Power-hungry, lawless and steadfast in its pursuit of authoritarian powers, the government does not voluntarily relinquish those powers once it acquires, uses and inevitably abuses them.

Likewise, any presidential candidate who promises to be a dictator on day one, if elected, will be a dictator-in-chief for life.

Then again, the president is already a dictator with permanent powers: imperial, unaccountable and unconstitutional thanks to a relatively obscure directive (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20), part of the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, which gives unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president in the event of a “national emergency.”

That national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the name of so-called national security.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

For all intents and purposes, the Constitution has long been suspended, and we’ve been operating in a state of martial law for some time now.

The emergency powers that we know about which presidents might claim during such states of emergency are vast, ranging from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, including implementing an internet kill switch, and restricting travel.

Yet according to documents obtained by the Brennan Center, there may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public.

Deploying the same strategy it used with 9/11 to acquire greater powers under the USA Patriot Act, the police state—a.k.a. the shadow government, a.k.a. the Deep State—has been planning and preparing for such crises for years now, quietly assembling a wish list of presidential lockdown powers that could be trotted out and approved at a moment’s notice.

We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die.

Mind you, the police state with the president at its helm has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.

The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.

All of the imperial powers amassed by past presidents—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were passed from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden and will be passed along to the next president.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

These are the powers that continue to be passed along to each successive heir to the Oval Office, the Constitution be damned.

The war on disinformation, the war on electoral corruption, the war on COVID-19, the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration: all of these countermeasures have become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’état.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

After all, it is a tale that has been told time and again throughout history about how easy it is for freedom to fall and tyranny to rise.

What we desperately need is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—answer to and are accountable to “we the people.”

We must recalibrate the balance of power.

Congress must also put an end to the use of presidential executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements as a means of getting around Congress and the courts.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely—no matter which party holds office.

The process of unseating a dictator and limiting the powers of the presidency is far from simple but at a minimum, it must start with “we the people.”

Make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.

 

John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute

The post How Absolute Power Corrupted the President appeared first on Granite Grok.

If you’ve forgotten who Peter Vlaming is, he’s a French Teacher in Virginia who (in 2018) was removed for refusing to address a Transgender student by their preferred gender/pronoun. Vlaming was accused of bullying and discrimination and let go. He sued on religious and free speech grounds.

And he’s winning!

 

In a gratifying win for religious freedom and free speech, the Virginia Supreme Court concluded Thursday that embattled Virginia high school teacher Peter Vlaming, who had been fired over his refusal to use a student’s preferred pronouns because of his religious faith, was protected by the free exercise and free speech clauses of the Virginia Constitution.

The majority decision, which was written by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, is a landmark victory for freedom of conscience and expression in the state. In its opinion, the court held that religious exercise is protected under the Virginia Constitution unless it threatens the public safety or order.

 

The case returns to the trial court to address “constitutional, statutory and breach-of-contract claims” with the State Supreme Court ruling attached. A ruling that makes the school’s claims impossible to defend. It based his termination on the presumption of what amounts to bullying, framing his beliefs as a threat, but the court tore that up and threw it away. (Related: Students Walkout in Support of Teacher Fired for Not Using Transgender Pronoun.)

 

The court wrote that the issue was not whether the school board’s policies forbidding discrimination and harassment applied (as the school board had asserted) or did not apply (as Vlaming had asserted) to the compelled-speech situation Vlaming alleged. Rather, the issue was whether Vlaming’s sincerely held religious beliefs caused him to commit overt acts that “invariably posed some substantial threat to public safety, peace or order,” and if so, whether, under a “strict scrutiny” review of the claim, the government’s compelling interest in protecting the public from that threat could be satisfied by “less restrictive means.”

The court wrote that when religious liberty merges with free-speech protections, as it did in Vlaming’s case, mere “objectionable” and “hurtful” religious speech (or in Vlaming’s case, “nonspeech”) wasn’t enough to meet this strict scrutiny standard.

 

Your feelings don’t trump his natural rights.

That’ll leave a mark and provide hope for educators across the state – especially in places like the infamous Loudon County.

 

Alliance Defending Freedom is handling the Vlaming Case.

The post Fired School Teacher’s Day In Court: School Can’t Compel Him to Use Preferred Pronouns appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Bill of Rights turns 232 years old today. Adopted in 1791 as a consolation prize for the Anti-Federalists,  it has been perhaps the most important part of American legal history since the eighteenth century and has served as an inconvenient reminder of the laissez-faire libertarian philosophy that permeated American political theory in the late 18th century.

As I noted in “Magna Carta and the Fantasy of Legal Constraints on States,” words written on parchment do not actually protect anyone’s freedoms, and legal constraints on state power are only as good as the ideological backing they receive from the population.

Nevertheless, for all its weaknesses, the Bill of Rights—when taken seriously by the general population—has played a part in preserving basic human rights for Americans that were eviscerated in many nations long ago. Thanks to the First Amendment and those who support it, for example, freedom of speech is often more respected in the United States than is almost any place one might hold up as an example. One can be arrested and imprisoned for saying unpopular things in France and Germany, just to name two examples. (And we’re not even considering the far more illiberal states of Asia.)

How absurd it was, for example, to hear the French pretend to be supporters of freedom of speech in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre when the French state imposed legal sanctions on people for saying allegedly anti-Semitic or racist things. In Germany, one can be imprisoned for saying unpopular things about Nazis or the Holocaust. What most (but not all) Americans understand—and what the French and Germans don’t—is that in a free country, some people will say repugnant things.

The First Amendment can also be partly credited for the lack of strong anti-defamation laws in the United States. For example, thanks to the First Amendment, federal law makes it very difficult for government agents to sue members of the public for alleged “defamatory” behavior. The whole concept of defamation, of course, is just a way to shut people up who say things the “victims” don’t like.

Moreover, religious freedom has never been more than a temporary convenience for people in most of the world. The French government seized Catholic churches long ago, and most of Europe shut down religious services during the Covid Panic. In the United States, these shutdowns were shorter, less widespread, and more haphazard due primarily to the lingering power of the First Amendment, as written. And certainly, for all the anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism that has reared its head in America over the decades, nothing compares to the government-sanctioned anti-Semitism that has at times permeated France, Germany, Austria, and a host of other “free” countries in Europe.

And as far as being Catholic goes, even the worst anti-Catholic persecutions in American history have nothing on the persecutions concocted by anti-Catholic regimes of the Spaniards, French, Mexicans, Brits, Japanese, and many others.

As for property rights — which includes the right to own weapons for self-defense — the US regime has managed to find new exceptions to this every year, but even in that case, the US often comes off looking relatively less awful. We need to look no further than the French regime’s scattered jihads against basic privacy and property.

Of course, most regimes do this every time there’s an “emergency.” In Canada, during World War II, the federal government mandated registration of all firearms, which it claimed was necessary to fight domestic subversion. Human rights go right out the window in the UK whenever the state feels the “need.” The US itself suspended habeas corpus and a host of other human rights during the Civil War. And the Bill of Rights didn’t prevent the internment of the Japanese-Americans, many of whom, unlike the Reservation Indians of old, were full-blown American citizens.

In the long sordid history of conquest and colonialism, the US has held its own (in a bad way), whether in the Philippines in Iraq or on the Western frontier of North America. And yet, the presence of the Bill of Rights and the ideology it represents has long been an inconvenience and an impediment — albeit often a weak one —to an even more aggressive state in terms of prosecuting “enemies” of the state who oppose American militarism.

