Authored by Walker Larson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The president’s desk bears a remarkable pedigree. Its story ties together several disparate historical threads, including a ghost ship, polar exploration, and relations between the United States and the UK. The tale begins with a certain British Admiral, Sir Edward Belch.

A mapmaker in the British Royal Navy described Sir Edward Belcher as “a tyrannical martinet who made every ship he commanded a floating hell.” In 1854, that hell was a cold one, since Belcher and his small flotilla were sailing the frigid seas of the Arctic.

Tyrannical or not, one thing is sure: Belcher was a talented seaman, explorer, and hydrographer (someone who maps bodies of water). In 1852, he’d been assigned an important task. Belcher and his men ventured into the austere, alien waters of the Arctic on a rescue mission, searching for any trace of the lost Franklin Expedition.

The Franklin Expedition, headed by Sir John Franklin, was an 1845 British exploration operation that aimed to find the Northwest Passage through Canada to the Pacific. Franklin’s crew was ordered to record magnetic data as a potential aid to navigation practices. But the treacherous northern sea closed its icy fingers around the men of the expedition and never let them go. The mission proved to be one of the worst disasters in the history of polar exploration.

The two ships of the Franklin expedition—the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—sailed from Britain in May of 1845, took on supplies in Greenland in July, were spotted in Baffin Bay, Canada, and crossed the Lancaster Sound. They were never heard from again, vanishing into the vast white void.

In the years of searching conducted by the British government after their disappearance, no trace of the ships was found. Only a few artifacts and human remains were recovered. Most of the 129 crew members and officers had simply disappeared. Forensic investigations were conducted on the recovered bodies, revealing that the men suffered from starvation, scurvy, lead poisoning, and, possibly, cannibalism, a narrative supported by the oral accounts of the expedition provided by the Inuit people. It was only in the 2010s that the Erebus and the Terror were at last discovered, wrecked off King William Island.

It was this polar tragedy that brought Sir Edward Belcher and his small fleet of ships, including the HMS Resolute, to the Arctic in 1854. Belcher’s voyage was almost as ill-fated as Franklin’s. Though the Resolute was heavily constructed to withstand the harsh Arctic environment, it became locked in the ice in 1854, along with four more of Belcher’s ships. Belcher made the difficult decision to abandon the ships and begin an overland trek to rendezvous with other vessels that could bring them back to England.

The men left behind their floating piece of home, their security and warmth, and entered the unending whiteness. They marched over the vast expanses of ice, eventually meeting up with their comrades’ ships and returning safely to England. There, Belcher was court-martialed (not for the first time) for abandoning his vessels but acquitted because his orders gave him full discretion. He never received another command.

So there, in the emptiness of the frozen North Sea, where the slowly clenching jaws of ice groaned and echoed through frigid air, the pale winds pined, and the strange lights flickered and played about the sky like ghosts, the abandoned Resolute waited. Belcher and his men had left it in good order, though they knew it would likely be broken up by the ice, in the end. But that was not to be its fate.

Months passed. Summer came, kissing even the hard northern waters with warmth. The ice thawed. Somehow, Resolute broke free. It drifted some 1,200 miles until James Buddington, captain of an American whaling ship, the George Henry, sighted it in 1855, near Baffin Island. An 1856 New York Journal article describes the moment the Americans boarded the ghost ship.

“Finally, stealing over the side, they found everything stowed away in proper order. … Everything wore the silence of the tomb. Finally reaching the cabin door they broke in and found their way in the darkness to the table … [a candle] was lit and before the astonished gaze of these men exposed a scene that appeared to be rather one of enchantment than reality. Upon a massive table was a metal teapot, glistening as if new, also a large volume of Scott’s family Bible, together with glasses and decanters filled with choice liquors. Nearby was Captain Kellett’s chair, a piece of massive furniture, over which had been thrown, as if to protect this seat from vulgar occupation, the royal flag of Great Britain.”

Buddington assigned a portion of his crew to the ghost ship, and they sailed it back to the United States. According to maritime law, the ship belonged to those who had found her (Buddington and his crew), and the British government accepted this fact when they were notified of the find. But the U.S. government had a different idea.

At this time, U.S. relations with Great Britain were strained. The War of 1812 was still alive to memory, including the moment when the British burned the U.S. capitol. The two countries continued to dispute the Canadian border. In the discovery of the Resolute, the U.S. government saw an opportunity to make a gesture of goodwill toward their adversaries across the pond. Congress authorized $40,000 to purchase the ship from Buddington and repair it.

The Americans took great care in refurbishing the sturdy old juggernaut, as described in an 1856 New York Times article:

“With such completeness and attention to detail has this work been performed, that not only has everything found on board been preserved, even to the books in the captain’s library, the pictures in his cabin, and a musical-box and organ belonging to other officers, but new British flags have been manufactured in the Navy Yard to take the place of those which had rotted during the long time she was without a living soul on board.”

With great fanfare, the Resolute was sailed back to England and presented as a gift to Queen Victoria, who visited the ship in person. The Brits took the gift to heart, and the queen remembered this gesture from the Americans for many years.

