Read it.

If you want to know why people are going to vote for Trump….

Washington Free Beacon.

The Biden administration hosted a lecture in Egypt on the virtues of “indigenous knowledge,” a pseudoscientific theory that posits Native Americans possess secret wisdom solely by virtue of their ethnicity, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The November 2022 lecture took place at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, and featured Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a Chadian activist. Ibrahim spoke about how alternative methods of knowing are often more accurate than data-driven science. To substantiate her point, Ibrahim claimed that her grandmother could predict when it is going to rain better than a weather app.

“I’m, like, I’m so sorry you went to the school for maybe for 20 years to get your Ph.D.s,” Ibrahim said. “My grandmother was born on those [sic] knowledge, she got it from her own grand-grand-grand-mother. It is hundreds and thousands of years of knowledge.”

Next up: “No kidding, astrology really really works!”

Read it.

A record-breaking number of illegal immigrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border last month, according to data released Friday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as the border crisis continues to rage with no end in sight.

NBC News.

Starting Feb. 5, Denver will start limiting the number of days migrants can stay in shelters and sending those who exceed their stay out onto the streets

NewsMax.

A majority of taxpayers feel they pay too much in taxes, with many saying that they receive a poor value in return, according to a new poll from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Two-thirds of U.S. taxpayers say they spend “too much” on federal income taxes, as tax season begins. About 7 in 10 say the same about local property taxes, while roughly 6 in 10 feel that way about state sales tax. Generally speaking, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to view taxes as unfair, to say they are paying too much in taxes, and to see taxes as a poor value.

The poll found that few U.S. adults have a high level of confidence that the institutions that ultimately use their tax dollars — whether the federal government or local school districts — spend those taxes in the best interest of “people like them.” But people tend to trust governing bodies closer to home with their tax dollars slightly more: 16% are extremely or very confident in their local school district, compared to 6% for the federal government.

Well, duh. “The only thing that saves us is that we don’t get all the government we pay for.”

The Foundry.

The House Homeland Security Committee on Sunday released two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“His lawless behavior was exactly what the Framers gave us the impeachment power to remedy,” Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., said of Mayorkas.

The two impeachment articles “lay out a clear, compelling and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment,” said Green, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee.

Read it.

The American military is receiving twelve of the new IFPC (Indirect Fire Protection Capability), a new anti-aircraft system starting production in 2024. These twelve systems will be armed with launchers for the ground based version of the air-to-air AIM-9X heat seeking missile, which has a range of 40 kilometers. The first twelve systems are for further testing and refining of the IFPC system.

IFPC is mobile and can detect and destroy cruise missiles, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), and projectiles fired from rocket, artillery, and mortar systems. The IFPC system consists of a launcher carrying interceptor missiles to protect stationary systems from low-altitude threats. Longer range and higher altitude threats from ballistic missiles are already covered with Patriot and the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system

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Ban gas stoves; Ban gas-powered generators; Ban books; Ban misinformation; Ban fake news; Ban gender affirming care; Ban parents from being notified of gender transitions; Ban abortions; Ban the banning of abortions; Ban gasoline powered cars and trucks; Ban the unvaccinated; Ban the unmasked; Ban DEI; Ban gas boilers; Ban coal; Ban nuclear; Ban high-capacity magazines; Ban guns; Ban incandescent lightbulbs…

Those bans are just to fix all of society’s important problems, but there are presumably less important things that need banning as well. What would really help is banning honors classes to produce equity, banning youth tackle football, and even banning sledding! In Canada!

The Foundry.

A number of federal statutes govern the National Guard, which is the modern equivalent of state militias and a reserve component of our military. Under 10 U.S.C. § 12301(a), the secretary of defense (and thus the president) is given the authority in “time of war or of national emergency declared by Congress, or when otherwise authorized by law” to order National Guard units to active duty.

But they cannot be called to active duty by the president “without the consent of the governor of the State.” If the governor consents, the unit called into federal service under Title 10 reports to the president as the commander in chief while in federal service.

State governors, however, like Abbott, remain the commanders in chief of their state National Guard units, such as the Texas National Guard, unless they have consented to the president’s call for those units to be in active federal service.

The only exception to the consent requirement is contained in subsection (f) and it only applies if National Guard units are needed for active duty for overseas service—such as when we were in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Read it.

Gee, just like the Good Old Days….

Read it.

It’s helpful to think of a COVID experience as a never-ending house of horrors, with room after room of scandal and outrage, so much so that you never quite get through it. There simply are not enough researchers or column inches to cover it all.

