House Dems Demand DOJ Go After Critics of Child Sexual Mutilation thumbnail

House Dems Demand DOJ Go After Critics of Child Sexual Mutilation

By Jihad Watch

“When popular accounts share unfounded and hurtful claims about these institutions.”  


As we already saw with the school board protests and abortion clinics, letters like these are coordinated with Biden’s DOJ, which use pressure groups to create an artificial ‘push’ to get the DOJ to crack down on political opponents.

The political opponents of the moment are critics of sexually mutilating children in the name of identity politics.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Andre Carson and dozens of other Democrats sent the latest hate letter warning that “when popular accounts share unfounded and hurtful claims about these institutions, millions of followers are instigated to send hostile messages and threaten hospital staff” and “platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Shopify, and others have been slow to act to limit the spread of threats and harmful misinformation from these accounts”.

Big Tech platforms are overeager, if anything, to take down anything deemed hate speech.

What the House totalitarians are complaining about is that the political censorship isn’t comprehensive enough for their taste.

The letter asks the DOJ how it’s “coordinating with other agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, to safeguard America from further threats against children’s hospitals or any institution targeted specifically due to associations, real or perceived, with LGBTQ+ individuals?”

The law against anyone making violent threats is clear enough. And these issues are taking place in super-blue areas with very woke local authorities. This is about broad national censorship of a debate about sexually mutilating children that is now gaining steam.

Asking the DOJ to address speech is a First Amendment violation. A violation that has become all too routine.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

AUN-TV NEWS: Federal Government Fines Missouri Doctor $500 Million for Suggesting Vitamin D for Covid thumbnail

AUN-TV NEWS: Federal Government Fines Missouri Doctor $500 Million for Suggesting Vitamin D for Covid

By Conservative Commandos Radio Show

AUN-TV GUESTS AND TOPICS

ALEX NESTER

Alex Nester is an Investigative Fellow for Parents Defending Education. Before joining Parents Defending Education, Alex reported on education at the Washington Free Beacon and produced podcasts for Nebulous Media.

TOPIC: What is Cracked Foundations?

DR. ERIC NEPUTE

Dr. Eric Nepute is a Licensed primary care provider in the state of Missouri. He is a License Doctor of chiropractic, Certified Doctor of natural medicine, a Certified nutritional specialist, and certified internal health specialists. Dr. Nepute has Advanced training, fellowships and certifications in functional neurology, Orthomolecular nutrition, Internal health, as well as advanced biomechanics.

TOPIC: Federal Government Fines Missouri Doctor $500 Million for Suggesting Vitamin D for Covid

RELATED ARTICLE: The Truth About Ivermectin

©AUN-TV and Conservative Commandoes Radio. All rights reserved.

The bitter global harvest of outlawing motherhood thumbnail

The bitter global harvest of outlawing motherhood

By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

‘Parenthood is sublime. It is the greatest and most transcendent of human achievements.’


According to the best guesses of those tracking the population of the world, last week the world passed a major milestone: the 8 billionth person was born on earth. The global population is projected to continue rising for the next few decades, and then a population decline—perhaps a precipitous one—is expected to begin.

This decline is coming because, on average, women are having fewer babies. The decades-long drop in fertility is precipitated by many factors including China’s forced one-child policy which has significantly impacted global population.

In the days before the one-child policy, the Chinese phrase for announcing “I’m pregnant,” was “I have happiness.” This sentiment changed, however, when becoming pregnant became a crime—a crime you could be socially punished, openly shamed, and physically assaulted for. By targeting and abusing women, the Chinese government got what it wanted: fewer people. But China also got something else it may not have anticipated: a nation of women who do not want children.

China now sees itself slipping toward economic collapse due to too few young workers to support the ageing population. Government forces are trying frantically to encourage women to have babies. But it may be too late to undo what they have done to motherhood.

But what have they done, exactly?

You reap what you sow

After years of being told that childbearing is unnecessary, socially inappropriate, and in some cases criminal, young women began to believe it. A recent article by He Huifeng highlights the issue. She says, “Many of China’s Gen Z women are looking to break free from the shackles of marriage and children, to live for themselves.” She says that for these young women, “Winning at life does not necessarily involve getting married or having children, no matter how much their parents and the government want them to.”

One woman He cites says life is more about “living for yourself” and says she does not think the presence of a husband or child could help her be successful. One advertising director, Liu Xin, told He, “‘Live for yourself’ has become a go-to advertising campaign that many brands use to lure female consumers, since a large number of women under the age of 35 only want to please themselves in terms of consumption and lifestyles … They want to have an easy life.”

Liu explains further, “Actually, ‘lying flat’ is prevalent among young women, not only in terms of work but also in respect to marriage and children.” According to He, “Lying flat, or tang ping, represents the mindset of literally lying down instead of being a productive member of society. Rather than striving to study hard, buy a home, or even start a family, many young people are rejecting it all to ‘lie flat.’”

After years of living as only children, having their fertility forcibly suppressed, and being told that children are a bane to be avoided like the plague—in concert with increasing economic resources—the situation seems to have given birth to a new kind of woman. A self-serving, self-focused woman who does not see herself as a unique and powerful giver and commander of life, but as a cog in the wheel of humanity who has only her own ease to consider. Of course, many childless women are motivated more by economic concerns than by self-seeking; this can also be tracked back largely to the intentional development of a society that values public work over private family-based service.

Returning to ancient wisdom

“Lying flat” and rejecting a life course that includes responsibility, work, managing stress, planning, and sacrifice—a life course that many would call “growing up”—is not just a problem for Chinese youth. We see a similar phenomenon in America and elsewhere. Why?

Though complex, the reasons are likely similar. While women’s fertility has not been forcibly suppressed through forced abortion and forced contraception in America, the free-for-all sexual climate and the push to climb the corporate ladder has urged women to the abortionist’s table, cheered on by a chorus of voices invoking the same noxious idea that was planted in the minds of young Chinese women: “babies are burdens.” This not only curbed the birth of babies but turned women’s minds away from the next generation that might have followed in their footsteps, and instead focused their minds inward.

The pervasive “live for yourself” mantra is in direct conflict with both the ancient Chinese wisdom of Confucius and the teachings of Jesus, which are both summed up nicely by Mahatma Gandhi: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Once a mindset of living only for oneself is deeply ingrained in a culture and in the souls of young women and men in it, how can a change from selfishness to selflessness be precipitated?

Once parenthood is relegated to the realm of things distasteful, unrewarding, and loathsome how can it be made appealing again? Or can it?

Erica Komisar, an American psychoanalyst, says, “Many of the young adults I treat who are ambivalent about becoming parents feel they were burdens to their overstressed working parents … They lack any reminiscence of a joyful childhood experience during which their parents prioritized them.”

Commenting on the falling birthrate she says, “What we fail to realize is that the desire to have and to care for children comes from feeling that we as children were desired and cared for, and that we were a priority to our parents … The declining birth rate is … a failure of society to value nurturing and family above all else and to model our joy in parenting to the next generation.”

Valuing nurturing and family above all else

If a major failure of the maturing generations is failing to value family above all else and failing to model joy in parenting, then perhaps a winning strategy is to start there: to talk freely and frequently about how raising children is—in aggregate—a prime asset, not just a time-consuming liability.

Chinese influencer Shen Jiake observes that for policies aimed at increasing the birth rate to be effective they must make young women feel as though their quality of life will be improved more by having children than by not having them. The fact that children make life more joyful (if also more rigorous) used to be largely self-evident, but no more.

American writer and mother Bethany Mandel says this is precisely where we must begin. She says those who know the joy of parenting must confront the false narrative that “motherhood is where dreams and hopes and ambitions go to die. Children are dream crushers. Something to be avoided.” And perhaps it is not as much an uphill battle as it appears.

Mandel says, “Here’s the secret: Talking about the joys of parenthood isn’t just some slick spin to get people to produce more human capital. No, it’s the truth. There is no higher joy, no greater euphoria, no more thrilling or exalted accomplishment than bringing a unique soul, all their own, into the world and orienting them toward virtue.”

Mandel continues, “[H]ow we depict life with children…sets a tone that influences whether the next generation continues the great unbroken chain. We must communicate this reality when we talk about parenthood both online and in person. Parenthood is sublime. It is the greatest and most transcendent of human achievements. This isn’t sugarcoating, this isn’t hyperbole, it’s just truth telling. And we need more of it.”

I concur. It seems the very future of the world depends upon it.

China berated and victimized mothers for 40 years. The West has been debasing, mocking, and marginalizing them for even longer. It’s time for more truth-telling. It’s time to let the secret out in grand fashion that having new little people to care for, to trust you, to teach you, to make you fall down laughing and to adore you beyond your wildest dreams—despite the diapers and the long hours—is the very finest life has to offer.

