America’s Latest Pasttime: The politicization of Everything

Right now, the most dangerous thing about politics is… politics.

Politics are dangerous to everybody. This is true if you’re scraping spray-painted obscenities off your Trump/Pence yard sign and wearing your MAGA cap at half-mast in mourning. And this is also true if you think AOC and the Green New Dealers have just dealt you a straight flush. (Flush twice – it’s a long way from Congress to your lunch bucket.)

Of course, politics have always been dangerous. Politics are how it’s decided who controls government… Whoever controls government controls the force of the law… And the force of the law is a lethal force.

Fail to pay a parking ticket and you’ll be fined. Refuse to pay the fine and you’ll be jailed. Try to escape from jail and you’ll be shot. Every law, every government rule and regulation, no matter how trivial or picayune, is obeyed at the point of a gun.

That gun is called politics. And what makes politics so dangerous right now is that Americans – Left, Right, and Center (if there even is a Center anymore) – have come to believe that the answer to every question is political.

How much money should we have?
How much money can we have?
What’s a dollar worth?
How many dollars must we pay employees?
Who are the employees required to be?
Who is allowed to employ them?
Who’s a real American?
Who’s just pretending?
Who gets to exercise free speech?
What if they speak too freely?
What should be taught in school?
What should be believed in church?
Which doctor can we go to?
Which car can we drive?
Or do we have to take the train?
And what should the weather be like?

Politics has become our first resort. And resorting to politics every time we face a problem is as absurd as (and identical to) resorting to firearms.

“Grab your shootin’ iron, Pa! Ma’s got bunions!”

It’s safer to rely on people (a podiatrist, for example) than it is to rely on politics.

P. J. O’Rourke, American Consequences

In Opinions: Yes, the War on Drugs disproportionately targets minorities

When you think of the longest wars in U.S. history, you’d typically think of armed conflict. 

Topping that list is the Afghanistan War and, by extension, the War on Terror. The almost 20-year war defined our entire generation. Most, technically all, of our age group has never known peace. We have never known a nation that is not at war with somebody, and why that is happening is another discussion for another day. 

But when you look at passive wars, wars without guns, there is one that sticks out the most. At the time of this writing, the War on Drugs has lasted 49 years, nine months and 23 days. It is easily one of the longest wars in world history. 

And despite lasting so incredibly long, its central purpose, goal and mission have not changed: target, engage and arrest minorities in the U.S., focusing on Black men. 

Between the 1970s and 2016, U.S. prison rates increased by 500%, leading to the U.S. having the highest tracked imprisonment rates. In 2018, of all federal prisoners in the US, 33% were Black, 30% were white and 23% were Hispanic.

The numbers seem relatively close, right? When you consider only 12% of the US population was Black during the same study period, there are red flags. And it’s not just imprisonment rates that are incredibly racist.

2015 report by the US Department of Justice found that Black drivers in Missouri were over twice as likely to be searched during vehicle stops but were found in possession of contraband around 30% less often than white drivers.

A 1995 United States government study found that from 1991 to 1993, 16% of those who sold drugs were Black, but 49% of those arrested for doing so were Black. Despite all of this information, the government has not changed its stance despite all of these studies. And this is because the United States government is using this to oppress minorities in this continue. 

But this isn’t even speculation: John Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s aide on domestic affairs, was the man credited with pitching the plan to the President. In a 1996 interview, Ehrlichman explained what it was like in the room where it happened. 

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying?” Ehrlichman began.

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news,” Ehrlichman explained in the interview.

The Nixon administration lied to the American public “night after night” about these drugs’ dangers and who was using them.

“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did,” Ehrlichman further explained. 

And it is not just Republican Administrations that are engaging in this. Take Bill Clinton’s Administration. The 1994 Crime Bill, which current president Joe Biden wrote, is known for targeting minorities, especially regarding crime. 

Specifically, towards drug legislation, the bill introduced the ‘Three Strikes Law.’ Which by its name seems harmless until you know what’s going on. It required a mandatory life sentence for any felony violent crime conviction after two other prior convictions. Again, this seems straightforward, but it includes serious drug offenses per Section 3559 of Title 18 U.S. Code.

Not to mention there is a direct implication for college students. The law had a clause that removed the approval of Pell Grants for low-income inmates in federal prison. 

So that means if you are an 18-year-old who got caught with weed by a federal agent, you now have a more challenging time paying for college. Keeping you stuck in the situations that likely brought you arrested in the first place.