In the past, any one of these outrages would be enough to call forth enormous public debate. Introduce them all at once—starting March 2020—and gradually unfold and codify them over a few years and many features slip through the cracks.

Consider, for example, the continued requirement that any legally immigrating person coming to the United States from another country and seeking residency is absolutely required to get the COVID-19 vaccine, a shot widely admitted not to protect against infection or spread and is associated with injury on a scale without pharmaceutical precedent.

Read it.

gents raided U.S. Private Vaults, a business that allowed people to rent safe deposit boxes anonymously, based on the belief that criminals were using the service. The search warrant stated that agents could only open the boxes to inventory their contents and identify the owners for the return of their property.

However, agents brought drug-sniffing dogs and planned to set aside cash worth more than $5,000, with the intent to seize the money.

Read it.

In 2007, science writer and editor Sally Adee attended a technology conference for DARPA—The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—when she learned about a brain surface electrical stimulation method that allegedly cut in half the time it takes a person to go from novice to expert in sharpshooting. Known as trans cranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), the brain stimulation technique was also presented as a way to potentially speed up language learning and mathematical aptitude.

Adee was struck by the idea of surface brain stimulation and for several years worked on convincing the Department of Defense agency to grant her permission to try it out for herself. In 2011, she flew from London to California to participate in an army training simulation. With a device on her head delivering electrical currents, Adee went from a frustrated shooter to a skilled sniper.

And have you heard anything about this in the intervening sixteen years? I’d guess not….

Read it.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, “urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression,” according to a letter from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in his capacity as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

FinCEN is a branch of the Treasury Department tasked “to ferret out money laundering, illegal activities,” Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., said in an appearance on Family Research Center’s “Washington Watch.”

“But there’s a way to do that,” the Missouri Republican added. “It’s called a search warrant.”

Read it.

Read it.

The mother of a 20-year-old autistic woman who was raped and murdered by an illegal immigrant MS-13 gang member in 2022 is suing the federal government for playing “Russian roulette with our lives.”

Kayla Hamilton was raped and strangled to death by the 17-year-old El Salvadorian, who she was living with in a trailer which the suspect, according to Aberdeen, Maryland police. Authorities arrested him in January 2023 based on DNA evidence from the crime scene. He was charged with first-degree murder, as well as rape and robbery, and is currently being held without bail ahead of his June 28 trial.

I’m curious as to the basis for this suit — ordinarily one cannot sue the government unless there is a specific statute that allows it.

Read it.

The explosive allegations that could possibly sink Fulton County’s RICO case against Donald Trump, et al. – that she is having an ongoing affair with Nathan Wade, the Special Prosecutor she appointed to persecute Trump – have now been corroborated.

On January 8, attorneys for defendant Michael Roman (who faces various charges for challenging the 2020 election) filed this motion, alleging (in part) that Willis and Wade must be disqualified from the case due to ethical violations and prosecutorial abuses due to their affair.

Read it.

The US Navy, like most other navies, is suffering from a shortage of new personnel, causing a problem with providing ships with enough sailors. It is increasingly common for warships to be stuck in port because there is no crew available. This is an international problem; more navies are finding that without conscription it’s difficult to obtain enough men willing to spend weeks or months at sea. After the Cold War ended in 1991, a growing number of nations dropped conscription. Serving on warships became a less acceptable activity for young men. Even fewer women were willing to serve on a ship.

Power Line.

Salvadoran national Jose Guadalupe Menjivar-Alas, a four-time deportee, was recently taken into custody in Colorado “after a mother and her son died in a drunken driving collision.” In 2022, a non-citizen and alleged MS-13 gang member was charged with the murder of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton.

In late December 2018, false-documented illegal Gustavo Perez Arriaga, also known as Paulo Virgen Mendoza, murdered Newman, California, police officer Ronil “Ron” Singh, a legal immigrant from Fiji who came to the United States to work in law enforcement. A group of seven illegals aided the murderer’s flight.

In 2015, Mexican national Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, a repeat felon deported five times, gunned down Kate Steinle on Pier 14 in San Francisco. In 2014 in Sacramento, previously deported Mexican Luis Bracamontes killed police officers Danny Oliver and Michael Davis, proclaiming in court that he wanted to “kill more cops soon.” These horrible cases all fall short of the worst.

Read it.

I don’t know if it has a legal bearing on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s mammoth prosecution of President Trump and others, but the lady seems to have had a romantic relationship with the attorney whom she appointed a special prosecutor to lead the prosecution,. His name is Nathan Wade and it is alleged that Willis’s relationship with him compromised the fairness of the prosecution. Among the items collected in The Week, National Review editors summarize the pertinent facts.

