Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Connections to Lois Lerner and George Soros

John Luman “Jack” Smith, 54, is the Special Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice prosecuting Donald Trump in two separate cases.

Born on June 5, 1969, Smith grew up in Clay, New York, a small town outside Syracuse.

He attended Liverpool High School, where he played baseball and football, graduating in 1987. After high school, he went to the State University of New York at Oneonta. He graduated in 1991. He then attended Harvard Law School.

Jack Smith is married to Katy Chevigny. They have one daughter.

Shortly after graduating law school, Smith was hired as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. He later worked in the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, rising to eventually become chief of criminal litigation.

In 2008, Smith moved to The Hague, Netherlands, and worked as an investigation coordinator in the International Criminal Court, before returning two years later to the U.S., moving to Washington, D.C. where he would lead the Justice Department’s public integrity unit.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 as special counsel to oversee two investigations into former President Trump. 

The first case is about Trump’s alleged attempts to “overturn the 2020 election” and his alleged involvement with the Jan. 6 incident. The second case is about Trump’s alleged retention of classified documents at his home in Florida.

 “This meeting was arranged at the direction of Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith.”

IRS targeting of conservative nonprofits started with a meeting arranged by Smith in 2010, according to testimony by his subordinate to Congress.

Richard Pilger told the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability that, as chief of the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, Smith reached out to Lois Lerner, who ran the tax-exempt organizations unit of the Internal Revenue Service, so they could coordinate efforts.

 “The Justice Department convened a meeting with former IRS official Lois Lerner in October 2010 to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits. This meeting was arranged at the direction of Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith,” Pilger said.

“Jack Smith was looking for ways to prosecute the innocent Americans that Lois Lerner targeted during the IRS scandal,” said U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

Wife is a left-wing filmmaker; mother in law received funding from George Soros

In 2011, Smith married Chevigny, a New York City native and prolific filmmaker who had previously married and divorced.

Chevigny is most notable for Deadline, a film she made about former Illinois Governor George Ryan’s blanket commutation of 167 death sentences in the state. Ryan, a Republican, would later go to prison on corruption charges.

A month after his indictment, Ryan traveled to the Sundance Film Festival to promote Chevigny’s film, telling reporters that “the death penalty system and the laws of this country need to be fixed.”

A Joe Biden donor, Chevigny also worked on films promoting Michelle Obama, and criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which held that the government couldn’t limit the free speech of U.S. citizens.

Chevigny’s mother, Bell Chevigny, (1936-2021) was a Wellesley College graduate who became a professor at Purchase College, SUNY. There, she once researched prison writers with the help of a grant from George Soros. The “Bell Chevigny Prize for Feminist Studies” was established in her name, upon her passing.

Katy Chevigny is a Hunter College H.S. and 1990 Yale graduate. After college, Chevigny moved to Chicago to work for the Vietnamese Association. She is fluent in Chinese.

Passed Over by Trump for a Promotion

After four years living together in Washington, D.C., Smith and Chevigny moved to Nashville in 2015.

Smith was working in the U.S. Department of Justice office in Nashville as First Assistant U.S. Attorney when Trump was elected president in 2016. 

Three months into Trump’s term, in March 2017, his boss, David Rivera, was removed from office by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Smith was appointed as acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, his temporary replacement. 

Smith would last five months in the job.

“Though not looking to leave the department of Justice, Smith said he had been offered an incredible opportunity and after much consideration, he had decided to leave the DOJ,” he said in a press release in August 2017, announcing his departure from the DOJ.

“This was one of the most difficult professional decisions that I have ever been faced with,” the release quoted Smith as saying.

Smith joined Nashville-based HCA Healthcare Inc. as its vice president of litigation, the only private sector job of his career. But that only lasted eight months.

War Crimes at The Hague

Smith left Nashville in May 2018 for The Hague, accepting a four-year term as chief prosecutor for “The Kosovo Specialist Chambers” there, where he would investigate war crimes in the 1998-99 Kosovo War.

