VIDEO: Texas Attorney General Explains State’s Supreme Court Election Integrity Lawsuit

The latest news is the lawsuit filed by the state of Texas against the states of Michigan, Wisconson, Georgia and Pennsylvania. What is unique about this lawsuit is that it pits a state against other states. Because of this the U.S. Supreme Court must take the case and has already put it on their docket.

This case is important because it can, if the the SCOTUS sides with Texas, nullify the 62 electoral college votes controlled by these four states.

Add to this the pending lawsuits in Nevada and Arizona, which controls a combined 17 electoral college votes (AZ -11, NV-6). Currently, according to EveryLegalVote.com President Trump has 232 vs. Biden’s 214 electoral college votes. If Trump wins both his lawsuits in Nevada and Arizona this would bring his total electoral college votes to 349. If Trump wins only Nevada he would have 236 electoral college votes vs. 225 for Biden. Trump wins. If Trump loses both in Nevada and Arizona then Biden wins the most electoral college votes. But neither has reached the magic number of 270. So what could happen then?

If the elections in Michigan, Wisconson, Georgia and Pennsylvania are found by the SCOTUS to be null and void then their 62 votes would not count and neither President Trump nor Biden can achieve the needed 270 electoral college votes then by the U.S. Constitution it falls on the shoulders of Congress.

If  the winner of the election would be determined by the U.S. House of Representatives because each state gets one vote and Republicans control more states than Democrats, therefore Trump wins.

WATCH: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton explains the lawsuit.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘The Big One’: Trump Vows to Intervene in Texas Election Case

RELATED VIDEO: God Bless Texas – Charlie Kirk

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

TAKE ACTION: Credit Card Companies Must Stop Processing Payments for the Exploitative Pornography Industry

This is it! Major progress in our war against Pornhub. A few days ago we reached out and let you know that Pornhub would be falling soon and it’s already happening—starting NOW!

As you are well aware, Pornhub profits off of the abuse of countless numbers of victims of child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, rape, and non-consensually produced pornography being uploaded to their website.

Just yesterday, following the groundbreaking piece in the New York Times, Pornhub announced updates to their policies in an attempt to appease critics and further delay justice and restitution for survivors (many of whom have spoken out and bravely shared their heartbreaking stories).

But it’s impossible for Pornhub to “clean up its act” because its business model—and the very content it profits from—is inherently abusive and exploitative.

The “changes” announced are merely a fraction of what needs to happen. Pornhub must not be let off the hook.

Pornhub must be shut down.

As a direct result of the work of international advocates, which has been boosted with the recent New York Times article, Mastercard and Visa have announced that they plan to investigate the atrocities hosted and facilitated by Pornhub in order to determine whether they will continue to work with the site. This is still an active fight and you can still encourage them to cut ties with the porn industry!

NOW IS THE TIME where we need you sending emails, sharing social media posts, and talking about this!

Join us in calling on credit cards companies to cease payment processing for Pornhub, and the porn industry at large! 

Contact their Executives directly with this easy-to-use action.

Email Credit Card Executives

If you haven’t already, please also contact your Members of Congress NOW! This will only take you one minute. It is so vital for Congress to hear about the issues directly from their constituents. Every email sent is a win!

Please join the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in urging Congress to:  

  1. Investigate Pornhub and #ShutItDown 
  2. Repeal CDA 230 Immunity for CSAM by passing the EARN IT Act (S. 3398 / H.R. 8454)

Email Congress

If you or someone you know has been exploited online via Pornhub, Twitter, Reddit or any other platform, please contact us. We may be able to help you seek legal action.

You are helping make great things happen, and this is just the beginning. Thank you for every action you take and every moment you spend in this fight with us!

Onward!

©National Center on Sexual Exploitation. All rights reserved.

ELECTION UPDATE: Chances of Biden winning PA, MI, GA, WI Independently after Trump ’s early lead is less than 1 in a quadrillion.

The 2020 presidential election is the most bizarre in my lifetime. This kind of election destroys Americans trust in our system nation wide.

I have never seen:

  1. The media call an election before all votes are counted.
  2. The growing examples of not only voter fraud but growing proof of election fraud.
  3. The tech giants attempt to paint anyone who disagrees with them negatively or even censoring them.
  4. The lack of some GOP elected officials to get behind the movement to #CountEveryLegalVote.
  5. The odds that a weak candidate like Biden could win anything without help from organized election fraudsters.
  6. The lack of justice in state supreme courts to sworn testimony of voter/election fraud on a massive scale.

In a Business Insider article titled 83% of Republicans polled after the 2020 election said they didn’t believe Joe Biden won  reported:

  • It’s been a month since major news organizations projected Joe Biden to win the 2020 election. But 83% of Republicans polled by Gallup in the days afterward indicated they didn’t believe the reports.
  • In the poll, taken from November 9 to 15, 99% of Democrats, 64% of independents, and 17% of Republicans characterized the news reports as “accurate.”
  • The vast majority of Republicans polled — 89% — said they didn’t believe the electoral process worked well, while 92% of Democrats said it did.
  • The 2020 election was unlike any other in US history, with an unprecedented surge in mail-in voting, a raging pandemic, and a huge spike in domestic misinformation.

Here’s one example of the odds of Biden’s win in swing states.

WATCH: Trump Team Begins a Forensic Exam in Michigan; Supreme Court Path Opens in PA | Facts Matter

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Gallup Poll: Americans’ Mental Health Hits 20-Year Low Ahead of Renewed Lockdowns

Any retrospective analysis of lockdown policies—the effectiveness which is seriously disputed—must be weighed against the loss of life and human suffering they caused.


In California and other parts of the country, Americans are headed back to lockdown or otherwise facing renewed restrictions on their day-to-day lives amid another spike of COVID-19. Yet a new Gallup poll shows these lockdowns come as people are already struggling with their mental health.

“Americans’ latest assessment of their mental health is worse than it has been at any point in the last two decades,” Gallup reports.

The new polling found that 34 percent of respondents said their mental health was “excellent,” which is 9 points down from 2019. Similarly, 85 percent of Americans had rated their mental health as “good or excellent” in 2019. Just 76 percent did this year. [VIEW CHART HERE]

This poll only further documents an ongoing trend.

As Jon Miltimore previously explained for FEE.org, the Centers for Disease Control found that 1 in 4 young Americans considered suicide this past summer amid life under lockdown and unprecedented levels of social isolation. In one anecdote that painfully demonstrates this broader trend, a California hospital doctor told local news in May that during lockdown he witnessed “a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”

Much of the decline in mental health over the last 9 months can reasonably be attributed to pandemic lockdowns rather than COVID-19 itself.

Why? Well, consider that for the aforementioned suicidal young adults, the actual mortality risk of COVID-19 is close to zero. It’s the shuttering of their schools, closures of their offices, and isolation from family, friends, and community that has affected them so drastically.

And the negative health effects, both physical and mental, of social isolation are well-documented. Consider this report from the New York Times:

A wave of new research suggests social separation is bad for us. Individuals with less social connection have disrupted sleep patterns, altered immune systems, more inflammation and higher levels of stress hormones. One recent study found that isolation increases the risk of heart disease by 29 percent and stroke by 32 percent.

