https://x.com/CortesSteve/status/1798448346044195241 Post: Hillary Clinton snidely remembers D-Day: https://x.com/HillaryClinton/status/1798688498784079878 Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/

Low birth rate – latest report By Terry A. Hurlbut The low birth rate phenomenon in the civilized world is worse than ever. Two months ago the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pegged the Total Fertility Rate in the United States at 1.6. That’s the lowest on record that it’s ever been – and those records go back to the 1930s. Explanations for this are probably as many and varied as the ones offering the explanations. CNAV sees it as further evidence of a deliberate depopulation agenda at work. But reversing of these trends will not happen easily. That will require an immediate change of leadership in America, and a commitment to restoring conditions conducive to a high birth rate. And, contrary to depopulation propaganda, America will have plenty of room – once we reopen certain tracts to human settlement, and regain control of our borders. Latest low birth rate reports Two new sets of numbers exist to estimate the Total Fertility Rate in the United States today. Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is commonly the number of children a woman might have during her childbearing years. Replacement level is that TFR level at which each succeeding generation will exactly replace itself. That level varies with living standards and a continuum of social state, from law and order to total disorder. In lawful and ordered societies it is typically 2.1, to replace: 1. Two adults who will eventually die, representing mothers and fathers, and 2. The one infant in ten who dies before he or she has a chance to sire, or bear, children. In less ordered societies that replacement levels, is higher. So quoting TFRs from central Africa, without quoting replacement levels, would be misleading. According to the CDC’s recent Vital Statistics Rapid Release Report, the TFR in the United States in 2023 was 1.6. But according to World Population Review, it stands at 1.84. Either rate is below replacement. The CDC examines United States birth records and Census data, while WPR takes its data from the World Bank. Why the World Bank should be reporting higher TFR numbers than CDC sources, begs explanation. But the CDC reminds its readers that their estimates are provisional. Some birth rates higher than others In any event, this low TFR is not uniform. It varies with race, socioeconomic status, and maternal age. Asians have the fewest children, with Native American and Alaskan native (Inuit, Aleut, etc.) having a few more. Whites come next, and Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders have the most. All rates declined from 2022 to 2023, with Black and White women’s rates declining more sharply than the rest. WPR also breaks down raw birth rates (not TFR) by State and territory. Sadly, WPR has no data any more recent than 2021. But as was true two years ago, the States having conservative governance have the higher birth rates. North and South Dakota lead, while Vermont, Rhode Island, and Oregon trail. Of course, the extra Hispanic population in Texas might (at first glance) drive a higher TFR in Texas. (Texas ranks fourteenth in raw fertility.) But the conservative mind-set of Texas, and the extra room the State has, might be the real drivers. Idaho, incidentally, ranks twelfth, and Oregon ranks third from the bottom. Thirteen counties in Oregon, all east of the Cascade Mountains, have voted for the Greater Idaho movement. That movement seeks to recruit seventeen counties to secede from Oregon and join Idaho. Those counties are among the most sparsely settled in all of Oregon. Secession would bring a more family-friendly legal and law-enforcement climate. And the residents of those counties already have a lot of room to “fill up.” Why the low birth rate? Two separate sources offer to explain the low birth rate as the CDC reported it. One is “Live NOW from Fox,” apparently a nationwide aggregator from Fox Broadcasting stations. The other is The Wall Street Journal, as quoted by Leo Hohmann. Live NOW from Fox barely offers any explanation. But they do quote surveys saying couples would like to have two or more children. But the costs and availability of housing, lack of job security, and “cost of child care” stop them. The women who are having babies, are having them later in life – often into their forties. That – as all medical students learn – carries with it risks of Trisomy 21 (“Down’s syndrome”) and other hereditary abnormalities. Fox quotes Nicholas Mark of the University of Wisconsin as suggesting that more than mere postponement is happening. In other words: complete cancellation of childbirth. Hohmann seems to accuse the Journal of writing an uneven story. According to him, the Journal cites “women establishing fulfilling