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“…Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine produced virtually no antibody protection against the omicron coronavirus variant in a laboratory experiment, underlining the new strain’s ability to get around one pillar of the body’s defenses. The vaccine appears to provide some defense against omicron, perhaps via other means such as stimulation of immune cells, according to Penny Moore, a South African virologist…”
Alan M. Dershowitz:
“…The Constitution provides no clear answer to whether a former president can claim executive privilege over communications that occurred while he was president. Both policy and analogy to other privileges would suggest an affirmative answer. A former spouse, a lawyer’s former client, and a penitent’s former priest can claim privilege — and so could a former member of Congress and a former judge. The relevant issue is whether the communication was privileged at the time it was made. If so, it should be an enduring privilege that encourages confidential communications during their incumbency.
The lawyer for the January 6th Congressional Committee, Douglas Letter, however, has argued that former President Donald J. Trump can no longer claim executive privilege, including over communications with his former chief of staff when they were both in office. According to The New York Times, this is what he said: “The Constitution does draw a clear line between a president and an ex-president. An ex-president is somebody who rejoins the great unwashed” — by which he apparently means you and me, who never had any executive privilege.
Where in the Constitution he or the committee find the “clear line” that supports his cramped interpretation of privilege is unclear. The issue is an open one that will likely be decided by the Supreme Court. I doubt that justices who are now retired or intend someday to retire — and join the “unwashed” — would be thrilled if Congress were to subpoena their former law clerks to disclose their confidential discussions about decisions they wrote while they were still among the washed.
In the absence of a definitive judicial decision to the contrary, former chief of staff Mark Meadows would seem to be required to accept former President Trump’s claim of executive privilege. Were he now to divulge communications that the courts ultimately held were privileged, the damage would be irremediable. The cat could not be returned to the constitutional bag. On the other hand, if he does not now disclose and the courts ruled that he must, the only harm would be some delay. The balance of harms clearly favors non-disclosure at this time.
That is precisely why it is so outrageous for the committee now to be seeking the criminal indictment of Meadows for refusing to disclose material that may well be constitutionally privileged. They should seek to have the courts rule first on the constitutional issue, and if Meadows then refuses to comply with a judicial order, they can seek criminal penalties. This chronology is especially required because Meadows has said that he would comply with court orders.
Seeking a court order first is also required by the constitutionally mandated separation of powers. Congress cannot simply compel the executive to bow to its will when there is a conflict between the two elected branches, the third branch — the judiciary — decide who is correct under the constitution.
Finally, criminal indictments should never be used to determine what the law is. It should only be used against individuals who know that they are violating existing law that is already clear.
The Justice Department should therefore refuse any congressional demand to indict Meadows. If the Justice Department improperly secures an indictment from a grand jury — which they can easily do because, as one judge put it, grand juries would “indict a ham sandwich” if asked to do so — the courts should immediately dismiss it and demand that the Justice Department first get a judicial ruling on the constitutional issue.
The precedent that would be established by allowing an indictment of a former chief of staff to the president for the “crime” of seeking a judicial ruling before irretrievably disclosing information that may well be constitutionally privileged would do great harm to our constitutional structure. Its victims would not only be the president and its former incumbent, but all of us “unwashed” who depend on the courts to guarantee our constitutional rights…”
Florida will not tolerate Cultural Marxism. Critical Race Theory is prohibited by @GovRonDeSantis.
We stand with our Governor!
CC: @ChristinaPushaw pic.twitter.com/MBpmTxj5q0
— Michael Mella 🐊 (@pico87mn) December 15, 2021
I reject this nonsense totally. I reject the Salvation Army and will no longer support the organization.
We live in the age of woke stupidity.
If you fall for this climate nonsense it’s on you. This is a cult.
“The struggle is about who gets to COUNT the vote”
Related:
McConnell is as old as dirt. For that reason alone I am inclined to agree that he should be replaced. On the other hand, he is a wise and crafty old hand and I would rather see Trump Republicans work with the old guy. The differences are very small and mostly relate to McConnell’s turn against Trump after the election. He made a mistake. He recognizes Trump still is the most powerful politician in the United States. You can work with him.
Our schools, our teachers, our politicians have failed miserably on education. They have let our children down. This is stupidity.
We live in the age of stupid.
https://youtu.be/HUX9LqA3bGY
Related:
https://youtu.be/JkGzAwRyaUU
“…And getting vaccinated if you have natural immunity appears basically useless.
mRNA vaccine protection from Covid is far weaker than natural immunity and declines very fast, according to a new study of almost 6 million people in Israel.
During the summer Covid wave, more than 140,000 Israelis who had been vaccinated but not received a booster shot became infected with Covid. Put another way, in just two months, about 1 out of every 20 vaccinated Israelis became infected with Sars-Cov-2.
