Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption Politics Reprints from others.

DHS Redacted Critical Details About ‘Anti-Disinformation’ Activities: Sens. Grassley, Hawley

Visits: 15

WASHINGTON, DC – Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA). (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has neglected to provide in full certain disclosures requested by members of the U.S. Senate relating to the department’s growing role in “counter-disinformation” activities, and this failure is particularly egregious in light of the co-equal roles of the executive and legislative branches of the government, two senators have charged in a Dec. 15 letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) charge the DHS with ignoring or downplaying their “serious concerns” about the DHS’s “growing counter-disinformation efforts” as conveyed previously in a letter of June 7, which formally requested “information necessary to inform our congressional oversight of DHS activities.”

Partly or completely redacted

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has neglected to provide in full certain disclosures requested by members of the U.S. Senate relating to the department’s growing role in “counter-disinformation” activities, and this failure is particularly egregious in light of the co-equal roles of the executive and legislative branches of the government, two senators have charged in a Dec. 15 letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) charge the DHS with ignoring or downplaying their “serious concerns” about the DHS’s “growing counter-disinformation efforts” as conveyed previously in a letter of June 7, which formally requested “information necessary to inform our congressional oversight of DHS activities.”

The senators are deeply concerned about the DHS’s admitted plans to ramp up its efforts to play a role in monitoring and mediating MDM, a common acronym for “mis-, dis-, and mal-information,” disseminated through social media, on topics as varied as the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, race relations in America, and the hasty U.S. pullout from Afghanistan in August 2021.

According to the senators, the DHS’s response to their June 7 letter, which was dated June 29, did not answer any of the ten questions they had posed in their June 7 communication.

Even more seriously, the DHS included with its June 29 letter three “document productions” supposedly intended to allay the senators’ concerns, but the first of these contained documents already in the public domain, and the third featured some 500 pages of information, half of which was partly or completely redacted.

“Based on our review of this material, it appears that many of the redactions are applied to pre-decisional and deliberative process material,” the senators write, before going on to remind Mayorkas that they have advanced their requests as sitting members of Congress whom DHS cannot legally ignore or blow off, given the separate and co-equal character of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches comprising the U.S. federal government.

The Freedom of Information Act applies neither to the requests nor to DHS’s procedures in protocols in responding to them, and the redaction of content—as DHS might do in response to a journalist’s request for information—is not appropriate here, the senators contend.

The senators also take DHS to task for complaining, in its letter of June 29, about Congress’s having made documents available to the senators without getting approval from DHS.

Here, too, Grassley and Hawley charge DHS with having misconstrued the nature of its relationship to other branches and having falsely assumed that DHS enjoys the right to apply executive branch designations such as “Predecisional,” “Deliberative,” and “For Official Use Only,” and thereby limit what documents and materials the senators may obtain by means of lawful whistleblower disclosures and oversight requests. In the case referenced in DHS’s June 29 letter, the senators state they did not unconditionally release all the material provided to them and included limited redactions of their own where appropriate.

“We make such decisions independently, based on our assessment of what will be in the best interest of transparency and the public interest. Moreover, DHS should learn a lesson in accountability and transparency when patriotic whistleblowers provide full and complete records in contrast to DHS failing to follow that standard and instead providing improperly redacted records,” Grassley and Hawley write.

Overstepping Bounds

The senators convey their considerable “alarm” at public reports that illuminate DHS’s growing role in “counter-disinformation activities.”

“These efforts stretch well beyond DHS’s seriously misguided effort to establish a Disinformation Governance Board (DGB),” they write, pointing to a document prepared by Cybersecurity Advisory Committee of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and released by The Intercept, which states that “CISA has a burgeoning MDM effort” that includes “directly engaging with social media companies to flag MDM.”

The same Intercept article also quotes a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review stating that in coming years DHS will aggressively combat what it sees as bogus information on a range of topics including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

The senators conclude by making two formal requests to Mayorkas, namely, full and complete answers to all questions raised in the senators’ June 7 letter, along with unredacted copies of the documents provided in DHS’s initial response; and a detailed account of DHS’s policy for replying to congressional oversight requests, specifying how DHS makes decisions about redacting material that members of Congress have asked for.

 

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Biden Pandemic COVID Medicine Opinion Reprints from others. Science

New Autopsy Report Reveals Those Who Died Suddenly Were Likely Killed by the COVID Vaccine

Visits: 45

(Anatta_Tan/Shutterstock)
December 8, 2022 Updated: December 14, 2022

A major new autopsy report has found that three people who died unexpectedly at home with no pre-existing disease shortly after COVID vaccination were likely killed by the vaccine.

A further two deaths were found to be possibly due to the vaccine.