AUTHOR

Kimberly Ells

Kimberly Ells is the author of The Invincible Family: Why the Global Campaign to Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can’t Win. Visit Invincible… More by Kimberly Ells

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Demand for Unvaccinated Blood Soaring thumbnail

Demand for Unvaccinated Blood Soaring

By The Geller Report

Understandable. Vaccine deaths and injuries are rampant.  Vaccinated blood contains the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. I am unvaxxed and would not take vaxxed blood. It was not so that long ago HIV infection was transmitted via blood transfusion. Considering the lack of testing and trials of the controversial Covid vaccine, this is a legitimate concern.

Coroner concludes death of 14 year old boy 3 weeks after Pfizer covid jab of ‘significant public concern’

The evidence is increasingly clear that that the jab should likely never have been approved in the first place.#Corporatepsychopaths #NHS https://t.co/ToQZBCESLe

— Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) November 22, 2022

Demand for Unvaccinated Blood Soaring

The growing demand for ‘pureblood’

By: Dr Panda, November 21, 2022:

Demand for unvaccinated blood is surging worldwide. Bacteria, viruses, prions, and parasites can be transmitted by blood transfusions likewise people vaccinated with the mRNA vaccine have the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in their blood. The spike protein (travels the entire body) caused by the COVID-19 vaccination last for months (potentially permanently in the body for those who frequently take booster shots).

There are new blood banks being set up in 18 countries so far, that provide this ‘pure blood’

[…]The general blood supply is now full of ‘fully vaccinated’ spike protein-laden blood. Blood Banks require you to indicate if you’ve been COVID vaccinated when donating blood. However they do not pass this information along to the recipient. They know but do not distinguish.

If an unvaccinated person receives a blood transfusion of blood containing the mRNA spike protein (and whatever else is in the vials) then that passes on to the recipient. The spike protein starts replicating again and your body is now a spike protein factory. The unvaccinated potentially become vaccinated along with all the damage that occurs.

Keep reading…..

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

59 Years Ago Today, This Young Couple Was Waiting to See the President thumbnail

59 Years Ago Today, This Young Couple Was Waiting to See the President

By Jihad Watch

Going through a box of memorabilia from family and friends recently, I found two letters. (The story you’re about to read is true; the names have been changed to protect the innocent.) On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, a young married professional in Dallas wrote to his parents. After discussing some recently purchased furniture, he added off-handedly:

In about three hours from now the President and his party will pass in front of our office. It is raining and the city is out with street washers washing it off and people out in the rain picking up paper. It is really comical. Laura has a Doctor’s appointment this morning and then she is coming by here and we are going to lunch. Aaron is going to meet us for lunch. Laura wants to go over to the Trade Mart for lunch so that she can see Jackie. I don’t know how much we will be able to see but I guess we will go over.

If it had kept raining, the 35th president of the United States would not have been riding in an open car. But the skies cleared up, and the program went on as planned.

This young man followed up with another letter on Nov. 23, 1963:

Dear Mother and Dad:

I am sure that you as well as we and the rest of the country find it hard to believe what happened yesterday.

Laura and I had gone to the Marriott Motel across from the Trade Mart to have a sandwich before going over to the Trade Mart to hear Kennedy. We had just paid the check and were walking out when we saw the two Presidential limousines pass the front of the Trade Mart. This was the route that they were to take and he was to enter the side door of the Trade Mart. I told Laura that they certainly were going pretty fast. We actually could not tell what had happened or if anything was wrong.

We went into the Trade Mart and most of the people were seated for the banquet. A friend of mine came up to me and told me the President had been shot. As most people would have thought we took it as a joke. We began to tell that he was serious and then someone came up with a radio. The people in the banquet area still had not heard the news and they were still playing music. We had been informed by a policeman that we would not be able to leave until the President left. I told Laura at the time that this was the time to get out before they announced it to the crowd. We got out and headed for the car.

There is more. Read the rest here.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

While Americans Can’t Afford To Heat Their Homes, Biden Pays Muslim Country Billions to Dump Coal thumbnail

While Americans Can’t Afford To Heat Their Homes, Biden Pays Muslim Country Billions to Dump Coal

By Jihad Watch

As part of talks led by John Kerry, donors are exploring how solar might replace the coal plants.


While Americans can’t afford gas or to heat their homes, Biden is bragging of a deal to subsidize solar panels in Indonesia.

Americans have too much money. And too much everything. Let’s give it all away.

The United States, Indonesia and other allies signed a $20 billion deal on Tuesday at the Group of 20 (G-20) summit that will help Indonesia reduce its reliance on coal.

The goal of the agreement, called the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), is to help Indonesia reduce emissions and transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

This isn’t a deal.

This is welfare and a bribe to convince a Muslim regime that has massacred Christians and continues to oppress them to switch its energy from reliable coal to worthless wind and solar.

And they’re taking us for every billion they can get.

The G7 and its partners have made multi-billion dollar offers to wean Vietnam, Indonesia and India off coal — but it has yet to convince emerging economies to drop the dirtiest fossil fuel.

The three deals have been under negotiation through much of 2022 and are being modeled on an earlier, $8.5 billion deal to shut down South Africa’s coal industry, dubbed a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP).

It’s hoped that at least two new partnerships might be unveiled during the COP27 U.N. climate talks, which start on November 6 in Egypt. Discussions with Vietnam and Indonesia have advanced to the point where initial cash offers of around $5 billion and $10 billion, respectively…

If you think that’s bad, the Green New Dealers want to get India and eventually China on board. And at that point we’re talking completely nightmarish numbers that would bankrupt everyone.

U.S. President Biden emphasized the importance of this partnership, saying, “Indonesia has shown tremendous leadership and ambition throughout the development of this partnership. The resulting new and accelerated targets demonstrate how countries can dramatically cut emissions and increase renewable energy while advancing a commitment to creating quality jobs and protecting livelihoods and communities.”

While destroying American jobs, livelihoods and communities.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLE: G20 MARCHING ORDERS—You will comply! 

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

White House Press Corps Explodes As KJP Publicly Berates Daily Caller Reporter thumbnail

White House Press Corps Explodes As KJP Publicly Berates Daily Caller Reporter

By The Daily Caller

The White House press corps exploded Tuesday after press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre berated the Daily Caller’s White House correspondent Diana Glebova.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was partaking in a press briefing when he went to step away from the podium. Glebova said she had asked several times what Fauci had done to investigate the origins of the virus, prompting Jean-Pierre to step back to the podium and snap at Glebova.

“Hold on one second, we have a process here. I’m not calling on people who yell. You’re being disrespectful to your colleagues and you’re being disrespectful to our guest. I will not call on you if you yell, and also you’re taking time off the clock,” she said.

The Grio reporter April Ryan also told her she was “being disrespectful.”

Glebova tried to respond but Jean-Pierre immediately silenced her, saying she would not get into a “back and forth with you.”

Glebova then said to Jean-Pierre that she “calls on the same people all the time.”

As Jean-Pierre then tried to step away, the New York Post’s Steven Nelson tried to defend Glebova, as did Simon Ateba from Africa News Today.

WATCH: KJP did NOT like it when @DailyCaller‘s @DianaGlebova shouted out a question to Fauci about the origins of COVID and the @NYPost‘s @StevenNelson10 came to her defense pic.twitter.com/iMmU25SfuT

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 22, 2022

“She’s asking a good question, she’s asking a very good question,” Ateba said.

“You need to call on people across the room, she has a valid question, she’s asking about the origins of COVID,” Ateba said, prompting Jean-Pierre to head back to the podium and nastily say she heard the question but would not respond.

Daily Caller’s @DianaGlebova tries to ask Dr. Fauci about what he did to investigate the origins of covid and Jean-Pierre shuts her down.

Another reporter yells at her for not letting Diana ask the question. pic.twitter.com/RieiEBwl2p

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 22, 2022

AUTHOR

BRIANNA LYMAN

News and commentary writer. Follow Brianna on Twitter

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Kevin McCarthy Threatens Biden’s DHS Secretary With Impeachment If He Doesn’t Resign thumbnail

Kevin McCarthy Threatens Biden’s DHS Secretary With Impeachment If He Doesn’t Resign

By The Daily Caller

House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy threatened President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas with impeachment Tuesday during a visit to the border in El Paso, Texas.

McCarthy, who is vying for the House speakership, said Republicans will push for Mayorkas’ impeachment if he refuses to step down. He was joined by several Republican colleagues, including Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, who represents a southern border district, that made the trip to show support for Border Patrol.

“His actions have produced the greatest wave of illegal immigration in recorded history. Our country may never recover from Secretary Mayorkas’ dereliction of duty. This is why today I am calling on the secretary to resign. He cannot and must not remain in that position,” McCarthy said.