His first target, Salih Mustafa, a pro-Kosovo independence fighter, compared Smith’s court to that created by Nazi secret police.

“I am not guilty of any of the counts brought here before me by this Gestapo office,” Mustafa told judges, before his trial and eventual conviction.

As a prosecutor, Smith is known by colleagues for making charging decisions“as swiftly as possible.”

“Former colleagues said Mr. Smith’s most memorable attribute was a stripped-down management style that put a premium on gathering enough information to make a charging decision as swiftly as possible,” wrote Glenn Thrush in the New York Times.



X22, On the Fringe, and more- Sept 5

 




Finally! 🥳 NCIS Sydney finally gets it's premiere date

 


The First-Ever International Edition of the Globally Popular Franchise to Air Mondays at 10:00 PM, Immediately Following the Original “NCIS”


CBS will take American viewers down under this fall with the CBS Original Series NCIS: SYDNEY, the first-ever international edition of the top-rated television franchise. Filmed against the spectacular backdrop of one of the world’s most breathtaking harbor cities, the eight-episode season of NCIS: SYDNEY will air Mondays, beginning Monday, Nov. 13 (10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs)*.

With rising international tensions in the Indo-Pacific, a brilliant and eclectic team of U.S. NCIS agents and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) are grafted into a multinational taskforce to keep naval crimes in check in the most contested patch of ocean on the planet. NCIS: SYDNEY marks the fifth series in the popular global NCIS franchise, which includes NCIS and NCIS: HAWAI’I, both picked up for their 21st and third seasons, respectively, on the Network, as well as NCIS: LOS ANGELES, which just completed its 14-year run, and NCIS: NEW ORLEANS. NCIS: SYDNEY was originally developed for Network 10 and Paramount+ in Australia. The series will premiere on Paramount+ Australia on Friday, Nov. 10, with additional Paramount+ international markets to follow at a later date.

“NCIS is one of the most popular series in the world and we’re thrilled to expand this franchise with a uniquely Australian twist,” said Amy Reisenbach, president of CBS Entertainment. “With the addition of NCIS: SYDNEY, our studio and Network footprint continues to grow in this fascinating world that has been a proven winner with viewers on both linear and streaming platforms. Featuring the stunning backdrop of Australia, the new series will incorporate the high-stakes intrigue, humor and camaraderie that have kept fans captivated by the NCIS teams for over two decades.”

The         series stars Olivia Swann (“DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” “The River Wild”) as NCIS Special Agent Michelle Mackey and Todd Lasance (“Without Remorse,” “Spartacus: War of the Damned”) as her 2IC AFP counterpart, Sergeant Jim “JD” Dempsey. They are joined by Sean Sagar (“The Covenant,” “Mea Culpa”) as NCIS Special Agent DeShawn Jackson; Tuuli Narkle (“Mystery Road: Origin,” “Bad Behaviour”) as AFP liaison officer Constable Evie Cooper; Mavournee Hazel (“Shantaram,” “Halifax: Retribution”) as AFP forensic scientist Bluebird “Blue” Gleeson and William McInnes (“The Newsreader,” “Total Control”) as AFP forensic pathologist Dr Roy Penrose.

NCIS: SYDNEY is produced for CBS Studios and Paramount Australia by Endemol Shine Australia and distributed outside Australia by Paramount Global Content Distribution. The series is created by Morgan O’Neill (“Les Norton”), who also serves as executive producer alongside Endemol Shine Australia’s Sara Richardson (“RFDS”) and Sue Seeary (“Ten Pound Poms”).

W³P Open Thread: Random Just Noticed a Thing Edition







Looks like the channels are coming back, but in a very muted way. It sounds like it will be moderated by disqus and will probably be overly strict, much like the all-star owned channels were during the first iteration of disqus channels. What do y'all think? I think it's going to suck eggs myself. How's about you?

Also, what's up with that 'ad' space at the top of the blog? That's new. I haven't figured that one out yet. Not much to this one. I just noticed the new channels and thought, "Hey, we can open thread about it."



