When did the Progressive hate towards Jews rear it’s ugly head at colleges and the business world? The hate has been there for years. I saw it towards myself and family when I called myself a Christian Jew (Jewish family member on my mothers side).
Claire Finkelstein, director of Penn’s Center for Ethics and Law, said anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses predates the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. She cited the pro-Palestinian BDS movement – or boycott, divestment, sanctions – founded in 2005.
Recently a group of UPenn professos went to Israel to show their support for Israel. Most likely to show that not all the professors were like the one who resigned because of her hatred towards Jews.
While it might be amusing that the latest victim of a phony police call of a violent crime in progress was extreme-left Billionaire George $oro$ (who probably wasn’t even in the country at the time), “Swatting” is no joke.
George Soros’ posh Southampton estate was swatted over the weekend as the leftist billionaire became the latest high-profile victim of the 911 pranks.
Southampton police said they received the 911 call shortly before 9 p.m. Saturday, with the caller telling cops he had just shot his wife at the ritzy South Shore manse and was threatening to shoot himself — sending officers rushing to the scene.
The report turned out to be bogus, Southampton Police Detective Herman Lamison said Monday.
“Spoke to security, searched the premises. It was [a] negative problem,” one cop responding to the scene reported, according to a recording of police radio traffic obtained by The Post.
Lamison did not identify Soros as the owner of the home, but sources confirmed to The Post that it was indeed the 93-year-old billionaire’s Long Island estate on Old Town Road.
It is not clear if Soros or members of his family were home at the time of the incident.
The Southampton prank was just the latest incident of swatting — phony calls to police reporting crimes at a specific address — targeting high-profile individuals.
On Friday, police in Virginia responded to the home of George Washington University legal scholar Jonathan Turley after a bogus 911 call to Fairfax County police that someone had been shot at the address.
“Yes, I was swatted this evening,” Turley said in a statement. “It is regrettably a manifestation of our age or rage.”
On Christmas Day, police were dispatched to the home of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) following a fake 911 call from a man who said he shot his girlfriend there.
Four other Georgia lawmakers — Republican state Sens. John Albers, Kay Kirkpatrick and Clint Dixon, and Democrat Kim Jackson — were swatted the same day, according to reports.
Another victim of the Christmas Day pranks was upstate New York GOP Rep. Brandon Williams.
On Thursday, Georgia GOP Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was also swatted, with a bogus bomb threat called into police — one day after US Rep. Rick Scott (R-Fla) was the target of another call that sent police rushing to his Naples home.
Among the other recent swatting victims were Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, and US Rep. Kevin Miller, an Ohio Republican.
Soros has backed dozens of far-left prosecutor candidates across several cities as part of his efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system, including Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Kim Foxx in Chicago, former DA Kim Gardner in St. Louis and others.
However, Soros’ work to overhaul the criminal justice system extends beyond prosecutors.
In what seems like an “uh-oh” realization that swatting call targets have been almost exclusively conservatives, there has been a sudden uptick in high-profile Democrats being targetted by these calls.
To long-time Disqus conservatives, this scenario sounds suspiciously like the infamous upvote theft bot of a couple of years ago that destroyed commenters’ ability to post on new sites because their ‘Disqus Rep” fell below the threshold of automatically going to pending — or marked as spam. When people started pointing out that all those losing their upvotes were conservatives, suddenly, a few token leftists were hit (and their vote counts were quietly restored soon after). Some conservative posters have had their upvotes restored, but only when an individual begged a Disqus staffer who was somewhat sympathetic to the user’s plight.
But while Disqus’s little dirty trick didn’t harm anyone in the real world, Swatting definitely could. And — sooner or later — it will.
In the interests of transparency, I have had this happen to me, and having a gun pointed at you for no good (ie, legal) reason is NOT conducive to a calm, well-thought-out analysis of the situation. Using one’s wife to hide the gun while standing out of the line of sight escalates an already bad situation.
Sooner or later, someone is going to get seriously injured or killed.
If it’s a conservative “MAGAt,” the story will be shrugged off. But if it happens to be a leftist, all hell will break loose, IMHO.
A Texas teen managed to safely steer her car off the road and save her passengers’ lives after being fatally shot in a road rage incident.