careers.” They also cite women spending their money on establishing themselves as homeowners rather than renters, and servicing student debt. Then Hohmann quotes a glaring inconsistency he might have missed. The Journal says young women are putting off motherhood – while also spending more income on child care. Where the children come from, who require child care, begs explanation. Sloppy writing? Hohmann doesn’t say. Hints at the real explanation But Hohmann does quote another source that is not only better written but is also simpatico with conservative ideals – The Burning Platform. Guest author Antonius Aquinas left this treatment on that platform yesterday. Commenting on the Journal findings, he writes: The reasons that The Journal and other commentators give to explain the decline in birth rates are the consequences of what took place in America and the Western world decades ago. Leftists had always wanted to break down and corrupt the traditional family. A splintered and dysfunctional family structure would be less likely to act as bulwark against its agenda. One of the ways to accomplish this was to get women out of the household and into the labor market, as working and career women would have fewer opportunities to have children. Blame that, in large part, on the Second World War. When all able-bodied men went off to fight Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini, the women, left behind, kept the factories going. What seemed such a good idea at the time gave the feminist movement an entering wedge. After the war, the feminists complained that the women were “retrogressing into … that thing known as The Home.” But despite the never-again-equaled prosperity of the Fifties, the women didn’t stay in The Home. Aquinas writes on: The feminist movement was more than just the attainment of “equal rights” for women. Its main objective was to lead women out of the home and away from their traditional roles as mothers and homemakers. The record drop in birth rates demonstrates how well this plan has been accomplished. In fact The Baby Bust began in or about 1970, and TFRs have been declining ever since, with few exceptions. But that decline has not limited itself to the United States, nor even to The West. Russia and China have even lower birth rates than America has. China directly – and brutally – slammed down its birth rates, out of a fanatical desire for control. (And because the Party apparatus couldn’t feed their own people!) Russia stumbled through Communism, finally abandoning it after seventy years. But its fertility problems remain, despite well-meant but superficial measures to address them. The core Finally Aquinas strikes at the core of the low birth rate problem: the normalization of working women. It should not be normal, says Aquinas, for all women to aspire to work outside the home. True, some women must work, and others are simply not equipped, emotionally or psychologically, to be good mothers. A sound society finds a good place for them – but does not suggest that a woman who chooses not to work, chooses foolishly! Both Hohmann and Aquinas decry the use of mass immigration to replace dead or never-born workers. But Aquinas offers a more detailed treatment: While anti-immigration voices have rightly focused on the cultural and political altering impact of mass illegal immigration, there has been less emphasis on the fundamental change of women’s role in society. Such neglect is probably due to a reluctance to take a moral position and appear chauvinistic or misogynistic. A healthy birth-rate model could offset the influx of unwanted immigrants. That reluctance comes about because no one teaches people that ethics can be just as logical as the natural sciences. To apply logic to ethics, merely ask yourself: Suppose we all did such-a-thing? What then? Too few people did ask: suppose all the women worked. What then? Who would take care of the children? Or even have them? In fact, William S. Gilbert famously applied just such an exercise in logic in the operetta Princes Ida: If you enlist all women in your cause, / and make them all “abjure tyrannic Man,” / The obvious question then arises: How / is this posterity to be provided? Sadly, no one asked that question even when the government created “Rosie the Riveter” to urge women to work “temporarily.” Today, at best, we have Julie Christie as Linda Montag in Fahrenheit 451 (1966) saying what a “shame” it would be to let “the species” die out – and doing nothing to prevent that. At worst we have bitter women who don’t care – and elites who want the species, except themselves, to die out. What might have been Perhaps had America had a different President at a critical moment – in 1918, not 1941 – America could have avoided this. Without Progressivist Woodrow Wilson, the United States need never have entered the First World War. President Taft, in his second term, might have