What Happens When

This is an example of what happens when President Joe Biden (D) presses his assault on our nation’s energy production industry, presses his enthusiastic destruction of our energy independence, and does his kowtowing to Russia (and to OPEC) regarding that nation’s and that cartel’s oil and natural gas production and sale.

He’s reduced the United States of America to begging other nations for energy, and those nations along with Russia are now showing their contempt for Biden’s obsequiousness.

The headline summarizes the matter.

As Oil Nears $100, Saudis Snub US, Stick to Russian Pact Amid Ukraine Crisis

And this:

Rising oil prices and fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine have created a dilemma for Saudi Arabia: help the West by pumping more crude to tame the market, or stand by a five-year-old oil alliance that is helping Moscow at the expense of Washington.
For now, the world’s largest crude exporter is sticking with Russia.

And this:

President Biden has repeatedly called on Persian Gulf producers to pump more oil to reduce gasoline prices that, for Americans, are about twice as high as they were earlier in the pandemic. Those calls have grown more urgent as oil prices have risen toward $100 a barrel….
Instead, the Saudis have said they won’t pump more than they agreed to last year as part of a deal between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia[.]

It doesn’t matter a whit to Biden that this problem wouldn’t exist if he got his Biden-Harris administration out of the way of our domestic oil and natural gas production so we could go back to being independent of our enemies and acquaintances for our energy, our economic life.

It doesn’t matter a whit to Biden that European nations’ dependence on Russia for their energy wouldn’t exist if he got his Biden-Harris administration out of the way of our domestic oil and natural gas production so we could go back to supplying Europe with oil and natural gas.

Slander

Former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin lost her slander suit against The New York Times (after the presiding judge telegraphed to the jury, while it was deliberating, that he’d set aside the jury verdict, but that’s for a story about judicial malfeasance). The Wall Street Journal‘s article centered its reporting on the premise that Palin had failed to pass the high bar reserved for celebrities and other public figures: she had to show actual malice in order to have a case, and she didn’t succeed in the judge’s opinion.

But case brings up a larger matter regarding the malice standard itself.

There’s no reason at all why some Americans should be prevented by that high bar from defending themselves against slander, while other Americans are not so prevented. The 14th Amendment to our Constitution is quite clear on this: No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The courts’ and the Court’s differential treatment of groups of Americans based solely on their social or political standing plainly violates that equal treatment clause.