“If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate every order, every action and every failure to determine whether we can begin an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said.

The Republican Study Committee was previously pushing for Mayorkas’ impeachment, but McCarthy argued that he “wants to make the case before we go for the jugular,” Axios reported in April.

Under Mayorkas’ leadership, federal border authorities have been overwhelmed by a surge in illegal immigration. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered a record of over 2.3 million migrants in fiscal year 2022 and more than 230,000 at the start of fiscal year 2023.

Mayorkas, however, continues to insist that the southern border is “secure.” He most recently made the assertion during a House Homeland Security Committee on Nov. 15.

For months, Republican lawmakers have called on Mayorkas to resign for making the false claim.

“I’m not unhappy. I’m pissed. Secretary Mayorkas needs to resign: he’s incompetent,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told Martha MacCallum, host of Fox News’ “The Story,” in September, adding “The border is not closed. It’s been surrendered.”

“Secretary Mayorkas is proud to advance the noble mission of this Department, support its extraordinary workforce, and serve the American people. The Department will continue our work to enforce our laws and secure our border, while building a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system,” DHS said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Members of Congress can do better than point the finger at someone else; they should come to the table and work on solutions for our broken system and outdated laws, which have not been overhauled in over 40 years,” the department added.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Even Worse’: Illegal Migrants Will Flood The US Border When One Major Trump-Era Policy Ends

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Why Sam Bankman-Fried Sounded so Much Like a Rand Villain thumbnail

Why Sam Bankman-Fried Sounded so Much Like a Rand Villain

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Sam Bankman-Fried, unlike James Taggart, is not an idiot. He knew his altruism was phony.


The financial collapse of the crypto exchange FTX was brutal and swift. Almost overnight, its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried saw his $16 billion fortune wiped out.

SBF, as he’s popularly known, managed to fool almost the entire world—though not quite everyone.

In hindsight, it’s not hard to see the red flags at FTX. There was no board of directors. Bankman-Fried couldn’t answer simple questions about his funding. The executive leadership was shady and there was the whole “cabal of roommates” in the Bahamas.

One thing that hasn’t gotten enough attention, however, is SBF’s philosophy of “effective altruism,” a social movement that rejects self-interest and instead focuses on “how to benefit others as much as possible.”

Many people will no doubt applaud SBF for his philosophy. Putting others before oneself is considered by many to be not just a virtue but the virtue, and it could help explain Bankman-Fried’s meteoric rise and celebrity. Legacy media swooned over SBF’s apparent selflessness. Story after story after story gushed over the crypto altruist who wanted to give his wealth away—even as he lived in a $40 million penthouse.

Bankman-Fried clearly liked to talk about his altruism, which many see as a clear and obvious virtue. Or is it?

Ayn Rand famously didn’t see altruism as a virtue; she saw it as a sinister force.

“Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others,” Rand wrote. “These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible.”

Now, I’m not an Objectivist. I actually celebrate giving and see charity as part of my Christian calling. But I think Rand is on to something. While I don’t believe “selfishness is a virtue” or “that greed is good,” I do believe in rational self-interest, the idea that it’s both normal and prudent for humans to advance their own interests in their economic decisions.

The idea of rational self-interest is central to capitalism and was famously articulated by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest,” Smith wrote. “We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

Smith, like myself, didn’t see charity as a sin or mere foolishness. But he clearly understood that humans are naturally self-interested creatures and that this instinct is not actually detrimental to human flourishing, but a key to it. This is the miracle of a market economy, which leverages self-interest through trade and voluntary action to improve everyone’s standard of living.

Now, contrast this sentiment with Sam Bankman-Fried, who said he was bailing out digital assets not because he saw an opportunity but because he felt it was the right thing to do.

“It’s not fair to customers,” SBF said on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

Or consider what Bankman-Fried told an Institute of International Finance audience in August.

“It’s okay to do a deal that is moderately bad, in bailing out a place,” SBF said.

Purchasing failing companies to protect their customers seems like a dubious business strategy to me, and it was one of the things that caught the attention of seasoned traders, who began to raise questions about FTX. Those traders turned out to be right. FTX, which recently had a valuation of $32 billion, was massively overleveraged, and when rival crypto exchange Binance announced it was offloading hundreds of millions of dollars of FTT (FTX’s token), a run on funds ensued.

But it’s worth focusing on Bankman-Fried’s rhetoric a little more, because it occurred to me it sounds a little like a character in Atlas Shrugged.

James Taggart, president of Taggart Transcontinental, is the most prominent villain in Ayn Rand’s magnum opus. He talks endlessly about serving mankind and sneers at those who are concerned with crass profits.

“Material greed isn’t everything. There are non-material ideals to consider,” Taggart lectures his sister Dagny, the hero of the story.

Taggart’s smug thinking is what prompts him to take on his own bad deal, a massive expansion of Taggart Transcontinental into Mexico. He confesses to “a feeling of shame” that he owns a railroad, but “the Mexican people have nothing but one or two inadequate lines.”

“The Mexicans, it seems to me, are a very diligent people, crushed by their primitive economy. How can they become industrialized if nobody lends them a hand? When considering an investment, we should, in my opinion, take a chance on human beings, rather than on purely material factors.”

Taggart gets his way and—like FTX—his San Sebastian Line is a disaster. The lesson in both cases is clear: beware business deals based on altruism.

SBF, like James Taggart, spoke often about serving humanity. His concern with climate change, global pandemics, and progressive causes earned him laurels and fawning press. Even after the collapse of FTX, newspapers are discussing his noble efforts “to prevent another pandemic.” But there is also a notable difference between Rand’s petulant railroad baron and Bankman-Fried.

While James Taggart is a mean, surly, unscrupulous man, his altruism seems somewhat genuine; either he’s too stupid to see his good intentions will bear bad fruit or he lacks the self awareness to realize his “altruistic” ideas are not as pure as he believes. (It’s important to understand that even though Taggart spurns selfishness and greed, he is clearly a selfish and greedy person.)

With Sam Bankman-Fried, this appears less true.

In an exchange with Vox reporter Kelsey Piper, SBF’s altruistic philosophy came up. Piper noted he was “really good at talking about ethics” publicly. His response is telling.

Sam Bankman-Friedman was no dummy.

He knew the game and was playing it superbly. pic.twitter.com/D9NA8ludcz

— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) November 18, 2022

“I had to be…it’s what reputations are made of, to some extent,” SBF answered. “I feel bad for those who get [expletive] by it…by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say the right shiboleths [sic] and everyone likes us.”

From this response, it’s clear Bankman-Fried knew he was a poser. His advocacy was just part of the new game of stakeholder capitalism. (Interestingly, SBF actually refers to ESG as a perversion.)

Sam Bankman-Fried, unlike James Taggart, is not an idiot. He knew what he was doing. I don’t know if this makes SBF more of a villain than Taggart or not.

But it certainly makes Bankman-Fried’s downfall all the more tragic.

This article was republished from the author’s Substack.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Give Thanks for the Rule of Law thumbnail

Give Thanks for the Rule of Law

By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

Let us give thanks for small favors.  Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot reversed course and will once again prosecute misdemeanor thefts of necessary items between $100 and $750.  This may not sound like a big deal, but it’s a victory over the progressive prosecutors – the Soros DAs, a group that includes Creuzot – who have been busy dismantling the criminal justice system in dozens of localities across the country.

Creuzot said he ended the policy not to prosecute these thefts because, he claimed, data shows the policy had no effect on crime, one way or the other.  The nonprosecution policy, also implemented by progressive prosecutors elsewhere, is straight out of the abolitionist playbook.  ‘Abolitionists’ are far-left crazies who want to abolish all police, criminal courts, and prisons.  Like them, Creuzot believes in ‘decriminalizing poverty’ and ‘ending mass incarceration’, attitudes which led him to stop prosecuting misdemeanor theft.  He also stopped prosecuting criminal trespass and misdemeanor marijuana cases.

In April, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and state Attorney General Ken Paxton sent Creuzot a letter that hit the nail on the head, making the point I’ve made many times that progressive prosecutors are not authorized or entitled to tear up criminal statutes duly passed by their state legislatures.  The letter states:

Reform is one thing. Actions that abandon the rule of law and that could promote lawlessness are altogether different. Texas law gives criminal district attorneys the duty to enforce the laws the Legislature writes…  It grants no power to criminal district attorneys to categorically rewrite the law. Constitutionally, ‘reforming’ state law is the province of the Legislature.

