Time to focus on where Republicans are winning with the American Voters. I’ve made a decision that it’s time to ease up on the criminal activities of Joe and Hunter Biden. Don’t get me wrong. There’s crimes that have been committed, but we must look at the big picture.
Republicans are winning on the Border, The Economy, Education, COVID, and Green Energy. The Biden administration is screwing up in all of those areas. They want us to just focus on Hunter so their other misdeeds will go unnoticed.
So unless it’s earth shattering and a main News issue of the day, this writer will ease up on the Hunter and Joe Biden money laundering.
5 Major Problems with ProPublica’s Latest ‘Ethics’ Hit Piece on Justice Clarence Thomas.
By Ken Klukowski
Lawyer who served in the White House and Justice Department.
There are five major problems with the latest so-called “ethics” attack on Justice Clarence Thomas, which this time is a hit piece from the leftwing ProPublica, attempting to kick Thomas off an upcoming Supreme Court case.
ProPublica has the vapors over the fact that Thomas flew on a private jet to a conference in Palm Springs in 2018 hosted by the network of Charles and David Koch, suggesting several ethics violations. ProPublica is legally wrong on every claim.
Two problems are that Supreme Court justices can speak at nonpartisan gatherings so long as there are no presentations to or from parties to a case currently pending before the Court, and the justice does not engage in fundraising.
First, Thomas did not present at the conference on any issues pending before the court, and no parties or lawyers on cases that were scheduled at the court made any presentations to him.
Second, although fundraising certainly takes place at such gatherings, so long as the justice does not ask for money, the fact that private citizens do so is not an ethics concern for a justice in attendance.
On various occasions when liberal justices like Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor have spoken at events, fundraising people huddle about how to promote the justice’s name to raise more money off the event. But Kagan and Sotomayor violate no ethics rules when this happens, because they are not the ones engaged in fundraising.
Third, it is utterly irrelevant that the Koch Network supports filing briefs in a case currently before the court that would change the scope of the federal government’s regulatory law. Justices frequently speak at events hosted by groups that take positions on pending matters, and the upcoming case is no different.
That case, Loper Bright, asks the court to overrule a 1984 case named Chevron, where the court held that courts should defer to agency bureaucrats about whether regulations are consistent with a law passed by Congress, if Congress’s law is either silent or ambiguous about the precise legal question at issue in the regulation.
Chevron should be overruled because it is egregiously wrong and has led to terrible results. It upends bedrock principles of the rule of law for judges who defer to the almost-all-powerful government about the government’s claims as to the government’s own power over citizens and companies. If anyone should get the benefit of the doubt, it should be the powerless ordinary citizen. But better yet, there should be no deference, and judges should just interpret the law and the regulations the same way they interpret any other law, regulation, or contract. (Full disclosure: I coauthored one of the many briefs in Loper Bright urging the Supreme Court to overrule Chevron.)
The left is panicking over Loper Bright. Chevron gives unelected bureaucrats enhanced power over the lives of private citizens on countless issues, from energy production, to transportation, to immigration, to transgenderism in schools, to firearms. It hobbles the ability of courts to require Congress to legislate clearly and for public policy to be made by officials accountable to the people. Overruling Chevron would restore transparency and good government, so the left is trying to disqualify conservative justices like Thomas from being able to vote on it.
Fourth, ProPublica’s authors are again ignoring judicial standards on personal hospitality. During the time in question (2018), if private individuals are a friend of a Supreme Court justice and offer the justice a seat on a private airplane, that form of personal hospitality is ethically allowed. Liberal justices like the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the retired Stephen Breyer frequently accepted such hospitality.
Fifth, even federal judges on lower courts that are already subject to the ethics code that Senate Democrats are trying to foist on the Supreme Court – a code that would be unconstitutional, because the Supreme Court is a coequal branch of government. In May 2005, Judge Ray Randolph – a highly respected judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit – conferred with ethics counsel at the Judicial Conference regarding a similar trip.
The judicial ethics expert at the Judicial Conference responded that the trip did not even need to be disclosed. So even if the Supreme Court could be forced into a subordinate role to Congress, like the federal appeals courts are, such trips would still be permitted.
The left’s latest desperate attempt to smear Thomas – this one from ProPublica – appears to be yet another swing and miss. And the fact that it focused so heavily on gaslighting the American people about Loper Bright shows that it is just the latest attempt at reverse court-packing to disqualify conservative justices in a brazen attempt to manipulate the outcome of a Supreme Court case on government power.
Dr. Bhattacharya (from right) co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration with Oxford researcher Sunreta Gupta and Harvard professor Martin Kulldorff.
Visits: 25
Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine, economics and health research policy at Stanford University, where he serves as director of the Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.
Exerting a pressure campaign on social media companies to censor COVID-19 skeptics
A federal appeals court ruled that the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FBI, and the surgeon general violated a Stanford doctor’s First Amendment rights by using social media to silence him by exerting a pressure campaign on social media companies to censor COVID-19 skeptics — including Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
“I think this ruling is akin to the second Enlightenment,” Bhattacharya told The Post. “It’s a ruling that says there’s a democracy of ideas. The issue is not whether the ideas are wrong or right. The question is who gets to control what ideas are expressed in the public square?”
The court ordered that the Biden administration and other federal agencies “shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly” to coerce social media companies “to remove, delete, suppress or reduce” free speech.
Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in the fall of 2020 with professors from Harvard and Oxford.
The epidemiologists advocated for “focused protection” — safeguarding the most vulnerable Americans while cautiously allowing others to function as normally as possible — rather than broad pandemic lockdowns.
The court ordered that the Biden administration and other federal agencies “shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly” to coerce social media companies “to remove, delete, suppress or reduce” free speech.
The court ordered that the Biden administration and other federal agencies “shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly” to coerce social media companies “to remove, delete, suppress or reduce” free speech.
Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in the fall of 2020 with professors from Harvard and Oxford.
The epidemiologists advocated for “focused protection” — safeguarding the most vulnerable Americans while cautiously allowing others to function as normally as possible — rather than broad pandemic lockdowns.
“The government had a vast censorship enterprise,” Bhattacharya said. “It was systematically used to threaten and coerce and jawbone and tell all these social media companies, ‘You better listen to us: Censor these people, censor these ideas, or else.’”
It was later revealed that then-NIH director Dr. Francis Collins called for a “swift and devastating takedown” of Bhattacharya and his co-authors — whom Collins dubbed “fringe epidemiologists” — in an email to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Subsequent reporting from Elon Musk’s so-called Twitter Files — internal documents and communications released by Musk, after he bought the platform, to expose Twitter’s inner workings — revealed that Bhattachrya’s profile was being suppressed on the platform.
A landmark case in curbing the influence the government has over social media
“It’s akin to the efforts by governments to suppress the printing press when it first was invented, when books represented an enormous threat to power,” Bhattacharya said, referring to efforts by King Henry VIII and the Catholic Church to curb use of the printing press in the 16th century.
“There’s an analogous fight that’s currently going on with social media, which makes it vastly easier for anybody to express their ideas, and very powerful people find that incredibly threatening.”
The September 8 ruling affirmed but narrowed a lower court order, issued on July 4 by US District Judge Terry Doughty, which found that the Biden administration and other federal agencies “engaged in a years-long pressure campaign [on social media outlets] designed to ensure that the censorship aligned with the government’s preferred viewpoints” and that “the platforms, in capitulation to state-sponsored pressure, changed their moderation policies.
Bhattacharya says the first victory, although in a lower court, was the most exciting to him.
“I was just absolutely thrilled, especially to have it on July 4th,” he said. “I think that judge was sending a message by issuing this ruling on July 4th that we’re going to restore free speech in this country.”
But he believes it’s “unlikely” the Supreme Court will overturn the Fifth Circuit’s decision.
He feels his is a landmark case in curbing the influence the government has over social media — on matters that extend far beyond just COVID-19 and lockdowns.
“This new technology has created enormous opportunities for people to participate in debate in the public square,” Bhattacharya said. “And I hope that this is the beginning of a legal infrastructure that enables that to happen— rather than the opposite, which is a dark age where the government gets to decide what’s true and what’s allowed to be said.”
Protecting our border BC Biden won't. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (Brandon Bell / Getty Images / File / Fox News)
Visits: 12
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott accuses Biden administration of cutting razor wire at border. Texas National Guard installing more razor wire. The Governor has claimed that the Biden thugs turn around and cut the wire. So more National Guardsman have been sent to replace the wire.
Texas installed razor wire in Eagle Pass to stop illegal crossings.
Today the Biden Admin CUT that wire, opening the floodgates to illegal immigrants.
I immediately deployed more Texas National Guard to repel illegal crossings & install more razor wire. pic.twitter.com/eMtLS8Z6WI
In July, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Texas for installing a buoy barrier, which was designed to curb illegal immigration, on the Rio Grande. The barrier was developed as part of Abbott’s Operation Lone Star.
A federal judge initially told Texas to move the buoys, but the U.S. Court of Appeals stayed that decision. The case is still being deliberated through courts.
Stop the trespass. Border buoys float on the Rio Grande River in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Omar Ornelas / El Paso Times / USA TODAY NETWORK / File / Fox News)
Just in case you missed it, California is blaming their failures on big oil. So, they’re going to court. Yes, they claim big oil caused Climate change. What happened to mankind being the culprit?
The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group also named in the lawsuit, said climate policy should be debated in Congress, not the courtroom.
“This ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of California taxpayer resources,” institute senior vice president Ryan Meyers said in a statement.
If big oil caused this, why not sue for damages? But the state wants the establishment of a fund to offset future costs from extreme weather events and climate mitigation efforts. In other words, it rains, or snows, big oil pays.
The judge maintained that President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by executive action in 2012.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times
A revised version of the federal policy known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which prevents the deportation of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, has once again been deemed illegal by a federal judge who gave the same ruling previously.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen said in his decision Wednesday that on July 16, 2021, the court vacated the DACA program created by the 2012 DACA Memorandum, which prohibited the U.S., its departments, agencies, officers, agents and employees from granting new DACA applications and administering the program.
Hanen’s decision then was affirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Wednesday, reaffirmed by him. Send them home.
Appeals court overrules affirmative action judge. Affirmative action judge Steve Jones denied Mark Meadows to move his trial to Federal Court. He also denied granting a stay until an appeal is filed. So, Meadows went to a real judge. We have this from ABC News.
An appeals court on Wednesday granted former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ request for an expedited review of his emergency motion seeking to block a lower court’s ruling that kept his Georgia election interference case in state court.
Meadows filed the request for an emergency stay with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals after Judge Steve Jones last week rejected Meadows’ bid to have his case moved, based on a federal law that calls for the removal of criminal proceedings brought in state court to the federal court system when someone is charged for actions they allegedly took as a federal official acting “under color” of their office.
FILE - California Attorney General Rob Bonta fields questions during a press conference, Aug. 28, 2023, in Los Angeles. Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Photo
Visits: 14
Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas had bills introduced in 2023 that would require districts to disclose a trans student’s gender identity to parents.
And why shouldn’t a parent have a right to know if a teacher or a school is hiding from parents this personal information? California requires a school to contact a parent if they want to give a child an aspirin, but you have an AG who wants to sue school districts that notify parents on what goes on in reference to schools who want parent notification.
“It’s disgusting that we now have union-controlled politicians fighting to keep sexual secrets from other people’s children,” said Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, in an email to The Center Square. “These radicals believe children are the property of the State, and many of them won’t reverse course any time soon because it’s part of their deeply held socialist views. The far left has infiltrated the government school system and they are using it for ideological indoctrination as opposed to education. These extremists see the school system as a means of raising other people’s children with their own worldview, and they won’t stop without accountability.”
Rehire them now. Viacheslav Lopatin/Shutterstock.com
Visits: 3
NYC must reinstate 10 Dept. of Education employees fired for refusing COVID vaccine, judge rules.
(The Center Square) — A New York state judge has ruled that 10 New York City teachers who were fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine were wrongfully dismissed.
In the ruling, state Supreme Court Judge Ralph J. Porzio said the city’s denial of religious accommodations from getting vaccinated employees was “unlawful, arbitrary and capricious” and ordered the teachers to be reinstated with back pay.
“This court sees no rational basis for not allowing unvaccinated classroom teachers in amongst an admitted population of primarily unvaccinated students,” he wrote in the 22-page ruling.
During the pandemic, New York City imposed some of the strictest COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the country, enforcing rules for public and private sector workers.
More than 1,750 city workers were fired for refusing to get vaccinated, including 36 members of the New York City Police Department and more than 950 public school employees.
Several unions sued the city over the mandate, and last October, Porzio ruled that the city’s policy was enacted “illegally” and workers who were fired for refusing to comply must be “immediately reinstated” with back pay. The city appealed the judge’s ruling.
California having issues with the First Amendment.
Visits: 16
Why do Progressives have issues with the First Amendment? Musk sues California. If it’s not California, it’s New York, If it’s not Illinois it’s Massachusetts, and it goes on and on.
But all have the same thing in common. Violating people’s first Amendment rights. If it’s not parents it’s other politicians, lawyers, or people from the business world like Musk.
In Musk’s case, they’re not going after him in court, California is passing laws that take away free speech. What’s next with these loons?
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