A Bright Spot in an Unnecessary Constitution 

Bizarrely revered by many as a “pro-freedom” document, the document now generally called “the Constitution” was originally devoted almost entirely toward creating a new, bigger, more coercive, more expensive version of the United States. The United States, of course, had already existed since 1777 under a functioning constitution that had allowed the United States to enter into numerous international alliances and win a war against the most powerful empire on earth.

That wasn’t good enough for the oligarchs of the day, the crony capitalists with names like Washington, Madison, and Hamilton.  Hamilton and friends had long plotted for a more powerful United States government to allow the mega-rich of the time, like George Washington and James Madison, to more easily develop their lands and investments with the help of government infrastructure. Hamilton wanted to create a clone of the British Empire to allow him to indulge his grandiose dreams of financial imperialism.

The tiny Shays Rebellion in 1786 finally provided them with a chance to press their ideas on the masses and to attempt to convince the voters that there was already too much freedom going on in America at the time.

The Federalists didn’t mention that they’d benefit personally from the new constitution, of course, but instead focused on the idea that without a stronger central government, the country would be overthrown by the powers of “faction.”

Patrick Henry and the Anti-Federalists pointed out—correctly—that the US already had proven it had sufficient means to deal with European powers, and that in the bloody history of states, the true threat to freedom lay not in there being too much freedom, as the Federalists claimed, but in the overweening power of centralized states.

Virtually no one believed that a new constitution was necessary to secure what they had earlier called their “English Liberties,” including freedom of speech, a right to due process, jury trials, and more. Those freedoms were already assumed to be assured to all non-slaves. Those freedoms had been won in the Revolution. The people didn’t need a more powerful Congress to protect them. If their freedoms were threatened, the people could rely on highly democratic (for the time) state legislatures and a decentralized militia system.

But, in the end, the Federalists won out after they promised to adopt a Bill of Rights to limit the power of Congress. As we know, though, the Bill of Rights began to break down immediately, and it was only a matter of time until the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson’s embargo, and other even worse crimes perpetrated on the states and the people.

It was the Constitution of 1787, after all, that strengthened the institution of slavery, set the stage for the fugitive slave acts, and made provision for the criminal prosecution of those who attempted to help set escaped slaves free.

That’s what sort of “pro-freedom” document the Constitution was and is.

What the Constitutions Should Have Said 

The Bill of Rights would never have been necessary, however, if so much power had not been granted to the central government by the constitution of 1787 in the first place.

Indeed, the earlier constitution of 1777 (the so-called Articles of Confederation) had itself been too detailed and powerful.

After all, the whole idea of a national constitution had always been sold on really just two premises: 1) It would assist in national defense and 2) it would facilitate trade among the member states.

In other words, it should never have been anything more than a customs union and a mutual defense agreement. So, in the service of sound political science, I have composed a new constitution for us:

Article 1. The United States shall meet every two years in Congress assembled to negotiate terms for the maintenance of a union of independent states. There shall be no duties or taxes imposed on trade among the states or the people therein. The states, in Congress assembled shall set the standards for membership in the United States and provide provision for member withdrawal and the conditions for receiving the benefits of mutual defense as a member of the Union.

The End.

Nothing more is necessary or prudent. Independent states enter into mutual defense agreements quite frequently, without surrendering their independence, and trade agreements are a quite mundane affair in the history of states.

Any appeal to “patriotism” or lofty ideas of “America” or the fanciful notion that people in Arizona are the countrymen of people in New York has no backing in the day-to-day realities of living. Never in history was there a group of 330 million people spread across four million square miles who were part of the same community and who shared the same experiences, interests, or even the same economic ties.

In reality, the people of Colorado, for example, have more in common with the people of Saskatchewan—in terms of economic interests, culture, and history—than with the people of Georgia or Delaware or Pennsylvania. People only believe the residents of the US states make up “one people” because their third-grade teachers told them as much. Actual experience tells us otherwise.

Those who demanded the Bill of Rights had attempted to preserve this idea of government on a human scale: government that reflects the realities of daily life, human relationships, and the necessity of free commerce—rather than the ideological fantasies of nation builders. Even to this day, the idea that the minutiae of life and commerce should be governed by a group of millionaires sitting in luxury 2,000 miles away is repugnant to the reasonable mind. In preventing this, the Bill of Rights has largely failed, although things most certainly could have been worse.

 

Ryan McMaken is executive editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy, finance, and international relations from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

 

Ryan McMaken } Mises Wire

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The post The Bill of Rights: The Only Good Part of the Constitution appeared first on Granite Grok.

America’s university systems are rotten to their core. The proof is in the Congressional hearings when university presidents refuse to denounce calls for genocide and in the streets filled with college kids chanting their approval for mass murder.

BREAKING: Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), presses Harvard President Claudine Gay on campus antisemitism during Congressional hearing. pic.twitter.com/8U7LnVqZ26

— Breaking 4 News (@Breaking_4_News) December 5, 2023

Still, our academic institutions weren’t captured on Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel. This isn’t a new nightmare for American students. They have suffered in the ever-increasing radicalized world of collegiate education for decades. Traditional beliefs are demonized, while professors promote harmful sexual and racial ideologies as inherently good. (ROOKE: There’s A Good Reason Trad Wives Can’t Stop Telling You About Their Sex Lives)

And thus, there is little campus support for college-educated conservative women.

Most groups available to women are geared toward uplifting progressive causes antithetical to traditional values and beliefs. In “You’re Not Alone: The Conservative Woman’s Guide To College,” author Karin Lips shows young women entering their college years how to navigate their hostile campuses to find like-minded students and mentors.

“This book is here to mentor you on how to thrive on campus as a young conservative woman, even in the face of liberal intolerance,” she wrote. “You can earn good grades. You can make friends. You can successfully prepare for your career.”

Lips is the founder and president of the Network of Enlightened Women (NeW). It originally started as a book club for women who wanted to read classic books which were being left off the University of Virginia’s college syllabus. However, it has since grown into a national organization encouraging conservative women to connect on issues important to them.

In my new book, I tell the story of @CHSommers visiting UVA when I was a student.

Buy it today to see how campuses have changed and strategies for dealing with what’s happening on campuses today.https://t.co/8hBPS7DUhh

— Karin Lips (@klips) December 13, 2023

Although we differ in opinion on whether it is positive how our campuses have become predominately female, offering women a different path than bitter feminism is important if we want them to find their purpose. GirlBoss attitudes strip women of their femininity and encourage them to search for a life without family. It does our society no good to have large swaths of our female population stuck in lives that don’t fulfill them. Feminism would have them believe a family is incompatible with success, while the right mentor could show them options giving them the possibility of having both.

Lips’ advice for women to look for college campuses with higher ratios of women to men was ingenious. Of course, it would make sense that if a woman is looking for a man willing to marry young, she will need to be in an environment where men have less of a romantic choice. She calls this the “man deficit.” (ROOKE: Why Are So Many American Men Killing Themselves? The Answer’s Obvious)

“In places where there is a ‘man deficit,’ or an undersupply of college-educated men, men are less likely to commit. The college and post-college hookup culture, declining marriage rates among college-educated women, and lack of commitment by men, … are byproducts of an undersupply of college-educated men,” Lips wrote.

Her research found that “58% of women in college self-identify as liberal…whereas only 15% identify as conservative” and “almost 60% of female professors identify as liberal, while 22% identify as conservative.” Although the lack of intellectual diversity among the faculty and students can be lonely, it also makes it easier to find professors sympathetic to conservative students, according to Lips. She urges these women to create relationships with friendly faculty because they often help connect students with programs and think tanks looking for the next generation of conservative thinkers.

