1st amendment wins again. President Biden getting his COVID-19 shot. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/File)
Winning. Biden weaponizing DOJ and Social Media ruled a violation of the 1st Amendment. It does my heart to see these rulings. What a way to end the week.
The Biden administration “ran afoul” of the First Amendment by trying to pressure social media platforms over controversial COVID-19 content, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled Friday.
In its 75-page ruling, the appeals court, said that President Biden, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FBI and the surgeon general cannot “coerce” social media platforms to remove content it deems problematic.
Fifth Circuit just unanimously affirmed Judge Doughty’s injunction against White House, CDC, FBI and others — giving Americans and #FreedomOfSpeech a major win against censorship, totalitarianism, and Biden. #FirstAmendment
Last week Noam Dworman of Comedy Cellar USA, on his Live at the Table podcast, interviewed Washington Post columnist Philip Bump. It was a debate, with Bump invited because he’s “most associated with pouring cold water on the Hunter Biden story,” as Noam put it.
The show went viral as Bump, semi-reprising the performance of Russiagate champion and Guardian reporter Luke Harding walking on an interview with Aaron Mate, left abruptly after conceding Hunter’s line, “unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary” was evidence. To be fair the show had run long, but Bump insisted earlier that there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing on Joe Biden’s part, so it wasn’t a timely exit — not that I’m unfamiliar with interviews that go sideways.
I know Noam and my name got dragged into this somewhat absurdly (Bump said I had “an agenda,” as Noam brought up tapes between Petro Poroshenko and Joe Biden I’d referenced), but didn’t want to say anything. Then a subsequent show also went sideways, for much the same reason. More on that in a moment. Back to Bump v. Dworman:
Many exchanges in the podcast stand out, not in a good way. Bump repeatedly tells Noam his problem is that he’s not accepting his, Bump’s, versions of things. At about the 56-minute mark, Bump chides Noam for bringing up things that have been “debunked.” When Noam asks, “What’s been debunked?” Bump says, “I’ve written about this!” He adds, “It’s been debunked in the sense that I’ve already addressed this, and presented the counter-arguments to it.”
At about 1:05 in the video above, Noam brings up “the issue of the press. The press actually bothers me more than Joe Biden…” To which Bump interjects [emphasis mine]: “But you don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and telling you you’re wrong about these things and you don’t listen.” About five minutes later Noam again brings up media, and Bump says, “But again, you’re attacking the press, because you refuse to listen to what we’re saying.”
Nearly an hour into the show Bump began complaining he’d been set up, and I know what he was thinking, having of course also been in the position of being invited to an interview with someone who perhaps wants to make an ass of you. I actually don’t think that’s Noam’s game, but even if it were, the answer isn’t to keep repeating, “How can we talk when you keep insisting I get down from this high horse I’m on?”
Bump acts like he and his paper haven’t gotten all sorts of thingswrong in recent years, implicitly rejecting the notion that people like Noam have reason to question anything “already addressed” by papers like the Post. If you need an explanation for declining ratingsand circulation of mainstream press outlets, this vibe is it.
The other episode involved professor and frequent media commentator Dan Drezner, who laughs hysterically and at great length the instant it registers that Noam plans on countering a claim that Trump was a bad president. It’s at about the 52-minute mark:
Drezner is doing what Bump did, albeit with more humor: gagging in disbelief when a mainstream piety sent up the flagpole isn’t instantly saluted.
I think a lot of people in the world I once inhabited, in center-left media and academia, don’t realize they’ve slipped into a deeply unattractive habit of substituting checklists of unquestioned assumptions for thought. In the blue bubble Trump’s limitless evil is an idea with such awesome gravitational pull that it makes nuanced discussion about almost anything impossible. It’s why no one in media could suggest even the possibility he hadn’t colluded with Russia. He’s become an anti-God, of a faith that requires constant worship. When do we get to go back to being atheists?