Since it's an Open Thread, here's some music too. Will the new channels take off or will drama ensue once again and burn it all down once more?




y'all know what's up
memes, gifs, music, pics, random thoughts ...
post 'em if you got 'em


and don't forget to recommend
and invite someone new to join in

What the Left Did to Our Country ~ VDH


Will their upheaval  succeed?


In the last 20 years, the Left has boasted that it has gained control of most of America institutions of power and influence—the corporate boardroom, media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the administrative state, academia, foundations, social media, entertainment, professional sports, and Hollywood.

With such support, between 2009-17, Barack Obama was empowered to transform the Democratic Party from its middle-class roots and class concerns into the party of the bicoastal rich and subsidized poor—obsessions with big money, race, a new intolerant green religion, and dividing the country into a binary of oppressors and oppressed.

The Obamas entered the presidency spouting the usual leftwing boilerplate (“spread the wealth,” “just downright mean country,” “get in their face,” “first time I’ve been proud of my country”) as upper-middle-class, former community activists, hurt that their genius and talents had not yet been sufficiently monetized.

After getting elected through temporarily pivoting to racial ecumenicalism and pseudo-calls for unity, they reverted to form and governed by dividing the country. And then the two left the White House as soon-to-be mansion living, mega-rich elites, cashing in on the fears they had inculcated over the prior eight years.

To push through the accompanying unpopular agendas of an open border, mandatory wind and solar energy, racial essentialism, and the weaponization of the state, Obama had begun demonizing his opponents and the country in general: America was an unexceptional place. Cops were racist. “Clingers” of the Midwest were hopelessly ignorant and prejudiced. Only fundamental socialist transformation could salvage a historically oppressive, immoral, and racist nation.

The people finally rebelled at such preposterousness. Obama lost his party some 1,400 local and state offices during his tenure, along with both houses of Congress. His presidency was characterized by his own polarizing mediocrity. His one legacy was Obamacare, the veritable destruction of the entire system of a once workable health insurance, of the hallowed doctor-patient relationship, and of former easy access to competent specialists.

Yet Obama’s unfufilled ambitions set the stage for the Biden administration—staffed heavily with Obama veterans—to complete the revolutionary transformation of the Democratic Party and country.

It was ironic that while Obama was acknowledged as young and charismatic, nonetheless a cognitively challenged, past plagiarist, fabulist, and utterly corrupt Joe Biden was far more effective in ramming through a socialist woke agenda and altering the very way Americans vote and conduct their legal system.

Stranger still, Biden accomplished this subversion of traditional America while debilitated and often mentally inert—along with being mired in a bribery and influence-peddling scandal that may ultimately confirm that he easily was the most corrupt president to hold office in U.S. history.

How was all this possible?

Covid had allowed the unwell Biden to run a surrogate campaign from his basement as he outsourced his politicking to a corrupt media.

Senility proved a godsend for Biden. His cognitive disabilities masked his newfound radicalism and long-accustomed incompetence. Unlike his past failed campaigns, the lockdowns allowed Biden to be rarely seen or heard—and thus as much liked in the abstract as he had previously been disliked in the concrete.

His handlers, the Obamas, and the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren radical Democrats, saw Biden’s half-century pretense as a gladhander—good ole Joe Biden from Scranton—as the perfect delivery system to funnel their own otherwise-unpopular leftwing agendas. In sum, via the listless Biden, they sought to change the very way America used to work.

And what a revolution Biden’s puppeteers have unleashed in less than three years.

They launched a base attack on the American legal system. Supreme Court judges are libeled, their houses swarmed, and their lives threatened with impunity. The Left promised to pack the court or to ignore any decision it resents. The media runs hit pieces on any conservative justice deemed too influential. The prior Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer whipped up a mob outside the court’s doors, and threatened two justices by name. As Schumer presciently put it, they would soon “reap the whirlwind” of what they supposedly had sowed and thus would have no idea what was about to “hit” them.

Under the pretense of Covid fears, balloting went from 70 percent participation on election day in most states to a mere 30 percent. Yet the rates of properly rejected illegal or improper ballots often dived by a magnitude of ten.