Exactly, and not just in Texas.  The Pennsylvania House of Representatives voted last week to impeach progressive Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner for, among other things, his refusal to prosecute prostitution and retail theft.  He also fired 30 experienced prosecutors.  The consequences of Krasner’s insane policies are a sky-high murder rate, ubiquitous shootings on public transportation and near schools and, because of increasing retail theft, numerous businesses leaving the city.  The impeachment vote is a first step in a process that could remove Krasner from office.

The progressive prosecutor in Baltimore asked the court to give an armed robber first offender treatment that could result in a clean record.  The robber was set free and went on to shoot and kill a sheriff’s deputy.

Another thing to be thankful for is the fact resistance to the Soros DAs is growing and getting better organized.  You might remember that progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin was recalled in San Francisco earlier this year.  A progressive candidate just lost her race for a district attorney’s spot in Arizona.  A new group, formed to fight progressive prosecutors at the ballot box, helped defeat a number of them around the country in the recent elections.

Good.  The progressive prosecutors are trying to tear down the Rule of Law, tear down the economy, tear down the criminal justice system, and sow chaos throughout the land so people will clamor for left-wing authoritarians to keep them safe.

So let us give thanks and hope the trend against them continues.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

VIDEO: The ‘True Story’ of the First Thanksgiving thumbnail

VIDEO: The ‘True Story’ of the First Thanksgiving

By John Eidson

EDITORS NOTE: Millions of school children have been taught the revisionist history that the first Thanksgiving was about the Pilgrims giving thanks to their Indian neighbors for saving them from starvation. Around this time of year, an historically accurate account of the first Thanksgiving was told on national radio. Eight years ago, I compiled a lightly-edited transcript of that account, which appears below. Please enjoy and share “The True Story of the First Thanksgiving,” as it was narrated each November by the late Rush Limbaugh.


Lightly-edited Transcript

The story of the Pilgrims began in the early part of the seventeenth century. The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone who did not recognize its absolute authority. Those who demanded freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs.

A small group of separatists fled to Holland, where they established an outpost. A decade later, about forty of the separatists decided to embark on a perilous journey to the New World, where they could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience.

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England carrying a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up a contract that established laws that would govern the new settlement. The values and principles set forth in the Mayflower Compact were derived from the Bible.

Because of an unshakable belief in Divine Providence, the Pilgrims never doubted that their bold experiment would succeed. But their journey to the New World was long and arduous. When they landed in America, they found, according to Bradford’s detailed journal, a cold and desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote, or houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could find temporary lodging and no trading posts where they could buy food and other necessities. The numerous hardships they would encounter in the name of religious freedom were just beginning.

During the first winter, half of the Pilgrims, including Bradford’s wife, perished from starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved on the margins, but the colony was still a long way from assured survival.

The original contract the Pilgrims entered into with their merchant sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, with each member of the settlement entitled to one common share. All land they cleared and all houses they built belonged to the community. The plan was to distribute everything equally. No colony member owned anything beyond a proportionate share of the common output. Under this communal living arrangement, the colony’s most industrious members lacked incentive to produce as much as they could.

Soon, it became obvious that the collectivist system was not yielding enough food. Faced with mass starvation, Bradford decided on bold action, and assigned each family its own plot of land. With private property rights and personal incentive in play, food production began to soar. The Pilgrims scrapped the collectivist system that almost led to their demise. What Bradford wrote about the colony’s near-disastrous experiment in communal living should be taught to every child in America:

“…. this community was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and to retard much employment that would otherwise have been to its benefit and comfort. Young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine [complain] that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without compensation.”

Under the new arrangement, every family was permitted to sell its excess crops and other products. The result? “This had very good success,” wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands industrious, so more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.”

With an abundance of food at hand, the Pilgrims set up trading posts and began to exchange goods with the Indians. The profits they earned enabled them to pay off their debts to their sponsors. News of the settlement’s prosperity attracted other Europeans, and precipitated what came to be known as The Great Puritan Migration.

Many of America’s schools incorrectly teach that the first Thanksgiving was an occasion where grateful Pilgrims thanked the Indians for saving them from starvation. But the true story of Thanksgiving is that of William Bradford giving thanks not to the Indians, but to God for the guidance and inspiration to establish a thriving colony, one that enabled the Pilgrims to generously share their plentiful bounty with their Indian neighbors at that first Thanksgiving.

Omitted in many classrooms is the historical fact that it was not Indians who saved the Pilgrims. Rather, it was free enterprise capitalism and Scripture, the latter of which was acknowledged on October 3, 1789 by President George Washington in his Thanksgiving Proclamation, a short historical document every school child should read.

©John Edison. All rights reserved.

NBC Finally Reports Body Cam Footage Shows Paul Pelosi Opened Door For Police Before Alleged Attack thumbnail

NBC Finally Reports Body Cam Footage Shows Paul Pelosi Opened Door For Police Before Alleged Attack

By The Geller Report

Another right wing conspiracy is today’s legacy news.  We are under a most powerful, dangerous domestic threat – Democrats and their axis of control in media, education, entertainment etc. Make no mistake, this is election rigging, as well.

For those keeping track at home, news after the midterms:

Hunter Biden’s laptop is real.

FDA backtracked on Ivermectin.

Student Loan forgiveness isn’t lawful.

Trump never had nuclear docs at Mar-A-Lago.

Feds had loads of informants in Oathkeepers before J6.

FTX fraud implodes.

— Murray 🇺🇸 (@Rothbard1776) November 21, 2022

NBC: Body Cam Footage Shows Paul Pelosi Opened Door For Police Before Alleged Attack

By: Tyler Durden, Nov 19, 2022:

The official narrative on the Paul Pelosi attack purported by Democrats and the mainstream media makes zero sense.  You don’t have to be a “conspiracy theorist” to recognize there were multiple contradictory accounts from the Department of Justice vs. local police and even some reports from journalists.

In fact, NBC suspended one of its own correspondents, Miguel Almaguer, after he reported that on the night of the supposed attack at the Pelosi home in San Francisco that Paul Pelosi actually opened the door when police knocked, seemingly in normal health, and then walked away from the officers to talk to the alleged assailant David Depape, when Depape attacked him.  This report led many to suggest that Pelosi and Depape somehow knew each other.

A media firestorm ensued along with denials from the DOJ, which detailed a completely different version of events in which the police officers opened the door themselves and found Pelosi struggling with Depape who had injured him with a hammer.  NBC dropped Almaguer after many called his report “bizarre.”

As it turns out, Miguel Almaguer was right.  NBC now reports that police body cam footage has been made available to some media outlets and the footage clearly shows Paul Pelosi opening the door for police in seemingly perfect health.  This contradicts the DOJ report on the attack and suggests a potential cover-up. 

NBC is forced to retract their earlier assertions that the Paul Pelosi open door event was unfounded.  Why?  Because they have to.  Eventually the police body cam footage will make it out into the public sphere for everyone to see, and NBC is front-running their own false reports.  However, they do suggest that “it doesn’t really matter” who opened the door to the Pelosi home, and that Paul Pelosi’s actions don’t support the “conspiracy theories” surrounding the attack.

If that is the case, then why would the DOJ lie?  Surely, they have seen the same body cam footage.  If there is no conspiracy, then why is there an attempted coverup?

NBC has never had a problem editorializing news stories in the past and presenting biased opinions as evidence, yet suddenly now they pretend as if they have journalistic integrity?  It is incumbent upon journalists to present what they think are the facts to the general public, but they are also required to investigate potential false accounts and false information in order to separate truth from lies.  In the case of the attack on Paul Pelosi, NBC and other outlets clearly do not want to dig deeper.

Now that the midterm elections are over it would appear that the “MAGA attacker” story no longer serves any purpose.  The Democrats conjured their own conspiracy theory first – The claim that right-wing “extremists” are a threat to “democracy” and that the Pelosi attack proves it.  There is no evidence to support this claim.  There is, though, evidence to support the theory that Pelosi was familiar with Depape and his behavior indicates familiarity.

No person under threat of being beaten with a hammer by a home intruder is going to move closer to the violent stranger instead of running towards the police.  This does not happen, it’s nonsense.

What is likely to take place as this case develops?  A media blackout on the story, much like we have witnessed with multiple cases in the past few years that make the political left look bad (the Waukesha massacre by BLM supporter Darrell Brooks comes to mind).  Details will probably emerge which further contradict the official narrative but they will be buried and ignored.  The leftists will continue to label any suspicions as “conspiracy” as they hope and pray the general public completely forgets and moves on to other distractions.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Judge Orders Unsealing Of Names Of 8 Anonymous Individuals Relating To Jeffrey Epstein

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Kari Lake Gives Update: ‘Whistleblowers Are Coming Forward’ thumbnail

Kari Lake Gives Update: ‘Whistleblowers Are Coming Forward’

By The Geller Report

Arizona must be done over. Paper ballots, no machines.