Returning the Favor

When the Resolute was removed from service and broken down in 1879, Queen Victoria ordered some of its timbers to be preserved. The heavy oak lumber, which had weathered so many storms and seen both tragedy and reconciliation, was constructed into a massive, ornate desk, weighing 1,300 pounds. Victoria sent it as a surprise gift to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, returning the favor and expressing gratitude for returning Her Majesty’s Ship, the Resolute, all those years before. Most importantly, the desk became an emblem of the mutual goodwill and alliance between the United States and Great Britain, which has never wavered since.

Most U.S. Presidents used the desk since it was gifted at the end of the 19th century. Between 1951 and 1962, it was used to hold a projector in the broadcast room at the White House until it was rediscovered by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. She had it moved back to the Oval Office, where it has formed part of the backdrop for many landmark moments in American presidential history. There are photos of President Kennedy sitting at the desk with John Kennedy Jr. peeking out from beneath it.

The Resolute desk, as it has come to be known, bears within it the marks of struggle, abandonment, miraculous discovery, restoration, and reconciliation. It’s a fitting symbol for the resolute American spirit.

Authored by John Maxwell Hamilton via RealClearPolitics,

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – Who guards the guardians? – is an old question that began as amusing repartee and has bedeviled democratic government from the beginning of its formation.

The phrase originated with the Roman satirical poet Juvenal, who was presented with the idea that wives should be chained to keep them faithful. Fine, the poet replied, but who will guard husbands?

The question for democracy lies at the heart of a new book by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law.” Too many laws and regulations administered by unaccountable government officials, he writes, have “swallowed up ordinary people.”

Gorsuch, with help from his former law clerk Janie Nitze, makes his case in a series of parables. They feature individual Americans who have been victimized by government laws that they did not know existed and that should not have been written in the first place. The courts in many stories are too aggressive in adjudicating cases that should have been considered minor infractions, at best.

In one such story, an agent from the U.S. Department of Agriculture informed a young magician, Marty Hahne, that he needed a license for using his rabbit in the act he had just performed at a local library. Hahne subsequently learned he also needed an evacuation plan for the animal in case of a hurricane or some other disaster. This requirement originated in a federal statute, the Animal Welfare Act, which regulates the treatment of dogs, cats, rabbits, and other animals for research, teaching, testing, and exhibition. Congressional lawmakers called on the USDA to apply the law to such venues as “carnivals, circuses, and zoos.” USDA regulators interpreted those exhibitions to include magic shows.

In other stories of misplaced rules and courts run amuck, people’s lives are more than inconvenienced. They are ruined. Gorsuch believes these stories show that a surfeit of laws is sucking the life out of democracy.

“Over Ruled” will be catnip for readers who fear the so-called deep state is out to subvert democracy. It also is convenient for Donald Trump, who, if elected, promises to “drain the swamp” by firing career civil servants and installing his own unelected supporters in their place.

But Gorsuch’s book should be taken seriously, both for its strengths and weaknesses. He certainly makes a valid point that the number of laws and regulations has exploded in recent years. The first federal criminal statute, written when the Republic was established, contained fewer than fifty crimes. Now the total number is, by some counts, 5,000. In the process, Congress has delegated powers to executive department agencies to write administrative laws and rules as well as apprehend suspects and judge them.

Having made the case for the problem, however, Gorsuch does not dig into the complexity of implementing workable solutions. He acknowledges that our society is much more complicated than it was at the nation’s founding, and therefore we need more measures to protect citizens. He does not tell us how we sort the good from the bad or how we regulate the regulators.

Perhaps most damaging to his argument, “Over Ruled” does not provide readers with the context needed to understand the longstanding tension between government by the people and the need for expert mediation on social, economic, and political problems.

Gorsuch, who believes judging involves close adherence to the original intent of the Constitution, takes us back to an earlier era that he characterizes as local people solving local problems. He considers this a good time for “ordinary Americans.” What he fails to say, however, is the Founding Fathers were elitists who doubted that ordinary white, male citizens, not to mention minorities and women, were up to the task of making good government decisions.

Gorsuch liberally quotes James Madison about the evils of too much law. But equally important, Madison and others hoped that elections would put the “best” in office. Only members of the House of Representatives were directly elected. Under the original Constitution, senators were elected by state legislatures. The Electoral College can “elect” a presidential candidate who did not win the popular vote – something that has happened already twice this century.

Thomas Jefferson, among many others, promoted national education schemes to create “a natural aristocracy” – what we would today call civil servants – to manage government. What Jefferson vaguely foresaw has come to pass, whether it is experts monitoring environmental degradation and food purity or ferreting out unfair trade practices.

This reliance on experts – people who have the training to determine facts – has not gone uncontested. It fueled populism in the United States in the late 19th century as well as today. Disaffected citizens feel government is not taking them into account and that the bureaucracy is an untethered fourth branch of government, a phrase Gorsuch used frequently. This mentality has given resonance to Donald Trump’s message that his intuitive common-sense ideas about interest rates are more sound than Federal Reserve System economists who have studied monetary policy all their lives.

Readers who want a fuller exploration of the longstanding social and political tension that arises from depending on experts can turn to “Democracy and Truth” by historian Sophia Rosenfeld. Or readers may choose a new volume by Stephen Breyer. The recently retired justice is an expert on administrative law and helped Sen. Ted Kennedy deregulate the airline industry. His “Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism” thoughtfully weighs the difficulty of balancing fealty to the Constitution with the needs of modern society.