Assaults now followed on hallowed processes, laws, customs, and institutions—the Senate filibuster, the 50-state union, the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, Election Day, and voter IDs.

Under Biden, the revolution had institutionalized first-term impeachment, the trial of an ex-president while a private citizen, and the indictment of a chief political rival and ex-president on trumped up charges by local and federal prosecutors—all to destroy a political rival and alter the 2024 election cycle.

Biden destroyed the southern border—literally. Eight million entered illegally—no background checks, no green cards, no proof of vaccinations. America will be dealing with the consequences for decades. Mexico was delighted, receiving some $60 million in annual remittances, while the cartels were empowered to ship enough fentanyl to kill 100,000 Americans a year.

“Modern monetary theory,” the Leftist absurdity that printing money ensures prosperity, followed. It has nearly bankrupted the country, unleashed wild inflation, and resulted in the highest interest rates in a quarter-century. Middle-class wages fell further behind as a doddering Biden praised his disastrous “Bidenomics.”

Biden warred on fossil fuels, cancelling federal leases and pipelines, jawboning lending agencies to defund fracking, demonizing state-of-the-art, clean-burning cars, and putting vast areas of oil- and gas-rich federals lands off-limits to drilling.

When gas prices predictably doubled under Biden and the 2022 midterms approached, he tried temporarily to lease out a few new fields, to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and to beg the Saudis, and our enemies, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, and the Russians, to pump more oil and gas that Biden himself would not. All this was a pathetic ruse to temporarily lower gas prices before the mid-term elections.

Biden abandoned Afghanistan, leaving the largest trove of military equipment behind in U.S. military history, along with thousands of loyal Afghans and pro-American contractors.

Biden insulted the parents of the 13 Marines blown up in this worst U.S. military debacle since Pearl Harbor. He lied to the parents of the dead that he too lost a son in the Iraq war, and when among them later impatiently checked his watch as he seemed bored with the commemoration of the fallen—and made no effort to hide his sense that the ceremony was tedious to him.

Vladimir Putin summed up the Afghan debacle—and Biden’s nonchalant remark that he wouldn’t react strongly to a “minor” invasion of Ukraine if it were minor—as a green light to invade Ukraine.

When Biden did awaken, his first reaction was an offer to fly the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the country as soon as possible. What has followed proved the greatest European killing ground since the 1944-45 Battle of the Bulge, albeit one that has now fossilized into a Verdun-like quagmire that is draining American military supply stocks and killing a half-million Ukrainians and Russians.

Suddenly, there are three genders, not two. Women’s sports have been wrecked by biological men competing as women, destroying a half-century of female athletic achievement. Young girls in locker rooms, co-eds in sororities, and women in prison must dress and shower with biological men transitioning to women by assertion.

There is no longer a commitment to free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union is a woke, intolerant group trying to ban free expression under the pretense of fighting “hate” speech and “disinformation.”

The Left has revived McCarthyite loyal oaths straight out of the 1950s, forcing professors, job applicants, and students applying for college to pledge their commitment to “diversity” as a requisite for hiring, admittance, or promotion. Diversity is our era’s version of the Jacobins’ “Cult of Reason.”

Race relations hit a 50-year nadir. Joe Biden has a long history of racist insults and putdowns. And now as apparent penance, he has reinvented himself as a reverse racial provocateur, spouting nonsense about white supremacy, exploiting shootings or hyping racial tensions to ensure that an increasingly disgusted black electorate does not leave the new Democratic Party.

The military has adopted wokeism, oblivious that it has eroded meritocracy in the ranks and slashed military recruitment. It is underfunded, wracked by internal suspicion, loss of morale and ginned up racial and gender animosity. Its supply stocks are drained. Arms productions is snail-like, and generalship is seen as a revolving door to corporate defense contractor board riches.

Big-city Democratic district attorneys subverted the criminal justice system, destroyed law enforcement deterrence, and unleashed a record crime wave. Did they wish to create anarchy as protest against the normal, or were they Jokerist nihilists who delighted in sowing ruin for ruin’s sake?

