Category: Deceit O’ The Day

JAMA? What else is new?

JAMA Pediatrics Publishes Extremely Flawed Studied Titled: “Firearm Laws and Pediatric Mortality in the US”

A new study in JAMA Pediatrics asserts that states with “permissive” gun control laws experienced higher pediatric firearm mortality rates following the 2010 Supreme Court decision in McDonald v. Chicago. The study analyzed data from 49 states spanning 1999 to 2023. This has to be one of the dumbest studies done in a long time. After Public Health officials fumbled the COVID response, you’d expect some hesitation before trusting their research on crime, a field far outside their expertise. The fact that they don’t even mention policing and law enforcement in discussing crime rates should provide some warning to the media.

We have previously written extensively on the false claim made in the first sentence of this study: “Firearm deaths are now the leading cause of death among US children and adolescents” (see here and here).

Unlike typical research, which compares crime or suicide rates before and after states change their laws and contrasts those changes with states that didn’t alter their laws, this study ignores how laws change over time. It takes what could be panel data which allows one to account for average differences across states and years (so-called fixed effects). The paper limits there discussion to a purely cross-sectional comparison. The purely cross sectional comparison cannot be used for any discussion of causation. They don’t even try to account for basic factors like law enforcement practices—such as arrest and conviction rates, imprisonment rates, or the death penalty—that influence crime. Nor do they account for any factors that might explain changes in suicides or accidental gun deaths in the 2011 to 2023 period.

The study categorizes the level of gun control laws in each state into one of three broad categories and assumes that there laws remain constant over time, and lumps many different laws together in an arbitrary manner. Are these additive? Do we simply add a concealed-carry law to a safe-storage law to universal background checks? For these gun control advocates, is a red flag law twice as important as having lots of gun-free zones? There is so much arbitrariness in how a measure that combines these different laws and even what laws to include. How did they decide to have eight strict gun-control law states, eleven permissive states, and 30 most permissive states? Why not 1/3rd in each of these different categories?

The methodology falters in several ways. It relies on the epidemiological concept of “excess deaths,” commonly used to gauge the impact of diseases like Covid-19. The authors applied Poisson regression, using only a time trend as a control variable, to estimate expected deaths for three state groups. They labeled the gap between predicted and actual deaths as “excess deaths,” attributing these to permissive state laws. This gap, however, could simply reflect error or residuals, encompassing random error, omitted variables, heteroskedasticity, serial correlation, measurement errors, and other statistical challenges inherent in such analyses.

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The Truth Is, They Do Want a King

I just returned from a wonderful week away enjoying time with my family and dear friends to find a lot of chatter about “No Kings” from the predictable group of left-wing Marxists, and their good friend Bill Kristol. It would seem laughable if this rebrand of revolutionary angst were not proven deadly already. Rather than burning urban areas under BLM flags, the revolutionaries are now shooting elected officials at home under the banner of contempt that pretends to dislike monarchies. As I noted recently, these dark and satanic ideologies imported openly into the American polis through the writings of Marx are deadly and should be removed from society as poison is drawn from a wound.

Those who wish death to America are not limited to the ayatollahs of Tehran. The tragic reality is that those inside the United States who hate this nation likely outnumber those who feel the same way from the Middle East. This is the product of generations of successful indoctrination imparted by the government schooling system. Education is not just about reading, writing, and arithmetic. It has always been about transmitting values. Those who hate the American way know it and act accordingly. This must be dealt with if ordered liberty is to stand a chance beyond our lifetimes.

The “No Kings” protest movement is organized and aimed at resurrecting the terror that gripped this nation during the 2020 summer of rage. The majority of Americans finally tired of the fictional, manipulative narratives of the Black Lives Matter and allied transgender movement over the last couple of years and voted accordingly in 2024. As Dr. Ben Carson shared with me recently, the results of the last election lulled too many conservatives into believing that political evil is defeated in our time—when the reality is that those who wish death to our way of life have been regrouping and plotting a counterassault. That counter assault was attempted in several U.S. cities recently through allegedly anti-immigration law enforcement, most notably in Los Angeles. Even in that city defined in our time as a protest center, the deep blue governing officials couldn’t get away with aiding and abetting lawlessness as usual. So they quickly rebranded the movement to “No Kings.” In doing so, they signal the brainless and fictional narrative that Donald is ruling as a dictatorial king, who curiously allows protests against him. The hypocrisy of that argument requires an entire volume to dissect.