Not to mention Bill Clinton cut many programs that help poor minority communities, such as public housing. Unfortunately, because many of our parents grew up being fed this false information, the lies persist in American society. And even then, it has focused on the same drugs from the 70s. 

Marijuana, heroin and meth are still the central focus, yet there are far more dangerous and legal drugs. 

Tobacco, alcohol and opioids are all very legal and very deadly. Opioids alone killed 81,230 people during the 2020 fiscal year. For comparison, that’s more than how many people died in the Hiroshima atomic bombing, not including those who died of radiation poisoning.

The War on Drugs is functionally the U.S. government’s biggest failure, spanning nearly five decades, all to put a group of peaceful Americans into prisons.

Kenneth Lockett III

What Happens to Florida if DeSantis Loses ?

Everyone’s moving to Florida — if not Texas. I get it. Florida has a lot to offer. But the desire of rational patriots to move to Florida rests heavily on the presence of a rational governor — Ron DeSantis. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that he might go away. But he could. It doesn’t matter what a majority wants. We saw that in Georgia, right? We know Donald Trump probably won Georgia, as did the two Republican U.S. Senate candidates. It didn’t matter.

Is it plausible to assume that the entire leftist-political-cultural cabal that forced Donald Trump out of the White House might do the same to Ron DeSantis? I certainly hope not. But you’re living in your head if you think it’s not plausible. Stacey Abrams and her army of frauds are undoubtedly even planning now how to accomplish what they have so far, since 2020, accomplished with a 100 percent success rate. You might say, “DeSantis controls the elections in Florida. He won’t let it happen.” I heard the same about Donald Trump. “He’s in the White House. Do you think he won’t use the federal government’s power to prevent widespread fraud?” All I can tell you is: Donald Trump is gone.

My point, as always, isn’t to be negative. It’s to be REALISTIC. At some point, those of us who still cherish our diminishing freedom will have to accept: Elections are not the answer. I don’t have a simple alternative for you. But with elections now being controlled nationally, and by evil persons (Zuckerberg, Dorsey, etc.) who control 95 percent of the flow of information in the world, elections might not be our best alternative.

So: If you live in Florida, or if you’re soon moving to Florida, what’s your plan — if DeSantis loses? And a socialist-Communist-woke Democrat takes over the Sunshine State?

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The End of Basic Education: Biden Issues Universal Public School Critical Race Theory Order

The Biden Department of Education has quietly proposed a new rule prioritizing the use of federal tax dollars for K-12 schools that replace traditional education with “culturally responsive teaching and learning” – more commonly referred to as critical race theory. This is the most significant move by the federal government to redefine the nature of state-funded public schools in U.S. history.

Although the current effort to push public schools receiving federal funding to adopt a detailed indoctrination agenda may feel new and overwhelming for parents, the truth is that the Biden attempt is simply the last phase in a decades-long effort to control local schools and press the progressive agenda on our children. With the power of taxpayer-funded purse strings, the federal government sends a message to public schools that if they want financial aid they must “teach” critical race theory and prioritize its ideologically anti-American, anti-traditional agenda over traditional education.

Under Obama, public schools were thrust into the controversial world of Common Core, a series of federal mandates that included “awareness education” involving a progressive view of race, gender, and so-called “equity” (not to be confused with “equality”).

Under Biden, a far more aggressive level of federal control over our nation’s K-12 classrooms will replace history (and objective truth) with identity politics and a warped view of American civics and institutions. In many cases, teachers are told to hide the racially divisive curriculum from parents. In others, students are encouraged to report the words and views of their parents and caretakers as examples of institutional racism. The initial goal is the indoctrination of young minds, but the long view is to aggregate power behind an alien political worldview that fed the dehumanizing machines of the Soviet Union and communist China.

At its core, critical race theory is the false idea that the United States is a fundamentally racist country and that all of our nation’s institutions – the law, culture, business, economy, education – are designed to maintain white supremacy. Politicians and pundits market critical race theory as inclusive teaching, one that promotes understanding and tolerance. When the truth is exposed, they try to repackage it in a series of euphemisms, including anti-racism, equity, or culturally responsive teaching. But the “scholars,” like Ibram X. Kendi and the 1619 Project behind the related anti-racist rhetoric proposed in the rule – the true believers – admit the truth.

