Category: Scratch a Lib-Find a Tyrant

USA Today Op-ed doesn’t think your rights matter

I’ve long argued that the Second Amendment is the insurance policy the Founding Fathers took out to protect the rest of the Bill of Rights. You can’t take away someone’s right to free speech, to freely assemble, and your freedom of religion without first taking away their ability to resist. Otherwise, someone’s going to fight you.

But in the wake of a mass shooting, we start to get a glimpse of who some people are.

As Ben Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

For one USA Today writer, he’s clearly and firmly in that camp.

Three children and three adults are dead, gunned down in a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tenn., by a human being who had no business possessing an AR-style rifle, an AR-style pistol and another handgun.

“But, but, but … the Second Amendment,” some will scream, like a myopic, zombified Greek chorus.

Hang your Second Amendment. It’s Monday in America, there has been yet another school shooting. Children are dead. The students who weren’t shot are forever changed by the trauma, and plenty more people across the country will be killed by gunfire in the days to come because, as I wrote a few words earlier, it’s Monday in America, and we have a whole damn week to go.

And at this point, it really doesn’t matter what else the writer has to say. He’s already made it clear that your Second Amendment rights are completely and totally irrelevant to him.

He’s also made it clear he’s not open for discussion about literally anything else that could potentially reduce mass shootings. Why? Because your rights don’t matter.

This is troubling in the Land of the Free.

See, one of the hallmarks of the United States is that we are a free land, that we value freedom. That freedom is protected in part by the fact that we have an armed populace that can react to any and all acts of tyranny.

We haven’t exactly used it, but mostly because the vast majority of us figure we can fight back without needed to expend ammunition.

Thankfully.

But we can’t “hang” our Second Amendment rights just because something bad happens. If we do that, we can then start hanging the rest of our rights when someone decides they need to go away.

Frankly, when you’re starting position is that my rights are completely and totally irrelevant, there is no discourse. There’s absolutely no reason to engage with you because there’s absolutely no chance of you being the least bit rational.

Do you want my rights? It’s not surprising. We’ve long known that gun control advocates ultimately want to gut the Second Amendment to the point that it’s little more than a trophy hanging on the wall.

The problem, however, is that it’s easy to say “hang your Second Amendment.” It’s a lot harder to do anything about it. Why? Because there’s an insurance policy in the Bill of Rights, and there are millions of Americans ready to act because of it.

Stop Lying: Watch How the Nashville School Killer Case Destroys Left’s Myth About Guns

No sooner had word emerged that a Nashville Christian school had been attacked by a mass shooter on Monday than the Left began dissembling about guns again. The shift from “thoughts and prayers” to “grab the guns from law-abiding gun owners!” occurred at hypersonic speed. And it was all wrong.

To save time, here’s a simple request by people who believe in the right to bear arms, which is explicitly guaranteed in the United States Constitution and is a God-given right. Stop lying. Try. It’s not that hard, and someone’s life depends on it.

First, let’s acknowledge that gender dysphoria is a real and treatable mental issue and obviously experienced by this 28-year-old biological female, who lived with her parents, and who police called a “she” even though the media insist we call her a “male.” She’s dead now, and her feelings won’t be hurt anymore by someone telling the truth about her. She can’t be defamed. And, obviously, “dead-naming” her is no longer an issue.

Think about this and many other after-effects of these lies. Imagine how this kind of “misgendering” will show up in crime stats. Males do the overwhelming number of mass shootings. It’s a fact. Will this wanna-be man show up in the crime stats as a male or female now? How does that help society understand the mentality of mass shooters? We need to stop lying about that too.

But here’s today’s lesson for the Left. You’ll want to commit this to memory, so pay attention as I explain this in words of one syllable.

Repeat after me: good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns.

And I can prove it.

First, who was called when the shooting broke out? That’s right, cops. Cops are called because they have guns. And let’s say something about these police officers who selflessly and bravely ran up the stairs to the sound of gunfire. They passed at least one body of a child without flinching and continued running to stop the monster. And they quickly dispatched this killer — unlike the cops in Uvalde, Texas. Watch the bodycam footage

You know the sad cliché: when seconds matter, cops are only minutes away.

