RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
March 31 to April 6, 2024 In RealClearInvestigations, Julie Kelly examines Judge Aileen Cannon as an illustration of how today's extreme partisanship, and diametrically opposite takes on reality, are increasingly echoed in the rule of law. When the Florida-based U.S. District Judge was assigned the sprawling case against Donald Trump for mishandling classified material, Cannon not only found herself in the spotlight – but also the crosshairs: -
She has issued a series of decisions unfavorable to the Department of Justice. But contrary to what her critics claim, the 43-year-old Trump appointee has also ruled against Trump and co-defendants. -
Nevertheless, demands for her removal thunder on the left. As Trump critic George Conway put it, “she should not be sitting on the federal bench at all. This is utterly nuts.” -
Such demands are echoed on the other side of the political spectrum, by Trump partisans. They argue that Judge Tanya S. Chutkan should recuse herself from the Jan. 6 case against the ex-president for repeatedly expressing anti-Trump bias. -
Those prosecuting Trump have been reluctant to admit the apparent double standard in Special Counsel Robert Hur’s declining to bring similar classified-documents charges against President Biden. -
Cannon is considering the defense’s motion to dismiss the case as a selective and vindictive prosecution – one that might yield explosive revelations about how top federal agencies again conspired to take down Trump. -
Trump’s critics seem especially concerned that Cannon -- unlike Chutkan, who has rushed proceedings in Washington -- might delay the trial past the fall election. -
Like Chutkan, Cannon faces threats to her safety. The Colombian-born jurist, whose mother fled Communist Cuba, seems unfazed.
Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Students Teach Teachers About Racism, RCI
Feds Pay Dead People $1.3 Billion, RCI
How Much Aid to Taliban? Who Knows?, RCI
3-Ring Circus Entrance for St. Louis Zoo, RCI
Many Cities In Debt and Lying About It, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway Feds Black Out Emails on Plan to Surveil Truckers, Just the News
Top Conservatives Sign 'United We Win' Pledge, Just The News
DOJ Seeks Prison Time for Ashley Biden's Diary Thief, New York Post
MAGA Troll’s Memes Were False, But Were They a Crime?, Intercept
Inside the Terrifyingly Competent Trump 2024 Campaign, Vanity Fair
1 Million Simulations, 1 Verdict: U.S. Debt Danger Ahead, Bloomberg Other Noteworthy Articles and Series About seven years ago, personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba began reporting strange and serious health problems that appeared to involve sound waves and became known as Havana Syndrome. A yearlong investigation by The Insider, "60 Minutes" and Der Spiegel makes the case that assassination and sabotage squads linked to Russian intelligence, GRU Unit 2915, used cutting-edge weapons to perpetrate the attacks in Cuba and around the world: Among this investigation’s core findings is the fact that senior members of the unit received awards and political promotions for work related to the development of “non-lethal acoustic weapons,” a term used in Russian military-scientific literature to describe both sound- and radiofrequency-based directed energy devices, as both would result in acoustic artifacts in the victim’s brain. These and other operatives attached to Unit 29155, traveling undercover, have been geolocated to places around the world just before or at the time of reported anomalous health incidents – or AHIs, as the U.S. government formally refers to Havana Syndrome. Furthermore, Joy is not the only victim to identify a known member of this Russian black ops squad lurking around her home. Contrary to the information that has been made public about Havana Syndrome – that it began in the eponymous Cuban capital in 2016 – this article reports that there were likely attacks two years earlier in Frankfurt, Germany, when a U.S. government employee stationed at the consulate there was knocked unconscious by something akin to a strong energy beam. The victim was later diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, and was also able to identify a Geneva-based Unit 29155 operative. In a separate column, Robbie Soave of Reason raises questions about the report: It “combines breathless alarmism about foreign malfeasance with a healthy dose of outright science fiction – energy beams! – in order to advance the mainstream media's favorite James Bond-esque narrative: Everything is Russia's fault.” The World Health Organization (WHO) is seeking unprecedented powers to impose its policies on the United States and the rest of the world during the next pandemic, John Tierney reports. Not only is WHO trying to make its policies mandatory for all countries, but it is also trying to censor those who oppose them. America has already declared a commitment to signing a pandemic treaty with WHO. Tierney writes: If we learned anything from the pandemic, it was the folly of entrusting narrow-minded public-health officials with wide-ranging powers. The countries that fared best, like Sweden, were the ones that ignored the advice of the WHO, and the U.S. states that fared best, like Florida, were the ones that defied the White House Coronavirus Task Force and the Centers for Disease Control. This wasn’t a new lesson. Previous research had shown that giving national leaders new powers to respond to a natural disaster typically leads to more fatalities and economic damage. This lesson is anathema to politicians and bureaucrats. Instead of analyzing their many mistakes during the pandemic, WHO officials are pretending their performance entitles them to expand their empire. Under the proposed new regulations, which would be “legally binding,” nations would commit themselves during an emergency to “recognize WHO as the guidance and coordinating authority of international public health response.” Nations that sign the pandemic treaty are agreeing to fully cooperate with WHO’s policies and to prevent the spread of “misinformation.” Tierney reports that asking for such authority displays “remarkable chutzpah,” since WHO is famous for the misinformation it spread during the COVID-19 pandemic: [WHO] originally underplayed the threat by repeating China’s false assertion that the virus wasn’t spread by human-to-human transmission. Then it pivoted to terrifying the public by vastly overstating the fatality rate. It praised China’s “transparency” and s brutal lockdown. It issued false statements the airborne transmission of