Radical racial activists, with Democrat endorsement, demand polarizing racial reparations. The louder the demands, the quieter they remain about smash-and-grab looting, carjacking, and the swarming of malls by disproportionally black teens—even as black-on-black urban murders reach record proportions.

In response, Biden tried to exploit the growing tensions by spouting lies that “white supremacy” and “white privilege” fuel such racial unrest—even as his ill-gotten gains, past record of racist demagoguery and resulting lucre and mansions appear the epitome of his own so-called white privilege.

This litany of disasters could be vastly expanded, but more interesting is the why of it all?

What we are witnessing seems to be utter nihilism. The border is not porous but nonexistent. Mass looting and carjackings are not poorly punished, but simply exempt from all and any consequences. Our downtowns are reduced to a Hobbesian “war of all against all,” where the strong dictate to the weak and the latter adjust as they must. The streets of our major cities in just a few years have become precivilizational—there are more human feces on the sidewalks of San Francisco than were in the gutters of Medieval London.

The FBI and DOJ are not simply wayward and weaponized, but corrupt and renegade. Apparently the perquisite now for an FBI director is the ability either to lie while under oath or better to mask such lying by claiming amnesia or ignorance.

Immigration is akin to the vast unchecked influxes of the late Roman Empire across the Danube and Rhine that helped to finish off a millennium-old civilization that had lost all confidence in its culture and thus had no need for borders.

In other words, the revolution is not so much political as anarchist. Nothing escapes it—not ceiling fans, not natural gas cooktops, not parents at school board meetings, not Christian bakeries, not champion female swimmers, not dutiful policemen, not hard-working oil drillers, not privates and corporals in the armed forces, not teens applying on their merits to college, not anyone, anywhere, anytime.

The operating principle is either to allow or to engineer things to become so atrocious in everyday American life—the inability to afford food and fuel, the inability to walk safely in daylight in our major cities, the inability to afford to drive as one pleases, the inability to obtain or pay back a high interest loan—that the government can absorb the private sector and begin regimenting the masses along elite dictates. The more the people tire of the leftist agenda, the more its architects furiously seek to implement it, hoping that their institutional and cultural control can do what  ballots cannot.

We could variously characterize their efforts as destroying the nation to save it, or burning it down to start over, or fundamentally transforming America into something never envisioned by the Founders.

Will their upheaval  succeed? All the levers of the power and money are on the side of the revolutionaries. The people are not. And they are starting to wake to the notion if they do not stop the madness in their midst they very soon won’t have a country.



End of the Line for Truth Social? Merger Woes Threaten Trump's Media Platform


Jeff Charles reporting for RedState 

Truth Social might be in a bit of trouble. And when I say a bit of trouble, I mean the platform could be shutting down altogether if the stars do not align. The company, established in October 2021, is reportedly on the brink of collapse due to its troubles merging with Digital World Acquisition Corp.

The platform was meant to become a tech behemoth worth up to $1.7 billion. But with the deal in jeopardy, this might not come to fruition:

When former president Donald Trump’s media start-up announced in October 2021 that it planned to merge with a Miami-based company called Digital World Acquisition, the deal was an instant stock-market hit.

With the $300 million Digital World had already raised from investors, Trump Media & Technology Group, creator of the pro-Trump social network Truth Social, pledged then that the merger would create a tech titan worth $875 million at the start and, depending on the stock’s performance, up to $1.7 billion later.

All they needed was for the merger to close — a process that Digital World, in a July 2021 preliminary prospectus, estimated would happen within 12 to 18 months.

“Everyone asks me why doesn’t someone stand up to Big Tech? Well, we will be soon!” Trump said in a Trump Media statement that month.

Now, almost two years later, the deal faces what could be a catastrophic threat. With the merger stalled for months, Digital World is fast approaching a Sept. 8 deadline for the merger to close and has scheduled a shareholder meeting for Tuesday in hopes of getting enough votes to extend the deadline another year.