And the killer knew it too. I repeat: the killer knew it too. This murderer knew this peaceful Christian school she’d attended as a girl years before was a gun-free zone, as are most schools in Tennessee.

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The nomenklatura is real. It sprang to life with the first law Congress passed that restricted the people and exempted goobermint.

American Nomenklatura.

A few weeks after Elon Musk formally acquired Twitter in October 2022, a senior official at the company who quit in the wake of Musk’s arrival took to the New York Times to pour cold water on Musk’s vision for the social-media platform. Yoel Roth, whose title had been Head of Trust and Safety, sought to assure his fellow progressives. Roth wrote that even if Musk wanted to remove the web of content-moderation rules and procedures Roth had helped create and enforce, the tech billionaire would be unable to achieve his aim. “The moderating influences of advertisers, regulators and, most critically of all, app stores may be welcome for those of us hoping to avoid an escalation in the volume of dangerous speech online,” he wrote.

What Roth meant was this: No Internet platform is an island, and Musk simply didn’t have the power to do what he wanted despite his 100 percent ownership of the social-media platform. It wasn’t merely that Musk would have to contend with Twitter’s progressive workforce, which believes that some political speech is so awful that it should be throttled or banned. He would also come into conflict with European regulators, the Federal Trade Commission, and Congress, all of whom also seek to limit what can be said online. And what about the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a trade organization of some of the world’s biggest consumer brands that advocates for “online safety”—a euphemism for protecting social-media users from accounts that may offend, harass, or trigger them?

He would also be dogged by advocacy groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, which have found a new and lucrative mission monitoring social-media platforms for hate speech. They work hand in hand with elite journalists and think tankers, who have taken to tracking the spread of misinformation and disinformation online. In Washington, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have personnel whose job it is to alert social-media companies to foreign propaganda and terrorism. In Atlanta, the Centers for Disease Control seeks to quarantine dangerous information that might lead Americans to forgo masks or vaccine boosters. And perhaps most important, there are other Silicon Valley giants—Apple and Google—that provide the digital storefronts or app stores that Twitter needs to update their software and continue to run its service.

Call it the “content-moderation industrial complex.” In just a few short years, this nomenklatura has come to constitute an implicit ruling class on the Internet, one that collectively determines what information and news sources the rest of us should see on major platforms. Talk about “free speech” and “the First Amendment” may actually be beside the point here. The Twitter that Musk bought was part of a larger machine—one that attempts to shape conversations online by amplifying, muzzling, and occasionally banning participants who run afoul of its dogma.

The existence of this nomenklatura has been known for a few years. But thanks to Musk and his decision to make Twitter’s internal communications and policies available to journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and others, more detail is now known on why and how this elite endeavors to protect us from all manner of wrongthink.

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Der apfel fält nicht weit vom baum (The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree)

Klaus Schwab’s Father Ran ‘National Socialist Model Company,’ Exploited Nazi Slave Labor.

Davos frontman Klaus Schwab’s daddy, Eugen Schwab, while the Third Reich was ravaging Europe in the 1930s and 40s, served as managing director of Escher Wyss Ravensburg, an engineering firm that constructed turbines and fighter plane parts for the regime.

While the elder Schwab worked in this capacity, the Nazis awarded Escher Wyss Ravensburg the prestigious title of “National Socialist Model Company” for all of its hard work in the service of the Führer.

To achieve this recognition, Escher-Wyss Ravensburg, under Eugen Schwab’s leadership, utilized Nazi slave labor and prisoners of war in its facilities.

Ravensburg itself, aside from the slave factory, was the site of numerous Nazi crimes against humanity, such as forced sterilization for the purpose of “racial improvement.” But to Eugen Schwab, that was just the cost of doing business with the Third Reich.

You want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs, right?

Klaus Schwab’s sanitized Wikipedia page contains none of the gruesome details of his daddy’s wartime activities, other than to say “his parents had moved from Switzerland to Germany during the Third Reich in order for his father to assume the role of director at Escher Wyss.”