Huntington Beach banned mask and vaccine mandates on Wednesday as Democrats push Covid hysteria again just in time for election season.
Huntington Beach, dubbed ‘Surf City USA,’ is a city on the Southern California coastline in Orange County, a traditionally conservative enclave that boasts multi-million dollar beachfront properties.
The Huntington Beach City Council on Wednesday voted 4-3 to ban universal mask and vaccine mandates.
Mayor Pro Tem Gracey Van Der Mark blasted the mask mandates previously imposed during the height of the Covid hysteria in 2020 and 2021.
Gracey Van Der Mark said masks “unnecessarily limited the freedoms of the citizens of Huntington Beach — even those who were not around anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 or at risk of any exposure.”
Wife of Trump Ally Indicted in Georgia Receives Letter in Mail: ‘This Is Not Going to End Well’
The individual who mailed this to my wife almost certainly has “Be Kind” in their Twitter profile and “Coexist” on their car bumper. pic.twitter.com/uxmWKRueWo
One of the Georgia residents indicted along with former President Donald Trump last week says his wife received a troubling letter by mail.
In a social media post, David Shafer, a former chair of the Georgia Republican Party, showed an image of a letter that contained a photo of Phillips State Prison in Buford, Georgia.
The letter bears the hand-written legend, “David’s Retirement Home.”
Underneath the photo is written, “Lee, Get Out Now And RunAs Fast As You Can. This Is Not Going To End Well for David.”
This from an acolyte of the “tolerant” “inclusive” Diversity Championing Leftist Democrats — TPR (Disclosure. I was a registered Democrat — like my parents and grandparents — for 30+ years. I didn’t leave the party; the party left me. It has leaned more and more toward totalitarian elitism, demanding that everyone think their way ONLY and allow Big Brother to take care of them. The days of JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you…” attitude are long gone.)
“Grateful to everyone who has reached out to encourage me. I have never once felt alone,” he posted in response to a posting that said a fundraising account had been set up to help him.
Many on social media supported Shafer, who made his mug shot after his arrest into his profile photo on X. “Democrats are out of control,” one poster wrote.
Shafer faces eight counts against him, including impersonating a public officer, forgery, false statements, and attempting to file false documents.
He was accused of helping organize a meeting at which he and 15 other people signed documents saying they were the true electors who should represent the state.
“Mr. Shafer and the other Republican Electors in the 2020 election acted at the direction of the incumbent President and other federal officials,” the filing said.
Other X/Twitter posters had various comments, including: “Democrats out of control” and “This is disgusting. Prayers my friend.”
Pence got one thing right. Biden blew it when it came to COVID.
Let’s face it, Pence is not going to be the Republican nominee, but he does have firsthand knowledge of some of the White House policies and procedures.
The left was screaming about needing the vaccines. Even claimed that the vaccines would prevent COVID ( We found out more vaccinated started dying than the unvaccinated under Biden. ).
The Biden administration, after taking office in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, “dropped the ball” after the previous administration left it with the tools to keep up with the fight, former Vice President Mike Pence, who is campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination, said on Newsmax Saturday.
“It’s remarkable to think that that the Biden administration, in their first year of COVID, tragically lost more Americans to the COVID pandemic, [even] with all of the tools that we left behind, than we lost in a year when we began with no tools whatsoever,” Pence said on Newsmax’s “America Right Now.”
Instead, under President Joe Biden, “they defaulted into vaccine mandates, and they dropped the ball on testing,” said Pence. “They dropped the ball on therapeutics, so there’s a lot of lessons to be learned.
At first blush, the question posed in my title sounds overwrought, and will no doubt seem tendentious to some. Perhaps it is a little. But let’s think about it. Are there areas of human endeavor that would be more advanced without the resource-sucking, brain-draining, attention-diverting impacts of leftism? I think so.
First, consider the sheer monetary costs associated with leftism: big government, high taxes, redistribution from more to less productive and efficient endeavors, and so on. I have read estimates that human society would be 40 percent wealthier without this ongoing drain.* What could be done if all those extra resources remained in private hands?