The report, published in Clinical Research in Cardiology, the official journal of the German Cardiac Society, detailed autopsies carried out at Heidelberg University Hospital in 2021. Led by Thomas Longerich and Peter Schirmacher, it found that in five deaths that occurred within a week of the first or second dose of vaccination with Pfizer or Moderna, inflammation of the heart tissue due to an autoimmune response triggered by the vaccine had likely or possibly caused the death.

Epoch Times Photo
Case characteristic of five deaths likely or possibly caused by the COVID vaccines.
Epoch Times Photo
Lymphocyte immune cells (white blood cells) are shown in blue and brown among the heart tissue, causing localised inflammation that proved fatal.

In total the report looked at 35 autopsies carried out at the University of Heidelberg in people who died within 20 days of COVID vaccination, of which 10 were deemed on examination to be due to a pre-existing illness and not the vaccine. For the remaining 20, the report did not rule out the vaccine as a cause of death, which Dr. Schirmacher has confirmed to me is intentional as the autopsy results were inconclusive. Almost all of the remaining cases were of a cardiovascular cause, as indicated in the table below from the supplementary materials, where 21 of the 30 deaths are attributed to a cardiovascular cause. One of these is attributed to blood clots (VITT) from AstraZeneca vaccination (the report was looking specifically at post-vaccine myocarditis deaths), leaving 20 from other cardiovascular causes.

Epoch Times Photo

For the five deaths in the main report attributed as likely or possibly due to the vaccines, the authors state:

“All cases lacked significant coronary heart disease, acute or chronic manifestations of ischaemic heart disease, manifestations of cardiomyopathy or other signs of a pre-existing, clinically relevant heart disease.”

This indicates that the authors limited themselves to deaths where there was no “pre-existing, clinically relevant heart disease,” making the report very conservative in which deaths it was willing to pin on the vaccines.

Dr. Schirmacher told me:

“We included only cases, in which the constellation was unequivocally clear and no other cause of death was demonstrable despite all efforts. We cannot rule out vaccine effects in the other cases, but here we had an alternative potential cause of death (e.g., myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism). If there is severe ischemic cardiomyopathy it is almost impossible to rule out myocarditis effects or definitively rule in inflammatory alterations as due to vaccination. These cases were not included.

“We did not aim to include or find every case but the characteristics of definitive, unequivocal cases beyond any doubt. Only by this way you can establish the typical characteristics; otherwise less strict criteria may lead to ‘contamination’ of the collective; it is absolutely plausible that by these criteria we may have missed further cases but the intention of our study was never quantitative or extrapolation and there are numerous positive and negative bias. But we wanted to establish the fact not the size.”

It is of course very possible that the vaccines also cause death where there is an underlying cardiovascular condition, and indeed, that it is more likely to do so. Thus these five deaths are the minimum from these autopsy cases in which the vaccines are involved—those in which there is no other plausible explanation.

It is worth noting here that initially in 2021, when the autopsies were first carried out, Dr. Schirmacher stated that his team had concluded 30–40 percent of the deaths were due to the vaccines. These earlier estimates may give us a better indication of how many of the deaths the authors really think are attributable to the vaccines, when they are unconstrained by highly conservative assumptions (and looking at causes besides myocarditis). Note that these percentages are based on a selection of deaths that occurred shortly after vaccination, not a random sample of all deaths, so the authors rightly warn that no estimation of individual risk can be made from them.

Did the autopsies find spike protein from the vaccines present in the heart tissue? The samples from the five vaccine-attributed deaths were tested for infectious agents including SARS-CoV-2 (in one instance revealing “low viral copy numbers” of a herpes virus, which the authors deemed insufficient to explain the inflammation). However, no tests were done specifically for the virus spike protein or nucleocapsid protein, such as have been used successfully in other autopsies to aid attribution to the vaccine, so unfortunately this evidence was unavailable for these autopsies.

The autopsies in the report also only cover doses 1 and 2, not any booster doses, and only deaths within 20 days of vaccination, so the report doesn’t address directly the question of what’s been causing the elevated heart deaths since the booster rollouts from autumn 2021 or whether the vaccines can trigger cardiovascular death weeks or months later. (Other autopsies have confirmed that the spike protein can persist in the body for weeks or months after vaccination and trigger a fatal autoimmune attack on the heart.)

What the report does do, however, is establish that people who die suddenly in the days immediately following vaccination may well have died from a vaccine-related autoimmune attack on the heart. It also confirms how deadly even mild vaccine-induced myocarditis can be—and thus why studies like the one from Thailand, found cardiovascular adverse effects in around a third of teenagers (29.2 percent) following Pfizer vaccination and subclinical heart inflammation in one in 43 (2.3 percent), and the study from Switzerland finding at least 2.8 percent with subclinical myocarditis and elevated troponin levels (indicating heart injury) across all vaccinated people, are so worrying.

