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Biden handed major legal defeat in attempt to restrict oil, gas drilling in Gulf of Mexico.

Views: 20

Biden handed major legal defeat in attempt to restrict oil, gas drilling in Gulf of Mexico.

A federal court struck down the Biden administration’s last-minute restrictions on an upcoming offshore oil and gas lease sale in a ruling late Thursday evening.

Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana granted a preliminBiden handed major legal defeat in attempt to restrict oil, gas drilling in Gulf of Mexico.ary injunction request from plaintiffs — the State of Louisiana, industry association American Petroleum Institute (API) and oil companies Chevron and Shell — to block the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) restrictions on Lease Sale 261. The lease sale spanning millions of acres across the Gulf of Mexico is slated for next week.

Cain ruled the federal government must proceed with the lease sale by Sept. 30 under its original conditions. As a result of a July settlement with environmental groups, BOEM removed about six million acres from the sale and imposed various restrictions on oil and gas vessels associated with the leases auctioned to protect the Rice’s whale species found in parts of the Gulf of Mexico.

“The court observes that plaintiffs have demonstrated substantial potential costs resulting from the challenged provisions,” Cain wrote in his decision. “While the government defendants largely focus on the acreage withdrawal and dynamics of the sale itself, many of plaintiffs’ alleged hardships arise from the vessel restrictions.”

 

The Biden administration's actions remove about six million acres of potentially oil-rich leases from an upcoming federal lease sale.

The Biden administration’s actions — rejected by a federal court late Thursday — removed about six million acres of potentially oil-rich leases from an upcoming federal lease sale. (Getty Images)

“Industry plaintiffs have shown a likelihood that these will burden their operations on current and planned leases,” the ruling continued. “The resulting costs would not be undone by the court’s entry of a permanent injunction and order of another sale.”

Cain also said the Biden administration’s actions appeared to be an attempt to “provide scientific justification to a political reassessment of offshore drilling.” And he said the administration’s process looked “more like a weaponization of the Endangered Species Act than the collaborative, reasoned approach prescribed by the applicable laws and regulations.”

In a statement following the ruling Thursday, API Senior Vice President and General Counsel Ryan Meyers said it was a positive step in ensuring energy security.

 

“We are pleased that the court has hit the brakes on the Biden Administration’s ill-conceived effort to restrict American development of reliable, lower-carbon energy in the Gulf of Mexico,” Meyers said in a statement.

“Today’s decision will allow Lease Sale 261 to move forward as directed by Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act, removing the unjustified restrictions on vessel traffic imposed by the Department of the Interior and restoring the more than 6 million acres to the sale,” he added. “This decision is an important step toward greater certainty for American energy workers, a more robust Gulf Coast economy and a stronger future for U.S. energy security.”

Native Boarding Schools-Oral History

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks in Las Vegas on April 14, 2023. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management put the lease sale restrictions forward after a settlement with eco groups. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

In late August, API and its fellow plaintiffs filed the lawsuit against the Biden administration calling for the court to require the Biden administration to “fulfill its obligations to the American people.” According to industry, sales like Lease Sale 261, which is the final federal offshore lease sale scheduled, are vital to ensure long-term oil and gas production.

Overall, BOEM said — following its eco settlement in July — it would offer 12,395 blocks across approximately 67 million acres in multiple regions of the Gulf of Mexico, less than the 13,620 blocks across 73.4 million acres it originally planned to offer. The acreage stripped from the sale included potentially oil-rich tracts located in the middle of the lease area.

Offshore lease sales often span large swaths of federal waters, but earn bids on a fraction of blocks projected by companies to contain more resources and to have a higher return on investment. For example, BOEM auctioned off 73.3 million acres during Lease Sale 259 in March, but received bids worth $263.8 million for 313 tracts spanning 1.6 million acres.

 

“The injunction is a necessary and welcome response from the court to an unnecessary decision by the Biden administration,” said Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA). “The removal of millions of highly prospective acres and the imposition of excessive restrictions stemmed from a voluntary agreement with activist groups that circumvented the law, ignored science, and bypassed public input.”

In addition to removing acreage from the sale, BOEM also imposed restrictions on oil and gas vessel traffic associated with the leases set to be auctioned during Lease Sale 261. Among the requirements, BOEM said specially-trained visual observers must be aboard all vessels traversing the area, all ships regardless of size must travel no quicker than 10 knots and vessels should only travel through the area in the daytime.

Oil and Gas Leases Lawsuit

An oil platform is pictured in the Gulf of Mexico about 200 miles south of Galveston, Texas. Judge James Cain blasted the Biden administration for its restrictions on offshore drilling Thursday. (AP Photo/Jon Fahey, File)

BOEM’s restrictions came in response to the administration’s settlement last month with a coalition of four environmental groups led by the left-wing Sierra Club.

In a federal stipulated stay agreement filed on July 21, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) agreed to a number of conditions requested by the groups which, in response, agreed to temporarily pause litigation in the related case. The case dates back nearly three years when, in October 2020, the environmental coalition sued the NMFS for failing to properly assess the oil industry impacts on endangered and threatened marine wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico.