Lips’ guide gives conservative women a much-needed blueprint for holding on to their traditional values while finding their purpose.

 

Mary Rooke | Daily Caller

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline, and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Another tragic loss as an otherwise young and healthy man suddenly drops dead. Lt. Col. Jered Little, “commander of Public Health Activity-Hawaii,” was proudly advertised en masse to encourage uptake of the COVID Vaccine. He died suddenly on Nov. 30 of a heart attack or stroke.

 

Arlington, VA mourns the sudden loss of one of its own, Army Lieutenant and Officer Jered Little, who passed away unexpectedly on Thursday, November 30, 2023, at the age of 39. The exact cause of his death has not been disclosed, but it is believed that he suffered a heart attack or a stroke.

 

Jab Poster Boy for the military passes away Nov 29 at age 39 pic.twitter.com/OxIA9pl6Ct

— Bama_Jeans (@bamajayt) December 12, 2023

 

 

Jered Little was an exceptional officer known for his leadership, dedication, and commitment to service. His military career was marked by strategic acumen and an unwavering sense of duty. Beyond his military life, Jered was a respected member of the Arlington community, often volunteering at local schools and mentoring young people.

 

 

His government and its public health apparatus lied to him despite his service, and now he is dead.

 

The post US Military ‘Poster Boy’ For COVID Vaxx Dies Suddenly at the Age of 39 appeared first on Granite Grok.

Hello, Friends of Freedom,

Our wonderful country has been beset with an atmosphere of incivility for quiet sometime now. In my awareness of politics over the last 40 years it keeps going from one depth of darkness to even lower levels of attack not only on candidates but their families as well.

It seems the ability to speak in a disparaging way about each other as candidates is more important than addressing the issues we see all around every day, i.e., Poverty, homelessness, looting in our stores, suppression of freedom with civil implemented mandates that have no legal bases at all, and the ongoing spending our tax dollars for foreign wars, wasteful government bureaucratic offices, and of course lavish lifestyle of our leaders while the average American struggles to pay bills.

What is civility, and did we ever have it as a country? In our beginnings, we certainly did have attacks in the press at the time of each political party, but there was a limit, and when the important work had to be done, they actually did work together for the common good.

Our fathers and founding statesmen affirmed over and over in their writings that the most important source of our civil virtues was our grounding in religious faith and its freedom of expression in the culture.

A few quotes:

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall: “One great object of the colonial charters was avowedly the propagation of the Christian faith.”

John Adams: “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were….the general principles of Christianity.”

The list of government officials who validate the role of the Christian faith in our founding as a nation is or could be a good-sized book containing those quotes.

President Harry Truman openly affirmed that, “ In this great country of ours has been demonstrated the fundamental unity of Christianity and democracy.”

Also, our great French ally and statesman Alexis de Tocqueville recorded in his great work, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA: “There is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America-and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.”

We were blessed with the most unique form of government, perhaps since governments have been formed for the overall good of society. Our incredible Constitution, our Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights have enabled mankind to achieve dignity, self-respect, nobleness, and prosperity that is unprecedented yet in modern or ancient history.

The Constitution, of course, being the CORNERSTONE of the building of the country, has laid a clear blueprint of the ideas of the founding fathers in relationship to freedoms that should be afforded to all of humanity.

Since we have had a decline of civility, perhaps we should examine the reason why. Could it be that we have simply accepted the cultural buzz and lies from the media about the role of faith and particularly Christianity that is nowhere regulated by law in any of their founding documents yet is presented as fact to a historically uneducated populace?

Let’s look at the celebration of Christmas. Since it is fast approaching, many people will not acknowledge its important role in the formation of Western Society. In fact, we have been pressured and had a veil of fear placed over us as Christians (if you are one). The simple greeting is no longer delivered with a robust smile and confidence but many Christians shy away from this incredible time of joy and often mutter the pablum phrase, “Happy holiday.” WORDS MATTER! (on an aside note, three of the Presidents of Ivy League colleges would not acknowledge evil with their words, and it cost one of them their job, and hundreds of petitions are moving for the firing of all three of them) Yes, WORDS MATTER! To deny the celebration of your faith by not acknowledging history is a dangerous thing, not just a polite way of saying I don’t want to offend anyone. The offense is in the suppression of your freedom of expression.) But I digress…lol.

For example, the widespread use of the word “HOLIDAYS” to describe what has traditionally been called Christmas for over 180 years in our culture. The removal of the Christian emblem of the Holy Family from public venues. No observance or acknowledgment in our public schools of the largest celebrated holiday in the Western World, if not the entire world? Yet we are reduced to and subjected to silence about it. This never happened when I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s. Christmas still had a space and a place in every public venue, from banks to grocery stores, to libraries, and even public schools. But now people are even afraid to wish someone a MERRY CHRISTMAS? How did we get here?

I will tell you how we got here.

A simple phrase called Separation of Church and State. First of all, this phrase is found nowhere in any of our founding documents. Many have been taught that it is a part of the FIRST AMENDMENT, which simply states,

“CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXPRESSION THEREOF.”

The words “separation,” “church,” or “state” are not found in the First Amendment. Yet many people, having never read the Constitution, think it is there. Also, if you prove to them it is not there, then they will say, but it is implied.

I hope in the next weeks to show you the origin of this phrase and how it has been used as a political tool to drive a wedge between common sense and civil celebration. Targeting the historically uneducated as they unwarily defend this phrase and use it to detract from the original intention of the founding fathers ideas, and especially targeting the idea of faith in the public arena.

Until Next Week,

Allen

The post Church and State Part I appeared first on Granite Grok.

Nothing says let’s all get along like a gang of Muslime yutes (Yooouths) beating up a guy dressed as Santa on his way to be Santa for some local kids.

Half a dozen migrant youths attacked the 54-year-old victim whilst others watched and laughed.

 

The 54-year-old victim was due to perform at the Königsalm on Königsplatz in the city of Kassel on Dec. 6 when he was approached by a gang of youths who crossed the street and confronted him.

According to the victim, Rainer B., the gang comprised several teenagers of a migrant background around 15 years of age. He told police they insulted him, calling him a “son of a bitch” and a “fat man” and ordered him to remove his Santa Claus costume.

They said they were Muslim and that Germany was “their country,” the victim said, as reported by the Hessische Allgemeine newspaper.

When he refused, the gang turned violent and struck him, resulting in injuries to his neck and tearing his costume. In self-defense, the man hit one of his attackers in the face, causing them to flee towards Martinsplatz.

 

The Muslims are teaching the kids that Germany is their country. Is that the sort of thing that could rile up the Fatherland, or have the once proud German people been diversity whipped into submission?

One positive note. Santa did his gig. He showed up all tussled up and torn and talked to the kids. No pictures were allowed, which is a bit of a bummer. Given the cultural arc of Germany, it might have been useful to have that one on hand for the grandkids. Here I am with Santa after a group of adherents of the Religion of Peace roughed him up a bit.

Not that the caliphate would allow you to keep something like that.

Oh, and in keeping with my intermittent habit of messing with song lyrics.

 

I saw Muslims kicking Santa Claus.
On his way to Kessel Town last night
To scratch some angry itch
They knocked him down into the  ditch
Tore his suit did those Muslim Yutes
Then called him a son of a bitch.

 

I couldn’t help myself. Ans yes, it could be better.

 

The post Diversity: Muslim Teens Beat Up Santa – Call him Fat and Tear His Red Suit appeared first on Granite Grok.