sternly advised all Americans to stay out of other people’s war zones, and off ships steaming into them. No American need have died aboard a ship named RMS Lusitania. America could and should have accepted German Imperial victory. With that victory, no one would have paid an obscure paper hanger named Adolf Hitler the time of day. For that matter, no one would have had to wheel barrows full of Reichsbanknotes worth millions of marks to buy a loaf of bread. Sadly, we’ve no reason to suppose that Russia would have avoided her Revolution. But even that would have concerned no one outside of Russia. The rest of the implications become readily apparent. No Great Depression. Prohibition might have remained, and with it the Speakeasies – and the gangs – and finally the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, which could have led to another moral awakening as the consequences of wanton lawlessness – and disrespect for the very idea of law – played out. But: no Kellogg-Briand Pact, no hemming-in of Japanese shipbuilding – and no Pearl Harbor. Therefore: no Rosie the Riveter. That might have required a reckoning, not with the gangsters, but with the bank-sters. But that’s another topic. Treatment of the low birth rate But one must deal with what one faces. Today we face a low birth rate across the board, and few ideas on how to reverse it. Elon Musk has definitely observed that we either reverse it, or die out as a species. But as Aquinas points out, even he doesn’t know how to reverse it. Aquinas knows, and calls for: a reordering of society to its natural state and restoring the family as a fruitful and nurturing institution for child rearing. To bring that about, start by re-electing Donald J. Trump as President. The feeble but bitter Joe Biden would rather see the species die out. Trump at least is family-friendly. Beyond that, the problem requires more than “restoring the family.” It requires restoring the rest of society as a mega-institution friendly to families. That starts with no more tolerance for abortion (except only to save a maternal life), and no more tolerance for the recruitment of children into the Alphabet Soup lifestyle. (It also might require hard thinking about the kind of signals parents send their children. Alphabet Soupers are not born; they’re made, and careless parents, even more than nefarious teachers, do the making.) It continues with husbands discovering that part of Paul of Tarsus’ Letter to the Ephesians they all missed: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her. Ephesians 5:25, NASB It also calls for repealing Malthus’ Iron Law of Wages. Malthus missed one thing: employers set wages, and landlords set rents. Typically they set them at the “desperation” level and keep them there. Employers especially should remember this verse: And [bosses], do the same things [for the members of your workforces], and give up threatening, knowing that both their [Boss] and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him. Ephesians 6:9, NASB (paraphrased) The enemy remains One thing more remains to consider. Leo Hohmann mentioned one Dennis Meadows, author of The Limits to Growth (1972), who recently talked of reducing population “peacefully.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE4nH2aSi4k Does Meadows actually believe that a bloody war over scarce resources could break out, without a mutual depopulation pact? Maybe – or maybe not. Actually, Meadows just threatened everyone: abstain from childbearing voluntarily, or we are prepared to kill you all. Indeed CNAV has discussed that depopulation agenda before. Likewise, Hohmann has mentioned an apparent objective of the WHO Pandemic Treaty: to tax wealthy countries to build vaccination centers in poor countries. Even Hohmann understates the implications. Citizens of those “wealthy countries” should object to such a tax, not because it would redound to the unearned, unpaid benefit of those “poor countries.” Indeed this program would do those poor countries no favors. Ask, rather, whether you care to have your government expropriate your substance – to go out and commit mass murder. Especially when you may be next. And remember that growth has no limits. Even apart from Elon Musk’s grand schemes to create a “multiplanetary civilization,” this Earth has plenty of room, if we use that room wisely. Don’t let a bunch of cynical, misanthropic struldbrugs tell you otherwise. Link to: The article: https://cnav.news/2024/06/05/editorial/talk/low-birth-rate-latest-report/ The CDC Report: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr035.pdf Dennis Meadows interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE4nH2aSi4k Declarations of Truth X feed: https://x.com/DecTruth Declarations of Truth Locals Community: https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/ Conservative News and Views: https://cnav.news/ Clixnet Media https://clixnet.com/