Louise Jean Wilson, 17, along with her boyfriend and a friend, were driving through Houston on Dec. 10 when the incident occurred, the New York Post reported.
According to police, Wilson unintentionally swerved in front of a four-door sedan to avoid getting into an accident on Interstate 45.
“The vehicle that they had cut off accelerated and overtook her on her driver’s side,” Det. Caleb Bowling said during a news conference. That was when the driver of the sedan opened fire.
Wilson pulled her vehicle off to the side of the freeway before succumbing to her injuries. She died at the scene.
“Louise’s last act was to safely pull over, most likely saving the lives of the two [passengers],” Bowling said. “It was a heroic act for her to be able to get that car to the side and stopped with the injuries that she sustained.”
A 17-year-old male passenger was hospitalized with a gunshot wound and released. A second male passenger was not injured.
“Our daughter was just trying to go to the beach to watch the sunrise with her boyfriend on her day off before she had to go back to work again,” said Wilson’s father, Daniel Wilson.
“She ended up dying a hero. She was shot through her heart, and she was still able to safely pull over the car and save people in her car and other people who were driving. She wanted to help people, and she helped them.”
Daniel Wilson also addressed his daughter’s killer.
“Just think about … what you took from this world and what she could have done,” he said. “Lay that on your conscience, whoever did this. Just know you gave an angel, but you took our baby girl.”
“Louise was a great girl, a wonderful soul, a great daughter, granddaughter and sister, and to have her life senselessly taken by a dirtbag — this should not have happened,” Wilson’s uncle, Leo Amoling, told KTRK-TV.
“I know it’s not just happening to us. There is a real crime issue in this country. We just want justice.”
The suspect, described as a black male in his mid-20s, is still at large, according to the Post.
According to Wilson’s obituary, she graduated high school a year early and was “just a few classes shy” of obtaining an associate’s degree. She hoped to work in law enforcement.
“Louise was a caring and gentle soul with a lovely personality that could light up a room,” the obituary said.
“Her life had far reaching impacts that only now we are able to comprehend. She is forever in our hearts and memories. We know she is up there with God singing and dancing in the perfect, peaceful landscape of heaven.”
Yes Virginia, when you protest against the war and carry Hamas flags, you do support Hamas and not Israel. You see these protests and always in the crowd are folks chanting racial slurs and making comments that support Hamas.
Asking Garland to do something illegal?
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
How afraid is Biden of Trump? Ask the NY Times.
Times reporters Katie Benner, Katie Rogers, and Michael S. Schmidt published an article on April 2, 2022, about Biden’s frustration with Garland about the lack of prosecution against Trump, according to two people familiar with Biden’s comments.
“The attorney general’s deliberative approach has come to frustrate Democratic allies of the White House and, at times, President Biden himself,” the Times reported. “As recently as late last year, Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments.”
“And while the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6,” the report added.
The CDC’s most recent weekly vaccination update says that “receipt of the COVID-19 vaccine is low across all socio-demographic subgroups and has consistently varied by age, race and ethnicity, poverty status, health insurance status, and urbanicity.” As of December 2, fewer than 18% of adults reported getting the updated COVID-19 vaccine since Sept. 14, and about another 15% of adults said they would “definitely” get vaccinated.
RSV — respiratory syncytial virus infection — is another one of those bugs that poses its most serious risk to the 60-and-over crowd. Although a serious RSV infection might require hospitalization, the uptake rate among the eligible 60-plus cohort is just 16%.
Vaccinations for the ordinary flu are down a bit, too. “Adult vaccination rates for influenza reached their peak for the 2020-2021 cycle,” the Washington Examiner reported on Monday, “with 50.2% of those over 18 getting vaccinated. For the 2022-2023 season, however, only 46.9% of the same population obtained their shot.” Rates are expected to be about the same or lower for the 2023-2024 flu season.
The drop isn’t huge, but the trendline is clear: Americans don’t seem to be all that worried about the flu — and aren’t concerned at all about COVID or RSV.
That’s not for any lack of effort on the part of our public health system.
The CDC began its big vaccination push over two months ago with this tragically hip tweet from CDC director Mandy Cohen.
Fetch? Retch!