For the first time in the state’s history, a lawsuit by disgruntled parents may have caused at least a temporary school closure. Windham Elementary School was voted to be temporarily closed on Thursday by their school board. The students will now attend Townsend Elementary School.

A lawsuit brought by parents led by Attorney Deborah Bucknam alleges the school is failing to provide basic educational services as required by the State Constitution. In an emailed message to VDC, Bucknam shared some more details about what transpired at the school board meeting.

“At the Board meeting, there were several references to our lawsuit as at least part of the reason for closing (I think it was the entire reason). So, for the first time in Vermont history, parents have held an entire school district to account,” she wrote.

She continued to suggest that it was largely the lawsuit that prompted this action.

“If my clients had not been there pushing the District, in my opinion, this school would still be open—and the teaching principal, Jenna Cramer, would likely still be employed. We shone the light on what was going on at Windham, and they were forced to make major changes,” she wrote.

The message includes that this development may help school choice advocates. School choice is when a community is allowed to send its students to other schools of each family’s choice, and their tuition money follows the students accordingly.

“The State will likely fight very hard to keep control, but I think this victory helps our school choice campaign,” she wrote. “If we get past the motion to dismiss–and I am hopeful that we will—we can engage in discovery, which will force them to provide information to parents about the operation of the school—and that can be a template for other parents in other districts—which will shine the light on the sorry state of Vermont’s schools.”

State trying to get the case dismissed

The state had argued to dismiss the lawsuit, prompting Bucknam to write an argument to the Windham Superior Court last week stating why it should not be dismissed. In it, she describes some of the shortcomings regarding Cramer’s job performance.

It states, “Ms. Cramer and Mr. [Marco] Lazin did not prepare curriculum or lesson plans for the children. By the middle of October, they told the parents that they had not started teaching the children from a curriculum because they had not received all their ‘supplies.’”

It continues, “Ms. Cramer was frequently late for school, and the children, instead of learning lessons, spent their days watching animal and PG-13 music videos, including one where a llama used the f—word, and, as indicated above, included showing a violent video [including a decapitation and a person being lit on fire] shown to first and second graders.”

Cramer was fired in November, leaving Lazin as the only teacher.

Also, in Bucknam’s written argument, she notes earlier this month, the school chose not to hire either of the two candidates that they had for teachers.

“At the December 5, 2023 meeting, the Windham School Board decided not to hire any of the candidates, leaving the school to continue with one inexperienced teacher and unlicensed substitutes,” it states.

In conclusion, her argument states, “Plaintiffs have sufficiently plead both a violation of the Education Clause and the Common Benefits Clause of the Vermont Constitution, and have requested relief which this Court has the power and authority to grant. Thus the State’s motion to dismiss must be denied.”

In a phone call on Friday, she further emphasized that this case could provide a legal template for other communities in Vermont to force changes at their schools if they feel that their kids are also being denied basic education rights.

 

Michael Bielawski | Vermont Daily Chronicle

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How big is the federal government? Two measures are the number of civilian employees (nearly two million) and the number of agencies (now exceeding 440). These numbers barely hint at their massive meddling into business activities and the personal lives of Americans.

While government was relatively small and less intrusive during its first hundred years, the Constitution held defects. In part, they resulted from the unavoidable compromises of consensus. The founders knew this, and some had anticipated civil war decades before the first shots were fired. Many other problems emerged during the great expansion of the nineteenth century due to the industrial revolution, the growth of America’s land area, and several political factors, mostly unanticipated. As population grew from about five million in 1800 to more than seventy-six million in 1900, government gained accordingly.

It was during the early twentieth century that the government acquired many extraconstitutional powers to intervene in our lives. This was accompanied by a great expansion of its jurisdiction and cost: new agencies, more government workers, more taxes. To give you a hint of this growth, here is an excerpt from the Congressional testimony of Doctor Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute in 2005:

We come, then, to the nub of the matter. Search the Constitution as you will, you will find no authority for Congress to appropriate and spend federal funds on education, agriculture, disaster relief, retirement programs, housing, healthcare, day care, the arts, public broadcasting—the list is endless. That is what I meant at the outset when I said that most of what the federal government is doing today is unconstitutional because it is done without constitutional authority. Reducing that point to its essence, the Constitution says, in effect, that everything that is not authorized—to the government, by the people, through the Constitution—is forbidden. Progressives turned that on its head: Everything that is not forbidden is authorized.

Almost 19 years have elapsed since Doctor Pilon’s testimony. Today, the federal government is far larger and more intrusive, having enlisted the support of Big Tech, Big Pharma, academia, the legacy media, and others. But still, how did the government grow so large?

A Fateful Error

It actually began during America’s founding, according to Professor Randy Barnett of George Mason University. In his most recent book, Our Republican Constitution, he cites the principal-agent dilemma that arose after the 1787 constitution was ratified: The adoption effectively dissolved the Articles of Confederation and the Continental Congress. In turn, this deprived the states of an active forum to oversee the new government. Furthermore, there was no provision in the Constitution for an independent plenary tribunal to adjudicate disputes concerning federalism. No wonder then that several delegates refused to sign the final draft. In his last work, The Rise and Fall of Society, Frank Chodorov wrote this about the charter’s signers: “The ink was hardly dry on the Constitution before its authors, now in position of authority, began to rewrite it by interpretation, to the end that its bonds would loosen . . . to extend the power of the central government.”

Some readers might respond that the states now had the Senate as their forum for overseeing legislation. Although members of the Senate were to be appointed by their respective state legislatures, and the Senate body held veto power over bills, the small states were outnumbered. Importantly, Senate bills were subject to defeat by the House of Representatives, in which a few densely populated commercial states reigned supreme.

Exploiting the Stealth Clauses

Federalist delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention openly stated their desire for a strong central government. In private communications with these colleagues, Alexander Hamilton expressed hope that the new government would eventually consolidate, with the states losing power and importance over time.

It should not be surprising then that the final draft Constitution held expressions that were capable of more than one interpretation. I shall refer to these as stealth clauses because they have been employed by federal courts to produce outcomes that were clearly unintended using customary meanings at the time of founding. Let us examine a few cases and consider their consequences.

How the Courts Boost Federal Power

First of all, courts do not base their decisions exclusively on the text of the Constitution with its amendments. No, instead they refer to the Constitution Annotated, a publication weighing many pounds. The Constitution Annotated is comprised of an amended Constitution annotated with analyses of all federal Court decisions since the federal judiciary opened for business. Constitutional lawyers depend on this publication to employ the rule of stare decisis, which serves to honor judicial precedents of like cases.

Murray Rothbard discussed the issue at length in his work Anatomy of the State. In the chapter “How the State Transcends Its Limits,” he quotes from The People and the Court by Professor Charles L. Black Jr.:

The prime and most necessary function of the [Supreme] Court has been that of validation, not that of invalidation. What a government of limited powers needs, at the beginning and forever, is some means of satisfying the people that it has taken all steps humanly possible to stay within its powers. This is the condition of its legitimacy, and its legitimacy, in the long run, is the condition of its life. The court, through its history, has acted as the legitimation of the government.

It should be noted that the court is biased to favor Congress (the justices call it deference) in these cases. This is common knowledge and is openly conceded by judicial appointees and by justices in their official opinions. Indeed, Chief Justice John Roberts provided the key defense for the Affordable Care Act, even though that law was opposed by twenty-six attorneys general during a court challenge.

The earliest event that my research uncovered was not a court case but a dispute between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton was promoting his ambitious plan to improve the new nation’s financial condition; it would require Congress to charter a bank modeled after the Bank of England. Jefferson believed this was unconstitutional; the Constitution did not even mention banks.

But Hamilton convinced President George Washington that the Constitution was not meant to cover everything the nation might need in the future, and to meet this need, Article I, Section 8 ended by granting power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” (emphasis mine) the enumerated federal powers granted by the Constitution. So, the “bank law” was passed by Congress and signed into law, creating the First Bank of the United States.

Of all stealth clauses, the commerce clause was almost the last to be exploited. Article I, Section 8 states that “Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce among the several states.”

In the case Wickard v. Filburn, a poor Ohio farmer was fined $117 for planting more wheat than his allotted 111 acres under a New Deal law. The government claimed his infraction “affected” market prices of wheat, even though he planted it just for family use. The false principal established after the Supreme Court upheld this case had a profound outcome. Almost all federal agencies could be disbanded if the case were overturned.

In a case under the New Deal’s National Recovery Act, a poor immigrant operated his dry-cleaning shop in New Jersey. He was fined one hundred dollars for charging five cents less than was allowed by the National Recovery Act to dry-clean a garment. He was jailed for a second infraction, while his family struggled to pay the fine.

In both of these cases, the government claimed that the violations affected interstate commerce, even though that was patently false. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court upheld both cases. Clearly, government inspectors chose to prosecute the innocent citizens to serve as examples and create fear in others.

The Constitution refers to general welfare in two places, the preamble and the taxing and spending clause. These references have been used as justification for a number of measures that were surely not envisioned by the framers. One example was adoption of the prohibition amendment. Another was the Social Security Act and countless other measures passed for the “general welfare.”

 

Formerly an IT worker, John Carroll is now retired and makes his home in Texas. He is currently developing plans for what he calls “A Well-Tempered Federalism.”

John Carroll | Mises Wire

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Elon has announced his new University. You heard right. The world’s richest man is getting into public education. He’s got a plan to create a STEM-focused primary and secondary school in Austin.

 

Elon Musk, who moved to Texas during the pandemic, is planning to start a university in Austin, according to tax filings for the billionaire’s latest charity called The Foundation.

The new institution, seeded with a roughly $100 million gift from Musk, will start with a STEM-focused primary and secondary school. Once that’s operating, it “intends ultimately to expand its operations to create a university dedicated to education at the highest levels,” according to an application to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status obtained by Bloomberg.

The university will employ “experienced faculty” and feature a traditional curriculum “alongside hands-on learning experience including simulations, case studies, fabrication/design projects and labs,” according to the application, which was filed in October 2022 and approved in March. It will seek accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.

Is any of that CRT or diversity voodoo at Musk U? No clue, but given his interest in advancing free speech, it would be counter-productive to consider any of that. The Culture War has been flanking the sciences for a while, making several successful incursions. But you can’t have #woke science. And you can’t make people with no interest in it apply or succeed in these fields; not that success was ever the goal of anything having to do with CRT or DEI – unless by success you mean making them killing fields for the budding intellect of America’s youth.

They’ve done a fine job of that.

Let’s hope Musk U (my name, not his) and his primary and secondary education efforts steer clear of anything that is not academic.

 

Tuition is in Dogecoin & u get a discount if u have a dog

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2021

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Early this year, Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member, was arrested and charged with transmission of national defense information and other charges. Teixeira allegedly leaked classified documents on the Ukraine war and other foreign policy issues to a Discord gaming group.

The document propagated from there and appeared in many news articles in the following months.

The Post article sympathetically portrays the struggles of U.S. government officials fighting to suppress the unapproved eruption of hard facts. In a passage sue to boost sales of Kleenex inside the Beltway, the Post quotes a U.S. government official who was permitted to remain anonymous: “We were blindsided and furious,”

The Post, which partnered with PBS for a television program on the Discord leaks, noted that the “top secret… leaks predicted Ukraine’s failure to make substantial gains in its counteroffensive — a multibillion-dollar effort that cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives. The bleak forecast provided a sharp contrast to Washington’s optimistic messaging on the war, and it hurt Ukraine’s relationship with its chief backer, the U.S. government.” The “bleak forecast” was vastly more accurate than anything emitted by the Biden White House. A senior defense official (anonymous, of course) told the Post that the Pentagon raced to determine “what information may have been compromised.” But the real challenge was determining which official lies had been debunked.

The Post bewailed how the leaks discomfited the Ukrainian government. The Post noted that the “the leaks included never-before-released casualty estimates for Ukrainian forces, weaknesses in Ukraine’s ability to service damaged armored vehicles and the country’s shrinking supply of air defense munitions, which left population centers vulnerable to Russian cruise missile strikes and drones. Other documents warned that Ukraine was struggling to sustain troops, artillery and equipment, which probably would result in only “modest territorial gains” that fall “well short” of Kyiv’s goals.”

But the only reason that the “leaks” caused an international uproar is because U.S. government officials and their foreign partners had been brazenly lying about Ukrainian successes and prospects for victory. Folks who read foreign news sources or independent American outlets or websites (such as Mises.org) were far more likely to recognize that the war would have no happy ending for either Ukraine or Russia.

The Post omitted mentioning the role of federal censorship in deluding Americans about the Ukraine war. In July 2023, the House Judiciary Committee revealed that the FBI routinely colluded with Ukraine’s spy agency which sought help to suppress social media accounts that criticized the Ukraine government or “inaccurately reflects events in Ukraine” (including accurate battlefield reports of Ukrainian military defeats). The House report revealed that the FBI “routinely relayed these lists [of accounts] to the relevant social media platforms” and sought their suppression. The House report noted that “authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified U.S. State Department account and those belonging to American journalists, were ensnared in the censorship effort and flagged for social media companies to take down.” The CIA also pressured Twitter, calling for the suppression of “long lists of newspapers, tweets or YouTube videos guilty of ‘anti-Ukraine narratives,” journalist Matt Taibbi reported.

Washington Post readers are the cream of the intellectual crop, at least according to Washington Post readers. So how did Post devotees respond to the indignation about the leaker?

The article generated almost 600 comments. Among the most liked was an outburst from “ArtPope”:” Don’t understand why this article was written other than to support the pro-Putin, anti-Ukrainian position of the white nationalist evangelical fascist RepubliQans.” “Thinking4″ replied: They have profound ignorance of democracy and that their very words and actions undermine the standing of the US in the world.” (Thinking4 was probably not an English major.)

None of the most liked comments showed any outrage about Team Biden’s perennial lies on Ukraine. Instead, raw hatred was popular: “Find these traitors. Put their butts in jail. 10 years minimum. No deals.” “Make it 30,” came a quick reply, and another person piled on: “In solitary.” Said another: “Throughout history, the traditional punishment for treason is hanging. I’m ok with that.” “Mario TRUTH” joined the lynch mob: “What Teixeira did was nothing short of America WORST traitor it has ever seen. He not only aided in murdering 1000’s of innocent people, he intruded in Ukrainian leaders planning of a counteroffensive that would have saved many of the 1000’s Teixeira killed.”

So, U.S. government officials are entitled to blindfold and deceive the American people to avoid “intruding” on foreign leaders planning a military attack? This theory of democracy gets curiouser and curiouser.

The Post noted that the Discord leaks “depicted Zelensky in a new light, revealing his apparent interest in occupying Russian border villages and obtaining long-range missiles to hit targets deep inside Russian territory — an assertion that Ukrainians deny and would have deeply angered Washington.” So, America’s favored foreign leader was conniving to pull the United States into World War Three? Maybe Biden should have asked if Americans supported such recklessness? No, he was president, so he was entitled to delude Americans and pretend to rule the world.

Perhaps the greatest intellectual calisthenics in the long article was the paragraph that exonerated all Biden administration falsehoods on Ukraine. The Post offered a finger-wagging explanation: “Rather than exposing willful deceit by a U.S. government eager to bury bad news, the Discord leaks revealed a sharp divide between the U.S. intelligence analysts who authored the documents and many senior officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department who were overly sanguine about Ukraine’s prospects for success.”

Do the Post reporters and editors have no shame? They were not smart (or honest) enough to hark back to one of the clearest lessons from the Pentagon Papers, leaked in 1971. As philosopher Hannah Arendt noted, during the Vietnam War, “the policy of lying was hardly ever aimed at the enemy but chiefly if not exclusively destined for domestic consumption, for propaganda at home and especially for the purpose of deceiving Congress.” CIA analysts did excellent work in the early period of the Vietnam conflict. But “in the contest between

public statements, always over-optimistic, and the truthful reports of the intelligence community, persistently bleak and ominous, the public statements were likely to win simply because they were public,” Arendt commented. The Post rationalized the bias of Team Biden: “U.S. officials viewed the airing of pessimistic battle outcomes as detrimental to their endeavor to raise support for the war effort, both in Congress and internationally.” Truth-telling never competed with cheerleading for more bombs and missiles.

Biden, his appointees, and plenty of former military officials on the gravy train have made endless brazenly false statements about the Ukraine war. The result is that the Ukrainian government is on the verge of conscripting Ukrainian grandfathers to send on daily suicidal Pickett’s Charges so that Ukrainian politicians can keep pocketing billions of dollars in handouts from the U.S. government. Ukraine prohibited any males between the age of 18 to 60 from leaving the country – as if the government had a preemptive right to send them to their death. Ukraine is closing its western border to “military age males” the same way that East Germany closed its border to West Europe decades ago.

But it remains a “no cost” war inside the Washington Beltway, where Ukrainian flags quickly replaced BLM banners after the start of the war. Nothing has changed for the policy class in the last 60 years. Arendt castigated the lavishly-paid intellectual cheerleaders for the Vietnam War who ignored “the untold misery that their ‘solutions,’ pacification and relocation programs, defoliation, napalm, and anti-personnel bullets, held in store.” In the subsequent decades, intellectuals became more affluent but not more trustworthy.

Will the Washington Post ever honestly examine the costs of its own kowtowing to officialdom? The Post could do a great in-depth investigation of why its own editorial page and columnists have made so many false, misleading, or deranged statements on the Ukraine war. But don’t expect hell to freeze over any time soon.

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.

James Bovard | Mises Wire

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Steve Bannon was a member of Donald Trump’s Administration and was subpoenaed to testify before a Congressional Committee about the January 6 “Insurrection ” at the Capitol. Bannon defied the subpoena and was justly held in contempt of Congress. His case was referred to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

He was subsequently charged with two counts of contempt, and his case was fast-tracked. Merrick Garland had Bannon in court in less than two months. Nothing in our court system happens in two months unless you are an Attorney General who will do anything to hurt Donald Trump or his people.

Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s only living son, was under subpoena to appear before the Oversight Committee for a closed-door deposition. The purpose was to allow Congress to examine the Biden Cartel’s financial workings and establish the President’s role in the Cartel and how much money was eventually deposited in one of Joe’s bank accounts. Hunter not only snubbed the subpoena but also went to the Capitol and taunted the Republicans. Whoever suggested doing this was a wise move is not a friend of Hunter or Joe.

Hunter was to appear on Wednesday at 9:30 AM. His first act of defiance was to arrive at the Capitol at 9:40 AM. It would be best to never be socially late for a Congressional appearance, especially as the sole witness. The next step was walking directly to the Senate side of the building to a prepared podium on the front steps. He then gave an opening statement explaining the Republican witch-hunt and the innocence of him and his Father. He went to the Senate side because the House Guards could have arrested him had he set up on the other steps. This dog and pony day was carefully choreographed.

The spot on the Senate steps needs to be reserved, and it was by Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA). That is the same Eric Swalwell who still holds a House seat after having an affair with a Chinese Spy and helped her escape the Country rather than face arrest by the FBI. Republicans want Swalwell held in contempt for him aiding Hunter Biden not to appear. Swalwell claims the Bidens are innocent, and he had to step up and keep Hunter from a miscarriage of justice. Swalwell is not the person to determine miscarriage.

Hunter Biden has exposed his guilt in interviews and books. We have porn videos of his sex and dug antics, and we have him admitting that none of his “successes” would have happened without the Biden name. Hunter Biden is a low-life individual who has been exploiting the system for years. He will hide behind his Father on the contempt charges as he hid in the White House to avoid being served by his daughter’s mother’s attorneys during his paternity suit. Hunter Biden and accountability are like oil and water. The two will never mix.

The ball is now in Merrick Garland’s court. Will he indict the President’s son as quickly as he did Steve Bannon? Will Hunter first be held accountable for his contempt and then the numerous civil and criminal charges against him? When will Joe Biden step in, protect the Cartel, and pardon his son? What political price will Joe pay if he uses the Pardon card? There are more questions than answers today, but you can feel the table tilting the other way.

So many questions. But so are the complexities of the Democrat Party. They are a conniving group with no morals but an insatiable appetite for power. The 2024 election is going to be ugly. A Republican fighting 91 charges to save his life, family, political career, and the Country, and a corrupt Democrat trying to preserve his Cartel and the millions they have realized from their immoral, unscrupulous acts. This is not what our forefathers envisioned but what the Country has become. It is appropriate this article contains 666 words.

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I think we’ve more than made the case that a government that wants you dead will deliberately advance policies that make you want to kill yourself. Like a public health apparatus that makes you wait over six months for ‘care,’ but can fast-track your “assisted” suicide.

 

According to a recently released report by the Fraser Institute, healthcare wait times in Canada have reached a record high of 27.7 weeks, the longest wait time in the survey’s 30-year history and 198 percent longer than the 1993 average of 9.3 weeks. 

“Excessively long wait times remain a defining characteristic of Canada’s health-care system,” Fraser Institute policy analyst and co-author of the report Mackenzie Moir said in a December 7 press release.  

“And they aren’t simply minor inconveniences, they can result in increased suffering for patients, lost productivity at work, a decreased quality of life, and in the worst cases, disability or death,” he added. 

 

American Socialists promoting Obama Care were forever admiring and elevating the government-run healthcare of places like Canada. But even in the heyday of hope and change, wait times in the Great White North were excessive. Canadians were (legally) crossing the border into America for procedures they could get that week rather than wait months, and in the years since, the problem north of the 49th Parallel has only gotten worse.

The solution? Expand the list of people they’ve made miserable who can ask for Medical Assistance in Dying (State Assisted Suicide).

 

In 2022, a Winnipeg woman wrote in her posthumously published obituary that she chose to die by assisted suicide after being refused the treatments she needed: “I could have had more time if I had more help.”   

 

Help they don’t want you to have so they can help you kill yourself. A death wish for its citizens mirrored in the People’s Republic of Oregon, where legislators have made medically assisted dying easier and quicker alongside legalizing drugs that reduce once productive people into basket-cases suitable for their Medically Assisted ‘Headsman.’ Arranged and advocated by a collective of progressive thinkers. Ideological descendants of eugenicists who insist there are too many people in the world, or the Netherlands or Canada, Hawaii, Oregon, or my neighbor to the left, Vermont.

They were all about a master race until Hitler took their ideas and showed them what that might look like if you wanted to expedite things.

A slight course change. Contraception, abortion on demand, and then, a few years along (wait for it) … State-managed self-death. Not to ensure the survival of a master race. No, it’s climate change, you see. It would be best if you died so that their children can live in the same engineered world imagined by the Wilsonian Eugenicists without all that off-putting holocaust imagery (they’ve been denying).

You’ll ask us. There will be soft light, soothing music, a warm blanket, surrounded by your loved ones if you’ve any left.

It’s not a coincidence. And it’s not cruel and unusual punishment. We just said that to overwhelm the prisons.

They will continue to advance policies to make you miserable until you can’t go on living because the best thing you can do for yourself, your family, your community, and your country is dying, and they will be happy to help you do it.

They want you dead. If they can do it without ovens or gas showers or lining you up and shooting you in front of a ditch filled with the peasants they killed before you, they will. And by the looks of things, populations are prepared to let them.

 

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Friends, HB 1291 is not just an ordinary bill that allows Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). It is HB 44 on steroids. Here is the bill in PDF format – HB 1291 Please notice the sponsors!

It is slated to be introduced on 01/04/2024 to the “Special Committee on Housing” which is a sham since out of EIGHT members, SEVEN of them are the bill’s sponsors!!!

HB 44 is a bill we defeated last year that would have allowed neighborhoods zoned single-family to chop up their homes into 4 units provided they were on municipal sewer and water.

HB 1291 makes no such distinction so long as the septic and well can serve the square footage per the town’s ordinances.

Please Submit Group communications or Press Releases to steve@granitegrok.com.
Submission is not a guarantee of publication – Publication is not an endorsement.

This means ANY single-family neighborhood can be turned into a rental nightmare with both ADUs attached and non-attached. Usually a normal ADU is one extra unit that is allowed to be occupied by someone related to the homeowner. These multiple units would have NO restrictions as to the relationship to the homeowner.

The arguments against this are:

– There would be NO more choice to live in your once-guaranteed single-family neighborhoods
– Doesn’t guarantee ‘workforce housing’ prices since the area would automatically get higher rental rates than in a city, and thus would likely not help the housing ‘crisis’ at all
– It’s an attack on the middle class and the family

Normally a bill like this would be heard before the House’s Municipal and County Government Committee. We should demand that it be heard there, and NOT in a committee whose majority is its sponsors!!!

The bill has been requested to be heard by the normal Municipal and County Government Committee of the NH House of Representatives. We will be appealing to whichever committee ends up holding the hearing and ask you to email or write to them with your testimony also.

You can submit your testimony online here.

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Blaze Journalist Steve Baker has been notified that he must self-surrender to the FBI by next Tuesday. Baker was a reporter on the ground on January 6 (J6), and while he does not yet know what the charges are, I think we can guess.

Wrongful reporting. He appears to have made observations outside the approved narrative.

 

The left-wing Sedition Hunters compiled a rather impressive spreadsheet of all types of journalists, with designations of “Interior (Breach),” “Interior (Press Corps),” and “Restricted Grounds” assigned to 160 different “confirmed” journalists, and an additional spreadsheet tab listing 45 “unconfirmed” reporters and videographers.

When I first looked up the Sedition Hunters’ spreadsheet over a year ago, I wasn’t listed. So I contacted them and asked to be added. They didn’t respond to me directly. Instead, they blocked me from their Twitter page. A more recent search shows they added my name, along with my Locals blog link, my Twitter handle, and my Rumble page, with the “Interior (Breach)” designation under the “confirmed” tab.

 

This is not Steve’s first rodeo with the FBI. After an interview in 2021, after which he offered to share his footage with the Feds, he learned he would be charged with …racketeering and property damage. Steve went wide with the alleged charges, sending “over 200 copies of a press release notifying media organizations large and small that an independent journalist was being prosecuted for his coverage of January 6.” The  AUSA was not pleased, but Baker was never charged.

Fast forward to December 2023, and boom!

 

BREAKING My attorney has just been notified by @FBI that I am going to be charged by @TheJusticeDept for my journalistic efforts on #Jan6. I have to self-surrender on Tuesday. Charges are yet unknown. Stay tuned for more information to follow this afternoon.

— Steve Baker – TPC (@TPC4USA) December 14, 2023

 

Baker is not just some blogger, so we’d expect the same media that was pissed when it learned that Barack Obama’s weaponized police state was spying on them to come to his aid. Even if he were just a blogger, the media status of citizen journalists has been set by precedent. The government nor the media gets to define what that means. And yet here we are.

The FBI plans to charge one journalist who followed a story – along with 60 other journalists – into the US Capitol. I can’t imagine this will hold up in court, and I suspect the FBI knows this. It is an intimidation campaign. Lawfare. The FBI is sending a message to independent media.

The Feds will come after you for any reason they can contrive. Bring you in for questioning and try to catch you in a lie. One way or another, the goal is the same. Silence is the only free press left out there—independent media.

And we can always use your support.

 

Please Support Independent Media – No Transaction Fees!

 

HT | GP

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Campaign for Vermont finally asked Vermonters directly the question our elected representatives have been avoiding for years in regard to their Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) fantasies: How much are you willing to pay to support the law’s greenhouse gas reduction mandates?

Vermonters’ overwhelming answer: not a #*&% thing!

When asked, “How much a year should Vermont residents be asked to pay in increased taxes in order to meet the Paris Climate Accord’s target of being carbon-neutral?” 50 percent answered nothing at all. Another 15 percent said $10 a year or less, and 23% said between $10 and $100 a year.

Ummmm… that ain’t gonna cut it. Just the thermal sector portion of the GWSA, the Clean Heat Standard, is estimated to cost the average Vermont household over $500 a year. The transportation portion, when enacted, is likely to cost Vermont drivers in the neighborhood of $10 per fill up. Changes to the Renewable Energy Standard under discussion for next year are estimated to add tens, potentially hundreds, of millions of dollars to Vermonters’ electric bills over the next decade. And all of these estimates are conservative. Back to the poll….

The policies for how to extract this money from the populace were even more unpopular. Asked if they supported or opposed “A plan by the State Legislature to subsidize CLEAN home heating systems and weatherization improvements by imposing a surcharge or tax on carbon-based home heating fuel, such as natural gas, home heating oil, kerosene, propane, and other forms of fuel,” 63 percent of Vermonters opposed the law, a majority (52 percent) strongly so. This sentiment was reflected in the tsunami of calls and emails lawmakers received before the Clean Heat Standard bill votes last spring. But, in spite of their constituents, 120 out of 126 Democrats in the House and Senate supported and voted to override Governor Scott’s veto of the Clean Heat Standard Bill (S.5/Act 18). Every Republican, like the majority of Vermonters, opposed this carbon tax.

 

 

Ummmm… that ain’t gonna cut it. Just the thermal sector portion of the GWSA, the Clean Heat Standard, is estimated to cost the average Vermont household over $500 a year. The transportation portion, when enacted, is likely to cost Vermont drivers in the neighborhood of $10 per fill up. Changes to the Renewable Energy Standard under discussion for next year are estimated to add tens, potentially hundreds, of millions of dollars to Vermonters’ electric bills over the next decade. And all of these estimates are conservative. Back to the poll….