Natural immunity – the protection following infection and recovery – lasts much longer, the study shows.
In fact, people who had already had Covid once had better protection from the virus more than a year later than people who had been vaccinated only three months before.
The gap was even larger in cases of severe infection.
Vaccinated people were more than five times as likely to develop severe infections than people with natural immunity. Only 25 out of roughly 300,000 Israelis with natural immunity developed severe Covid infections in the summer wave – compared to almost 1,400 vaccinated Israelis.
The difference did not result from gaps in age between vaccinated and recovered people. People over 60 benefitted even more from natural immunity relative to vaccination than did younger people.
The study also showed that giving people who had natural immunity a vaccine dose did little to lower rates of infection for them, raising the question of why they should ever be vaccinated.
Finally, the study offered a disturbing signal that vaccination may ultimately interfere with the development of lasting immunity in people who are infected after being vaccinated.
A booster shot did lower the risk of infection about to the level of peak protection from natural immunity – but because the study ended in September, it is impossible to know how long that protection may last.
All these findings come out of a database of Covid infections among almost 6 million Israelis in August and September, at the peak of the fourth Covid wave in Israel. The database contains information on essentially every Israeli over age 16 who was fully vaccinated or had previously had a Covid infection…”
The paper, “Protection and waning of natural and hybrid COVID-19 immunity,” is currently available as a preprint at:
“Protection and waning of natural and hybrid COVID-19 immunity,”
“…In a letter to the Department of Justice last year, an anonymous Democrat whistleblower accused fellow Democrats in Pima County, Arizona of adding approximately 35,000 votes to each of the Democrat candidates in the 2020 election.
This information came out Monday, during an “ad hoc” hearing in Tucson, where Arizona State House and Senate members met to discuss election integrity issues in Pima County.
During the hearing, experts provided evidence and testimony about the voting irregularities that allegedly took place during the election, including ballots from people not living where they voted, and inflated voter rolls across the Democrat-leaning county.
Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, who has received Trump’s endorsement for Arizona Secretary of State in 2022, read the letter. It was dated November 10, 2020, and addressed to the Criminal Division of the DOJ.
Please be advised the Pima County Recorder, located at 240 N. Stone Avenue in Tucson, Arizona, 85701 in Pima County, Arizona, and the Democrat Party added fraud votes. In the initial count of the vote by mail (VBM) totals released at 8 pm on November 3, 2020, There are approximately 35,000 fraud votes added to each Democrat candidates’ vote totals. Candidates impacted include County, State, and Federal Election candidates. Through the utilization of the automated ballot count machines in Pima County Elections, My understanding is that 35,000 was embedded into each Democrat candidates’ total votes. Below are the meeting notes.
In a meeting I was invited to by the Democrat party in Pima County, Arizona on September 10, 2020, no phones or recording devices were allowed. A presentation was given including detailed plans to embed 35,000 votes in a spread configured distribution to each Democrat candidate’s vote totals.
When I asked, “How in the world would 35,000 votes be kept hidden, or from being discovered?” It was stated that spread distribution will be embedded across the total registered vote range and will not exceed the registered voter count. And the 35,000 was determined allowable for Pima County based on our county registered voter count.
It was also stated total voter turnout versus total registered voters determined how many votes we can embed. The embedding will also adjust based on voter turnout. Because the embedded votes are distributed sporadically, all embedded votes will not be found if audited because embeds are in groups of approximately 1,000. This is so the County Recorder can declare an oversight issue or error, as a group of 1,000 is a normal and acceptable error.
Maricopa County’s embed totals will be substantially larger than Pima, due to embeds being calculated based on the total number of registered voters. When I asked, “Has this ever been tested, and how do we know it works?” the response was, yes, this has been tested and has shown significant success in Arizona judicial retention elections, since 2014. Even undetectable in post audits because no candidate will spend the kind of funds needed to audit and contact voters to verify votes and the full potential of the total registered voters, which is more than 500,000 registered voters. This year our Secretary of State has removed precinct level detail from election night releases, so candidates can’t see precinct over-votes.
This is what I have from this meeting. Just thought I’d report this. Not sure if you can do anything since I was unable to have a recording device at this meeting. Thank You.’
The whistleblower reportedly said he/she wished to remain anonymous and not be included any investigation.
Finchem said lawmakers were copied on the email, and over the ensuing months, they executed a “very quiet, but fruitful investigation.”
He also said that his team was able to verify that the IP address of the computer that sent the email is in Tucson, Arizona, but unfortunately, they wee not able to verify the identity of the whistleblower. Joe Biden’s DOJ reportedly refuses to investigate the allegations.
During the hearing, election experts described other potential election shenanigans in Pima County.
