Extremists’ on SCOTUS Are ‘Screaming’ About Rulings that Follow Liberal Principles.
On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Harvard Law Professor, author, and Newsmax Legal Analyst Alan Dershowitz stated that the Supreme Court’s rulings on President Joe Biden’s loan program, racial preferences in college admissions, and free expression are consistent with liberal views, but “it’s extremists, both on the court and off the court, that are screaming and yelling that somehow this ends democracy in America.”
Dershowitz said, “All three of these decisions are close cases that — I’m a liberal, I’ve been a liberal for 60 years, I happen to agree with all of these three cases. I have been arguing against using race in affirmative action since 1974. I have always preferred free expression and the First Amendment over any other laws, whether it be public accommodation laws or hate speech laws. So, many civil libertarians, people who are left and right, support the decision in the web case, it’s a close case. And many civil libertarians also support the decision that says that, in a democracy, important decisions about spending fortunes of money should be made by the legislature, not by the unelected executives. So, these are all close cases that many liberals agree with, and many Democrats agree with.”
He continued, “And it’s extremists, both on the court and off the court, that are screaming and yelling that somehow this ends democracy in America.” He added that “the color of a person’s skin, the accident of race should never be a factor. That’s the liberal perspective. That’s the constitutional perspective.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued in her dissenting opinion to the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling that promoting diversity "saves lives." (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File )
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Ketanji Brown Jackson made ‘mathematically absurd claim’ on Black newborns: WSJ op-ed. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued affirmative action ‘saves lives’
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made a “mathematically absurd claim” about Black newborns in her dissenting opinion in the affirmative action decision, attorney Ted Frank wrote in a Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Jackson argued in her dissent that diversity “saves lives” and that it was essential for “marginalized communities.”
“It saves lives. For marginalized communities in North Carolina, it is critically important that UNC and other area institutions produce highly educated professionals of color. Research shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly (including, for example, prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication). For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die,” she wrote.
Frank responded to the argument in his Journal opinion piece: “A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued in her dissenting opinion to the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling that promoting diversity “saves lives.” (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File )
Frank, a senior attorney at Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, filed an amicus brief in support of the petitioners in SFFA v. Harvard, according to the WSJ.
“How could Justice Jackson make such an innumerate mistake?” he wrote.
Frank wrote that Jackson’s claim came from a 2020 study, according to a footnote in the dissent, but added that the study didn’t match Jackson’s claim.
“The study makes no such claims. It examines mortality rates in Florida newborns between 1992 and 2015 and shows a 0.13% to 0.2% improvement in survival rates for black newborns with black pediatricians (though no statistically significant improvement for black obstetricians),” he said.
The Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in a landmark 6-3 ruling on June 29. (Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States via Getty Images)
The Supreme Court rejected the use of race as a factor in college admissions at the end of June, citing a violation of the 14th amendment.
In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that, “A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination.”
President Biden nominated Jackson to the high court in 2022 and the first Black female Supreme Court Justice began her first term last October. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Frank said the study cited in Jackson’s dissent was “flawed.”
“So we have a Supreme Court justice parroting a mathematically absurd claim coming from an interested party’s mischaracterization of a flawed study. Her opinion then urges ‘all of us’ to ‘do what evidence and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and march forward together.’ Instead we should watch where we’re going,” Frank continued.
North Carolina’s Democrat Governor Roy Cooper has vetoed three bills related to transgender issues, one banning sex changes for minors, another keeping biological males out of girls’ sports, and a third that would limit school instruction on gender ideology. Maybe it’s time for impeachment?
Now hopefully with super majority the legislature will override his veto. This isn’t the first time that good legislation has been passed and he’s vetoed it. So just maybe it’s time for a change in NC.
Top Fauci Adviser Admits to Using Private Email to Avoid FOIA Requests. “I Will Delete Anything I Don’t Want to See in the New York Times” So how does he get away with this?