The authors of the new study diplomatically write that the “reported incidence” of myocarditis after vaccination is “low” and the risks of hospitalization and death associated with COVID-19 are “stated to be greater than the recorded risk associated with COVID-19 vaccination”—notably declining to commit themselves to the official propositions that they dutifully repeat.

The fact that those who die suddenly after vaccination may have died from the hidden effects of the COVID vaccine on their heart is thus now firmly established in the medical literature. The big remaining question is how often it occurs.

Stop Press: Dr. John Campbell has produced a helpful overview of the report’s findings in his latest video.

video
play-sharp-fill

We’ve suspected this for some time, now we have proof,

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Categories
Crime Elections Politics

Philly Man Charged With Postal Crimes Also Found With Stolen Mail-In Ballots

Visits: 15

Authorities say a Philadelphia man found with about 15 mail-in ballots that had been stolen from U.S. Postal Service collection boxes faces numerous postal-related charges.

Zachkey James, 27, was charged with impersonation of a U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Mail Carrier, unlawful possession of three USPS arrow keys, mail theft, and possession of stolen mail, U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero said in a statement.

The arrow key is a universal master key that opens USPS mail boxes and the master door panel for clusters of mail boxes such as those found in apartments.

A July 2022 indictment alleges that while pretending to be a USPS mail carrier, James stole undelivered mail from a collection box near the Kingsessing Post Office in Philadelphia.

In October 2022, while again allegedly pretending to be a mail carrier, James is accused of stealing undelivered mail from a collection box near the East Germantown Post Office in Philadelphia.

And in November 2022, James possessed three arrow keys and approximately 15 mail-in ballots that had been taken from USPS collection boxes, the indictment said.

If convicted, James faces a maximum of 31 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Brown.

Arrow Key Theft

In October, Romero reported the indictment of three men who allegedly robbed a USPS letter carrier of his arrow key on Dec. 22, 2021, and used the key repeatedly to steal mail from collection boxes in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.

The indictment said they found and altered checks in the mail to make them payable to third parties, often in amounts greater than the checks’ original value, then deposited the washed and altered checks into third-party accounts.

Money orders, gift cards, and cash are other possible finds in the mail.

Across the internet there are multiple examples of arrow key thefts—so called because they are imprinted with an arrow.

Over the summer at least 13 arrow keys were stolen during assaults on letter carriers in the Washington D.C. area, according to news reports.

“In recent months, there has been a rise in crimes involving the mail, including mail theft, check washing and robberies of postal carriers,” Romero said in a Twitter video. “Make no mistake, mail theft is a serious federal offense. If you steal mail, you are going to prison.”

PSA:

John Walker, assistant inspector in charge for the Philadelphia Division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, spoke in the same video and advised mail consumers to notice the last pickup time posted on every blue collection box. If consumers are there after that time, they should consider holding their items until the following day.

Customers can also mail their items inside any post office.


Guess this crook forgot to give “the big guy” his cut.

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Biden Pandemic Corruption COVID Drugs Links from other news sources.

Covid 3-fer: Fauci deposed, Air Force vax mandate ruled against, and Pandemic of the vaxxed

Visits: 38

Fauci will be the 2023 commencement speaker at Yale’s School of medicine.

Fauci on Trial: retiring bureaucrat suddenly ‘can’t recall’ anything. Surprised?

We’ve reported this before, but someone did the legwork and read his deposition related to the govt/big tech collusion to censor those who opposed the vaccine mandates. They found a (not so) astonishing 174 times Tony the Fauch said “I don’t recall”including when asked about emails that he sent, interviews that he gave, and other important information. Considering the 80-year-old con man could be looking forward to spending the rest of his life in jail if the censorship case and any sequelae ever go to trial, is anyone surprised?

Full story here:

COVID-19 vaccine maker AstraZeneca has revealed it made four billion dollars in sales from its coronavirus jab last year

Sixth Circuit Appeals Court Upholds Air Force Personnel’s Relief From COVID Vaccine Mandate

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court ruled unanimously to uphold a class action injunction protecting Air Force personnel who declined the COVID vaccine from punitive measures.

In the ruling, Judge Murphy wrote, “Under RFRA, the Air Force wrongly relied on its ‘broadly formulated’ reasons for the vaccine mandate to deny specific exemptions to the Plaintiffs, especially since it has granted secular exemptions to their colleagues. We thus may uphold the Plaintiffs’ injunction based on RFRA alone. The Air Force’s treatment of their exemption requests also reveals common questions for the class: Does the Air Force have a uniform policy of relying on its generalized interests in the vaccine mandate to deny religious exemptions regardless of a service member’s individual circumstances? And does it have a discriminatory policy of broadly denying religious exemptions but broadly granting secular ones? A district court can answer these questions in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ fashion for the entire class. It can answer whether these alleged policies violate RFRA and the First Amendment in the same way. A ruling for the class also would permit uniform injunctive relief against the allegedly illegal policies. We affirm.”