Newsweek ran a corporate “fact check” in which they cherry-picked a falsely attributed image of Eugen in a Nazi uniform as a way to seem to disprove his connection to the Third Reich entirely. But deep into the article, Newsweek subtly admits that it’s all true — which almost no one will get to, thanks to short attention spans:

The posts shared online in May, 2022, claim Klaus Schwab’s father, Eugen Schwab, was a close ally of Hitler, and include a photo of the World Economic Forum leader alongside a man in Nazi uniform… the photo shared online is not of Eugen Schwab, but of Nazi general Walter Dybilasz… Klaus Schwab’s father, on the other hand, was the managing director of a subsidiary of Zurich-based engineering firm Escher Wyss. 

The history of Eugen’s relationship with Nazism in general is complex… Eugen Schwab was a member of some National Socialist organizations, but that alone does not prove any relationship to German high command or a belief in Nazi ideology. While the Escher Wyss branch in Ravensburg, Germany, (which Eugen managed) used prisoners of war and forced laborers, it is not clear whether the company was forced to do so by the Nazis or because of a lack of workers.

So, Eugen Schwab was an avowed National Socialist, and yes, okay, his firm did use Nazi slave labor. But, you see, that doesn’t mean he was a Nazi. And maybe Escher Wyss had to use slave labor to make their products for the Nazis because of a worker shortage.

This is a common tactic in corporate media: Take a false claim that circulates on the web (in this case, an image incorrectly identified as Eugen Schwab) and use that single post to discredit the entire factual connection between Schwab and the Nazis.

Biden Administration, State Governments Carried Out Elaborate Hoax On Gun Owners

New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- The “why” of the attack on the armed citizenry is as pressing as the “how”—the strategies employed. It all goes back to Government’s lust for “power” and “control” over the common people. The Globalists and their puppets in Government treat people like random bits of energy that require a firm hand lest common people get “out of hand.” The fear of the Tyrant is always that the common people will revolt against his Tyranny.

The “sticky wicket” for the Globalists is the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

It serves, one, as evidence of the sovereignty of the American people over their Government, Federal, State, or local, and serves, two, as a mechanism to thwart the rise of tyranny. The Second Amendment, unlike the First or any other Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Has a tenacity that, when unleashed, a ferocity that scares the dickens of the proponents of a world empire and world domination, as well it should.

In this second half of the Biden Administration regime, we are seeing more and more emphasis placed on reining in the armed citizenry. And State Governments under Democrat Party leadership, like that of New York, are fully on board with this. Expect to see more of this, much more, in the weeks and months ahead.

The argument NY Governor Kathy Hochul makes in support of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) boils down to these two propositions:

  • People are afraid of guns and of average law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owners who keep and bear them.
  • Average law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owners pose an imminent threat to public safety and order.

Concerning the first, if some Americans happen to fear guns and those who exercise their fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense—indeed, if any American should happen to register such fears—those fears aren’t the product of something innate in a person, but, rather, are the product of an elaborate, concerted well-coordinated, and executed plan.

The question of why such psychologically damaging programs would be initiated by and ceaselessly and vigorously propagated by the Federal Government and many State Governments against the civilian population has nothing to do with a desire on the part of the Government to secure the life, health, safety, and well-being of Americans.

Rather, it has everything to do with carrying out a plot focused on the demise of a free Constitutional Republic, the only one like it in existence, the dissolution of our Constitution, and the subjugation of our people to the dictates of a new order of reality: the rise of a neo-feudalistic global empire.

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SloJoe, his handlers and the rest of the demoncraps were never interested in stopping crime.

DEMOCRATS’ GUN CONTROL DUPLICITY LAID BARE

It is time for President Joe Biden to drop the gun control charade. He – and his Capitol Hill gun control supporters – were never interested in curbing criminal misuse of guns. They are only interested in controlling you.

President Biden’s prisoner swap with Russia of a convicted international arms trafficker for a WNBA star proved that his administration doesn’t care about keeping guns out of the hands of those who should never have them. His only interest when it comes to guns is keeping them out of the hands of those who obey the law. His podium admonitions are betrayed by his actions.