Critical race theory curriculum tells students that they fall into one of two categories – the oppressed or the oppressor – based solely on the color of their skin. It tells students that if they are white then they are privileged and racist, and makes them affirm this ideology through classroom discussion and assignments. Some school districts take it even a step further and physically segregate students based on their race for lessons, reducing them to nothing more than a set of racial stereotypes.

This is not healthy. It erases decades of progress. And it pits our children against each other, teaching them to hate one another. Parents must stay alert because this week’s proposed rule is just the beginning. Senate and House Democrats have already introduced bills, including the Civics Secures Democracy Act, which would require schools to promote critical race theory in exchange for more federal money.

The go-for-broke approach of the Biden administration to upend bulwarks of the American constitutional republic, from Supreme Court-packing to open borders to emptying the public treasury to ensuring federal control of elections, reveals the true agenda: the consolidation of power. And nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in its drive to replace history, reading, and writing with noxious doctrine designed to replace both parental control and constitutional rule of law.

Kimberly Hermann is General Counsel for Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based constitutional public interest law firm and policy center. Kim is committed to promoting individual liberty, the rule of law, and accountability in government. She advances these principles through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts.

Rule by Fiat: When Government does What it Wants

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” — Ayn Rand

Rule by brute force.

That’s about as good a description as you’ll find for the sorry state of our nation.

SWAT teams crashing through doors. Militarized police shooting unarmed citizens. Traffic cops tasering old men and pregnant women for not complying fast enough with an order. Resource officers shackling children for acting like children. Homeowners finding their homes under siege by police out to confiscate lawfully-owned guns. Drivers having their cash seized under the pretext that they might have done something wrong.

The list of abuses being perpetrated against the American people by their government is growing rapidly.

We are approaching critical mass.

The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

In effect, you will disappear.

Our freedoms are already being made to disappear.

We have seen this come to pass under past presidents with their use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements.

President Biden’s long list of executive orders, executive actions, proclamations and directives is just more of the same: rule by fiat.

Now the Biden Administration is setting its sights on gun control.

Mark my words: gun control legislation, especially in the form of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats, will become yet another means by which to subvert the Constitution and sabotage the rights of the people.

These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.

Nineteen states and Washington DC have red flag laws on their books.

That number is growing.

As The Washington Post reports, these laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.

In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings (the statistics suggest otherwise), these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.

Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.

Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.

With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats… to “stop dangerous people before they act.”

While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.

We’ve been down this road before.

Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.

This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.

This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.

For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

Let that sink in a moment.

Now consider the ramifications of giving police that kind of authority: to preemptively raid homes in order to neutralize a potential threat.

It’s a powder keg waiting for a lit match.

Under these red flag laws, what happened to Duncan Lemp—who was gunned down in his bedroom during an early morning, no-knock SWAT team raid on his family’s home—could very well happen to more people.

At 4:30 a.m. on March 12, 2020, in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that had most of the country under a partial lockdown and sheltering at home, a masked SWAT team—deployed to execute a “high risk” search warrant for unauthorized firearms—stormed the suburban house where 21-year-old Duncan, a software engineer and Second Amendment advocate, lived with his parents and 19-year-old brother.

The entire household, including Lemp and his girlfriend, was reportedly asleep when the SWAT team directed flash bang grenades and gunfire through Lemp’s bedroom window.

Lemp was killed and his girlfriend injured.

No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, had a criminal record.

No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, was considered an “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public, at least not according to the search warrant.

So what was so urgent that militarized police felt compelled to employ battlefield tactics in the pre-dawn hours of a day when most people are asleep in bed, not to mention stuck at home as part of a nationwide lockdown?

According to police, they were tipped off that Lemp was in possession of “firearms.”

Thus, rather than approaching the house by the front door at a reasonable hour in order to investigate this complaint—which is what the Fourth Amendment requires—police instead strapped on their guns, loaded up their flash bang grenades and acted like battle-crazed warriors.

This is the blowback from all that military weaponry flowing to domestic police departments.

This is what happens when you use SWAT teams to carry out routine search warrants.

This is what happens when you adopt red flag gun laws, which Maryland did in 2018, painting anyone who might be in possession of a gun—legal or otherwise—as a threat that must be neutralized.

Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally where the burden of proof is reversed and you are guilty before you are given any chance to prove you are innocent.

Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.

Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.

In fact, U.S. police agencies have been working to identify and manage potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats for some time now.

All you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutterdrive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social mediaappear mentally ill, serve in the militarydisagree with a law enforcement officialcall in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom, or generally live in the United States.

Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.

You will be tracked wherever you go.