As the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. The protestors hope to tap into a patriotic root with this iteration of rhetorical schema, rallying a wider coalition based on the nation’s rejection of monarchial rule in the 18th century. They will fail because the branding can’t get even skin deep.

Look around at who is showing up to these supposed “No Kings” events. It’s the same Randi Weingarten-esque group bussed in to every other anti-American protest. The iconography of their signs remains intact from the previous protests, sporting the usual color patterns associated with Ukraine and the sexual liberation movement. What you won’t find is a Betsy Ross flag, which served as the nation’s colors at the time of our ancestors’ rebellion against an *actual* king. America’s left wing decided it, and the nation’s founding, is racist. Given such logic, honest activists would demand to become subjects of King Charles III.

But let’s lay all that aside for a moment and talk about how to respond to one of these “No Kings” protestors from a position that grants a basis of dignity in approach. I offer this: the left wing is desperate for a king. Everything about progressivism yearns for someone who will make all things safe, who will guarantee the right to all self-centered behavior, who will provide all things needed for one to live in equity rather than through what one earns. Progressivism demands a king who will uphold its cause zealously, and punish people who dare to assert that the law should provide rights and reasonable limitations equally to all citizens for the purpose of a virtuous society.

Their king will tell you what you can drive, what you can say, what you can eat, and how you may use your land. They want a king who will literally cover your face and inject your body, a king who will take your children if you deny transgender ideology, a ruler who will terminate your bank accounts and your job if you stray from depraved thinking. The progressive left wing wants what it has always wanted: power. It needs—no, demands—a dark lord who will, as the great novelist J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, rule them, find them, and bind them in darkness.

No, the protestors we see now do not reject a king. They demand one.

Scripture assures that those who want to live under dark rule will eventually get their wish. But we dare not hasten those days. So long as God gives us the strength, we must be sure to prevent that coronation from happening.

May be? It may be the worst scandal since Woodrow Wilson, and over the same type of incapacity. Watergate was a criminal conspiracy to cover up a dirty political campaign trick. Bidengate involves the hijacking of the presidency itself, with a conspiracy that involves senior leaders of a major political party and Cabinet officials, not to mention Vice President Kamala Harris herself. And let’s not forget that the Protection Racket Media didn’t just fail to uncover it, they actively acted to cover it up — for four full years.
Watergate was a bungled frat prank in comparison.
– Ed Driscoll

Of course, Tapper is still trying to CYA because the media – lapdogs of the demoncraps – conveniently neglected to do their purported jobs.

Neuroscientist Accidentally Reveals Democrats’ Dark Strategy Behind Biden’s Mental Health Cover-Up.

Neuroscientist and author Sam Harris recently admitted he was misled about President Joe Biden’s cognitive health, conceding that he once believed claims that Biden remained sharp behind closed doors—but now doubts that assumption, citing what he describes as an “effective” cover-up.

In a candid discussion, Harris acknowledged he used to defend Biden’s mental acuity by separating the president’s communication struggles from his decision-making abilities.

“It’s at least intelligible to say, ‘Okay, he’s not a good communicator. He was never a good communicator, he’s only getting worse,’” Harris said. “You can’t reliably stick him in front of a microphone and trust that something good is gonna come out of his mouth.”

Harris once accepted the idea that while Biden fumbled public speaking engagements, he was still competent when it came to deliberating important issues in private.

“The truth is… when you sit with him and deliberate about the war in Ukraine or anything else, he is compos mentis, he clearly understands the issue as well as he ever did,” Harris claimed he previously believed. “He’s just not a fluid speaker, and less and less fluid by the hour. Neurologically speaking, that is an intelligible claim to make about a person. That’s what I assumed was true.”

However, Harris now says he doubts Biden was ever as mentally fit as some insiders had claimed. “Because of how effective this cover-up was, I no longer believe that to have been true,” he admitted. “I think it’s quite possible that he was just checked out to a degree that I did not suspect at the time.”

Now, we’re supposed to believe this explanation, which is basically the same thing that Democrats and their allies in the media are saying. According to them, they were duped. But, Harris, like everyone else on the left who defended Biden’s mental acuity, was lying.

How do I know? Because he flat-out contradicted himself moments later, and it wasn’t subtle.