‘Merchant of Death’

President Biden announced last week the trade with Russia of Viktor Bout for Brittney Griner. Bout is a notorious international arms smuggler who earned the moniker “Merchant of Death.” He is a former Soviet-era military officer who was arrested in 2008 in Thailand by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in a sting for proposing a sale of tens of millions of dollars to the Colombian narco-terrorist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The illicit sale was for $20 million worth of “a breathtaking arsenal of weapons — including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, machine guns and sniper rifles — 10 million rounds of ammunition and five tons of plastic explosives.”

Bout’s history runs much deeper. He was identified as an illicit arms dealer by the United Nations in 2000. He was moving arms to African warlords, Middle East dictators and Central American narco-terrorist groups. His attempt to arm the FARC was what ultimately put him in prison for charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, U.S. officers and employees, conspiracy to acquire missiles to destroy aircraft and conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Bout was traded for Griner, a basketball player arrested by Russia in February on drug possession charges.

Security Threat

The swap has been lampooned by critics for how lopsided it is. Russia continues to hold former Marine Paul Whelan, arrested on dubious espionage charges. Former National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton told CBS News, “This is not a deal. This is not a swap. This is a surrender.”

Fox News reported that former DEA Special Operation Director Derek Maltz, who was involved in Bout’s capture, slammed the White House for their “ironic” prisoner swap, arguing that it’s “disgusting” for the Biden administration to sell gun control while celebrating the release of an international arms trafficker.

Even the Pentagon is wary. “I think there is a concern that he would return to doing the same kind of work that he’s done in the past,” a senior defense official told reporters.

The exchange exposed how unserious this administration truly is when it comes to ending the criminal misuse of firearms. Less than one day before the swap was announced, President Biden renewed his pledge to ban Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) in America. That pronouncement came just days after he told media, “The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick. It has no socially redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

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Why the Left Must Destroy Free Speech – or Be Destroyed

In Hayek’s famous 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, he warned that the intellectual and political classes of the democracies of that time were embracing some of the same ideas that inspired Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Stalin’s Russia:  comprehensive government planning, hyper regulation of industry,  nationalization, welfare statism, and collectivism in general.  He did not predict that these societies would end up “in serfdom,” however, as some have mistakenly claimed.  Quite the contrary.  In his first chapter he clearly stated that he hoped the ideas in the book would help these countries to avoid that disastrous fate.  He hoped the ideas of the book would be a roadblock on the road to serfdom.

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Who In the US Is Objectively Racist? The Left. As the Data Show Definitively.

Joe Biden and the Democrats keep gunning for your guns. Research like this is a major part of their argument. What it shows–definitively–is that it isn’t guns. It’s a particular social pathology enabled by a social psychosis that reached epidemic proportions in 2020. The data are irrefutable.

One graphic tells the tale:

The increase in gun homicides documented in the Emory University study is attributable almost exclusively to one factor: a nearly 60 percent increase in homicide fatalities among black men. Not over a period of many years–but in a little over one year.

And what year was that? 2020. And what happened in 2020? The death of George Floyd, and the subsequent revelation that black lives especially matter.

Yes, but not in the way intended. Not by a long shot. That death and revelation brought in its train myriad consequences. Defund the police. The war on cash bail and the release of numerous criminals. The demoralization of police, who were instructed explicitly and implicitly that arresting black male offenders was a career risk, and the subsequent surrender of the streets to the thugs. And on and on. (The release of many from jail because of COVID didn’t help either.)

This is as close to a natural experiment as can exist in social science. An exogenous shock–the death of one man–leads to a tectonic shift in law enforcement, especially with regards to a particular demographic. The result?: a hyperbolic increase in homicide rates in that demographic. (I note that the previous uptick observable in the chart in 2014 corresponds to the proto-Floyd event, the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, which was the catalyst for Black Lives Matter.)

This is as close to a definitive proof of causation as is possible in observational social science.

This is not complicated. We sowed. We reaped. There is no other plausible explanation for the data.

It is sickly ironic–and mainly sick–that so many black lives have been sacrificed on the altar of Black Lives Matter.

But it gave an opportunity for Nancy Pelosi and the like to demonstrate their superiority over us plebs by taking a knee wearing kente cloth, so it was all for the best, right?

