Elections Archives - Page 177 of 386

Biden’s Classified Documents Scandal: The China Connection

January 11, 2023/in Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, National Security, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

As you have undoubtedly heard, classified documents from when Joe Biden was vice-president were found in an office Joe Biden used at a Washington think tank. The documents were found last fall and a Justice Department investigation is underway. The documents concern Iran, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. But many are raising questions about the Chinese connection to the growing scandal.

The documents were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. The University of Pennsylvania, which created the Center, received $54.6 million in donations from China from 2014 to 2019. This includes $30 million dollars in anonymous donations from China since it named the Center for Biden. The University paid Joe Biden $1 million to be an honorary professor and some are asking whether the money came directly from China.

That’s not all they’re asking. They’re asking whether China gave money to a university connected to Biden in order to facilitate business deals China was making with the Biden family. Donald Trump and others are even asking whether China saw the classified documents in question and whether Joe Biden found another way to sell his office by selling access to classified documents.

These are all naturally occurring, legitimate questions given the extent of the Biden family’s business dealings with Chinese entities. Those dealings were copiously documented a year ago in Peter Schweizer’s book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win and need not be recounted here.

However, people are also asking questions about three new commercial situations involving China and Joe Biden that have recently come to light.

Senate Republicans are investigating a $200 million Biden Energy Department grant to Microvast Holdings, a battery company that operates primarily in China. The senators say the company may nominally be American but is controlled by China. It gets subsidies from China and serves primarily Chinese customers. The senators are asking whether the grant endangers U.S. national security and technological superiority over China.

The Energy Department also gave over $10 million in grants to LanzaTech, another green energy company tied to China. LanzaTech is in a partnership with the investment arm of the Chinese state-owned oil giant Sinopec. LanzaTech acknowledged in SEC filings “the Chinese government may intervene or influence our operations at any time.” A Sinopec executive sits on LanzaTech’s board.

The third situation involves the Biden administration allowing Chinese-owned TikTok to get away with not disclosing its far-flung lobbying and public relations activities to the American public. TikTok’s parent company is in negotiations with the Biden administration aimed at allowing TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. The parent’s lobbyists registered under the domestic Lobbying Disclosure Act on the pretext they are not lobbying for a foreign government. The Act only requires barebones disclosure, not the more extensive reporting required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Justice Department has required lobbyists for other Chinese companies to register as foreign agents, but not the lobbyists for TikTok’s parent company.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform is starting an investigation of the Biden family’s business dealings. James Comer, the new chairman, has made it clear, “We’re investigating Joe Biden.” I will be following the proceedings of the committee closely. We deserve to know whether we have the most corrupt president in American history on our hands.

Federal Aviation Administration Grounds All Domestic U.S. Flights

January 11, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Elections, Politics, Regulation /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Caller

All domestic flights in the U.S. were grounded overnight Wednesday into the morning due to a technical error. Some flights gradually started to resume shortly before 9:00 am (eastern time).

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) worked overnight to restore a system that allows air traffic control to alert pilots when there are potential hazards on their flight path. Normal air traffic operations resumed just before 9am on Tuesday while agents continued to look into the original cause of the issue, according to an update from the FAA.

Update 4: The FAA is making progress in restoring its Notice to Air Missions system following an overnight outage. Departures are resuming at @EWRairport and @ATLairport due to air traffic congestion in those areas. We expect departures to resume at other airports at 9 a.m. ET.

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023

“We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now. Operations across the National Airspace System are affected,” the FAA wrote on Twitter. “We will provide frequent updates as we make progress.”

Roughly an hour after their initial tweet, the FAA sent an update to followers, announcing that the agency had “ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9am Eastern Time,” to allow for research to be done on the “integrity of flight and safety information.”

Cleared Update No. 2 for all stakeholders: ⁰⁰The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage. ⁰⁰While some functions are beginning to come back on line, National Airspace System operations remain limited.

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023

Delays for arriving and departing domestic flights are likely to be substantial Wednesday, just a few short weeks after a significant winter bomb cyclone disrupted tens of thousands of flights through the holiday season.

Twitter users were quick to express concerns over the total shutdown of domestic travel, with the CEO of Evercontact writing, “This is alarming. There should be an independent audit on such a large-scale incident. Is it due to obsolete equipment? is it a hack? Human error? Accountability is key to restoring trust in an industry that can’t allow mistakes!”

The FAA then retweeted a post from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who noted that “there is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed the Department of Transportation to conduct a full investigation into the causes.” She furthered that the FAA would continue to provide regular updates.

AUTHOR

KAY SMYTHE

News and commentary writer.

The “360,000 Amigos”

January 11, 2023/in Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Immigration, National Security, Politics, Taxes /by DrRichSwier.com

By Center For Security Policy

President Biden and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts have been dubbed the “Three Amigos.” We should call the scheme he announced on the eve of their meeting this week the “Three-Hundred-and-Sixty-Thousand Amigos.”

That’s the number of aliens expected to be brought here this year from four deeply problematic countries through a gambit that is arguably illegal and certainly unauthorized by Congress. As first revealed by the author of Overrun, Todd Bensman, the administration is now enabling people who would otherwise have paid cartels to smuggle them into this country to skip that expense and grave danger.

Instead, they’ll be authorized in their home countries to “lawfully” migrate, then flown here equipped with work papers and money – all at U.S. taxpayer expense. This process may obscure, but will only exacerbate today’s border catastrophe.

Court-ordered injunctions and impeachment proceedings can’t come soon enough.

This is Frank Gaffney.

AUTHOR

Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Founder and Executive Chairman.

House Republican Files Articles of Impeachment Against DHS Sec. Mayorkas In Wake of Border Invasion

January 11, 2023/in Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Featured, Immigration, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

Finally! Millions have stormed the border while Mayorkas continues to insist “the border is secure.”

Mayorkas: ‘The border is closed, the border is secure’:

House Republican Files Articles of Impeachment Against DHS Sec. Mayorkas

Kevin McCarthy called for Mayorkas to resign in November or face an impeachment inquiry

By Kyle Morris, Kelly Phares | Fox News January 10, 2023:

Texas Republican Rep. Pat Fallon has filed impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, delivering on a promise he made last week before the 118th Congress was officially sworn in.

The articles of impeachment against Mayorkas for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” known as House Resolution 8, were introduced by Fallon in the House on Monday and have been referred to the House Judiciary Committee.

Last week, Fallon vowed to file impeachment articles against Mayorkas after the Congress was sworn in. The effort from Republicans in the House is one of many that the new GOP majority will take as it works to fight the Biden administration on issues related to immigration and the southern border crisis.

“Since day one, Secretary Mayorkas’ policies have undermined law enforcement activities at our southern border,” Fallon said in a statement to Fox News last week. “From perjuring himself before Congress about maintaining operational control of the border to the infamous ‘whip-gate’ slander against our border patrol agents, Secretary Mayorkas has proven time and time again that he is unfit to lead the Department of Homeland Security.”