For instance, in the small town of Sells, Arizona, 1,375 residents were determined to be of “voting age.” However, 2,762 people were registered to vote in the town – more than double the voting age population…”
“…A Virginia court on Monday found a hospital in the state in contempt of court for failing to comply with previous orders to provide prescribed Ivermectin to a COVID-19 patient.
The court ruled that if the Fauquier Health hospital, in Warrenton, failed to provide the dose by 9 p.m. on Monday the state would be allowed to fine the hospital $10,000 a day.
The hospital reportedly agreed Monday to comply with the order after a week of back-and-forth with the court. But it was unclear as of Tuesday morning whether the patient received the prescription, over which its effectiveness in treating virus symptoms health care providers disagree.
The patient, Kathy Davies, was admitted to the hospital with COVID in October and placed on a ventilator in the ICU on Nov. 3. Her husband, Donald Davies, and the couples’ children, have been fighting to get for weeks to the patient a dose of Ivermectin.
Hospital doctors have adamantly refused to comply with the wishes of the family, prompting the Davies to hire a legal team earlier this month.
According to a Daily Wire report, the court initially ruled that the patient had the right to try Ivermectin and any other drug prescribed by her doctor.
However, on Dec. 7, when one of Kathy’s sons and a registered nurse arrived to administer the drug – which had been prescribed by Dr. Martha Maturi – the “hospital administration barred [him and the nurse] from entering the ICU with the Ivermectin,” reads a court document.
Following several rounds of back-and-forth between the hospital and Maturi over the matter of admitting Maturi to the hospital to care for her patient, the Davies returned to court to claim that the hospital had behaved unreasonably in its effort to provide the patient with care and should therefore be held in contempt of court.
Judge James. P. Fisher, of the 20th Judicial Court of Virginia, agreed with the arguments presented by the Davies family attorney and ruled to hold the hospital in contempt of court and compel the $10,000 a day fines, which could be applied retroactively beginning Dec. 9. The hospital, at this point, complied and allowed the Ivermectin to be administered to the long-suffering patient…”
“…The shopping center has also heightened its security presence with additional personnel including off-duty police officers — but the fencing is a more novel addition to the options operators can choose from to protect their stores, experts say.
“The coil wire is a reasonably new technology in retail crime prevention,” said Mike Lamb, an expert in retail security and former vice president of asset protection and safety at Walmart (WMT), Home Depot and Kroger. “It looks like it’s designed to not cause injury, but [it] can tangle a person in it and slow down someone who is trying to get away quickly.”
The wire fencing in place didn’t fully deter a robbery at The Grove on November 22, when a group of 18 to 20 looters used sledgehammers and an electric bicycle to smash into the complex’s Nordstrom (JWN) store after hours. They managed to steal at least $5,000 of merchandise and cause $15,000 in damage, though police later recovered merchandise and arrested three people in connection with the burglary.
But a spokesperson for The Grove noted the fencing did help prevent the assailants from getting onto the shopping complex’s property by blocking the entrance to it: The Nordstrom store entrance that was damaged faced a public street and so that area was not protected by the barrier.
Additionally, all stores at The Grove have a special ballistic film coating exterior- and interior-facing windows, which helps fortify the glass in the event of a smash-and-grab type of crime. That film did make it more difficult for the Nordstrom assailants to break through the glass, giving law enforcement more time to respond.
Retailers all over the nation have been shaken by the spate of robberies…”
If the elite class as represented by politicians, journalists, and media personalities are a representative cross section, the answer is yes, yes they are.
Karma may visit Mr. Frum.
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1470376382211534857
“…It has been a critical couple of weeks for the nation in the US Supreme Court. Last week, the Supreme Court heard the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That case involves a Mississippi law that is a direct, head-on challenge to the pro-abort Roe legal regime. In that argument, it appeared there were five solid and six probable votes to strike down both Roe and Casey (read Justice Thomas Tears Into Pro-Abortion Lawyers With Hard Opening Questions for more color commentary). This week, the Supreme Court turned back a challenge to Texas’s heartbeat law; see Supreme Court Humiliates Biden, Refuses to Stop Texas Heartbeat Law, and Gorsuch and the Wise Latina Have a Public Spat. All in all, it looks as though abortion may cease to be a federal issue.
Perhaps just as critical to the nation’s future was Carson v. Makin. That case addressed whether a state can subsidize private school tuition and expressly forbid religious schools to participate in the program. You can read my take at this post: Supreme Court Seems Ready to Nuke Maine’s Law Discriminating Against Religious Schools.
While there was general wailing about the bum’s rush given the noble and Holy status of abortion, some of the most hyperbolic rhetoric was directed at the Maine school-choice case. This is how the always entertaining Ian Milhiser of Vox.com sees school choice. Headline: The Supreme Court appears really eager to force taxpayers to fund religious education. Subhead: Carson v. Makin appears likely to end in another transformative victory for the religious right…”