The whole ugly spectacle makes me literally nauseous. (And yes, I literally know what it means to say “literally.”) Hell is not hot enough to torture properly all those preening better-thans who have cost more black lives in a couple of years than the KKK did in its entire, horrid, sordid history (which dates to 1866).

But you are the problem you see. You and your icky guns.

No, the real problem is the social psychosis that is modern American leftism, which obsesses over race, and in the name of helping one race is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of that race.

So tell me: who are objectively the racists here? (See Orwell on “objectively pro-Fascist” if you don’t catch my point.)

If this does not make you incandescent with anger, some serious self-reflection is definitely in order. Unless you are a leftist, in which case that is something of which you are constitutionally incapable.

Cue the shocked meme…..

BREAKING: New Twitter Files Dump Exposes Blacklists, Secret Cabal Censoring High-Profile Conservatives.

Independent journalist Bari Weiss took to Twitter on Thursday night to unload a second trove of internal memos and documents exposing how Twitter officials silenced the voices of prominent conservatives on the platform. Radio host Dan Bongino, Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya, and activist Charlie Kirk were among those Twitter censored or blacklisted, along with the popular “Libs of TikTok” account.

“A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss, a former New York Times reporter, wrote. “The authors [of the Twitter Files] have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.”

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Are we slouching toward fascism? 
Andrew P. Napolitano

Fascism is a governmental system in which the means of economic production and delivery of services are privately owned but government-controlled. Throughout history — before even getting to its racism and wars — fascism has led to the glorification of the state and the destruction of personal liberty. It is happening here.

During the past few months, we have learned that the major credit card companies have begun to record transactions at gun shops so as to enable the feds to learn the identity of patrons. These are lawful gun shops selling lawful products to lawful purchasers. The credit card records do not reflect precisely what was purchased — it might have been $2,000 for a gun safe or for gun safety lessons — but they do record the purchase amount and the contact information of the purchaser.

The problem here comes about when the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives come calling with their so-called National Security Letters in order to find out who is purchasing what. The George W. Bush-championed Patriot Act of 2001 — the most horrific congressional assault on personal liberty since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 criminalized dissent — permits federal agents to bypass the search warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment when they want private records that are in the hands of a custodian.

These NSLs are really nonjudicial search warrants in which one federal agent has authorized another to seek your records. Since the gun shop purchase consists of the exercise of the natural right to exchange value for a lawful product and since the product purchased is an extension of the natural right to self-defense, the former protected by the Fifth Amendment and the latter by the Second Amendment, there is no lawful reason for the feds to know who has made these purchases.

Prior to the Patriot Act, if the feds came calling upon the custodian of your records, the custodian informed you of the government’s interest in your records, and you had a reasonable time period to challenge the feds in court. Today — notwithstanding the free speech protections in the First Amendment — it is unlawful for a custodian to inform you that the feds have come calling.

Thus, the records held by your computer, telecom, financial, health care, utilities and credit card service providers, your physicians and lawyers, may all be accessed without search warrants and without notice to you.

Under the Constitution, where federal gun registries are not permitted, it is none of the federal government’s business who has purchased what from a gun shop.

Moreover, since the Supreme Court has characterized the right to self-defense as fundamental, akin to the freedom of speech, there is no more authority under the Constitution for the feds to learn the identity of gun shop patrons than there is for them to learn the identity of bookstore patrons.

The additional danger here is to the democratic process. These decisions to keep records of sales and make them available to federal agents were made by government bureaucrats and corporate bosses, not by Congress. This is a creeping deterioration of the right to keep and bear arms because the feds are notoriously anti-gun, no matter who is president and no matter what the Supreme Court rules the Second Amendment protects.

Add to this the new program concocted by Visa whereby it will keep records of credit card purchases in which it will rank the purchased products’ conformity with the green climate change agenda view of carbon emissions, and make those records available to the Treasury Department, and you see a further whittling away of personal privacy.

It gets worse.

Last week, Amazon announced a bizarre new partnership with the New York City Police Department whereby if you live in New York City and install Amazon’s Ring service at the front entrance to your apartment — and thus permit Amazon to record the audio and video of all who come and go at your entrance — the NYPD will have real-time access to the same audio and video.