How strange that Maricopa voting machines misread votes in only Republican districts!

Kari Lake Gives Update, Says ‘Whistleblowers Are Coming Forward’

By Jack Phillips, The Epoch Times, November 21, 2022:

Arizona Republican governor’s candidate Kari Lake issued a Monday update, saying her attorneys are working to obtain more information and “whistleblowers are coming forward” after reports of poll issues on Election Day in Maricopa County.

“Attorneys are working diligently to gather information,” said Lake, a former local news anchor who was backed by former President Donald Trump. “Whistleblowers are coming forward and the curtain is being lifted. Whether done accidentally or intentionally. It is clear that this election was a debacle that destroyed any trust in our elections.”

Authorities Maricopa County are, according to Lake, “still counting ballots” after “printer problems, tabulation errors, three-hour-long lines and even longer and confusing instructions given by election officials made this election day the most chaotic in Arizona’s history.”

For the past several days, Lake has been posting videos of voters complaining about their experiences during Election Day to her Twitter page. She’s said that Republican voters were disenfranchised when they tried to cast ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county.

Officials in Maricopa County said on Nov. 8 there were problems with vote-tabulation machines and asked voters to drop their ballots inside dropboxes. Later that day, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and county Recorder Stephen Richer blamed an issue with printers for the problem and later said that the glitch would not stop anyone from voting.

Letter

Over the weekend, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office sent a letter asking Maricopa County for answers about the apparent voting problems. The memo said that it has fielded hundreds of complaints about how authorities conducted the election during the in-person voting phase.

“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” the letter said, asking for a response before Nov. 28. Gates, in an interview with local media, said his office would comply.

“We’re reviewing this with our attorneys right now and I don’t have anything further to say at this point, but we will certainly before we hold the canvass,” he told KTAR on Monday.

Gates stated that around 70 of the county’s 223 vote centers suffered problems on Nov. 8. Technicians were able to solve the problem by the same afternoon, he remarked.

Epoch Times Photo

A woman replaces a poster critical of Democratic candidate for Arizona governor Katie Hobbs during a prayer rally outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix on Nov. 14, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

The letter said that Maricopa needs to provide a “full report” for the “myriad problems that occurred in relation to Maricopa County’s administration of the 2022 General Election.”

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘They Created An Industry’: How Leftists Gaslight Americans On Extremism thumbnail

‘They Created An Industry’: How Leftists Gaslight Americans On Extremism

By The Daily Caller

Democrats’ final pitch to Americans this November as the midterms approached couldn’t have been more clear: Republicans are “extremists” hellbent on destroying Democracy.

Joe Biden infamously declared that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic” at a September speech in Philadelphia. But 50 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — 50 million Americans who, according to their president, are fringe “extremists.”

Interest in the word “extremism” is vastly more pronounced in Washington D.C. than in any state over the last year, according to Google Trends. On a scale of 0-100, DC stands at 100, with Vermont, Virginia and Maryland following at 22, 20 and 16, respectively. Swing states such as Ohio, Indiana and New Jersey have a relative interest in the word of 8, 7 and 8, respectively. In short, obsession with the problem of extremism is mainly a passion project of the D.C. elite.

Following the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center, Democrat lined up to support Roe v. Wade, and even enshrine it into law. Biden promised to codify Roe if Democrats took majorities in the midterms, and Vice President Kamala Harris lamented the potential overturning of Roe back in May.

But Roe v. Wade allowed abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy, well into the second trimester, and most Americans support restrictions on abortion after the first trimester, which ends at 12 weeks. In fact, the Mississippi abortion law that sparked the Dobbs decision would not ban abortions until the 15th week of pregnancy.

Progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal called a Florida bill that bans explicit discussions of sex and gender in classrooms “extremist.” Jayapal is one of many Democrats who inaccurately dubbed this legislation the “Don’t Say Gay Bill,” although it nowhere prohibits individuals from saying the word “gay.” Despite Democrat claims of extremism, a majority of registered voters supported the legislation, and only 35% opposed it. Opposition to transgender surgery for children has also been dubbed “extremist” by LGBT activists, but a recent poll from McLaughlin and Associates finds that 65% of Americans think the transgender movement has gone too far in recommending such procedures to minors.

Brian Levin, who directs the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, told the Daily Caller that extremism can be defined as “a position that is … antithetical to our constitution and the processes of our democracies, particularly with regard to bigotry and discrimination,” but admitted that the word is often thrown around too lightly.

“Sometimes we label people extremist because we’re too lazy to debate them, but other times people are labeled extremists because they are,” Levin told the Caller, adding that political problems arise, “when we have people running for various types of critical office who are election deniers.”

Kyle Shideler, the director and senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, said the term “extremist” is problematic from the start.

“I think we should discard the term altogether. If we need to talk about ideologies that potentially lead to violence, we need to talk about those ideologies on their own terms. So if we have concerns about Neo-Nazi groups, we should talk about neo-Nazism,” Shideler told the Caller. “Same thing if we’re concerned about anarchists like Antifa. You don’t need a blanket term to do it. We should identify groups and ideologies on their own terms.”

1/ I’m writing about this report for my newsletter. It’s really sloppily done. In some cases they just find nothing and pretend it’s something. I’ve complained about this sort of “research” on online extremism for years — it really bugs me.https://t.co/9AXtEwyq7B

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) September 24, 2022

In June 2021, the Biden White House released a National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, which claimed that domestic terrorism comes from “racial or ethnically motivated violent extremists and networks whose racial, ethnic, or religious hatred leads them toward violence, as well as those whom they encourage to take violent action.”

The document not only decries “explicit” calls for violence against religious and ethnic minorities, but also words that are “less explicit, lurking in ideologies.” Chief among these ideologies are, according to the document, “conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation and misinformation.”

Shideler told the Caller that the government’s use of the term “extremism” blurs the line between speech that calls for violence and constitutionally protected speech, causing the government to censor speech which they claim is so extreme that it leads to violence.

“It’s a sort of bait and switch that’s been perpetuated, because they will use the term extremist and say not everyone who is an extremist is a terrorist and they have first amendment rights … But then they will turn around and say ‘oh there’s a rise in extremism.’ And so they dance between whether they’re talking about people who are actually engaged in criminality or people who hold certain ideas,” he added.

As an example, in July 2021 then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House was working with Facebook to determine which posts on the platform should be flagged for “disinformation” on the COVID-19 vaccine.

“We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” Psaki said, noting that “Facebook has repeatedly shown that they have the levers to promote quality information.”

“[The left] created a terminology, and then they created an industry,” Shideler told the Caller, “and they staffed that industry with certain academics who held a particular viewpoint.”

Levin told the Caller that people who spread extremist ideologies online but don’t necessarily call for violence still contribute to a negative environment.

“Those individuals are at least part of the ecosystem of extremism even if they’re not the bullseye center of it,” Levin said.

AUTHOR

SARAH WEAVER

Staff writer.

RELATED VIDEO: Bidens Finally to Be Investigated

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ARIZONA: Maricopa County’s Election Dysfunction Was More Widespread Than Officials Said, Memo Claims thumbnail

ARIZONA: Maricopa County’s Election Dysfunction Was More Widespread Than Officials Said, Memo Claims

By The Daily Caller

  • More Maricopa County voting centers saw tabulator or printer issues than officials had announced, according to a memo by an attorney who observed the election process.
  • “It seems very clear that the printer/tabulator failures on election day at 62.61% of the vote centers observed by 11 roving attorneys, and the resulting long lines at a majority of all vote centers, led to substantial voter suppression,” the memo said.
  • “It is certainly safe to assume that many voters refused to wait in such lines, left the vote center, and did not return to vote later,” the memo read. “A survey of the electorate could easily confirm such an assumption.”

Election day tabulator or printer issues affected more Maricopa County, Arizona, voting centers than authorities had previously claimed, according to a memo by an attorney who observed the voting process.

On Nov. 8, the day of the midterm elections, 11 of the roving attorneys tasked with observing election processes in the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) Election Integrity program in Arizona collectively visited nearly 52% of the county’s voting centers, according to a memo sent to party officials and candidates by roving attorney Mark Sonnenklar and obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The memo alleged that 72 of those 115 visited centers, or roughly 60%, saw “material problems with the tabulators not being able to tabulate ballots,” resulting in “substantial voter suppression.”

The findings of the memo would indicate that tabulation and printer problems at Maricopa County voting centers were more widespread than elections officials had previously claimed. Though the memo does not address whether tabulation and printer problems may have occurred at the Maricopa County voting centers that the attorneys did not visit, a significant number of those locations may have seen similar issues, given the large sample size of voting centers visited by the roving attorneys.

