Category: Bureaucraps

Military Documents About Gain of Function Contradict Fauci Testimony Under Oath

  • Military documents state that EcoHealth Alliance approached DARPA in March 2018 seeking funding to conduct gain of function research of bat borne coronaviruses. The proposal, named Project Defuse, was rejected by DARPA over safety concerns and the notion that it violates the gain of function research moratorium.
  • The main report regarding the EcoHealth Alliance proposal leaked on the internet a couple of months ago, it has remained unverified until now. Project Veritas has obtained a separate report to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, written by U.S. Marine Corp Major, Joseph Murphy, a former DARPA Fellow.
  • “The proposal does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research,” a direct quote from the DARPA rejection letter.
  • Project Veritas reached out to DARPA for comment regarding the hidden documents and spoke with the Chief of Communications, Jared Adams, who said, “It doesn’t sound normal to me,” when asked about the way the documents were buried.

Project Veritas has obtained startling never-before-seen documents regarding the origins of COVID-19, gain of function research, vaccines, potential treatments which have been suppressed, and the government’s effort to conceal all of this. Continue reading “”

The media suddenly notices the CDC is clueless
CNN has declared the agency ‘a punchline,’ but that has more to do with politics than health

For over a year, the national news media has held up the CDC and it’s director, Rochelle Walensky, as paragons of public health. It’s no coincidence they’ve now suddenly had a moment of clarity as it pertains to the CDC adjusting its pandemic protocols.

This epiphany is happening primarily at CNN, with ratio king Chris Cillizza coming around to reality on Twitter and declaring that blue staters, journalists, and Democratic politicians catching Covid isn’t a moral failing and shouldn’t be shamed (the Washington Post made a similar statement).

This past Sunday, CNN hall monitors Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy actually went after the CDC, saying it appears the agency has become “a punchline.” That segment also featured Dr. Lucy McBride, who warned that some medical professionals are fanning the flames of panic, with accompanying chyrons like “Is the media out of touch with the country about Covid?” and “Covid and the doomsday-doctor problem.”

No doubt it’s a good thing that CNN’s worst actors have suddenly come around to what CDC skeptics have been saying for over a year, and are facing consequences for waiting so long. The last guy to figure things out has finally figured the thing out.

Yet to save Stelter, Darcy and their network any more embarrassment, let me put it bluntly: the CDC lost the faith of the American people last year when business owners were forced to stay home and parents were forced to pull their kids out of school, yet social justice protesters and leftist activists were permitted to flood the streets in protest. You weren’t allowed to open your business, but they were allowed to burn it down.

Since then, amid this overnight changing of “the science” with little to explain it other than Joe Biden’s poll numbers, members of mainstream media have suddenly changed their tune on the never-ending pandemic measures. Simply put: the writing is on the wall for the upcoming midterm elections and they are making their adjustments accordingly at the behest of an administration flailing over its broken promise to “shut down the virus.”

The media’s sudden about-face is not because they now hastily agree with those on the opposite side of the political aisle. Stelter and others are simply trying to moderate their message now that “the good ones” are starting to catch Covid. This is about hierarchy. Journalists and Democrats are experiencing the same draconian-lite measures that the rest of the country has had to go through for the past year, and they are finding them very inconvenient, both to their own lives and to Joe Biden’s approval ratings.

This appears to be a warning shot across the bow to the CDC and Walenksy, who are primed to take the fall as the Biden administration dramatically shifts its messaging on Covid in the coming weeks. The problem for CNN and Brian Stelter is that this attempt looks politicized, forced, and completely cynical. Probably because it is.

In other words, SloJoe’s cabinet devised a fraudulent plan to invent an issue to give federal law enforcement a purported reason to come down on political enemies.
If that isn’t ‘Banana Republic’ style, IDK what is.

BLUF:
“Attorney General Merrick Garland unequivocally stated that he based his memo on the NSBA’s letter – which in turn, mobilized the FBI and US Attorneys,” Neily added. “If Secretary Cardona was truly involved in this ugly episode, it is a significant breach of public trust, and he should be held accountable.”

Education Secretary Cardona solicited NSBA letter comparing protesting parents to domestic terrorists: email

 Education Secretary Miguel Cardona solicited the much-criticized letter from the National School Boards Association that compared protesting parents to domestic terrorists, according to an email exchange reviewed by Fox News.