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The groups pursued the lawsuit after the NMFS coordinated a multiagency consultation studying the effects all federally regulated oil and gas activities would have on species like the Rice’s whale listed under the Endangered Species Act in the Gulf of Mexico over the next 50 years. The groups argued in the original complaint that the NMFS’ biological opinion resulting from its consultation was not based on the best science.

API and NOIA also argued BOEM’s action had contravened the congressional intent of the Inflation Reduction Act, which reinstated multiple lease sales, including Lease Sale 261, after the Biden administration axed them in May 2022. In the sale’s record of decision, it is mandated to be region-wide while its environmental analysis didn’t acknowledge risks it may pose to the Rice’s whale.

 

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The Truth Shall Set You Free- “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”

Views: 13

The Truth Shall Set You Free- “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”














Words That Hide the Truth – George Carlin (on Rumble)




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NYT Pushes the White Oppressor Myth.

Views: 20

NYT Pushes the White Oppressor Myth.

The propaganda is endless!

Here’s an odd sentence in today’s New York Times:

“Mr. Erwin was born in 1942 in Tyler, Texas, where the Black community lived on the north side of town, the whites lived on the south side and Black people did not cross Front Street after sundown.”

“And Black people did not cross Front Street after sundown”??? But whites felt free to stroll around the black part of town any time of day?

It’s the incessant myth of WHITE PEOPLE PREYING ON BLACKS!

In case you’re wondering, even in the 1940s, the black murder rate was many, many times higher than the white murder rate:

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So where are the free COVID tests coming from?

Views: 16

So where are the free COVID tests coming from? Many think that they’re made in the USA and coming from American companies. Well not really. China and other countries with American locations.

Not all American Corporations..

What they didn’t mention is that many of these companies are foreign organizations that simply have small offices or manufacturing centers in the United States, and that much of the supplies are being imported from the foreign principals.

Access Bio is based in South Korea.

Advin is based in India.

iHealth is a California-based subsidiary of Andon Health of China.

Kwell Laboratories is based in South Korea

Sekisui is based in Japan.

In total, more than $312 million, through a contract branded to “reduce our reliance on overseas manufacturing” is being distributed to foreign companies. And $167 million has been awarded to the China-based iHealth, which has received *billions* of dollars from the U.S. government for their Covid tests.

Article originally was at The Dossier

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Bombshell. Mayo Clinic on Hydroxychloroquine.

Views: 26

Bombshell. Mayo Clinic on Hydroxychloroquine. Last year a demoted secretary tried to pass themself off as a Scientific Medical expert and claimed that two of the most prestigious hospitals in the world were kook hospitals. One being the Mayo Clinic. Guess what the Mayo Clinic posted on their website.

 

Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria. It is also used to prevent malaria infection in areas or regions where it is known that other medicines (eg, chloroquine) may not work. Hydroxychloroquine may also be used to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) in certain hospitalized patients.

Using this medicine alone or with other medicines (eg, azithromycin) may increase your risk of heart rhythm problems (eg, QT prolongation, ventricular fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia). Hydroxychloroquine should only be used for COVID-19 in a hospital or during clinical trials. Do not take any medicine that contains hydroxychloroquine unless prescribed by your doctor.

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Time to focus on where Republicans are winning with the American Voters.

Views: 12

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.

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NY Governor Goes Around Voters’ Backs, Signs Change in State Election Laws

Views: 31

 

New York’s Democratic legislature and governor have decided to change election laws despite the fact that voters had previously rejected the idea.

On Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s website announced that she had signed a series of election reforms designed to “strengthen democracy and protect voting rights.”

Among these new voting laws is S. 7394-A/A. 7632-A, which strengthens the controversial early voting by mail that caused so much uproar in the 2020 presidential election.

“This legislation will create a process allowing all eligible, registered New York State voters the opportunity to vote early by mail in advance of an election,” a statement on the governor’s website reads. “This legislation represents a significant expansion of ballot access in New York State, and will provide millions of New York voters with an easy, safe, and secure means of voting early by mail ballot.”

Yet for all their talk about protecting “democracy” and “voting rights,” the leftist Democrats who run New York State seem to have forgotten one big thing: The people of New York do not want this.

According to Just the News, in 2021, voters in New York rejected a measure that would have enshrined early voting by mail into the state’s constitution.

Nevertheless, Hochul and her fellow Democrats have decided to push ahead anyway, in defiance of the will of the very people they claim to serve. It’s a strange form of “democracy,” if you ask me.

Hochul’s new laws are not without pushback, however, and several Republican lawmakers at both the state and federal levels have filed a lawsuit against the governor for violating the state’s constitution.

Among those suing the governor are Rep. Elise Stefanik, the Republican National Committee, and the New York Republican State Committee. All allege that this new law is unconstitutional.