Whatever your opinion about the safety or efficacy of this or that vaccine, we can all agree that seeing a 44-year-old medical doctor/public health official try to be hip is painfully cringeworthy. Besides, as any “Mean Girls” fan could tell you, “Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen! It’s not going to happen!”
Chicago health officials took a more traditional (and much less wince-inducing) approach on Monday, with Dr. Colleen Nash, associate professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Rush University Medical Center, warning, “We’ve now been lucky enough to kind of live with COVID but still enjoy normal life and activities and things. And that is directly attributable, at least in part, to vaccinations. So I would really encourage people to do that if they haven’t already.”
While reports show that Illinois’ hospitalization rate for COVID is “ticking up,” the actual numbers aren’t anything like 2020, with an additional 1,251 COVID hospital admissions this week statewide. And yet, according to the Chicago Tribune, only about 11% of city residents are fully current on their COVID-19 vaccinations.
The CDC tried on Twitter/X again on Saturday, reminding readers, “‘Tis the season for joy and family. Now is the time to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and flu before you see your loved ones again.”
While the replies were all over the place in tone, this one reasonable-sounding tweet captured the general sentiment.
When vaccination rates are down even for the innocuous (and generally trusted) flu shot, it’s clear that the CDC no longer enjoys the clout it used to with the American public.
On a personal note, I’ve done everything a columnist can do to keep this piece 100% evenhanded. The only strong opinion expressed here was a joking one about Dr. Cohen’s use of “fetch” in her October 4 tweet.
You got to be kidding me. After a crushing defeat, Lee is running for her Congressional seat. Just a few weeks back, Lee got her butt whipped in the mayoral race. Now she’s running for her old seat again.
She will be running against a former employee of hers. I guess some folks just can’t walk away.
Out with the rubbish.
Photo by DJ Paine on Unsplash
Is it really one down two to go? House approves resolution demanding MIT; Harvard presidents resign after antisemitism testimony.
Is it really one down two to go? Yesterday we saw a bipartisan resolution condemning antisemitism and asking two college presidents to resign. But, does anyone think that there’s only two college Presidents who feel like the ones who testified?
So, who’s next with these radical groups? Will they take their protests to the homes of the Jews, Christians, and any other group or religious organization they have issues with? And when do the Democrat politicians stand up and say enough is enough?
Looking across the country, I’m willing to bet the number is huge,10,20, maybe close to 100? This is a sickness, and I don’t know how you fix it. If anyone has the answer or answers, I’m all ears.
(Left) Special counsel Jack Smith in Washington on Aug. 1, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) / (Right) Former U.S. President Donald Trump. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
(Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Pool via Getty Images)
Reported by THE EPOCH TIMES
The special counsel’s office is preempting former President Donald Trump’s appeal of his case to the U.S. Supreme Court by petitioning the high court for a writ certiorari before judgment—an immediate ruling—of whether the former president can rely on his presidential immunity defense.
Special counsel Jack Smith has charged President Trump on four counts regarding his actions to challenge the 2020 election results; President Trump has filed four motions to dismiss the case. Several were rejected by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, and the defense has since appealed the motion to dismiss based on presidential immunity to a federal appeals court.
The prosecutors are asking the Supreme Court “whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”
President Trump had asked the district court to pause proceedings pending appeal, noting that he would seek that pause from the appeals court if the district court didn’t grant it. If granted in either court, the legal strategy would certainly throw off the trial schedule.
Prosecutors are now asking the Supreme Court to issue judgment before the appeals court makes a decision.
“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy,” the special counsel’s team argued in the new filing. “The district court rejected respondent’s claims, correctly recognizing that former Presidents are not above the law and are accountable for their violations of federal criminal law while in office.”
They argue that President Trump’s legal strategy in the appellate court now jeopardizes the March 4, 2024, trial date.
“It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” the prosecutors argued.
They claimed that President Trump is “profoundly mistaken” on the law and only the Supreme Court can “definitively resolve” the issues at hand. The court’s granting the writ of certiorari before judgment would “provide the expeditious resolution that this case warrants.”
he former president issued a statement describing the move as a “Hail Mary” on the prosecutor’s part, “by racing to the Supreme Court and attempting to bypass the appellate process.”