The willingness to rely on common sense over expertise is not infinitely elastic. Most people prefer to go to trained doctors when they are ill rather than consult someone they pass on the street. Most people like some aspects of government expertise and intervention. They may, for instance, place a high value on fighting animal abuse, which is the motivation behind the well-intentioned (if misused) Animal Welfare Act. Various professions require training and education in order to acquire a license to practice; in addition to adding to their credibility, this restriction reduces competition. One of Gorsuch’s examples of overreaching administrative law concerns an African American woman who was “apprehended” for braiding hair in her salon without having attended cosmetology school.

In regard to preferences, it is worth noting that Justice Gorsuch has some of his own, namely enlarging the power of presidents beyond anything the Founders conceived. Insofar as administrative power is concerned, he and other conservatives believe that the president should have more control over quasi-independent agencies.

A recent Supreme Court decision raises concerns about maintaining the protections that administrative law provides. The court found that it was unconstitutional for the Securities Exchange Commission to levy fines against a financier whom they deemed to have violated antifraud and pro-transparency rules. The court said the SEC had to pursue its case in federal court. This dramatic switch in thinking by the Supreme Court could make it difficult – and in some cases impossible – for agencies to police offenders. As law professor David Cole has noted, “some agencies’ statutes do not authorize them to sue in federal court.” It is worth asking, do we want our already flooded courts to deal with all these issues, when more efficient ways exist to get the job done?

Gorsuch has not written a legal analysis so much as a stump speech. His examples are akin to those used by political leaders to give a human dimension to policies they are promoting. Many of the stories are trivial to the point of being frivolous.

Is it really worthwhile to dwell on a law, long ago passed by Virginia legislators, to outlaw hunting bears with dogs on Sundays? A few reform-minded states have wiped laws like these from the books. At the federal level, Gorsuch notes, President Obama directed agencies to “eliminate rules that don’t make sense.”

These steps are relatively easy. The difficult part Gorsuch leaves untouched. His cases are largely cartoons. They do not demonstrate how to balance the injustice growing out of a law with the legitimate concerns it is trying to address.

The solutions he offers sound like Fourth of July speeches. His call for more civic education, as valuable as that would be (see my RCP column on the subject), emphasizes school-age children spending more time reading the Constitution.

Gorsuch argues that the expansion of laws and regulations undermines the credibility of our legal institutions. “Everyone feels like a criminal,” he told the C-SPAN audience.

The growth in law-making is a problem, but it is questionable that most Americans feel like criminals. How can they feel like criminals if they don’t know about all the laws that exist, as Gorsuch insists is the case?

If the justice is worried that we are moving “from a world in which law is revered into one in which it generates disaffection and feeds distrust,” he could profitably focus on the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to police itself. Feeble ethical standards govern justices’ behavior, which is well known and heavily criticized.

The Supreme Court has enormous power. Justices are appointed, not elected, and may serve until they die. They are given their jobs because of their expertise in nuanced application of the law. For Gorsuch, who belongs to this powerful elite, one might expect a deeper exploration of the trade-offs between too much law and too few protections.

“Who guards the guardians” is a much more profound subject than Justice Gorsuch lets on.

John Maxwell Hamilton is an RCP columnist, a professor at the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University, and an award-winning author of eight books, including “Manipulating the Masses: The Origins of Government Propaganda,” which won the Goldsmith Prize.

There are a great many tall tales circulating these days in association with illegal immigration.  Possibly one of the most prevalent claims from the political left is that western economies “need illegals” in order to support the dragging economy and fill a hungry labor market. An extension of this idea is that many of these migrants are “skilled workers” that the west desperately needs for vital roles. 

But how much do the US and Europe really need illegal immigrants in order to keep western economies going?  And how many of them actually bring important skills to western labor markets?  Would they be sunk without these people?  Or, would they be much better off?

First and foremost it should be noted that in the US there is ample evidence to show that the Biden Administration has been engaging in statistical manipulation for the last four years, and this includes labor statistics.  While there was indeed a clear shortage of workers in the service sector during covid lockdowns (and the helicopter money supplied by covid stimulus and PPP loans), recent revisions to BLS numbers have cut at least 819,000 jobs from the books that Biden originally took credit for.  In other words, those jobs never existed.

It was these same jobs numbers that were used by the Democrats to argue in favor of open borders; asserting that without illegals this explosion in labor demand would turn into a worker shortage crisis.  While specific job sector stats (job categories) don’t usually distinguish between legal and illegal migrants, there is little evidence to indicate they fill an important role in our society.

In America, migrants flood into the low-skill service sector and health services sector.  In many cases this involves entry level nursing home care and similar employment.  The other category in which they usually work is construction.  They offer cheap labor for home building, but this has certainly not translated to lower housing costs. 

In the meantime, tens-of-millions illegal migrants drive up housing demand, in turn driving up prices on new homes and rentals.  Migrants are given access to government subsidies as long as they are under review for asylum or refugee status, in many cases they are offered more access to government aid than natural born citizens.  Both California and Oregon are currently instituting housing loan programs available to immigrants only.  

