Sanity comes in the NY Trump case. For now. A short term removal of the gag order against Trump has been lifted for now. Appellate judge David Friedman stayed Engoron’s gag order citing Trump’s First Amendment rights. “considering the constitutional and statutory rights at issue an interim stay is granted.”
This is a no brainer case that never should have happened. Judge David Friedman of the state’s intermediate appeals court issued what’s known as a stay — suspending the gag order and allowing the former president to speak freely about court staff while a longer appeals process plays out.
Imagine if 40 percent of the gas stations you went to had pumps that were dry or out of order. You’d think you’d taken a time-warp back to the gas crisis under President Carter.
Well, welcome to what it’s like owning an electric vehicle. And not somewhere in back-country Montana — but in super-green, super-techy Los Angeles.
According to a Wall Street Journal article published Wednesday, a test of 30 non-Tesla fast-charging stations in the EV capital of America — stations that had a combined total of more than 120 stalls — revealed at least 40 percent of them had some sort of issue.
“L.A. County has more public DC fast chargers than any other in the country, according to the Atlas Public Policy research group,” wrote columnist Joanna Stern, herself the owner of a Ford Mustang Mach-E EV.
“From the beach in Santa Monica to parking garages under Rodeo Drive, my video producer Adam Falk and I visited 30 different non-Tesla DC fast-charger stations in a Rivian R1T pickup. I ran into problems at 13 of them — that’s over 40%. Oof is right.”
Stern said that “[d]uring my testing expedition, I encountered three problem categories. I pressed the companies on why they happen, and what can be done to fix them. And while it’s good that Tesla will start accepting non-Teslas in 2024, that might not put an end to the issues I’ve encountered.”
(For the record, the experiment was deliberately limited to Level 3 chargers, a cut above the Level 2 chargers that are the norm at most public charging stations. “I ignored the more common chargers known as Level 2 because they’re just too slow for quick fill-ups,” Stern wrote.)
The first problem was simple: The charging station was broken, with “a sign, a dead screen or an error reading ‘Charger unavailable’ or ‘Out of service,’” Stern wrote.
She found that fully 27 percent of the 126 individual Level 3 fast chargers at the EVgo, Electrify America and EVCS stations surveyed weren’t working for one reason or another.
The problem in some cases could be solved simply by a company technician turning a troublesome unit off and on again, Stern wrote, though that’s not much of a help to a motorist who needs the charge immediately.
Electrify America’s vice president of operations, Anthony Lambkin, also said that issues with power generally could force the units out of service.
But the unit could also have a broken part or defective connector, Stern wrote, which requires replacement parts.
Stern wrote that part of the solution is replacing gear that is as new as five years old because EV charging tech is advancing.
Scrapping such new equipment seems like it adds to exactly the kind of waste environmentalists will tell you they’re trying to avoid — but nothing says that you care like owning an EV, no matter what the actual impact is!
The second issue had to do with payment — namely, it being rejected.
“My favorite stop? No. 18, an EVgo in Culver City,” Stern wrote.
“After I repeatedly tried the credit-card reader with several different cards, the system demanded: ‘CASH ONLY,’” she wrote. “As if this was some hot-dog stand in the park — except there’s no money slot!”
This affected nearly 10 percent of the stalls that were otherwise working. Both swipe read and chip read errors were reported.
“Why do these machines hate credit cards? Again, a few reasons. Karim Farhat, the chief commercial officer at EVCS, said the makers of the charging hardware and the credit-card reader machines are often different, so there can be integration problems,” Stern wrote.
Sara Rafalson, a senior vice president at EVgo, told Stern the problem could be chip readers mandated by the state.
“The newest standards require more dependable contactless card readers,” Stern wrote.
So, the solution? According to Stern, motorists should go contactless and use online payment systems like Apple Pay — although it’s worth noting that certain EV models can be registered with apps operated by EVgo and Electrify America and payment is handled automatically as soon as you plug in.