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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1984 to 2020 Florida County Republican Presidential Election Trend Report

January 11, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By Steve Meyer

The information in this 1984 to 2020 Florida County Republican Presidential Election Trend Report was originally tied to the monthly Florida’s Registrations Report but owing to a delay in reporting of one major county, and the report becoming too unwieldly, a separate report on long-term trends of the vote is being issued.

The Republican Party is a candidate-based political organization. The variability in registration and vote trends noted in past registrations reports suggests that being a candidate-based political organization does not allow for the optimization of Republican political fortunes.

There are many political organizations, both national and international, who are satisfied with undertaking long-term political efforts. Fabian Socialists and the Chinese efforts come to mind. This raises the question of how are Republicans doing in improving their long-term prospects?

1984 was chosen as the base year for the examination as the 1984 Presidential Election was the peak of Republican share of the vote and the 36-year time span (1984 to 2020) is sufficiently long to be considered long-term. The Republican national popular presidential vote margin since 1984 is an eye-opening, and poorly trending, negative 23,938,640 votes (going from a 16,938,640-vote win in 1984 to a 7,060,520-vote loss in 2020), and a worrisome, but positively trending 908,745-vote loss of margin in Florida (falling from a 1,280,431-vote win in 1984 to a 371,686-vote win in 2020).

To demonstrate the need for a change from being a solely candidate-based organization to an organization which also considers policies, charts and tables showing long-term Republican vote trends, with accompanying tables, were created. Chart 1 and Table 1 are based on percentage of the vote and Chart 2 and Table 2 are based on vote margin. These charts, and the accompanying data tables are attached.

The shift in Florida county political sentiments based on presidential elections on a percentage basis ranged from Lafayette County increasing the Republican percentage of the vote by 21.7% to Orange County seeing a drop of 33.6% in the Republican percentage of the vote, a difference of 55.3%!

The shift in county vote margin in presidential elections ranged from St. Johns County increasing the Republican vote margin by 37,255 votes while in Broward County the Democrats increased their margin by 345,302 votes, almost ten times that of the Republicans’ gain in St. Johns County.

For clarification of what is meant by vote margin, St. Johns County, the best performing county in growing Republican margin between 1984 and 2020, increased its Republican vote margin from 9,841 votes in 1984 to 47,096 votes in 2020, a gain in margin of 37,255 votes. Lee County, the county which had the largest Republican margin in 2020, had a Republican vote margin of 54,995 in 1984 which grew to 75,552 votes in 2020, a difference of 20,557 votes. In margin gain, St. Johns County outperformed Lee County by 16,698 votes.

The generally poor performance in Florida’s higher population counties has led to Florida’s Republican share of the presidential vote falling from 65.32% of the vote and a vote margin of 1,280,431 in 1984 to 51.11% of the vote, and a vote margin of 371,686 in 2020.

There were nine Florida Counties whose Republican percentage of the presidential vote exceeded 80% in 2020. These high performing counties are target poor as these counties have little room for improvement short of growing their populations, which they hopefully will pursue. Optimistically, the positive changes seen in the 2022 election in many of the traditionally poorer performing, target rich, and more highly populated counties, will carry over to the 2024 presidential election.

These data demonstrate that there are factors not associated with campaigns which, over time, have an overwhelming effect on election outcomes. Republican operatives should take this traditionally quiet times between elections to exhaustively pursue the adoption of policies that will increase Republican market share and ideally give Republican candidates ammunition to use in campaigns.

There are innumerable challenges for Republicans to adopt market share growing strategies. These include

No funding mechanism, as nearly all Republican funds are used in campaigns.
Republican politicians and their strategists, who have successfully navigated the current system, seeing no need for new strategies.
A dearth of Republican non-campaign strategists.
Unlike the free market, where the capturing of a small percentage of market share allows alternative ideas to flourish, alternative political ideas are easily stifled by the existing status quo by simply ignoring the alternative ideas.

One of the most significant long-term factors in politics is the relative size of the Democrats’ favoring demographic of those who rent their housing. Democrats, as a political strategy, champion policies which increase the relative numbers of those who cannot escape rental housing. Vote trends suggests this is a highly effective Democrat strategy!

Housing is one policy area where Republicans could gain a campaign advantage. Democrats want relatively more renters. In this effort, they, their willing allies, and their non-willing, but ignorant opposition, adopt policies which subsidize rental housing, and which make the purchasing of a first home a near impossibility for most. This successful Democrat strategy should be pointed out to the Democrat rank-and-file by Republican candidates as a part of a traditional campaign strategy.

Those multitudes of Republicans who favor policies which will be referred to here as smart growth real estate policies, face a binary choice. Our Republic cannot survive without a super-majority of its voters being propertied. Smart growth policies create costs the housing market cannot overcome while corrupting current homeowners, who are more Republican than not, with unearned wealth as the smart growth policies unfairly increase the value of their properties. The binary choice is to keep smart growth programs in place and lose our Republic, or jettison smart growth policies and keep our Republic. The choice is this stark!

Housing policy changes take time to affect the electorate. The 2011 Florida legislature and Senator Rick Scott, who was then serving as Florida’s governor, jettisoned the enforcement arm of Florida’s smart growth program, which was made operational in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, by eliminating the Florida Department of Community Affairs.

The political significance of Florida ridding itself of The Department of Community Affairs in late 2011 is not broadly understood. Traditional political analysts tried to figure out how President Trump carried Florida in 2016. Then the analysts puzzled over how Governor DeSantis defeated Andrew Gillum in 2018. Next, the analysts pondered how President Trump carried Florida by an even larger margin in 2020. Now the analysts are trying to make sense of how Florida experienced a red wave in 2022 while other states did not.

Competent state Republican governance and national incompetent Democrat governance surely played a role in the 2022 election, as likely did an influx of Republican voting Puerto Ricans, but so did the 2011 Florida legislature, and then Governor Scott, who made the Florida real estate market less burdened resulting in comparative growth in the Republican vote!

Florida Election Report 1984-2022

Jim Jordan Will Chair ‘Weaponization of Government’ Select Committee

January 10, 2023/in Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

It’s a start…..

HUGE: Conservative Hero Jim Jordan Will Chair “Weaponization of Government” Select Committee

By Cullen Linebarger, TGP, January 9, 2023:

Republicans across America deserve to be thrilled this morning with the news conservative bulldog Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) will be leading a select committee investigating the innumerable abuses of power by the Biden Regime. Given Jordan’s impeccable credentials with the right, the Regime better start sweating.

According to the Post Millennial, this “weaponization of government” committee will chiefly focus on four areas: the collusion between the Regime and Big Tech, the politicization of the FBI, the Department of Injustice’s targeting of parents at school board meetings, and Anthony Fauci. These are the things conservatives have been demanding from Republicans for the past two years.

Here’s the story from the Post Millennial:

“The 118th House of Representatives will see the formation of a new select committee, headed by Jim Jordan, to dig into the abuse of power and the Weaponization of Government. This investigative panel will demand emails and correspondence between the Biden administration and big tech companies, and follows the massive revelations that came to light through the recent release of the Twitter Files.

“The probe into communications between tech giants and President Biden’s aides will look for government pressure that could have resulted in censorship or harassment of conservatives — or squelching of debate on polarizing policies, including the CDC on COVID,” Axios reports.

