Good. It’s good to see the House Republican leadership stick with this. Yes, it’s largely symbolic since the Senate will never convict, but when you only control one half of one branch of government, you should still do everything in your power to fight for the American people.
The House of Representatives has narrowly voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, making him the first cabinet member to face impeachment in nearly 150 years.
Many Republicans blame Mr Mayorkas for an unprecedented influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border.
Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher has had quite a week. After a controversial vote against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Gallagher made the surprise announcement that he will not be seeking reelection. The moment says a lot about where the Republican base is right now.
[…]
Impeachment is a political tool granted to the House of Representatives by the Constitution to be used against anyone in the other two branches of government. It is one of the famed “checks” that creates “balance” in our system of government. The criteria for impeachment are intentionally vague because it is a political tool — not a legal one.
Even though the Democrat majority in the Senate would never convict Mayorkas, the House Republican leadership sought to impeach Mayorkas to vent the frustration of their constituents and use the most powerful tool available to them to try to check the Executive Branch’s wonton disregard for the laws it is charged to faithfully implement.
Gallagher voted against impeaching Mayorkas and it failed by a narrow margin. Gallagher’s reasoning was sincere, but flawed. He aspires to a higher standard for impeachment that the Democrats abandoned long ago and is not appropriate for the seriousness of the border crisis and Mayorkas’ role in it.
The reaction to Gallagher’s vote from Republican voters and moderates was immediate and vicious — perhaps overly so, but reflective of the pent-up frustration and anger about Biden’s border treachery. Republican voters are looking for elected Republicans to use every tool available to fight for a secure border. We are sick and tired of watching elected Republicans latibulate when our country needs people to fight for it.
Gallagher took both barrels of that gurgling anger. Although he did not state this reaction as the reason, he announced that he will not seek reelection a couple of days after his vote. Gallagher was a rising Republican star with legitimate conservative credibility, but this singular vote has most likely ended his political career.
by Owen | 1925, 11 Feb 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
Yes, they are both too old. Imagine if the Republicans would nominate someone born after the Korean War.
According to the poll, conducted using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, 86% of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president. That figure includes 59% of Americans who think both he and former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, are too old and 27% who think only Biden is too old.
The Senate voted 67-27 Sunday afternoon to move the $95.3 billion package another step toward final passage, assembling in the chamber shortly before the Super Bowl kickoff.
The package includes $60 billion for Ukraine; $14 billion in security assistance for Israel; $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine; and $4.8 billion to support allies in the Indo-Pacific. It was stripped of border provisions last week after conservatives objected to a bipartisan border deal.
There is an open secret in corporate America regarding consultants. While business leaders will sometimes hire consultants to actually study an issue and offer unbiased advice, perhaps more often than not, consultants are hired to tell the business leaders what they want to hear. This is exactly what is happening within the redistricting case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Here is how the game is played: An executive knows they need to do something or wants to do something but either does not have support or does not want to take responsibility for the decision. The executive hires a consultant to “study” the issue and provide guidance with a wink and a nod. When the consultant miraculously comes back recommending that they do what the executive wanted, the executive can sell the decision to their bosses, employees, and customers as something “recommended by unbiased experts after rigorous study.” Consultants get paid. Executive gets what he or she wants.
When the leftists on the Wisconsin Supreme Court chose to violate the law and Constitution to throw out the legally implemented state legislative maps last year, they decided that they needed a fig leaf of legitimacy to force whatever new maps they draw. To that end, they went out and hired two consultants, Jonathan Cervas and Bernard Grofman. Both men are academics who have carved out a niche for themselves consulting on redistricting for clients all over the country. Both of these consultants will be paid $450 per hour up to $100,000 each for their work. It is a good side hustle if you can get it. The hiring process for these consultants was utterly opaque. There was no nationwide search for the best, most unbiased consultants. The leftists did not solicit input from any of the litigants in the case. There was no bidding process or price negotiation made public. We, the public, have absolutely no idea why these two consultants were selected or why we are paying them $450 per hour. The only thing we know is that the leftist court majority chose them.
The leftist court majority is getting exactly what they are paying for. In response to the court usurping the power of the Legislature and throwing out the state legislative maps, the court accepted six alternate proposals from interested parties. The six sets of maps were submitted by Legislative Republicans, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, Governor Tony Evers, Democrat plaintiffs, Senate Democrats, and a group of academic mathematicians.