This is yet another example of law enforcement intruding into private property — the home — without a search warrant, without probable cause of crime and without articulable suspicion.

The Amazon/NYPD partnership — just like the credit card/BATF partnership and the Visa/Treasury partnership — was never authorized by legislation. All these symbiotic relationships, just like the now well-known Big Tech/Department of Homeland Security partnership producing censorship of speech the government hates and fears, were born by bureaucrats using government carrots and sticks and the acquiescence of gutless corporate chieftains willing to please their government masters.

The government’s appetite for surveillance is insatiable. Yet, the dual purposes of the Fourth Amendment — by requiring judicial search warrants based on probable cause of crime and specifically describing the place to be searched and person or thing to be seized — are to keep the government off the peoples’ backs and to compel law enforcement to focus on crimes that have already been committed.

May the government lawfully engage in fishing expeditions? In a word: NO.

The secondary purposes of the Fourth Amendment are to prohibit general warrants — not based on probable cause of crime and not specifying the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized — and to require that before the government begins to gather any evidence of crime, it has articulable suspicion about the crime that has been committed and the person or place to be investigated.

Moreover, articulable suspicion alone — the threshold for commencing all criminal investigations — does not justify any search, seizure or non-public surveillance.

What we have here is the stealth use by government of private enterprise to do its unconstitutional dirty work, thus far untested in the courts but unconstitutional on its face. What secret favors is the government giving in return?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court Judge, has published nine books on the U.S. Constitution.

“You Won’t Answer the Question” — Senator Rand Paul Confronts FBI on Scooping Up Online User Data

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) confronted FBI Director Christopher Wray about the collusion with social media companies and whether the FBI scoops up private information to identify users.


“Is  or any other social media company supplying private messages or data on American users that is not compelled by the government or the FBI?” Paul asked Wray. “No warrant, no subpoena, they’re just supplying you information on their users?”

“I don’t believe so, but I can’t sit here and be sure of that as I sit here,” Wray replied.

“Can you give us a yes or no by going back to your team and asking? Because it’s a very specific question. Because if they are, it’s against the law,” Paul said, invoking the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. “This was done to protect the privacy of people so we could feel like we can send an email or direct message to people without having that information given over. It’s a very specific question: Will you get with your team of lawyers and give us a specific answer? Because this is the law. If you’re doing it, then we need to go to court to prevent you from receiving this information.”

“Well, I can tell you that I’m quite confident that we’re following the law —, ” Wray started.

“Well, that’s not the answer, ” Paul responded.

“ — but what I will also follow up with you to make sure we get you more information; more detailed information,” Wray added.

“Is the FBI obtaining anonymous social media data and then using technical methods to pierce the anonymous nature of the data?” Paul questioned.

Wray paused before asking, “Anonymous social media data?”

“So you purchase data,” Paul said. “People purchase data all the time and we sort of tolerate it for advertising and things because it’s anonymous data. Are you purchasing what is said to be anonymous data through the marketplace and then piercing the anonymous nature to attach individual names to that data? Are you purchasing data and then piercing the anonymous nature of that data?”

“So the manner in which we use — we usually use the term commercial data — is probably longer than I can explain here. But again, let me —, ” Wray said appearing to dodge the question.

“So you will not answer the question of whether or not you’re attaching names to anonymous data,” Paul stated.

“I think it’s a more complicated answer than I can give here,” Wray responded.

“So, so far we’re 0 for 2 at getting you to answer this, but you’re pledging you will actually answer the question because you have to realize the frustration; we’ll write you a letter and your team of lawyers will write back with a 15-page letter that says nothing and you won’t answer the question. These are very specific. This is whether you’re obeying the law, whether we can have confidence. I want to have confidence,” Paul said.

“We are obeying the law,” Wray responded.

“Well, you’re saying that, but you won’t tell us the answer,” Paul stated. “You aren’t telling me the answer. And the answer is: Are you collecting data not compelled by a warrant? That would not be in compliance with the law. But you won’t answer that you’re not collecting that data.”

Eventually, Paul asked, “Are you getting tips and leads from social media companies?”

“We get tips and leads from companies, absolutely,” Wray acknowledged.

