Military Veterans and Patriots

Category: Politics

  • The Festivus Report 2024

    The Festivus Report 2024

    The Festivus Report 2024

    Happy Festivus! From Senator Rand Paul

    How is 2024 already wrapping up? It feels like we blinked, and history dumped a year’s worth of plot twists on us. Donald Trump dodged two assassination attempts, Vice President Kamala Harris ousted President Biden from the presidential race last minute only to fail spectacularly, the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris captured global attention with a brilliant display of breakdancing from our friends in Australia, and November handed control of Congress to the Republicans. Yet, even amid these seismic events, one issue remained unchanged—the ever-mounting national debt.

    Last Festivus, we bemoaned the national debt nearing $34 trillion. In just a year, Washington’s career politicians and bureaucrats have managed to push it beyond $36 trillion—unsurprisingly, with hardly a second thought.

    Who’s to blame for our crushing national debt? Everybody. This year, members of both political parties in Congress voted for massive spending bills, filled with subsidies for underperforming industries, continued military aid to Ukraine, and controversial climate initiatives. As Congress spends to reward its favored pet projects, the American taxpayers are forced to pay through high prices and crippling interest rates.

    The same big spenders teamed up, yet again, to continue sending Americans’ hard-earned money to foreign countries, funding endless wars, all while STILL ignoring our wide-open southern border.

    And our mountain of debt will continue to pile even higher. The Congressional Budget Office predicts we will add an average of $2.1 trillion in debt annually for the next decade. According to a July House Budget Committee Report, the U.S. government will add over $6.4 billion of debt every single day for the next ten years, borrowing over $268 million every hour, $4.5 million every minute, and over $74,401 every second.

    This year, I am highlighting a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12. That’s over $1 trillion in government waste, including things like ice-skating drag queens, a $12 Million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082 on Ukrainian influencers, and more! No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.

    As always, taking the path to fiscal responsibility is often a lonely journey, but I’ve been fighting government waste like DOGE before DOGE was cool. And I will continue my fight against government waste this holiday season.

    So, before we get to the Feats of Strength, it’s time for my Airing of (spending) Grievances!

    I have a lot of problems with federal spending, and now it’s time to hear all about them.

    I attempted to cut, copy and paste the itemized list. Success was not mine so I performed a screen shot of the pages.

  • The Most Important Revelation About Gaza Casualties

    The Most Important Revelation About Gaza Casualties

    The Most Important Revelation About Gaza Casualties

    Seth Mandel for Commentary.org

    The headlines about an essential new study by the Henry Jackson Societyfocus on the fact that the casualty numbers out of Gaza have been “inflated.” And that is true, and important. But more important is howthose numbers have been inflated, and which casualties this effect applies to.

    HJS’s Andrew Fox spearheaded the rigorous study, and provided a great public service in doing so. It is now incontestable—though it was evident already—that Hamas has lied. But this report implicates the Western press and politicians in ways that may be uncomfortable to face. Regardless, face them we must.

    Let’s jump right to the point. At the beginning of the war, Hamas Ministry of Health statistics on fatalities were the only regular source of data on the subject and were mainly supplied by hospital officials. A couple of months into the war, a second source became regularly available: official family reporting of loved ones lost. These require eventual verification because they are tied to government benefits due the bereaved families.

    At some point, hospital records were disrupted by the effects of the war and Hamas began changing its methods of collecting the data to less reliable, less scientific, and less reviewable ways.

    Can you guess what happened? Sure you can.

    At the beginning, both Hamas and family reporting found that military-aged males constituted a similar share of casualties. When Hamas changed its counting methods, those numbers diverged significantly.

    Can you guess which one matched the trendlines from before the divergence? Of course you can.

    The family reports remained statistically consistent and the Hamas numbers went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

    From April to August of this year, the report states that, according to Hamas hospital numbers, 45 percent of those killed were men and 37 percent were children. According to the more reliable family reports, men were 64 percent of casualties and children were 22 percent.

    Except, “children” generally means under 18 and Hamas has been known to tweak it to 19. Which means we know for a fact a chunk of that 22 percent were combatants. Some of those combatants were children, some weren’t. The fact that Hamas uses child soldiers actually benefited the terror group in the media narrative, because the numbers never distinguish between civilians and combatants, and news consumers don’t read “children” and assume “combatants.” The press was broadly complicit in normalizing and incentivizing the use of child soldiers, a fact that should stain many reputations forever.

    But wait, there’s more. The report notes that Hamas—and thus the press—includes natural deaths in the casualty count. There were more than 5,000 natural deaths in that time, by conservative estimate.

    But wait, there’s even more. A review of the first 1,000 names on Hamas’s casualty list between the beginning of the war and the summertime found more than 100—that is, 10 percent—had their ages revised downward. In other words, between the time that Hamas numbers could be plausibly verified and the more recent counts, lots of people suddenly became “children.”

    But wait, there’s still more. Gaza casualty numbers include those killed by Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups. Remember the al-Ahli hospital blast that was reported initially as a Israel’s fault, only to become clear soon after that it was an errant Palestinian rocket (likely from Palestinian Islamic Jihad)? Those deaths still get reported today by the press as caused by Israel because they are included in the casualty numbers—as are, if you can believe it, all Gazans murdered by Hamas security forces during the war.

    But wait, there still even more. Cancer patients, the report shows, were listed as war fatalities by Hamas while still also being listed as alive and receiving treatment in Israel or some other treatment center outside Gaza.

    Two main conclusions. First, once you drop the natural deaths, approximate the numbers of those killed by Hamas or other Palestinian groups, and adjust the demographic numbers to fit the actual family reports, you end up with about as many militants killed as civilians. In an urban environment with the Hamas soldiers stationed among civilians, this means Israel’s civilian-combatant ratio is not just low but unheard of.

    Second, much of the reporting and commentary has framed this war as a “war on Palestinian children.” It’s a convenient reanimation of a classic blood libel, and it is demonstrably a lie. I don’t think anyone using the “Israel is murdering Palestinian children” talking point was never interested in statistical accuracy, but it is important that the rest of society is aware of the level of deception being practiced by those who propagate it.

  • An Israeli alliance with Druze and Kurds

    An Israeli alliance with Druze and Kurds

    An Israeli alliance with Druze and Kurds

    By: Joseph Puder on American Thinker

    Being the only Jewish state in the Middle East, and in the world, Israel has always sought natural allies among a sea of Muslim Arabs.  In Syria today, the opportunity to forge a natural alliance exists — with two minority groups who are seeking an alliance with Israel.

    Each of these two communities has a particular identity that stands out from the majority–Sunni Muslim Arab majority.  The Kurdish community, who, ethnically, are not Arabs, represent more than 10% of Syria’s population.  The other community are the Druze.  Though Arabs by ethnicity, they are not considered Muslims.  In the secretive Druze religion, they consider Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, the major prophet.  Many among the Muslim majority view the Druze as “infidels.”

    These two communities reside in different geographic areas.  The Kurds occupy a large swath of Syrian territory in northeast Syria, estimated to be about 40% of Syria’s territory.  The majority of Druze are to be found in an enclave around “Jabal Druze,” the Druze Mountains in southwestern Syria, close to the Israeli Golan Heights.

    Israel has had a long history of support for the Kurds, especially those in Iraq, with Israelis fully identifying with the Kurdish people’s struggle for self-determination and statehood.  In the early 1960s, Mullah Mustafa al-Barzani, the legendary Iraqi Kurdish freedom fighter and Kurdish military leader, was trained in Israel.  Barzani sought to create an independent Kurdish nation for the approximate 40 million Kurds living on the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.

    Without being a sovereign in their historical homeland and able to protect the Jewish people, Jews suffered persecution, pogroms, and eventually the Holocaust until, after over two millennia, Israel was established in 1948.  It is therefore natural for Israelis to have empathy for the Kurdish people.  Reuters reported on September 13, 2017 that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Israel supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve their own state.”  On October 10, 2019, Netanyahu once again issued a statement, declaring, “Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies.  Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.”  On November 10, 2024, the newly installed Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, emphasized the importance of forging a “natural alliance” with the Kurdish nation.

    The Turks, the Iranians, and the Arab regimes of Iraq and Syria share little, except a unifying desire to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state.  Turkey and Iran, in particular, have been aggressively persecuting their Kurdish populations.  The major ambition of Turkey’s Erdoğan is to impede any manifestation of Kurdish independence or even any autonomous status in Syria.

    Erdoğan has trained and financed the rebel groups that ended the Bashar Assad regime’s control of Syria.  While the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS) focused on capturing Aleppo, Hama, Hums, and Damascus, Erdoğan’s proxy, the National Syrian Army (NSA), focused on killing Kurds and conquering Kurdish-majority communities in northern Syria.

    Israel has a security and strategic stake in an alliance with the Kurds in Iraq and Syria (as well as supporting the Kurds in Iran) and the Druze community in Syria.  Strong alliances with these minorities would create a barrier against any future attempts by Iran and its Shiite Iraqi militias attempting to infiltrate Syria and link up with Hezb’allah.

    A prominent Syrian-Kurdish leader friend of this writer has correctly commented to me that, although words of support from Israeli government officials are nice, the Kurds need action.  The Kurds want an alliance with Israel, and they want military assistance.  I responded by noting that although it had been difficult for Israel to aid the Kurds militarily, given the close military relations Israel had with the Turkish army and intelligence apparatus, Erdoğan’s openly hostile declarations clearly indicate him as a declared enemy of Israel.  As a result, this has changed the calculations in Jerusalem, and Israel is now prepared to render military assistance to the Kurds.

    An alliance with the Druze is much easier, given the proximity of the Golan Heights to the Druze villages in southern Syria.  The U.K. Telegraph reported on December 14, 2024 that “the residents of a Druze community in southern Syria have expressed a desire to become part of Israel to prevent assaults by ‘radical Islamists.’”

    These Druze villagers remained loyal to the Assad regime to the end.  As a minority, they were always watching their backs, and now they fear retribution from the Sunni jihadist rebels who have taken over Syria.  In terms of the bigger picture for the Druze, they would like to be granted an autonomous status in southwestern Syria, realizing that an independent Druze state is unrealistic.  Given the weight of the Israeli Druze community, and the prestige and affection the Jewish majority gives them, Syrian Druze feel compelled to choose sides.  Their fear of jihadist rule and the prospect of joining with their fellow Druze in Israel under the Israeli Defense Forces umbrella make for an easy choice.

    A Christian-Lebanese friend of this author recently told me that “Israel must become the protector of the minorities in the Middle East.”  He had in mind not only the Kurds and the Druze, but also the Christians of Lebanon and Syria.  Although it is a tribute to Israel’s recent military victories, which has projected Israel as the “strong horse” in the region, those objectives might be far beyond Israel’s resources.  Still, an alliance with the Kurds and the Druze in Syria has considerable merit.

    I am going to leave any commentary to those (looking at our editor) with more background knowledge on said groups.

  • The World Paid a Steep Price for Biden’s Decline

    The World Paid a Steep Price for Biden’s Decline

    The World Paid a Steep Price for Biden’s Decline

    Seth Mandel. for Commentary.org

    Back in 2016, Tevi Troy wrote a book called Shall We Wake the President? The title references Hillary Clinton’s campaign ads asking whether she or her opponent should be the one to answer 3 a.m. phone calls at the White House. But aides to the current president had a bigger challenge: “Shall we wake the president” was a 24-hour riddle.

    The Wall Street Journal’s report on Biden’s presidential hibernation adds to what we know in two crucial ways. First, it tells us that Biden wasn’t up to the job on day one, let alone day 1,000. Second, the reporters provide us with examples of how global conflicts were affected by the White House staff’s cover-up of the president’s condition.

    In the early months of Biden’s term, advisers “noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.” From then on, they ordered, one-on-one time with Biden would be limited in time and scope even when it came to “powerful lawmakers and allies.”

    That meant the global crises that arose during Biden’s presidency were dealt with by reducing the flow of information to and from the president—a recipe for disaster. In 2021, the first such disaster struck: the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    Rep. Adam Smith, “a Democrat who then chaired the powerful House Armed Services Committee, was alarmed by what he viewed as overly optimistic comments from Biden as the administration assembled plans for the operation,” the Journal reports. So he tried to get a word with the president, to no avail. In the event, 13 Americans and 170 Afghans were killed in the clumsy and ill-conceived operation.

    Yet the administration had the temerity to scold Smith when the congressman criticized the withdrawal.

    Smith, as well as Democrat Jim Himes, who led the Intelligence Committee, both told the Journal they had interacted far more with Barack Obama during Obama’s presidency despite the fact that neither were committee chairs at the time.

    Rather than being an anomaly that was quickly corrected, the Afghanistan pullout set the course for the administration’s handling of foreign affairs.

    In fact, as the president’s condition worsened, he needed more time, not less, with key Cabinet secretaries. But because a coverup was in place, the White House went in the opposite direction.

    For the first two years of the term, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin attended the president’s briefings weekly, and then would meet Biden one-on-one afterward. “But in the past two years—a period when the wars in Ukraine and Gaza demanded the president’s attention—Austin’s invitation to the briefing came less frequently, to the point where the one-on-one meeting was seldom scheduled.”

    The Journal then drops the revelation that from that point on, one-on-one meetings (already rare) were not in person but “were more typically virtual meetings.” Which means the meeting wasn’t really one-on-one, doesn’t it? Nor is there any expectation that a president who can’t pay attention in person will be productive in a Zoom setting, presumably with aides within earshot, further splintering his attention.

    This means, above all, that most people stopped seeing the president entirely.

    There was a land war in Europe, Americans were taken hostage in Gaza after dozens of Americans were among the 1,200 killed in Hamas’s brutal rampage. And yet, the president was stored away in some utility closet somewhere.

    Meanwhile, we can gather more information about his handling of foreign-policy crises from the details regarding his reelection campaign—which went on as planned, despite everything, until the president imploded in public: “Biden’s pollsters didn’t meet with him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting the data that they were sending him, according to the people.”

    He didn’t know he was on pace to lose in a landslide because, apparently, no one told him. At some point, his reelection campaign looks more like elder abuse than anything else.

    It also tracks with what the Journal reported about Biden’s insulation from criticism more broadly: “Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president.”

    We don’t know exactly which stories those were, but we know the president’s aides were avoiding giving him bad news. Did Biden even know what was really happening on the ground in Ukraine? When the administration froze the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza for months, dooming a number of the hostages and allowing Hamas to regroup and thus prolonging the war, who was responsible for that freeze? Who tried to hit “pause” on reality like it was Netflix? And if the president was the one who made that call, what kind of information was he going on?

    The fact that we have to ask the questions at all, as well as the fact that we know we won’t get answers until the administration leaves office and the subpoenas start flying, is perhaps enough of an answer to know that the world paid a dear price to protect the fragile mental state of the American president.

  • Three Russia Hoax Bombshells Hidden In IG Report On DOJ Surveillance Of Congress

    Three Russia Hoax Bombshells Hidden In IG Report On DOJ Surveillance Of Congress

    Three Russia Hoax Bombshells Hidden In IG Report On DOJ Surveillance Of Congress

    BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY  DECEMBER 17, 2024

    These revelations show why the DOJ needs massive reform in the next administration.

    Last week the Department of Justice’s inspector general released a report on some of the DOJ’s tracking of communications from media and congressional figures as part of its purported investigation into who was leaking classified information against President Donald Trump in 2017. Three significant bombshells about the Russia collusion hoax were hidden inside the dense and dry 100-page report.

    For context, when Trump won the 2016 presidential election, anonymous Democrat operatives in the federal government and Congress began leaking like sieves as part of a coordinated effort to paint Trump as a mastermind spy who had worked with Russian President Vladimir Putin for decades in order to steal the election.

    Two Washington Post stories, a New York Times story, and a CNN story were all found to have included classified information. None of the four stories are specified in the report, but they all appeared in the first half of President Trump’s first year in office. 

    The first Washington Post story is likely the April 2017 story by Ellen Nakashima, Devlin Barrett, and Adam Entous revealing that DOJ had gotten a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Carter Page, a Trump affiliate. The true story of that warrant would end up revealing the corruption of the DOJ, including how it falsified evidence in its application and relied on the laughable Steele dossier as the basis. 

    But at the time of its publication, the FISA story suggested that an honorable DOJ had serious reason to suspect the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia to steal the election.

    As outlandish and unhinged as the conspiracy theory was, it was fueled with daily drops of classified and deceptively packaged information designed to make it appear legitimate. The corporate media dutifully regurgitated, published, and aired the leaks as part of their campaign against the Republican president. 

    Nakashima, Barrett, and Entous were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their perpetuation of the Russia collusion hoax in this and other stories. The leaks, which threatened national security and were intended to get Trump removed from office, threw the White House into chaos.

    For years, polling has indicated that most Democrats continued to cling to the conspiracy theory as an explanation for Trump’s first presidential victory. The leakers have never been brought to justice.

    Bombshell #1: A Democrat Whistleblower Identified Schiff, Swalwell As Leakers

    One of the more surprising claims in the report was that a Democrat staffer on one of the congressional committees “voluntarily told the FBI” almost immediately after the investigation began in 2017 that he suspected two members of Congress and a number of Democrat staffers of being involved in the leaking of the classified information, leading to further investigation of those identified.

    While the report doesn’t identify the whistleblower, his committee, or name the members of Congress, a 2021 New York Times story already identified then-Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both of California, as the two congressmen on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) who were under investigation. 

    The DOJ report further notes that only these two members of Congress were investigated. Schiff was the top Democrat on HPSCI at the time its Republican chair Devin Nunes was engaged in painstaking efforts to reveal the Russia collusion hoax and many of its participants.

    Both Schiff and Swalwell were notorious for going on left-wing media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC to push the Russia conspiracy theory. Schiff, now California’s junior senator, lied publicly for years about the matter, falsely claiming to have secret evidence substantiating the hoax. Schiff was widely suspected of leaking information to his allies in the press, or otherwise misrepresenting information from the committee. 

    Swalwell, for his part, famously had an intimate relationship with Communist Chinese spy “Fang Fang,” who had targeted him and other Democrats as part of a honey-trap operation. Despite these serious problems, both men served on HPSCI until former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy removed them in early 2023.

    The whistleblower told the FBI he “suspected that Member 1 had previously leaked classified information and that Member 2 wanted to influence public opinion via the release of classified information.” However, the FBI said the whistleblower didn’t offer enough “direct evidence” of the suspected leaking.

    The DOJ itself would go on to stonewall Nunes and Senate colleagues who were attempting to investigate DOJ’s lead role in the Russia collusion scam. Many of the top leadership at the FBI, including former Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, were later unveiled as some of the worst leakers in government and leaders of the Russia collusion hoax. While they were removed from office, the Biden administration later paid some of them off.

    Bombshell #2: A Top Democrat Staffer Was Caught Communicating With Three Reporters Who Published the Classified Info He Had Access To, But FBI Didn’t Think It Meant Much

    The IG report says the whistleblower identified a top Democrat “staffer from the same committee” as a potential leaker. The report notes that DOJ “focused its investigation on the Senior Committee Staffer as the potential source of the leak” and that beyond being identified by the whistleblower, he was someone they “suspected of being the source of the unauthorized disclosure for other reasons as well.”

    The DOJ was so interested in rooting out leaks of classified information, however, that it waited three full years to interview their main suspect and only after Attorney General Bill Barr apparently caused the investigation to be re-opened in 2020. One almost gets the sense that the DOJ wasn’t super-interested in stopping leaks that fed the Russia collusion hoax they ran.

    The IG report doesn’t name the senior staffer, but another 2021 New York Times story identifies the suspected leaker. “[T]he leak investigation appeared to have been primarily focused on Michael Bahar, then a staff member on the House Intelligence Committee,” Russia collusion hoaxers Michael S. Schmidt and Charlie Savage wrote. “It remains unclear whether agents were pursuing a theory that Mr. Bahar had leaked on his own or whether they suspected him of talking to reporters with the approval of lawmakers. Either way, it appears they were unable to prove their suspicions that he was the source of any unauthorized disclosures; the case has been closed, and no charges were brought.”

    It’s unclear if the DOJ was unable or, perhaps more likely, unwilling to go after participants in the Russia collusion hoax it helped run.

    The IG report reveals that “[r]ecords showed that the Senior Committee Staffer visited the room where the classified material was made available to Members of Congress and congressional staff (Read Room) on at least one and possibly two occasions in early 2017, while still working for the committee.” 

    DOJ obtained his phone records and learned that they “showed that immediately before accessing the Read Room and continuing through shortly after publication of the articles containing the relevant classified information, the Senior Committee Staffer’s phone number was in contact with telephone numbers used by all three of the reporters who authored the articles that disclosed the classified information.”

    Well, that seems like a big deal. But the senior staffer had the perfect alibi, at least in the view of our trusty FBI investigators. He explained to them that if they looked at more of his phone records, they’d see that he had been yakking it up with two of the three reporters long before they published the classified info he had access to.

    They discovered that he had been talking to these reporters for a long time and therefore they … decided to drop the investigation with no charges. I’m sure that this explanation would have passed muster with the FBI if it were offered by a Republican.

    Incidentally, the report keeps asserting the whistleblower had little foundation for his suspicions. In one case, he said he thought some individuals might be using their spouse’s phone to contact the media. 

    And in a December 2017 interview, he said he “overheard the Senior Committee Staffer tell other staffers that the Senior Committee Staffer would use their spouse’s cell phone to make calls, which the Committee Witness believed was intended to conceal the Senior Committee Staffer’s activity. However, the Committee Witness later admitted that they had little foundation for the belief that the Senior Committee Staffer used their spouse’s phone.”

    Hunh? First off, the IG report said that in addition to the whistleblower’s claims, “the DOJ had other indicators that the Senior Committee Staffer and his spouse used each other’s accounts” and later reiterated they had “indicators that the Senior Committee Staffer and their spouse sometimes used each other’s accounts.” 

    Did the whistleblower later deny his own claim about what he heard the senior staffer tell people? Or is the DOJ simply dismissing eyewitness testimony it wished didn’t exist as having “little foundation?”

    Bombshell #3: DOJ Spied On As Many Republicans As Democrats When Investigating Democrat Leaks

    The IG report shows a surprisingly high number of congressional staff had their communications monitored secretly by the DOJ as part of the investigation into who was leaking classified information to hurt Republicans. A look into who the DOJ was monitoring suggests the investigation was never done in good faith.

    Of the 43 congressional staffers who were monitored, 21 worked for Democrats and 20 worked for Republicans. Another two worked in nonpartisan positions.

    At the time that the leak investigation began, Republicans on the HPSCI were famously battling against the Russia collusion conspiracy theory while Democrats were loudly pushing it. Yet the investigators decided that they’d surveil Republicans and Democrats equally because the lead career prosecutor said “because the leakers’ motivations are unknown, prosecutors must explore all possibilities and cannot assume political motives one way or the other.” This career prosecutor added that the Carter Page FISA story “was a good example of that principle because both parties had potential political motivations to leak the information.” 

    In fact, the Carter Page FISA story was transparently designed to cast suspicion on Carter Page, and by extension, the entire Trump campaign, as being Russian agents. Not a single rational person in the world thought that the leak came from the Republicans on HPSCI or other committees trying to get the truth of the Russia collusion hoax out.

    The decision to use the leak investigation as a pretext to dig into those Republican staffers’ communications instead of tenaciously targeting Democrat leakers or taking the deluge of leaks from the DOJ itself seriously is a great example of why the DOJ needs massive reform in the next administration.

  • House Refers Dizzy Lizzie For Prosecution

    House Refers Dizzy Lizzie For Prosecution

    The House Oversight committee released its interim report on all things J6 and it’s not good news for Liz Cheney.

    Among other things, including the fact that the whole incident could have been prevented, the report said Cheney tampered with witnesses. Witness tampering is a felony and can carry a sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

    The report specifically mentioned Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Mark Meadows. Cheney repeatedly had communications with Hutchinson via an encrypted app while the investigation was in full swing. You probably remember that Hutchinson was the one who testified that Trump tried to grab the wheel of the Beast while the riot was going on.

    “The Federal Bureau of Investigation must also investigate Representative Cheney for violating 18 U.S.C. 1622, which prohibits any person from procuring another person to commit perjury,” the report said. ”Based on the evidence obtained by this Subcommittee, Hutchinson committed perjury when she lied under oath to the Select Committee.”

  • Control Freaks Use

    Control Freaks Use

    Control Freaks Use Brian Thompson Murder To Peddle ‘Ghost Gun’ Bans

    More laws couldn’t have stopped the crime and won’t stop people from making their own weapons.

    J.D. Tuccille. for Reason.com

    Ammunition cartridges of various calibers are printed from a 3D printer. | Miriam Doerr | Dreamstime.com

    (Miriam Doerr | Dreamstime.com)

    The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has renewed the debate over “ghost guns,” according to some news reports. More accurately, the usual control freaks are using the killing as a convenient hook on which to hang their authoritarian arguments. While there’s plenty to find horrifying in this crime, that alleged murderer Luigi Mangione made his weapon using a 3D printer isn’t one of them, no matter that a few people see in the act an opportunity to advance restrictive legislation.

    “The homemade handgun and suppressor that police say was used in last week’s killing of a UnitedHealthcare executive is intensifying the debate over the growing presence of such firearms in the U.S.,” Cameron McWhirter, Jacob Gershman, and John West reported for The Wall Street Journal.

    “The Maine Gun Safety Coalition is asking state lawmakers to ban ghost guns after an untraceable firearm was used by the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter,” added AnnMarie Hilton of the Maine Morning Star.

    Hilton clarified that “firearms known as ‘ghost guns’ do not have a serial number as they are usually constructed at home with a kit or with the assembly of separate pieces. They could also be made with a 3D printer.”

    ‘Ghost Guns’: Misunderstood and Resistant to Regulation

    Mentions of 3D-printed firearms seem to set people off, as if printers spit out guns like Star Trek replicators. So does the word “kit,” creating the impression that people go on Amazon, order packages of gun parts, and assemble working firearms as if they’re putting together flat-packed shelving units. I ran into that misconception when I showed a home-built AR-15 to friends. They asked, “So you just put together a kit?” and were astonished to learn the project required drilling and milling in my workshop.

    Kits package together some unregulated parts. But the mechanism that makes a gun go “bang” is regulated and must either pass through the same channels as a commercially manufactured firearm or else be constructed from scratch or from unfinished blanks. That’s not necessarily difficult, but it means there’s really no magic legislative wand that can be waved to make DIY guns disappear.

    After the high-profile assassination of a political figure in 2022, Reuters’ Ju-min Park and Daniel Leussink reported, “the man suspected of killing former Japanese premier Shinzo Abe with a hand-made gun on Friday could have made the weapon in a day or two after obtaining readily available materials such as wood and metal pipes, analysts say. The attack showed gun violence cannot be totally eliminated even in a country where tough gun laws mean it is nearly unheard of for citizens to buy or own firearms.”

    The weapon the assassin used in Japan was a crude but effective two-shot firearm that looked more like an old-fashioned zip gun than the 3D-printed pistol used to kill Thompson. But while not pretty, it was just as effective.

    In 2019, TheFirearmBlog published a retrospective pointing out that during the zip gun heyday in the 1950s, “a mechanically inclined youngster might upon obtaining ammunition, most often widely available .22 rimfire, find that such rounds will fit into a section of suitably sized steel tubing, often a section of the salvaged car radio antenna. From then on it is a simple matter of fabricating a means of striking the rear of the cartridge while ensuring the entire assembly is held firmly together.” The article included photographs of homemade firearms discovered in the tightly controlled confines of prisons, crafted by inmates from found materials including pipes and plumbing fittings.

    DIY Guns Have Existed as Long as Firearms

    A 2018 Small Arms Survey report on improvised and craft-produced weapons noted that such “weapons have been manufactured for as long as firearms have existed, typically by hand or in small workshops.” Among the weapons manufactured by craft producers, the authors noted, are “mortars, recoilless guns, and grenade launchers.”

    Revisiting the subject last year in the context of Europe, Small Arms Survey noted that evolving technologies make it much easier to share plans for privately manufactured firearms and to create sophisticated devices at home without specialized skills.

    “If production technologies continue to improve and proliferate, [privately made firearms] will increasingly erode the effectiveness of export controls and other key elements of national and international small arms control regimes, and may eventually pose an existential threat to these regimes,” warned the authors.

    The production technologies referenced in the report included 3D printing, as well as CNC machining, in which computer programs guide tools. But at least as important is the internet itself, which allows enthusiasts to share designs, techniques, and experience. That eases the development of plans for sophisticated firearms that are highly resistant to government restrictions.

    In September, Lizzie Dearden and Thomas Gibbons-Neff wrote for The New York Times about the worldwide proliferation of designs for the FGC-9, a partially 3D-printed weapon that can “be built entirely from scratch, without commercial gun parts, which are often regulated and tracked by law enforcement agencies internationally.”

    As one expert told the reporters: “Now you have something that people can make at home with unregulated components. So from a law enforcement perspective, how do you stop that?”

    You Can’t Stop the Signal

    You can’t stop that. That’s always been the motivation of those who design and build what have variously been called “improvised,” “craft-produced,” and “privately manufactured” firearms and are now referred to in the U.S. as “ghost guns.” People make their own guns because they want them and somebody in power seeks to prevent them from possessing weapons. The result has inevitably been people who arm themselves in defiance of the law, using whatever tools and materials are available.

    The murder of Brian Thompson would have been no less horrible if the weapon was a legally purchased firearm, a knife, an incendiary device, a club, or any other of the many means of destruction humans have historically wielded against one another. The fault lies with the criminal, not the tool.

    And people, being clever and defiant towards authority, will always gain access to forbidden objects that they want, including weapons. They’ll do so even if they have to manufacture them at home.

    It is never about the person using the gun. It is always the gun, as if it went out and committed the act all by its little self.

  • Out riding fences

    Out riding fences

    Was hearing a Eagles tune, hmm that it, I’ve been out riding fences to long, creatures such as Barbra, come with their own… problems, I got enough already. Some may not know what 5 degrees feels like or looks like, well now ya do, heat rising up from the water, as if she’s not cold enough as it is.

    It’s 5 degrees out here, that’s like just below warm/chilly, keep moving stay warm, or get chilly, the cold will be here soon enough walkin around you stay warm, that rabbit will be plenty warm in my belly.

    People may wonder what I think about out here in the woods, well, I don’t believe prostitution is the oldest profession, I’ll show you a couple books while keeping this in mind, how can I kill him when he’s over there while I’m way over here.

    In no uncertain terms, this person here, I got stuff to do then wonder what level of crazy she has attained

    Tosses in some history so you know I am as well informed as Kash

    That’s enough inside, back outside, see this, it’s the McCready hat, Women are the only ones who know styling, I’d be stylin while checking the trapline, not at this price!

    The Thing Custom Handmade Cowboy Hat

    $425.00 – $850.00

    Material: 5x Beaver

    Heavy Soil Trail Dust (+$95.00)

    Add a Windstring (+$25.00)

    This hat is a testament to the bravery and resourcefulness of MacReady against the terrifying creature. Ideal for fans of the movie, collectors of memorabilia, and those with a penchant for unique style. Our The Thing Custom Handmade Beaver Fur Felt Cowboy Hat is not just a hat.

    They’re right, it’s not just a hat, it’s a G’damn money pit.

    sips coffee…

    I coulda to him there’s no mermaid in those waters, some people just don’t listen

    Now excuse me, I’m call the McCready hat people and see if I can get the price lowered since I have some beaver skins layin around here doin nothin besides takin up space. They were rejected by the auction guy last Spring

  • The Real Scandal of Hunter’s Pardon

    The Real Scandal of Hunter’s Pardon

    The Real Scandal of Hunter’s Pardon

    By Ron Paul for Mises.org 12/11/2024

    Politicians and pundits spent much of last week commenting on President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter for lying on a federal gun purchase form, failing to pay taxes, and any other offenses he may have committed over the past decade. Much of the controversy is because President Biden repeatedly pledged that he would never pardon his son.

    Some have also observed that the pardon’s timeline starts the year Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukraine energy company Burisma. This has led to speculation that President Biden is trying to block any investigation into links between his son’s business dealings and President Biden’s Ukraine policy.

    What has not been widely discussed is the fact that Hunter Biden may be the only American President Biden has pardoned for violating unconstitutional federal gun and drug laws.

    Hunter Biden was convicted of lying on federal Form 4473. This is a form Americans must fill out to get federal government “permission” to purchase a firearm. Specifically, Hunter Biden gave a false answer to the question, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”

    The Second Amendment forbids the federal government from limiting the ability of any American to exercise his natural right to own a firearm. Furthermore, federal drug laws are themselves unconstitutional.

    The Constitution only creates three federal crimes: treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. All other crimes are under the jurisdiction of state and local governments. So, the required use of this form is a constitutional violation of the rights of Hunter Biden and all other Americans who are subjected to it when they seek to obtain a gun.

    Form 4473 warns Americans that “the use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.” Thus, someone could be prevented from exercising his Second Amendment right because of his activities that are perfectly legal in his state. This turns federalism on its head.

    Hunter Biden was also convicted of, and pardoned for, tax evasion and the filing of fraudulent tax returns. It is hard for anyone who values liberty to get upset at those who violate the tax laws since the income tax is a form of theft by the government of people’s hard-earned income.

    An outrage of Hunter Biden’s pardon is President Biden’s hypocrisy. When he served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s, then-Senator Biden played a major role in getting through Congress the Brady Law that created the federal gun purchase background check system that Hunter Biden was convicted of violating. Senator Biden also was a leading drug warrior who led the fight to pass the 1994 crime bill and was a champion of mandatory minimums and other infringements of civil liberties in the name of the war on drugs. President Biden also supported hiring more IRS agents to squeeze more money from taxpayers.

    Then-Senator Biden wrote large parts of the PATRIOT Act. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Biden also led the effort to pass the unconstitutional (and disastrous) “authorization for use of military force” against Iraq.

    President Biden should spend his last month in office pardoning more Americans for violations of unconstitutional drug and gun laws. This would serve as a small gesture of atonement for a political career spent advocating policies destructive of peace, prosperity, and liberty.

    Originally published by the Ron Paul Institute.

  • Here’s Who Trump Might Nominate to Helm the ATF

    Here’s Who Trump Might Nominate to Helm the ATF

    Here’s Who Trump Might Nominate to Helm the ATF

    Matt Vespafor Townhall.com

    AP Photo/Keith Srakocic

    The new administration is coming together rapidly, certainly much faster than the first Trump presidency, where the president-elect admitted that he made some bad personnel decisions. He owed it to a lack of experience and an underestimation of the threat he faced within the Washington establishment. 

    With no election on the horizon, Mr. Trump will go all-out on many policy areas, especially regarding the border. On gun policy, the president-elect is said to be looking at Blake Masters, who unsuccessfully ran for the US Senate in Arizona during the 2022 midterms (via Semafor): 

    Blake Masters is under consideration to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for President-elect Donald Trump. 

    Masters met with the incoming president’s transition team on Thursday and is interested in helming the regulatory agency, two people familiar with the situation told Semafor. He lost two races for Congress in Arizona, this past fall and in 2022, while running as a Trump loyalist. 

    Masters was previously vying to lead the Presidential Personnel Office, as Semafor first reported. That low-profile, influential role focused on administration hiring ultimately went to Sergio Gor, the president and co-founder of Donald Trump Jr.’s publishing company. 

    […] 

    If Masters does get the nod, he won’t have an easy path in the Senate — simply due to the history of the ATF director position, which involves oversight of politically sensitive gun policies. President Joe Biden pulled his first ATF nominee, David Chipman, before his second nominee, Steve Dettelbach, was confirmed in 2022. 

    […] 

    Brandon Herrera, a gun advocate who narrowly lost a GOP primary race against Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales earlier this year, is also interested in the ATF position. He said last month he would “hack, slash, and cripple that agency in ways it could never recover from” if confirmed to the job. 

    Both would be good picks.

    Personally, I like the idea of someone who would “hack, slash, and cripple that agency in ways it could never recover from” if confirmed to the job.”