Article by Solange Reyner in NewsMax

 

McConnell's Home Vandalized Over Blockage of Stimulus Checks

Mitch McConnell’s home in Louisville, Ky., was vandalized over his blockage of a vote on a Senate bill that would provide $2,000 in stimulus checks to Americans, reports WDRB.

Messages were written on the home using red and white spray paint, including “Where’s my money?”

The rest of the home wasn’t damaged.

Louisville police say the incident happened around 5 a.m. Saturday. A home belonging to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco was vandalized with spray paint on New Year’s Day, with phrases like “$2K,: “Cancel rent!” and “We want everything” written on her garage door. A pig’s head and fake blood were also left near the vandalism, reports KGO-TV.

“I’ve spent my career fighting for the First Amendment and defending peaceful protest. I appreciate every Kentuckian who has engaged in the democratic process whether they agree with me or not,” McConnell said in a statement Saturday.

“This is different," he continued. "Vandalism and the politics of fear have no place in our society."

He concluded: “My wife and I have never been intimidated by this toxic playbook. We just hope our neighbors in Louisville aren’t too inconvenienced by this radical tantrum.”

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/mcconnell-pelosi-vandalized-homes/2021/01/02/id/1003989/

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Article by Michael Dorstewitz in NewsMax

 

In 2020, Vote Fraud Claims Were Not 'Baseless'

Each time a member of the big media reports on someone referring to acts of fraud or even irregularities in the Nov. 3 presidential election, they describe them as "baseless claims" or "unproven."

Such words are included in almost every wire story since election day published by the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, and others.

Actually, there are many examples of vote fraud that took place during the 2020 election, and serious evidence of voting irregularities relating to the main-in ballots.

Here is what we do know:

Nevada: The Silver State rushed a universal vote-by-mail measure through the legislature in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill, known as AB 4, lacked safeguards to assure voter identity and was implemented without cleaning voter rolls of deceased voters, those who had moved, or who had become ineligible to vote.

Attorney Jesse Binnall testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Dec. 16 as to what resulted.

He had proof of nearly 90,000 fraudulent or improper votes that were cast, including instances where:

• More than 42,000 people voted multiple times.
• At least 1,500 people listed as "dead" voted.
• More than 19,000 non-residents voted.
• In excess of 8,000 people cast mail-in votes from non-existent addresses.
• Over 15,000 votes were cast from commercial or vacant addresses.
• Nearly 4,000 non-citizens voted.

Considering Biden took Nevada by 33,596 votes, these allegations are serious.

Arizona: The Arizona Republican Party alleges more than 100,000 ballots might have been improperly cast in the Grand Canyon State, including some 28,000 duplicated ballots in Maricopa County alone.

Arizona GOP party chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward also addressed in one of her video reports the subject of "fake news" outlets, that tend to mischaracterize allegations of voter fraud.

"We are trying to have integrity in our electoral process," she said, adding: "We have every right to make legal challenges."

Again, only 10,457 votes separate Biden and President Donald Trump on Arizona, a 0.3% difference.

Wisconsin: President Trump's legal team sought to have some 221,000 ballots disqualified that were cast in the state's two most heavily Democratic counties — Dane and Milwaukee.

At issue were incomplete absentee ballot envelopes where clerks filled in missing information, as well as those that were issued without a proper request, and still others that were the subject of ballot harvesting.

In a narrow 4-3 ruling, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the challenge, claiming the campaign was "not entitled to the relief it seeks."

The campaign filed its petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Only 20,682 votes separate Trump and Biden in the Badger State, 0.61%.

One can hardly say this is a "baseless" claim, and pure reason has many people suspicious.

Biden underperformed Obama in 80% of Wisconsin counties but hugely outperformed in just five counties to win the state.

Michigan: While the Trump campaign has made an issue of the voting systems and software used throughout the state, allegations of widespread fraud remain unproven.

The Trump legal team has presented additional evidence of voter fraud and irregularities before the Michigan state Senate Oversight Committee on Dec. 1.

In one instance, a "Guard the Vote" volunteer testified he went through 30,000 of the 172,000 Detroit absentee ballots — about 17%. Some 229 were dead voters and 2,660 listed invalid addresses.

Finally, Republican poll watchers were denied access for proper ballot monitoring due to alleged COVID-19 concerns.

Pennsylvania: Nothing about the Keystone State made sense.

Like Detroit, Philadelphia election officials denied Republican poll watchers adequate access into counting rooms, requiring them to seek a court order.

"Trump campaign staffers marched into the PA Convention Center with a court order giving them the right to stand 6 feet away from sorters, instead of the previously allotted 20 feet," reported CBS3 Philly reporter Alecia Reid.