“You may think this is jolly well to get all this stuff without a warrant that people volunteer to you, but many of us are alarmed that you’re getting this information that are private communications between people because it is against the law – it’s against the law for Facebook or social media companies to give it to you, but it’s also against the law for you to receive it,” Paul ended.

The left’s newest stealth attack on free speech

America’s two most important rights are free speech and the right to bear arms. Without the first, no people are free; and without the second, there is no first. Totalitarians always go after both; that is, they silence and disarm them. For decades, the left has been open in its war on the Second Amendment. They’ve struggled more with the war on speech, but they may finally have come up with a new approach that will sneak around constitutional muster.

When it comes to speech that incites violence or is otherwise imminently threatening, the law has always been clear: The threat must be very explicit and imminent for the speech to lose its First Amendment protections. At the most simplistic level, saying, “I wish so-and-so were dead” is not an actionable opinion. However, saying, “I’m going to kill so-and-so this week” or “You all need to kill so-and-so; I’ve got a plan” is criminally actionable speech. (The standard is more sensitive when speech is directed at the president, of course.)

This constitutional limitation on making (conservatives’) political speech criminally actionable has long vexed the left. They’ve trained their young acolytes that speech is violence (so much so that almost half of college students say “hate speech” should get the death penalty) but, so far, courts haven’t fallen for that gambit. Unless speech creates an imminent threat, it gets a pass.

Lately, though, the left has come up with a new concept that seeks to say that any speech that opposes leftist policies is actual and imminent “terrorism.” Or as leftist academia calls it, “stochastic terrorism.”

Christopher Rufo discusses the concept in an important City Journal essay. He begins by revealing that he is being identified as someone who is directly responsible for the attack on Paul Pelosi:

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Scratch a liberal, find a racist tyrant underneath

 

 

 

 

 

BLUF
COVID has been the tool that the Elites™ have used to bully Americans into complying with the most absurd rules, beating us into submission. It would be ironic indeed if we could turn the tables and use the likelihood that the United States helped fund the development of the virus that has literally plagued us as a tool to dismantle the bipartisan transnational clique who have been driving the West into the ground.

The COVID coverup begins to unravel.

UPDATE: Vanity Fair has a detailed story on the investigation into the COVID virus’ origin:

COVID likely started circulating in China is late 2019–now 3 years ago–and its effects have dominated our lives for 2 1/2 years.

Yet for much of that time the Establishment™ has been gaslighting us about its likely origins. You know that. The Establishment™ knows that you know. And now the Senate Republicans on the health committee are laying the facts out on the table. COVID almost certainly was released accidentally from a Chinese research lab.

It was remarkable how quickly the Narrative™ settled on the zoonotic origin of the virus, since warning signs that the virus didn’t originate naturally were everywhere. Even scientists who confidently declared in private their belief that the virus was engineered publicly stated the opposite–after having been directed to by Anthony Fauci, the keeper of the keys to the kingdom’s treasury when it comes to research dollars. Fauci in recent months has been backtracking on whether or not the virus could have been engineered, but he sure expended enormous effort maintaining the fiction that an animal origin was certain.

There is a simple reason for Fauci’s reluctance to consider a lab leak hypothesis–if it came from the Wuhan Institute for Virology, the US government likely funded the research. Obviously nobody wants that on their record, and Fauci has quite the pension to protect, as well as an unearned reputation as The Science™.

From the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON—The Covid-19 pandemic that has killed millions worldwide “was most likely the result of a research-related incident” in China, and not natural transmission of a virus from animal to human, a new report by Republicans on the Senate health committee concludes.

The study cites details about the early spread of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes Covid; the fact that no animal host has been identified nearly three years into the pandemic; and troubled biosafety procedures at labs in the Chinese city of Wuhan to buttress its conclusion.

The 35-page report by Republican committee staff acknowledges that definitive conclusions about the pandemic’s origins are impossible without more evidence. But, it says: “The hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy.”

The report is largely based on information already publicly available but is likely to bolster calls in Washington for further investigations into the origins of the virus. Republicans have vowed to launch more aggressive Covid-19 probes if they regain control of one or both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections.