Surprise surprise, that’s exactly what the operators posited was the solution to this all.
The third issue? Handshakes.
No, we’re not talking about a sign of friendliness exchanged between two individuals, but rather a software error between the charger and the car.
“The charger and the car are both computers, and they use industry standards to communicate about how much power to transfer,” Stern wrote.
“The Combined Charging System (aka CCS) — the technology integrated in most fast-charging non-Tesla EVs including the Rivian — requires a quick handshake. If there’s a timeout before things align, you have to unplug and start over.”
Stern continued: “These stations from EVgo, Electrify America and EVCS tend to support CCS along with the Tesla charger, known as the North American Charging Standard (NACS), and occasional older standards as well. Meaning, unlike with Tesla’s own stations, there could be a dizzying number of combinations of car and charger.”
And, to make things worse, according to EVCS chief commercial officer Karim Farhat, a software update could be enough to throw the handshake balance off and make the car unchargable.
The solution to this? Getting the industry to agree on a standard. This might be problematic, considering that Tesla’s system seems to be viewed most positively by those who own the vehicles. At present, however, those systems only work with Teslas. When Tesla starts allowing models from Ford, GM and Rivian to start using its stations, some will be able to handle the vehicles’ charging system — but in other locations will require motorists to use an adapter between CCS and Tesla’s North American Charging Standard. That could cause a whole new set of headaches, as well.
Los Angeles isn’t the only place in California experiencing these kinds of problems with EV charging stations. A 2022 study by the University of California, Berkeley found that 22.7 of plugs studied in the Bay Area weren’t working properly and 4.9 percent had cords too short to reach their vehicles. (Tesla stations weren’t included here, either.)
And it’s bad enough elsewhere in the country that even on a tour to promote electric vehicles, the entourage of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm couldn’t find places to charge at times.
It’s little wonder, then, that while EV adoption was a hot thing for the last few years, the trend has cooled. The Journal had previously reported that EV prices are being slashed as electric cars go unsold on lots they would have flown off of just a year or two ago.
California, meanwhile, wants to ban the sale of internal-combustion cars by 2035 — and, in its biggest city, 40 percent of the chargers aren’t working now.
I can see the new license plate slogan now. “California: Drive Like It’s the Future, Fill Up Like It’s 1979.” Not exactly the thing to make voters — even Golden State voters — go wild, is it? Well, unless lawmakers in Sacramento change course in a hurry, that could be exactly what drivers will face from San Diego to the Bay Area and beyond.
And don’t think the rest of America isn’t far behind — not if the Democrats have their way, anyhow.
Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down Biden ATF ‘Ghost Gun’ Limits – Rules Agencies Cannot ‘Write Laws’. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a 2022 rule aimed at weapons that could be built from parts bought online without a background check exceeded the agency’s authority.
Judge Kurt Engelhardt led the Fifth Circuit in a unanimous decision throwing out the ATF rule.
“ATF, in promulgating its Final Rule, attempted to take on the mantle of Congress to ‘do something’ with respect to gun control,” he continued. “But it is not the province of an executive agency to write laws for our nation. That vital duty, for better or for worse, lies solely with the legislature.” he wrote.
National Archives releases 82,000 pages of Emails Joe Biden Sent or Received on Three Private Pseudonym Accounts. It going to be interesting to see what’s in those e-mails.
To date, there is no indication from the National Archives in the court case that any of Biden’s email contain classified information. However, the president is under criminal investigation by Special Counsel Robert Hur for taking classified documents from his time as vice president and as a senator and storing them improperly in insecure locations in the garage of his Delaware home and a think tank office he kept in Washington D.C.
Byron Donald’s Says Possible New Evidence Showing Payments Made on Behalf of Joe Biden to Surface. On Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” with host Maria Bartiromo, it was revealed that there are more payments that went to Joe.
Congressman Donalds said Oversight Committee is actively finding new evidence of Biden corruption every day.
