Coverup

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President Joe Biden (D) was squirreling away classified documents in the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement while he was sitting in our nation’s Vice President chair. The Penn Biden Center is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, a university with close funding ties to the Communist Party of China. It turns out that now-President Biden’s administration—in particular, his Attorney General Merrick Garland (D)—had known about this for some time (I’m eliding the fact that Biden himself has known about his classified document squirreling for the several years since he started it and has chosen to not disclose that).

Just two weeks earlier, Biden’s lawyers disclosed to government lawyers on November 2—just six days before the midterm elections—that they had found sensitive government documents with classified markings inside an office that Biden used at the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington after he left office as Barack Obama’s vice president.

Two weeks earlier: Garland had announced on 18 November that he had named a special prosecutor to investigate former-President Donald Trump’s (R) handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

The Biden administration covered up Biden’s mishandling of classified documents until after the mid-term elections. It’s only coming out now because Biden’s mishandling can no longer influence the mid-terms, and it’s only coming out now in an effort to dilute its impact on the Presidential election in two years.

This is another example of the way Progressive-Democrats reign over our nation.

More Censorship

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Meta, the owner of Facebook, is expanding its censorship practice.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said Monday that they will be taking down posts that support the raids of Brazilian government buildings by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

And it was preplanned:

“In advance of the election, we designated Brazil as a temporary high-risk location and have been removing content calling for people to take up arms or forcibly invade Congress, the Presidential palace and other federal buildings,” a spokesperson for Meta said in a statement reported by Reuters.
“We are also designating this as a violating event, which means we will remove content that supports or praises these actions,” the statement continued. “We are actively following the situation and will continue removing content that violates our policies.

All because Mark Zuckerberg disapproves of opinions different from his own. And he’s proud of his censorship.

The correct answer to distasteful, even despicable, rhetoric—Facebook posts or otherwise—is answering rhetoric that makes the differing case. Merely censoring, deleting, canceling rhetoric is either laziness or cowardice. Or both.

Is it True?

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There’s a view, widely spread and spreading, that members of the Progressive-Democratic Party and their Leftist supporters don’t like America very much.

Then something happened Saturday morning during newly elected Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s (R, CA) acceptance speech. He said he was going to reopen the Capitol Building, which sits on Capitol Hill and holds both houses of Congress.

“My friends—this chamber is now fully open for all Americans,” he said, which was met with thunderous applause from Republicans. Democrats in the chamber remained silent.

That’s not dispositive, but it is strongly indicative. Where was—where is—the Left’s and their Party’s enthusiasm for welcoming us average Americans into our own house, and in which those we elect to represent us…work for us?

A State Supreme Court Justice Didn’t Mince Words

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In TWISM Enterprises v State Board of Registration, TWISM, an engineering company, sued Ohio’s Board of Registration over being denied a contract to provide engineering services to the State of Ohio. The Regulators had denied the contract on the grounds that Ohio’s engineers must be employees of the State. Never mind that the applicable Ohio law requires no such thing. Per The Wall Street Journal‘s editors,

The court ruled 7-0 that the regulatory board had essentially rewritten Ohio law by insisting that anyone providing engineering services must be an employee, and not an independent contractor. The statute says no such thing, and the court ruled for the company.

Justice Patrick DeWine expanded on that in the ruling, as he wrote and was joined by three more of the seven:

[He] swept away competing lines of previous Ohio deference cases to make clear that “the judicial branch is never required to defer to an agency’s interpretation of the law.” The agency’s view “is simply one consideration a court may sometimes take into account in rendering the court’s own independent judgment as to what the law is,” he writes.

Never required. Court’s own independent judgment. What he, and they, said.

Rules and Defense Spending Cuts

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The House—in particular, the majority Republicans—along with too many so-called defense journalists are having trouble with a rule that potentially leads to defense spending cuts, a particular anathema in today’s environment of a Russia at war and a People’s Republic of China threatening war.

However, the fact is defense spending has always been vulnerable to cuts, particularly by the Progressive-Democratic Party and its predecessor Democratic Party. The proposed rule just makes the potential explicitly stated. But it does not mandate defense spending cuts; it mandates spending cuts in one (or more) places if there are to be spending increases in other places. Quoting from the proposed rules:

Initiatives to Reduce Spending and Improve Accountability. Subsection (a)(1) replaces current “pay-as-you-go” requirements with “cut-as-you- go” requirements. The provision prohibits consideration of a bill, joint resolution, conference report, or amendment that has the net effect of increasing mandatory spending within a five-year or ten-year budget window. This provision continues the current practice of counting multiple measures considered pursuant to a special order of business which directs the Clerk to engross the measures together after passage for purposes of compliance with the rule and provides a mechanism for addressing “emergency” designations.

And

Subsection (e)(2) establishes a point of order against consideration of a bill or joint resolution reported by a committee (other than the Committee on Appropriations) or an amendment thereto, or a conference report thereon, which has the net effect of increasing direct spending in excess of $2,500,000,000 for any of the four consecutive 10 fiscal year periods beginning with the first fiscal year that is 10 fiscal years after the current fiscal year. The levels of net increases in direct spending shall be determined based on estimates provided by the chair of the Committee on the Budget.

And

Spending Reduction Amendments in Appropriations Bills. Subsection (f) provides for spending reduction account transfer amendments and requires a spending reduction account section to be included in all general appropriations bills.

There’s nothing in there that mandates cuts in defense spending. All spending, though, needs to be up for discussion in light of the current Progressive-Democratic Party-driven economic condition of our nation, as Freedom Caucus Founder, Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH) has pointed out. That I—and lots of others—disagree with not continuing to increase defense spending in these parlous times simply means that we need to make our case instead of relying on inertia to carry it. And refreshing the case is entirely good.

In the event, the rules package was passed without significant change.

The rules as proposed can be read here.