“If government personnel and agencies do not comply, subpoenas are likely to be issued, per a GOP source. The GOP is committed to digging into “the politicization of the FBI,” which not only includes the work done to discredit accurate reporting from the New York Post in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, but the allegations of Russian election interference in the lead-up to the 2016 election.”

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Dems Ask Each Other to Stop Busing Migrants

January 10, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Immigration, National Security, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By Jihad Watch

“You must stop busing migrants to Chicago and New York City.”

Last week I discussed the outpouring of humanitarian kindness by Colorado’s Gov Polis in shipping unwanted migrants to New York City. Don’t mistake this for the ‘bad’ kind of busing that DeSantis and Abbot do. No, in Polis’ words, it’s “honoring our values by treating people with dignity and respect.”

I’m not so sure that shipping people to NYC or Chiraq treats them with dignity and respect. NYC and Chicago certainly don’t.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot demanded Saturday that Colorado Gov. Jared Polis stop busing asylum seekers to their cities, saying they are “over capacity.”

“We respectfully demand that you cease and desist sending migrants to New York City and Chicago,” Adams and Lightfoot wrote in a letter to Polis. “Since December of 2022, Chicago and New York City have received hundreds of individuals from Colorado.”

“You must stop busing migrants to Chicago and New York City,” the mayors wrote. “In the case of family reunification, let us work together to ensure that people are reconnected with their loved ones, however sending migrants to our cities whose systems are over capacity, where they may struggle to find shelter and other services is wrong and further victimizes these most vulnerable individuals.”

Polis previously insisted, “too many people, in our opinion, view this through a political lens or as playing politics — and it’s terrible that in some places, people have been used as political props. But what we are doing here is just honoring our values by treating people with dignity and respect.”

Adams and Lightfoot should honor their values by putting the migrants on buses to Denver. Or trains or planes. The whole thing can become a paradox in which the migrants are being perpetually shipping around the country without ever stopping.

Or, and this is racist madness, we can build a border wall, enforce border security, pull out of the international refugee treaty that demands we give open the door to migrants, and then ship all the arrivals back where they came from. By bus. Even if it’s across the ocean.

But that would be madness. This way is so much better. Once all the migrants are bused to Chicago and NYC, we can build a border wall around them.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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House Passes Rules Package. Here’s What Conservatives Won

January 10, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Featured, Politics, Taxes /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Caller

Twenty House Republicans who initially opposed a Kevin McCarthy speakership extracted a slew of concessions from the Californian in exchange for their votes, devolving power away from chamber leadership and back toward rank-and-file members as well as themselves personally.

On the 12th and 13th speaker ballots, 15 Republicans flipped to support McCarthy. They cited negotiations between the Californian’s allies and some of the holdouts that will give members of the House Freedom Caucus representation on key committees, cut spending, and schedule key bills for votes. The complete terms of the agreement have not been fully released, although bits and pieces have been made public. The process has rankled some members of the Republican conference who argue that the agreement gives the Freedom Caucus an unfair level of influence in the lower chamber.

The official House rules package, which all but one Republican voted for, passed Monday. It includes a single member motion to vacate the chair as well as a requirement that tax increases receive 60% support before becoming law. The rules also require that legislation have only one subject, and give members 72 hours to read bills. Republicans are also creating a new Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government under the House Judiciary Committee.

“You are going to have to trust the people that are put on this committee, and I’ll tell you what, if there’s something fishy going on, I’ll come out of the SCIF and tell you, but a lot of it will be behind closed doors, it will be classified information. If we find anything illegal or unconstitutional, we will bring it forward,” Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie told Tucker Carlson of the committee.

However, most provisions negotiated by the leadership team and the GOP holdouts are not included in the rules package voted on by members.

“It has to do with personnel, how members of the conference will be appropriately distributed to key committees. It is about policy imperatives. There are critical issues that we must address,” North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop told reporters Friday.

McCarthy named Florida Rep. Byron Donalds to the GOP Steering Committee over the weekend, making him the second Freedom Caucus member, along with Arizona Rep. Debbie Lesko, on the panel. The Steering Committee doles out committee assignments to the Republican conference writ large. The Steering Committee chose Tennessee Rep. Mark Green, also a member of the Freedom Caucus, to lead the House Homeland Security Committee on Monday. Green beat out Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a McCarthy ally and staunch critic of the Freedom Caucus, for the gavel.

“They should be represented like all the other caucuses, but they shouldn’t have more than other members have. We should have equal representation on these committees,” New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis told The Dispatch of Freedom Caucus committee appointments. “I think that’s probably where a lot of members will draw the line.”

pic.twitter.com/c380OTUQn5

— Rep. Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) January 7, 2023

Another provision, intended to balance the federal budget within 10 years, would freeze the Fiscal Year 2024 budget at FY2022 levels. This could lead to steep defense cuts, since the FY 2022 budget included $782 billion in defense spending, while the FY2023 budget raised that number to $858 billion. Key Republicans like incoming Appropriation Committee chairwoman Kay Granger of Texas are pledging to oppose any defense cuts, although the plank still has some members nervous.

“We don’t want to go back to sequestration. That would be very damaging to our military in a very dangerous world,” incoming House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul of Texas told the Daily Caller.

“What we need to have conversations on is how that breaks down into defense and non-defense. Those still have to be had. I can tell you it won’t be on the backs of our troops,” Florida Rep. Mike Waltz added.

Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales cited the possibility of defense cuts in a Sunday interview explaining his lone GOP opposition to the rules package.

“When you have aggressive Russia and Ukraine, you’ve got a growing threat of China in the Pacific, you know, I’m going to visit Taiwan here in a couple of weeks, how am I going to look at our allies in the eye and say, I need you to increase your defense budget, but yet America is going to decrease ours,” he told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”

AUTHOR

MICHAEL GINSBERG

Congressional correspondent.

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The MAGA Movement Must Adopt ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ As It’s Marching Song

January 10, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By Dr. Rich Swier

“There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party.” — Ulysses S. Grant

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.

We are seeing the MAGA movement gaining strength despite the efforts of the Biden administration, the weaponization of the DoD, DOJ, FBI, CIA, DHS federal agencies, the lies and myths promoted by Democrat Party and the censorship of conservatives by the main stream and social media platforms.

The MAGA movement is still standing strong.

We are also seeing rebellions against tyrants spreading around the globe from Brazil to Iran to China. People want freedom from their oppressors.

This is a tipping point in history when we now have two parties: traitors and the MAGA movement patriots.

We witnessed this second civil war raging across America beginning on January 20th, 2021. A war waged by tyrants, in both political parties, who are anti-faith, anti-family and anti-freedom.

America in 1861 has repeated itself 161 years later on January 6th, 2021 at the Save America March in Washington, D.C. to stop the steal of a presidential election.

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Patriotic songs have the power to bring people together in a musical celebration of unity and love of country. This is what America and every American needs “unity and love” for our nation. MAGA embodies these two beliefs.

One song represents everything that the MAGA movement is fighting for. To tyrants, it is a musical slap across their hateful and prideful faces.

Listen to the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

As the 118th Congress is sworn in we witnessed 20 patriots who call themselves the Freedom Caucus. How fitting in that we now know who are the patriots and who are the traitors in both parties.

The highlighted words from one verse of the Battle Hymn of the Republic are most appropriate today:

In the beauty of the lilies

Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom

That transfigures you and me;

As He died to make men holy,

Let us die to make men free;

While God is marching on.

Time for a second Civil War? A civil war to restore faith, family and freedom? Time to set America’s men and women free?

We believe so.

Originally a camp-meeting hymn “Oh brothers, will you meet us on Canaan’s happy shore?” it evolved into John Brown’s Body. Then in 1861 Julia Ward Howe, the wife of a government official, wrote a poem for Atlantic Monthly for five dollars. The magazine called it, Battle Hymn of the Republic. The music is believed to be by William Steffe, a Southerner.

Lyrics Battle Hymn of the Republic:

Mine eyes have seen the glory

Of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage

Where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning

Of His terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

Chorus

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watchfires

Of a hundred circling camps

They have builded Him an altar

In the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence

By the dim and flaring lamps;

His day is marching on.

Chorus

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet

That shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men

Before His judgement seat;

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him;

Be jubilant, my feet;

Our God is marching on.

Chorus

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies

Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom

That transfigures you and me;

As He died to make men holy,

Let us die to make men free;

While God is marching on.

Chorus

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

Numbers Don’t Lie: America’s Border Crisis Is Biden-Made

January 10, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Featured, Immigration, Politics, Regulation /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Signal

The Biden administration’s open-border policies and its refusal to fully enforce federal immigration laws have imposed huge costs on local communities across the country. Border states are groaning under the enormous cost of sheltering, feeding, educating, policing, and providing medical care for tens of thousands of illegal aliens.

There are humanitarian costs, as well, paid by those who are assaulted and killed by the human traffickers, those who die from the fentanyl flooding across the border and those victimized by vicious criminals who have entered illegally.

This crisis is unprecedented crisis. And it is entirely man-made. Put more precisely: It is Biden-made.

The numbers don’t lie. In fiscal year 2022, ending Sept. 30, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a record 2.76 million alien “encounters” at our border. CBP reported another 278,102 in October and an even-more-staggering 283,189 in November. More than 3 million illegal aliens will have crossed our border illegally in the past 15 months—all because of the administration’s irresponsible stewardship of the Department of Homeland Security.

And that number is conservative. It doesn’t include the “gotaways”— those who made it across the border illegally, without getting caught. Border officials estimate there were at least 600,000 “gotaways” in fiscal year 2022, compared to only 60,000 in fiscal year 2020.

Supporters of open-border policies argue that this flood of illegal aliens is beneficial. Try telling that to the victims of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens who should never have been allowed to enter the United States.

Texas is one of the few states that provides reports on crimes committed by aliens, and the numbers are appalling. The latest report from the Texas Department of Public Safety notes that, from June 1, 2011, through Dec. 31, 2022, more than 389,000 criminal aliens were booked into local Texas jails. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed that 70% of those arrested were here illegally.

Keep in mind that Homeland Security can only confirm the illegal status of aliens who were previously detained by DHS and had their fingerprints entered into the department’s alien database. Given the huge number of “gotaways” whose fingerprints never make it into the system, it is highly likely that many more of those arrested are also here illegally.

But just those 269,000 arrested aliens confirmed to be here illegally were charged with more than 454,000 criminal offenses. That included 847 homicides, 55,509 assaults, 901 kidnappings, 22,139 thefts, 2,551 robberies, 5,579 sexual assaults, 6,729 sexual offenses, 54,885 drug charges, 35,538 obstructing police charges and 5,315 weapons charges. And this is only in Texas.

Sanctuary states like California and New York deliberately refuse to collect or report this data. But we know that Americans are being killed and victimized all over the country. Just ask the families of the victims of criminal aliens at organizations like the Remembrance Project.

The violence, bloodshed, and mayhem caused by these criminals should shock the conscience of every government official, particularly President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris (his designated “Border Czar”) and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Those three have worked to obstruct the enforcement of our immigration laws and destroy the security of our borders.

Biden’s latest proposal for mass amnesty and mass parole would only make the problem worse.

Already exacerbating this public safety problem are rogue prosecutors such as Joe Gonzalez, John Creuzot and Jose Garza, the elected district attorneys in Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas, respectively.

Disregarding their fundamental duty to protect the public, they refuse to prosecute most misdemeanors, water down violent felonies, turn a blind eye to most illegal drug offenses, and refuse to seek cash bail for known criminals. These policies send a loud message to those inclined to commit crimes: Go ahead and do it!

One of the many reasons why people from all over the world come to the U.S. is because they want to live in a country where the rule of law, undergirded by the Constitution, matters and is honored. The rule of law is the cornerstone of an ordered society.

But when “progressive” officials—from the president down to local district attorneys—refuse to enforce the law, chaos ensues.

It’s time to end the chaos, enforce the law, and hold Biden and all federal and state executive branch officials accountable for failing to do their jobs.

Originally published at the DailyCaller.com.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

AUTHORS

Hans von Spakovsky

@HvonSpakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, and former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a member of the board of the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

Cully Stimson

@cullystimson

Charles “Cully” Stimson is a leading expert in national security, homeland security, crime control, immigration, and drug policy at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Read his research.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

DeSantis Tackles Divisive ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ Programs on College Campuses

January 10, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Education, Elections, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Signal

The average American university has more than 45 individuals with jobs devoted to promoting so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI programs push divisive identity politics as well as distorted narratives about American history. But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is once again leading on this issue, taking a first step in clamping down on these counterproductive positions and administrative bloat.

In order to provide taxpayers and parents with transparency around what tax dollars are funding within the halls of state colleges and universities in Florida, the governor’s office sent a letter to the state Department of Education this week requesting that the agency, along with public universities, provide information on initiatives and expenditures associated with DEI programs and critical race theory.

Each institution must provide by this Friday, Jan. 13, a brief description of the program or activity, the number of full and full-time-equivalent employees involved, the total funding to support the initiative, and the amount of state funding spent.

It’s a welcome survey. Florida State University has at least 31 personnel dedicated to DEI efforts, and the University of Florida has at least 29, which is likely only the tip of the DEI iceberg on that campus. Numerous such staff members are on the payrolls of Florida’s 38 other state colleges and universities.

Getting a full accounting of costs associated with the many programs and initiatives will paint a fuller picture of just how much taxpayer money is funding DEI efforts—efforts that are counterproductive to fostering welcoming environments for all students and that cement divisive, identity-focused politics on campus.

On average across the country, universities employ four times as many DEI staff as staff dedicated to helping students with disabilities, according to research by The Heritage Foundation’s Jay Greene and the Educational Freedom Institute’s James Paul. Their research also found that universities employ 1.4 times as many DEI staff as history professors.

The problem is that this proliferation of DEI personnel and initiatives is not improving student satisfaction with their higher education experience. Rather, it is increasing bureaucratic bloat and “may be better understood as jobs programs subsidizing political activism without improving campus climate,” as Greene and Paul explain.

DeSantis’ most recent move follows other important measures his administration has taken to rein in the Left’s capture of academic institutions funded by Florida taxpayers, such as:

The Stop WOKE Act. This law prohibits public school districts and colleges from hiring critical race theory consultants and codifies Florida’s prohibition on the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools. It also prohibits employers from requiring employees to participate in DEI training. “In Florida we are taking a stand against the state-sanctioned racism that is critical race theory … We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other,” DeSantis stated when he announced the proposal in December 2021. While a federal judge paused aspects of the law in November, the governor is expected to appeal the decision.
The Parental Rights in Education Act. This law stipulates that “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” It puts parents—rather than public schools, which should be focused on teaching young children to read and write—in the driver’s seat on sensitive topics like sexual orientation and “gender identity.”
Senate Bill 7044. This law requires universities to periodically change accrediting agencies in an effort to reduce the “inordinate amount of power” held by accrediting bodies, DeSantis said. Requiring periodic changes in accrediting agencies may also mean colleges aren’t pressured to increase DEI initiatives in order to remain in good standing with the accreditation cartel. For example, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools released a DEI position statement that reads in part that it “supports and encourages the leadership role of its institutions in promoting and sustaining diversity, equity and inclusion in all arenas of higher education.” The law also requires professors to undergo “comprehensive post-tenure review” every five years to provide performance accountability.
Alternative Pathways Into the Classroom. In August, DeSantis announced changes to the Florida Administrative Code that provide a pathway for veterans and returning service members to obtain temporary teaching licenses. Downplaying or ending certification requirements to teach (including the requirement that teachers possess a teaching degree, with no consideration for real-world experience as a substitute qualification) would address purported teacher shortages while also weakening the power of ineffective and woke colleges of education.

From providing parents with more transparency relative to what their children are taught in schools and protecting children from the discrimination of critical race theory to weakening the accreditation cartel and shining sunlight on DEI, Florida is leading the way in weakening the Left’s capture of education institutions.

It’s a big reason—along with expansive school choice options for families and a good return on investment for taxpayers—the state ranked first on The Heritage Foundation’s inaugural Education Freedom Report Card.

As 2023 legislative sessions kick off across the country, it will be exciting to see what other states follow suit.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

AUTHOR

Lindsey Burke

Lindsey M. Burke is director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy and Mark A. Kolokotrones fellow in education. Read her research. Twitter: @lindseymburke

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Ilhan Omar To Officially Be Kicked Off Intelligence, Foreign Affairs Committees

January 10, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, National Security, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Caller

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy confirmed Monday night that Democratic California Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell will be removed from the House Intelligence Committee and the House will vote on the removal of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee.

In February, McCarthy told the Daily Caller that if he is elected Speaker that he intends to strip Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee and Swalwell and Schiff from the Intelligence Committee. On Monday, McCarthy confirmed to The Associated Press (AP) that he would be moving forward with that decision, saying both Swalwell and Schiff should not have seats on the committee.

McCarthy has said Swalwell’s reported relationship with a Chinese spy and Schiff’s defense of the Steele dossier are some of the reasons they should be removed from the committee. McCarthy has said Omar’s anti-Semitism is a reason she should be removed from Foreign Affairs.

“Swalwell can’t get a security clearance in the private sector. I’m not going to give him a government security clearance. Schiff has lied to the American public…,” McCarthy told The AP.

In 2021, Democrats stripped Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments.

The Daily Caller contacted Swalwell, Schiff, and Omar’s offices about McCarthy’s decision to move forward and have them removed from committee assignments to which they did not immediately respond.

AUTHOR

HENRY RODGERS

Chief nationals correspondent. Follow Henry Rodgers On Twitter.

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House Rules Package: A Step in the Right Direction

January 10, 2023/in Commentary, Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics, Regulation /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

Frank Gaffney pointed out on his show yesterday that every major country in the Americas is now in the hands of the Left – Canada, the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and Chile. That’s really disturbing when you consider how authoritarian leftist governments become. An island in this sea of misery is the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the United States which just elected a new Speaker and passed a rules package that will appeal to anyone concerned about the advance of the authoritarian Left in this country.

The full text of the rule package isn’t posted yet on Congress.gov, so what I’m about to tell you is from the House Rules Committee version 3 dated January 6th. (text – analysis). Even if some of the details of my summation are not correct, the point will remain the same – the Republican House is standing strongly against misrule by the authoritarian Left.

The first thing that caught my eye in the rules package is the institution of CUTGO – proposals to increase spending in one area must contain equal or greater offsets to spending in other areas. Put that together with the new rule a 60 percent majority is required in the House to pass tax increases, and you’ve got a start on getting government spending back under control. The Left always wants to tax and spend. Half their mischief would go away if government were forced to live within its means like the rest of us. I also like that this restores the Holman Rule that allows members to offer amendments to reduce the salary of specific abusive federal bureaucrats and to cut specific bloated government programs. I’d start with no more paycheck for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who is single-handedly dismantling the nation’s immigration laws.

Other provisions in the package I like include allowing the public to bring ethics complaints directly against House members, and limiting bills to a single subject. The latter will make it much easier for members and the public to follow proposed legislation. Hopefully, this means no more secret deals stuffed into giant bills passed in the middle of the night when nobody knows what’s in them. What Pelosi said during Obamacare – ‘we have to pass it so you can see what’s in it’ – became standard operating procedure under the Democrats, making a mockery of representative government.

Other ideas I’ve seen floating around I hope made it into the final rules:

Requiring the text of legislation to be made available at least 72 hours prior to a vote in the House
Ending proxy voting in the House and remote proceedings in committees
No more automatic suspensions of the debt ceiling when a budget resolution is adopted. A separate vote to raise the debt ceiling would be required.
No more prohibitions against gender-specific language such as “mother” or “father” on the House floor or in committee. That’s a deserved poke in the eye to the Woke Left.

Best of all are the investigations. One will look into the origins of COVID, the government’s involvement in gain-of-function research, COVID vaccines and vaccine mandates. Others will take up the weaponization of government agencies against the people. The Justice Department will be investigated for going after ordinary parents as ‘domestic terrorists’ for speaking their minds against leftist policies at school board meetings. The FBI and other federal agencies will be investigated for their roles in censoring truthful information about COVID and election fraud. There will also be a Select Committee established to look into the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to the country – it’s about time. I also hope the investigation into Hunter Biden and the Biden crime family’s foreign business dealings made the final cut. I will be following all these investigations very closely.

Finally, I hope somewhere in all this is the restoration of regular order, that is, a return to actual separate appropriations bills with committee hearings – not just the giant take-it-or-leave-it omnibus budget packages we’ve seen under the Democrats in recent years. Thousand page monstrosities loaded up with all sorts of leftist spending priorities that members can’t possibly read before they vote.

The battle has been joined. May the House Republicans summon the courage to stick to their principles in the face of the onslaught from the authoritarian Left that is coming. Democrat operative David Brock has formed a $5 million ‘SWAT team’ to deflect House Republican investigations of the administration. That’s in addition to another multimillion-dollar ‘war room’ set up by other leftist organizers for the same purpose. Where do they get all this money? Big money versus sound principles and representative government – I know what side I’m on. Do you?

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

RELATED ARTICLE: 7 Key Reforms in New House Rules

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pic.twitter.com/c380OTUQn5

— Rep. Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) January 7, 2023

Now The Left is Trying to Blame All Post-Vax Sudden Deaths On—Climate Change

January 10, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Energy, Environment, Healthcare, Politics, Science /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

Now that it is impossible to escape the horrible post-vaccine phenomena of young adults are dying suddenly, the left is blaming, wait for it — climate change. If that doesn’t tell you just how stupid they think we are and what malarkey the whole climate hoax is.

“Scientists Studying Temperature at Which Humans Spontaneously Die With Increasing Urgency.”

July 7, 2021

Died suddenly = climate changehttps://t.co/Hcz6zyZN3K https://t.co/RnfHWXHpfH

— annakres77 (@annakres77) January 9, 2023

More young healthy people died today. White House says it’s from Climate Change. Can’t make this shit up.

— ULTRA MAGA LIBERAL SLAYER 🇺🇸 (@democratslie69) January 9, 2023

#diedsuddenly must be Climate change ?! 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/yQaK4LhjDh

— Andrew Turek (@TurekAndrew) January 2, 2023

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) January 10, 2023

Breaking: Adam Schiff and Pelosi call for an immediate criminal investigation into Trump over the events unfurling in Brazil. pic.twitter.com/BVW7Iiou0f

— Merissa Hansen🇺🇸 (@merissahansen17) January 8, 2023

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Biden’s Disastrous Border Numbers Defined 2022 — Make Mayorkas Defend Them In 2023

January 9, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Immigration, National Security, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Caller

Now that 2022 has come to a close, it’s worth looking back at how the issue of immigration affected America this year, and what lies ahead.

The past year set records at the border for all the wrong reasons. While the 2022 official numbers have not been released, it appears a record number of illegal aliens crossed the U.S. border. During the last fiscal year (October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022) Border Patrol apprehended more than 2.7 million aliens crossing the U.S. border illegally and a record 98 suspected terrorists (another record).

As recently as 2019, border patrol apprehended zero suspected terrorists illegally crossing the border. Additionally, government sources confirm at least 853 migrants perished while attempting to make the perilous journey through Central America to the U.S., setting another tragic milestone. These staggering numbers make clear that 2022 was the worst year for border security in American history. Could 2023 be any better? It’s unlikely.

During the 2022 midterm election, Joe Biden’s party significantly outperformed historical trends, and the White House has made clear that it sees the midterm results as permission to ram through their anti-border agenda. After the election, Biden said he wasn’t planning on changing anything, making it clear that he misread the results as an affirmation of his agenda.

“I’m confident these policies are working and that we’re on the right path and we need to stick with them,” he said

Since then, the Biden administration has tried to end Title 42 — the only semblance of sanity this administration has maintained at the border since taking office. Thankfully, the American people received a momentary reprieve when Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary stay, blocking the administration from ending the program. However, the policy remains in great danger, and when and if it does fall, the subsequent crisis might make the last two years look like child’s play.

Administration officials are expecting as many as 14,000 illegal aliens to enter the country every day once Title 42 ends. This would create an economic and cultural upheaval the likes of which most Americans have not experienced ever, while gravely endangering U.S. national security.

It is essential that this program remain in place, but unfortunately Congress appears asleep at the wheel. Congress passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill with little meaningful support for border security. Bipartisan congressional apathy towards the border crisis is a betrayal of the American people. However, all hope is not lost.

As the year came to a close, some members of Congress attempted to rush through an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. Border security advocates were able to defeat an amnesty proposal from Sens. Thom Tillis and Kyrsten Sinema and the legislation was not attached to the omnibus bill like many had feared. Additionally, legislation intended to expand the number of green cards and reform the U.S. immigration system in a more pro-migration direction was unable to get out of the House of Representatives. The death of those two bills was a major victory for all Americans who care about our sovereignty and the rule of law.

As a result of the 2022 midterms, Republicans will take over the house this month, meaning the Biden Administration will face increased oversight over its failures at the border. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the expected next House Speaker, has called on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign, and has threatened to impeach him if he does not. While Mayorkas would almost certainly be acquitted in a Senate trial, his impeachment would present an excellent opportunity to educate the American people on the disastrous effects of the border crisis. He would be forced to defend these disastrous border numbers publicly, creating enough political pressure on the Biden Administration to begin taking the crisis seriously.

States lead the way in fighting back against the federal government’s anti-border policies in 2022. Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis of Texas and Florida, respectively, have forced liberal elites to confront the crisis they created by bussing illegal aliens to sanctuary cities across the country, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Abbott also recently declared an invasion at the border, which will allow the state of Texas to take additional steps to protect their residents from the crisis. With the federal government likely to continue its anti-borders aggression, the states will once again lead the way in combating the crisis in 2023.

What has happened at the border over the past two years is one of the great tragedies in American history, and those of us who care about the rule of law and the future of our country are in for the fight of our lives in the New Year.

William Davis is a communications associate for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.

AUTHOR

WILLIAM DAVIS

Reporter. Follow William Davis on Twitter

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We are at the border today to call out Joe Biden.

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The Most Important Scene in Sin City Reveals a Dark Truth about Violence and Power

January 9, 2023/in Commentary, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

The late Powers Boothe only has a small role in Sin City, but it’s an important one.

Being sick is never fun. But when I was struck by a virus a few weeks ago, I took the opportunity to watch one of the great pulp action movies of the 2000s: Sin City.

The film adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novels is one of the most visually stunning movies ever made. Directed by Miller and Quentin Tarantino collaborator Robert Rodriguez, it contains plenty of sex and violence—but it’s done with style and story, which makes it feel more artistic than gratuitous.

Among a star-studded cast that includes Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Rosario Dawson, and Elijah Wood, it’s still Mickey Rourke who stands out above and beyond the rest in Sin City. The onetime pretty boy of the 80s plays Marv, a tough-as-nails hard case who exacts revenge against the crime lords of Sin City who murdered a young prostitute. Marv’s murderous methods of revenge are unjust, and he pays the ultimate price for his actions, but Rourke shines in his role as a street tough taking on the real bad guys of Sin City: corrupt politicians and a wicked police state.

And this is where I gleaned something new from Sin City, a movie I had not watched in at least a decade (probably much longer).

Senator Roark’s Speech

The late Powers Boothe (1948-2017) only has a small role in Sin City, playing the corrupt Senator Ethan Roark Sr. Though he’s the primary antagonist in the Sin City comics, Senator Roark isn’t seen much in Sin City the movie, unlike Roark’s son (‘That Yellow Bastard,’ played by Nick Stahl) and the senator’s brother (Cardinal Roark, played by Rutger Hauer).