“Based on the information provided to my office over a period of years by multiple credible whistleblowers, there appears to be an effort within the Justice Department and FBI to shut down investigative activity relating to the Biden family,” Grassley wrote in a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Such decisions point to significant political bias infecting the decision-making of not only the Attorney General and FBI Director, but also line agents and prosecutors.”
How sick is this? CBS Reporter ordered by court to reveal her source.
Catherine Herridge, now a reporter for CBS News, was ordered in August to disclose the identity and motive of the source, who provided information about an FBI investigation into a Chinese scientist.
Judge Cooper, an Obama appointee, disagreed and tried to force Herridge to unmask her source.
“The Court recognizes both the vital importance of a free press and the critical role that confidential sources play in the work of investigative journalists like Herridge,” Cooper wrote in the ruling in August. “But applying the binding case law of this Circuit, the Court concludes that Chen’s need for the requested evidence overcomes Herridge’s qualified First Amendment privilege in this case.”
Herridge refused to disclose her source during the deposition and now she faces contempt charges and potential jail time.
On September 7, 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense gave an award of $749,387 to Newsguard Technologies, a private service that scores media outlets on “reliability” and “trust.” According to the suit, roughly 40,000 subscribers buy Newsguard subscriptions, getting in return a system of “Nutrition Labels” supposedly emphasizing “safe” content. Importantly, Newsguard’s customers include universities and libraries, whose users are presented with labels warning you that CBS is great and Tucker Carlson is dangerous:
Consortium News was labeled a purveyor of “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “false content,” and, worst of all, “anti-U.S.” This is despite the fact that, according to the suit, Newsguard only flagged six articles out of the tens of thousands Consortium News has published since the late award-winning reporter Robert Parry founded it in 1995. As Consortium News points out, Newsguard downgrades its entire 20,000+ library of available online articles with these flags based on the handful of edge cases, all of which involve criticism of U.S. foreign policy.
A particular irony is that Parry, a decorated AP and Newsweek reporter, founded Consortium News specifically to address topics suppressed by mainstream editors. Now Parry’s old site is being downgraded for dissenting reports on subjects like the 2014 Ukrainian coup and neo-Nazism in Ukraine, coincidentally topics that are “the subject of NewsGuard’s ‘Misinformation Fingerprints’ project that is under contract with the Cyber Command,” as the suit reads.
Newsguard denies it’s influenced by the government. In fact, its denials are part of the reason for the suit. When Michael Shellenberger and I testified before Congress in March, we mentioned Newsguard as a “government-funded” ratings service. I was quickly contacted by email by co-CEO Gordon Crovitz, who hastened to correct me: Newsguard isn’t government-funded, but merely an organization that receives government funds. He wrote:
As is public, our work for the Pentagon’s Cyber Command is focused on the identification and analysis of information operations targeting the US and its allies conducted by hostile governments, including Russia and China.
Our analysts alert officials in the US and in other democracies, including Ukraine, about new false narratives targeting America and its allies, and we provide an understanding of how this disinformation spreads online. We are proud of our work countering Russian and Chinese disinformation on behalf of Western democracies.
Crovitz added that “contrary to claims made in the hearings, we oppose any government involvement in rating news sources,” saying Newsguard “is entirely independent and free of any outside influence, including from the U.S. or any other government.”
The letter, CC’ed to co-CEO and editor Stephen Brill, was subject lined “Inaccuracies relating to NewsGuard.” I immediately wrote back:
Crovitz didn’t answer at the time, but Newsguard did simultaneously release the letter to the UK-based Press-Gazette. When I reached out for comment again after the filing of this litigation this week, asking once again how “government-funded” could be inaccurate, Crovitz finally answered, writing:
“We are ‘government funded’ in the same way that Verizon is ‘government funded: We have licensed data to the government for a fee, just as Verizon has provided telco services for a fee.”
He added:
The government pays us both for our commercial offerings. Our Pentagon contract is a single-digit percent of our revenues.
So, they are government-funded, just not wholly government-funded. These are the people rating others on accuracy, remember.