Last week, accompanied by a statement heavy with meaningless academic jargon, the consultants rejected the two maps submitted by Republicans and WILL — the only two maps submitted by someone who is not a fellow traveler of the leftist court majority. The consultants did not declare which map was most correct but left open the option to draw their own if asked to do so by the court.
Let me save everyone the drama of what is to come. We already know. The leftist court majority has made it clear that they will redraw the maps to favor the Democrats as much as possible. They have a fundamental belief that legislative representation should mirror the statewide popular vote – ignoring small-“r” republicanism that balances geographic and popular interests. Given that the leftists have the majority, they will impose maps that are heavily gerrymandered to favor Democrats.
The leftist justices want to maintain the fiction of impartiality and judicial objectivity. Yes, “fiction” is the correct word. To that end, one of two outcomes will happen. The court will choose the maps submitted by the mathematicians. This lets the leftists pretend that there is objective science behind the maps without accepting maps submitted by obviously biased Democrats.
The more likely outcome is that the leftist justices will toss out all of the submitted maps and charge the consultants to draw new maps. This gives them ultimate control over the outcome and covers their overt partisanship with a veneer of academic impartiality and objectivity. The mainstream media will announce their approval for the allegedly fair, in reality completely unfair, maps like the clapping barking seals they are.
The two consultants hired by the leftist court majority were hired to deliver maps that favor Democrats. That is exactly what is going to happen. In the end, given the billions of taxpayer dollars that are going to flow to leftist operatives and priorities as a result of this decision, $200,000 seems like a reasonable investment for them to make to maintain the fiction of a rule of law in Wisconsin.
by Owen | 0840, 9 Feb 2424 | Politics | 5 Comments
I took the time to watch Biden’s press conference yesterday in full. Wow. Every American should take 13 minutes and do the same. I confess that I, too, fall into the habit of just watching the clips and highlights. Seeing him in longer form (not LONG form – it’s less than 15 minutes) is so distressing. Here are some of my takeaways.
Biden’s slurring, mumbling, and coughing is pronounced. We’ve watched Biden speak for 50 years and he was, at one time, a decent orator. Not anymore.
He read a note off the teleprompter again (“continue quoting”).
The mental mistakes that have been cited are significant and real. He forgot the name of the church where he allegedly got a rosary. He said that el-Sisi is president of Mexico. Remember that this was in less than 15 minutes. His mental decline is clear and definitive. If this was your grandpa, you’d have sympathy for him.
Biden’s temperament has changed. He’s always been an asshole behind the scenes, but in public, he worked hard on his image as a genial, friendly, joking, compromiser. The asshole is clearly on the surface now. He lacks the emotional control and mental acuity to hide it. He lashes out at reporters who ask decent questions. He insults. He curses. He yells. This is the real Biden.
You clearly see Biden sifting through notes during the Q&A. It appears that the questions and answers were scripted again. But Biden got lost and it appears that he called on the wrong reporters who asked some off script questions.
To the content… Biden clearly lies. Again/ He claims that he never shared classified information with his ghost writer. He claims that he would never forget when his son died. Both incidents are recorded and documented in the DOJ report. Biden is just lying.
On his son’s death, Biden gets visibly angry and shaken up, but again, the DOJ report is clear on the fact that he could not remember the year.
Biden hangs his hat on the fact that the DOJ declined to press charges but does not address the reason. Namely, that Biden is too mentally decapacitated to stand trial. Remember that Biden committed these felonies many years ago when he had his mental faculties. He is not being prosecuted because he’s too senile now.
Once again, Biden blames his staff for illegally taking and storing classified documents.
When Biden returned to the podium to talk about Israel, notice how he talks. He takes credit for personally opening the gates between Mexico (Egypt) and Gaza for humanitarian aid. It is a foreign policy blunder for Biden to tell the world that Sisi opened the border after Biden personally called. If that even really happened, it has made Sisi look like a puppet of America in the Arab world. This perception damages Sisi domestically and we can expect him to be less cooperative as he shores up domestic support. Biden’s desire to take credit overwhelmed any sense of managing America’s interests abroad.
On the same theme, Biden says that he was committing to protect Saudi Arabia and others with military means from Iran in exchange for recognition of Israel. Again, if true, it is a significant regression in American foreign policy. Trump shifted to using economic incentives and economic entanglement to encourage peace in the Abraham Accords. They were working. Biden has returned to a foreign policy of the 70s through 90s where America uses military might to enforce peace. That policy was not successful and risks pulling America into another war in the Middle East. Biden has returned to that policy.
Biden again claims that Hamas attacked Israel because they knew that Biden was about to get other Arab nations to recognize Israel. Based on Hamas’ own words and behavior, this is 100% wrong. The fact that Biden seems to actually believe this as the cause for Hamas’ attack underlines his complete misunderstanding of what is going on and why his responses are equally wrong.
In the final note, watch when Biden walks off. Again, that is the careful walk of a feeble old man who is unsure of his footing or direction. Many of us have seen that walk in people we know and love.
Loaning money to unemployed college kids has always been a high-risk endeavor. When the federal government guaranteed, and then took over, the loans, that risk was transferred to taxpayers against their will. Now this is what far too many deadbeat college grads and dropouts think about taxpayers. Selfish deadbeats.
Santos is “overwhelmed” by her student loan balance because she currently doesn’t have a job. She asked her TikTok viewers: “Are you guys paying your student loans back?”
Surprisingly, a significant number of people who commented admitted they aren’t paying their loans back. Some, like Santos, appear to have forgotten completely, while others have purposefully sent their loans to collections or ignored their payments altogether.
Many of those who commented said they haven’t started paying their student loans back because they can’t even afford their monthly payment.
by Owen | 1628, 8 Feb 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
We did not need the Justice Department to confirm what we all already know. But even with the “damning report,” you will note that they did not actually do anything. The swamp protects their own.
The Department of Justice released its long-awaited investigation into Joe Biden‘s mishandling of classified documents Thursday, delivering a damning assessment of the president’s ‘diminished faculties’ and limited memory.
Although the report did not recommend bringing charges against the 81-year-old, it provides a cascade of damaging findings about files found in Biden’s garage as well as the president’s fitness for office.
In interviews with investigators, Biden became muddled about the dates he was vice president and could not even remember the year in which his son Beau died.
And it said his cavalier attitude to classified documents, such as his habit of reading sensitive files to a ghostwriter, posed a significant national security risk.
One of the reasons they decided not to press charges was because ‘at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’
[…]
He was also apparently hazy on the debate around withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, which was such a key part of the first months of his presidency.
Rep.Gallagher posted the following defense for his “no” vote on impeaching Secretary Mayorkas on X. Here’re the problems with his argument:
1) An unelected cabinet secretary is not the same as an elected president. How you treat one does not set a precedent for the other. It is perfectly acceptable to have a higher bar for an elected president than an unelected member of the government.
2) Impeachment is an inherently political action. It was intended to be so by the Founders, which is one of the reasons the language in the Constitution is broad and does not include specific prerequisites. Lawmakers are allowed to use their judment to decide if a government official is meeting the ethical standards we want our government to meet.
3) Specifically for Mayorkas, it is not just about him dutifully implementing Biden’s open border policies. Mayorkas has repeatedly, deliberately, and condescendingly lied under oath and obstructed Congress’ consitutionaly responsibility to provide oversight.
4) From a political lens, we all know that Mayorkas is never going to be convicted by a Democrat Senate. Impeachment is mostly symbolic, but symboilism is important. While Democrats are willing to use every political and legal lever available to them (and some that aren’t) to fight for their agenda, Republicans repeatedly fall short. Impeachment is a perfectly suitable and constitutional response to the Biden Administration and Mayorkas’ blatant disregard for the border enforcment laws dutifully passed into law by previous Congresses and Presidents. The fact that Gallagher isn’t willing to use that response is a failure on his part and confirms for many base Republicans that the Republican Party is in it to lose.
House Republicans failed to impeach Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas for his mishandling of the southern border crisis in a nail-biting vote that came down to the wire and sparked chaos on the floor.
The 214-216 vote marked the second of three major legislative failures of the day for House Republicans who remain deeply divided across the House and Senate.
There is an open secret in corporate America regarding consultants. While business leaders will sometimes hire consultants to actually study an issue and offer unbiased advice, perhaps more often than not, consultants are hired to tell the business leaders what they want to hear. This is exactly what is happening within the redistricting case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Here is how the game is played: An executive knows they need to do something or wants to do something but either does not have support or does not want to take responsibility for the decision. The executive hires a consultant to “study” the issue and provide guidance with a wink and a nod. When the consultant miraculously comes back recommending that they do what the executive wanted, the executive can sell the decision to their bosses, employees, and customers as something “recommended by unbiased experts after rigorous study.” Consultants get paid. Executive gets what he or she wants.
When the leftists on the Wisconsin Supreme Court chose to violate the law and Constitution to throw out the legally implemented state legislative maps last year, they decided that they needed a fig leaf of legitimacy to force whatever new maps they draw. To that end, they went out and hired two consultants, Jonathan Cervas and Bernard Grofman. Both men are academics who have carved out a niche for themselves consulting on redistricting for clients all over the country. Both of these consultants will be paid $450 per hour up to $100,000 each for their work. It is a good side hustle if you can get it. The hiring process for these consultants was utterly opaque. There was no nationwide search for the best, most unbiased consultants. The leftists did not solicit input from any of the litigants in the case. There was no bidding process or price negotiation made public. We, the public, have absolutely no idea why these two consultants were selected or why we are paying them $450 per hour. The only thing we know is that the leftist court majority chose them.
[…]
The more likely outcome is that the leftist justices will toss out all of the submitted maps and charge the consultants to draw new maps. This gives them ultimate control over the outcome and covers their overt partisanship with a veneer of academic impartiality and objectivity. The mainstream media will announce their approval for the allegedly fair, in reality completely unfair, maps like the clapping barking seals they are.
The two consultants hired by the leftist court majority were hired to deliver maps that favor Democrats. That is exactly what is going to happen. In the end, given the billions of taxpayer dollars that are going to flow to leftist operatives and priorities as a result of this decision, $200,000 seems like a reasonable investment for them to make to maintain the fiction of a rule of law in Wisconsin.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators on Sunday released a highly anticipated $118 billion package that pairs border enforcement policy with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies, setting off a long-shot effort to push the bill through heavy skepticism from Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson.
[…]
If the number of illegal border crossings reaches above 5,000 daily for a five-day average, an expulsion authority would automatically kick in so that migrants are sent back to Mexico without an opportunity to make an asylum claim. If the number reaches 4,000, presidential administrations would have the option of using the expulsion authority.
There is so much bad about this bill, but that last quoted provision is the absolute deal killer. It effectively legalizes 1.8 million illegal aliens PER YEAR before we even really try to stop the flow. That is a nation-killing wave of illegal aliens that will crush our social safety nets and economy.
This is a terrible bill and it is terrible politics for Republicans. They are trying to hand Biden a giant “bipartisan” bill that pretends to fix our border problem during an election year. Terrible policy. Terrible politics. Every Republican who supports this bill should be run out of office like a Taco Bell squirt with as little compassion as they are showing the victims of violent illegal aliens.
In a sane world, isn’t what Stalinsky wrote just common sense? You have a group of people who is celebrating the rape, kidnapping, and murder of Jews on October 7th and calling for genocide. Why wouldn’t we be concerned and keep a closer eye on them? If these were white Michiganders celebrating Nazi attacks in Europe, we wouldn’t hesitate.
The contentious article was written by Steven Stalinsky, who is a commentator on terrorism and has served as executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, based in Washington DC, since 1999.
He warned in the story that Dearborn’s majority Arab population ought to be paid ‘close attention’ by counterterrorism agencies following October 7.
[…]
‘It’s 2024 and the WSJ still pushes out this type of garbage. Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic. Dearborn is one of the greatest American cities in our nation.’
According to census figures, Dearborn is roughly 54 percent Arab American, making it one of the most densely populated areas for Middle Eastern people in the US.
It is home to the largest Muslim population in the US per capita as well as the largest mosque in North America.
In the wake of the October 7 attacks on 1,000 Israeli citizens, protests erupted in Dearborn – supporting the Palestinian side.
[…]
‘President Biden, we say quite clearly: you are not welcome in our community.’
Zahr said to the crowd: ‘Are we going to forget?’ To which he received the roaring response: ‘No!’
The crowd chanted: ‘Biden, Biden, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,’ ‘Genocide Joe’ and ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’
by Owen | 0913, 4 Feb 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
We’re going to get the basement campaign again. There’s no way a well man running for reelection turns down airtime on the most viewed event of the year – especially when the polls are narrow and his approval rate is in the toilet.
President Joe Biden will again skip a pregame Super Bowl interview embraced by recent presidents as an annual tradition.
Presidents have traditionally sought to leverage the marquee football event’s broad viewership, making Biden’s decision particularly notable in an election year.
Biden participated when NBC and CBS aired the game but sat out last year, when the Super Bowl was aired by Fox. CBS will broadcast the game this year on Feb. 11. The White House confirmed to POLITICO that Biden would be skipping an interview after Variety first reported the news.
“We hope viewers enjoy watching what they tuned in for — the game,” White House spokesperson Ben LaBolt told the entertainment outlet.
Families interested in applying to OCS through the WPCP are invited to a virtual Q&A session hosted by Impact Christian Schools on Tuesday, February 6 at 6:30 p.m. Attendees will have the chance to explore educational options, ask questions, review tuition details, and make informed decisions about their child’s education.
“We must remember who the real enemy is, what are we defending, who our laws are meant to protect.”
She added: “History’s judgement against those who deliberately destroy and sacrifice… resources at the expense of humanity, at the expense of all those who are suffering the consequences of the environmental and climate crisis… and at the expense of future generations, your own children and grandchildren will not be gentle.”
Today, people from around the globe are streaming across the southern border, most of them just as eager to work. But rather than trying to elude U.S. authorities, the overwhelming majority of migrants seek out border agents, sometimes waiting hours or days in makeshift encampments, to surrender.
Being hustled into a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle and taken to a processing facility is hardly a setback. In fact, it is a crucial step toward being able to apply for asylum — now the surest way for migrants to stay in the United States, even if few will ultimately win their cases.
[…]
In December alone, more than 300,000 people crossed the southern border, a record number.
It is not just because they believe they will be able to make it across the 2,000-mile southern frontier. They are also certain that once they make it to the United States they will be able to stay.
Forever.
And by and large, they are not wrong.
The United States is trying to run an immigration system with a fraction of the judges, asylum officers, interpreters and other personnel that it needs to handle the hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing the border and flocking to cities around the country each year. That dysfunction has made it impossible for the nation to expeditiously decide who can remain in the country and who should be sent back to their homeland.
“I don’t know anyone who has been deported,” Carolina Ortiz, a migrant from Colombia, said in an interview…
This is what an overwhelmed city can look like: a preschooler sleeping under a bridge for a month; crowds lining up each night to get food and shelter; and the mayor calling out for help. And when that city is Denver in the winter, and the overnight temperatures sink below zero degrees Fahrenheit, the problems are life-threatening.
“Our city is really struggling,” Mayor Mike Johnston told CNN after he visited families in a makeshift encampment – a sign of the unfolding emergency triggered by the mass arrival of people from outside the city.
“This is both a humanitarian crisis for the individuals that are arriving, and it’s a fiscal crisis for the cities that are serving. Those two crises are coming to a head right now.”
[…]
Johnston is looking at Denver having to foot an annual bill of $180 million for migrant services, which would lead to major cuts in other city budgets, he said. “We don’t want to take police officers off the street. We don’t want to take firefighters off the street. We don’t want to not do trash pickup or not have our parks and recreation centers open.” But hard decisions are coming, he said.
[…]
Johnston said Texas Gov. Abbott had not returned his calls but if he could talk to him, he would empathize. “I understand they feel like they have this huge influx of people that they can’t handle in Texas alone. I agree with him that no one state or one city should need to solve this entire challenge. But I think there’s a way for us to work together to say, let’s create a coordinated plan where we send people to cities that have capacity, where they can be successful.”
No. Close the dang border. The fact that a bunch of people want to be in America is not a reason for us to allow them to enter illegally and crush our communities.
It’s not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own husband—according to a complaint filed with the university on Monday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis.
The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston’s thin publication record. In her 2009 dissertation, submitted to the University of Michigan, Charleston quotes or paraphrases nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution, the complaint alleges. And in her sole peer-reviewed journal article—coauthored with her husband, LaVar Charleston, in 2014—the couple recycle much of a 2012 study published by LaVar Charleston, the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, framing the old material as new research.
Through that sleight of hand, Sherri Ann Charleston effectively took credit for her husband’s work. The 2014 paper, which was also coauthored with Jerlando Jackson, now the dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education, and appeared in the Journal of Negro Education, has the same methods, findings, and description of survey subjects as the 2012 study, which involved interviews with black computer science students and was first published by the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.