Federal records obtained by the House Oversight Committee reveal one of Dr. Fauci’s top advisers said he used his personal email account in order to avoid any Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and even went as far to imply he has deleted emails during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The House Oversight Committee released possibly incriminating emails from Dr. David Morens who has served as an adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the last 25 years.
In one of his emails that was uncovered by Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup of Ohio, Dr. Morens wrote to his colleagues, “As you know, I try to always communicate on Gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly.” In the conclusion of his email, Morens wrote, “I will delete anything I don’t want to see in the New York Times.”
Dr. Morens intentionally used his personal email to avoid FOIA and evade transparency to the American people:
▪️ "I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA'd constantly."
Serious adverse events from Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine are not “rare”
Despite repeatedly claiming that serious harms of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine are RARE, an investigation found no drug regulator could quantify the rate. Experts say it’s “hypocritical.”
Drug regulators and public health agencies have saturated the airways with claims that serious harms following covid vaccination are “rare.”
But there has been very little scrutiny of that claim by the media, and I could not find an instance where international agencies actually quantified what they meant by the term “rare” or provided a scientific source.
The best evidence so far, has been a study published in one of vaccinology’s most prestigious journals, where independent researchers reanalysed the original trial data for the mRNA vaccines.
The authors, Fraiman et al, found that serious adverse events (SAEs) – i.e. adverse events that require hospitalisation – were elevated in the vaccine arm by an alarming rate – 1 additional SAE for every 556 people vaccinated with Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine.
According to a scale used by drug regulators, SAEs occurring at a rate of 1 in 556 is categorised as “uncommon,” but far more common than what the public has been told.
Therefore, I asked eight drug regulators and public health agencies to answer a simple question: what is the official calculated rate of SAEs believed to be caused by Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, and what is the evidence?
Not a single agency could cite the SAE rate of Pfizer’s vaccine. Most directed me to pharmacovigilance data, which they all emphasised does not establish causation.
The Australian TGA, for example, referred me to the spontaneous reporting system but warned, “it is not possible to meaningfully use these data to calculate the true incidence of adverse events due to the limitations of spontaneous reporting systems.”
Both the German regulator (PEI) and European CDC referred me to the European Medicines Agency which, according to its own report, saw no increase at all in SAEs. “SAEs occurred at a low frequency in both vaccinated and the placebo group at 0.6%.”
The UK regulator MHRA went so far as to state it “does not make estimations of a serious adverse event (SAE) rate, or a rate for adverse reactions considered to be causally related for any medicinal product.”
The US FDA, on the other hand, did conceded that SAEs after mRNA vaccination have “indeed been higher than that of influenza vaccines,” but suggested it was justified because “the severity and impact of covid-19 on public health have been significantly higher than those of seasonal influenza.”
Despite analysing at the same dataset as Fraiman, the FDA said it “disagrees with the conclusions” of the Fraiman analysis. The agency did not give specifics on the areas of disagreement, nor did it provide its own rate of SAEs.
Expert response
In response to the criticism, Joe Fraiman, emergency doctor and lead author on the reanalysis said, “To be honest, I’m not that surprised that agencies have not determined the rate of SAEs. Once these agencies approve a drug there’s no incentive for them to monitor harms.”
Joe Fraiman, emergency doctor, New Orleans, Louisiana
Fraiman said it’s hypocritical for health agencies to tell people that serious harms of the covid vaccines are rare, when they have not even determined the SAE rate themselves.
“It’s very dangerous not to be honest with the public,” said Fraiman, who recently called for the mRNA vaccines to be suspended.
“These noble lies may get people vaccinated in the short term but you’re creating decades or generations of distrust when it’s revealed that they have been misleading the public,” added Fraiman.
Dick Bijl, a physician and epidemiologist based in the Netherlands, agreed. “It goes to show how corrupted these agencies are. There is no transparency, especially since regulators are largely funded by the drug industry.”