The conceit about funding isn’t complicated, but it works. Because Newsguard has other customers, it can claim to be an “independent” news service that just happens to downgrade news reports that contradict and/or criticize the policy of its major client, the Department of Defense. It’s censorship, but through a silencer. As the Consortium News suit reads:
NewsGuard and the United States in violation of the First Amendment are carrying out a governmental program under the “Misinformation Fingerprints” contract to publicly label, target and stigmatize news organizations as disfavored, unreliable, as journalistically not responsible… where said organizations differ or dissent from U.S. policy.
The suitalso details what I think is the more insidious part of the system. In the guise of an independent news service, Newsguard contacts outlets and interrogates them about disputed content, not-so-subtly pressing for retractions. Again, from the suit:
In the course of the government contract, NewsGuard and the United States have acted to retaliate against those news entities and media organizations that refuse to retract or correct their articles; such retaliation consists of the “false content” warnings, the red flag and associated content described in this Amended Complaint…
Racket received one of these irritating queries this year. Call it what you want, but it comes down to Pentagon Cyber Command giving a big check to “analysts” who happen to slap red revenue-sapping warning tags on outlets that report on controversial topics like war or government censorship.
As I wrote to Newsguard when they contacted me, “media outlets should gain and lose trust based on how they are evaluated by audiences, not paid services.” This system allows institutions like the Department of Defense that have no legal remit to meddle in the domestic news landscape to pressure private media outlets.
That’s over and above the DoD’s already hugest-on-earth-by-far public relations budget. Think of the scale of petty determination one must have to spend over $500 million a year on messaging and be so dissatisfied with the results that you feel the need to spend more on private services that downgrade independent news critics. It’s particularly grating that your tax dollars are spent hiring private services that label news outlets using terms like “anti-US.” State-sponsored impugning of patriotism is a bold stroke, even by the low moral standards of the anti-disinformation era.
“When media groups are condemned by the government as ‘anti-U.S.’,” said Bruce Afran, attorney for Consortium News, “the result is self-censorship and a destruction of the public debate intended by the First Amendment.”
I was remiss in not getting this story up before but will have more as the case goes on.
Consortium News is seeking “a permanent injunction… barring the government and NewsGuard from continuing such practices” and “more than $13 million in damages for defamation and civil rights violations.” You can read their coverage here.
Why not make the court based on ethnic population? And how about not using Affirmative Action? This goes nowhere. Introducing the bill were Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey; Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Alex Padilla of California. The bottom of the barrel.
Under the proposed legislation, a new justice would be appointed every two years, The Hillreported. That justice would hear every case for 18 years. The justice would then step back from the bench and hear just a “small number of constitutionally required cases.”
Appellate cases, which make up the bulk of the courts’ cases, would be heard only by the nine most recently appointed justices. The remainder would take part in a smaller number of cases under the court’s “original justification,” according to the news outlet.
A opinion piece writer in the Washington Post is asking the two white candidates to step aside and allow a person of color to be the Democrat candidate.
So will @AdamSchiff and @katieporteroc drop out of the Senate race, as this Washington Post columnist suggests, in order to make way for a black female Senator?
Or do they not really believe in the "diversity" they supposedly champion?https://t.co/RDGBIzSj0I
Foolish column in today’s WP: “Schiff and Porter are White; Lee is a Black woman. The right course is clear, isn’t it…Schiff and Porter should step aside.”
Martin Luther King would roll over in his grave. Good idea. Let’s judge people by the color of their skin. pic.twitter.com/ttbIGT2067
California’s Democratic leaders have an opportunity to do more than pay lip service to their rhetoric around diversity. It wouldn’t hurt to remind them that Harris gave up one of California’s seats to serve the country. They need to know, and show, that forcing genuine equality isn’t easy or comfortable. It requires hard decisions, especially for White people who might have to disappoint their friends or sacrifice their egos and ambitions for the sake of the larger cause.