Unlike Senator Roark, both of these villains experience unceremonious endings in the film. Cardinal Roark is killed by Marv, who discovered the religious leader was killing prostitutes (and consuming them). Roark Junior, a rapist and pedophile, is castrated by Hartigan (Bruce Willis), a burned-out ex-cop wrongfully imprisoned until he finally signs a false confession.

Though he’s featured less prominently than his evil relatives, Senator Roark makes an even larger impression in some ways. He may not be as sexually depraved as his son or as barbaric as his brother, but he’s just as bad and more real. He’s a politician that cares for nothing but power, and in an epic monologue to Hartigan—who’s lying in a hospital bed after saving a little girl from Roark Junior—Roark explains the source of his power.

“Power don’t come from a badge or a gun. Power comes from lying. Lying big, and gettin’ the whole damn world to play along with you,” Roark says. “Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain’t true, you’ve got ’em by the balls.”

The senator then tells Hartigan that he could “pump you full of bullets right now” and not face any consequences.

“Everyone would lie for me, everyone who counts,” Roark tells Hartigan at gunpoint.

Live Not By Lies

Roark’s speech didn’t make much of an impression when I first watched Sin City in the movie theater in 2005. But seventeen years later, after reading The Gulag Archipelago and other great works from Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, I now understand what the monologue means. And it scares me a little.

Solzhenitsyn, who himself was sentenced to years in the gulag for making a quip about Stalin in a private letter to a friend, understood that lying and violence are intertwined. In Live Not By Lies, he explained that violence cannot last very long without lies, because it quickly exhausts itself.

“When violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: ‘I am violence. Run away, make way for me — I will crush you.’ But violence quickly grows old,” Solzhenitsyn wrote. “After only a few years it loses confidence in itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally—since violence can conceal itself with nothing except lies, and the lies can be maintained only by violence.”

This is why violence changes. It cannot sustain itself long alone, so it pivots: “it demands of its subjects only that they pledge allegiance to lies, that they participate in falsehood.”

This is what Roark means when he says, “Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain’t true, you’ve got ’em by the balls.” True power is getting the rest of the world to participate in deceit.

This is why Solzhenitsyn, in his 1972 Nobel speech, urged people to do one single, extraordinary thing: do not participate in falsehood.

“The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions!” he wrote. “His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.”

While the former sentence gets the most attention, the latter also deserves attention. Solzhenitsyn is conceding that lies will come into the world, and that they may even “reign supreme” for a time. But his call is to individuals: do not participate in them yourself.

This was Solzhenitsyn’s message to all brave men and women, and it’s the key to defeating the Senator Roarks of the world.

I have no idea if Frank Miller or Robert Rodriguez ever read Solzhenitsyn, but it’s clear they understand political power and violence are intertwined with falsehood. And when I look at the world today and see the decay of truth, it frightens me a little.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. (Follow him on Substack.) 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.

Biden Border Visit: Theater of the Absurd

January 9, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Featured, Immigration, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

I predicted last week Joe Biden’s visit to the southern border would be a carefully staged piece of theater, and I was right.

We can start with the picture in the New York Times story on the visit of Biden talking to agents at a border wall. What’s remarkable about this is that one of the first things Joe Biden did as president was to stop the building of Trump’s border wall. So the photo in the New York Times was deliberately designed to give you the misimpression Biden is tough on border issues when the opposite is true.

Local TV in El Paso reported that migrant camps were being cleared out and people arrested to clean the area up before Biden arrived. They needn’t have bothered. Biden didn’t visit any areas overrun by illegal aliens when he was there. He didn’t go downtown. He went to a processing center where he watched demonstrations by drug-sniffing dogs.

During his visit, Biden claimed securing the border would take a lot of money. No, it wouldn’t. He could start with reversing the three dozen or so policy changes his administration has made to open the border, policy changes I’ve documented in previous commentaries. So Joe Biden is misleading you when he says it’s lack of money, not his policies, that’s responsible for the record illegal immigration we are witnessing.

Likewise, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is gaslighting you when he claims it’s all Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s fault for not cooperating with the federal government. Mayorkas instigated many of the policy changes opening the border I mentioned, and his focus is on getting as many illegal aliens efficiently processed into the interior as possible. His priority is to make “legal pathways” for the nation to be overrun.

Darn that Governor Abbott for not being on board with the invasion. Abbott wants to stop the invasion and recommends five steps be taken: build the wall, limit humanitarian parole to its original definition, reinstitute Remain in Mexico for asylum seekers, designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and – if you can imagine this – actually enforce the nation’s immigration laws as they were written, including deportation.

Abbott handed Joe Biden a letter which accurately describes the situation:

Your visit to our southern border with Mexico today is $20 billion too little and two years too late. Moreover, your visit avoids the sites where mass illegal immigration occurs and sidesteps the thousands of angry Texas property owners whose lives have been destroyed by your border policies. Even the city you visit has been sanitized of the migrant camps which had overrun downtown El Paso because your Administration wants to shield you from the chaos that Texans experience on a daily basis. This chaos is the direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted.
Under President Trump, the federal government achieved historically low levels of illegal immigration. Under your watch, by contrast, America is suffering the worst illegal immigration in the history of our country. Your open-border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grow wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings. Texans are paying an especially high price for your failure, sometimes with their very lives, as local leaders from your own party will tell you if given the chance.
All of this is happening because you have violated your constitutional obligation to defend the States against invasion through faithful execution of federal laws. Halfway through your presidency, though, I can finally welcome you to the border. When you finish the photo-ops in a carefully stage-managed version of El Paso, you have a job to do.

White House Pressured Facebook To Censor Tucker Carlson, Document Reveals

January 9, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

These seditious tyrants have been doing this to my colleagues and me for years. And as I forewarned then, it wouldn’t stop with us. On the contrary, the silence that followed our persecution empowered these goons to go after anyone that opposed their malevolent goals.

This didn’t just happen overnight. This was made to happen.

Remember, it was Obama who blamed freedom of speech (a YouTube video) for the slaughter of our Ambassador and attack on our embassy in Libya. It was Obama’s FBI that aided and abetted the jihadis that attacked our free speech event in Texas.

White House Pressed Facebook To Censor Tucker Carlson, Document Reveals

By: Harold Hutchison, Daily Caller, January 8, 2023:

The White House pressed Facebook to censor Fox News host Tucker Carlson for saying “vaccines” “don’t work,” according to a document released by Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry of Louisiana.

“Since we’ve been on the phone – the top post about vaccines today is [T]ucker Carlson saying they don’t work. Yesterday it was Tomi Lehren [sic] saying she won’t take one,” White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty reportedly said in an April 14, 2021 email to an unidentified Facebook employee, which was posted on Twitter by Landry.

Landry along with Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt sued the Biden administration in federal court on May 5, claiming that members of the administration colluded with social media companies to suppress debate on the 2020 presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues. The court ordered the Biden administration to turn over communications between officials and the tech companies in July.

Rob Flaherty tells facebook to censor @tuckercarlson pic.twitter.com/mxUT2C8nna

— AG Jeff Landry (@AGJeffLandry) January 6, 2023

“This is exactly why I want to know what ‘Reduction’ actually looks like – if ‘reduction’ means ‘pumping our most vaccine hesitant audience with [T]ucker Carlson saying it doesn’t work’ then… I’m not sure it’s reduction!” Flaherty continued in the document released by Landry.