Census SIPP data from 2022 indicates that around 59% of non-citizen households in the US use one or more welfare programs, compared to 39% of US-born households.  The establishment media and Democrats will often try to dilute welfare stats by citing legal migrant numbers instead of illegal migrant numbers.

Around 47% of illegal migrants to the US never completed high school (as opposed to 8% of US-born citizens).

It is estimated that illegals cost US taxpayers at least $150 billion in public services (officially) each year while paying only $25 billion in taxes.  While some economists cite a potential $324 billion in GDP gain from migrant workers, this almost all comes from wages which illegals send to their families outside the US.  

In the UK, migrant data is rarely tracked by the government, ostensibly because they want to keep the indigenous public in the dark as much as possible.  However it is clear that, just like in the US, migrants (specifically from third-world nations) do not bring skilled labor to the table.  UK migrants overwhelmingly work in the service and health sectors, once again in low-level nursing jobs, elderly facilities, some work in tech and the rest do not work at all.  

The UK estimates that at least 1.7 million migrants are unemployed while on the dole, and they are costing taxpayers upwards of £8.5 Billion ($11 billion) annually.

In Germany, welfare costs skyrocketed in 2024 and reports show 47% of recipients for government handouts are migrants.  The total cost of $49 billion is 14.8 percent higher than in 2023, 18.4 percent higher compared to 2020, and 23 percent higher compared to 2015.   In the EU migrants from Africa and Asia are once again greatly overrepresented in health services. 

The point is, the notion of “skilled migrant workers” saving western economies with their vital labors is a complete fabrication.  Illegal migrants in particular are a net negative and a dangerous strain on the welfare system.  They also drive up housing costs by creating mass demand with not enough supply, and this same demand drives up inflation in almost every other area of the economy.  The roles they do fill can be easily adapted without them by offering minor subsidies or tax benefits for American citizens.   

Like most countries in the world today, the US and European nations should be vetting migrants and only accepting those that bring value to the table along with a willingness to assimilate.  Otherwise, they serve no useful purpose.       

Authored by Richard Truesdell via American Greatness,

On Friday, I did something I hadn’t done since before COVID-19, I went and saw a movie premiere on the day it opened in an actual movie theater. With my childhood friend Susan, whom I’ve known for more than five decades—a dyed-in-the-wool conservative just like me—we went and saw Reagan. And unlike most critics on Rotten Tomatoes who rated it at 18% and elsewhere, we loved it along with a virtually unprecedented 98% of Rotten Tomato viewers.

Right up front, I can say that Reagan is not without flaws. The cinematography in much of the movie is quite dark, especially in the flashback scenes at the start of the film. Also, at 2 hours and 15 minutes, the film is long. While a lot of footage was likely left on the cutting room floor, getting Reagan down to two hours would likely help. When Reagan comes to streaming, I’ll watch it again.

With that out of the way, I will say that Dennis Quaid’s performance as Ronald Reagan is simply outstanding. It’s easily his best work since The Big Easy, one of my all-time favorite movies, a movie I like to say is a guilty pleasure (with equally great chemistry with co-star Ellen Barkin). When Susan and I entered the 530 PM showing, people exiting from the earlier 3 PM showing had tears in their eyes, saying to us that Reagan would pull on our emotions, which it did. Again, and to not spoil it for you, if I were writing the screenplay, the ending is exactly how I would have written it. It generated applause from everyone in the theater.

I could not find fault with any of the performances. Jon Voight as the ex-KGB operative who followed Reagan for decades and narrates the story, and especially Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan, were perfect. We both thought there was great on-screen chemistry between Quaid and Miller.

Remember that during Reagan’s presidency, Nancy was often vilified. Even four decades ago, the mainstream media showed their bias as they have done with every Republican First Lady since then, save for Laura Bush. This while idolizing narcissists like Michelle Obama and especially, until a month ago, “Dr.” Jill Biden. As I like to say, “It is what it is.”

This is what I call a small, big movie. Small in that it’s not told epically. In some ways, the Ron-Nancy love story is intimate. But it’s a big movie in that it tells the story with an all-star (Quaid, Miller, Voight, and many others) cast. The production was interrupted by the COVID lockdowns, so it took about five years from when Quaid was first cast as Ronald Reagan (he also portrayed Bill Clinton earlier in his career) to its debut last Friday.

But as I mentioned earlier, Reagan has been savaged by the critics, and the reviews fall along ideological lines. Most egregious, of course, was at the New York Times. There, Glenn Kenny couldn’t help himself. Amazingly, the bias at the New York Times permeates everything it touches, going beyond its news coverage to its best-selling books list to even its movie reviews. Kenny closed his review by saying, “It all makes for a plodding film, more curious than compelling.”

Tell that to the viewers who loved it, you jackass. You simply can’t help yourself.

(I would like to contrast how the critics loved Oppenheimer. Of course, the New York Times fell all over itself in praising Oppenheimer, a far less satisfying film, saying “Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s staggering film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb.”

Staggering film? Again, when the story fits its agenda, it gets a gushing review.

As I said earlier, the New York Times simply can’t help itself.

As biopics, both films have their flaws, especially in length. All films do. But as entertainment as well as telling a historic story, Oppenheimer is much more flawed than Reagan.)