Comer is demanding interviews with multiple White House staffers involved in the movement of boxes from the Penn Biden Center.
AP
Hits: 22
Comer probing White House’s ‘incomplete and misleading’ Biden classified docs timeline.
This article first appeared in the NY Post on October 11th.
James Comer is demanding that the White House explain why it put out an “incomplete and misleading” timeline related to the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center.
Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the panel obtained evidence that President Biden’s aides began inspecting the material at his private office nearly 20 months before the sensitive papers were said to be found.
Annie Tomasini, the 80-year-old president’s senior adviser, was the first of five White House staffers and a Department of Defense employee, to rummage through the documents and materials at Biden’s Washington, DC, think tank office, Comer claims.
This incident occurred just two months after the president’s inauguration, on March 18, 2021.
The House Oversight Committee says it has evidence that a White House employee inspected President Biden’s Penn Biden Center office in March 2021, earlier than previously known.ZUMAPRESS.com
The Kentucky Republican details four other expeditions to retrieve material from the Penn Biden Center that was previously unknown.
On May 24, 2022, Comer claimed that former White House counsel and Assistant to the President Dana Remus contacted former Biden aide and Department of Defense employee Kathy Chung – via her personal email address – to retrieve the commander in chief’s papers at the Penn Biden Center.
A month later, on June 28, 2022, Chung packed up Biden’s things at the think tank office, according to Comer.
A dozen classified documents were discovered at the Penn Biden Center on Nov. 2, 2022.AFP via Getty Images
Then, on June 30, 2022, Remus, White House staffer Anthony Bernal and another unknown White House employee went to Penn Biden Center to “take possession of the boxes of documents and materials but could not fit all of the boxes into their vehicle.”
“The next wave of assessing of files and looking at boxes,” according to the oversight chairman, began on Oct. 12, 2022, when White House staffer Ashley Williams and Biden’s personal attorney Pat Moore visited the president’s former office.
The following day, Williams returned to Penn Biden Center and left with “a few” of Biden’s boxes, and Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney, texted Chung that Moore had begun sorting through the boxes.
“Each of the encounters above was omitted from the White House’s and President Biden’s personal attorney’s public statements,” Comer argues, noting that a January statement from Bauer included a timeline of event that “inexplicably” begins on Nov. 2, 2022 – when the lawyer claims he first stumbled upon classified material that was stored at the Penn Biden Center.
Comer is demanding interviews with multiple White House staffers involved in the movement of boxes from the Penn Biden Center.AP
“President Biden’s timeline was incomplete and misleading,” Comer writes. “It omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating among multiple White House officials, Ms. Chung, Penn Biden Center employees, and President Biden’s personal attorneys to retrieve the boxes containing classified materials.”
The oversight chairman adds that “there is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials.”
Comer requests transcribed interviews with the White House staffers involved in the previously unknown activity at the Penn Biden Center, and access to all White House communications regarding the movement of material from the think tank and the drafting of public statements related to the discovery of sensitive documents.
The letter comes days after special counsel Robert Hur, who is overseeing the Justice Department’s probe into Biden’s mishandling of White House documents, conducted two “voluntary” interviews with the president at the executive mansion.
“As we have said from the beginning, the President and the White House are cooperating with this investigation, and as it has been appropriate, we have provided relevant updates publicly, being as transparent as we can consistent with protecting and preserving the integrity of the investigation,” Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, said Monday.
The Nov. 2, 2022, discovery of at least a dozen classified documents – some related to the United Kingdom, Ukraine and Iran – at his old office near the US Capitol was kept under wraps by the White House through the 2022 midterm elections and for weeks after.
More sensitive documents were discovered in Biden’s Wimington home in January after an FBI search. The bureau also searched the president’s Rehoboth Beach, Del., home as part of the probe but did not turn up any additional documents.
Biden has dismissed the shocking findings as simply “stray papers” that ended up on his property and private office because of careless aides who packed up his White House office over a decade ago.