If the vote fails, Digital World will be required by law to liquidate and return $300 million to its shareholders, leaving Trump’s company with nothing from the transaction.

The deal has been fraught with challenges having been postponed six times. The issues include scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), allegations that Digital World engaged in early conversations in violation of rules governing special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), and a slew of internal problems, such as the termination of the chief executive and insider trading allegations against a former board member.

If the vote for another extension fails, Digital World will be compelled to liquidate and return $300 million to shareholders. This would leave Trump’s company with empty pockets.

SPACs, also known as “blank check companies,” are investment vehicles that allow investors to invest in private equity-type transactions. Investors set up these entities with the purpose of pursuing deals in certain industries. The only purpose of this type of business is to raise capital through initial public offerings (IPO) to acquire existing businesses.

Digital World’s funding consists largely of small-time retail investors, which makes it difficult to get sufficient participation in critical votes. Trump Media blames the SEC for the myriad of delays, accusing it of political sabotage. The SEC counters by claiming that Digital World made “material misrepresentations” to investors.

There is also the reality that Truth Social has not lived up to its ambitious goals. In July, it had about 500,000 monthly active users in the U.S. This fell far short of projections that it would reach 41 million users by the end of 2023. Indeed, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson decided to air his interview with the former president on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, instead of Truth Social.

The future of Truth Social remains uncertain. But if it does go under, there could be a silver lining – it could prompt the former president to return to X. If he comes back to the platform, we can already imagine the hilarity and triggering that will result, right? We already saw what happened when Trump posted his mugshot on the platform. Using X might allow him to once again dominate the headlines as it would get engagement from a wider swath of users – including those on the left.

Another disadvantage of Truth Social is that it attracted primarily those on the right. This created an echo chamber similar to other “free speech platforms” that tried to position themselves as alternatives to mainstream social media sites.

The hurdles Truth Social faces are not to be taken lightly. The clock is ticking and the companies involved have limited time to make a deal. If things fall through, then Truth Social might be no more. But, if Trump comes back to X, it might actually benefit his campaign for the presidency more.



Elon Musk Slams the ADL, Reveals Advertising Woes and Threatens a Lawsuit


Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Since Elon Musk's acquisition of social media giant Twitter, now named X, one organization has waged war on the platform: The Anti-Defamation League

From the beginning of the transition, the far-left group, which promotes itself as a fighter of anti-semitism and white supremacy, has demanded to have an outside role in how X functions. Claims of increased "hate speech" have been the primary weapon used against Musk and his company, though there's very little tangible evidence to support that position. Still, advertisers have folded under the ADL's pressure campaign.

According to a new disclosure from Musk, US advertising revenue is down 60 percent since he bought the company.

Despite all the damage done, the ADL and its CEO Jonathan Greenblatt continues to respond with abject arrogance. 

Greenblatt speaks like he's a school principal disciplining a student. Who appointed him master of the universe, whereby he gets to have "frank" discussions with a private company about how it does business? To weaponize ad revenue against X based on nothing but his petty, partisan vendetta is gross. It's exactly the kind of left-wing bullying that has become all too common. 

Still, Musk bears some responsibility for appointing a CEO in Linda Yaccarino, who appears to be more than willing to bend the knee to the ADL's attempts at corporate blackmail. When Twitter was owned by a board of far-left individuals, Greenblatt never had any complaints about the multitude of disgusting content on the site. In the end, the ADL's war against X really comes down to who gets to be the gatekeeper. Greenblatt and his left-wing allies do not want conservatives to be able to speak freely. That's what this is really about, not fighting actual anti-semitism, which existed on the site prior. 

Remember, this is the same organization that hyped up a fake white supremacist "day of hate" in February. Greenblatt then took to Twitter to declare victory over something that never even existed. It's also the same organization that changed the definition of racism to only apply to "people of color," expressly legitimizing racism against white individuals. That's the kind of grift the ADL has become known for, and its website is littered with further examples. 

Perhaps Musk has reached the end of his rope, though. He's now teasing the possibility of a defamation lawsuit. 