Read it.

The military recruitment crisis that has crippled our defense capabilities has been talked to death by generals, politicians and pundits who have blamed everything from rising minimum wages to obesity to Gen Z culture for the problem. They have raised enlistment bonuses to unprecedented levels, spent fortunes on ad campaigns that feature lesbian weddings and doubled down on DEI as the answer to the crisis. And yet the crisis has grown worse.

That’s because recruitment was a self-inflicted problem caused by a woke racist military.

Between 2018 and 2023, white Army recruits, once the mainstay, fell from a bare majority of 56% to a minority at 44%.

This was not an unintended effect, but policy.

Read it.

Former White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted in a congressional deposition last week that the federal government’s COVID guidance for six-feet social distancing was not based on scientific evidence, stating under oath “it sort of just appeared.” Fauci’s testimony came during the second day of his closed-door deposition before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and echoed a similar comment made by former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb.

“The six feet rule was arbitrary in and of itself,” Dr. Gottlieb said during a September 2021 appearance on “Face the Nation” while discussing COVID guidance. “Nobody knows where it came from. The six feet is a perfect example of sort of the lack of rigor of how CDC made recommendations.”

Read it.

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry lashed out at a reporter who asked him about his “carbon footprint” at the World Economic Forum’s Davos conference on Tuesday.

Read it.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed an order requiring Texas to move a floating barrier on the Rio Grande that drew backlash from Mexico – the latest development in legal battles between the Biden administration and Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Read it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) prepared to alert state and local officials to an emerging connection between heart inflammation and COVID-19 vaccines, but ultimately did not send the alert, according to a new document obtained by The Epoch Times.

Read it.

“Courtesy cards,” are cards given out by the NYC police union (and presumably elsewhere) to friends and family who use them to get easy treatment if they are pulled over by a cop. I was stunned when I first wrote about these cards in 2018. I thought this was common only in tinpot dictatorships and flailing states. The cards even come in levels, gold, silver and bronze!

Democrats didn’t invent modern political corruption, but they are certainly perfecting it.

Read it.

The commanding officer of the USS Georgia sub’s blue crew — Capt. Geoffry Patterson — was relieved by Rear Adm. Thomas Buchanan, the commander of Submarine Group 10, “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command,” the Navy said.

Patterson appears to be the first Navy commander to be removed from command this year.

Suggesting that we can look forward to others?

The USS Georgia is homeported at King’s Bay, Georgia. According to data from the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, where King’s Bay is located, Patterson was arrested in the early hours of Jan. 9 on charges including driving under the influence and improper lane change.

Read it.

The US military spends about $10 billion on small-arms ammunition annually. The most common caliber ammunition used by the US military is the 5.56x45mm NATO Standard round. On average, an American soldier carries around 210 rounds of ammunition for their primary weapon, which is usually an M-16 or M-4 automatic rifle. U.S. military depots store an estimated 15 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition. The Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky is the largest US military ammunition storage facility.

Small arms ammunition typically remains in storage for up to 20 years. The US military uses a variety of small-arms ammunition in combat, including 5.56mm, 7.62mm, and .50 caliber rounds. The US military replenishes its ammunition stockpiles on a regular basis, based on usage and demand. New military ammunition undergoes extensive testing and evaluation to ensure reliability, accuracy, and performance.

Read it.

When Congress voted to spend hundreds of billions to switch electricity production to solar and wind, it forgot something: transmission lines. New ones will be needed going to the locations of the new power sources, but nobody bothered to figure out who will pay for it or how much it will cost.

When has Congress ever cared “how much it will cost”?

Congressmen Sean Casten (D-IL) and Mike Levin (D-CA) introduced a bill last month to fix their omission, largely at your expense. The bill has already picked up 76 co-sponsors, including eight from Illinois.

Read it.

Eight months after anonymously blowing the whistle on Texas Children’s Hospital’s transgender program, a surgeon has gone public with a tale of relentless persecution by the Biden administration.

Dr. Eithan Haim would have preferred to remain anonymous, but he said the Biden administration’s “blatant attempt at political intimidation” forced him to go public, after a federal criminal investigation buried him and his wife in $250,000 of legal fees without ever filing charges.

“We spent the entirety of our retirement, investments, savings, and almost all of our disposable income to pay the legal bills to keep the case alive,” Haim explained. “Although we have given this case all we have, there simply isn’t enough to keep up with the hundreds of thousands we currently owe in legal bills or the potential million[s] it would cost to fight this case through trial.”