“The Mail-Voting Law is a blatant violation of Article II, § 2 of the New York State Constitution, which requires qualified voters to cast their vote in any election in person at their designated polling places unless they will be unable to do so,” the lawsuit says. The only exceptions to voting in person allowed by law are absence from the county of residence or being unable to go to their polling place because of illness or physical disability.

The lawsuit is also careful to mention that the people of New York voted against this very thing two years ago.

“The Mail-Voting Law was enacted by the Legislature in open and knowing defiance of Article II, § 2, ignoring and subverting the will of the People whom the Legislature is supposed to represent. Only two years earlier at the general election held in November 2021, the voters of the State soundly rejected a constitutional amendment proposed by the Legislature entitled “Authorizing No-Excuse Absentee Ballot Voting,” which had sought to amend Article II, § 2 by deleting the requirements for absentee voting in order to allow all qualified voters to vote by mail without providing a specific reason.”

Robert Ortt, New York State Senate Minority Leader, called the vote-by-mail scheme “yet another attempt by the far-left to keep themselves in power in New York State.”

Honestly, this situation is really infuriating. The governor and legislature are  not only violating the laws of their own state, they are also going against the will of the people and are trying to push this agenda through anyway.

Yet this is hardly surprising. The left always loves to talk about “defending democracy,” but more often than not, that just means defending the liberal agenda and advancing their ideology.

The people of New York are learning the hard way that in the world of the left, just because you vote a certain way, it does not mean that the leftist authorities are going to respect your decision.

The Republicans have every right to take Hochul and her state election officials to court because what they are doing is illegal.

Let’s hope the people of New York will not forget this illegal act and will vote differently in the next election.

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And we’re up to four and counting. David Weiss stymied on Hunter Biden tax crimes.

Views: 18

And we’re up to four and counting. David Weiss stymied on Hunter Biden tax crimes. We now have four IRS employees (two workers and two managers) who have claimed that there was hanky panky going on in the Hunter Biden saga.

IRS Director of Field Operations Michael Batdorf and DC IRS Special Agent in Charge Darrell Waldon detailed how Weiss’ probe was thwarted in recent testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee.

Garland has repeatedly insisted to lawmakers — most recently on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee — that Weiss, the US attorney for Delaware, had “full authority” to bring cases against Hunter Biden anywhere he wished and that Garland would not personally interfere in the probe.

Batdorf recalled sitting in on a June 2022 meeting involving Weiss, IRS criminal investigators, and FBI officials at which DOJ Tax personnel pushed back against charges for the first son — at the same time they were holding conferences with Hunter Biden’s legal team.

When asked how many times the two sides met, Batdorf could not recall specifically, but said there had been “more than two” meetings and possibly as many as four. CPA Academy

“Is it typical in a tax investigation to meet with defense counsel two, three, four times?” Batdorf was asked, to which he answered: “No.”

.IRS Director of Field Operations Batdorf also said he had signed off on a report recommending felony and misdemeanor tax charges dating back to 2014 against Hunter, now 53 — including counts related to income from the first son’s position on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings

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5 Major Problems with ProPublica’s Latest ‘Ethics’ Hit Piece on Justice Clarence Thomas.

Views: 21

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 BrightChevron 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.

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The Biden administration tried to censor this Stanford doctor, but he won in court.

Views: 25

The Biden administration tried to censor this Stanford doctor, but he won in court.

By Rikki Schlott.

This is a continuation/follow up to an article from Phoenix.

Judge: Biden Admin Violated Doctor’s First Amendment Rights – Looking at today’s world (atwebpages.com)

A federal court of appeals ruled earlier this month that the White House, surgeon general, CDC and FBI “likely violated the First Amendment” 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.

Joe Biden in a mask
The Fifth Circuit court found that the Biden administration and other federal agencies pressured social media companies to censor dissenting views on COVID-19.
Getty Images
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
A court found Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was among those indirectly censored by the Biden administration for his views on COVID-19.
CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag

“We were just acting as scientists, but almost immediately we were censored,” said Bhattacharya, director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. “Google de-boosted us. Our Facebook page was removed. It was just a crazy time.

“The kinds of things that the federal government was telling social media companies to censor included us — along with millions of other posts from countless other people who were criticizing government COVID policy,” he added.

A New Orleans-based three-judge panel found that the federal government “likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content” by vaguely threatening adverse regulatory consequences if social media companies did not suppress certain viewpoints on the pandemic.

Martin Kulldorff, Jay Bhattacharya, and Sunreta Gupta
Dr. Bhattacharya (from right) co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration with Oxford researcher Sunreta Gupta and Harvard professor Martin Kulldorff.
UnHerd
Stanford campus
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.
Getty Images

“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.

“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.”

Francis Collins
In an email to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins (above) referred to Bhattacharya and his co-authors as “fringe epidemiologists.”
AP

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.”

The Biden administration appealed to the Supreme Court on Thursday — a move that Bhattacharya anticipated.

Judge Terry A. Doughty
Judge Terry A. Doughty declared the Biden administration’s actions “Orwellian” in a July 4th ruling.
Youtube

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.

 

 

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