Read it.

Special Counsel Robert Hur testified for some five hours before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday on his investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents over his too long career in public life. I have posted the Washington Post’s YouTube video of the hearing at the bottom. At the same time, transcripts of Hur’s interview of Biden in the investigation were released: October 8 (99 pages) and October 9 (157 pages).

Mr. Techno Fog provided his hot take on the transcripts here (“confusion, evasion, and outright lies”). David Harsanyi cut to the chase in the Federalist column “Turns out Biden lied.” The Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr reviews both Hur’s testimony and the Biden transcripts in “Interview Transcript, Congressional Testimony Shed Light on Biden’s Memory Lapses During Classified Doc Investigation.”

Read it.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) wants to declare racism a “public health crisis,” the symptoms of which include “microaggressions” and the “forms of violence” that black Americans face when “jogging in neighborhoods.”

Brown on Monday introduced “a resolution declaring racism a public health crisis,” which calls for “a nationwide strategy to address health disparities and inequities across all sectors in society.” The resolution does not offer strategies for “dismantling systemic practices and policies that perpetuate racism” but does call for “governments to engage significant resources to empower the communities that are impacted.”

It’s a potentially risky resolution for Brown, one of the Senate’s staunchest progressives, who faces a tough reelection bid in a state that swung for former president Donald Trump by more than 7 points in 2020. Brown, who votes with President Joe Biden 98 percent of the time, has attempted to position himself as a defender of blue-collar workers.

The greatest threat to the health of black people is a black teenage gang-banger is a gun. I don’t see any mention of it in the Senator’s plans.

Read it.

Since January 2023, President Joe Biden’s National Science Foundation (NSF) has spent millions of dollars on grants funded by the American Rescue Plan, Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus package. The grants have nothing to do with COVID, but they do fund studies on climate change.

The American Rescue Plan, which Biden said would bring “direct relief to families bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 crisis,” sent $600 million to the NSF. The agency pledged to use the funding to “support groups of individuals and institutions most strongly affected by the pandemic.” Three years after Biden signed the legislation, that money is still going out the door—through research grants that aren’t COVID-related.

One July 2023 grant, for example, funded a $246,000 Amherst College study meant to “deepen our understanding of how floodplains have responded to … climatic changes.” A more than $7 million grant awarded one month earlier to the University of Texas at Austin will help develop “a learning environment that is welcoming to marginalized and minoritized researchers.” The NSF sent another $181,000 to California Polytechnic State University in December to investigate “the structural organization, and changes therein, of a school of fish.”

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Anybody who has ever observed and studied the homeless situation in California will readily see how the nonprofit homeless service providers that have been enabled by our political leaders have not only helped create the crisis, but have institutionalized homelessness as a way of life.

Now, a new conduit for corruption in the state of California is rearing its ugly head, and a word to the wise is to recognize this demon for what it really is. In brief, it is the role that nonprofits are playing in the California State Housing Mandate that the governor’s office and our legislature are promoting.

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Three small business owners filed suit and won in court against the Biden administration for attempting to choose winners and losers solely based on race when deciding who would receive government financial support.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) sued the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), a federal agency that was expanded under the Biden administration and charged with supporting minority-owned businesses, in March 2023 on behalf of Jeffrey Nuziard, Matthew Piper and Christian Brucker.

The MBDA sought to serve “minority business enterprises (MBEs) owned and operated by African Americans, Asian Americans, Hasidic Jews, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders.” The agency was created as part of a presidential executive order in the 1960s, and permanently authorized through the Infrastructure Act in 2021.

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The University of Virginia (UVA) has at least 235 employees under its “diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)” banner — including 82 students — whose total cost of employment is estimated at $20 million. That’s $15 million in cash compensation plus an additional 30-percent for the annual cost of their benefits.

Read it.

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Biden administration from unlawfully redirecting taxpayer funds away from the construction of a wall along the southern border.

StrategyPage.

The U.S. Navy has finally started repair work on an SSN (nuclear attack submarine) that returned damaged from its last time at sea nine years ago. The Newport News Shipbuilding firm is to carry out a $1.24 billion overhaul of Los Angeles-class submarine USS Boise at a shipyard in Virginia. The work will be completed by 2029.

The work includes maintenance and restoration of hull structure, tanks, propulsion systems, electric plant, auxiliary systems, armament, and furnishings in addition to many useful alterations.