Most recently, a group of 17 Republican state lawmakers released a blockbuster statement Monday, alleging 202,377 more votes were cast than there were voters who voted. State Rep. Frank Ryan, who has a background as a certified public accountant, led the investigation and released a statement.

"These numbers just don't add up, and the alleged certification of Pennsylvania's presidential election results was absolutely premature, unconfirmed, and in error," the statement said.

Georgia: The biggest bombshell was a video that appears to depict news media and poll watchers being ushered out of the counting room in an Atlanta tabulation center.

After all but a few workers left, suitcases of what appear to be ballots are removed from underneath a table and are run through machines.

Georgia failed to use signature verification and other measures to certify mail-in ballots. Rejection rates — not allowing non-eligible mail-in ballots — plummeted in 2020 from the 2018 election.

Other irregularities:

In addition to outright claims of fraud, state and local officials in at least four states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia — used the pandemic to make last-minute changes to their state voting laws.

The U.S. Constitution provides only each state legislature may set the time, place, and manner of elections.

This prompted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to file a lawsuit against the four states with the United States Supreme Court for allegedly exploiting "the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election."

In a statement he said, "Trust in the integrity of our election processes is sacrosanct and binds our citizenry and the States in this union together. Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin destroyed that trust and compromised the security and integrity of the 2020 election."

Despite the fact 18 more states signed on to Texas' petition, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, citing lack of standing. Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a student of history, compared the long list of anomalies to another election nearly 200 years in the past.

"The more data comes out on vote anomalies that clearly are not legitimate the more it looks like 2020 may be the biggest presidential theft since Adams and Clay robbed Andrew Jackson in 1824," Gingrich tweeted. "State legislatures should demand recounts."

https://www.newsmax.com/michaeldorstewitz/vote-fraud-baseless-merit-scotus/2021/01/02/id/1003982/ 

 

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Article by Ben Stein in NewsMax

 

Dark Days That Leave Me With Foreboding

It was a beautiful day here. I swam, went to my usual 12-step meeting, which we hold in our house and only has my wife and me as attendees. Then, I had a fine lunch and worked on a show with my pal Judah.

But I have been feeling extremely unwell in my spirit lately, dark and bent over and waiting for the lash. Two reasons: First, Lynn Kellogg died. I first encountered Lynn in 1968. I had been down from Yale Law School to have interviews for a summer job at a fancy New York law firm called Coudert Brothers.

The interviews were unpleasant in the extreme. The partners had tiny little offices with drawings of sailboats. They basically said to me: "You would be happier at a Jewish law firm. We're not your kind and you're not our kind."

I would have argued with them, but they happened to have been totally right. It was not my kind of place, in that it was basically a factory with assembly-line lawyers pretending to be Country Gentlemen. Not for me.

My wife was waiting for me at a Mexican restaurant. We had a grim meal, musing on the anti-Semitism still very much present in New York law firms. Then, we went to see a musical play called Hair at a nearby theater. It was about hippies in Greenwich Village, and I loved it.

I just loved the life of the hippies and thought, "This is my life. Not the life at Coudert." The best voice in the show belonged to a young star named Lynn Kellogg. She was beautiful and had the voice of an angel. She sang some deeply moving songs and then I went off into the New York night determined to be a hippie.

I didn't become a hippie, but I became a friend of Lynn Kellogg. Both Lynn and I were active in the right-to-life movement. We met many times after she left the cast of Hair, and I continued to be her fan and friend.

Many years ago, she and her husband gave me a beautiful wristwatch that I still treasure. Yesterday, out of the blue, I got an email that she had died quite suddenly of COVID-19 plus leukemia.

I felt as if I had been slammed on the head by an axe handle and I still feel that way. She was a perfect Christian, just like my wife. So, I feel just awful about her.

Plus, I feel scared about Mr. Biden. Really scared. We elected a man we don't even know. He has no platform. No program. We elected him just to be rid of Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Trump was a great president. He was great for the economy, great for not starting any wars. Great for winding down the wars we are in.

He was great for Israel and actually set the Mideast on the path to peace. And now he apparently is being kicked out for no good reason I can understand, just because the all-powerful media went to war with him.

I feel as if we are being led into a dark forest and then into a cave and we don't know what's in that cave.

We do know that some of Mr. Biden's fans are also fans of some major anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan. I don't want a president who is friends of friends of Farrakhan. Why would anyone want friends like that?