The email exchange indicates Cardona was more involved with the letter’s creation than previously known.

President Biden’s Department of Justice relied on the NSBA letter, which suggested using the Patriot Act against parents, in creating its own memo directing the FBI to mobilize in support of local education officials.

In the Oct. 5 email, NSBA Secretary-Treasurer Kristi Swett recounted that NSBA interim CEO Chip Slaven “told the officers he was writing a letter to provide information to the White House, from a request by Secretary Cardona.”

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Fauci’s NIH Division Paid $205K for Researchers To Study Transgender Monkeys

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division of the National Institutes of Health paid over $200,000 during the coronavirus pandemic for researchers to study why transgender women have high rates of HIV by injecting male monkeys with female hormones.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in December 2021 gave Scripps Research $205,562 for the study, which aims to determine why transgender women have high rates of HIV. As part of the study, researchers subject male monkeys to feminizing hormone therapy to study how it impacts the monkeys’ immune systems, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Fauci has overseen rampant animal testing since he took over the NIAID in 1984. It was revealed in November that the NIAID funded a study that infected beagles with heart-worm larvae and euthanized them after experimentations. As part of another study, researchers infected beagles with mutated bacteria from ticks.

The NIAID began running HIV vaccine tests on monkeys a year after Fauci took charge. Each year, the department acquires 400 to 600 rhesus monkeys from a South Carolina island leased by Charles River Laboratories, which has a $27.5 million contract with the NIAID.

Dr. Katherine Roe, a neuroscientist with PETA, says the study is “yet another pointless, wasteful monkey torture experiment.”

“It’s just bad science to suggest that dosing monkeys with feminizing medication makes them good stand-ins for humans,” Roe told the Washington Free Beacon. “This study will not help to prevent or treat HIV and will not help transgender women.”

Roe says the study is ineffective because monkeys cannot contract HIV. They contract Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, a milder form of the disease. She faults the National Institutes of Health for spending billions of dollars on using monkeys in HIV research, since the primates cannot contract AIDS.

Scripps Florida told the Free Beacon that testing “sub-populations” is the key to discovering effective treatments for fatal diseases.

“The research you reference concerns a sub-population of people at greater risk of HIV infection, and factors that may or may not affect their response to a treatment/preventative approach in development,” a spokeswoman said. “It is through these types of targeted research studies that substantive progress against HIV, cancer, ALS, dementia—indeed most diseases and conditions—will be made.”

The NIAID did not respond to requests for comment.

The NIAID has granted millions of dollars to researchers who study HIV transmission in transgender individuals, who are 49 times more likely to get HIV than non-transgender individuals. The agency gave over $155,000 to a University of Alabama researcher to study how testosterone treatment for women potentially weakens disease-fighting microorganisms in the vagina. Researchers at Emory University received over $230,000 to study how the rectum immune cells of transgender people affect HIV risk.

BLUF:
In the end, this is just more evidence of how political the entire pandemic has been. Everything’s a conspiracy theory until it’s no longer useful to the Democrat narrative. Then, and only then, can changes be made to present the public with more accurate information.

The CDC Just Confirmed Something That’s Been Called a Conspiracy Theory for Nearly Two Years

Since the beginning of the pandemic, a debate over the accuracy of the COVID-19 death totals has existed, with the attempt being to delineate who died directly from the virus vs. who died while having an incidental infection.

That debate emerged because there have been numerous examples of people wrongly labeled as dying of the coronavirus when they clearly died by other means and would have done so regardless of infection. Typically, when a limited dive into the data produces such results (such as just looking at Palm Beach County), you can bet there are a lot more examples out there that just haven’t been discovered.

Yet, for the better part of two years, any discussion of such miscategorizations resulted in a litany of derogatory responses. Either you were a conspiracy theorist, weren’t taking the pandemic seriously, or both. The press wrote countless articles insisting that the totals were completely accurate, especially during the Trump administration. The Washington Post even managed to call Sen. Joni Ernst, who is about as milquetoast of a Republican as you can get, a conspiracy theorist for asking questions. Meanwhile, social media companies would ban people for suggesting the totals were inaccurate.