Previous zoonotic disease outbreaks—in which a pathogen jumps from animals to man—have occurred in multiple locations as a virus circulates in animal populations, while the Covid virus is known to have emerged only in Wuhan, home to laboratories conducting research on coronaviruses, the report notes. In addition, it says, no animal has been identified as infected with the virus before the December 2019 pandemic outbreak.

I have always suspected, based upon the balance of the evidence I have access to, that the virus was accidentally leaked from a lab. But I freely admit that biological research is not in my wheelhouse.

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Democrats,  Demoncraps, who have spent years delegitimizing the Supreme Court and rule of law, undermining legislative norms, cheering on unprecedented and blatant executive abuses, and using the DOJ to target their political enemies, among other “democracy”-destroying behaviors, do not occupy any high moral ground. And while “democracy” was once just a transparently silly euphemism for “stuff we want,” it has since evolved into a rhetorical device that denotes a decisively illiberal mindset.

DEMOCRATS Demoncraps: The Only Way To Save Democracy Is One-Party Rule.
‘Save Our Democracy’ is the new ‘Russia Collusion.’

At this point, it would save everyone time if Democrats could simply point to a policy agenda item that isn’t going to save democracy — if such a thing exists.

If Republicans vote, they are killing democracy. If they don’t vote, they are killing democracy. The only way to “save democracy,” writes The Washington Post’s Max Boot, is to empower one-party rule — a position that probably sounds counterintuitive to anyone with a middle-school education. “Now you need to vote to literally save democracy again,” contends President Joe Biden, or we will lose our “fundamental rights and freedoms like the right to choose, the right to privacy, the right to vote — our very democracy.”

Chilling stuff. But it doesn’t end there. You will remember that by failing to “reform” the filibuster, which would entail authorizing the thinnest of fleeting majorities to shove through massive generational “reforms” without any national consensus or debate, we are also killing democracy. This has been the position not only of left-wing pundits and the New York Times editorial board, but also senators tasked with defending their institution. I wonder if they will support this democracy-saving fix next session, as well?

Then again, if we don’t nationalize the economy to avert a climate crisis, we are also killing democracy. “We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species,” Jamie Raskin explains. And if we don’t empty the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to temporarily keep gas prices low to help Democrats win in 2022, we are killing democracy. “We find ourselves in a situation, where keeping gas prices low is key to preserving and strengthening the future of our democracy,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says.

We must allow the president to unilaterally create trillion-dollar spending bills and break existing private sector contracts by fiat. For democracy. We must pack the court to “save democracy.” We must create a Ministry of Truth to help with “strengthening democratic institutions.” We must vote for a Pennsylvania candidate who can’t cobble two consecutive coherent sentences together because the “fate of our democracy” is at stake, says our former president.

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That’s why I don’t really care what 97Percent wants or claims to be about. They’re no different than Giffords, Brady, Everytown, and every other group that wants to annihilate our Second Amendment rights.

Don’t get too excited about “common ground” survey results

For many, the goal is to find common ground on issues relating to guns and gun control. It’s their hope that if they can find enough points of agreement, gun control laws can be passed.

Even if I accepted this premise, though, I know what will happen. Those laws will be passed, only we see no results (at best) so now they want to find “common ground” on still more regulations. Little by little, we’ll see our rights whittled away.

Yet the question remains, does the common ground exist?

According to a recent report, it does.

The majority of gun owners are concerned about gun violence and support policies to reduce gun-related injuries and deaths, according to new research from Tufts University and gun safety organization 97Percent.

Three-fourths of gun owners surveyed said they are concerned about the frequency of school shootings, and 71 percent said the same of mass shootings, according to the research released on Monday. Seventy percent said they also want to help find a way reduce gun-related injuries and deaths.

Most gun owners, including Republican ones, said they support several proposed laws to prevent people with a high risk of violence from accessing guns.

Gun safety organization 97Percent, which touts itself as a bipartisan group of both gun owners and non-gun owners, noted in its report on the research that this defies the current perception that there is an “intractable divide” over gun control in the U.S.

And since 97Percent paid for this study, it’s not surprising that the result was exactly what 97Percent wanted.

It’s part of why all such “studies” need to be questioned vigorously.

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