The delays in doing the work on the USS Boise were caused by submarine maintenance backlogs resulting from not enough shipyards. The Boise was originally supposed to have this work done in 2016, but for eight years there were not enough shipyards available to do the work.

Read it.

The Senate passed six government funding bills on March 8 to avoid an impending shutdown deadline that was poised to activate at midnight later that night.

Senators approved the funding package 75–22 early in the evening on March 8 after hours of debate. Democrats pushed for a faster vote, while Republicans proposed several amendments to the funding package that all inevitably failed.

After the House of Representatives passed its measure on March 6, only the Senate was left to pass its funding bills before they were all sent to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. In addition to the March 8 deadline, there is another looming shutdown deadline on March 22.

Read it.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has been sued by a Nassau County executive who has accused her of unconstitutional discrimination for trying to override the county’s decision to block biologically mmale transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.

The lawsuit was filed by Nassau County official Bruce Blakeman, who said on X that he filed the lawsuit “to protect women’s sports and ensure a safe environment for women.”

“Bullying of women and girls will not be tolerated!” he added, in response to James’ cease and desist letter and threat to use legal action to force the county to allow trans athletes to compete.

Daily Beast.

Gee, I wonder why?

Real estate billionaire Jeff Greene sat in his oceanside mansion in Palm Beach on Thursday as President Biden unveiled a proposal to raise taxes on the ultra-rich—a central element of his State of the Union address. The plan would impose a 25 percent minimum income on anyone worth at least $100 million. Greene, with an estimated $7.5 billion net worth, would easily make the cut.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the real estate tycoon doesn’t support Biden’s proposal. “I don’t agree with the idea of just singling out people because of how much they have or don’t have,” he fumed to The Daily Beast.
“The progressive income tax, I understand,” he continued, though he argued that tax rates in some parts of the country have already grown out of control. “You have to leave incentives for people who are the ones who are going to create the jobs for all those people trying to climb the ladder.”Greene also contended that wealth can be difficult to measure. Some billionaires, like Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos, have net worths composed mostly of publicly traded stock, which is easy to value. In his world—real estate—that kind of analysis is often subjective.

(Hint: If you’re the whipping boy, don’t give your money to the guys with the whips. Just sayin’.)

The Foundry.

Throughout all of history, education has been understood as being about learning the truths of reality and conforming oneself to those truths in order to flourish in civil society.

The Biden administration wants to turn that idea on its head. The administration thinks one should try to twist reality to conform it to oneself and one’s emotions.

That brainwashing starts at the highest levels of the federal government and percolates down into the classrooms. And that’s exactly what’s happening with the Department of Education.

Power Line.

• Esquire used to pose a rhetorical question as a caption on a photograph of Richard Nixon that it published in its annual Dubious Achievement Awards edition: Why is this man laughing? The question to be posed for this speech is Why is this man shouting? He is an angry old man.

• This was a terrible speech terribly delivered. It’s a good thing no drug test was required before the address. Biden sounded hopped up. He spoke too fast. He slurred his words. He was frequently difficult to understand. He shouted a variety of clichés and shibboleths as though we might otherwise miss their depth and meaning. The disparity between the shibboleths and the shouting was almost funny.

• Biden sounded like a 45 rpm record playing at 78. It was an old record — it had scratches at several places that caused it to skip the groove.

Read it.

The president made numerous claims, many of them contentious and sharply partisan. The Daily Signal fact-checked many of those claims to assess whether they were truthful and accurate.

Newsbusters.

Hey, somebody needs to.

mmediately following President Biden’s State of the Union Address Thursday night, CNN’s band of liberal anchors (Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, and Abby Phillip) praised his attacks on former President Trump, his “fight,” and tried to do damage control for his plethora of senior moments.

Tapper made sure to tout how Biden alluded to Trump 13 times (ABC counted 16) during the address. Once he quickly exhausted all the nice things he had to say, Tapper awkwardly pivoted to trying to downplay Biden’s bumbling, stumbling, and disgraceful mispronunciation of Laken Riley’s name (the young college student Biden’s open border policies killed) by calling her “Lincoln”.

The War Zone.