You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

The government has been building its pre-crime, surveillance network in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

To that noxious mix, add in a proposal introduced under the Trump Administration and being considered by Biden for a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) that will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.

It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

Connect the dots.

Start with the powers amassed by the government under the USA Patriot Act, note the government’s ever-broadening definition of what it considers to be an “extremist,” then add in the government’s detention powers under NDAA, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

To that, add tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the picture, toss in the real-time crime centers being deployed in cities across the country, which will be attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

Hopefully you’re starting to understand how easy we’ve made it for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat for a variety of reasons that run the gamut from mental illness to having a military background to challenging its authority to just being on the government’s list of persona non grata. Finally, add in the local police agencies and SWAT teams that are being “gifted” military-grade weaponry and equipment designed for the battlefield and trained in the tactics of war.

It all adds up to a terrifying package of brute force coupled with invasive technology and totalitarian tactics.

This brings me back to those red flag gun laws.

In the short term, these gun confiscation laws may serve to temporarily delay or discourage those wishing to inflict violence on others, but it will not resolve whatever madness or hate or instability therein that causes someone to pull a trigger or launch a bomb or unleash violence on another.

Indeed, those same individuals sick enough to walk into an elementary school or a movie theater and open fire using a gun can and do wreak just as much havoc with homemade bombs made out of pressure cookers and a handful of knives.

Nor will these laws save us from government-instigated and directed violence at the hands of the militarized police state or the blowback from the war-drenched, violence-imbued, profit-driven military industrial complex, both of which remain largely overlooked and underestimated pieces of the discussion on gun violence in America.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, in the long term, all these gun confiscation laws will do is ensure that when the police state finally cracks down, “we the people” are defenseless in the face of the government’s arsenal of weapons.

No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes. In this way, even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

Red flag laws and gun control legislation are no less a threat to our freedoms.

John Whitehead

What the George Floyd Matter Reminds Us About Leftism

We have to remember a few things. Leftists do not care about justice. Justice applies to the individual. Leftist notions of “social justice” sacrifice the individual to society (in theory) and to the brutality of the state (in practice). Leftists do not care about racism. They ARE racists. They suggest that race is the defining and only important attribute of an individual; that the individual has no identity, no freedom of choice, no unique characteristics — only DNA. THIS IS RACISM.

Leftism is not a mixture of right and wrong, or good and bad, as most philosophies and ideologies are. Leftism, especially the Communist-woke type overwhelmingly dominating our culture today, is raw, undiluted, uncompromising and irredeemable evil.

Also, from Tucker Carlson:

It’s that simple: violent protests get results. That’s a threat, obviously. But it’s also, unfortunately true. Rioting does work. When you burn cities, you get what you want. You get rich from corporate handouts. You get the jury verdicts you’ve demanded. Rioters know this very well, even if the rest of us won’t admit it. By allowing Wendy’s to be torched and Macy’s to be looted and police stations to be destroyed, the rest of us have relinquished our power as citizens and instead handed it to the most violent, unreasonable, and least productive people in the country. Why would we do something like this? Maybe historians will be able to explain it. In the meantime prepare for the next phase. But, once again, don’t kid yourself. Derek Chauvin’s conviction didn’t settle accounts. It merely increased the debt.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Why Maxine Waters Wanted a Mistrial

When Maxine Waters called for people in the streets of Minnesota to be more active and confrontational if Derek Chauvin were to be acquitted, like many, I thought she had handed a gift to the defense on appeal.   In some ways, she did.  We all heard Judge Cahill describe her behavior as abhorrent, and, while he didn’t think her remarks mattered in terms of the evidence and jury deliberations, he was unequivocal that her actions likely provided the defense with the basis for a mistrial at the appellate level and could well result in the case being thrown out.  Why, if that’s what he thought, didn’t the judge declare a mistrial himself? 

Some might say it’s because he didn’t want to try the case again, but I think he didn’t want to be “that guy” responsible for letting Chauvin off the hook and reaping the wrath of a good part of the country that had long promised to burn it all down.  Why bear that burden himself and potentially subject his family to violence when it’s so much easier to pass the buck to the appellate court?

We also have to question why someone as politically experienced as Maxine Waters would so brazenly deliver a message of incitement, knowing the optics and, more importantly, that her words and conduct would only serve the interests of the defense in claiming that this was textbook intimidation of both judge and jury.  Why would a ruthless, calculating, lifelong professional left-wing s—kicker like Waters knowingly cross state lines to, if not incite, certainly agitate for continued unrest on America’s streets?