Sonnenklar wrote that the findings in the memo “directly contradict the statements of County election officials that (1) printer/tabulator issues were limited to only 70 of the 223 vote centers, (2) the printer/tabulator problems were resolved as of 3:00 p.m., and (3) the printer/tabulator issues were insignificant in the entire scheme of the election.”

READ:

Aggregated Roving Attorney Ge… by Daily Caller News Foundation

For instance, Maricopa County’s main Twitter account said Nov. 9 that an issue with printers had affected an estimated 17,000 ballots across 70 (about 31%) of the county’s 223 voting centers, with tabulators unable to read some ballots lacking dark enough timing marks.

“In many cases, the printer/tabulator issues persisted from the beginning of election day until the end of election day,” Sonnenklar wrote. “It seems very clear that the printer/tabulator failures on election day at 62.61% of the vote centers observed by 11 roving attorneys, and the resulting long lines at a majority of all vote centers, led to substantial voter suppression.”

Tabulators rejected ballots’ first insertion almost every time at many voting centers, and many ballots could not be machine-tabulated no matter how many attempts a voter made, Sonnenklar stated.

“The strong consensus regarding why the tabulators would not read certain ballots was that those ballots, in particular the barcodes on the side of the paper, were not printing dark enough for the tabulators to read them,” he wrote, claiming to have personally visited ten voting centers.

Material problems caused voters to either deposit their ballots into a box for later counting, spoil their ballots and re-vote, or “get frustrated” and leave without voting, the memo said. Many voters had to wait an hour or two to receive a ballot for voting, with the roving attorneys reporting “significant lines at 59 of the 115 vote centers” they collectively visited, it claimed.

The DCNF has not verified the claims in this memo, and the Maricopa County Elections Department did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

“It is certainly safe to assume that many voters refused to wait in such lines, left the vote center, and did not return to vote later,” Sonnenklar added. “A survey of the electorate could easily confirm such an assumption.”

Sonnenklar quoted the ten other roving attorneys in the memo, and five of them confirmed to the DCNF that they provided information to Sonnenklar that was included in the memo.

“Some of the issues I reported (in real time and later to Mark Sonnenklar) were based on the reports that I received from the Republican observers at the respective sites, except those which I specifically indicated that I witnessed myself,” Roie Bar, one of the roving attorneys and a Scottsdale-based lawyer, told the DCNF. “Each site only allows one observer from each party and all the locations I covered had Republican observers present all day (2 in each location, covering 2 shifts – morning and afternoon). I was in communication with the observers throughout the day and was receiving reports from them in real time.”

The memo quoted one roving attorney as reporting long lines at three of 15 voting sites they visited. Another reported that five of the nine centers they visited had long lines.

“To sum it up, it was a complete mess!” a third roving attorney said of observations they made, according to the memo. “There is no other way to put it.”

Sonnenklar was not the only legal professional to raise concerns over the voting process; Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright sent a Saturday letter describing reports of similar tabulation and printer issues.

“Due to the widespread problems in non-uniform printer configuration settings, many voters were unable to tabulate their ballots on Election Day using on-site tabulators. Instead, voters were instructed to deposit their ballot in ‘Door 3,’” Wright stated. “Maricopa County appears to have failed to adhere to the statutory guidelines in segregating, counting, tabulating, tallying, and transporting the ‘Door 3’ ballots.”

Despite the findings in the memo, Maricopa County election officials have attempted to characterize the voting issues as relatively minor and insubstantial.

“Nearly a million County residents voted early in the November General Election,” the county’s main Twitter account stated Friday. “On E-Day, most Vote Centers experienced no printer issues, most had wait times under 30 min. and @maricopavote gave voters the freedom to cast their ballot at any one of 223 locations.”

The DCNF obtained the memo from former Arizona Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen.

“I worked at a polling location,” Pullen told the DCNF. “The tabulators were not working.”

Arizona, we are still in the fight. pic.twitter.com/ytaGvqG5J0

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) November 17, 2022

Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake refused to concede Thursday after Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs was projected the winner in their race. Lake claimed “nearly half of all polling locations had problems with tabulating machines and printers,” forcing voters “to wait in line for hours.”

AUTHOR

TREVOR SCHAKOHL

Legal reporter.

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FREEDOM MINUTE: Biden is the real threat to ‘democracy’

By Center For Security Policy

Our country’s Founders had a central preoccupation: prevent abusive government. They crafted a constitution with a system of checks and balances to guarantee God-given individual rights, prevent the concentration of federal power that would threaten them and repose authority in representatives closest, and, therefore accountable, to the people.

The Biden administration is systematically wrecking this arrangement. It is ruling with sweeping executive orders, weaponizing law enforcement and otherwise a bridging personal freedom and making international commitments without popular mandates that threaten worse in the future.

Consider Team Biden’s agreement at the G-20 meeting last week to institute a digital vaccine passport system to control international travel. Inevitably, this will translate into new mandates for vaccinations and documentation here, too. Learn more about the coming Digital Gulag at a webinar this afternoon at StopVaxPassports.org.

Will the new Republican House save our freedoms – and Republic?

This is Frank Gaffney.

AUTHOR

Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Founder and Executive Chairman, Center for Security Policy.

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JAIL THE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY!!! pic.twitter.com/1SYVhfsrYl

— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) November 21, 2022

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G20 MARCHING ORDERS—You will comply!

By Church Militant

by Kristine Christlieb  •  ChurchMilitant.com  •  November 19, 2022

TRANSCRIPT

The G20 summit issued its Leaders’ Declaration on Wednesday. It’s composed of 19 countries and the European Union.

Church Militant’s Kristine Christlieb explains global elites’ plans for your future.

Budi Gunadi Sadikin, minister of health, Indonesia: “So let’s have a digital health certificate, acknowledged by WHO, if you have been vaccinated or tested properly. Then, you can move around.”

On Wednesday, G20 leaders issued their official declarations, which included giving humans the opportunity to “move around” if they comply with vaccination or testing requirements.

Here’s their official language: “We acknowledge the importance of shared technical standards and verification methods, under the framework of the IHR (2005), to facilitate seamless international travel, interoperability and recognizing digital solutions and non-digital solutions, including proof of vaccinations.”

Translation: We may require you to have a vaccine passport to leave the country.

The document is a detailed blueprint for the future.

Steven Mosher, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Pandemics, told Church Militant, “The world is growing smaller. After locking us in our homes and out of our churches, they now want to lock us in our countries. It’s always about control.”

An underlying assumption throughout the 20-page statement is climate change and the need to manage limited resources in a sustainable way.

Breanna Roque, graduate student, UC Davis: “Dairy cattle actually contribute a lot of greenhouse gas emissions to the environment.”

But health care and agriculture aren’t all that need to be overhauled. Also in need of revision are “finance instruments” that will improve “accessibility and affordability,” such as digital currency.

Nearly every aspect of modern life will need to be transformed.

Global leaders are telling us what they plan to do. We should believe them.

The G20 summits have been working in lockstep with United Nations organizations since the group’s inception 15 years ago.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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America’s Silence In The Face of Tyranny

By Kelleigh Nelson

“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.” —  John Locke

“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of the press.” —  Thomas Jefferson

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.  It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.” —  Thomas Jefferson

“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the Republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” —  George Washington


Americans were built with an inner strength, a strength that fought for independence and liberty for seven long years.  The end of conflict came only after British forces were removed from Charleston and Savannah in late 1782.  The future often looked bleak, but by the grace of God, the American patriots fought on and won.

Where is that inner strength today?  Have we lost it?  Have we grown too fat and lazy to even pay attention to the tyrannical moves of the federal and state governments?  I’m afraid this is the case, combined with the elimination of academic education replaced with Pavlovian dog training, Skinnerian conditioning and communist propaganda.

Our Constitution means nothing to the majority of people whose education failed to teach them our God given rights and freedoms, those very freedoms which blessed the birth of this once great nation.

Trampled Rights

The first amendment in our Bill of Rights grants five freedoms.  It protects speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government. Together, these five guaranteed freedoms make the people of the United States of America the freest in the world.  However, over time, and especially during the C-19 years, these unalienable rights were sacrificed “for our safety” by our federal and state governments. Fear and subjugation went hand in hand to squelch any rebellion against the tyrants while those precious God given rights were trampled into dust.

The only protest we saw was the January 6th, 2020 Capitol Hill protest, and we all suspect/know the FBI was involved despite their denials. Those who were peacefully attending are now spending their lives in a dungeon of hell and the US Constitution’s protections are once again trampled to dust.  I’ll admit it was foolish to go into the Capitol, but the doors were opened to them and President Trump’s request for national guard presence was denied by Nancy Pelosi.