Five months after the attacks by Hamas on Israel sparked what has been an incredibly violent war, according to multiple reports, the Biden Administration is planning to set up a beachhead to move large amounts of aid to Gaza, from ship to shore. Such an operation, which would be fraught with risk, comes days after the United States joined a growing number of countries executing airdrops of aid into Gaza. Significant portions of the Gaza Strip have been largely destroyed by tens of thousands of Israeli strikes and ongoing ground fighting.
Politico reports that Biden will formally announce the plan during his State of the Union address tonight. Citing three undisclosed senior administration officials, the outlet states that “Biden will order the U.S. military to establish a temporary port in Gaza so more humanitarian aid can get to Palestinians in need.” One administration official has reportedly said the plan will not “require U.S. boots on the ground.” How exactly that is possible is not clear. Gaza currently has no functioning port facility.

Read it.

Ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this evening – what concerns do the political elites on Capitol Hill have that require security crews to erect a large steel fence around the immediate perimeter of the Capitol Complex?

In several posts on X, FOX News Senior Congressional Correspondent Chad Pergram said the steel, grated 12-foot fence around the Capitol Complex was erected on Wednesday night on the orders of the Secret Service.

Read it.

Politico reports that President Biden has a big announcement to make tonight. During his State of the Union address, he will order the military to establish a temporary port in Gaza so more humanitarian aid can get to Palestinians in need. Enough with the airdrops, or to supplement the airdrops. We’re going in big time to keep Hamas in business.

Read it.

A longtime Safeway employee from San Mateo, California, has won a court victory after she was terminated for trying to stop a suspected shoplifter, FOX-KTVU out of Oakland has reported.

Read it.

Legislation introduced on March 5 would strip COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers of liability protections, enabling Americans injured by the shots to sue the companies.

City Journal.

on the case when it comes to solving one of the most perplexing mysteries of our day: How can the economy be so good, and yet Americans think it’s so bad?

A recent Harris poll found that just 31 percent of registered voters believe that the economy is “on the right track.” That’s the same percentage (in the same poll) who said that Joe Biden is “showing he is fit to be president” rather than “showing he is too old.” Yet the press continues to assure readers that the economy is steaming along like a powerful locomotive.

“The economic news in 2023 was almost miraculously good,” the New York Times’s Paul Krugman enthuses, as the American “economy continues to look like an amazing success story.” The title of a Financial Times article emphasizes the “strange lack of electoral reward for the success of Bidenomics.” CNN’s MJ Lee reports that the president himself is confused by the “significant gulf” between an economy that seems to be “humming along” and “the public’s stubbornly grim sentiment.”

Read it.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.

Recently approved vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) for older adults may be linked to a rare nervous system disorder that causes the body’s immune system to attack its own nerves.

In a Feb. 29 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, health officials presented data that appears to show a slightly elevated rate of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) among people who received RSV vaccines by Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

The Foundry.

Here’s my roundup of what I think are the six most prominent failures of the Biden presidency so far.

Read it.

As a partial government shutdown looms, the House Freedom Caucus has called on Republicans to oppose the ‘Swamp Omnibus’ bill, criticizing it for containing a ridiculous amount of pork. This government funding package is designed to prevent a partial shutdown set for Friday.

Read it.

A district court ruled Monday that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission violated the First Amendment by attempting to force religious health care workers to provide gender-transition procedures.

In 2021, the Christian Employers Alliance filed a lawsuit against the EEOC over two mandates requiring religious employers to provide health insurance that covered gender transitions as well as forcing religious physicians to perform sex-change procedures or face charges of discrimination based on gender identity. The District Court of North Dakota ruled in favor of the Christian Employers Alliance, arguing that the rules would violate an employer’s or doctor’s religious beliefs.

Navy Matters.

One of the characteristics of WWII, which made the defeat of Germany and Japan a foregone conclusion, was the vast industrial capacity of the US and the ability to convert that capacity to wartime production needs. In contrast, today we lack the sheer foundation of industry and, for a host of reasons, the ability to convert what we do have to wartime needs and to scale up the capacity that we do have.

Why, you ask, can’t we scale up and convert the industry that we do have to wartime needs? As an illustrative example, recall that in WWII, auto manufacturers were able to convert from cars to tanks, aircraft, and other equipment. Ford Motor Company, for example, produced B-24 bombers and M-4 tanks, among other items. Conversion to wartime production was possible, in large part, due to the fact that civilian automobiles and military vehicles and aircraft used, basically, the same equipment. An M-4 tank wasn’t that different from an automobile. Bombers and tanks used radial engines which were, themselves, just automobile engines in a different shape than an in-line car engine. And so on.