Because without an acquittal or a mistrial — either of which would have unquestionably given rise to increased violence — Rep. Waters and most Democrats actually want the bedlam to continue.  After all,  racializing everything by pointing fingers at the straw men of white supremacy; white privilege; and the conveniently invisible and unmeasurable systemic, structural, and internalized variants of racism is the bread and butter of the Democrats.  Without it, they have no raison d’être

Had Maxine kept her mouth shut, a simple conviction without a strong basis for a mistrial on appeal would cut short the mayhem in the streets.  A pause in the bedlam is not good for the left, whose entire existence and justification is predicated on being the party of racializing everything — especially relationships between black communities and white cops.  On the other hand, a conviction accompanied by overt threats of violence reeking of jury intimidation, from a political figure, keeps alive the likelihood of a mistrial on appeal and could extend the rioting all the way to the 2022 elections.  This is a tempting insurance policy that would allow the Democrats to continue to foment racial division and milk dry other white cop–black victim scenarios until their goals are reached of defunding the police, reimagining the criminal justice system, getting rid of police and replacing them with civilian security, eliminating bail, unleashing untold numbers of violent criminals back onto the streets, and disarming the public so they cannot protect their families. 

We like to think our justice system is fair, and usually it is — indeed, some believe that a guilty verdict on all three counts by a jury that was 50% white, presided over by a white judge, with several white prosecutors and a white defense attorney, is all the proof needed that “our system of justice works.”  That’s a legitimate assessment of our criminal justice system and one I’d like to embrace.  But you can equally argue that, if Chauvin was indeed guilty of one or more counts, there are aspects of how this trial was conducted that cast considerable doubt on whether it was fair and impartial.  The right verdict by a tainted process is as bad as a wrong verdict justly rendered.

Now that Chauvin has been found guilty, he will undoubtedly appeal, and a mistrial could be his fate, but not only because of Maxine’s incitement.  Even President Biden inappropriately weighed in while the jury was deliberating, hoping for a guilty verdict.  Since they weren’t sequestered, it is possible that the jurors heard these comments and were influenced by them — something that should have been asked of them to preserve the record for appeal.

During the jury selection process, the city of Minneapolis settled with the Floyd family for $27 million, sending a powerful message to the newly impaneled jury that guilt was a foregone conclusion.  The defense’s motion to sequester the jury, precisely to prevent this kind of influence on the jury and exposure to the press, was denied by Judge Cahill — a critical mistake in my opinion.  He also (astoundingly) denied the defense’s motion to change the venue and move the trial to a different jurisdiction to ensure an impartial jury and fair trial.  With unrelenting riots and protests in Minneapolis, and every major political figure from Governor Walz and A.G. Ellison on down to local mayors convicting  Chauvin in the court of public opinion, how could there possibly be a fair and impartial trial in Minnesota? 

Other forms of intimidation and influence on jurors include ongoing riots by BLM and Antifa activists and clearly biased media reports throughout the trial; the drive-by shooting of two National Guardsmen directly after Waters’s statement; the delivery of a severed pig’s head and smeared blood on the former abode of a defense witness in the style of The Godfather, in which the severed head of a treasured horse was placed in Jack Woltz’s bed, sending the clear message that the Corleones meant business and he’d better watch his step; even the tracking down and harassment of a paramedic who donated $10 to Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense, by ABC reporter Jason Nguyen to allegedly “get his side of the story” — all of this could have intimidated any juror who saw it.  Nguyen also doxxed the paramedic on social media.  Like the pig’s head, the messaging is clear: if you stand with Floyd or Rittenhouse, you are being watched, and the next head might be yours.

This is the ugly underbelly of jury tampering and intimidation.  And it’s effective.  The judge and those twelve jurors knew that any verdict short of guilty could result in untold deaths and property damage from riots, as well as threats to their families.  No matter how devoted to their constitutional duty, it is tough to remain strong in the face of such jackboot tactics.

But the verdict wasn’t enough for many black activists, politicians, journalists, and pundits.  It isn’t enough that Derek Chauvin will spend the rest of his life in jail, if the inmates let him live.  Since racism is an invisible force that exists despite any evidence of its existence, these activists and their leaders in the Democrat Party aren’t going to rest until they, to quote New York BLM leader Hank Newsom, “burn it all down.”  And according to Auntie Maxine, they “mean business.”  They want the riots.  They want the hate and division.  They want to destroy white America and will deconstruct all of America in the process, in order to recreate a new America in their image — cleansed of white history, white culture, and white people.  Im devastated to have to say that, but at this point, can there be any doubt?