Original article here:

Defense for Jabs Gone: Pandemic of the Vaccinated, Increased Likelihood of C19 Death

For the first time, a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine.

Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family.

34% increase in Covid deaths in most vaxxed states vs least vaxxed.

We looked at the top ten most vaccinated states; they had an average uptake of 82%. And we looked at the bottom ten least vaccinated states, and [it] turns out there’s a 34% increase in deaths per 100,000 of COVID deaths in the top ten most vaccinated states.

Jeffrey Jaxen [of The Highwire]comments, “So there’s a data point that is actually really shocking, really should be alarming to a lot of people, really should be investigated.”

Agreed, Jeffrey. If the shots really were “safe and effective,” how is it possible that the top ten most vaccinated states are now seeing 34% MORE Covid-19 deaths than the top ten least vaccinated states? And why is it that programs like The Highwire and internet warriors that have to do CDC’s job for them? These things clearly aren’t working. There’s a negative efficacy signal, and nothing comes to chance when you compare ten states of data to another ten states. That’s essentially a mega meta-analysis.

But luckily, the fear is gone, and no one wants these things anymore. It’s time they accept defeat, admit wrong, and pull the Covid-19 shots off the market. They see what we see. So the longer this goes on, the more we can say it’s criminal.

Original Here:

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Reprints from others. Science

UH OH Yellowstone supervolcano has a lot more magma than previously thought

Visits: 34

Yellowstone eruption, illustration. Yellowstone National Park is sitting above an underground magma chamber.

The supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park has a substantially larger magma reservoir under the caldera than scientists previously thought, according to new research.

In addition, the newly found lava is flowing at shallow depths that fueled prior eruptions, according to a paper published Thursday in Science.

Researchers mapped the seismic wave speed below the Yellowstone volcano using a technique called seismic tomography. This 3D modeling of seismic waveforms measures the volume of the melt and makes assumptions of the distribution of how the melt is spread in the subsurface in Yellowstone’s magma reservoir, Ross Maguire, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s department of geology and author of the study, told ABC News. [*”Melt” means liquid magma.]

“We found that it’s likely that Yellowstone’s crustal magma reservoir holds more melt than previously was thought,” Maguire said, adding that there is up to 20% melt at shallow depths.

Castle Geyser is a cone geyser in the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park. © George D. Lepp/Getty Images

Previous studies have suggested the partial melt fraction was between 5% and 15%, Maguire said.

The Yellowstone magma reservoir is not so much “a big tank of magma,” with accumulation all in one body, Maguire said, but rather, more like a “snow cone,” in which there is a solid component and a liquid component, Kari M. Cooper, professor and chair at the University of California Davis’s department of earth and planetary sciences, told ABC News.

The findings show it’s possible there are some relatively small to moderate-size bodies of magma that are below Yellowstone that could be mobilized and expelled, Cooper said. Yellowstone tends to garner a lot of attention because of the potential for “catastrophic, explosive eruptions,” Maguire said, but that’s not the most common type of eruption in the park.

“They would be of a similar size to what’s happened in the very recent Yellowstone history that’s produced a series of lava flows that filled the most recent caldera after the most recent really large eruption,” she said.

Despite the new discovery, the research does not indicate that an eruption will happen any time soon, the scientists said. There are no signs of “increased volcanic unrest” at Yellowstone, Maguire said.

“This really does not change the hazard assessment at all, because we already knew that. We already knew this was the recent activity,” Cooper said. “We already knew that was the most likely sort of activity to happen next.”

However, a key issue for assessing the hazards of volcanic eruption is to ascertain how much magma is below the surface and where, and continued monitoring of the subsurface is important to provide a clear picture if the situation begins to change dramatically, the researchers said.

In addition, Yellowstone is thoroughly monitored by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, Cooper said.

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Crime How sick is this? Leftist Virtue(!) Reprints from others. The Courts

ANDY NGO REPORTS: Five more Antifa members in San Diego plead guilty to violent attacks during riot

Visits: 49

Their plea deals were made more than a month after trans Antifa member Erich Louis “Nikki” Yach, 38, made a plea deal in September. Yach was the first of 11 defendants to plead guilty, and pleaded guilty to three violent felonies, including conspiracy to riot, and was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison earlier this month. Yach has a prior violent criminal record that was a factor in the sentencing.

Prior convicted felon Erich Louis “Nikki” Yach was recently sentenced to nearly five years in prison.

In the five new plea deals, court paperwork reveals that Antifa members Christian Martinez, Bryan Rivera, Joseph Austin Gaskins, Samuel Howard Ogden, and Alexander Akridge-Jacobs all agreed to two years probation, a fourth amendment search waiver that includes electronic devices, and to not associate with any co-defendant. Any actual custody time will be determined by the judge at a sentencing hearing in three months. Until then, all five defendants will remain at liberty on their own recognizance.