The world is falling back into the evil days of open anti-Semitism and violence, and I fear that Mr. Biden just might be the drum major.

https://www.newsmax.com/benstein/dark-days/2020/12/31/id/1003785/

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Australian pro surfer Mikey Wright saves woman struggling in Hawaii surf

 

 

Article by Roger Koopman in World Net Daily

 

Our republic desperately needs a new breed of Republicans

 Roger Koopman exhorts, 'Stop hiring cowards and moral relativists to do a patriot's job'

The answer to politics is not more politics. It's not making eloquent excuses for compromising fundamental principles. Freedom is what it is. It doesn't change, it doesn't mutate, and it doesn't hybridize with tyranny. Breed one with the other, and the offspring is a two-headed carnivore with an insatiable appetite. Feed it morsels of our liberties, and it will only grow larger and demand more, until it's swallowed up our Constitution for dinner.

In these times of pragmatic politics and pandering politicians, Republican lawmakers wear the moniker "conservative" like a cheap tin badge won at a carnival game. But they soon forget that freedom is not a game. It is a fight to the finish. Because with so many of our elected officials, politics triumphs over claimed principles, and compromise triumphs over claimed courage, the fight for liberty is becoming a lost cause.

The gradual usurpations are no longer gradual, and we quickly blame the Democrats for that. But we stand at the brink of tyranny not because Democrats act like Democrats, but because so many Republicans do also. As candidates, they roar with the rhetoric of freedom, but cower like kittens when called upon to defend it. In my state of Montana and nationally, Republicans have increasingly marched to the drum of pragmatism over principle. They act as though freedom is a quaint relic, no longer worth fighting for. They have lost their will and lost their way.

Republicans have also lost their memory. To honor their oath of office, all lawmakers must serve with a memory. A memory of the Constitution. A memory of what America was and was eternally meant to be. Democrats' memory extends as far as the last entitlement and their vision no further than the next one. Their philosophy is a rejection of the very essence of historical America, an assault on the very things that make us distinct as a nation. The bricks and mortar of a free society. The sweat and the spirit of a free people.

But Republicans have no excuse. Their platforms and public pronouncements lay claim to the memory. To the things of liberty. Less government. Lower taxes. Fee markets. Personal sovereignty. Individual responsibility. Freedom of choice. Government – at all levels – staying out of our pockets and out of our lives. These are the words people want to hear, and the reasons they send Republicans to Washington and to our state capitols. Why, then, does government continue to grow when the Republicans are in charge?

What happens to these Republican officeholders after they have raised their hands and sworn to uphold the Constitution? Could the voters be sending off to fight for freedom, people armed with pea shooters? Politicians who really don't believe in the ideas that got them elected? After serving two terms in the Montana House of Representatives and two terms on the Public Service Commission, I was no closer to answering that question than ever. Democrats hold fast to their Old World philosophy. They believe there is a government solution for everything, and they work daily to bring that about. They are remarkably consistent, and rarely does a single Democrat break ranks with their party's big government/small people philosophy. Voting records don't lie.

So, why can Democrats stand firm on the things people don't want, while Republicans cannot stand firm on the things people do want? Is the GOP so lacking in the courage of their convictions, or are they simply lacking in conviction? Certainly, the constant pressure to be a "team player," bury your personal beliefs and adopt the party line leads many lawmakers to vote for all kinds of interventionist schemes they say they don't believe in.

The path of least resistance always leads in the direction of bigger government, more spending and more programs resulting in more dependency and more "entitlement." Programs and handouts create the illusion of net benefit, because the benefit to the few is large and visible, while the cost to the many is monetarily small and economically invisible. You cannot see what never was, when taxation removes it. You cannot view a lost opportunity. A job that was never created. A business that never started. A raise that wasn't given. You can only imagine. Free people imagine. Free people see. Free people believe in the creative fire of a free society. But Democrats haven't a clue, and contemporary Republicans, it seems, are only slightly better. They nod in agreement, but freedom is an abstraction to them that they can't articulate or fully embrace. Freedom becomes negotiable.

And so, the Democrats – anchored in their ideology and reinforced by the special interests – set the agenda, even while in the numerical minority. It is painfully obvious that many Republicans running for office are only fashionably conservative. Their conservatism is at best a preference, not a conviction. Because they have done precious little reading on conservative ideas and free-market economics, they are grounded in quicksand. The media and the culture have shaped their thinking more than they realize. Peel away the onion skin of party label, and their voting records quickly betray them.

For five biannual legislative sessions, a group of conservative leaders in Montana tracked the voting records of state legislators on a wide range of issues, using well over 100 recorded floor votes. We called our index Taxpayer Advisory Bulletin (TAB) and based our bill evaluations on one simple criteria: "Does this measure increase or decrease the presence of government in your life?" In every session, TAB demonstrated that while Democratic legislators had an average conservative rating of under 10% (with all in the "liberal" category), Republican legislators were spread across the entire spectrum, with an average GOP conservative rating in the low 40s. Approximately 25% of Republicans scored firmly in the liberal Democratic camp.

Congress shows exactly the same voting pattern. This nasty blend of blue and red produces Grey Zone Republicans that corrupt the two-party system, leaving voters in many congressional and legislative districts with no real choice. It also guarantees that every session of Congress will escort us further down the road to Big Government. Indeed, government growth has continued unabated for decades, even with Republican presidents and Republican congresses. The formula for the demise of our republic remains the same: All Democrats + moderate-to-liberal Republicans = the defeat of the very conservative philosophy most Americans support. It is an oft-repeated tragedy performed on almost every congressional and legislative stage under Republican control. At both the state and federal level, statism and "socialism light" proceed, and hundreds of government-expanding bills get passed – always with Republican support. They could pass no other way.

The media then applaud the "bipartisan spirit" of lawmakers who they acclaim as "dedicated to getting things done." Never mind that what they are getting done is robbing our family incomes and burying our liberties in massive new government programs, bureaucracies and controls. The media never seem to notice that the only "bipartisanship" that occurs is when Republicans cross over to support liberal legislation. There is no example of Democrats crossing the aisle to support conservative measures that would reduce the size and power of government. All bipartisanship is a one-way street.

So, what is the solution for those of us who still believe freedom is worth fighting for? Answer: Stop hiring cowards and moral relativists to do a patriot's job. Stop electing skillful, smooth-talking politicians who, as C.S. Lewis once put it, are "men without chests." If we want to put true champions of freedom to work in our state legislatures and Congress, then we must judge them not so much by their intellect, as by their heart. What do we find there? Do we find true courage, pure faith and virtue-born conviction? Do we find rock-solid integrity and uncompromising moral character? Do we find that same steely-eyed warrior spirit that existed at the founding of our nation? If we settle for less, we get exactly what we deserve. For too long, we have settled for less.

We need men whose hearts beat to the rhythm of liberty. Men like these:

God, give me men! A time like these demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue and damn
His treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking.

– Josiah Gilbert Holland

https://www.wnd.com/2021/01/republic-desperately-needs-new-breed-republicans/ 

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Article by James Bovard in The American Conservative

 

The Official Whitewash of the Killing of Duncan Lemp

Trust us, it was a good killing.

Why did a Montgomery County, Maryland SWAT team kill  21-year-old Duncan Lemp, in a no-knock predawn raid on March 12?  The county released an official report yesterday stating that a violent no-knock raid was justified “due to Lemp being ‘anti-government,’ ‘anti-police,’ currently in possession of body armor, and an active member of the Three Percenters.”  The report also noted that “police had viewed several videos showing Lemp handling and shooting firearms.”

Distrusting the government and police and appearing in photos or videos with firearms is a catch-all that could apply to millions of Americans. But that was enough to justify a deadly assault in one of America’s most liberal jurisdictions. (I wrote about this case for TAC previously here, here, here and here).

Montgomery County released the report on New Year’s Eve, probably hoping that it would receive scant attention. But the county’s own admissions should propel new demands for disclosures on the most under-reported police killing of 2020.   

The report details how police attacked the Lemp home from two sides. Two members of the raid team did a “‘break and rake’ on Duncan Lemp’s first-floor bedroom window while the rest of the team entered the house by using a battering ram on the main front door … Another officer used a fireman’s pike tool to break the bedroom window closest to the bed where Lemp and [his pregnant girlfriend Kasey] Robinson were sleeping. The tool also has a hook that is used to grab a hold of and pull away the blinds so that officers would have an unobstructed view inside the bedroom. Once the window was broken and the shades pulled out of the way, one officer ducked below the window line as he was unarmed. A second officer (the shooting officer) who was armed with a rifle, then stepped up to the window and looked inside to locate Lemp as soon as possible and prevent him from having time to access any weapons that could be used against the SWAT officers.” Another team of SWAT cops used a battering ram to smash in the front door of the Lemp home. 

The official report serves a completely different version of Lemp’s killing than the county police department provided on March 17. In its initial explanation of the Lemp killing in March, the Montgomery County Police Department stated: 

The officers entering the residence announced themselves as police and that they were serving a search warrant. Officers gave commands for individuals inside the residence to show their hands and to get on the ground. Upon making contact with Lemp, officers identified themselves as the police and gave him multiple orders to show his hands and comply with the officer’s commands to get on the ground. Lemp refused to comply with the officer’s commands and proceeded towards the interior bedroom door where other officers were located. Upon entrance by officers into Lemp’s bedroom, Lemp was found to be in possession of a rifle and was located directly in front of the interior bedroom entrance door. 