Now, consider a modern Abrams tank or a B-2/B-21 bomber as compared to a typical automobile. There’s no comparison and little similarity! Turbine engines have little in common with car engines. Advanced armors have little in common with automobile sheet metal. Exotic materials like titanium, composites, etc. have little in common with sheet metal and run of the mill steel and aluminum. Forming, welding, and manipulating exotic materials requires exotic skills. Stealth coatings have nothing in common with automobile paint. Micron tolerances have nothing in common with automobile level tolerances. And so on.

Yes, given years of time to retrain workers, revamp factories, master advanced production techniques, and so forth, we could convert but we aren’t going to have years of time in a war. If we can’t convert quickly, we aren’t going to convert at all.

Read it.

The Biden administration has used secretive flights to transport migrants into the U.S., adding to the massive influx at the southern border, a Center for Immigration Studies’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit discovered.

The center’s Todd Bensman first reported that the FOIA suit discovered that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) approved secretive flights that last year alone transported 320,000 illegal immigrants from foreign countries into at least 43 different U.S. airports.

“This administration is both importing voters and creating a national security threat from unvetted illegal immigrants,” Elon Musk posted on X while sharing a DailyMail.com story about the secretive flights.

“It is highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11. Just a matter of time.”

Read it.

Think of it as evolution in action.

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When President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union speech on Thursday, the audience will include 17 relatives of Americans held captive or murdered by Hamas terrorists in Israel.

A list published Monday by the Families of the American Hostages in Gaza coalition named relatives of six hostages still held captive, two released captives and two hostages who were killed.

The family members will be guests on Thursday evening of a bipartisan slate of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Among the hosts are the speaker, Louisiana Republican Rep, Mike Johnson, and the minority leader, New York Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

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As military units increasingly depend on wireless communications in the combat zone, the Ukraine War is providing examples of how patterns of cell phone use can be mapped and provide targets for guided missile attacks. Military field headquarters have long known that they must restrict their use of wireless devices and, if possible, route communications via wire to a location hundreds of meters from the headquarters. From that remote location wireless transmissions can be made. If the enemy locates the wireless transmission site and attacks it with a missile, casualties and damage are minimized. It’s been known that field headquarters using wireless communications, including cell phones, makes the headquarters a missile magnet. The war in Ukraine confirmed that. The Russians were often the target of these missile magnet attacks because the Ukrainians were more careful with their use of cell phones in the field.

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After the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a state has no power to kick a presidential candidate off a ballot, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said he planned to “revive legislation” to prevent anyone guilty of participating in an “insurrection” from running for president.

Yeah, well, the problem they have is that Trump hasn’t even been formally accused of ‘participating in an insurrection’, much less found guilty of doing so. That dog won’t hunt.

Read it.

The federal government has used taxpayer dollars to fund services for LGBTQ refugees in Latin America over the past couple of years, federal grants show.

The State Department and the Inter-American Foundation, an independent federal agency, funded a trio of grants between August 2021 and October 2023 aimed at bolstering Costa Rica’s status as a haven for LGBTQ asylum-seekers, funding a project to help LGBTQ refugee entrepreneurs as well as teaching gay and transgender refugees how to use computers. The three programs collectively received almost $300,000 in federal funds.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers (CBP) at the San Ysidro Port of Entry made a massive bust over the weekend, discovering more than $11 million of blue fentanyl pills concealed in a car on Sunday.

At the San Ysidro POE around 8PM on Sunday night, a K-9 unit encountered a “37-year-old man driving a 2008 sedan applying for admission into the United States from Mexico,” a release from Customs and Border Patrol revealed over the weekend.

The K-9 unit alerted for drugs near the glove compartment and the vehicle was referred for further inspection, at which point “CBP officers extracted a total of 100 packages containing blue pills concealed within the vehicle’s dashboard and within the front passenger seats”.

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Illicit Iranian oil sales have hit $90 billion under the Biden administration, with the proceeds helping Tehran’s regional terror proxies fund an unprecedented wave of attacks on Israel, American forces, and Western shipping vessels.

Tehran’s sales to China, its top importer, have consistently crossed more than 1 million barrels per day during the past several months, a signal that the Biden administration continues its softline approach toward enforcing sanctions on the regime’s oil exports.

“Iran has managed to sell $90 billion worth of U.S.-sanctioned oil, setting new export records in the process,” according to the latest figures published by United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), a watchdog group that monitors Tehran’s illicit oil trade. “Ongoing hesitance to enforce oil sanctions on Iran has proven to be a defining characteristic of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy.”

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Violent crime is going down in Venezuela just as the United States has been hit with a rash of high-profile violent crimes by illegal immigrants.

It’s not hard to figure out why.

The killing of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student in Athens, Georgia, has become the latest and most prominent case of an American being killed as a consequence of President Joe Biden’s open-border policies.

The man being held in connection with the killing of Riley is Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal immigrant who reportedly entered the United States in 2022. Since his arrival in the U.S., he appears to have spent his time breaking various other laws and behaving like a general menace to society. He has been arrested for various serious crimes and repeatedly released.

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Remember when, in the immediate aftermath of the Ukraine war, Russian oil immediately traded down to a discount of as much as 30% below spot Brent as the entire western world suddenly found itself locked out of access to the most valuable Russian export (which also meant that China and India were the only natural buyers left) and the price of Russian oil had to reflect the explicit plunge in demand?

Well, that’s no longer the case because in the two years since the start of the Ukraine conflict, it became apparent that Western sanctions were merely a theatrical publicity stunt as the alternative – strict enforcement – would have sent oil prices soaring and that would be unacceptable to a Biden administration terrified of losing the November elections if and when oil and gasoline prices surges.

And as fear of enforcement became a non-issue over time, so did the discount of Russian oil to Brent, which brings us to today, and Goldman’s “chart of the week” which illustrates the collapse in the discount on Russian crude oil close to zero relative to Brent, according to the bank’s estimates using the most recent customs data for December.

Read it.

A recent study found that the majority of patients who suffered from long COVID during a time when vaccines and antiviral treatments were widely available were vaccinated.

Every day, in every way, I’m glad I never got vaccinated.

Read it.

It’s no surprise to readers of this site that metals are often worth more than fiat currency. Gold, silver, and other precious metals are known for their value. But sometimes fiat currency can’t even compete with zinc.

The US penny, which is primarily made of zinc, costs roughly three cents to produce and is only worth one cent according to the federal government. This is the opposite of what has happened historically. Generally, governments produce currency that is worth far more than the cost of producing it. Imagine printing a one hundred dollar bill which costs far less than a hundred dollars in materials and printing costs. The profit from this is called seigniorage. With pennies, the US government is practicing reverse seigniorage.

This loss of money from producing pennies is one of the arguments for abolishing the US penny. There are other arguments against the penny such as the claim that it’s worth so little compared to the typical American wage that it makes no sense to denominate prices in pennies, would anyone argue that the United States needs a coin worth half a penny?

Read it.

Dr. Clarice Saba, an otorhinolaryngologist in Brazil, developed sudden hearing loss in her right ear a week after receiving her first dose of the COVID-19 adenovirus vaccine.

“I did all the exams and could not find any other reason other than because of the shots,” she told The Epoch Times.

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The revelation that the U.S. intelligence community, under the Obama administration, sought the assistance of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Donald Trump’s associates before the 2016 election is a chilling reminder of the lengths to which the deep state will go to protect its interests and challenge its adversaries. (The Five Eyes countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.)

This bombshell, reported by a team of independent journalists, exposes a dark chapter in American political history, where foreign intelligence services were reportedly mobilized against a presidential candidate.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.

Billionaire Greg Flynn, who made his fortune running one of the world’s largest restaurant franchise operations, is getting a new boost from sourdough loaves and brioche buns.

That’s because a California law that’s about to raise the state minimum wage at fast-food spots to $20 an hour from $16 offers an unusual exemption for chains that bake bread and sell it as a standalone item.

Governor Gavin Newsom pushed for that break, according to people familiar with the matter. Among the main beneficiaries is Flynn, a longtime Newsom donor whose California holdings include two dozen Panera Bread locations.

The specificity of the exemption has puzzled observers for months, especially after the governor told reporters last year that it came about as “part of the sausage-making” of politics. In response to detailed questions, Newsom’s office said the wage law was the “result of countless hours of negotiations with dozens of stakeholders over two years” — and will make a real difference for hundreds of thousands of Californians.

Flynn, who has been involved in business dealings with Newsom in addition to contributing to the governor’s political campaigns, said in a brief conversation that he didn’t play a role in crafting the bread exemption. He didn’t respond to requests for comment about his connections to Newsom.

Democrats never pass a law that doesn’t have loopholes for their favored allies.

UPDATE: California Governor Under Fire for Bizarre Minimum Wage Carveout That Benefits Donor

ZMan does a deep dive.

The term “deep state” has been overused and abused to the point where it is meaningless, but the concept behind it remains useful. Conceptually, it simply means the permanent state, the individuals and institutions that lie behind the facade of our democratic processes and institutions. Politicians come and go but there is a permanent managerial elite that runs the important institutions. The C.I.A., for example, does not change after a presidential election brings in a new president.

Read it.

Moments ago, two things happened: Biden’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released the first revision of Q4 2023 GDP, a number which is completely irrelevant as it looks at the state of the US economy more than 2 months ago as the calendar is now just weeks away from the start of Q2 2024… and bitcoin soared above $60,000, now less than $10k away from a record high. While it may not be immediately obvious, the two are actually linked. Let us explain.

Read it.

The image shows two well dressed middle class white women looking furtive, with one hiding a stolen handbag inside her coat.

Respondents noted that the typical demographic of organized retail thieves in big cities doesn’t correlate with the chosen image.

Another image used by the FBI showed a white man stealing something from a supermarket.

God forbid that the Woke bureaucrats should admit the truth, that most organized retail crime is committed by Shoplifters of Color. (Surely they could blame it on The Patriarchy somehow?)

According to the FBI’s own arrest record crime statistics, 52.7 per cent of robberies are carried out by blacks or African-Americans, despite the fact they only make up about 13 per cent of the population.

Even with a significantly higher population, whites in America only account for 44.7 per cent of robberies.

The significant majority of these robberies will also have been carried out by men, making the choice of well dressed white women even more bizarre.

When has actual reality ever successfully intruded on government policy?

Read it.

The following are just a few of the Biden family scandal items from the last three months — leading up to the Hunter deposition — that have received no coverage on ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening or morning shows, nor their Sunday roundtable shows:

If, of course, you’re keeping score.

The American Mind.

If there is one uniquely American institution still held in high regard, even as general trust in American institutions has cratered, it is the elected office of sheriff. The office of sheriff has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon tradition and centuries of English common law, but the sheriff who keeps the peace with a steely gaze and a steady hand, not in the interest of some far-flung ruler in a distant capital but at the request of his neighbors, is surely a uniquely American icon.

When you talk with elected sheriffs—as I am frequently blessed to do at the annual Claremont Sheriffs Fellowship and when I provide briefings to various sheriff departments around the country—you hear repeatedly two main points that emphasize why American faith in this storied office is not misplaced.

Read it.

Joe Biden administration officials admitted that six weeks into the undeclared war in Yemen, the US and UK strikes have failed to erode the Houthis military capabilities. The officials said the US is surprised at the Houthis’ military capabilities and that Washington has a limited understanding of how advanced their weapons systems are.

Somehow I am not surprised that they are surprised.

Read it.

Since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, a significant number of vaccinated people have reported various adverse reactions.

Some adverse events are widely acknowledged, like blood clots and myocarditis. Others are less publicly discussed but are still present in the research literature.

The Epoch Times reviewed the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the United Kingdom’s Yellow Card Reporting system, South Africa’s VAERS database, and numerous peer-reviewed studies, selecting the top reported adverse events with literature support. Their severity determines the order of the events.

UPDATE: Study Finds Hearing And Balance Disorders Among COVID-19 Vaccinated

UPDATE: Study Finds Increasing Time Between COVID Vaccine Doses Reduces Risk Of Myocarditis, Yet Cardiologists Raise Concerns

Read it.

Jesalyn Harper, a City of Reedley code enforcement officer, had to determine whether to turn off the power to a secret Chinese biolab in California in order to prevent a fire that inspectors had said was a risk.

But with the power off, the freezers’ contents would thaw, with potentially dangerous consequences. The biolab was full of thousands of vials of possible infectious pathogens.

She called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for advice.

“It was a very short-lived and frustrating phone call that ended with them hanging up,” said Ms. Harper.

She left the power on.