But as has been the pattern the last few months, from the admission that the lab leak theory is probable to revisions about the vaccines not stopping the spread of COVID-19, another major shift is taking place. Per CDC Dir. Rochelle Walensky, the government is preparing to release revised COVID death figures that will show those who died from the virus instead of the broader total of those who died with it.

When taken in a vacuum, this announcement is a very good thing. Who wouldn’t want more accurate data regarding the pandemic? Especially when our inflated COVID death numbers are used to disparage the United States worldwide while other countries undercount their death totals.

Yet, I can’t help but notice how politically convenient this is. Literally, just a few days after Joe Biden took the mantle of presiding over the most COVID deaths from Donald Trump, the government suddenly decides now is the time to revise the numbers? Yeah, there’s no way that’s a coincidence. And rest assured, the same media that “fact-checked” any prior questions about the COVID death totals will now pretend like that never happened.

Imagine if the CDC under Trump had moved to compile such data? It would have caused a firestorm of accusations that the government was falsifying the death totals for political gain. Heck, it wouldn’t have surprised me if it led to another impeachment. Yet, the Biden administration moves to do just that and it’s all shrugs.

In the end, this is just more evidence of how political the entire pandemic has been. Everything’s a conspiracy theory until it’s no longer useful to the Democrat narrative. Then, and only then, can changes be made to present the public with more accurate information.

FDA Issues Guidance Prioritizing People for Monoclonal Antibodies Based on Their Race

Guidance from the Food and Drug Administration says that some people may be considered “high risk” based on their race and will be prioritized for monoclonal antibodies and oral antivirals used to treat COVID-19.

The agency issued a fact sheet for healthcare providers, which was updated in December, notifying them that it had approved emergency use authorizations of sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody proven effective against omicron. However, the antibodies are only approved for patients considered to be “high risk.”

“Medical conditions or factors” such as “race or ethnicity” may “place individual patients at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19,” the guidance reads, adding that the “authorization of sotrovimab under the EUA is not limited to the medical conditions or factors” outlined by the agency.

Older age, obesity, pregnancy, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease are listed as some of the medical conditions and factors that would make a person “high risk.”

Similarly, New York state’s Health Department last week revealed its plans to distribute COVID treatments like monoclonal antibody treatment and antiviral pills. The plan states that a person must have “a medical condition or other factors that increase their risk for severe illness” to be eligible for the treatment.

One “risk factor” included in the plan is being a person of color due to “longstanding systemic health and social inequities.”

“Non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity should be considered a risk factor, as longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19,” the memo reads.

Well, they’re bureaucraps, what would one expect?

CDC Statements Resurrect Concerns Over Agency’s Past Anti-gun Advocacy

Last month in this space, I detailed much of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) history of advocating for gun control. This month continues that story by examining how those seeking to use the CDC to promote gun control have repeatedly peddled the false narrative that the government is prohibited from engaging in any firearms-related research.

In August, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky sat down for an interview with CNN for what was framed by the purported news network as a major announcement. Walensky told CNN that, after supposedly more than two decades on the sidelines because of an NRA-backed measure to limit the use of CDC funding, the agency was getting back into the gun-violence-research business. Despite waning support for the public health agency in the wake of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Walensky said it was time for the CDC to put the “pedal to the metal” on this political controversy. The CDC director said of firearms, “I swore to the president and to this country that I would protect your health. This is clearly one of those moments, one of those issues that is harming America’s health.”

Aside from the general problem with treating firearms as if they were germs transmitting a communicable disease—as opposed to treating their misuse as a criminal justice problem—the CDC’s supposedly groundbreaking announcement might leave some observers of gun politics with a sense of confusion or deja vu for a couple of reasons.

Continue reading “”

Again, this shows that 2020 was the anomalous ‘pig in the python’ that makes what would have been another record year (and nearly was) a second place finisher. However it wasn’t until June that the number of checks was less than those in ’20.

Up to date?
Boooooosters for life!

Who Saw This Coming? The New Term for ‘Fully Vaccinated’ Has Arrived

With booster shots being increasingly pushed and many institutions now requiring them, the term “fully vaccinated” is being replaced, according to White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“We’re using the terminology now ‘keeping your vaccinations up to date,’ rather than what ‘fully vaccinated’ means,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said Tuesday. “Right now, optimal protection is with a third shot of an mRNA or a second shot of a J&J.”

The comments come after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the Pfizer-BioNTech booster shot five months after the two-dose series, which is one month earlier than previously recommended. For the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the agency has not changed its recommendation for when to get a booster—six months and two months after the initial series, respectively.

“As we have done throughout the pandemic, we will continue to update our recommendations to ensure the best possible protection for the American people,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. “Following the FDA’s authorizations, today’s recommendations ensure people are able to get a boost of protection in the face of Omicron and increasing cases across the country…”

Much like the definition of ‘fully vaccinated,’ government officials have also changed the way vaccine mandates are discussed, preferring to use “requirements” instead.

“Mandates—that’s a radioactive word. Requirements—people seem to respond better to that,” Fauci told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last month. “They work. We are never going to get out of this outbreak if we still have 50 million people who for reasons that are still very, very difficult to understand refuse to get vaccinated when you have a virus that’s killed 800,000 Americans and caused 50 million infections so if people still do not want to get vaccinated sometimes you have to for the common good make requirements.”

Biden DOJ issues gun control orders

We’re supposed to be a nation of laws, not a nation of men. No one is supposed to be above the law, and no one is supposed to be able to create laws with the stroke of a pen. Our Founding Fathers knew monarchies and wanted no part of them.

Yet, generations since then have decided bureaucracies are the way to go. Now, the rules people have to live by can change overnight without any lawmakers getting a vote. That just happened, and it’s a gun control measure.

The Justice Department on Monday announced a new federal gun control rule aimed at ensuring gun owners have secure storage devices.

Under the new rule, federally approved gun sellers will be required to have gun storage or safety devices available onsite for potential buyers as required by the Gun Control Act.

According to the department, a secure gun storage device is defined as “a safe, gun safe, gun case, lock box or other device that is designed to be or can be used to store a firearm and that is designed to be unlocked only by means of a key, a combination or other similar means.”

The department submitted the rule to the Federal Register. If approved, the change will amend the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ gun regulations and go into effect on Feb. 3.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said the change is meant “to reduce the risk of firearms falling into the wrong hands.”

“Gun safety is a Department of Justice priority, and we will continue to take all appropriate steps to help reduce the number of people killed and injured by the misuse of firearms,” Mr. Garland said in a statement.

Now, for new guns, this isn’t a big deal. New guns pretty much all come with gun locks, which should qualify under the regulation.

But the problem is that many gun stores sell used guns, which means they have to also have some means of gun storage on-site regardless of what comes with new firearms.

That means already limited inventory space is going to have to be filled with expensive and often unnecessary gun storage options. After all, not only do many gun owners already have some way to secure their guns, they can also get gun locks from most law enforcement agencies if they want one at no cost.

So now, with this new rule, gun stores are going to have to scramble to order new inventory – even as inflation and supply chain issues may make those items harder to get – to comply with federal regulations.

For many, this may not look much like gun control, but it is. It’s an attempt to tell those who sell guns what else they must sell. It’s little different than the law in New Jersey that says gun stores will have to have a smart gun model available for sale.

Look, I get that not everyone secures their guns the way some would like. However, you’re deluding yourself if you think the reason they’re not doing that is that they’re somehow unaware of storage options or where to find them.

Garland and his DOJ can’t be stupid enough to think otherwise, so why issue this? Because it’s gun control they can do.

The Biden administration has been getting heat following the Oxford shooting for not doing anything to address what happened. The problem is, there’s not much they can actually do. So, they do this so they can pretend they’re dealing with the problem.

The fact that this also punishes gun stores, which the Biden administration has been gunning for since day one, is likely what they would consider as something of a bonus.

It ain’t.

The misinformation from the CDC keep on coming
I could spend all day, every day, dissecting the garbage that gets published by the CDC. This paper was a doozy. Fortunately, I get by with a little help from my friends.

Sometimes, the crap coming out of the CDC is too egregious to ignore and litigation is required to fix it.

This is one such case. And credit goes to Del Bigtree, ICAN, and Aaron Siri for both doing the analysis and threatening legal action if they don’t withdraw the paper. This is what I meant in the headline about getting by “with a little help from my friends.”

The paper in question can be found on the CDC website: Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19 Among Adults Hospitalized with COVID-19–Like Illness with Infection-Induced or mRNA Vaccine-Induced SARS-CoV-2 Immunity — Nine States, January–September 2021

The claim: you are 5.49X more likely to be infected if you are unvaccinated but had a previous COVID infection compared to a vaccinated person.

This claim is preposterous.

It is well established in many papers that previous infection is way way better than vaccination. Also, the previously infected don’t spread the virus, unlike the vaccinated. So natural infection is also preferred to vaccination.

This paper is contrived to mislead the public into believing vaccination provides better protection than natural infection. It doesn’t.

You always have to be suspicious when there are only 9 states. Were they cherry picked to give the results that they want? Nah, only a conspiracy theorist would make that kind of assertion!

Have you ever seen the CDC publish a paper that was counter-narrative? It does happen (rarely).

You may be surprised that this does in fact happen! However, it is rare and the press never seems to notice it. Here’s a rare example that you can read before they notice their mistake and remove it (excerpted from my earlier article “Do masks work?”).

Clinical trials consistently find that masks don’t protect people from respiratory viruses. Here is what a multi-year study on masks versus viruses said (it is published on the CDC website):

“We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility.”

I bet you weren’t aware of that paper. It is well concealed.

The full analysis of the CDC paper comparing recovered immunity vs. vaccine immunity

Here’s the full analysis for your reading pleasure.

It makes you wonder if there is a book available at the CDC employee bookstore, only for CDC employees, entitled “50 ways to skew a study to achieve the results management wants.”

Fauci Finally Admits COVID Data Is Garbage

For two years, Americans have been told to “trust the science” and listen to “the data” on hospitalization and death from Wuhan coronavirus. They were told these were the best metrics to use when planning risk, how to move forward with their lives and that the government was using the numbers to determine a “safe” amount of personal freedom they could allocate to the masses. This data was also used to scare parents into complying with hardcore lockdowns of schools under demands from politically motivated teachers’ unions.

During the summer, just as schools were supposed to reimplement in-person learning and reopen for the fall semester, media outlets around the country reported children were being hospitalized for Wuhan coronavirus. Headlines blared about concerning spikes in hospitalizations for the disease and health officials cited in reports demanded new restrictions and unproven vaccinations for children.

But it turns out those headlines were false, and the data doesn’t reflect a crisis.

“One important thing. If you look at the children that are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID. And what we mean by that, if a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID, and they get counted as a COVID hospitalized individual when they may, in fact, go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it’s over counting the number of children who are ‘hospitalized with COVID’ as opposed to because of COVID,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told MSNBC during an interview this week.

With COVID as opposed to because of COVID. Precisely.

Finally, Fauci admits what many have known to be true. Those who made this point before Fauci’s admission were called conspiracy theorists and banned for stating these facts on Twitter. Cases of the virus were and are being counted regardless of patient status and whether individuals were in the hospital for the disease or another issue. The over counting isn’t limited to children; it applies to every person admitted to the hospital since the pandemic began in early 2020. The tainted numbers have also made their way into death counts, not just hospital admissions.

In December 2020, a Colorado coroner essentially blew the whistle on death counts from the disease by revealing that people who had died of gunshot wounds were counted as Wuhan coronavirus deaths.

“The Grand County, Colorado coroner is calling attention to the way the state health department is classifying some deaths. The coroner, Brenda Bock, says two of their five deaths related to COVID-19 were people who died of gunshot wounds,” KMOV4 reported at the time. “‘These two people had tested positive for COVID but that’s not what killed them,’ she said. ‘The gunshot wound killed them.'”

For two years, the death and hospitalization rate data being used by government health officials at the local and federal levels have been completely contaminated. Regardless, it’s been cited as justification for business closures, to halt “non-essential” medical procedures, to shut down schools, limit events and much more. The lives of Americans have been turned upside down, and their freedoms have been limited based on egregiously bad data.

With Fauci’s atypically truthful admission, the question now becomes whether government bureaucrats will work to detangle and detach deaths or hospitalizations with the virus from deaths or hospitalizations caused by the virus? Or will they continue to use the trashed data to uphold their emergency powers to bolster never-ending control over the lives of Americans? Sadly, we already know the answer.

Comment O’ The Day
“The ‘noble lie’. These clowns are undermining faith in the health care system for a generation…… Idiots.”

‘The right to self defense has just been reaffirmed’: Case dismissed in Staten Island Christmas Day death

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A grand jury Thursday dismissed the case against a man accused in a fatal Christmas Day encounter in Concord.

The jury chose not to indict Emmanuel “E.J.” Diaz, 32, in the death of 36-year-old Rafael Ramos on charges that included second-degree murder, first-degree strangulation and criminal obstruction of breathing.

Diaz’s lawyer, Mark Fonte, said Sunday after his client’s arraignment that Diaz acted in self defense when Ramos came to his Clove Road apartment armed with a box cutter.

On Thursday, Fonte credited the office of District Attorney Michael McMahon for its professionalism and for presenting the facts of the case to the grand jury.

“The right to self defense has just been reaffirmed on Staten Island. An armed intruder entered my client’s residence Christmas morning and slashed my client’s face,” Fonte said. “He had every right to protect his wife, two small kids and himself. If self defense isn’t warranted here it would be a travesty.”

McMahon concurred.

“Following a thorough investigation of all of the facts and evidence in this case, my office presented that evidence fairly and impartially to the grand jury, as is our obligation and duty to the People of Staten Island,” he said.

“We regret the tragic circumstances that led to this incident culminating in the death of Mr. Ramos, and extend our deepest condolences to his family, who have suffered the loss of a loved one during this holiday season.”

In the moments surrounding the violence, multiple tenants in the Elbee Gardens Apartments in Concord called 911, stating a man armed with a sharp instrument — who turned out to be Ramos — was banging on apartment doors, an NYPD spokesman said Monday.

Some of Ramos’ family members said he would bounce between the apartment of his longtime girlfriend and their children in the same Concord apartment building, and a family member’s house in Dongan Hills.

Ramos’ mother said Monday her son was under the impression Diaz and his girlfriend were romantically involved.

She recalled that Diaz — who she described as a loving father, and her right-hand — recently had attended a child’s birthday party at Ramos’ apartment.

She added that her son had a contentious past with his girlfriend’s mother, including an altercation that had to be resolved in the court system. She noted that her son was known to have a temper.

Police said the altercation on Christmas Day between Ramos and Diaz occurred on the second floor of the building.

Diaz was slashed in the face while struggling with Ramos, but ultimately applied a choke hold that resulted in Ramos’ death, Richmond County prosecutors wrote in the criminal complaint. Ramos’ family said he was struck in the head with a nebulizer during the altercation.

Jalissa Carrasco, Diaz’s spouse, was there the day of the incident and outside the courthouse Thursday waiting to greet her husband. Diaz’s parents — Yamel Diaz and Mark Diaz — along with his friends and family —Tricia Jaccoma, Austin Willard, Angel Pagan, and Eddie Martinez — joined Carrasco outside the courthouse.

Diaz’s mother said that she was glad her son was coming home, but expressed remorse for the man who lost his life and his family.

Internal watchdog freaking over 3D-printed guns at the ATF

For a while now, the media has been freaking out over so-called “ghost guns,” as has the ATF. Basically, any gun without a serial number that can’t be traced is a “ghost gun.” However, not all such weapons are created equally.

To be sure, I understand some of the concerns. However, I’ve long felt the fears are overblown. Yes, there’s difficulty tracking these weapons, which means bad people may get their hands on these guns, but having come of age in the ’90s, I’m used to the idea of bad people getting guns. They’ve been doing it since long before “ghost guns” were a thing.

The technology to make 3D-printed guns that can evade metal detectors is improving, but the nation’s gun crime-fighting agency is not making such weapons a priority for monitoring, the U.S. Justice Department’s internal watchdog warns.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in a report earlier this month that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) has only encountered about dozen 3D-printed weapons in cases over the last four years.

“ATF officials told us that they have not identified 3D printing of firearms as a priority area to monitor,” Horowitz said.