Compare January 6th 2020 to the recent runoff election in Brazil.  Over three million Brazilians protested election fraud and are still out every day protesting.  Bolsonaro’s Party has moved to annul the election since the results could not be validated.  The people know electoral fraud was committed by Communist convicted criminal Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Silent Republicans

All we heard from them were promises while they were running for office.  But no one has mentioned vote fraud other than those who, almost two weeks later, are still doing recounts.  Ever wonder why only Democrats succeed in winning the recounts or runoffs?  And they are the biggest election fraud deniers, along with their comrades in mainstream media.

Kari Lake, Arizona gubernatorial candidate, is still fighting the election fraud where she was ahead and after days of recounts, Katie Hobbs allegedly wins.

Hershel Walker, Georgia’s Republican Senatorial candidate is in a runoff on December 6th with Raphael Warnock.  It concerns me that those who are shilling for Hershel are not true patriots. Americans for Prosperity is a Koch organization. Then there’s Nikki Haley and she’s a World Economic Forum member. Former Speaker, Newt Gingrich who voted years ago for the UN gun grab, and several other folks most refer to as RINOs, want you to send Hershel more money.  This includes the RNC who won’t stop emailing or calling me.  I hope Hershel wins and he is not beholden to these people.

However, in Lawrence Sellin’s recent article, he exposes the Chinese connection in the Georgia runoff.  He writes, A November 15, 2022 article entitled “U.S. midterm elections:

Georgia’s “play-in” to determine the final Senate map – How Chinese can seize the critical moment,” published on the Chinese language website of the BBC, described how the Chinese in Georgia are organizing to defeat Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker in the upcoming run-off election.

According to that BBC article, Xiao Yu, who has helped several Chinese people run for office in Georgia and organized Chinese electioneering in the 2020 presidential election, is mobilizing Chinese to participate in the second round of the ballot in support of Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock.

So, the Chinese Communist Party is helping the Stalinist Democrats to win in Georgia, and probably many other states.

And we’re learning our overseas military are being deprived of their valid votes.

A shocking testimony reported by Gateway Pundit reveals democrats were stealing overseas and military ballots from Michigan, Georgia and now Arizona too.  The ballots were tampered with and all looked like Xerox copies. Proof doesn’t sway the fraud deniers.

George Soros, with the help of his Democrat Party comrades, has financed campaigns of left-wing district attorneys, and he succeeded in installing leftist prosecutors in major cities. Money was spread nationwide to Democrat Party candidates, and most won.

There are five representatives in the House who consistently vote with the Constitution, Andy Biggs, Thomas Massey, Paul Gosar, Al Rosendale and Chip Roy.  Those are the five members who have a freedom index of 100% every year.  There are several members with 97s and 93s, but they should all be 100% all the time.

In the Senate, Rand Paul (KY), and Mike Lee consistently receive 100%.  Senator Ron Johnson (WI) came close to losing his seat in this month’s election, but thankfully he won.  Blackburn and Hagerty in TN, Lummis in WY, Cruz in TX, and Braun in IN, all come in at the 93% level.  The rest are lower and many are at 0%, meaning they always vote against the document they took an oath to uphold.

Abridging States’ Rights

Twelve Republican Senators joined the Democrats and voted for the Respect for Marriage Act.  HR 8404, which passed the House of Representatives in July, “provides statutory authority for same-sex and interracial marriages,” repealing provisions that define marriage as between a man and a woman. Sens. Roy Blunt (MO), Richard Burr (NC) Shelley Capito (WV), Susan Collins (ME), Cynthia Lummis (WY), Rob Portman (OH), Mitt Romney (UT), Dan Sullivan (AK), Thom Tillis (NC), Joni Ernst (IA), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Todd Young (IN).

“Make no mistake,” Alliance Defending Freedom President Kristen Waggoner warned, “this bill will be used by officials and activists to punish and ruin those who do not share the government’s view on marriage.”

Once again, marriage, abortion, slander and libel, and so many other federal grabs at legislation, belong only to the states. The federal government overstepped their bounds and trampled the Constitution they took an oath to defend.

Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution lays out the enumerated powers of the federal government.  The feds have overstepped their limited powers and forced them upon the states, time and again.  The 10th Amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Socialists and Communists

In 2019, Trevor Loudon supplied a list of socialists and communists in our Congress.  He believed then that about 100 members of the House would struggle to pass a low- level security test.  He named a number of them, all democrats, including Tulsi Gabbard.

While the Democrat Party has long exhibited Stalinist actions and overt tendencies, the Republican Party isn’t far behind.  Many Americans refer to Republicans as Republicans in Name Only (RINOs), but I would have to disagree. The majority of Republicans are very similar to their buddies across the aisle. Other than a handful of Constitutional Republicans, the rest do little to stop the onslaught of communism; we’ve seen that time and again.  So, what are they?  They’re slow Marxists, not full-blown Stalinists like the Democrats, but more like Leon Trotsky, a Russian Marxist revolutionary who believed that the slow implementation of Marxist doctrine would succeed in achieving the goal and the citizenry would accept it.

This is the reason so many of them fought against Donald Trump in 2016 and throughout his presidency, and most likely the reason they joined in election fraud denial when it was so very obvious that 2020 was outright skullduggery.

Trump 2024

Trump declares his candidacy for 2024.

President Trump, why bother running again? Vote fraud is now rampant! They’ll never let you win.  My friend Christine commented, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It isn’t fair to Trump’s supporters or the rest of the country to continue this charade.”

Number one, we want an apology for Operation Warp Speed Death jabs, the millions of deaths and the adverse effects they have caused.  We want the enemies of freedom, who caused this evil, exposed and charged.  Their demand for amnesty should be met with two words, and it ain’t, “Let’s Dance.”

Secondly, if you believe that the election won’t be stolen after the last three were stolen, (yes, 2018 was stolen too, and you know about 2020 and 2022) you are full of hot air and that’s being kind.  We all know it, why don’t you?  Unless our elections go back to one vote for one man, we are finished.  You won’t make any difference to them; they’ll destroy you from both sides of the aisle and steal the votes for other republicans as well.

Why don’t you spend two years and work with good people to help change the laws back to what our founders intended (one man, one vote) instead of the obvious cheating we’ve seen over and over again that no one does anything about. Then you’d help the country regain her righteousness.

Do you hear our people?

I did not support Kari Lake, but hoped she’d win against Hobbs, obviously vote fraud is still rampant across the country, and especially in Arizona’s Maricopa County.

Few protested over Covid, most donned the masks, stayed in their houses, lost their businesses while big box stores gained trillions.

No one complained when communists from Antifa and BLM torched and destroyed cities and federal buildings to the tune of billions in damages. And the Insurrection Act was never used because you, President Trump, listened to your Deep State advisors.

No one complained about the 2018 election fraud when republicans went to bed believing they’d won and days or weeks later, after recounts, they lost.

No one complained about the massive 2020 election fraud, and nothing was done.

Now, no one is complaining about the theft of another election in 2022.

Fix it first!  Don’t put us through this insanity again!

Nancy Pelosi is Out

By a very small majority, the Republicans regained the House.  However, so many of them are left of center, I don’t believe it will make much difference.

As for Kevin McCarthy, he should never become Speaker of the House.  He used FTX cash to defeat conservatives in 2022.  He funded a “secretive,” anti-MAGA campaign within the GOP to protect his establishment speaker ambitions.

Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) is the former House Freedom Caucus Chairman, and he’s not so certain that McCarthy is the right man for the job.

Biggs believes that McCarthy may not be a strong enough candidate for the party, “He’s back-pedaled on things like impeachment. In some ways, that indicates a willingness to be weakening the oversight authority that we need to have, and the leverage points we need to have in order to deal with a Democrat president.”

I hope Congressman Biggs launches a challenge against McCarthy and wins.

It’s about time we had a true patriot leading the House.

Worthless Dollars

We’ve called the two parties the uni-party for a long time, and for good reason.

More money is now wanted for the fascists in Ukraine, while our own country is circling the drain and inflation has skyrocketed.  How much confidence do you have that republicans will vote it down?

The White House is asking Congress for $37.7 Billion in new Ukraine aid which would bring total US spending on the war to about $105 billion.

Then they’ll want money for Taiwan. The printing presses are spewing out more and more worthless dollars as American’s suffer higher and higher prices.  And who is getting rich off it?  Ponzi scheme!

Mac Slavo writes that the US is going to attempt to quickly arm Taiwan as the “China Threat” grows.  But with Biden in the back pocket of Xi Jinping, who knows.

Conclusion

Where are my fellow Americans?  Crickets!  Time to take lessons from Brazil.

Our citizens don’t write, call or email their reps.  And if those reps don’t hear any noise from the people, they’ll keep doing what makes them rich and to hell with the unwashed masses who just want to be left alone.

Our founders paid dearly for our nation’s independence.  What are we willing to do to save her?

©Kelleigh Nelson. All rights reserved.

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Tales From The Crypto

By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

The spectacular collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange is not just a business story.  It’s a Washington swamp story and Republicans will be investigating it when they take control of the House in January.  At issue is whether “Individuals within the Democrat Party accepted money with knowledge of potential criminal activity occurring at FTX.”

High-flying FTX bought Super Bowl ads and sports facility naming rights.  It amassed a net worth of $32 billion to become one of the largest crypto exchanges in just three years with 28-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried at the helm. It lost half its worth in a matter of days when customers lost confidence and essentially started a run on the bank.  It was reported Bankman-Fried secretly siphoned off $10 billion in customer funds and transferred it to another trading firm he also owned, run by his girlfriend.   The trading firm invested in FTX’s crypto token, the financial roundtrip prompting investor concern.  FTX was left without sufficient assets to pay customers pulling their money out, and bankruptcy ensued.

FTX has been called a Ponzi scheme, but it sounds more like embezzlement and fraud.  News reports don’t talk about money from new investors being used to pay previous investors, as in a Ponzi scheme.  Instead, $1-2 billion simply vanished.  Some of it went into buying $121 million worth of property in the Bahamas, but a lot of it was going into buying influence in Washington.

FTX, Bankman-Fried, and other FTX top executives poured money into Democrat politicians and liberal causes – $28 million went to a Democrat pro-COVID lockdown PAC, and $4 million to a group called Reproductive Freedom for All.  Democrat politicians who benefitted include Senators Dick Durbin and Bob Menendez.  Bankman-Fried gave more than $5 million to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and was the second largest Democrat donor in the 2022 midterms.  Money also went to Republicans, but it’s common for corporations to make contributions on both sides of the aisle to hedge their bets in the influence game.  In all, an estimated $57 million went to Democrat candidates and groups and $22 million to Republican candidates and groups. [Steve Moore newsletter, 11/21/22]

Another Democrat politician who benefitted is Maxine Waters.  There are pictures of her and Bankman-Fried with their arms around each, smiling.  Another picture shows her blowing kisses to him.  And this is the woman who, as current chair of the House Financial Services Committee, will be holding hearings on FTX next month.  Moreover, nine members of the committee — seven Democrats and two Republicans — received more than a combined $300,000 in political contributions from Bankman-Fried and others at FTX.  It doesn’t take a genius to see the conflict of interest here.  It’s shaping up to be a whitewash, with the chair of the committee blowing kisses at the perp.

Meanwhile, critics are asking ‘what did the SEC know and when did it know it?’  It turns out the father of the girlfriend who ran the trading firm I mentioned earlier worked with Gary Gensler, chairman of the SEC, when both were professors at MIT.  Gensler, former campaign finance chair for Hillary Clinton, has been criticized for not seeing FTX was going off the rails.  A famous short seller who spotted trouble at Enron and other places, had been publicly warning FTX looked like a scam.  In addition, there are allegations Gensler was actively helping FTX find legal loopholes to escape regulation.

Bankman-Fried insists all the money he has been throwing around is completely innocent and not meant to influence lawmakers or regulators.  The House Republicans will be testing that assertion come January, and we’ll see just how innocent all of this really is.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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Governments Are Using Drones to Spy on Americans. Here’s How People Are Fighting Back thumbnail

Governments Are Using Drones to Spy on Americans. Here’s How People Are Fighting Back

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Drone technology is making it easier than ever for governments to stick their nose where it doesn’t belong.


Americans have long been concerned about government surveillance, and rightly so. Being watched by the government is incredibly disconcerting, especially when government agents are probing into your private life.

The rise of drone technology has not helped on this front. Whereas before a government would need a plane or helicopter to get aerial views of you or your property, now they just need a small remote-controlled device.

The issue of governments spying on Americans using drones has come up in some recent court cases and legislative disputes. One recent case involves Todd and Heather Maxon who live on a rural five-acre property in Long Lake Township, Michigan. Todd likes to fix up cars, and he keeps a number of vehicles on his property.

For years the Township has been going after the couple for zoning violations, accusing them of illegally storing “junk” on their property. But here’s the kicker. The cars can’t even be seen from outside the property…that is, unless you fly a drone overhead. And that’s exactly what the Township did.

Without even attempting to get a warrant, the Township hired a contractor to fly a drone as low as 150 feet over the Maxons’ property multiple times over two years. The Township is now trying to use the pictures taken by the drone as evidence that the Maxons are violating a local zoning ordinance.

“If the government wants to conduct intrusive surveillance like this, the Fourth Amendment requires that it get a warrant,” said Institute for Justice Attorney Mike Greenberg regarding the case. “The zoning authority’s failure to even try to get one shows their indifference to Michiganders’ constitutional rights.”

New York City has also come in the crosshairs in recent years for its decisions on this front. In 2019, the New York Police Department acquired 14 drones for “monitoring giant crowds, investigating hazardous waste spills, handling hostage situations and reaching remote areas in crime scenes, among other tasks.” Though the NYPD insists the drones won’t be used for warrantless surveillance, many are worried that putting this technology in the hands of police is just asking for trouble.

Citing these fears, privacy advocates pushed for legislation known as the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act (“POST Act”), which requires the NYPD to release information about how surveillance tools are being used and creates an annual oversight system to audit compliance with department policies. The Act was passed in June 2020 after gaining momentum following the death of George Floyd.

The legal issue with warrantless government surveillance revolves around the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which states the following:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

In plain language, governments aren’t allowed to conduct searches and seizures as they please. They need to get a warrant.

In the more than two centuries that have passed since this amendment was adopted in 1791, mountains of case law have built up establishing precedents for what exactly constitutes “unreasonable” and what qualifies as a “search” or “seizure.” Other related questions have also been extensively litigated, such as whether evidence collected in an unconstitutional search (such as pictures from a warrantless drone flight) can be used in court. On that issue, there is a long-standing precedent. “For more than a century, the remedy for a Fourth Amendment violation has been suppression of unlawfully obtained evidence,” the Institute for Justice notes.

Whether the Maxons win their case remains to be seen.

What’s clear, however, is that drone technology provides governments with unprecedented spying capabilities—capabilities they would gladly use against Americans if they could get away with it.

For many topics addressed in the Bill of Rights libertarians are firmly in favor of the right being recognized (for example, freedom of speech and gun rights). With the Fourth Amendment, however, there are some philosophical problems.

The economist and political philosopher Walter Block addresses the “right” to privacy in the Peeping Tom chapter of his book Defending the Undefendable 2. “According to the libertarian legal code,” Block writes, “we may do anything at all to each other, whether they like it or not, provided, only, that in so doing we not violate—not their privacy ‘rights’ which do not exist, but rather—their property rights in their own persons and justly owned physical possessions.”

As Block correctly points out, spying on people isn’t technically a rights violation from a libertarian perspective. Indeed, a “right” to privacy, consistently recognized, would lead to all sorts of absurd laws, such as banning detectives or prohibiting most journalism and gossip.

Should we let governments spy on us at will, then, and never push back through legal channels? Of course not. There is a sound philosophical case to be made against government surveillance—it just doesn’t rest on a supposed “right” to privacy.

The most fundamental point to be made in this regard from a libertarian framework is that government surveillance is funded by taxpayer dollars, which are taken coercively. This alone makes the practice immoral in the libertarian view.

It’s also worth pointing out that the purpose of government surveillance isn’t necessarily protecting people. Sometimes the government uses drones because it intends to force its laws on people (such as in the case of the Maxons and Long Lake Township’s zoning laws) in which case the government is using surveillance as a means to a liberty-violating end.

In such cases, libertarians will often make a tactical move. While we may disagree with the Fourth Amendment philosophically, holding the State to its stated laws on privacy is often a more effective way of defending people’s liberties (property rights) than appealing to philosophical ideals. Just saying “it’s their property, they have a right to use it as they please” may be a more philosophically sound rebuttal to zoning laws, but it’s not particularly effective in court.

If appealing to the Fourth Amendment is what will convince the powers that be to respect property rights, there’s nothing wrong with that. We just need to recognize that, for libertarians, such an appeal is merely a practical tactic—the philosophical argument against the government’s actions is rather different from the legal argument.

So that’s the argument against government drones, but what about private drones? Would libertopia have private drones flying everywhere, snooping on people constantly, seeing as libertarians don’t recognize a right to privacy? Of course not. Privacy is in high demand, so drones would almost certainly be regulated with voluntary contracts.

Responding to the Fourth Amendment at the end of his Peeping Tom chapter, Block summarizes the libertarian position on privacy as follows: “We have no such right. It is merely a privilege, one that, fortunately, the free market system can bestow upon us.”

AUTHOR

Patrick Carroll

Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.