As I sorted through other reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, especially the less-than-positive ones, one word kept appearing: hagiographic. Even though I have a better-than-average command of the English language and volcabulary, I had never used or even seen that word. So I went online and looked it up. The definition is “excessively flattering.” It’s as if reviewers got their reviewers’ talking points directly from the DNC. The reviews of Reagan are just like any other political commentary, like anything connected in the mainstream media to “Orange Man Bad.” Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery on the third anniversary of Abbey Gate at the invitation of the next-of-kin of the fallen 13 is a perfect example.

This hagiography nonsense starts with Ty Burr at the Washington Post. “The faithful for whom ‘Reagan’ was made aren’t likely to see that it’s a hagiography as rosy and shallow as anything in a Kremlin May Day parade. As pop-culture propaganda—popaganda, if you will—the movie’s strictly for true believers. As history, it’s worthless.”

It’s as if Burr is channeling his inner Hillary Clinton, viewing anyone who enjoyed Reagan as deplorable.

It continues with Joshua Peinado at In Review Online, who said, “It’s one thing to go the route of hagiography and never mention the notable failures of Reagan and his presidency…but Reagan makes the stranger choice to give voice to the issues of his conservatism and then, promptly, forget all about them.”

Christopher Lloyd writing for The Film Yap, giving the film two out of five stars says, “The Gipper gets a goober of a biopic—schmaltzy, hagiographic, and ham-handed—though Dennis Quaid nails the portrait of his self-effacing charm hiding a steely resolve.”

I could go on and on, but what’s the point?

But the bottom line is that a couple that will spend $40 and up (the cost of the tickets plus a bucket of popcorn and two overpriced sodas) for a date night out will love Reagan.

Overall, I’m torn between giving it four or five stars out of five, so I’ll give it a 4.5. It’s an emotional film in many ways. For those of us who came of age during the Cold War and watched the Soviet Union disintegrate in the early 1990s, you will find Reagan an enjoyable way to spend 2 hours and 15 minutes. It’s a satisfying, emotional film. To me, it’s a far superior film (as entertainment) to the Oscar-honored but plodding Oppenheimer. Being a history person, I really wanted to like Oppenheimer but felt the earlier Fat Man and Little Boy with Paul Newman told the development of the atom bomb story far better.

To get the flavor of Reagan, here’s a link to the trailer.

So if you are looking for something to fill your time on the last day of the long Labor Day weekend, I can recommend Reagan without reservation.

A Pennsylvania court has ruled that election officials cannot reject mail-in ballots with incorrect dates or no dates as long as they were submitted before the filing deadline.

A panel of the Commonwealth State Appeals Court ruled on Aug. 30 that the state’s legal requirement for mail-in ballot envelopes to have dates written violates the state constitution.

“Simply put, the refusal to count undated or incorrectly dated but timely received mail ballots submitted by otherwise eligible voters because of meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors violates the fundamental right to vote recognized in and guaranteed by the free and equal elections clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution,” wrote Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler for the 4-1 majority.

The ruling applies to both Philadelphia and Allegheny counties, and strikes down a 2019 law – Act 77 – which included a provision requiring voters to date the envelope in which the mail-in ballots are enclosed.

As the Epoch Times notes further, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged that and other provisions, arguing that they are unconstitutional as they sued Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, the Philadelphia County Board of Elections, and the Allegheny County Board of Elections.

The Pennsylvania Republican Party and the Republican National Committee intervened in the case and said the provisions do not violate the state Constitution.

The majority declined to rule against other provisions but said the date requirement is unconstitutional.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a social media statement that the court “got it right: an eligible voter’s minor error of forgetting to date or misdating a ballot envelope cannot be cause for disenfranchisement.”

The appeals court said in the ruling that officials still have the authority to make sure mail-in ballots comply with other requirements, including deadlines for submission.

Pennsylvania’s Department of State said that “multiple court cases have now confirmed that the dating of a mail-in ballot envelope, when election officials can already confirm it was sent and received within the legal voting window, provides no purpose to election administration.”

The office has not said how the decision might alter its guidance to counties that run elections. In July, the Department of State told counties that return envelopes should be printed to include the full year, “2024,” leaving voters to add the accurate month and day.

Mike Lee, executive director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, said the ruling “preserves the votes of thousands of voters who make this mistake in every election, without undemocratic, punitive enforcement by the counties.”

According to data presented to the court, more than 10,000 mail-in ballots were not counted in the 2022 midterm election and 4,000 were rejected in the primary elections earlier this year because the ballots did not comply with the ballot date requirement.

Tom King, who represents the state and national Republican Party groups in the case, said he was disappointed in the decision and “absolutely will appeal.”

Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough said in a dissent that the date requirement was “perhaps the least burdensome of all ballot-casting requirements” and that the groups that challenged the provision had not met the burden of showing that the requirement was so difficult as to deny voters their right to vote.

“It seems to me that the majority was swayed by the raw numbers and avoided applying the true test for evaluating a Free and Equal Elections Clause claim,” she wrote.