Another analysis that pooled data from 70 studies and 3.4 million people found that socially isolated individuals had a 30 percent higher risk of dying in the next seven years, and that this effect was largest in middle age.

Loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early: Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.

It’s certainly true that we can’t solely attribute the burgeoning mental health crisis to the lockdowns. But there’s no denying the intuitive and demonstrable fact that confining people to their homes and stripping away their livelihoods has driven the spikes in suicide and depression.

How could it not?

Ample research shows how stripping people of their agency and leaving them feeling powerless contributes to mental health decline.

“Having a high sense of control is related to proactive behavior and positive psychological outcomes,” health researchers point out. “Control is linked to an ability to take preventative action and to feel healthy. An impairment of control is associated with depression, stress, and anxiety-related disorders.”

So, such drastic government lockdowns seizing control of the minutiae of American life were always going to have severe mental health consequences. Unintended consequences plague all top-down government efforts to control or manage society.

“Every human action has both intended and unintended consequences,” Antony Davies and James Harrigan explain for FEE. “Human beings react to every rule, regulation, and order governments impose, and their reactions result in outcomes that can be quite different than the outcomes lawmakers intended.”

Replacing individual decision-making of hundreds of millions’ of peoples’ everyday lives with centralized government mandates intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 inevitably causes enormous ripple effects. Our retrospective analysis of lockdown policies—the effectiveness which is seriously disputed—must be weighed against the loss of life and human suffering they caused in their own right.

COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Opinion Editor at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

AOC’s $58 ‘Tax the Rich’ Sweatshirt Perfectly Demonstrates How Her Ideas Hurt the Poor

It is unlikely that those paid to make AOC’s sweatshirt could afford to buy the end product —even if they’re earning what she calls a “living wage.”


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did what she does best this week and created another social media firestorm.

It all started when a Twitter account called Tax March, which apparently advocates for higher taxes, posted a link to the congresswoman’s online merchandise store and complimented a sweatshirt she sells.

The sweatshirt pictured is a plain, black, cotton item emblazoned with the words “tax the rich.”. But the style itself is not what made headlines, rather it was the price tag: a whopping $58.

The usual (and deserved) criticisms poured in quickly.

Never one to back down from a fight, the congresswoman responded to the criticism on her own Twitter account stating that the merchandise was “made in the US with dignified, union jobs paying living wages.”

She went on to say that “Republicans are freaking out because we don’t use slave-wage labor for merch that funds our grassroots organizing” and that people could obtain the sweatshirt for free if they chose to volunteer for her.

We’ll leave the fact that the congresswoman included the term “slave-wage labor” in a post that simultaneously called for others to work for her for free alone, as we have bigger fish to fry here. (But, come on.)

So to summarize, Ocasio-Cortez is selling sweatshirts that say “tax the rich” at a price most poor or working class people could not reasonably afford. She’s making money off of her merchandise that attacks the creation of wealth. And her excuse for all of this hypocrisy is that it costs more to buy from whole-sellers who pay a “living wage” and use American labor. There’s a lot to unpack here.

While Ocasio-Cortez clearly thinks her choice to employ operations that pay a “living wage” (presumably at least $15 an hour) is virtuous, it actually perfectly portrays how her economic ideas hurt people—especially the poor.

As the cost for labor increases, so do the prices of goods and services.

As much as Ocasio-Cortez likes to think she’s sticking it to the rich by buying from companies that pay their employees more than their fair market value, in reality she’s just passing those increased labor costs on to her supporters.

When companies are forced to pay too much for labor, either due to governmental rules or regulations, they merely bake those costs into the price of their product.

When that product is something as frivolous as a luxury sweatshirt peddling trite socialist slogans, we can laugh about it. But Ocasio-Cortez wants to use big government to force these costly business conditions on every industry—meaning the cost of essential goods like food, automobiles, and essential clothing items would all increase. That doesn’t uplift struggling people—it spells disaster for the poor.

Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk might counter that their mandates would increase peoples’ take-home pay, so they could afford higher prices and still obtain a higher quality of life. However, it’s also important to remember that when the price of goods and services increase, real wages fall.

Real income is not nominal wages, it is an individual’s actual purchasing power in the market. Even if someone is paid $15 an hour, they will likely see their purchasing power decrease as the price of goods and services increase as a result of companies having to pay workers too much. As one example, it is unlikely that those paid to make AOC’s sweatshirt could afford to buy the end product in this scenario—even if they’re earning what she calls a “living wage.” Ultimately, people care about what their paychecks can buy, not the number itself.

Furthermore, Ocasio-Cortez’s use of the term “Made in America” may have just been intended to troll Trump-supporting Republicans, but the congresswoman accidentally proved why free trade creates prosperity. When the US or any country tries to force domestic production of certain goods that can be made more efficiently in other countries, it results in inefficiency and higher prices.

That’s how you end up hawking a nearly $60 sweater when the same thing could be available for half or one-quarter of the price.

Personally, I like to buy from and support American companies when I can. But the reality is that our regulatory framework, cost of labor, and business taxes make many American-made products far more expensive. When I can afford to, I’m happy to buy local, but I’m beyond grateful I have the option to buy globalized products when it comes to high-end items like my iPhone, which would be quite expensive if it was a “Made in America” product.

If these kinds of products were only made in America, and if Ocasio-Cortez got her way and made it impossible to hire anyone for less than $15 an hour, no one but the very wealthy would be able to afford this technology.

If politicians want to elevate American companies and products, they should work to deregulate our economy, slash corporate taxes, and create an economy where businesses can create cost-effective products. Until that happens, we should all thank our lucky stars we have the ability to order cheaper products from other places.

And we shouldn’t devalue the work being done by others to produce these goods in other parts of the world. Nowadays, it’s become popular to virtue-signal against “sweatshops” in other countries. But as is so often the case with those more focused on virtue-signals than price-signals, these ideas would also hurt the poor. Developing countries need to be able to compete in a global marketplace. And while these jobs may not meet our standards in an industrialized country, they are a life raft to those struggling to obtain basic necessities in third-world countries.

Plain and simple, when put into practice, the policies that undergird Ocasio-Cortez’s worldview hurt people. In contrast, free markets (when allowed to operate organically) lead to an abundance of affordable products and all people having greater access to goods and services. And free trade is an essential component of free markets.

“It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy,” wrote Adam Smith. “What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.”

We can forgive everyday people for making the kinds of Econ 101 errors that plague this agenda. But as an educated congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has no excuse. We can laugh about her expensive sweaters, yet there’s nothing funny about the fact that the policies she pushes would make life less affordable for all Americans.

COLUMN BY

Hannah Cox

Hannah Cox is a libertarian-conservative writer, commentator, and activist. She’s a Newsmax Insider and a Contributor to The Washington Examiner.

RELATED ARTICLE: Gallup Poll: Americans’ Mental Health Hits 20-Year Low Ahead of Renewed Lockdowns

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Goldman Sachs Eyes Florida Exit as Financial Exodus from New York Continues

In August, with his state looking at a $13 billion budget hole and residents fleeing in droves, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a plea for New Yorkers to return to the Big Apple.

“They are in their Hamptons homes, or Hudson Valley or Connecticut,” Cuomo said at a press conference. “I talk to them literally every day. I say, ‘When are you coming back? I’ll buy you a drink. I’ll cook.”

Cuomo’s generous offer to buy cocktails and cook doesn’t appear to be solving New York’s economic woes.

On Sunday, news broke that the multinational financial services company Goldman Sachs, one of the largest companies in the US, is considering a plan to move its headquarters to the South.

“Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is weighing plans for a new Florida hub to house one of its key divisions, in another potential blow to New York’s stature as the de facto home of the U.S. financial industry,” Bloomberg reported. “Executives have been scouting office locations in South Florida, speaking with local officials and exploring tax advantages as they consider creating a base there for its asset management arm, according to people with knowledge of the matter.”

According to The Street, the Fort Lauderdale area and Palm Beach County are the most likely destinations, though Goldman is also considering Dallas as a possible alternative.

The news comes on the heels of several other investment firms—Elliott Management, Blackstone, and Citadel—that have boosted their presence in Florida. The Sunshine State is attracting companies because of its low costs, warm weather, and friendly tax climate. (Florida has no income tax).

Goldman’s announcement could not come at a worse time for New York City, which currently “has the most office space available since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack,” according to Bloomberg.

Goldman Sachs has an estimated market value of $71 billion and employs more than 38,000 people worldwide. So, its departure would further erode New York City’s standing as the financial capital of the world even as the state struggles with the broader challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic damage wrought by lockdowns.

Some may point to the coronavirus as the culprit for Goldman Sachs’s pending exodus. A November CNBC report showed that some 300,000 New Yorkers have bailed on the Big Apple since the lockdowns began, despite the largest decline in rental rates in almost a decade.

While it’s certainly true that New York City, which has had one of the strictest lockdowns in America, has seen some of its most attractive draws neutralized by COVID-19—its top notch dining, entertainment, fashion, and networking—a closer look shows the exodus predates the pandemic.

As Hannah Cox pointed out last month on FEE.org, about a million people said goodbye to New York City and the tri-state area over the last decade. Similarly, other financial companies, such as AllianceBernstein Holding LP fled New York long before lockdowns and social distancing arrived.

The reality is the coronavirus exacerbated New York’s economic plight, but it’s not the source of it. The city’s fundamental problem is an open hostility to markets and freedom.

From policies such as universal pre-K and mandated paid sick leave to the city’s $15 minimum wage, rent-controlled housing, and oppressive tax climate, New York’s political class has shown a disdain for capitalism, private property, and business concerns, and a troubling affinity for central planning.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Listen to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who told New York Magazine this in 2017.

“What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be.

I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too.

Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development….

Look, if I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there would be very stringent requirements around income levels and rents. That’s a world I’d love to see…”

Did you catch that? The mayor of the world’s financial capital believes the primary obstacle to prosperity is private property. He thinks city officials should get to determine where buildings go and “who gets to live in [them].”

As one observer noted at the time, de Blasio is not the first political leader to thirst for such power.

“Other leaders have had such power, in the Soviet Union and China and Venezuela, and those systems did not produce progress. Or even toilet paper,” David Boaz wryly observed in USA Today.

Unfortunately, neither Cuomo nor de Blasio seem aware of this history. Prior to and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the pair have embraced the heavy hand of big government instead of free markets. New York’s oppressive climate has yielded a batch of bad fruit—surging violence (shootings were up 112 percent in November), injustice, economic depression, joblessness, and general despair.

Considering the current troubling state of New York and de Blasio’s open hostility to private property, one has to wonder what any financial services company or investment bank is still doing business in the Big Apple.

Fortunately, the American system of federalism means neither individuals nor businesses have to put up with it. New Yorkers feeling trapped can easily move to South Carolina or Utah, where they can actually have a social life and make a living. And financial companies can hit the road for Fort Lauderdale, Nashville, Dallas, Las Vegas or wherever their fancy takes them.

Should individuals or companies feel guilty over leaving? Quite the contrary.

As legal scholar Ilya Somin observed, “voting with your feet” is one of the best ways to help a struggling community and historically has been a key tool for upward mobility in America.

“Those who have been fortunate enough to achieve a measure of success thanks to mobility should not feel guilty about it,” Somin wrote in the Washington Post. “We can help society best by being productive citizens and–where possible–working to ensure that the foot voting opportunities that benefited us become more available to others.”

As someone who has personally benefited from this mobility—I bounced around a lot in my 20s—I wholeheartedly endorse this message. It’s one of the underappreciated glories of the American system. But one need not have experienced the benefits of mobility to understand what Somin is getting at: individuals and companies alike should make sure their talents and resources are best utilized.

Sadly, New York increasingly is no longer that place, for many.

A departure from Goldman Sachs would signal that New York City’s days as the financial capital of the world are over.  In some ways, the only surprise is that it took so long.

COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WATCH THIS MEGA MAGA VIDEO: ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’

Thanks to Glynda for sharing this video posted by Mad__ American titled “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Never give up. Never surrender.

WATCH:

©Mad__ American. All rights reserved.

RELATED TWEET:

VIDEO: The Night the Rights Went out in Georgia

What Americans witnessed on November 3rd didn’t just happen. A lot of people don’t remember, but the seeds for this election mess were planted way back in 2018 when Democrats won the House. The coronavirus didn’t hurt, of course, but the cheat was on long before Joe Biden was nominated. Why does that matter? Because — the president’s attorneys warn — if Republicans don’t keep fighting, the damage to our democracy is here to stay.

Liberals are getting restless. The media is impatient. Even some Republicans, men and women who believe there was legitimate fraud, want the White House to throw in the towel and move on. Why don’t they? Because at the end of the day, this isn’t about the presidential election. It’s about the sanctity of American law. We aren’t just talking about Pennsylvania’s law or Georgia’s law — but the power of every state legislature to pass laws with the expectation that they will be upheld. Right now, elected leaders in state legislatures can’t even perform their most basic function without other state officials and courts overruling them. That’s not how democracy works. So when the Left tells everyone to “move on,” they aren’t pressuring us to give up on Donald Trump — but our entire constitutional system.

Americans have laws for a reason, and when they’re violated or ignored, it should concern everyone. Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell, who’s had her eyes on the Left for two years, knows the game plan. As far as she’s concerned, the 2020 election has been a coordinated sabotage since the earliest days of the new Congress. “Don’t forget,” she said on “Washington Watch,” “H.R. 1 — the first bill taken up by Nancy Pelosi when the Democrats won control of the House in 2018, was a massive election bill that would have provided for [this mail-in balloting] everywhere in the country.” Of course, as usual, the Democrats couldn’t accomplish any of their radical election plans democratically. So they started filing lawsuits to sue their way to an absentee system that would open up new avenues for manipulation. “Even in 2019,” Cleta points out, “they started [suing]… in Mississippi, Louisiana, cases in practically every state… [They] spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars (it might not surprise you to learn that George Soros funded it, [and] Marc Elias [of Russia-gate fame] managed it.”

The strategy was to get judges to “adopt laws — quote unquote — or orders that basically threw out the duly enacted laws of the state legislatures,” Cleta explained. Then the coronavirus hit, and it was the perfect storm for the Left’s stalking horse: rewriting election laws that would undermine the election safeguards and ballot integrity the states have in place. Even Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), Cleta said, when he was sued by Stacey Abrams (D) capitulated. “Instead of fighting them, saying, ‘I have no authority, and the judge has no authority to change the law — that’s the legislature’s responsibility,’ he ended up settling with them and entering a consent decree.” And you and I both know, she shook her head, “what happens to Republican officeholders when they decide that they like to be loved by the media and the Left. It’s not good for conservatives.” And, as we’ve seen, it’s not good for the process.

For the time being, there’s at least a very compelling case in Georgia. When it comes to fraud, people keep asking, “Where’s the evidence?” Well, as the Trump campaign said in its filing on Friday: here it is. Their court petition has more than 1,000 pages of sworn testimony and nearly 100 affidavits — signed under penalty of perjury. “There’s nothing in this lawsuit that is not backed up by either a sworn affidavit by an eyewitness as to a violation of a Georgia election code or a declaration by an expert who has analyzed the Georgia state election and voting records.” It would be difficult for Raffensperger to read the petition and not understand that there are tens of thousands of illegal votes — “more than enough [to make up the margin of victory] that should be thrown out,” Cleta argues.

“That’s what’s so remarkable here…” Cleta went on. “Several of these violations — just taken by themselves — would be three to four times the number required to invalidate the election. [It’s] all in there. So… I will guarantee that the secretary of state, the number one defendant, has not read the analysis of his own data.” But whatever anyone says, she argued, “this election was not valid. Those results are not valid. And the secretary of state has a lot to answer for in my opinion.”

Her concern, like a lot of voters, is that these issues need to be cleaned up before the Senate runoff elections. The courts and certain state officials helped the Left undermine election laws, and the legislature needs to assert itself to make sure that a) that doesn’t happen again, and b) that it doesn’t affect January 5th. When almost 40 percent of the country thinks November 3rd was a rigged election, the last thing Americans need is to have the Senate thrown into the same limbo.

FRC Action’s Faith Family Freedom Fund is hosting a special Georgia event with the hopes of making the runoff results as resounding a victory as possible. Join us at Truett McConnell University’s Benjamin F. Brady Basketball Arena on December 15th at 7:00 p.m. (doors open at 5:00 p.m.) for a Pray Vote Stand rally with invited and confirmed speakers like Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), Senator David Perdue (R-Ga.), Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), Governor Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reed, Todd Starnes, and more. To RSVP, visit the website.


Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.


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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

The U.S. Supreme Court DID NOT Reject Mike Kelly’s Voter Fraud Lawsuit Against Pennsylvania

In these turbulent times there has been misreporting on important cases dealing with voter fraud. One of them is the case filed by Mike Kelly on behalf of the Pennsylvania GOP currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Washington Examiner incorrectly reported the following.

The truth is:

CLICK HERE TO READ SCOTUS TIMELINE OF MIKE KELLY’S THE LAWSUIT.

Additionally, the SCOTUS had agreed to hear the Texas lawsuit.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Supreme Court: Texas Sues 4 States Over Election; Forensic Exam of Arizona Machines | Facts Matter

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Inauguration Committee Fails to Pass Resolution Acknowledging Biden as President-Elect

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THIS is the case. The one to watch.

Texas Sues Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin at Supreme Court over Election Rules

The State of Texas filed a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court shortly before midnight on Monday challenging the election procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on the grounds that they violate the Constitution

Texas argues that these states violated the Electors Clause of the Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions, but not through the state legislatures. Additionally, Texas argues that there were differences in voting rules and procedures in different counties within the states, violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Finally, Texas argues that there were “voting irregularities” in these states as a result of the above.

Texas is asking the Supreme Court to order the states to allow their legislatures to appoint their electors.

https://twitter.com/JeffLingESQ/status/1336427764258402306?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1336427764258402306%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgellerreport.com%2F2020%2F12%2Frkansas-alabama-florida-kentucky-mississippi-south-carolina-south-dakota-announce-joined-texas-election-fraud-lawsuit-on-scotus-docket.html%2F

Supreme Court Adds Texas Election Fraud Lawsuit Against GA, MI, PA, WI to the Docket And Rejects GOP Pennsylvania Lawsuit

Attorney General Jeff Landry’s Statement on 2020 Federal Elections and Recent Texas Motion Before the Supreme Court

Louisiana Dept of Justice, December 8, 2020:

BATON ROUGE, LA – Attorney General Jeff Landry issued the following statement regarding the ongoing controversies over the 2020 federal election and the new motion put forward by the State of Texas before the U.S. Supreme Court:

“Millions of Louisiana citizens, and tens of millions of our fellow citizens in the country, have deep concerns regarding the conduct of the 2020 federal elections. Deeply rooted in these concerns is the fact that some states appear to have conducted their elections with a disregard to the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, many Louisianans have become more frustrated as some in media and the political class try to sidestep legitimate issues for the sake of expediency.

Weeks ago, on behalf of the citizens of Louisiana, my office joined many other states in filing a legal brief with the United States Supreme Court urging the Justices to look into the conduct of the election in Pennsylvania where their state court ignored the U.S. Constitution in regard to the conduct of the election. The U.S. Constitution in Article 1, Section 4, states plainly: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature …” The power for the conduct of federal elections is held by the State Legislatures in each state. In states like Pennsylvania, the judicial branch attempted to seize control of these duties and obligations and to set their own rules. These actions appear to be unconstitutional. If it is unconstitutional for Pennsylvania to take this action, it is similarly unconstitutional for other states to have done the same.

Only the U.S. Supreme Court can ultimately decide cases of real controversy among the states under our Constitution. That is why the Justices should hear and decide the case which we have joined representing the citizens of Louisiana.

Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court should consider the most recent Texas motion, which contains some of the same arguments.

Louisiana citizens are damaged if elections in other states were conducted outside the confines of the Constitution while we obeyed the rules.”

RELATED VIDEO: Supreme Court: Texas Sues 4 States Over Election; Forensic Exam of Arizona Machines | Facts Matter

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Conservatives Are Way. Too. Nice. Time to be more like serpents.

TRANSCRIPT

Church Militant (a 501(c)4 corporation) is responsible for the content of this commentary.

In the continuing revelations being made at the intersection of Church and culture, President Trump said something very plainly Saturday at the Georgia rally in Valdosta — as plain, in fact, as the nose on your face. It’s this simple point: Republicans are nice, and as a lady from the crowd reminded him, too nice.

Likewise, in last week’s public hearing on election fraud in Michigan, Rudy Giuliani made the exact same point, that good people are too nice and have not realized just how mean bad people really are. Hopefully, it’s a message that will resonate with political conservatives and enough Republican leaders before it’s too late.

But moving from that point straight into the Faith, there are often major overlaps in how all these affairs play out because we are always dealing with human nature at the end of the day, regardless of the given arena. Too many faithful Catholics are just way too nice. For a variety of reasons, they simply let the evil in the Church (as well as the world) continue. In some weird, overly pietistic view of the second commandment to love your neighbor, they simply forsake all common sense and proper judgment.

The idea that it isn’t Christlike to treat a person suspiciously or that it is sinful to weigh their words against their actions and determine that they are lying is errant. Living the Catholic life fully oftentimes means living in a state of tension, balancing two seemingly contradictory principles across a large spectrum of teaching.

Deciding how to live and respond and conduct our affairs is why we need prudence. Going to one side or the other of a given proposition often leads to chaos. For example, when Our Blessed Lord instructed the Apostles to go out and save the world, which is what His sacred command boiled down to, they flinched, understandably.

“You send us out as sheep among wolves,” they said. A very correct first understanding, as many of us know and can testify to. But here comes the “balancing act” response: “Then be as cunning as the serpent and as peaceful as the dove.” That may be the only time in human history that alignment has ever been made.

Today, and maybe longer than most realize, this divine command is being lived totally out of balance — way too much dove, nowhere near enough serpent. To have a personality that is suspicious of authority is seen as unholy or deficient or some such other degrading view. To regard someone who tells you something that doesn’t add up as a liar or dishonest is frowned upon.

No, we should not always give someone the benefit of the doubt. And to label that as “Christlike” to do and to hide behind a soft spirituality is naive at best and destructive at worst. Would you give a convicted sex offender the benefit of the doubt when looking for a babysitter? Would you give the keys to your car to an alcoholic who is on a drinking spree?

There is absolutely nothing in the world wrong, sinful or immoral about being suspicious of a leader, person or family member whose actions don’t align with their words — even someone coming off as “holy” and pretending to be about the Faith and so forth. You have to consider are they just self-promoters making a living off you, telling you what you want to hear.

Are they advancing some personal agenda regarding schismatic groups, for example; deliberately withholding information from you that would undermine their cause or argument? Are they just trying to expand their email list or increase their Patreon donations by saying what tickles your ear?

Turning from laity to clergy, are the bishops being two-faced and malicious in reality, while in public presenting themselves as concerned “fathers”? Yes, at the very first instance, a person should be given the benefit of the doubt. But when words and actions begin to veer apart, then, yes, it is time to go from dove to full-on serpent.

Remember, these sorts of people are very good at the sly, slithering serpent role, presenting themselves as doves, all the while planning to strike like serpents — the wolf in sheep’s clothing expression. Not for nothing do we have the expression “Watch what he does, not what he says.”

Yet something in the personality and misguided spirituality of many faithful Catholics seems to preclude looking at the world and people in it for what they truly are: Fallen. Fallen mankind is capable of great evil, great deception, horrendous immorality. To walk through life as though that’s not the case is to whistle past the graveyard.

Chalking up evil actions to some irrational excuse in the name of piety is to place your soul and body in danger. This is how wicked priests and bishops got away with raping thousands of altar boys and then using your money to pay off the lawsuits (not to mention the lawyers) when they got caught.

This is how they also got away with destroying the faith of tens of millions in this country alone with hardly anyone uttering a peep. See, that wicked lot is perfect at following the counsel of Our Lord, at least outwardly: Be as cunning as the serpent and as peaceful as the dove.

Cunning they certainly are. Yet the only way they are able to be cunning is because too many faithful Catholics are willing to believe their hogwash, their outward show. Look at their actions, at what they do, not what they say. Their words are a deflection. It’s the same with politicians as well as supposedly reliable Catholic information sources.

First, ask yourself, in all cases, what skin does this fellow have in the game? For example, where does the funding come from? Is a politician supported by Wall Street or Soros or whatever? Is a Catholic apostolate — or media personality — supported by schismatic groups or, perhaps, a few very wealthy donors who pull the strings?

Where did the money come from to begin the operation (whether it’s a campaign for office or a Catholic venture)? Did the politician or Catholic person put up his own money, making him personally invested? Is the politician or Catholic person or outfit personally profiting from their messaging, or are they reinvesting that money back into their effort to better the world and humanity?

It isn’t sinful, immoral or uncatholic to ask these questions — to wonder these things — especially if you start to see a divergence in words from actions. Faithful Catholics in the Church and the world of politics need to ask a lot more questions and be a lot more suspicious-minded.

Too many have been conditioned to feel that suspecting something bad is afoot or making judgments in the material order is a bad thing. Being suspicious of evil and making correct judgments about it is how you get to Heaven — by avoiding the pitfalls. And that’s not Church Militant saying that, it’s Church Militant repeating what Our Blessed Lord said.

Abandon this stupid anti-Catholic notion that “nice” wins the day. The word “nice” never once appears in Sacred Scripture. Being “nice,” in fact, is a sure path to Hell.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Our Constitutional Republic Depends on Fighting Electoral Fraud

Concept of US presidentail election ballot being completed

The Center for Security Policy Founder and Executive Chairman Frank Gaffney hosted a critical webinar on mounting evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election and the implications of this fraud for the future of our republic with Colonel Phil Waldron, U.S. Army Retired, and the Center’s Senior Analyst for Strategy Dr. J. Michael Waller.

Colonel Waldron reminded viewers that it was President Obama who established the February 2013 Presidential Policy Directive – Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience (PPD-21) “to strengthen the security and resilience of its critical infrastructure against both physical and cyber threats” and that his DHS secretary Jeh Johnson designated U.S. election systems as part of the nation’s critical infrastructure on January 6, 2017.  Waldron explained, though, that despite this designation there is no national standard for cybersecurity for these systems and that the government agency responsible for protecting it – DHS – has been woefully unprepared.

Waldron made it clear that the recently fired director of DHS’s Cyber and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) – Christopher Krebs – was completely wrong when he stated that the election was the “most secure in American history,” and that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” He went into detail to demonstrate that at least two of Krebs’ assumptions were incorrect: that voting machines are “air gapped” from the internet and that the states maintain mechanisms to prevent fraudulent activity in their elections. Waldron pointed to numerous examples of the fraud, including the more than 17,000 votes cast in Michigan and nearly 40,000 votes cast in Pennsylvania by deceased voters.  He and Frank Gaffney also discussed the extremely informative HBO Documentary “Kill Chain” which demonstrated well before the election just how vulnerable these voting machines are to electronic manipulation, including through their connectivity to the internet.

Waller explained that the election systems and procedures used by the United States neither meets the standards established by the U.S. State Department for its evaluations of elections in foreign countries or the well-respected “Jimmy Carter standards” established at The Carter Center and used worldwide.  He explained how the “DNA” of the voting machine software traces back to Venezuela where it was designed to keep Hugo Chavez in power perpetually. He explained that Venezuela, like many other Latin American nations, actually has much stricter voter identification rules and systems, so that capability to electronically manipulate votes had to be designed around these “obstacles.” In comparison, Dr. Waller stated, “the United States’ election system is a soft target.”

Both the webinar’s viewers and its experts decried the lack of focus on this critical issue of election security by the intelligence community, law enforcement, and other government agencies and the overwhelming censorship on the topic by media and social media giants who consistently state that stories of election fraud are “baseless claims.”  Mr. Gaffney made it clear that the republic itself is at stake if we don’t fix these issues, and fast.

Waller was pessimistic for our nation’s future because he did not believe this attack on the right of Americans to free and fair elections will be countered.  Colonel Waldron’s prognosis was positive because he sees that the American people – from whom the United States’ government gets its own power and legitimacy – are waking up to this threat.

COLUMN BY

The Two Party System: Those Who ‘Get Out The Vote’ vs. Those Who ‘Go Steal The Votes’

It appears that for years one party has focused on the principle of getting out the vote. This is done at the local level where party members knock on doors and ask people to legally register to vote.

Another party has for years decided that it is easier to steal the votes using various means.

QUESTION: Guess which party uses GOTV vs. GSTV?

This idea came to me after I received an email from Stop-Republicans.org titled Should Trump be invited to Joe Biden’s Inauguration?

The email asks:

We CAN’T WAIT for Joe Biden’s Inauguration in January.

We know that Biden’s presidency will be the beginning of something GREAT for our country.

And there’s one thing that will make that historic Inauguration Day even sweeter — if Donald Trump ISN’T there!!

We can humiliate Trump one final time, but we need to know whether 34238 Democrats agree with our plan. So, let us know…

Vitriol is palatable. Why would anyone want to “humiliate” any president? Why would one faction want to dis-invite the outgoing president? Why, just one party that I know of.

Go Steal The Votes

There are four pillars that undergird the Democrat’s Election Fraud in 2020:

  1. Voting machines (specifically Dominion Voting).
  2. Mail-in-ballots (people like West Virginian Jeff Harshman who posted on his Facebook page, “I voted 29 times by mail in 29 different districts in battleground states. Vote Joe no matter what!!!”)
  3. Faulty voter rolls (a.k.a. dirty voter rolls) dead people voting, people voting who do not live in the state in which the ballot is counted and “ghost voters”.
  4. Failures by the USPS to either deliver ballots, failure to properly post mark ballots (in swing states) or caught intentionally destroying ballots which have been found in dumpsters.

Let’s take a serious look at each one of these four pillars that have led to massive election fraud in 2020.

ELECTION FRAUD PILLAR 1: Voting Machines.

On October 26, 2020 PBS News Hour did an analysis of the Dominion Voting system in Georgia, a state where the 2020 election recount is being currently disputed. The PBS analysis found the Dominion Voting system seriously flawed when compared to using a traditional paper ballot.

WATCH:

We first learned about what was called a “computer glitch” that flipped Trump votes into Biden votes in the state of Michigan.

WATCH:

But it’s much, much worse!

In one county in Michigan Joe Biden was well ahead, but the tally didn’t match with the past voting patterns. In the last 135 years the voters of Antrim County voted Republican in 32 of 34 elections. It turned out the software used in the voting machines had flipped as many as 6,000 votes. After the error was fixed, Donald Trump was 2,000 votes ahead of Biden.

Another computer glitch in Oakland County Michigan caused a similar flip. What are the odds? Strangely, it didn’t flip votes up for Trump, only down. Not so much a bug perhaps as a design feature?

The philanthropy group that worked with Dominion from 2014 – 2017  to provide “access to Voting Technology” for “emerging democracies”? The Clinton Foundation.

This voting technology may now be the largest automated system to steal an election in U.S. history.

Because of this the Republicans have asked for another 47 Michigan counties (of 83 counties) to recount their votes, but it’s worse than that.  Dominion Software is used in 30 other states across the USA, including every single “key” swinging state. Some of their machines were also reportedly faulty on the day of the election and voting hours were extended for those counties to try to help those who couldn’t vote due to the breakdown.

WATCH: #MalkinLive – Election update.

WATCH: How Democrats used the Dominion Voting system to cheat in the election.

To read all of the articles on voting machines please click here.

ELECTION FRAUD PILLAR 2: Mail-in-Ballots

The First Great Election Conspiracy

They say that history has a strange habit of repeating itself. So do politicians.

The Democrats have pushed the idea that mail-in ballots are the best solution for voters. This is not a new idea, but rather just another attempt to steal an election. The first attempt to use mail-in ballots occurred during the 1864 election.

In a eye opening column in The Washington Post titled Mail-in ballots were part of a plot to deny Lincoln reelection in 1864 Dustin Waters wrote:

Traveling to Baltimore in the fall of 1864, Orville Wood had no way of knowing he would soon uncover the most elaborate election conspiracy in America’s brief history.

Wood was a merchant from Clinton County in the most northeastern corner of New York. As a supporter of President Abraham Lincoln, he was tasked with visiting troops from his hometown to “look after the local ticket.”

New York legislators had only established the state’s mail-in voting system in April with the intent of ensuring the suffrage of White troops battling the Confederate Army.

This great “election conspiracy was conducted by the Democratic Party, known as the Copperheads. The Copperheads were:

[T]he Northern wing of the Democratic Party, which opposed the Civil War. These Peace Democrats urged an immediate, peaceful settlement with the Confederacy. Many supported slavery and blamed the war on abolitionists. They argued that Southern states had the right to secede and that the federal government’s policies under President Abraham Lincoln violated the Constitution. Republican writers labeled these Democrats Copperheads to suggest that they were poisonous snakes, betraying and endangering the Union. The Democrats accepted the label, reframing it as a reference to the image of Liberty on a copper penny. In some cases, members of the group were arrested for treason, tried, and imprisoned or sent into the Confederate states.

The Copperhead Catechism refers to Fernando Wood who was New York City’s mayor, and later, a congressman. Wood was an avowed Copperhead who, in 1861, had urged the city to secede in order to maintain revenues from the cotton trade.

Read more.

Dustin Waters noted:

The results of the 1864 elections would heavily affect the outcome of the war. Lincoln and his supporters in the National Union Party sought to continue the war and defeat the Confederacy outright. Meanwhile antiwar Democrats, also referred to as Copperheads, looked for an immediate compromise with the Confederate leaders and the end of the abolition movement.

Read more.

The Second Great Election Conspiracy

Fast forward to the 2020 Presidential Election. Like their predecessors The Copperheads the Democrats have rekindled the the old, and proven fraudulent, use of mail-in ballots. Their excuse? COVID-19. The Democrats have made this pandemic and the USPS an issue to blackmail states and force them to pass legislation allowing mail-in ballots.

In a Daily Signal column titled Potential for Fraud Is Why Mail-In Elections Should Be Dead Letter Hans von Spakovsky wrote:

Absentee ballots are the tools of choice of election fraudsters because they are voted outside the supervision of election officials, making it easier to steal, forge, or alter them, as well as to intimidate voters.