He also noted Mr. Smith’s poor record at the high court, which he stated “has not been kind to him, including by handing down a rare unanimous rebuke when the Court overturned him 8-0 in the McDonnell case,” in which Mr. Smith prosecuted former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.
President Trump reiterated his belief that the prosecution is politically motivated.
“There is absolutely no reason to rush this sham to trial except to injure President Trump and tens of millions of his supporters. President Trump will continue to fight for Justice and oppose these authoritarian tactics,” he stated.
Trial Date
The trial on March 4, one day before Super Tuesday Republican primary elections in more than a dozen states, would be the first of the four criminal cases against President Trump.
The 45th president, who has pleaded not guilty to 91 criminal counts, was also facing a May trial date in a federal criminal case in the Southern District of Florida, which is almost certainly going to be postponed as the judge is set to revisit the trial schedule in January.
In Georgia, prosecutors have pushed for an August 2024 trial start, which President Trump’s attorney has argued falls too close to the general election, likely putting jurors in the position of voting for or against him while they attempt to try the case objectively.
President Trump is also facing criminal charges in Manhattan; prosecutors originally set a March 2024 trial date, but the court is set to postpone the case around the schedules of these other criminal cases.
On top of that, President Trump faces several civil lawsuits, one with trial ongoing in New York and another two set to go to trial in mid-January.
Presidential Immunity?
On Dec. 1, a federal appeals court ruled that presidential immunity doesn’t shield President Trump from lawsuits regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach and noted that the court wouldn’t be the final authority on the issue.
In November 2022, Mr. Smith was appointed special counsel on issues related to the Capitol breach, just days after President Trump announced his candidacy. This summer, he unsealed the indictment against President Trump alleging criminal conspiracy in his actions to challenge the 2020 results, tying much of the case to Jan. 6, 2021.
U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan ruled that President Trump was acting as candidate Trump in much of what he is being sued for and that his actions weren’t official acts of a president.
“When a sitting president running for re-election speaks in a campaign ad or in accepting his political party’s nomination at the party convention, he typically speaks on matters of public concern. Yet he does so in an unofficial, private capacity as office-seeker, not an official capacity as office-holder. And actions taken in an unofficial capacity cannot qualify for official-act immunity,” he wrote, rejecting an appeal filed by President Trump, who is also facing civil lawsuits related to Jan. 6, 2021.
The judge added that the rejection of presidential immunity in this case assumes truth in the plaintiffs’ allegations against him, which will need to play out in district court.
“When these cases move forward in the district court, [President Trump] must be afforded the opportunity to develop his own facts on the immunity question if he desires to show that he took the actions alleged in the complaints in his official capacity as President rather than in his unofficial capacity as a candidate,” he wrote. “At the appropriate time, he can move for summary judgment on his claim of official-act immunity.”
The special counsel’s office argues that President Trump sought to “overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud” and that he conspired with several people outside of office to do so.
They rebutted President Trump’s presidential immunity defense by arguing that a former president doesn’t have the same immunity and that if he did, it “would be narrower than the ‘outer perimeter’ standard” afforded a sitting president.
The defense argued that President Trump has a history of taking allegations of election fraud seriously, pointing to several investigations he approved while in office, and argued that the speech about election fraud during the end of his term fell squarely within the duties of a president. The special counsel frames the situation quite differently, arguing that President Trump was aware of having legitimately lost the election when he made allegedly false claims about election fraud and “stolen” votes.
In the petition to the Supreme Court, they are also arguing that President Trump has been impeached on similar issues and that the immunity argument is “undercut” by the impeachment clause.
The special counsel has argued, and the district court affirmed, that to grant President Trump presidential immunity here would be to put him “above the law.”
If the Supreme Court agrees to issue judgment before the appeals court rules, it may throw off President Trump’s plans to stall the case past the general election.
CDC director issues false alarm. Mask up. Yes, my friends mask up or you’re going to get sick or die. At least that’s what the CDC DIRECTOR IS SPEWING. But here’s what’s on the CDC website.
At this time, there is no evidence that JN.1 presents an increased risk to public health relative to other currently circulating variants, and CDC is closely monitoring COVID-19 activity and JN.1 spread. The increase of this variant does not alter CDC’s