the virus and about natural immunity. It continues recommending masks despite their harmful effects and the evidence that they make little or no difference in stopping viral spread. When China hid data from its coronavirus research in Wuhan, investigators from the WHO went along with the cover-up by concluding in 2021 that it was “extremely unlikely” Covid originated at the laboratory. Since then, the accumulated evidence has made it a near certainty that the virus came from the lab. But the WHO, which promised to do a more rigorous follow-up investigation of the pandemic’s origin, has abandoned that investigation and shows no interest in holding China accountable. Tierney anticipates that if the U.S. and other countries support WHO’s power grab, then we will continue to see many more emergencies – like the pandemic –that bring “new powers and more money” to WHO. From the Annals of Your Government at Work, this article reports that President Biden is a bit behind schedule in his plans to build 500,000 electric-vehicle charging stations across the country by 2030: Two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states. And as the Biden administration rolls out its new rules for emissions from cars and trucks – which will require a lot more electric cars and hybrids on the road – the sluggish build-out could slow the transition to electric cars. … Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, said that some of the delays are to be expected. “State transportation agencies are the recipients of the money,” he said. “Nearly all of them had no experience deploying electric vehicle charging stations before this law was enacted.” Nigro says that the process – states have to submit plans to the Biden administration for approval, solicit bids on the work, and then award funds – has taken much of the first two years since the funding was approved. “I expect it to go much faster in 2024,” he added. This article echoes an October 2023 article in RealClearInvestigations that reported on a wide range of challenges to Biden’s EV dreams. John Murawski wrote: Massive public subsidies will be a crucial part of this effort because private industry is not willing to take the financial risks of betting on an uncertain future. Government subsidies mean complying with recordkeeping and reporting mandates and making sure chargers are online 97% of the time, while bearing the financial risk of vandalism, mechanical malfunctions, daily fluctuations in electricity pricing, and cashflow unpredictability. The rapid transition from a reliable legacy energy infrastructure that’s more than a century old to emerging technologies in just a few decades will require the buy-in of virtually every American, including relearning driving habits and adopting charging patterns that right now constitute the leisurely prerogative of early adopters and trend-setters. The FBI spends "every day, all day long" interrogating people over their Facebook posts. At least, that's what one of its agents told Stillwater, Oklahoma, resident Rolla Abdeljawad when a group of them showed up at her house to ask her about her social media activity, this article reports: Abdeljawad told agents that she didn't want to talk and asked them to show their badges on camera, which the agents refused to do. She wrote on Facebook that she later confirmed with local police that the FBI agents really were FBI agents. "Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account," one agent in a gray shirt said in the video. "So we no longer live in a free country and we can't say what we want?" replied Abdeljawad. "No, we totally do. That's why we're not here to arrest you or anything," a second agent in a red shirt added. "We do this every day, all day long. It's just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will." Abdeljawade had made multiple angry posts per day about the war in Gaza, referring to Israel as "Israhell." But none of the posts on her feed call for violence. Ironically, Abdeljawad had also posted a warning about exactly the kind of government monitoring she was later subjected to. "Don't fall for their games. Our community is being watched & they are just waiting for any reason to round us up," Abdeljawad wrote. "If you're Muslim and/or pro-pal consider all your media accounts, Google searches, mail, messenger, local mosques & political events monitored. #NYC #usa #PoliceState #FreePalestine" The changing face of Europe was underscored this Easter season as many cities also offered full-throated celebrations of an overlapping Muslim holiday, Ramadan: A stretch of Venloer Strasse, a large and busy street near the Central Mosque of Cologne, is sporting decorative Islamic street lighting with large 'Happy Ramadan' signs, Eastern-style 'Aladdin' lanterns and half-crescent moons that are turned on at dusk each day. … In Britain, Windsor Castle hosted its first Iftar last week, with permission from King Charles, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Guests feasted on coconut milk and dates in the grounds before a private tour of the State apartments. Westminster Abbey, meanwhile – a Christian site for over 1,000 years – flew the national flag of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, with the Muslim crescent and star, to mark 'Pakistan Day'. Feathers were further ruffled when the official departures noticeboard at London's King's Cross station featured Islamic prayer times during Ramadan and a quote from the Prophet Mohammed referring to 'sinners'…. Ramadan lights have also appeared for the first time in another German city, Frankfurt, courtesy of the local Green mayor. In Oslo, Norway, a £75,000 publicly funded display is sparkling near the city hall for the 30 days of Islamic fasting. There has been some pushback on these celebrations and other accommodations extended to Muslims, though the article says it is not just from anti-Muslim bigots: Last week, a Paris headmaster quit his job following online death-threats after he asked a teenage pupil to remove her Islamic head-covering, which, under French law, is not permitted in schools. It also emerged that 24 children at a Frankfurt secondary school were told by teachers they could not drink water because three other ten-year-old pupils in the class were Muslims observing the Ramadan fast. At the beginning of last week, the liberal-democrat Swiss news magazine Neue Zurcher, which has a pan-Europe readership, offered its own unbridled views: "The political establishment is in the grip of Ramadan fever. Islamisation is taking place. Islam is not becoming more German, but Germany is becoming more Islamic.” |