This is “revenge racism” — payback for hundreds of years of oppression.  Payback against whites who had nothing to do with our tainted history, who never did anything racist, and even whose ancestors had nothing to do with our history.  To quote again from The Godfather, it’s best served cold.  Nothing we are experiencing is an accident.  And while it all feels intensely hot, it is a cold and calculated series of events and policies designed to rend our country from the inside out.

I have no doubt that Maxine and the Democrats wanted a mistrial to justify continued violence.  Since they didn’t get it, the lure of a mistrial on appeal will provide them with months, possibly even years of racializing, dividing, and destroying.  They will continue to unleash criminals on helpless innocents of all colors, with no aid or comfort on the way, and no ability to defend themselves, and they will not rest until they blow up this shining city on a hill…and turn it into a hellhole.

Sally Zelikovski, American Thinker

Mob Rule is not Justice

Don’t kid yourself. The conviction of Derek Chauvin isn’t a victory for justice. When members of Congress, the media and domestic terrorism groups threaten to burn down all of Minnesota unless they get the verdict they desire, that’s not a judicial system; it’s mob rule. This isn’t a comment on Chauvin’s guilt or innocence. It’s a comment on the fact that objective guilt or innocence are no longer relevant.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Glenn Greenwald Explains That the Presstitutes Lie Because That Is What the Audience Wants

Do you remember the lie spread by the despicable lie machine, the NY Times, that officer Brian Sicknick was beat to death with a fire extinguisher by white supremacists at the “Trump Insurrection?”

Here is the lie as told by the NY Times:

“On Wednesday, pro-Trump rioters attacked that citadel of democracy, overpowered Mr. Sicknick, 42, and struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to two law enforcement officials. With a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support. He died on Thursday evening.”

The two law enforcement officers do not exist. Sicknick was not hit with a fire extinguisher or rushed to the hospital with a bloody gash in his head. The story was a complete fabrication, and the NY Times knew it.

Every one of the presstitute scum went on and on about “Officer Brian Sicknick clubbed to death with a fire extingisher by Trump’s mob” (words of Nicholas Kristof, a professional liar for the NY Times and CNN). A complete lie became another false news fact spread all over the world.

All of this happened despite the fact that Sicknick’s family told the media that Brian was fine and had not been hit at all.

Sicknick did later die, but according to the District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner, “Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes” a day after the alleged beating. The autopsy found no blunt trauma to Sicknick’s head.

Glenn Greenwald points out that the presstitutes do not care about the facts, and neither does their audience. The audience wants to be lied to in order to have their emotion-based positions confirmed. The only purpose of the American media is to confirm the emotion-based hatred directed against white “systemic racist” Americans, Trump supporters, and the United States that has been programmed into the heads of blacks and white liberals by universities and the public school system. The presstitutes propagate the lies that sustain the emotion-based hatreds. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-about-officer

In short, the American media serves as a propaganda ministry against the United States.

Today at the gym a person remarked that her fantasy was that the presstitutes are rounded up, forced to dig a trench with their bare hands, and then machine-gunned into the trench. As more and more people feel this way, perhaps it will happen.

Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ Review

The Ugly American Left is Now Ruling America

Maxine Waters, a member of Congress, has openly called for violence against dissenters. Not for the first time. To leftists, she is bold, enlightened and progressive. She’s nothing more than an old-fashioned thug. Communism is thuggery. It advocates and practices the use of armed force to achieve all its ends — the redistribution of wealth, the suffocation of dissenting ideas and the disarming of the population. Communists were advocating this in the late 1800s. Today’s elites think they have hit on something new.

Nothing this woman says or does should surprise you. It is 100 percent consistent with the actions of every member of her party (as well as the RINOs) every day of the week. The FBI will not hold her accountable for her open advocacy of violence against unarmed people whose only offense is to disagree with her. The FBI is not on the side of individual rights; our government agencies only wish to protect the guilty, not the innocent. Any anti-Communist who stated or implied one-tenth of what Waters has stated would be under arrest, on the spot. Joe Biden, the nominal head of our federal government, is an open ally of the Chinese Communist Party and a member of a criminal family. Sadly, our government is now on the side of the bad guys — and Maxine Waters is an ugly reminder of this fact.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason