Biden and His Iran Nuclear Weapons Deal

He’s still after one, one that would give the Mullahs hundreds of billions of dollars in return for their delaying, briefly, development and production of nuclear weapons. This despite the Mullahs’ avowed goal of destroying Israel, its empirical history of spending billions of dollars funding its terrorist clients and their terrorism, and the Mullahs’ current terrorism against their own subjects for those subjects’ heinous crime of protesting the Iranian government’s murder of a young woman Iranian “police” had arrested and had in police “custody” at the time of her murder.

Biden refuses to change his goal vis-à-vis that deal. Refuses to, not cannot, change. Gabriel Noronha, ex-special adviser on Iran for the State Department offered this:

Biden officials feel that to announce an end to negotiations would be admitting failure, and that snapback also signals the end to the JCPOA[.]

This is just a silly rationalization, though. It would be easy enough—and highly effective—to say words to the effect of “Worth a shot, didn’t work due to Iranian government intransigence, we’re ending negotiations.”

Acknowledging that something hasn’t worked out as planned and changing to something else is the stuff of successful business, and it’s the stuff of successful politics.

But Biden, the great Senator deal maker, is desperate for his deal. And that’s to the detriment of our national security and to that of Israel and to that of our other allies and friends.

Some Thoughts

Donald Trump Jr has posted some ideas for maintaining/protecting the freedom of speech of us American citizens that his father, former President Donald Trump (R) has for 2024. He’s on the right track….

I have some thoughts on some of them.

Regarding Section 230: Social media—Twitter, Facebook, Alphabet—have made themselves into the public square, and with their collusion with the Federal government to censor speech, they’ve made themselves arms of that same Federal government. That’s two ways, each of which alone is determinative, in which social media have demonstrated their lack of need and forfeited their “right” to protection under Section 230.

Regarding Federal dollars going to academic institutions or programs that don’t live and breathe free speech—especially unpopular speech: Not a single copper penny should be going to those things. If they’re going to censor Americans, they need to do it on their own coin.

Regarding the 7-year cooling off period for intel-related folks: Go broader. Lift the security clearances for all government officials as soon as they leave office, with this exception: the President, Vice President, Cabinet Secretaries, and Agency heads should be allowed to keep their clearances for 90 days, with no possibility of an extension, in order to arrange their library/library-like affairs.

Regarding a Digital Bill of Rights: No. Not at all. Our rights do not come from government; they come from our Creator, as our Declaration of Independence acknowledged and still acknowledges. In addition to that, we already have a Bill of Rights; it’s written into our Constitution. That Bill of Rights also is technology agnostic; digital matters are subsumed into it. Declaring an additional set specifically for digital matters, apart from my just above objection, would only dilute that extant and much more powerful set of Rights.

Fiddling While….

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg seems to be a modern day fiddler. During the…negotiations…with rail unions just concluded, Buttigieg chose to go haring off to Portugal on vacation. He also appears to have told no one of the public he was heading out: previously undisclosed trip, according to the Washington Free Beacon as cited by Fox News.

“The secretary took a long-planned personal trip from Aug. 29 to Sept. 5,” a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation told Fox News. “As usual, while traveling on personal time he remained available and engaged on urgent issues, which in this case meant multiple calls with staff and stakeholders to work on the topic of rail labor negotiations.”

“Long-planned.” Nothing so trivial as a looming transportation strike with national economic implications was to disturb his precious vacation. Phone calls, though. Because there’s no need to meet in person with the players. Vacation.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) noted the irony hypocrisy:

Rail workers just wanted a few days of paid sick leave. President Biden told them to pound sand and his Transportation Secretary vacationed in wine country[.]

And, of course, us taxpayers continued to pay Buttigieg’s his salary—he gets paid vacation, along with his paid sick leave.

What Biden’s Border Policy Has Accomplished

Here’s the flow of fentanyl into our nation that President Joe Biden (D) and his administration is so actively permitting with his No Southern Border policy. (For both graphs, Left-Click|Open-in-New-Tab to get a larger view.)Nor is the death and destruction limited to our southern border States.

Biden is permitting the attacks throughout our nation with his refusal to deal with our southern border.

Beyond that, it’s not just the Mexican drug cartels that the Biden administration is actively allowing to flood our nation with fentanyl through his policy. The cartels are getting, free-flowingly and cheaply, the precursor chemicals for manufacturing fentanyl from the People’s Republic of China.

Not only is the Biden administration refusing to secure our border—especially against the importation of this murderous drug—the Biden administration is refusing to take action against the PRC to put an end to its active role in poisoning Americans.

Government-Tech Censorship?

In his op-ed concerning social media censorship, Philip Hamburger, Columbia Law School Maurice & Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, had this:

Amid growing revelations about government involvement in social-media censorship, it’s no longer enough to talk simply about tech censorship. The problem should be understood as gov-tech censorship.

He’s on the right track, but he doesn’t take it far enough, even as he writes this:

The Biden White House has threatened tech companies and federal agencies have pressed them to censor disfavored opinions and users.

That’s the nub of the matter. It’s not gov-tech censorship; it’s Government-directed tech censorship. Nothing less.