Read it.

Americans were stunned on Sunday afternoon after Fox News reported the Federal Aviation Administration, overseen by Mayor Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Transporation Department, rolled out a new “Diversity and Inclusion” program to hire people with “severe intellectual disability” and “psychiatric disability” (among various other disabilities), just days after the latest mid-air near-disaster involving a Boeing 737 Max heightened the public’s attention to the potentially deadly impact of woke Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies in the skies.

I will not set foot on board an airplane until sanity returns.

Not holding my breath….

Read it.

For those who are not doctors, which happens to be most of us, we depend on those few who have dedicated years of their lives to the scientific and medical fields to help inform us so we can make good decisions about our own health. Heading into the pandemic, a public largely jaded toward media and the government still placed high trust in their doctors. That trust has largely been betrayed during the Covid-19 pandemic years. CDC and FDA consultant Dr. Paul Offit’s response to concerns that the mRNA Covid shots may not be safe is an example of that betrayal.

Read it.

Pro-Hamas protesters sought to rip down a reinforced fence outside the White House Saturday night. The assault on the White House constituted the culmination of their march. It looks something like what Democrats call an “insurrection” (video below).

…

For some reason: “No arrests were made.” Perhaps the authorities were busy defending the ramparts. Perhaps President Biden admires the “passion” of the protesters, or the “passion” of the “protesters.”

Read it.

A news article in the Wall Street Journal explains the stakes in the 2024 elections in terms of federal taxes over a decade: The Republicans want to extend $4 trillion in tax cuts, while Democrats want to impose $2 trillion in tax increases.

Read it.

It’s widely accepted that “migrants” are a net financial drain on any Western nation that decides to import them en masse. The following article reports on the research conducted by a German economist in an effort to quantify the amount of money lost due to all the cultural enrichment.

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

During a television appearance last night, I was asked why the Biden administration pursues an open border policy that has had catastrophic consequences and is deeply unpopular with voters. It is a good question. I agreed with the host that liberals think they are importing a lot of future Democrats. I also think some Democrats perceive that mass illegal immigration dramatically increases the demand for social services, most of which are provided by Democrats. Still, I am not sure how persuasive those explanations are.

The New York Times understands its fellow Democrats better than I do, so yesterday’s “The Morning” email likely provides a clue–in a word, Trump made them do it.

Read it.

Democrat Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is pleading with Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott not to send busloads of migrants to Chicago while the Midwest is being hit by a powerful winter storm.

Chicago is among the many Democrat-run cities that have declared themselves sanctuaries for illegal immigrants, and Abbott has sent thousands to Chicago and other sanctuary cities by bus and airplane to relieve the strain on his state caused by immigration at the U.S. southern border.

Read it.

Brooklyn’s PS 261 school said it took down the colorful map titled, “Arab World,” in which the area that sits between Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria—where the Jewish state, as well as Gaza and the West Bank, lies—is labeled “Palestine,” after the Free Press on Thursday reported its display in a classroom there.

Qatar Foundation International, owned by the Qatari government, in April posted a picture of the map on X, then known as Twitter. The map was displayed in an “Arab Culture Arts” classroom in the school where children from pre-K to fifth grade learn as part of a program that the organization funds, the now-deleted post said.

The Free Press asked the city’s Department of Education whether the map remained up in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. Spokesman Nathaniel Styer responded by asking, “Why would it not be?” and added that it was a “map of countries that speak Arabic.” After the outlet published the story, however, Styer gave an update on the map’s status.

Read it.

More than a year since its creation, a U.S.-backed fund to support the Afghan people has not made a single disbursement and lacks safeguards to prevent the $3.5 billion investment from being stolen by the Taliban government, according to a government watchdog.

The Afghan Fund was created more than a year ago by a Biden administration order that allowed more than $3.5 billion in funds previously held by Afghanistan’s central bank to be moved into a charitable account tasked with aiding the war-torn country’s ailing population.

Since that time, “the Fund has made no disbursements for activities intended to benefit the Afghan people” and currently has no “specific controls in place to ensure funds are not diverted to or misused by the Taliban,” according to a report published earlier this week by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which monitors American aid to the country.

Read it.

Because he can?

If he were a Republican, his ass would be rotting in jail even as we speak.

Read it.

The Texas National Guard this week erected new barriers along part of the state’s border with Mexico blocking access for U.S. Border Patrol agents, the federal government said in a Friday court filing.