Christian Martinez, 24, pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to riot with his Antifa co-defendants, plus felony assault on victim 7, likely to produce great bodily injury. He also admitted to the special allegation that he was armed with a weapon, a full can of Twisted Tea. The prosecutor told the grand jury that he threw this beverage can so hard at the victim that the can actually broke open. Martinez’s maximum possible sentence is four years and eight months in state prison, plus 3 years parole. Martinez was arrested in December 2021 at his family’s home in Los Angeles, and police found Antifa symbols in his bedroom, according to testimony before a grand jury.

In June, a secret grand jury indicted 11 alleged Antifa members accused of being part of a network of violent cells in southern California that planned and carried out brutal assaults during a riot in Pacific Beach, Calif. on Jan. 9, 2021. Video recorded at the riot showed the mob in black bloc assaulting multiple victims with weapons. Trump supporters, minors, a photojournalist, and a man and his dog walking on the beach were all hurt during the attacks. Multiple weapons and firearms were seized from suspects during executed search warrants. This shocking conspiracy case involving Antifa has largely been ignored by establishment media which furthers the false claim that Antifa “doesn’t exist.”

Sentencing for the five who pleaded guilty is scheduled for March 1, 2023, at the central courthouse in downtown San Diego before Honorable judge Daniel Goldstein.

The five remaining defendants out of 11 have pleaded not guilty to all charges. Faraz Martin Talab has a trial date of March 1, 2023. Jesse Cannon, Brian Cortez Lightfoot Jr., Jeremy Jonathan White, and Luis Francisco Mora have the same trial date of April 3, 2023.

Original article here:

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Categories
Corruption COVID Drugs Reprints from others. The Courts

Fauci Can’t Recall Key Details During Deposition: Louisiana AG

Visits: 59

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he could not recall key details about his actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to one of the officials who questioned him on Nov. 23.

Fauci, the director National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, was deposed by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, both Republicans.

“It was amazing, literally, that we spent seven hours with Dr. Fauci—this is a man who single-handedly wrecked the U.S. economy based upon ‘the science, follow the science.’—and over the course of seven hours, we discovered that he can’t recall practically anything dealing with his COVID response,” Landry told The Epoch Times after leaving the deposition. “He just said, ‘I can’t recall, I haven’t seen that. And I think we need to put these documents into context,’” Landry added.

“It was extremely troubling to realize that this is a man who advises presidents of the United States and yet couldn’t recall information he put out, information he discussed, press conferences he held dealing with the COVID-19 response,” Landry added later.

Fauci and NIAID did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Landry declined to provide specific details about the deposition until it is made public, which will happen at a future date. But he said officials would be able to take some of what they learned to advance their case.

Landry and Schmitt sued the U.S. government in May, alleging it violated people’s First Amendment rights by pressuring big tech companies to censor speech. Documents produced by the government in response bolstered the claims. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, the Trump appointee overseeing the case, recently ordered Fauci and seven other officials to testify under oath about their knowledge of the censorship.

Doughty concluded that plaintiffs showed Fauci “has personal knowledge about the issue concerning censorship across social media as it related to COVID-19 and ancillary issues of COVID-19.”

While Fauci qualified as a high-ranking official, the burden of him being deposed was outweighed by the court’s need for information before ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction, Doughty said.

Wednesday was the first time Fauci testified under oath about his interactions with big tech firms, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Before the deposition, Landry said in a statement, “We all deserve to know how involved Dr. Fauci was in the censorship of the American people during the COVID pandemic; tomorrow, I hope to find out.”

“We’re going to follow the evidence everywhere it goes to get down to exactly what has happened, to get down to the fact that our government used private entities to suppress the speech of Americans,” Landry told The Epoch Times.

Other Depositions

The government moved to block some of the depositions, but not Fauci’s. It just won an order blocking the depositions of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, and Rob Flaherty, a deputy assistant to Biden.

Similar efforts to block the depositions of former White House press secretary Jen Psaki and FBI official Elvis Chan have been unsuccessful.

Chan is scheduled to answer questions next week. Psaki is scheduled to be deposed on Dec. 8.

Chan was involved in communicating with Facebook, LinkedIn, and other big tech firms about content moderation, according to evidence developed in the case and public statements he’s made. Psaki publicly said while still in the White House that platforms should step up against alleged mis- and disinformation.

Plaintiffs have already deposed several officials including Daniel Kimmage, an official at the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.

That center worked with Easterly’s agency to create a coalition of nonprofits called the Election Integrity Partnership, which pushed social media companies to censor speech.

Kimmage was also responsible for meetings during which censorship was discussed, with State Department official Samaruddin Stewart acting on his orders, according to documents produced by LinkedIn.