Dick Bijl, physician and past President of the International Society of Drug Bulletins
Bijl said it’s vital to know the rate of SAEs for the vaccines. “You must be able to do a harm:benefit analysis, to allow people to give fully informed consent, especially in young people at low risk of serious covid or those who have natural immunity.”
Bijl said the mainstream media has allowed these agencies to make false claims about the safety of vaccines without interrogating the facts.
“The rise of alternative media is strongly related to the lies being told by the legacy media, which just repeats government narratives and industry marketing. In the Netherlands, there is a lot of discussion about the distrust in public messaging,” said Bijl.
Target realizes what a mistake they made. Will now carry Mark Levin’s Book. Wednesday Target said they were afraid that Democrats would be offended so they said they weren’t going to sell Levin’s new book.
Target must have realized that Democrats don’t spend their money in stores beside Walmart and local liquor stores. Thursday they changed course.
Excellent to see Target cave to conservative customers. Maybe they’re not so stupid after all! https://t.co/CU6w7lfSvI
Commentary By Rachel Emmanuel for The Western Journal July 6, 2023
On Monday, Fox News published a report titled: “Trump draws massive crowd of at least 50K in small South Carolina town of 3,400: police.”
The article covered former President Donald Trump’s rally in Pickens, South Carolina, on Saturday, which, according to the police chief of the town, drew a crowd of over 50,000 Trump supporters to the tiny town.
But community note contributors on Twitter weren’t willing to accept that the former president was still able to draw crowds of this size.
A community note was added to the Fox News tweet of the article that read: “Police Chief Randall Beach initially estimated the crowd to be 50,000, he said he would need to confirm those numbers with the Secret Service. A Secret Service agent later clarified to the news that approximately 15,000 were in attendance.”
Trump draws massive crowd of at least 50K in small South Carolina town of 3,400: police https://t.co/FsR40BLShx
But it turns out the fact-checkers were doing a little less “fact-checking” and a little more “fact manipulation.”
The fact-checkers cited an article from Greenville News to support their community note.
The relevant section cited read:
“Pre-rally estimates of 10,000 to 30,000 were made. During his remarks, Trump claimed the turnout was 75,000. Beach said he needed to get an accurate count from the Secret Service before providing a final number. Around 11 am, a secret service agent told the News there are 5,000 inside the gate and approximately 10,000 still in line.”
Sidebar: Do you trust fact-checkers? Yes: 1% (7 Votes) No: 99% (1197 Votes)
With some convenient cherry-picking, the fact-checkers used the estimated 5,000 people inside plus the 10,000 still in line mentioned by the Secret Service agent and came up with a grand total of 15,000 people at the rally.
An impressive math feat.
What they did not mention, however, is that that estimate was made at 11 o’clock in the morning. Trump’s plane hadn’t even landed at that point, according to Politico.
Tens of thousands pack Pickens. More than 50 treated for heat-related illness.
Moreover, the article cited is titled: “Trump in SC: Tens of thousands pack Pickens. More than 50 treated for heat-related illness.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but “tens” of thousands generally means more than one ten and a five.
But, maybe the fact-checkers missed the fact that the title of the article they cited implies in its title that there were well more than 15,000 there that day.
They must have also missed the part in the very same article they cited where Beach “reiterated his crowd estimate of 50,000.”
“I would not be shocked if it were closer to 60 (thousand),” he told the newspaper. “If someone has an estimate closer to 70 (thousand), I wouldn’t question it.”
That statement by Beach was made on Sunday, the day after the rally, not at 11 a.m. on Saturday, hours before the rally had even started.
So the part about the Secret Service agent’s estimate being the “later” one was, let’s just say, sadly mistaken.
The South Carolina crowd explodes when Trump Force One flys over Pickens.