Going entirely to by-mail elections would unwisely endanger the security and integrity of the election process, particularly if officials automatically mail absentee ballots to all registered voters without a signed, authenticated request from each voter.

Voter registration rolls are notoriously inaccurate and out of date, containing the names of voters who are deceased, have moved, or otherwise have become ineligible.

To read all of the articles about mail-in-ballot fraud click here.

ELECTION FRAUD PILLAR 3: Faulty Voter Rolls

October 17, 2018- Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) to discuss election integrity and how dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections.

To read all of the articles about faulty voter rolls click here.

ELECTION FRAUD PILLAR 4: Failures by the United States Postal Service

Project Veritas released a new video of another Brave USPS Insider who says that pro-Trump and pro-Republican mail is being ordered to be discarded while pro-Biden mail is “to be treated as first-class.”

Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:

  • Elkins Park, Pa., USPS whistleblower: “The only political mail that will be delivered from now on will be that of the ‘winner,’ in this case, Joe Biden. Other political mail from other sources and senders would be put into the undeliverable bulk business mail bin.”
  • Elkins Park, Pa., USPS whistleblower: “All political mail for Biden was to be continued to be treated as first-class and delivered the day it was received.”
  • Elkins Park, Pa., USPS whistleblower: “I think that we’re a delivery service and that [playing politics] is not really our place.”
  • Elkins Park, Pa., USPS whistleblower: “The only thing that’s going to prevent a fraudulent election is people having the courage to come forward. I wouldn’t want to say that I had the opportunity to do that and didn’t do it.”
  • Whistleblower says Elkins Park, Pa., USPS Supervisor of Customer Services Walter Lee gave the order to 30 postal workers

You can watch the full video here:

What is going on with the USPS? Since when do they decide what political mail goes out or gets discarded?

This is the third Pennsylvania USPS Insider to blow the whistle on election malfeasance in the last week. There is something going on with USPS and we must get to the bottom of it immediately.

To read all of the articles about the failures of the USPS click here.

Election fraud is real. Election fraud is a threat to our free and fair election system. Anyone who commits election fraud is an enemy of the state.

Conclusion

Elections in the future will be about who can steal the most votes. If this election fraud is not stop dead in its tracks then free and fair elections will become a thing of the past.

As Joseph Stalin said:

“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”

Intentionally stealing votes is worth of third world countries. Once any party will to steal an election takes power the only way to remove them from power is by  force. As the Declaration of Independence states:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

What Americans are witnessing is something we have never seen before. We are witnessing what I call “The Art of the Steal.” It is a parody of the title of a 1987 book credited to Donald J. Trump and journalist Tony Schwartz “The Art of the Deal.”

Today is another day where we find Democrats in large cities doing everything they can to steal the 2020 election. This is not about Trump, this is about fundamentally changing the ballot systems nationwide to favor one candidate over another.

This Art of the Steal began well before Donald J. Trump came down the escalator and announced his run for President.

Stealing elections is now become big business. 

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Judge says California Gov’s “anyone can mail in a ballot” exec order violates the state’s constitution.

Targeted Killings: The Legality vs. The Morality

Arguably, the most galling reaction to the targeted killing of Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, came from John Brennan, Director of the CIA under the Obama administration.

Startling evidence that members of the former Obama administration simply inhabit a parallel universe over Iran has been revealed in their reaction to the assassination last Friday of the mastermind of the Iranian nuclear weapons programme, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.—Melanie Phillips, The warped reaction to the Fakhrizadeh assassination, December 1, 2020.

It has been over a week since the lynchpin of the Iranian nuclear project, Mohsen Fakhridazeh was killed in what appears to be an immaculately planned and flawlessly executed strike by elusive and yet to be identified assailants. Nonetheless, analysis of what took place and speculation of what might take place as a result, are still at the focus of considerable media attention.

The prime suspect…?

While no state or organization has claimed responsibility/credit for the action, and despite the fact that a good number of interested parties had reason to approve of his sudden demise, suspicion fell chiefly on the secret intelligence service of Israel, the Mossad.

Depressingly—but not unexpectedly—international condemnation was both swift and widespread.

Thus, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, issued a disapproving statement, declaring: “…an Iranian government official and, according to reports, one of his bodyguards, were killed in a series of violent attacks. This is a criminal act and runs counter to the principle of respect for human rights the EU stands for.”

In similar critical vein, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab expressed concern over “the situation in Iran and the wider region [where]we do want to see de-escalation of tensions.” Although he admitted that “We’re still waiting to see the full facts…of what’s happened in Iran”, he nevertheless stressed the need to “stick to the rule of international humanitarian law which is very clear against targeting civilians.”

Significantly, as Ron Jontof-Hutter deftly points out, both Borrell and Raab seem either woefully misinformed or willfully misleading in describing Fakhrizadeh as a “civilian/official”. After all, it is widely known that he was a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, not only an elite and highly privileged arm of Iran’s military, but also designated a terrorist organization by the US in April 2019.

Hostile & Hypocritical?

But perhaps the most alarming and annoying reaction came from John Brennan, who served as the Director of the CIA under the Obama administration (2013-17). In a series of tweets immediately after the attack, Brennan decried the killing of Fakhrizadeh in the strongest of terms.

Although professing not to know the identity of the assailants or whether “a foreign government” was behind “the murder of Fakhrizadeh”, he nevertheless began by deeming the attack as an “act of state sponsored terrorism” and “a flagrant violation of international law”, which was likely to “encourage more governments to carry out lethal attacks against foreign officials.

He went on to characterize the action as “…a criminal act & highly reckless”, warning that: “It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict”.

When operating in foreign countries, secret intelligence forces are ipso facto in contravention of the law of the land in which they operate. Indeed, as part of their job description they may abduct, extort, illegally acquire classified information and yes, assassinate individuals deemed a grave threat to their homeland.

This is, of course, something that Brennan is well aware of—since he was, as the New York Times dubbed him: “the chief architect of a clandestine campaign of targeted killings”, and “the principal coordinator of a ‘kill list’… overseeing drone strikes by the military and the C.I.A.”—see here and here.

Good for the goose but not for the gander?

Indeed, the Brennan-orchestrated campaign spanned large swathes of the globe—including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, comprising around an estimated 14,000 strikes. Of course, unlike the targeted killing of Fakhrizadeh, which resulted in little to no collateral damage, the US drone strike caused significant civilian casualties—with estimates ranging from just under a 1000 to just over 2000 fatalities, including hundreds of children—and leaving thousands injured.

Indeed, according to one BBC report, local residents stated that they were more afraid of the US drones than they were of the terrorists, who the drones targeted—also see here. Indeed, Amnesty International designated the US extrajudicial killings as unlawful—some of which might even be considered war crimes. Moreover, as for the efficacy of the drone campaign, many see the collateral damage wrought on civilians as spurring recruitment to the very terrorist groups it was designed to curtail.