Motion to Dismiss

Earlier Wednesday, the government asked Doughty to throw out the case, asserting that plaintiffs have not shown the government engaged in coercion against the companies.

Even if government officials “urged social media companies do more to contain misinformation, any content moderation decisions made by social media companies ultimately ‘rested with’ those companies,” U.S. lawyers said.

“Even emphatic requests or strongly worded urging, see … (President Biden saying failing to take action against misinformation results in ‘killing people’), do not plausibly amount to coercion,” the lawyers added.

Plaintiffs are crafting a response to the motion.

Both sides are also preparing briefs regarding the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision that blocked the Murthy, Easterly, and Flaherty depositions.

The appeals court said Doughty had not adequately considered whether alternative means of obtaining the information sought exist, such as deposing lower-level officials or seeking written answers from higher-level officials.

Doughty ordered plaintiffs to file a brief by Nov. 29. The government has until Dec. 2 to respond. Plaintiffs may reply to that response by Dec. 5.


Funny how he can’t recall things that are already documented as happening.

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Leftist Virtue(!) Links from other news sources. Politics Uncategorized

Democrat Charged with ‘Wide Scale’ Election Fraud in Philadelphia, ‘Forgery of Signatures’

Visits: 38

Only THREE YEARS late…

by John Nolte

Attorney General and Governor-elect Josh Shapiro charged a Democrat campaign consultant with ‘wide scale’ voter fraud.

Here’s the pertinent information from the attorney general’s office:

Attorney General Josh Shapiro today announced the arrest of Rasheen Crews, a Philadelphia political consultant, for charges related to forging signatures on nomination petitions to get his clients on the ballot for the 2019 Democratic primary races in Philadelphia.

“In advance of the 2023 municipal elections, this arrest is an important reminder that interfering with the integrity of our elections is a serious crime,” said AG Shapiro. “By soliciting and organizing the wide scale forgery of signatures, the defendant undermined the democratic process and Philadelphians’ right to a free and fair election. My office is dedicated to upholding the integrity of the election process across the Commonwealth, to ensure everyone can participate in Pennsylvania’s future.”

 

Crews is charged with cheating in a Democrat primary. This means he cheated Democrats. If he had cheated Republicans, Shapiro wouldn’t do a thing.

Crews is alleged to have forged “thousands of signatures” to qualify his clients to have their names included on the ballot for some local 2019 Democrat primary races.

The petitions are said to have had over a thousand duplicate signatures. Some of the pages were photocopied and used again as separate pages. Some individuals whose names were on the petitions said they never signed.

And so, Crews is now charged with “criminal solicitation to commit forgery and theft by failure to make required disposition.”

What a stupid and lazy crime to commit.

Gathering signatures that qualify you (or your client) to appear on a ballot is not that difficult. I’ve done it, and almost no one says no if you ask. It’s only a matter of gathering supporters and going out to where the people are. If you’re going to pay people to forge a petition, why not pay them to gather legal signatures?

You see, it’s all about being a Democrat and believing you can be above the law because you’re a Democrat. The fact that you are a Democrat tells Democrats they can do whatever they want because they are virtuous, which means everything they do is virtuous simply because they do it.

And don’t get all happy that a Democrat politician is charging a Democrat here. Remember, this Crews guy is charged with cheating in a Democrat primary. This means he cheated Democrats. If he had cheated Republicans, Shapiro wouldn’t do a thing.

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Child Abuse Education Leftist Virtue(!) Links from other news sources.

The Inmates Running the Asylum: NJ mandates teaching “climate change” in almost all subjects – even PE

Visits: 41

Climate change exercise
New Jersey’s teachers are now required to teach climate change beginning in kindergarten and across most subjects, including art, social studies, world languages, and PE. Supporters hope the lessons will spread.

This article appeared in both  WaPo and The Hechinger Report.

PENNINGTON, N.J. — There was one minute left on Suzanne Horsley’s stopwatch and the atmosphere remained thick with carbon dioxide, despite the energetic efforts of her class of third graders to clear the air.

Horsley, a wellness teacher at Toll Gate Grammar School in Pennington, New Jersey, had tasked the kids with tossing balls of yarn representing carbon dioxide molecules to their peers stationed at plastic disks representing forests. The first round of the game was set in the 1700s, and the kids had cleared the field in under four minutes. But this third round took place in the present day, after the advent of cars, factories and electricity, and massive deforestation. With fewer forests to catch the balls, and longer distances to throw, the kids couldn’t keep up.

“That was hard,” said Horsley after the round ended. “In this time period versus the 1700s, way more challenging right?

“Yeah,” the students chimed in.

“In 2022, we got a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Horsley. “What’s the problem with it, what is it causing?”

“Global warming,” volunteered one girl.

Two years ago, New Jersey became the first state in the country to adopt learning standards obligating teachers to instruct kids about climate change across grade levels and subjects. The standards, which went into effect this fall, introduce students as young as kindergarteners to the subject, not just in science class but in the arts, world languages, social studies, and physical education. Supporters say the instruction is necessary to prepare younger generations for a world — and labor market — increasingly reshaped by climate change.

In Suzanne Horsley’s climate change lesson, yarn balls represent carbon dioxide molecules. Students try to clear the atmosphere — or playing field — of the balls. Credit: Caroline Preston/The Hechinger Report“There’s no way we can expect our children to have the solutions and the innovations to these challenges if we’re not giving them the tools and resources needed here and now,” said Tammy Murphy, the wife of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and a founding member of former Vice President Al Gore’s Climate Reality Action Fund, who pushed to get the standards into schools. Just as students must be able to add and subtract before learning calculus, she said, kids need to understand the basics of climate change — the vocabulary, the logic behind it — before they can tackle the climate crisis.Historically, climate change has not been comprehensively taught in U.S. schools, largely because of the partisanship surrounding climate change and many teachers’ limited grasp of the science behind it. That started to change in 2013, with the release of new national science standards, which instructed science teachers to introduce students to climate change and its human causes starting in middle school. Still, only 20 states have adopted the standards. A 2020 report from the National Center for Science Education and Texas Freedom Network Education Fund found that many states that didn’t follow the new guidance weren’t explicit in their standards about the human causes of climate change, and a few even promoted falsehoods about its causes and degree of seriousness. Meanwhile, discussion of climate change outside of science class remains relatively rare, educators and experts say.New Jersey is trying to change that, but it’s not a simple task. Like teachers around the country, educators here are exhausted after years of Covid disruptions, and, as elsewhere, some schools face dire teacher shortages. On top of this, many educators don’t feel prepared to teach climate change: A 2021 survey of 164 New Jersey teachers found that many lacked confidence in their knowledge of the subject, and some held misconceptions about it, confusing the problem with other environmental issues such as plastic pollution.

For now, the climate instruction requirements haven’t faced much pushback from climate deniers and conservatives, who’ve trained their attacks instead on the state’s new sex-education standards. But state officials anticipate some criticism as the lessons begin to roll out in classrooms.

A more pressing concern — and one that plagues any education initiative because of local control of schools — is that the lessons are rolling out unevenly across the state. Schools in affluent towns like Pennington tend to have more time and resources to introduce new instruction; schools in poorer communities like Camden, which are often the most vulnerable to climate disasters, may lack the resources to do so.

“I am happy to see New Jersey as a pioneer of climate change standards,” said Maria Santiago-Valentin, co-founder of the Atlantic Climate Justice Alliance, a group that works to mitigate the disproportionate harm of climate change on marginalized communities. But, she said, the standards will need to be revised if they fail to adequately emphasize the unequal impact of climate change on Black and Hispanic communities or ensure that students in those communities receive the instruction.

New Jersey is making some effort to help teachers adopt the standards, setting aside $5 million for lesson plans and professional development, and enlisting teachers like Horsley, who holds a master’s degree in outdoor education and has a passion for the environment, to develop model lessons.

Supporters are trying to ensure that teachers have plenty of examples for teaching the standards in age-appropriate ways, with racial and environmental justice as one of the key features of the instruction.

“It’s not like we’re asking kindergarteners to look at the Keeling Curve,” said Lauren Madden, a professor of education at the College of New Jersey who prepared a report on the standards, referring to a graph showing daily carbon dioxide concentrations. “We’re trying to point out areas where we can build some of those foundational blocks so that by the time students are in upper elementary or middle school, they really have that solid foundation.”

On a recent weekday, Cari Gallagher, a third grade teacher at Lawrenceville Elementary School in central New Jersey, was reading to her students the book “No Sand in the House!” which tells the story of a grandfather whose Jersey Shore home is devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Later, the students sat down to write about what they’d heard, drawing connections between the book and their own lives, world events or other books they’d read.

After the writing exercise, Gallagher directed the students to split into small groups to build structures that would help provide protection against climate change calamities. The kids used Legos, blocks, Play-Doh and straws to create carports, walls and other barriers.

That same morning, a kindergarten class at the elementary school listened as their teacher, Jeffrey Berry, held up a globe and discussed how different parts of the world have different climates.

At Hopewell Valley Central High School, in Pennington, art teacher Carolyn McGrath piloted a lesson on climate change this summer with a handful of students. The results of the class — four paintings featuring climate activists — sat on the windowsill of her classroom.

“It felt empowering to see people like me, who reflect me and my identities,” said Mackenzie Harsell, an 11th grader who’d created a portrait of 24-year-old climate activist Daphne Frias, who, like Mackenzie, is young, and is disabled. “This project told me I could do anything.”

Research suggests education does have an impact on how people understand climate change and their willingness to take action to stop it. One study found that college students who took a class that discussed reducing their carbon footprint tended to adopt environment-friendly practices and stick with them over many years. Another found that educating middle schoolers about climate change resulted in their parents expressing greater concern about the problem.

Jeffrey Berry, a kindergarten teacher at Lawrenceville Elementary School, encourages his students to care for plants and nature. Kindergarteners tend to the “garden of good manners,” pictured here. Credit: Caroline Preston/The Hechinger Report

“Education is certainly a way that we could have perhaps slowed down where we are right now in terms of the climate crisis,” said Margaret Wang, chief operating officer with SubjectToClimate, a nonprofit that is helping teachers develop and share climate lessons. More jobs related to climate change are already opening up, said Wang, and kids will need skills not just to discover scientific innovations but to tell stories, advocate, inspire and make public policy.

Back at Toll Gate elementary, Horsley, the wellness teacher, was getting ready to hand off the third graders to their classroom teacher. Before filing back into the school, a handsome brick building that suffered flooding last year during Hurricane Ida, students reflected on the lesson.

Ayla, a third grader dressed in jeans and tie-dye sneakers, said it made her want to “do something” about climate change because “I don’t want it to get so hot.”

Wes, another third grader, said adults could have done more to protect the environment. “I think they’ve done a medium job because they’re still producing a lot of carbon dioxide and a lot of people are littering still.”

“I feel bad for the other animals because they don’t know about it, so they don’t know what to do,” added his classmate, Hunter.

“We know about it,” said Abby, who was wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words “Girl Power.” She said it was up to humans to drive less and recycle and protect other species from climate disasters.

“When I first found out we were going to learn about climate change in gym, I was like, that’s surprising, because normally we learn that in class,” Abby added. “But I’m glad we did it in gym,” she continued. “It was really fun.”

Climate CHANGES.  Your hubris that we cause it or that we can change it is — unprintable.

Where’s Vito Corleone when you need him?

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Elections Opinion Politics

The Election in Pennsylvania: Thoughts

Visits: 62

Winning combination: shaved head, hoodie, tattoos, jogging shorts, & closed captioning — while slurring his replies into unintelligibility. Seriously? What were people thinking?

As of this writing, both Fetterman and Shapiro have won their contests.

I live in Central PA and am an elected voting official for my county. As such, I can say some things that the average Pennsylvanian might not realize.

  • The presiding “Judge” for a given precinct is elected. The gotcha is that sometimes there is absolutely nobody running, and a single write-in vote can be enough to “win” the election. Guess how I know?
  • Even though someone is “elected,” someone else may perform those duties.
  • The “Judge” has to assemble their group of poll workers, contacting each of them themselves.
  • A poll worker may not live in the same precinct they are working in if the “Judge” can’t find anyone IN the precinct willing to work. The BOE only helps if the judge can’t find enough people to man the polling place on their own.
  • In my precinct, not enough Democrats are interested in working, so Republicans fill slots theoretically for a Democrat.

Given all that, I can say that — in MY precinct at least — the tabulator was not connected to the internet — although everything is recorded on thumb drives that are kept separate from the tabulator during the return to the elections office. Also, there was no available wi-fi during polling, so that was moot in my precinct.

Training — in my county at least — is inadequate for the task at hand if one is a newbie. It also seems that each county must develop its own training materials.

Now, getting to the election itself.

Fetterman’s own Hometown Newspaper endorsed his opponent.

Why would anyone vote for a person who routinely dresses like a Hell’s Angels reject, who’s had a stroke (and who needed closed-captioning to debate), who slurred some statements into unintelligibility, and who was — time and again– the only person on the parole board to vote to let dangerous felons out of jail, and who chased and held an innocent, unarmed (black) jogger with a shotgun because he thought he heard gunfire (and has NEVER apologized for doing so) is beyond me.

He never called out Biden for saying he wanted to close all coal-powered electrical plants when PA is a coal-producing state.

Yet Fetterman seems to be winning as of this writing. The margin is slim, but…

The pandemic saw the destruction of a number of small businesses in the county. There is no more taxi service in State College (home to Penn State), where there were two companies in operation before it, plus Uber and Lyft drivers. Likewise, towing companies have diminished severely. Liberal paranoia about the Wuhan flu closed Penn State, killed a number of restaurants, and was generally an overblown PITA. Geisinger medical sites are STILL demanding masks to enter their kingdom, and Fetterman and Shapiro are okay with that. Should we look for more of the same?

I know that Pittsburgh, Philly, and Harrisburg are all liberal strongholds (along with State College, where students outnumber actual residents.) But has all common sense escaped these people?

Remember this headline from the acting (Democratic) Secy of State?

Why (how) was the race determined so quickly?

Is it simply more “orange man bad” TDS infecting their reason-deprived minds out there in the liberal enclaves?

What say you?

 

 

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