In the new version of the report, Lemp was shot five times by a policeman standing outside his smashed-in bedroom window. Montgomery County still refuses to name the policeman who killed him. That policeman says that he shouted a warning to Lemp before opening fire, asserting that Lemp stood up holding a rifle and turned the muzzle toward the policeman. (The family always maintained that the shots that killed Duncan came in from that window.) Were the police lying in March, or are they lying now, or are they still lying?

“Let’s go to the videotape”—except that there isn’t any. And there were no other police witnesses to the killing of Duncan Lemp. Police body cams have been one of the most significant reforms in curbing police misconduct in this century. But, as Lemp family lawyer Rene Sandler disclosed, Montgomery County signed a labor agreement with the police union which allowed the SWAT team to “opt out of the truth and transparency by not being required to wear body camera or videotaping a no knock raid.” This is par for the course for police unions across the nation utterly sabotaging police accountability. 

Police targeted and eventually killed in part Lemp because they believed he possessed an illegal Israeli assault weapon. Late in the report, as if reciting a minor technicality, the county prosecutor states, “It should be noted that upon further review and investigation into the IWI Tavor X95 rifle, it was determined that it was not an assault rifle … It appears that Lemp’s rifle was a legal ‘copycat’ made to look exactly like the illegal version of the IWI Tavor X95.” But the non-banned weapon was close enough for government work to justify violently attacking Lemp’s home. The false predicate for the violent raid barely rates a footnote in the 17-page report. 

Police stated that Lemp was prohibited from possessing any firearms due to a previous criminal conviction—a point that the family vigorously contests. According to Sandler, the affidavit used to secure the no-knock raid contained information that was “demonstrably false.” (Shades of Waco and Ruby Ridge!) A police raid occurred at the Lemp family home when Lemp was a juvenile in 2016 but no details were disclosed in the report on that raid or by anyone else.

Montgomery County announced that the killing would be investigated by neighboring Howard County, to assure an independent credible review. But that was a sham from the start. The Howard County prosecutor requested that a Montgomery County detective “conduct interviews” with key police personnel, including the officer who signed the search warrant and the SWAT supervisor “to find out more details regarding why the decision was made to do a no-knock warrant.” Howard County made no effort to determine some of the most potentially controversial aspects of the case.

A grand jury examined the shooting earlier this year but all of the testimony and evidence presented remains confidential—except for selections that the county attorney’s office received permission from a judge to disclose in the report. Sandler and Cary Hansel, a lawyer for Kasey Robinson, Lemp’s girlfriend, are outraged at what they consider “cherry picking” by the prosecutor. They are calling for full disclosure of all materials and evidence from the grand jury proceedings.  Was the grand jury investigation into the killing of Duncan Lemp as big a charade as the Louisville grand jury that examined the police killing of Breonna Taylor earlier this year? Sandler notes, “The family is particularly upset at the lack of any consideration of the other eye witnesses in the home at the time [of the raid].  The report simply makes it clear that none of that was seriously considered.” Instead, the new storyline on the killing was sacrosanct. 

Nothing in the report indicates that Lemp posed a threat of imminent threat of violence to anyone, not even to stray dogs in the neighborhood. The report indicates that police were surveilling Duncan Lemp and the Lemp residence well before they launched the SWAT raid.  Sandler said police “would have seen him taking Kasey to a doctor’s appointment or going to a store. They could have detained him during a traffic stop while [other police] secured the home. That would be a much safer tactic than to accost an entire family and to raid blindly at 4:30 in the morning in the dark.”  

Why did the SWAT team rely on massive violence instead of the type of routine police work that prevailed in most of the nation in the last century? The “break and rake” routine seems custom-made to spur residents to grab any firearm or broomstick handy. And then there were the bombs the police detonated that morning. Flash-bang grenades epitomize the current relation between police and private citizens. A 2019 federal appeals court decision noted that the grenades are “four times louder than a 12-gauge shotgun blast” with “a powerful enough concussive effect to break windows and put holes in walls.” As TechDirt noted in 2019, “As anyone other than cops seems to comprehend, startling people in their own homes with explosives and kicked-in doors tends to make everything more dangerous for everyone.” 

The official report makes clear that Lemp was targeted in part because of his political beliefs. Lemp is identified as a supporter of the “the Three Percenters … a far-right militia movement and paramilitary group” which advocates “gun ownership rights and resistance to the federal government’s involvement in local affairs.” ( Three-percenter refers to “the belief that only 3% of colonists fought against the British in the Revolutionary War,” as the report notes.) This is close enough to heresy in antigun Maryland, though it is considered on par with motherhood and apple pie in most of America.  Lemp was outspoken politically, and his last tweet, a couple months before he was killed, declared, “The constitution is dead.” The report also gravely notes, “Lemp has a number of postings on his Instagram page showing him in possession of and shooting different types of guns.” The police targeting of Duncan Lemp was spurred by a “confidential source” whose name has not yet been disclosed. The report states that that source directed police to Lemp’s  “mymilitia.com” and “Instagram” profile pages. Was the “confidential source” trying to bring down gun activists, or was he working off a plea bargain (bringing in scalps for a reduced sentence), or was it simply someone who Lemp had told about his firearms?  

And why has Montgomery County created a new right for police to anonymously kill citizens? As David Simon, the writer who masterminded the television series Homicide and The Wire, observed, “Without a name [of a policeman involved in a shooting], there’s no way for anyone to evaluate an officer’s performance independently, to gauge his or her effectiveness and competence, to know whether he or she has shot one person or 10.” When an FBI agent shot to death Ibragim Todashev, a Chechen guy he was interrogating in Florida in 2013, the FBI sought to keep all the details secret (despite the changing official narrative of the killing). A year after the shooting, the Boston Globe revealed that the FBI agent who killed Todashev had a stormy record as a policeman in Oakland, California, where he “took the Fifth at a police corruption trial and was the subject of two police brutality lawsuits and four internal affairs investigations” before retiring at age 31. But Montgomery County officials believe no one is entitled to know the prior record of the officer who killed Duncan Lemp. 

Nobody in Montgomery County appeared to give a damn about Lemp’s killing. Sandler contacted Montgomery County executive Marc Elrich and all nine Members of the Council  on behalf of the family. “And not one person responded,” Sandler said. Mercedes Lemp, Duncan’s mother, commented, “We are so disappointed and saddened and shocked by the apparent lack of any meaningful investigation in this case. And given the county’s refusal to even acknowledge us as victims, we decided to relocate” out of the county.    

The prosecutor’s report, explaining why it wasn’t important that Lemp didn’t actually own an illegal assault weapon, tutted, “Very minute changes such as the overall length of the weapon can mean the difference between an illegal assault rifle and a legal one.” Unfortunately, there are no such “very minute changes” in Montgomery County police procedures that could justify violently attacking a peaceful home and killing a young man. The brazen report released yesterday confirm that Montgomery County politicians and police officials believe they can continue covering up the killing of Duncan Lemp. Trust us, it was a good killing. Will they get away with it? 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-official-whitewash-of-the-killing-of-duncan-lemp/

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Donald Trump Has Been The Most Illuminating President In Decades

In all Trump gave us — the good, the bad, the hilarious, and the unsettling — his administration brought much-needed clarity to the GOP and the country.

by Rachel Bovard for The Federalist

At the end of his second term, amid the early retrospectives about his presidency, George W. Bush reportedly remarked, “the true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now.” It was a wise reminder that the passage of time generally yields a more honest, dispassionate analysis of events than is often allowed by the heated political present.

While we are left to wonder how history will judge the last four years of President Trump, it will hopefully be with more fairness than the often-unhinged levels of coverage he’s received to date. Yet as the nation’s self-appointed purveyors of truth dutifully tap out their think pieces about how Trump brought fascism to America, it’s worth reflecting on what changes Trump did bring to Washington.

Trump Engaged on Policy Literally, Not Rhetorically 

I have worked in and around Republican politics in Washington for nearly 15 years observing Republicans of all stripes. Trump is different. What is most notable, however, is how he is different, and what he accomplished because of it.

To put it frankly, Trump dared to meaningfully go where nearly every Republican politician in my lifetime has feared to tread: culture. For instance, Trump, with his typical rhetorical flourish, refers to his administration as the most pro-life administration in history. He’s not too far off the mark.

After years of empty rhetoric from Republican politicians, Trump shepherded more substantive gains for the pro-life movement than nearly every president before him and certainly every Congress: ending federal funding for new medical research using fetal tissue from aborted babies; giving states the ability to exclude abortion providers from their federally supported Medicaid programs; and prohibiting federal family planning dollars from flowing to organizations that “perform, promote, or refer for abortion,” a move that resulted in Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion provider — rejecting the funds altogether.

Trump wasn’t a pick-and-choose culture warrior, however. Perhaps one of the most striking things about his presidency was how willingly he showed up to the culture war, something the Republican base has been begging their leaders to do for years, to no avail. Conservatives, in particular, have felt under attack from every significant culture-shaping institution: public schools and universities, Hollywood, the media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and major corporations. 

Rather than shirking from these fights with limp excuses about “leaving private business alone,” or encouraging people to “build your own Facebook,” Trump recognized these institutions have grown powerful on the largesse of government policy as well as on dollars from the taxpayers they now want to banish from polite society. He didn’t give an inch.

Perhaps Trump intuitively understood the stakes that Andrew Breitbart so keenly laid out years before — that politics is downstream from culture. Or perhaps he bristled at the various ways corporate media characterized him and his voters as dumb, ignorant, racist rubes.

Regardless of the reason, Trump waded right into the Woke Wars, defending statues as important to the lessons of America’s history, threatening the government subsidies that have built the billion-dollar tech companies now tyrannizing the free flow of information, taking on the insidious racism of critical race theory in the government, and decrying the intellectual authoritarianism  — and, increasingly actual authoritarianism — of the left.

He was unafraid to talk in plain terms about the economic trade-offs we make for a loose immigration policy that prioritizes cheap labor. Furthermore, his subsequent gains with Hispanic voters in the 2020 election proved a huge part of the GOP consultant class wrong regarding the “right” kind of Republican immigration policy. Also, after years of Washington acceding to corporations who deferred to China, Trump rightly identified the country as our chief geopolitical and economic adversary and wasn’t afraid to shout it. 

Where many on the right have no answer to the growing culture of wokeness and the mega-political power wielded against policy outcomes by corporate institutions, Trump engaged in the fight. Yes, he was sometimes inartful, and sometimes inelegant, but he refused to waver. Frequently, he distinguished himself from the ranks of Republican politicians who consistently feign helplessness, or, worse, continue to crave approval from corporate titans and Hollywood superstars who hate them.

Trump Revealed the ‘Swamp’ Is Real

If Trump’s actions were clarifying in their sharp contrast to decades of Republican rule, the response to him by greater Washington was even more so. Trump’s tenure proved that the swamp is real and that the creatures that dwell in it have teeth.

Under Trump, bureaucrats were no longer faceless drones whose influence was rumored but never proven. They were real, with names, faces, and overt political agendas, like Alexander Vindman, Sally Yates, James Mattis, Kevin Clinesmith, James Comey, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok.

A junior-level staffer at the Department of Homeland Security was allowed to publish anonymously in The New York Times, his bio and influence inflated because he was denouncing the president. A retiring diplomat bragged about keeping the president intentionally misinformed so he could not withdraw American troops from Syria. 

Trump’s time in office made it finally, painfully, obvious how much power unelected officials have in Washington, and, more dangerously, how much they see their positions not in service to our representative self-government, but as a perch from which to rule. They were aided by a relentless media campaign that sought to turn insubordination — and even outright illegality — into stardom, cable news contracts, and book deals.

The swamp, we learned, is not so much an immovable block as it is a multi-headed hydra, working across agencies and industries to strangle the town to its will. But where it once existed in the shadows, institutional Washington’s response to Trump has exposed itself fully in the full, harsh light of day.

Early in his tenure, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Trump that he “didn’t want to hear any of this drain the swamp talk.” Democrat legislators claim working-class credentials while defending the corporate oligarchy of the Big Tech companies because Big Tech favors them. An entire flank of people who once associated with the Republican party has left it, either officially or rhetorically, many of them now openly favoring Democrats.

For everything Trump gave us — the good, the bad, the hilarious, and the unsettling — his administration brought much-needed clarity to the GOP and the country.

Washington, D.C, is a town built on petty agendas, political calculations, and superficial promises. It’s a teetering game of Jenga, with each politician trying his best to place his block on the tower. To successfully maneuver in this city requires finesse, a highly trained ability to ignore the inconvenient, a penchant for back-slapping, and a precise sense of timing.

But there is an alternative. As the voters who sent Trump to Washington seemed to grasp intuitively, D.C can be tamed — or at least threatened — by someone willing to bring in a battering ram and knock the whole thing over, to be built anew on sounder foundations.

Trump ultimately seemed to see his election as more of a moment than as the beginning of a movement. Despite this — and although many will attempt to erase it — his four years have left an indelible mark on this city, on the path that Republicans may follow, and on what voters will expect from their leaders going forward. What has been demonstrated as possible, exposed as disingenuous, and unmasked as baselessly corrupt can’t easily be unseen.

 

Article by G. Murphy Donovan in The American Thinker

 

Boycott the Biden inauguration

 “Sin by silence makes cowards of men.” - Lincoln

Good people across America are wringing their hands over the 2020 presidential election results. Seventy million voters are a lot of political angst.

Worse still, many serious observers are challenging the legitimacy of the very process -- the polyglot of systems, manual and electronic, that are supposed to make a fair and democratic election possible.

Apparently, entrenched urban Democrat political monopolies that sponsor systemic corruption are now above reproach, scrutiny - or above the law in 2020.

President Trump made the best speech of his presidency the other day, detailing the widespread evidence of fraud and abuse. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, wrote a similar eloquent fact-based obituary for American democracy in the Washington Times.