“Today the majority says that requiring the date on the voter declaration on a mail-in or absentee ballot envelope is subject to strict judicial scrutiny and cannot be enforced because doing so unconstitutionally denies the voting franchise altogether. I must wonder whether walking into a polling place, signing your name, licking an envelope, or going to the mailbox can now withstand the majority’s newly minted standard.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Brazil has not just banned X (formerly Twitter) from the entire country, but citizens will now be fined $9000 a day (more than the average salary in the country) for using VPNs to access the platform. X is the main source of news for Brazilians, who will now be left with government-approved sources or face financial ruin in seeking unfettered information.

The Guardian is reporting that the confiscatory fines are part of a comprehensive crackdown on efforts to get news through X, including ordering all Apple stores to remove X from new phones.

The move puts Brazil with China in the effort to create a wall of censorship between citizens and unregulated information.

For the anti-free speech movement, Brazil is a key testing ground for where the movement is heading next. European censors are arresting CEOs like Pavel Durov while threatening Elon Musk.

However, it is Brazil that foreshadows the brave new world of censorship where entire nations will block access to sites committed to free speech values or unfettered news. If successful, the Brazilian model is likely to be replicated by other countries.

The reason is that censorship is not working. As discussed in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” we have never seen the current alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media interest against free speech. Yet, citizens are not buying it.

Despite unrelenting attacks and demonizing media coverage, citizens are still using X and resisting censorship. That was certainly the case in Brazil where citizens preferred X to regulated news sources. The solution is now to threaten citizens with utter ruin if they seek unfettered news.

The question is whether Brazil’s leftist government can get away with this. The conflict began with demands to censor supporters of the conservative former president Jair Bolsonaro. When X refused the sweeping demands for censorship, including the demand to name of a legal representative who could be arrested for refusing to censor users, the courts moved toward this national ban.

The man behind the effort is Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has aggressively used censorship to combat anything that he or the government deems “fake news” or disinformation. With socialist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, they are the dream team of the anti-free speech movement.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison responded to the ban with a posting declaring “Obrigado Brasil!” or “Thanks, Brazil!” Ironically, he did so on X.

Ellison previously praised the virulently anti-free speech group Antifa and promised that it would “strike fear in the heart” of Donald Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany. It is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. That purpose is evident in what is called the “bible” of the Antifa movement: Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’” Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists…  From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

The question is whether Brazil will become a nightmare for free speech around the world as other nations seek to force citizens to read and hear news from approved, state-monitored sites.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).

Law-abiding Americans should be made well aware of the cities, counties, and states that have laws, ordinances, and policies that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield illegal alien criminals from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is because the Biden-Harris administration has imported the third world into the first world, and with that comes elevated risks of violent crime and chaos.

Footage of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua members raiding an apartment building with at least one AR-style rifle and pistols in the northern Denver suburb of Aurora shocked the nation last week about how quickly sanctuary cities run by far-left Democrats can spiral out of control after rolling out the red carpet to illegals. 

BREAKING: The Mayor of Aurora, Colorado just CONFIRMED that Venezuelan illegal migrant gangsters have indeed taken over several apartment complexes and have pushed out property managers to EXTORT rents from the tenants directly

He also BLAMED the Kamala-Biden regime and said… pic.twitter.com/Vj0P7ceHg4

— George (@BehizyTweets) August 29, 2024

And now spillover risks?

BREAKING: Masked gang waving AR-style rifle attacks a home in a Denver suburb. 0 arrests.

Coming to a neighborhood near you: pic.twitter.com/3Kn75Pt4Ux

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 2, 2024

Let’s not forget sanctuary city NYC…

The big picture understanding is that sanctuary cities have imported millions of illegal aliens, some of which are prison gang members and have zero respect for first-world laws. Defunding the police has also been pushed nationwide by Democrat lawmakers, and with that comes the risk that local municipalities could become quickly overwhelmed. 

Independent think tank Center for Immigration Studies has done the easy work for readers, outlining the cities, counties, and states with laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from ICE.

In other words, these areas have a possibility of high risk for violent crime. And in our view, these areas should be avoided for safety reasons. 

View the map: https://t.co/GZeXeNXoUr

— Center for Immigration Studies (@CIS_org) August 28, 2024

Sigh… 

It will not matter who wins the election. The flood of illegals have a purpose in the overall plan that has been unfolding. Chaos as far and wide as possible.
Massive spread across the nation!https://t.co/qFhElt4NtW

— Phillip Davis (@Phillip96207244) September 2, 2024

Here’s the full list:

States

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Illinois

Massachusetts

New Jersey

New York

North Dakota

Oregon

Rhode Island

Utah

Vermont

Washington

Cities and Counties

District of Columbia

Washington

Georgia

Athens-Clarke County

Atlanta

Columbia County

DeKalb County

Douglas County

Idaho

Bonneville County

Power County

Indiana

Lake County

Monroe County

St. Joseph County

Wayne County

Kansas

Douglas County

Kentucky

Campbell County

Franklin County

Jefferson County

Louisville

Scott County

Louisiana

New Orleans

Maine

Cumberland County

Hancock County

Maryland

Baltimore

Baltimore County

Charles County

Howard County

Hyattsville

Montgomery County

Prince George’s County

Queen Anne’s County

Rockville

St. Mary’s County

Michigan

Kalamazoo County

Kent County

Lansing

Leelanau County

Luce County

Muskegon County

Oakland County

Washtenaw County

Wayne County

Wexford County

Minnesota

Anoka County

Cottonwood County

Dakota County

Hennepin County

Jackson County

Kandiyohi County

Lincoln County

Lyon County

Nobles County

Pipestone County

Ramsey County

Todd County

Watonwan County

Nebraska

Arthur County

Banner County

Blaine County

Douglas County

Gosper County

Grant County

Greeley County

Hayes County

Hooker County

Howard County

Johnson County

Lincoln County

Logan County

Loup County

McPherson County

Nance County

Perkins County

Platte County

Sioux County

Thomas County

Wheeler County

New Hampshire

Hillsborough County

New Mexico

Bernalillo County

Chaves County

Colfax County

De Baca County

Dona Ana County

Eddy County

Farmington

Grant County

Hidalgo County

Las Cruces

Lincoln County

Los Alamos County

Luna County

McKinley County

Otero County

Quay County

Rio Arriba County

Roosevelt County

San Juan County

San Miguel County

Sandoval County

Santa Fe

Santa Fe County

Sierra County

Socorro County

Taos County

New York

Albany

Albany County

Dutchess County

Monroe County

Nassau County

New York City

Orange County

Putnam County

Rockland County

Saratoga County

Suffolk County

Sullivan County

Tompkins County

Ulster County

Warren County

Wayne County

Westchester County

Yates County

North Carolina

Buncombe County

Chatham County

Durham County

Forsyth County

Guilford County

Mecklenburg County

Orange County

Wake County

Watauga County

Ohio

Franklin County

Hamilton County

Lorain County

Mahoning County

Pennsylvania

Allegheny County

Berks County

Bucks County

Chester County

Delaware County

Lancaster

Lehigh County

Mifflin County

Montgomery County

Montour County

Northampton County

Philadelphia

Washington County

South Carolina

Charleston County

Tennessee

Shelby County

Virginia

* Denotes the jurisdiction is part of a regional jail system. Please click on map point for further information.

 

Albemarle County *

Alexandria

Alleghany County *

Amherst County *

Appomattox County *

Ashland *

Arlington County

Augusta County *

Bath County *

Bedford *

Bedford County *

Botetourt County

Brunswick County *

Buchanan County *

Campbell County *

Caroline County

Charles City County *

Charlotte County

Charlottesville *

Chesapeake *

Chesterfield County *

Colonial Heights *

Covington *

Dickenson County *

Dinwiddie County *

Dumfries *

Emporia *

Essex County *

Fairfax County

Franklin *

Gloucester County

Greensville County *

Halifax County *

Hampton *

Hanover County *

Harrisonburg *

Haymarket *

Hopewell *

Isle of Wight County *

James City County *

King and Queen County *

King William County *

Lee County *

Loudoun County

Lynchburg *

Manassas *

Manassas Park *

Martinsville

Mathews County *

Mecklenburg County *

Middlesex County *

Nelson County *

Newport News

Norfolk *

Northumberland County *

Norton *

Occoquan *

Petersburg *

Poquoson *

Portsmouth City *

Prince George County *

Prince William County *

Quantico *

Rappahannock County *

Richmond

Richmond County *

Rockingham County *

Russell County *

Scott County *

Shenandoah County *

Smyth County *

Southampton County

Staunton *

Suffolk *

Surry County *

Tazewell County *

Virginia Beach *

Warren County *

Warsaw *

Washington County *

Waynesborough *

Westmoreland County *

Williamsburg *

Wise County *

York County *

Wisconsin

Dane County

Milwaukee County

Winnebago Correctional Center (state facility)

Wyoming

Teton County

The chaos erupting in a Denver suburb, driven by a Venezuelan prison gang, is a wake-up call for Americans. It highlights how the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous open southern border policies could cause other sanctuary cities and areas to descend into turmoil. 

If the police are overwhelmed…

Why did it take #CPD 50 minutes to assign this call, and why did it have to go to Sargent? Short a few cars in 3? Is this not a high priority call?

Broadcast at 7:45, assigned at 8:35 #ChicagoScanner
(Time stamps on the recording reflect the 30-minute rebroadcast delay… https://t.co/cNPZ8ScHJM pic.twitter.com/LBOmRJwLeC

— WindyCity Weather and News (@WindyCityWxMan) September 3, 2024

Who will come to help you? 

This man says those people in Aurora Colorado voted for the politicians that allowed this Venezuelan gang in this country

As hard as it is to agree with him, bc this has gone viral all over the world

Elections do have consequences, so if you don’t want this. VOTE TRUMP IN NOV pic.twitter.com/66OThoYRrv

— @Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) August 31, 2024

This is insanity! 

HOLY FVCK!

A cop tells a citizen who is reporting a crime committed by an immigrant:

“I’ve arrested a double homicide suspect in this city before, I let him walk out the door because we’re sanctuary city.

We do not report illegals, undocumented immigrants.”

CITIZEN: “So… pic.twitter.com/bclVNcQPSl

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) September 3, 2024

By Liz Heflin of Rmxnews.com

From April to June, the European Union bought more than 12.7 billion cubic meters from Russia and 12.3 billion cubic meters from the United States.