The move by Texas comes amid an escalating conflict between the Republican state government and the Democrat administration of President Joe Biden over migration.

Lawyers for the Biden administration told the U.S. Supreme Court in their filing that Texas’ “activities have changed the situation along the relevant stretch of the Rio Grande.” They added that the additional barriers in and around Eagle Pass, Texas “further restricts Border Patrol’s ability to reach the river in particular areas.”

More to the point, it restricts the illegal immigrants’ ability to reach Texas in particular areas, which the Border Patrol seems unwilling to do.

Read it.

How dare he act like an American President!

Read it.

In its latest assertion of sovereignty and responsibility for securing its border with Mexico, the once and future Republic of Texas has seized control of a 47-acre park in the city of Eagle Pass, which has been a major avenue of illegal immigration. What’s more, the Texans are barring US Border Patrol agents and watercraft from the property, which they’ve used as a staging area for processing migrants.

Read it.

People reacted to the news that the U.S. Army is struggling to recruit white soldiers by asking why they would want to serve a regime that hates them.

Good point. In fact, any white male who works for a corporation with an HR department might just as well quit now, because there is no chance that you will ever get promoted.

“A total of 44,042 new Army recruits were categorized by the service as white in 2018, but that number has fallen consistently each year to a low of 25,070 in 2023, with a 6% dip from 2022 to 2023 being the most significant drop. No other demographic group has seen such a precipitous decline, though there have been ups and downs from year to year,” reports the website.

In 2023, the Army missed its recruiting goal of 65,000 soldiers by a shortfall of 10,000, with just 44% of new recruits categorized as white in 2023 compared to 56.4% in 2018.

Bloomberg.

An oil tanker previously seized by the US for carrying illicit Iranian oil, was boarded by people in military-style uniforms off the coast of Oman.

Four to five people wearing black masks went aboard the ship, the UK Maritime Trade Operations said. The tanker — identified as St Nikolas by the Associated Press — was heading toward Iran after it was boarded, maritime risk-management company Ambrey Analytics said. It didn’t name the vessel.

UPDATE: Iran Hijacks Oil Tanker In Gulf Of Oman

Read it.

The Biden administration’s refusal to redesignate Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a terrorist organization is causing tension with U.S. military leaders in the region as they struggle to counter a rise in attacks by the Iran-backed militant group.

Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, leader of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), which is tasked with responding to Houthi attacks on American assets in the Middle East, told lawmakers in a private meeting that it is harder to combat the Iran-backed terror group since the Biden administration stripped its designation as a foreign terrorist organization. That problem became clear during a congressional delegation trip to the region.

“I did ask specifically about the Houthi attacks and their designation,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa), who led the bipartisan congressional delegation to the region, told the Washington Free Beacon. “When I spoke to the NAVCENT commander he did indicate it would be helpful to have them listed on the foreign terrorist organization list. So I think that has been a little bit of contention.”

New York Post.

Students at a Brooklyn high school were kicked out of the classroom to make room for nearly 2,000 migrants who were evacuated from a controversial tent shelter due to a monster storm closing in on the Big Apple.

The city made the move amid concerns that a massive migrant tent at Floyd Bennett Field would collapse from torrential rains and gusting winds — packing them instead into the second-floor gym at James Madison High School five miles away.

The school’s neighbors were not keen on the last-minute decision.

“This is f—ed up,” said a local resident who identified himself only as Rob. “It’s a litmus test. They are using a storm, a legitimate situation, where they are testing this out. I guarantee you they’ll be here for the entire summer.

Well, you voted for these clowns….

The problem with government schools is that they belong to the government, and the government can use the schools for whatever they choose. If they choose to use it to store homeless people or drug users or illegal immigrants, the actual students and their parents need not be consulted.

Read it.

Was special counsel Jack Smith illegally appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland and is his prosecution of former President Donald Trump unlawful?

That is the intriguing issue raised in an amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court by Schaerr Jaffe LLP on behalf of former Attorney General Ed Meese and two law professors, Steven Calabresi and Gary Lawson, in the case of U.S. v. Trump.

I knew Stevfe Calabresi when we were undergrads at Yale. He’s a sharp guy. His uncle, Guido Calabresi, was Dean of the Yale Law School and a Federal Appellate Court Judge.

Read it.

Following a private meeting between Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Border Patrol agents in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Monday, sources in the room told Fox News’ Bill Melugin that “Mayorkas admitted that the current release rate for migrants caught crossing the border illegally is ‘above 85%.’”

Refusing to do his job sure sounds to me like an impeachable offense.