While you might assume that Biden’s obvious mental decline would be a deal-breaker for a neuroscientist, Harris made it clear that it didn’t matter one bit. The truth is, Biden’s cognitive state was irrelevant to him. His only real concern was stopping Trump—no matter the cost.

“Even that is preferable to me and to, I think, many Democrats, than having someone who we consider to be genuinely evil—genuinely 100% purposed to serving himself in the office of the presidency,” he said, drawing a sharp contrast between Biden’s frailty and Trump’s leadership.

Harris went even further, laying bare the mentality behind the left’s support of Biden in 2024: “I would rather have a president in a coma, where the duties of the presidency are executed by a committee of just normal people,” he said. “And that’s the choice that many of us believe was before us.”

In doing so, Harris admitted that Biden’s competency wasn’t just misunderstood—it was irrelevant. The real goal, for many Democrats, was to stop Trump at any cost. “Not much materially changes once you reveal just how insane and despicable this cover-up of Biden’s infirmities actually was,” Harris concluded, suggesting that the deception—however egregious—was worth it to keep Trump out of office.

Here we have a neuroscientist—someone with the education and expertise to spot cognitive decline a mile away—claiming he was duped by the Biden White House. But then, in the same breath, he admits it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Why? Because he’d rather see a cabal of unelected leftist operatives quietly steer the country into a constitutional crisis than let Trump win.

Spare me the victim act. He wasn’t fooled—he willingly ignored what was right in front of him because his hatred for Trump clouded his judgment.

Just like every other partisan on the left, he helped prop up a mentally unfit president and now wants to pretend he was misled.

He wasn’t. He was complicit.

Anna Matson

I knew the Covid vaccine was dangerous, but after listening to this hearing- it’s so much worse than we thought. We heard from top experts who have been censored- until now. Here is what we know about the vaccine

First I want to point out that the panel was placed under oath. If they lied, it would be a federal crime.

First, @Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH® who is one of the most published people in the world on Covid vaccine myocarditis spoke. He saw warning signs as early as August of 2021 that the vaccines can cause myocarditis…

Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart. Before Covid, Dr. McCullough saw two patients with this problem. Now there are over 1000 peer reviewed studies on Covid vaccine myocarditis.

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BLUF:
They knew he was mentally aloof—a cancer diagnosis would be the ballgame. The latter happened no matter what, so I think it’s time to own it. We all know how this movie ends, kids. This con job is over. You lied. You tried to keep a mentally degraded man suffering from cancer in office. Not only that, but you were also preparing for him to die if re-elected.
A sacrifice on the altar of Democratic politics. These people are savages.

There’s No Way This Latest Statement From Biden’s Team About the Cancer Diagnosis Is True

Former President Joe Biden revealed that he was diagnosed with stage four metastatic prostate cancer on Sunday. It set off another wave of scrutiny regarding a man whose health issues were covered up by Democrats and the media. It’s why this story isn’t going away—cancer diagnosis or not. The levels of this scheme to deceive the public and perpetuate fraud are beyond criminal. We knew the mental health cover-up was sinister, finally exposed for all to see when Biden imploded against Donald Trump in the CNN debate last June.

Now, we have this cancer news. Was Joe sick when he was president? The answer is ‘yes.’ There’s no way prostate cancer that metastasizes to your bones is on a 100-200-day timeline. That’s scientifically impossible; Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel even noted on MSNBC that Biden likely had cancer at the start of his presidency. The former president was not only mentally cooked but had cancer, and no one knew.

The Biden team is trying to do damage control now, adding that Joe was not diagnosed while serving as president. Yeah, because you people never tested him. His last prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test was done in 2014. I’m sure you know the obvious problem: These people lie. They’ve lied for years, and we’re supposed to trust them now. Please. This little statement will do nothing since it’s clear Biden wasn’t tested in office for an obvious reason: they didn’t want a paper trail.

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If it’s that advanced, it means he likely was suffering from it YEARS ago Maybe even before 2020!
And his physical exams (PSA) lab work should have indicated it.
So…. what else is new about covering up for SloJoe?

Joe Biden diagnosed with ‘aggressive form’ of prostate cancer with metastasis to the bone

Former President Joe Biden’s office confirmed on Sunday that he was diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer.

“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms,” Biden’s team shared in a statement. “On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.”

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management. The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians,” the statement said.

ALEX BERENSON: Why we need to humiliate Joe Biden
It may seem cruel, but we must prevent similarly addled men from clinging to power

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. was even more demented than we knew.
Last night, excerpts leaked from Biden’s October 2023 interview with Robert Hur, the federal prosecutor who investigated him for possessing classified documents.

They are awful. They show a man in severe cognitive decline. Biden couldn’t recall even basic facts, like when elections are held. Yes, Joe Biden — who had lusted for the presidency his entire life — thought Donald Trump had won in November 2017, not 2016. It wasn’t a verbal slip. He didn’t know. An aide had to correct him.

BIDEN REPEATEDLY SAYS ‘I DON’T REMEMBER’ REGARDING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS IN NEWLY RELEASED HUR INTERVIEW AUDIO

Even that summary doesn’t capture Biden’s struggles.

What he says is bad. How he says it is worse. His voice is weak and whispery. He goes silent for stretches, loses his train of thought, offers oddly emotional asides about his son Beau — though he could not remember when Beau died. He seems not to remember being vice president; he speaks of being a senator and then jumps to running for president.

In the end, the classified documents investigation went nowhere. (Like the similar case involving Donald Trump, it shouldn’t have). But along the way, Hur — a well-respected prosecutor who had been the U.S. Attorney for Maryland in Trump’s first term — discovered something far more important: proof of Biden’s incapacity.

The Hur interview is so crucial because Biden and his handlers went to such lengths to protect Biden from press or public scrutiny even before the 2020 election.

Biden used teleprompters for his speeches, of course. His press conferences were rare and closely scripted. He had been told what questions would be asked in advance. Biden’s few unscripted, live interactions visible to the public generally came when he left the White House to walk to Marine One. He would occasionally stumble over to the “gaggle” of reporters yelling questions at him and speak for a few seconds.

Hur’s interview with Biden was likely the only time during Biden’s entire presidency when he faced lengthy questioning he could not control. It shows why Biden and his handlers tried so hard to avoid similar situations.

Hur wrote in his report on the investigation last year that Biden was “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The audio suggests that description was kind.

You wouldn’t trust the guy in this interview to drive to the grocery store.
Biden had the nuclear codes.

Still worse, Hur interviewed Biden in 2023. If Biden and the people around him had had their way, he would have been president through January 2029. The interview suggests he’ll be nearly vegetative by then — if he lives that long.

When the Justice Department released Hur’s report on his investigation in February 2024, the legacy media immediately downplayed its importance and attacked Hur’s motives.

… the legacy media is only the second-most important villain here. It was Biden and the people around him, most notably his wife Jill and son Hunter, who insisted that he was fit to serve, and would continue to be until he was 86. 

“In what is supposedly a legal document, these inclusions certainly looked gratuitous—to say the least,” the New Yorker wrote in an article about Biden’s “righteous fury” over the report.

Two days later, the Washington Post would claim in a headline Hur had a “five-hour face-off” with Biden and write:

“Hur’s description of Biden’s demeanor as that of a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” would infuriate Biden’s aides, who saw it as sharply at odds with what occurred as the president sat for voluntary questioning.”

Sharply at odds, huh?

I have written before about the media’s dereliction of duty in covering Biden’s decline, both before and after the Hur report, which continued until his disastrous June 27 debate in Atlanta made covering for him impossible. And I will come back to the media’s failure. Hur’s report made clear that Biden’s cognitive impairment was severe and the White House was covering it up. That scheme should have been the story of the 2024 campaign from the moment the report became public.

This is not 20/20 hindsight on my part. On Feb. 9, 2024, the day the report came out, I wrote that it actually might be WORSE for Biden than an actual indictment.

Most of the media looked the other way, even as Biden’s flubs and lapses visibly worsened in the spring of 2024 despite the protective cocoon around him. But the legacy media is only the second-most important villain here.
It was Biden and the people around him, most notably his wife Jill and son Hunter, who insisted that he was fit to serve, and would continue to be until he was 86. Both Jill and Hunt had their reasons. Jill’s lust for the trappings of power would be almost comic in its nakedness if it weren’t so dangerous; Hunter has champagne taste and a beer budget (or, more accurately in his case, cocaine taste and a meth budget).

But, of course, all of them, including Biden, knew the truth. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths to hide it.

Imagine if Biden had won. Imagine if he had somehow found his way through his debates with Trump and then gone back to the presidential cocoon. Imagine if the media had insisted through Election Day that the videos showing his decline were merely “cheap fakes” – as it did throughout the spring. We’d be approaching a Constitutional crisis. Our system is not parliamentary; it has no way to replace an unfit President quickly or easily. And in running for a second term when he did not have to, Biden showed that he would not give up power unless he was forced to do so.

Robert Hur spoke truth to power. He’s a hero.

Biden and the people around him lied about his basic ability to function as he tried to convince American voters to give him the world’s most important job for four more years. He shouldn’t be forgiven. His misdeeds belong in the first line in his obituary.

We need to remember what he did, even if he can’t.

Try “well known but – poorly – covered up, before the 2020 election”

Yes, Our President Was Senile for a Long Stretch.

On the menu today: Before we dive into the latest detailed anecdotes of President Joe Biden’s undeniable senility in his final year in office, we ought to look back at the on-the-money prediction of these all-too-late tell-all books from back in 2022. I knew this was coming and there’s an extremely good chance you knew this was coming, too. Democrats can’t wait to move on; it’s humiliating to learn Biden couldn’t function in the evenings, his staff told Democratic donors that Kamala Harris was incompetent and unelectable, and that Tim Walz was terrified of debating JD Vance. But how do you learn from a mistake if you refuse to ever admit them?

Everyone Recognizes George Clooney . . . Except Biden

The Morning Jolt, June 20, 2022:

I think the single most predictable “bombshell” of the coming years is that sometime in 2025, someone like Bob Woodward or Robert Costa will publish a book with a title like “Perpetual Crisis: Inside the Biden White House,” and we will “learn” something like:

The president’s official health report said he was in fine shape for his age. But behind the scenes, Jill Biden, Ron Klain, and Susan Rice were deeply concerned the president’s health was rapidly declining, and that he would soon be unable to perform his duties.

His speech was becoming less and less coherent, his thinking more erratic, his mood shifts more intense, and he angrily lashed out at routine advice or recommendations. He insisted he had not been told things he had been briefed on and that his wrong statements were correct. He repeatedly insisted the U.S. had committed to protecting Taiwan, when no treaty required it.

When asked about this, Biden insisted no policy had changed. At almost every public appearance, no matter how much he had been instructed to stick to the teleprompter’s prepared remarks, Biden would go off script and add some comment or outburst — like “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!” — that undermined his message and created new foreign-policy headaches.

But the first lady, Klain, and Rice all concurred that Biden’s problems could be hidden from the public, at least for now, and that Vice President Harris taking over was unthinkable — both because it would be too traumatic for the country and because they had little faith in Harris’s ability to defeat Trump or DeSantis in 2024.

Either man entering the Oval Office in January would put nothing less than all of American democracy at risk. For the good of the country, Biden had to stay in place, and his cognitive decline hidden — much as FDR’s disability, JFK’s back pain, and Woodrow Wilson’s stroke had been hidden before. 

Biden’s public appearances grew less and less frequent, and he virtually stopped doing sit-down interviews. Late at night, Klain and Rice would get together, satisfied they had kept the ship sailing for another day. All the while, the public had no idea that Biden was in such rough shape.

Though it will be treated like a bombshell revelation, the fact is we all have eyes and ears and can see and hear Biden.

I just wish the lottery numbers were so easy to predict.

Enjoy these days of Joe Biden getting knocked around like a piñata, because after Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson have sold all the books they can, the story of the coverup of Joe Biden’s failing physical and mental health is going to disappear like the subject of a David Copperfield prime-time special. It’s just too embarrassing, too harmful to the Democrats’ priorities now, too much of a benefit to Donald Trump and Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer yesterday, on CNN:

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BBC Pushes Firearm Falsehoods, Then Quietly Changes Article

A BBC article published on Monday, in the wake of recent mass shootings, included a graphic that contained blatant lies about the fire rates of different types of firearms.

BBC later removed the graphic from the article, but they provided no editor’s note in the article and failed to announce the correction on Twitter.

The graphic, conducted by “BBC research,” claimed that a “modified semi-automatic assault rifle (AR-15)” could fire up to 1,200 rounds per minute. This ludicrous assertion was even more astonishing when they claimed that an M16 had a maximum fire rate of 950 rounds per minute, and that a semi-automatic AK-47 only fired a mere 120 rounds per minute.

 

 

A PolitiFact fact check debunked a similar claim in 2016 after the Orlando shooting when Democrat Alan Grayson said an AR-15 could fire 700 rounds per minute. PolitiFact found that “the 700-round-a-minute figure is only a theoretical benchmark, not something achievable in reality.” This is because the cyclic fire rate of these guns is around 700.

Essentially, they found that, in a perfect world with infinite capacity magazines and without the gun overheating, that a 700-900 rounds a minute fire rate would be possible. This isn’t reality, and the BBC is trying to push that figure into the stratosphere.

The BBC researchers may have missed the mark by a monumental amount on the AR-15, but they gave a much more realistic, but still implausible, figure for a semi-automatic AK-47 with 120 rounds a minute. So, why lie about the AR-15? Who fact checked this research and who were the researchers they even employed in the first place? This is at best lazy and incompetent journalism, and at worst a malicious attempt to misinform the populace about the capability of firearms.

The article has a number of further oddities in it, citing odd figures for the prices of firearms, as well as claiming that the NRA is one of “the most powerful special interest lobby groups in the US” despite their lobbying efforts being dwarfed by organizations like Planned Parenthood.

The article may have been rife with falsehoods, obfuscation, a lack of transparency, and head-scratching statistics, but the BBC’s readers need to worry. They were sure to add a handy link to the end of the article on “why you can trust BBC News.”

How Democrats used NGOs to end-run voters: A ‘parallel government.’

I’m often darkly amused by common examples of inherently false nomenclature: “Jumbo shrimp.” “Government ethics.” “Unbiased news media.”

And one of our society’s biggest falsehoods-in-a-name: “Non-governmental organizations.”

Until recently these groups have been widely seen as international, idealized versions of domestic non-profits.

We thought of them as do-good organizations set up by people who really care — about the environment, or poor people, or children, or freedom.

We imagined they raise money, help the downtrodden, send out press releases and engage in other private activities to promote the causes they favor.

Trump is deworming Washington — now to keep the parasites out for good
They’re not government entities, we thought — the very name says that — but a species of private charity whose good intentions deserve the benefit of any doubt.

Perhaps some NGOs do operate in that way.

But as we’ve learned recently, partly as the result of Department of Government Efficiency digging, many “non-governmental” entities are really just fronts for government activities that Americans would never stand for if Washington attempted them directly.

For example, America’s border crisis was funded in large part by Joe Biden’s government, which sent large sums of money in the form of grants to various NGOs that helped train migrants on how to get to the United States — and how to claim asylum when they arrived.

NGOs helped the illegal immigrants with expenses on their way, and then provided legal resources and more than $22 billion worth of assistance for them — including cash for cars, home loans and business start-ups — once they got in.

This was US taxpayer money, laundered through “independent” organizations that served to promote goals contrary to US law, but consistent with the policy preferences of the Biden administration.

Under President Donald Trump, this funding halted — and, unsurprisingly, the flow of illegal immigrants did, too.

Likewise, the weird wave of sudden global enthusiasm for “trans rights” and novel ideas about gender turns out to have been largely funded by the US government through USAID grants.

Federally funded NGOs spent millions on everything from a transgender opera in Colombia, to a campaign promoting “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean,” to an LGBTQ community center in Bratislava, Slovakia.

As data expert Jennica Pounds (“DataRepublican” on X) put it, “Over the last few months, we’ve come to a realization that should have landed much harder: NGOs weren’t just adjacent to government.”

They were tools of government, “the parallel government,” Pounds wrote, specifically doing things that Washington bureaucrats knew full well they couldn’t easily do themselves.

The big surprise is that we’re so surprised this has been going on.

The lack of accountability also made NGOs a perfect conduit for funneling money to Washington insiders.

It’s been a profitable cycle: Politicians fund agencies; agencies make grants to NGOs; NGOs hire politicians’ wives and offspring — and sometimes the politicians themselves, once they’ve left office.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), for example, voted to award $14.2 million to Ocean Conservancy since 2008, Fox News reported — and the NGO, in turn, paid his wife Sandra Whitehouse and her firm $2.7 million for consulting work.

No wonder the Washington establishment went crazy when Trump and DOGE started cutting off such funds.

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ATF facial recognition: Chairman Andy Biggs seeks records as gun owners sound alarm

Gun owners across America have every reason to be outraged. According to a March 27, 2025, letter from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been secretly using facial recognition technology to track and identify gun owners—all without sufficient oversight, transparency, or even basic training for agents.

Biggs, who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, is now demanding that Acting ATF Director Kash Patel hand over all documents relating to the agency’s use of facial recognition software. The call for answers follows multiple bombshell Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports and revelations that the ATF conducted at least 549 facial recognition searches between 2019 and 2022, often on law-abiding Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights.

“The Subcommittee has concerns about ATF’s use of facial recognition and AI programs and the effects that its use has upon American citizens’ Second Amendment rights and rights to privacy,” Biggs wrote.

A Pattern of Overreach

This latest scandal adds to a growing list of examples proving that the federal government simply cannot be trusted with gun owner data. As AmmoLand News previously reported, the ATF has flirted with or outright pursued unconstitutional surveillance for years—compiling digitized firearm transaction records and maintaining nearly 1 billion records at its National Tracing Center.

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Senate Bill 3: Gun licensing scheme much broader than claimed

The Colorado legislature is close to final passage of Senate Bill 25-003, to impose one of the most restrictive licensing systems in the nation on many, but not all firearms. Legislators and the public should understand that the bill would apply to all semiautomatic centerfire handguns. The kinds of handguns that Coloradans typically choose—from companies such as Glock, Ruger, or Smith & Wesson—would become much more onerous to purchase.

Senate Bill 3 seems cunningly written. It purports to apply only to the “gas-operated semiautomatic handgun.” (p. 4). The bill then provides five types of gas operation. Cumulatively, the definitions cover almost every centerfire semiautomatic handgun.

The bill does not apply to semiautomatics that fire the puny .22 rimfire cartridge.

There is only one centerfire semiautomatic handgun model that does not fall within the bill’s definitions. That unique item is the Benelli B-80, a collector’s item last manufactured in 1990. The identical gun was produced in six different calibers, model numbers 76 through 82.

As for every other model of semiautomatic pistol, Coloradans will be forced to navigate their way through one of the most onerous systems in the nation, far exceeding even California’s.

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Well, I did too, so…….

The Left Knew They Were Lying to Us All Along

Victor Davis Hanson

For years, the left has advanced utter untruths for cheap partisan purposes that it knew at the time were all false. And now when caught, they just shrug and say they were lying all along.

They damned as incompetent, racist, and conspiratorial any who dared follow logic and evidence to point out that the Chinese government and its military were both culpable for the virus and lying.

A million Americans died of COVID. Millions more suffered long-term injuries. Still, the left-wing media and Biden administration demonized any who dared speak about a lab origin of the deadly virus.

The lies were designed to protect the guilty who had helped fund the virus’s origins, such as Doctors Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.

The Biden government also tried to use the lab theory to ridicule a supposedly pro-Trump “conspiracy.”

Western corporate interests deeply invested in China did not want their partner held responsible for veritably killing and maiming hundreds of millions worldwide.

Almost as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, the left knew that he was physically and mentally unable to serve as president.

Indeed, that was the point.

Biden’s role was designed as a waxen figurine for hard-left agendas that, without the “old Joe Biden from Scranton” pseudo-moderate veneer, could never have been advanced.

His handlers operated a nightmare administration: the destruction of deterrence abroad, two theater wars, 12 million illegal aliens, a weaponized justice system, hyperinflation, and $7 trillion more in debt.

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Cynical Publius

It used to amaze me at how effective Democrats were at flooding the zone with huge numbers of zealous demonstrators for whatever the party’s cause de jure was at the time.

I was always jealous of the ideological commitment that it took to get so many individuals to turn out for those sorts of events, and wished we conservatives could similarly harness such passion.

But I was really wrong.

It turns out that Democrats do nothing for free, and instead our tax dollars–funneled through America-hating NGOs–were in many cases paid to hired “demonstrators” to create that aura of political passion.

We’re already starting to see the effects of cutting off that firehose of dollars, as the anti-Trump demonstrations thus far tend to consist of a gaggle of patchouli-smelling ex-hippies in their late 70s singing Woody Guthrie songs, accompanied by a handful of obese, nose-ringed transgender college students with blue hair LARPing at Marxism.