There is already a massive crowd for Trump’s Pickens, South Carolina rally. Biden could never draw a crowd this large. It’s clear Trump is the president of the people. pic.twitter.com/wrqnipp764
Cherry-picking when it comes to how stories are reported is nothing new, especially when the news is conservative and even more when the story has the word “Trump” in it. So it’s important to stay vigilant, even on a so-called bias-free platform like Twitter.
As for the contributors who wrote the community note on the article — if I were a gambler, I’d take any odds that at least one of them has the letters “CNN” in their employment bio.
The United States is now investigating how to inject chemicals into the atmosphere in order to block out the sun.
The idea is to use a “stratospheric aerosol injection” to essentially mimic the effects of the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, where the sun is blocked out for a prolonged period of time. The goal here is, however, to somehow reduce greenhouse gases.
What could possibly go wrong?
The research, which was done by the Office of Science and Technology Policy on a congressional mandate, created a plan for “solar and other rapid climate interventions.”
Besides injecting chemicals into the atmosphere, it also looked into “marine cloud brightening,” which makes clouds less reflective, as a way to allow more sunlight to reach the earth’s surface.
Mexico in January banned these types of experiments.
A company called “Make Sunsets” had begun experiments on solar geoengineering in Baja California, in December 2022. It launched weather balloons that were releasing sulfur particles into the stratosphere.
It was a small experiment that used less than 10 grams of sulfur dioxide. But Mexico wasn’t having any of that. The country banned future programs on solar geoengineering. An official statement from its Ministry of Environment and National Resources notes that since 2010, under the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, there is a moratorium against the use of geoengineering.
It states: “Solar geoengineering practices seek to counteract the effects of climate change, through the emission of gases into the atmosphere such as sulfur dioxide, aluminum sulfate, among others. This process induces the sun’s rays to be reflected back into space, thus avoiding the increase in temperature in a specific geographical area.”
Yet it adds something important. Apparently, the harm of programs like this is known.
According to the Mexican government, “there are enough studies that show that there would be negative and unequal impacts associated with the release of these aerosols, which cause meteorological imbalances such as winds and torrential rains, as well as droughts in tropical areas; in addition to generating impacts on the thinning of the planet’s ozone layer.”
Interest in the concept started after a volcanic eruption in 1991 in the Philippines. Mount Pinatubo blasted 20 million metric tons of sulfur aerosols into the atmosphere. This sparked interest among climate change enthusiasts because the natural disaster caused a cooling in global temperatures that lasted for two years.
But risks or not, and regardless of studies already showing the harm such programs would have, there are people set on moving forward.
Billionaire Bill Gates made headlines in 2019 when he was funding a new program to replicate the effects of a massive volcanic eruption.
Interestingly, the program he was backing falls under the “stratospheric aerosol injection” concept that the White House is now saying it’ll look into. According to CNBC, under the Gates program, “Thousands of planes would fly at high altitudes, spraying millions of tons of particles around the planet to create a massive chemical cloud that would cool the surface.”
Of course, programs such as this predate that. In 2018, the journal Environmental Research Letters had a study from a pair of researchers at Harvard and Yale that proposed the idea of “stratospheric aerosol injection.” It notes a body of research on the concept, mainly from 10 to 20 years ago, but also notes there was a proposal as well from the National Academies of Science in 1992.
LiveScience noted in 2018 that a program to “Spray Cheap Chemicals in the Air to Slow Climate Change” would be surprisingly cheap. It would cost about $3.5 billion over the course of about 15 years. Once it’s ready to go, it would cost another $2.25 billion each year.
It notes that if the solar dimming chemicals were sprayed in the stratosphere, the effect would last for a year to 18 months.
Recreating ‘The Worst Year to Be Alive’?
So why did the Mexican government ban it, if research groups in the United States seem to still be interested?
Well, it goes back to the idea of a volcanic eruption.
Remember, the technology is meant to mimic the solar dimming effect of a massive volcanic eruption. If they did that using chemicals, it would last at least a year, and current proposals would drag this out for around 15 years. So what does that look like in practice?
Again, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, we can look back to the year 536 A.D., popularly known as “the worst year to be alive.”
What was so bad about it? Well, there was darkness for 18 months. And what was the cause of it? It was unknown for most of history, but climate change scientists have since discovered it was caused by a volcanic eruption.
As Science reported in 2018, the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine discovered that a massive volcano in Iceland erupted in 536 A.D. and spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere. It was followed by two other massive eruptions in 540 and 547 A.D.
Byzantine historian Procopius wrote that during the time, “the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed.”
Science reported that temperatures dropped by about 1 degree Celsius. Remember, the Mount Pinatubo eruption that inspired the current research dropped temperatures by around 0.1 degree Celsius.
Regardless, back to 536, Science cites medieval historian Michael McCormick, who noted that “Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record ‘a failure of bread from the years 536–539.’”
It also was cited as a likely cause of a deadly plague that killed around 50 million people. The Sun reported in 2019 that the eruption in 536 also led to “famine and a collapse of the global economy” while “Some experts even believe the eruptions are linked to a major plague pandemic. The Justinian Plague started in 541 A.D. and killed around as many as 50 million in just 12 months as it spread across the Mediterranean.”
Remember how Twitterheads claimed that the Philly shootings were done by “White Supremacists?” Well, here one is:
The 40-year-old Kimbrady Carricker
The man accused in the fatal shooting spree in Philadelphia that left five people dead and four others wounded Monday night left a will at his house, and according to a roommate, had acted agitated and wore a tactical vest around his house in the days before the shooting, prosecutors said Wednesday.
In his first court hearing on Wednesday morning, 40-year-old Kimbrady Carriker was charged with 11 total offenses and several counts of each.
In addition to murder, Carriker is also facing charges of attempted murder, reckless endangerment, aggravated assault, and carrying a firearm without a valid permit.
He is being held without bail for the murders.
Sources say the suspect made disturbing social media posts before the gunfire. Sources say, Carriker, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, owned the ghost guns used in this mass shooting.
Prosecutors said they recovered a handgun, a will dated June 23, and other evidence during a search of the Carricker’s home. They declined to discuss details of the will or whether it gave any indication Carrick had been planning the attack between then and the shooting ten days later.
This is not the first time Carriker has had run-ins with the law. The suspect has misdemeanor drug and gun charges from 2003, which led to probation.
Does the mainstream media need Competition? Ren LaForme/Poynter)
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Does the mainstream media need to bring back the ombudsman to restore credibility and trust? Liberal journalists should acknowledge it’s natural that people wronged by the Bidens would be welcomed by the conservative media, just as Trump-haters (like angry niece Mary Trump) would be celebrated by the liberal media.
In case you didn’t know, the MSM tends to leave out stories and articles that point out the wrong doings of the Biden Administration and their far left allies.
But they don’t pass up an opportunity to report negatively on Conservatives even when they don’t have verification on the articles that they print. How do we correct that?
Here’s parts of an interesting article from The Poynter.
Despite a slight increase since 2016, the public’s low level of trust in the mainstream media is of deep concern for the future of journalism.
Nearly half of people surveyed listed inaccuracies, bias and “fake news” as factors in their low confidence. A general lack of credibility and the perception that reporting is based on opinions was also cited for the loss of trust. But the Gallup poll did offer a glimmer of hope. Nearly 70% of all respondents said they felt trust could be restored somehow.
Would the return of ombudsmen improve public trust in the mainstream media? If so, what changes in the traditional ombudsman role would make its use even more effective? Eight former ombudsmen weigh in with their thoughts on the current state of journalism and the role of ombudsmen in the era of online journalism.
“The ombudsman was thought to be an independent, autonomous person, on a level with the editor-in-chief of the paper’s organizational level, but not reporting to anyone in the newspaper,” said Mark Prendergast, who from 2009 to 2012 was the ombudsman at Stars and Stripes.
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