The watchdog said he is concerned the agency has a security blindspot since “3D-printed firearms are comprised almost entirely of polymer materials that are undetectable by metal detectors.

“Moreover, 3D printing technology has seen advances in quality and decreases in cost and has become much more accessible to individuals, including prohibited persons,” he added, warning the agency currently doesn’t even track 3D-printed weapons in its eTrace computer database used by local police.

“ATF lacks a method to facilitate collecting 3-D printed firearms data, either in eTrace or outside of eTrace,” Horowitz noted. “Consequently, law enforcement cannot report and ATF cannot collect information regarding the material composition of a firearm or whether a firearm was possibly derived from 3-D printing.”

So, let me get this straight. In a nation of around 330 million people, the agency tasked with policing guns has only seen a dozen cases of 3D-printed guns over four years – meaning just three per year – and as such has decided this isn’t a major concern, and we’re supposed to be alarmed by this?

First, let’s understand that if these guns aren’t being used significantly in crimes, there’s no reason for the ATF to be alarmed in the first place. After all, it’s already illegal to make your own guns if you’re prohibited from buying a firearm. Otherwise, it’s perfectly legal under federal law to make your own guns via whatever means you have available to you.

Frankly, I don’t get where Horowitz is coming from. Other than that he clearly has bought into the mass hysteria surrounding these kinds of guns.

If the ATF isn’t seeing them show up in cases, then maybe that is the more telling thing. After all, if the fear is that criminals will use this technology, and they’re not using this tech, that should be heralded as good news.

And really, these guns are still detectable. You’d think the internal watchdog for the ATF would be aware of this fact.

So really, this particular flavor of hysteria is nothing more than a way to gin up outrage to call for the banning of something that is actually impossible to prevent people from doing. Absolutely brilliant.

This is where we are right now.

Frankly, I’m relieved the ATF isn’t freaking out over these guns. My hope is they continue to not consider it a priority, and for all the obvious reasons.

Covid’s Three Blind Mice.

A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America, by Scott W. Atlas (Bombardier Books, 328 pp., $28)

How could public officials vowing to “follow the science” on Covid-19 persist in promoting ineffective strategies with terrible consequences? In a memoir of his time on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Scott W. Atlas provides an answer: because the nation’s governance was hijacked by three bureaucrats with scant interest in scientific research or debate—and no concern for the calamitous effects of their edicts.

Atlas’s book, A Plague Upon Our House, is an astonishing read, even for those who have been closely following this disaster. A veteran medical researcher and health-policy analyst at the Hoover Institution, Atlas, a radiologist, joined the Task Force six months into the pandemic, after he had published estimates that lockdowns could ultimately prove more deadly than Covid.

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SloJoe’s bureaucraps get stopped…again.

Judge strikes down Biden’s vaccine mandate for health care workers

A federal court halted President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers in 10 states.

“The scale falls clearly in favor of healthcare facilities operating with some unvaccinated employees, staff, trainees, students, volunteers and contractors, rather than the swift, irremediable impact of requiring healthcare facilities to choose between two undesirable choices — providing substandard care or providing no healthcare at all,” wrote U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp in a 32-page order Monday.

The 10 states impacted by the ruling are those that sued the Biden administration over the rule: Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

Biden’s Nov. 5 order applied to health workers in hospitals that receive federal funding through Medicaid or Medicare, with Biden arguing that the rule was needed to help slow the spread of COVID-19 among the nation’s health care workers.

But Schelp ruled the order likely exceeded Biden’s authority, giving the ten states a temporary victory as the case continues to wind its way through the system.

“Congress did not clearly authorize CMS to enact this politically and economically vast, federalism-altering, and boundary-pushing mandate, which Supreme Court precedent requires,” Schelp wrote.

The 10 states sued the administration shortly after the order was issued, arguing it encroached on states’ rights and would worsen health care worker shortages.

The ruling comes days after OSHA announced that it was suspending its enforcement of Biden’s vaccine mandate for private employers with more than 100 employees after it too was blocked by a federal court, which ruled the agency should “take no steps to implement or enforce” the regulation.

“OSHA is complying with the 5th Circuit’s stay,” a Department of Labor official said. “OSHA is not enforcing or implementing the [regulation] — so they are not engaging or offering compliance assistance.”