If Musk is joking, he really shouldn't be. The ADL has cost his company untold amounts of advertising revenue by spreading vague, unproven accusations that X spreads hateful conduct. Instead of giving in to Greenblatt, Musk should take serious action, up to and including legal action. To not do so would just embolden the left to keep bullying companies into submission. Nothing will ever be enough for the ADL because its purpose is to shut down free speech. Nothing more.



The Flawed Dichotomy: Why Classifying Crimes as 'Violent' Versus 'Nonviolent' Misses the Point


Over the past three years, crime has been a prominent topic of discussion as criminality skyrocketed during the COVID pandemic, and there was widespread unrest due to a backlash against police brutality. Conservatives have pilloried so-called progressive prosecutors who give lenient treatment to both violent and nonviolent criminals. Those on the left contend that this approach somehow creates a fairer justice system.

But is the delineation between “violent” and “nonviolent” crime a useful way to approach the issue?

There have been several reports showing that this oversimplified classification not only perpetuates criminality but also results in people being punished for behaviors that should not be considered crimes in the first place.

City Journal article detailed the story of Yowhannes “John” Tewelde in San Francisco, who died after trying to stop a thief from stealing beer from his store. If the store owner had not intervened and allowed the criminal to pilfer his beer, it would have been classified as a “nonviolent” crime, which means he would not have faced any serious consequences. The author also notes how many “nonviolent” criminals commit crimes that can easily escalate to assault or murder.

By downplaying the severity of crimes like theft and others, progressive policymakers are essentially giving some of these individuals a free pass to conduct mass shoplifting operations. This trend has had a seriously detrimental impact on businesses in these cities, many of which had to close up operations or take other measures to safeguard their property.

Perhaps the problem is with the “violent vs. nonviolent” dichotomy in general. Instead of focusing on differentiating between these types of crime, it would be better to focus law enforcement efforts on crimes that actually have victims.

Rather than using police resources to hunt down, arrest, convict, and imprison people over substances they choose to consume, it would be more effective to target those who are actually violating people’s rights. Those who assault, steal, murder, and defraud are threatening people’s natural rights to life, liberty, and property. People who choose to consume a plant are not.

Decriminalizing or, at the very least, deprioritizing victimless offenses would free up resources for law enforcement agencies – especially those that are already stretched thin. This would empower officers to go after people who are engaging in harmful behavior against others. Those who commit crimes with victims should be given the appropriate punishment instead of going easy on them out of some misguided sense of social justice.

America’s approach to justice needs a lot of work. A more nuanced approach to these issues is needed. Law enforcement must take into account the full range of a crime’s impact on victims and communities. The current handling of these issues has not worked – especially the War on Drugs.

The bottom line is that punishing people for engaging in behavior that does not threaten other people’s rights should not be the purview of the government. Moreover, it has not actually made for better and safer communities. There are far more drug overdose deaths today than there were in the 1980s, the decade after the War on Drugs began – and it’s not only because of fentanyl.

This isn’t to say that drug addiction and other victimless behaviors are not an issue. They certainly are. But it has been shown over and over again that using the government to address these problems not only doesn’t work, it makes them worse while also creating a slew of additional problems.

If anyone is going to solve these problems, it is we the people, not the state. I trust private organizations, churches, and individuals to help people get off drugs far more than I would ever trust the government’s solution, which pretty much involves locking people up and hoping for the best.

Reforming our criminal justice system is a complex issue. But we have already seen that going easy on those who harm others isn’t the way to keep people safe. Perhaps if law enforcement adopts a laser-like focus on these individuals, it will prevent more situations like what happened to Tewelde.



Biden-Appointed Judge Rules Religious Parents Can’t Opt Kids Out Of Pro-LGBT School Lessons

Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox parents argue that the school board’s ‘no-opt-out’ policy violates their constitutional rights.