Indeed, Brennan has been harshly berated by human rights organizations—much along the lines that he himself castigated the strike against Fakhrizadeh; while his integrity in accounting for the results of the drone campaign, has been gravely impugned. For example, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism asserted that Brennan’s claims regarding civilian casualties “ do not appear to bear scrutiny”; while The Atlantic was even more brusque, alleging reproachfully: “Brennan has been willing to lie about those drone strikes to hide ugly realities”. It derisively designated his assertion that: “there had been zero collateral deaths from covert U.S. drone strikes in the previous year, an absurd claim that has been decisively debunked.”

“Extraordinary & galling…”

Following his previously cited derogatory tweets, Brennan tried to differentiate his drone campaign from the targeted killing of Fakhrizadeh. Accordingly, he tweeted: “These assassinations are far different than strikes against terrorist leaders & operatives of groups like al-Qaida & Islamic State, which are not sovereign states. As illegitimate combatants under international law, they can be targeted in order to stop deadly terrorist attacks.

So, according to “Brennenesque logic”, while preemptively blowing away a “bad guy”(together with several unfortunate collateral bystanders), who was allegedly plotting to slay several hundred is completely justified; while eliminating a high ranking military figure (with zero collateral casualties),who was unquestionably planning the destruction of several million is a heinous “act of state sponsored terrorism” and “a flagrant violation of international law”.

It was with good reason that General (ret.) John “Jack” Keane, formerly Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army, took exception to Brennan’s remarks.

In a Fox News interview, he remarked tersely: “…that’s pretty extraordinary. It takes a lot of gall to say something like that in the face of what Israel is dealing with, with Iran.”

He went on to clarify: “ I mean Iran is a threat to the United States. They’ve proven it. They’ve blown up our embassies they’ve killed our soldiers in Iraq. They’ve killed thousands of us in the [last] forty years. But they are not an existential threat… They are not challenging the survival of the United States. Nuclear weapons in their hands with ballistic missiles and the continuous and repeated threat to destroy the State of Israel. Iran is an existential threat to the survival of Israel…that is why their actions are so different than ours”.

“Arrogant & Dismissive…”

With some surprise and disapproval, Keane added: “I’m stunned that a former CIA director would not recognize this level of intensity and determination for what it really is–it is to protect the security of the Israeli people.

Elsewhere, Keane robustly disputed Brennan’s earlier tweets: “I’ll take issue with … those statements… It’s the arrogance that comes out of America at times when we are so dismissive of what our allies are really dealing with…what they deal with every single day in terms of a threat. So here we have the Iranians, that for every single year for 40 years have stated that they want to destroy the State of Israel and they want nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them as the means. And they talk openly about it. But we’re just dismissing that. We’re not going to take it seriously. The Israelis shouldn’t be doing anything that could potentially lead to a “lethal reaction’. ”

So, it seems that it is not that Israel’s detractors do not recognize that states have a right to undertake actions that Israel has undertaken. It is just that that they feel that Israel should be denied that right!

If it walks like a duck… 

But surely if Jews as individuals or as a collective are denied the rights recognized for others, if individual Jews are denied the right to personal safety, and the Jewish collective is denied the right to provide itself security—is that not blatant Judeophobic discrimination?

If there is call for a unique and prejudicial standard to be applied to Jews alone—both as individuals and as a collective—then there is little choice but to conclude that what we are witnessing is not mere hypocrisy—but blatant anti-Semitism—little more than an expectation the Jews should in fact consent to die meekly.

It should be exposed as such—and treated accordingly.

©Martin Sherman. All rights reserved.

A Worst [Suit]case Scenario for Fraud

When the president touched down in Georgia on Saturday, his legal team was already on the ground. Thanks to the “smoking suitcase video,” documented irregularities, and witness testimony, the Trump campaign thinks it has more than enough evidence to challenge the state’s election results. Only this time, the team doesn’t just want a hearing — it wants a new statewide election.

“Due to significant systemic misconduct, fraud, and other irregularities occurring during the election process, many thousands of illegal votes were cast, counted, and included in the tabulations from the Contested Election for the Office of the President of the United States, thereby creating substantial doubt regarding the results of that election,” the lawsuit, filed in court on Friday, reads.

Of course, the image Democrats can’t seem to shake is the blockbuster video of four suitcases that appear to be stuffed with ballots, pulled out from under a table, and counted and scanned without election supervisors present. Regardless of how the media is trying to dismiss this story (and a simple Google search shows how desperately they’re trying), “legitimate ballots do not come in suitcases,” Rush Limbaugh pointed out, “That’s not how they are transported. That’s not how they are collected. It’s not how they are stored. They don’t come in suitcases! You don’t need to know any more than that to know something is awry here.” And yet, Democrats are still insisting there’s no evidence of fraud. “Do they even know what ‘evidence’ means? Of course they do. They’re just lying through their teeth about it.”

Republican members, like Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), were just as shocked. “This EXPLOSIVE fraud is ORGANIZED,” he tweeted. “People do not spontaneously conceal cases of ballots in a counting room to be counted later in secret. It requires money, logistics and leadership — like Stacey Abrams’s group that’s already under investigation. Who’s running this operation?”

In a state where less than 12,000 ballots separate Joe Biden and Donald Trump, this is the kind of coordinated manipulation that can sway elections. The media, meanwhile, is frantically trying to debunk the story — insisting this was a completely above-board operation (which just happened to exclude poll watchers and other Republican officials). Remember Election night, Mollie Hemingway asks? Every major news outlet was reporting that Georgia’s “ballot counters were sent home.” So what are they doing pulling out suitcases of ballots and feeding them through machines in secret?

That’s something the Trump legal team wants to get to the bottom of — along with a laundry list of other problems and irregularities, several of which would more than close the 12,000-vote gap. According to Trump’s legal team:

“Data experts also provided sworn testimony in the lawsuit identifying thousands of illegal votes: 2,560 felons; 66,247 underage voters, 2,423 votes from people not registered; 1,043 individuals registered at post office boxes; 4,926 individuals who voted in Georgia after registering in another state; 395 individuals who voted in two states; 15,700 votes from people who moved out of state before the election; 40,279 votes of people who moved without reregistering in their new county; and another 30,000 to 40,000 absentee ballots lacking proper signature matching and verification.”

Is it any wonder the media is having a tough time selling its “fair and honest election” headlines? Politico, one of the outlets on the ground in Georgia, was stunned at how many Americans still don’t believe the election results. Reporter James Arkin said they’d talked to more than two dozen voters, and “not a single person told Politico they thought Joe Biden had won the election.” This was mind-boggling to Arkin, who pointed out that there’d been a recount in Georgia and other states.

But frankly, America’s misgivings shouldn’t surprise anyone. Voters saw how Democrats abused the process in the name of COVID, how they twisted and changed election laws without legislatures’ consent. Trust in the system was at a record low well before Election Day. There was a time, the president told the crowd Saturday night, when “I used to say, ‘Without borders, we don’t have a country.’ I can also say that without an honest voting system, without an electoral process that’s honest and fair, we don’t have a country either.” Which is why, the president said, “Now is not the time to retreat. Now is the time to fight harder than before.”


Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.


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