Second, we have the regulatory costs. How much further along would human progress be without regulatory burdens and compliance costs? How many things weren’t invented because the barriers to entry were too high? How many startups ran afoul of Hillary Clinton’s “I can’t worry about every under-capitalized business” attitude?
Third, there is the brain-drain. The left killed between 100 and 240 million people in the 20th century alone (no one knows for sure how many). What brilliant minds were lost? What might they have done? What discoveries might their children have made, and their children’s children? We’ll never know.
Similarly, there are about 40 million abortions worldwide every year, and while that’s not the exclusive province of the left…it mostly is. Setting aside how you feel on the political issue of abortion, that is 40 million more minds and contributions that will never be. Every year.
Then there is the diversion of brilliant minds to pointless agenda items of the left, like trying to convince humanity that the next eco-pocalypse is right around the corner. Billions of dollars and thousands of minds are now being dumped into just one thing: the watermelon scheme of climate change. That money and those minds could be working to push a thousand different boundaries…any one of which might produce the next big advance. But scientists are human—they go where the money is, and the money is in climate change. Apologies to our ancestors who thought we’d be living in cities on the moon by now.
And it’s not just the geniuses—those diversions impact all of us. Think of all the energy we are putting into political fights: chasing nonexistent bugbears conjured up by the media, arguing online, defending ourselves from the predations of government, and otherwise wasting energy on politics and manufactured “causes.” How much more productive could each of us be with that precious time? The right shares responsibility for some of this diversion too…just not as much.
Diseases never cured. Boundaries never broken. How much further along would our space exploration be? How about longevity research?
We’ll never know.
Obviously I am engaged in counterfactual speculation here. I am sure people on the left will object, or even come up with counter-scenarios. I think they’d be wrong. We know their ideology has sky-high costs in treasure. We know it has cost us in blood, with its bottomless predilection for democide. We know how much time they spend trying to convince us of things that are not true. We’ll never know just how much all this has retarded human progress. I suspect it may be more than we realize.
Eastman explains it all. He did not urge Vice President Pence to reject electors whose certification was still pending. Eastman was on with Laura Ingraham the other night and explained exactly what he told Mike Pence. Here’s part of his discussion with Ingraham.
“Several things,” Eastman replied. “Some people had urged that Vice President Pence simply had power to reject electors whose certification was still pending.” “I don’t believe that,” Ingraham shot back. “That’s one thing I don’t agree with.”
“I don’t either,” the lawyer said. “And I explicitly told Vice President Pence in the Oval Office on January 4th, that even though it was an open issue, under the circumstances we had, I thought it was the weaker argument and it would be foolish to exercise such power even if you had it.”
“What I recommended, and I’ve said this repeatedly,” he continued, “is that he accede to requests from more than 100 state legislators in the swing states to give them a week to try and sort out the impact of what everybody acknowledged was illegality in the conduct of the election.”
And from Eastman asking Pence to wait a week the far left took that to mean Pence needed to rig the election.
Fani ignoring the Constitution. New Civil Rights Movement website photo.
How crazy is this? Fani says defendants have no Constitutional rights. Fani Willis stated that based on Georgia law, asking for a speedy trial or separation from the other defendants causes this.
“Defendants cannot now argue that they are entitled to the State’s discovery responses ten (10) days in advance of trial.”
“Defendants cannot now argue that they are entitled to notice of the State’s similar transaction evidence ten (10) days in advance of trial.”
“Defendants cannot now complain that they received less than seven (7) days notice of the trial date in this case.”
Lmfao! This isn’t true! It’s not how the law works.
But this really is a mask off moment.
Fulton County DA threatens to violate the rights of the defendants because she’s not prepared for trial. https://t.co/xTYtgcykHR
Testimony this week in federal court by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reportedly contradicted claims that former President Donald Trump insisted he violate his oath of office by fabricating enough votes to win the state.