Nevertheless, barring a gut check at the Justice department, or the Supreme Court, it appears Joe Biden will be inaugurated on Jan 20. The high court was the last hope to expose or remedy urban (read: Democrat Party) corruption, once a local, big city phenomenon, now made possible, with a big tailwind, on a national scale.

The balance of power that the Founding Fathers sought with three branches of government is now in peril, too. The highest court in the land, like many other American institutions, is now intimidated by a malignant, loud, and pyrrhic American left.

Meanwhile, much of Washington, D.C. and other city centers are still cowering behind a burka of plywood on store fronts. Like this.

The deep state, Big Tech, partisan media, and urban voters have now, with the 2020 election, accomplished what various coup attempts since 2016 could not. By hook or crook, it seems that Donald J. Trump will be out of the White House come Jan. 20.

What is to be done?

America still has one more vote. She can vote with her feet.

Americans should come to Washington on Jan. 6 and 20, not to celebrate, but in civil protest of an administration that by any measure is predicated on several lawless premises, not the least of which is Biden family corruption.

The Trump family and administration players should vote with their feet, too; walk away from the 2021 inaugural ceremony, too, not as sore losers, but as patriots who need to make a serious and unambiguous statement about the Washington swamp and why it still needs to be drained.

Call it sour grapes if you will, but the Biden/Harris administration needs to know that back to the future is not a plan. Many Obama-era coup grifters, with Susan Rice an ominous example, will be playing first string for Joe Biden.

The Trump administration rose above the radar to do the unprecedented in 2016. The exit strategy in January should be just as revolutionary. Any silent or passive acquiescence about the last four years would be an endorsement of the beginning of the end.

Go out, as you came in, with an unprecedented bang, President Trump! Lay down another historical marker.

Boycott the 2021 inauguration.

It’s the right thing to do.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/boycott_the_biden_inauguration.html

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Article by Michael Devon in The American Thinker

 

Building your ‘digital ark’ for an age of techno-repression

In a previous American Thinker blog, I outlined a strategy for creating digital arks that cannot be accessed by the internet. Why should freedom loving Americans create digital arks? Because no socialist nation has ever allowed the free flow of information and every socialist nation attempts to erase or modify past its past history and cultural touchstones.  A Harris/Biden administration will surely be no exception. And we all have a soft deadline of January 19, 2021, if Biden prevails, to get the essential information we cherish, stored safely away.

A number of American Thinker readers have contacted me and asked for suggestions on what specific items to include in our arks. So, I’m going to list a very tiny sliver of the most important books, documents, movies and art that I think should be included.

But much more importantly I’m also inviting all of our AT family to add generously to this list in the comments section. Our collective experiences and perspectives are frankly a much better measure of what will be important to future generations.

Be sure to digitally save/print out this blog and the comments section as a shopping list for your digital ark. This will someday become a snapshot of our cultural and historical perspectives at the beginning of 2021.

Other than these top ten suggestions, there is no ranking of importance.

• The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson
• The Federalist Papers by James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton
• Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Bible - Old and New Testaments
• The Talmud - You don't have to be Jewish to appreciate this text.
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
• Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges Translation by Andrew Hurley

Internet Videos

• Trump Rallies and Trump Speeches
• Reagan Speeches
• How-To for gunsmithing, gun collecting, hand reloading, and shooting.
• How-To for home gardening, food preservation and cooking.
• How-To for blacksmithing, wood craft. metal working, and construction.
• How-To for sewing, leather craft, quilting, weaving wool and cotton.
• How-To for car and truck repair and restoration, and engine restoration.
• College level courses American, English, Roman, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian, and Medieval history and culture
• College level courses on chemistry, math, earth sciences, astronomy and cosmology
• College level courses on plays and playwrights throughout history.
• College level courses on Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and French

Authors and Artists

• Henry David Thoreau
• Herman Melville
• Charles Dickens
• Shakespeare
• Herman Wouk
• J. K. Rowling
• Picasso
• Arthur C. Clark
• Arthur Conan Doyle
• Martin Buber 
• Plato, Aristotle and Socrates
• Impressionist. Modern, post-modern, and Renaissance painters
• Crime, Western, Sci-Fi, Romance, and historical novelists.

Movie Directors

• Stanley Kubrick
• Frank Capra
• Martin Scorsese
• Francis Ford Coppola
• Steven Spielberg
• Clint Eastwood
• John Ford
• James Cameron
• Peter Jackson

Please add your own digital ark selections in the comments section. Be specific and also use broad strokes. You will certainly trigger additional ideas for other digital ark makers.

Hebrews 11:7: "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house..."

Note: YouTube doesn't allow you download directly to a local file.  You'll need to use third-party software. I went here.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/building_your_digital_ark_for_an_age_of_technorepression.html

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