As a new school year kicks into gear, a Biden-appointed federal judge is using the legal equivalent of grade inflation to prop up the misguided efforts of a local school board to indoctrinate students with gender ideology. On Aug. 24, the U.S. District Court judge denied a requested injunction from a group of Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox parents to opt their children out of LGBT storybook lessons, exposing the judge’s grave misunderstanding of the Supreme Court’s religious freedom jurisprudence.

A stone’s throw from Washington, D.C., Montgomery County Public Schools is one of the largest public school systems in the country, with roughly 70,000 students attending elementary school. Last fall, the Montgomery County Board of Education announced it was adopting a collection of more than 20 “LGBTQ+ inclusive” books for use in pre-K through eighth-grade classrooms. 

The collection calls for pre-K students ages 3-5 to read Pride Puppy!, the story of two women who take their children to a “Pride Day” parade. A word list using the letters of the alphabet to show what a child might see includes the words “leather,” “underwear,” and “[drag] queen.” 

Fifth graders — typically 10- and 11-year-old children — will read Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, about an elementary school-aged girl who tells her mother, “I don’t feel like a boy. I AM a boy.” Her mother agrees to tell their family “that we know … You are a boy.” But when Penelope’s brother protests, “You can’t become a boy. You have to be born one,” he’s told that “not everything needs to make sense. This is about love.” 

Other books include What are Your Words?, a story about a child “figuring out” “their” pronouns, and Intersection Allies: We Make Room For All, a book that offers leftist definitions for “sex,” “gender,” and “transgender” as well as asks readers what pronouns “fit them best.”

When parents initially raised objections to the books, the school board said they could opt their children out of instruction involving the books, as parents can for other parts of the curriculum. By the spring, however, the school board announced parents would not only no longer be notified in advance when the books would be read, they also couldn’t opt their children out of instruction involving the books. 

Three families, representing various faith traditions with children enrolled in schools run by the county, sued. They object to having their children exposed to principles concerning sex and identity that contravene their religious beliefs. They argue the school board’s “no-opt-out” policy violates their and their children’s free exercise and free speech under the Constitution’s First Amendment and the parents’ substantive due process rights under the 14th Amendment. The lawsuit asks for a preliminary injunction to restore the rights of parents to opt their children out of reading and discussing the books. 

Biden-appointed Judge Deborah Boardman denied the requested injunction, just days after oral argument. “[T]he plaintiffs have not shown that the no-opt-out policy likely will result in the indoctrination of their children,” she wrote. But what about the parents’ rights to direct the religious upbringing of the children? Boardman’s take is that “[e]ven if their children’s exposure to religiously offensive ideas makes the parents’ efforts less likely to succeed, that does not amount to a government-imposed burden on their religious exercise.” 

Perhaps the most bizarre part of Boardman’s opinion is her opinion that “the plaintiffs’ asserted due process right to direct their children’s upbringing by opting out of a public-school curriculum that conflicts with their religious views is not a fundamental right.” Professor Helen Alvaré of the George Mason University Scalia School of Law would beg to differ. In a recent law review article, she explains that teaching on “familial relations” is part and parcel of instilling and transmitting the faith itself — and anything that interferes with it interferes with the liberty and free exercise rights of parents.

Under long-standing Supreme Court precedent, government schools are not “empowered … to ‘save’ a child from himself or his [religious] parents” by imposing “compulsory” education to “influence … the religious future of the child.” In fact, the court recently reaffirmed as an “enduring American tradition,” the “rights of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children.” Boardman’s attempts to distinguish these cases borders on the ridiculous.   

Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of drivel we can expect of Biden’s judicial appointees. 

While failing to appreciate basic truths of our Constitution, Judge Boardman did get one thing in her opinion correct when she noted that “[t]he Fourth Circuit has not addressed the question of when a mandatory public-school curriculum might burden the religious exercise of students or parents.” This is promising as the parents pushing back against Montgomery County School Board’s attempt to indoctrinate their young students have announced they will be appealing her decision. 

Parents of Montgomery County, Maryland, are bravely pushing back against indoctrination in our nation’s schools. Let’s hope the Fourth Circuit will join them and stop the madness.