The policies for how to extract this money from the populace were even more unpopular. Asked if they supported or opposed “A plan by the State Legislature to subsidize CLEAN home heating systems and weatherization improvements by imposing a surcharge or tax on carbon-based home heating fuel, such as natural gas, home heating oil, kerosene, propane, and other forms of fuel,” 63 percent of Vermonters opposed the law, a majority (52 percent) strongly so. This sentiment was reflected in the tsunami of calls and emails lawmakers received before the Clean Heat Standard bill votes last spring. But, in spite of their constituents, 120 out of 126 Democrats in the House and Senate supported and voted to override Governor Scott’s veto of the Clean Heat Standard Bill (S.5/Act 18). Every Republican, like the majority of Vermonters, opposed this carbon tax.

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank. He is also a regular contributor to VermontGrok.

 

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A few days ago, University Presidents of Harvard, Penn St, and MIT were brought before Congress and grilled on anti-Semitism at their schools. Under oath, they dodged, ducked, and avoided straight answers. Worst of the bunch was Penn State President Liz Magill, who reportedly smirked at the questioners.

It seems as if Liz has backtracked now, saying that killing and the holocaust are unacceptable. Could this change of heart be because the Penn State, Wharton Business School has demanded her resignation? Or perhaps because Businessman Ross Stevens, who recently gifted Penn State with $100 million, has demanded his money back, or Magill gone?

If forced out, it would be one baby step in the right direction, in my opinion. Not only should she be given the boot, but every professor, teaching graduate, and every student screaming the “From the river to the sea,” the anti-Jewish terrorist chant, needs to be introduced to the wonderful world of a McDonalds employee.

Colleges and Universities in America have been a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. This has spread down to High Schools, as seen by the arrest of a 13-year-old boy in Canton, Ohio, who laid out plans to commit a mass shooting at the Temple Israel in that city. These kids are pawns for leftist professors and administrators, which is why they must be removed from any position where they can infect their hatred to others.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, it has been reported Hamas fighters have begun surrendering. Only about 120 so far, but though that sounds like a small number, these are men sworn to fight and die for Allah. They are voicing displeasure, it’s said, with their leaders hiding in a bunker deep underground while their people are dying in large numbers in the streets above. This may be the start of the end for Hamas, in wars when small numbers begin quitting others tend to follow but we will have to wait to see if this happens.

Keep in mind nothing will change anywhere until we remove leftists from positions of power everywhere, from local town officials all the way up to the US Congress and President. MAGA, vote for Trump in 2024

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Here’s a quick decline of the American culture update. “In Fairfax County, Virginia, during the swearing-in ceremony, school board member Karl Frisch opted for a stack of books portraying explicit content and immoral behavior.”

I guess we could say that, at the very least, he’s standing up for or behind (perhaps with his pants down) his “convictions. And I’m willing to bet that it is an oath (to the books, at least) he will actually keep.

 

In Fairfax County, Virginia, during the swearing-in ceremony, school board member Karl Frisch opted for a stack of books portraying explicit content and immoral behavior instead of a Bible.

This choice reflects an attempt to normalize inappropriate behavior and challenge the… pic.twitter.com/eYWUM7c6T0

— I Meme Therefore I Am (@ImMeme0) December 14, 2023

 

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The Legislative Beer Caucus is hoping to sit down with all major presidential candidates over beers and have some serious, substantive discussions about NH PRIMARY  issues. And also have fun – starting with Chris Christie on Wednesday in Portsmouth.

December 15, 2024
CONTACT: Todd Cheewing
(todd.cheewing@gmail.com)

 

FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE SLATED FOR BEER CAUCUS LEGISLATIVE FORUM AT SEA DOG BREWERY IN EXETER ON DECEMBER 20

 

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Former New Jersey Governor and current Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie will be the featured guest at a legislative forum (at the Sea Dog Brewery in Exeter) at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, December 20th.

The event marks the return of the popular “Legislative Beer Caucus Founders Happy Hour” political confab. The Beer Caucus is an informal group of several dozen current and former New Hampshire legislators who socialize and network while addressing important Granite State issues.

The “Happy Hours” were started in 2020 by the Beer Caucus Founders during the COVID pandemic as on-line zoom events allowing GOP candidates to share perspectives and positions while concurrently enjoying libations. Hundreds of voters registered to watch these interactive events where significant and substantive issues were addressed in a format that also allowed for humorous and relaxed interaction.

The four Beer Caucus Founders include District 2 State Senator Tim Lang (Chair, Senate Ways and Means Committee), District 17 State Senator Howard Pearl (Chair, Senate Committee on Executive Departments and Administration), Merrimack District 4 State Representative Mike Moffett (Chair, House Committee on State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs) and the Honorable Reed Panisiti, former House Assistant Floor Leader. The December 20th event will be a hybrid affair, meaning that this time the Happy Hour will include a live audience as well as the on-line option.

“Elected officials have long connected informally over beers to communicate and figure out how to get things done,” explained Lang. “Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill for instance. We’re excited to engage Governor Christie and are very pleased to have him find time for us.”

The Happy Hours conclude with the popular “Lightning Round” where the candidates are given a succession of “either/or” options to respond to.

To watch on-line via “Zoom” voters can go to
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83234382709?pwd=bkNsRGFqYWJ1U2RBS1JudDB5MHFCQT09
Meeting ID: 832 3438 2709, Passcode: 685611

Voters can email suggested candidate queries to timothy.lang@leg.state.nh.us.

 

#####

 

‘GrokNote: ( … ) Changed from original to reflect a venue change after the press release was issued.

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In advance of a holiday season that could see record numbers of ancestry kits given as gifts, The Rutherford Institute is cautioning the public about the significant privacy risks associated with corporations, government agencies, and hackers possibly gaining access to one’s familial DNA.

As the Institute’s investigative report “We’re All Suspects in a DNA Lineup, Waiting to be Matched with a Crime” explains, a DNA print reveals everything about who we are, where we come from, and who we will be. By submitting one’s DNA to a genealogical database, individuals risk the police, corporations, and hackers potentially gaining access to the genetic makeup, relationships, and health profiles of every relative—past, present, and future—in their family, whether or not they ever agreed to be part of such a database. The Institute’s warning comes in the wake of reports that hackers may have gained access to the ancestry data of 6.9 million people through one of the leading genealogical sites.

“The debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty. Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup waiting to be matched up with a crime.”

Police have used ancestry databases to solve cold cases that have remained unsolved for decades. Anyone who comes up as a possible DNA match—including distant family members—can suddenly become part of a circle of suspects that must be tracked, investigated, and ruled out. Although a number of states had forbidden police from using government databases to track family members of suspects, the genealogy websites could provide a loophole for law enforcement. For instance, in 2018, former police officer Joseph DeAngelo was flagged as the notorious “Golden State Killer” through the use of familial DNA, which allows police to match up an unknown suspect’s crime scene DNA with that of any family members in a genealogy database. Police were able to identify DeAngelo using the DNA of a distant cousin found in a public DNA database. A few states have started introducing legislation to restrict when and how police use these genealogical databases, with Maryland requiring that they can only be used for serious violent crimes such as murder and rape, only after they exhaust other investigatory methods, and only under the supervision of a judge.

Tens of millions of people have added their DNA to genealogical databases in recent years. Public, commercial DNA databases have grown so massive that they can be used to find you even if you’ve never shared your own DNA. One genealogy profile can lead to as many as 300 other people. All 50 states also maintain their own DNA databases, in addition to CODIS, the FBI’s massive DNA database. As part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns, some hospitals also take and store newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

 

| Rutherford Institute

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