In response, the unidentified Facebook employee reportedly told Flaherty that they were “running this down now,” according to the document posted by Landry.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Gov. Newsom Claims State That Bans Cars and Speech Offers ‘Freedom For All’

January 9, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Energy, Environment, Politics, Science /by DrRichSwier.com

By Jihad Watch

You can do anything in California except open a business, walk down the street, or buy a home.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, the democratic choice of the enlightened ballot harvesters of California, desperately wants to be president. Despite pledging not to run against Biden, he’s continuing to posture by announcing an “anti-Jan 6” march (whatever the hell that is) for his inauguration. The one-party governor of one of the most corrupt states in America then spent his speech ranting about Republicans in other states.

California’s unelected governor wants to reframe freedom to mean mandatory masks and car bans. Not to mention state censorship of online speech.

Freedom is slavery, slavery is freedom.

Gavin Newsom triumphantly marched toward California’s statehouse to deliver an inaugural speech that celebrated California’s freedoms and the state’s resistance to forces that “want to take the nation backward.”

“More than any people, in any place, California has bridged the historical expanse between freedom for some, and freedom for all,” he said under cloudy but dry skies for the first time in days.

“Freedom is our essence, our brand name – the abiding idea that right here anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything.”

Except work freelance, drive a truck, buy a car, get disposable utensils, buy a fur coat, install a gas stove or any of the tens of thousands of things that the Democrat one-party system has banned in some or all of the state.

You can do anything in California except open a business, walk down the street, gas up your car or buy a home. It’s the land of dreams, the hotel you check into and then escape through the back window.

California is so incredibly free that, like North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, everyone is running away.

Gov. Newsom has the unique honor of presiding over a population loss every year in office.

“California’s population continues to dwindle. The state’s population declined by 114,000 people from about 39,143,000 in 2021 to 39,029,000 in 2020, new estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau show. It marks the third straight year that California has reported a loss.”

While Texas and Florida, the states he’s attacking, are gaining people, the only folks California is gaining are coming illegally over the border.

That and sex predators.

Unlike other states, Newsom said, California safeguards freedoms like “the freedom for teachers to teach, freedom from litmus tests about their political party or the person they love.”

California safeguards the right of teachers to “love” the kids of their choice. Republican teachers however get fired.

“They make it harder to vote and easier to buy illegal guns. They silence speech, fire teachers, kidnap migrants, subjugate women, attack the Special Olympics, and even demonize Mickey Mouse,” he said about conservative leaders like DeSantis. “All camouflaged under a hijacking of the word ‘freedom.’”

Whereas in California, Mickey Mouse can expose himself to children. Freedom!

In California, public school teachers, whose insane salaries are subsidized by property taxes no new residents can afford to pay unless they’re millionaires, can groom 9-year-olds. Freedom!

In California, vagrants and junkies have a right to camp in front of your home, but you have to wait 3 years to get a permit to have any work done. Freedom!

In California, a race riot is a civil right while trying to defend yourself against them is a crime. Freedom!

In California, shoplifting is legal, but opening a business isn’t. Freedom!

Wait, why is everyone fleeing the land of the fee and the home of the slave? Wait for the reparations. Stay for the car ban. Or the mandatory ethnic studies. And the race riots. And the tax hikes.

Big population drops in L.A., San Francisco transform state – Los Angeles Times

Why are you leaving the home of freedom? Why?

Do you have something against systemic racism, child abuse, mentally ill vagrants smoking crack, high taxes, and no legal rights whatsoever, you reactionary bigot. You’re taking the nation “backward”.

And California is going backward. Instead of, Go West, Young Man, it’s now Go East.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

In 2022, The IRS Went After the Very Poorest Taxpayers

January 8, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Elections, Politics, Regulation, Taxes /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

And so many of them vote Democrat — Stockholm Syndrome.

I am sure they are comforted in their freezing beds in the knowledge that Ukraine is living large on their dime.

In 2022, the IRS Went After the Very Poorest Taxpayers

By: Liz Wolfe, Reason Magazine, January 5, 2023: (thanks to Van):

Despite $80 billion in new funding, the agency is living up to its reputation of hassling low-income taxpayers over rich people.

On Wednesday, Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released data provided to it by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on audits performed by the agency in fiscal year 2022. Despite the infusion of new funding earmarked for the IRS via last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, the agency continued historic trends of hassling primarily low-income taxpayers, with relatively few millionaires and billionaires getting caught up in the audit sweep.

“The taxpayer class with unbelievably high audit rates—five and a half times virtually everyone else—were low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit,” reported TRAC, noting that the poorest taxpayers are “easy marks in an era when IRS increasingly relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn’t have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions.”

In fact, “if one ignores the fiction of auditing a millionaire through simply sending a letter through the mail, the odds that millionaires received a regular audit by a revenue agent (1.1%) was actually less than the audit rate of the targeted lowest income wage-earners whose audit rate was 1.27 percent!”

The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August 2022, directed $80 billion worth of new funding over the next decade to the IRS so it could hire 87,000 new workers, purportedly to better target millionaire and billionaire scofflaws. The Biden administration and credulous journalists claimed that this would in no way increase audits for those making under $400,000 annually—suspect assurances not provided within the text of the actual bill. This increased capacity meant only those at the top would be targeted, supporters insisted. But this ignores how the IRS’s incentives work and how agencywide reform might be too heavy of a lift.

Correspondence audits—which are conducted via mail, and are the type frequently used when interacting with the poorest of taxpayers—are much easier and cheaper to conduct than other types of audits. Plus, the earned income tax credit is easy to get wrong. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that new hires with experience in the field will take almost three years of ramp-up time, with more junior new hires taking longer. The lag time between 2022’s infusion of funding, and legitimately increased capacity, will be enormous—if the agency can even snag the best in the industry when TurboTax and H&R Block will surely be swelling their own ranks. It makes sense that, given a dearth of experienced auditors not likely to be fixed soon, the agency would rely on the easiest and least time-consuming types of audits.

But be suspicious of the idea that an infusion of cash will solve longstanding problems within the IRS. This is, after all, the agency that sent $1.1 billion in child welfare payments to the wrong people over the course of merely five months during the pandemic. It’s the agency that was hacked back in 2015, resulting in the personal information of more than 700,000 taxpayers being compromised. It’s the agency that has been foolishly going after Americans who hold $10,000 or more in a foreign bank since 2010, never mind the fact that many of them are middle-class expats, not folks with yachts in the Mediterranean. And it’s the (leaky) agency that enabled the richest Americans’ intimate financial information to be thumbed through by ProPublica readers. It will take more than a little cash to fix all this, and, as the IRS’s competence and tenacity increase, so too will the tenacity of the vast infrastructure of accountants and lawyers hired by the rich to creatively minimize their tax burdens.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED TWEET:

Watch: Newly-elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy: “I know the night is late, but when we come back, our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.” pic.twitter.com/1IAbz27NsR

— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) January 7, 2023

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