As Breitbart News has long noted, the media have misrepresented the January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger, quoting Trump as telling Raffensperger that he should “find” the votes necessary for him to win. In fact, Trump said “I just want to find” the votes, referring to his own state of mind. Moreover, the context was that Trump believed he actually had won the state of Georgia, and the votes simply had not been properly counted yet.
Raffensperger took the stand in a federal court in the Northern District of Georgia as part of a hearing on a motion by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who is one of Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the criminal case in Fulton County, Georgia. Meadows argued that the case should be removed to federal court, because he was just working for the president, and therefore cannot be tried in state court under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.
Meadows stunned many observers by testifying in his own defense. Raffensperger was subpoenaed to testify by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. According to George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, Raffensperger testified that the call, while “extraordinary,” was a “settlement negotiation” in the context of an argument over whether to pursue another recount of votes — not a demand to make up new votes.
The call was misrepresented by the [Washington] Post and the transcript later showed that Trump was not simply demanding that votes be added to the count but rather asking for another recount or continued investigation. Again, I disagreed with that position but the words about the finding of 11,780 votes was in reference to what he was seeking in a continued investigation. Critics were enraged by the suggestion that Trump was making the case for a recount as opposed to just demanding the addition of votes to the tally or fraudulent findings.
Raffensperger described the call in the same terms. He correctly described the call as “extraordinary” in a president personally seeking such an investigation, particularly after the completion of the earlier recount. That is manifestly true. However, he also acknowledged that this was a “settlement negotiation.”
So what was the subject of the settlement talks? Another recount or further investigation. The very thing that critics this week were apoplectic about in the coverage. That does not mean that Trump had grounds for the demand. Trump’s participation in the call was extraordinary and his demands were equally so. However, the reference to the vote deficit in demanding continued investigation was a predictable argument in such a settlement negotiation. As I previously stated, I have covered such challenges for years as a legal analyst for CBS, NBC, BBC, and Fox. Unsupported legal claims may be sanctionable in court, but they have not been treated as crimes.
If Meadows succeeds in his bid to have the case removed to federal court, other defendants will do the same, and may ague that the charges should be dismissed because of the Supremacy Clause and on other grounds. However, Raffebsperger’s testimony could also be used to dismiss at least some of the Fulton County indictments, particularly regarding “Solicitation of Violation of Oath by Public Officer,” in reference to the phone call with Raffensperger.
Riverside Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli’s bill to force California schools to out transgender students to their parents never got a hearing in the Assembly. But it could soon get a hearing from California voters. Essayli is set to join Assemblyman Joe Patterson, R-Rocklin, on the west steps of the Capitol at 3 p.m.
Monday to unveil a trio of proposed anti-transgender ballot initiatives. Joining the Republican lawmakers are conservative activists Jonathan Zachreson, Scott Davison and Jay Reed; speakers Erin Friday of the group Our Duty; former NCAA athlete Sophia Lorey of the conservative California Family Council, and “de-transitioner” Chloe Cole, who headlined her own event at the Capitol earlier this year.
The activists, calling themselves Protect Kids California, are looking to advance three ballot initiatives that would: Force schools to notify parents if their child uses a different name or pronouns; Block transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports programs; Block transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming medical treatment. Once a proposed ballot measure has been written, its language must be submitted to the California Attorney General’s Office for review.
It will then have until Oct. 26 to prepare a title and summary, at which point the measure’s backers will be cleared to begin circulating petitions for signatures. Proposed initiative statutes require 546,651 signatures, while constitutional amendments require 874,641, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office. is the last day for the California secretary of state to determine whether an initiative petition meets the minimum signature requirement.
An account for Protect Kids California on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, points to polling it says shows that California voters would support the measures. The group doesn’t cite the source of the polling on its website. The event was promoted on X by Northern California chapters of the group Moms for Liberty.