Director of the Russian Department of Economic Cooperation of the Foreign Ministry, Dmitri Birichevski, says Russia now supplies 15 percent of the total volume of natural gas imported by the European Union. This despite the EU’s REPowerEU instituted back in May 2022 to shift away from Russia and cut it off from its flow of energy profits.

Birichevski noted, in particular, the fact that France imported 4.4 billion cubic meters of liquid natural gas (LNG) in the first quarter of 2024, more than double the circa 2 billion it imported in 2023.

Norway is still in first place, having supplied the EU with 23.9 billion cubic meters in Q2. Prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia held the top spot.

The German government maintains it no longer imports any gas from Moscow. However, many member states clearly do.

In the face of renewed demands to end Russian imports and defund Putin’s war chest, the energy policy spokesman for the Free Democratic Party (FDP) suggested that the EU “pay a fixed amount of aid and arms supplies to Ukraine for every cubic meter of imported Russian gas.“

After Hungarian FM Szijjártó’s meeting with Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller, Hungary doubles down on Russian gas, saying it is not a matter of ideology but physics.

The government has repeatedly put families and households first when it comes to securing energy supply, and with the… pic.twitter.com/iBL0Rl6J3p

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 30, 2024

The matter of Russian gas imports has been an ongoing saga, with reports of shipments from Russia being essentially laundered through other countries and pipelines to avoid being stamped as “Russian.”

This new data comes in the face of no less than 14 sanctions packages, including the latest one adopted in June, which specifically prohibits the transit of Russian LNG.

As we’ve been highlighting since 2016, polls are not to be trusted thanks to various ‘tricks of the trade’ – most commonly, oversampling.

Last month we noted how the founder of the main outside spending group backing Kamala Harris for president says their own internal opinion polling is “much less rosy” than public polls.

“Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in the public,” said Future Forward super PAC president Chauncey McLean said during a Monday event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

Now, the Washington Times reports that some pollsters are even sounding the alarm over Vice President Kamala Harris’ so-called ‘surge’ in the polls – which Harris pulled ahead in after replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee on July 21.

Since the switch, Harris is leading Trump nationally by nearly 2 percentage points and is either leading or tied with him in all seven battleground states. However, Republican analysts argue that these polling numbers may not accurately reflect voter sentiment due to biased polling methodology.

If you want to see examples of polling bias, click into this thread on X…

In the meta data from the call centers college educated Dems are 3-4x more likely to answer than non-college. While weighting can help minimize the bias if done correctly it won’t totally eliminate the problem.

— Mark Davin Harris (@markdharris) August 16, 2024

Critics point out that many polls have been sampling a disproportionately smaller share of Republican voters compared to exit poll data from the 2020 presidential election. The result, they say, is a misleading “phantom advantage” for Ms. Harris. According to them, this skewed sampling could be a strategic move to boost enthusiasm and fundraising for Ms. Harris’ campaign.

Trump campaign strategist Jim McLaughlin echoed this sentiment, stating, “They undersample Republicans” intentionally “to tamp down support and donations for Trump.” He added that the polls are part of a larger effort to create a narrative that favors Harris.

Trump has openly criticized the poll results. “It’s fake news,” Trump declared during a rally in Michigan. “They can make those polls sing.”

“They are on to us, we can’t keep oversampling Democrats anymore to rig the polls”

“Here’s an idea: let’s just massively oversample women to push Kamala, they’ll never figure that one out”

“Brilliant, comrade!” pic.twitter.com/SqH58tHOQU

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 29, 2024

Harris’ recent poll numbers have indeed helped fuel excitement among her supporters, as evidenced by her campaign’s announcement of a $540 million fundraising haul in July, more than four times what Mr. Trump raised in the same period. Still, the growing skepticism over the legitimacy of the polls has prompted some to question whether the surge in support is as real as it appears.

Recent polls that show a Harris lead, such as the Suffolk University/USA Today poll, included more respondents identifying as Democrats (37.1%) than Republicans (33.8%). The poll found Ms. Harris leading Trump by 5 percentage points, a significant turnaround from earlier in the year when Trump was ahead by 4 points vs. Biden. Similarly, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released on August 27 found Ms. Harris ahead of Mr. Trump by 1 percentage point, with Democrats making up 33% of respondents compared to only 29% for Republicans.

The discrepancy in party sampling is causing concern among poll watchers. Data from the 2020 exit polls showed a nearly equal split, with 36% identifying as Republican and 37% as Democrat. Yet, recent polls seem to favor Democrats disproportionately, leading to claims of deliberate skewing.

Mr. Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, has argued that these polls are designed to suppress support for Mr. Trump. In a memo, he stated, “Once again, we see a series of public surveys released with the clear intent and purpose of depressing support for President Trump.”

Pollsters like Don Levy of the New York Times/Siena Poll counter that these claims lack substance. They argue that any gaps between recalled 2020 vote and actual 2020 results are not evidence of intentional bias but may reflect the complexity of polling dynamics, including response bias where Democrats are more likely to participate in polls.

Despite these excuses, the controversy surrounding these polls has left many wondering about the true state of the race. Polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight shows Ms. Harris’ approval rating ticking up to 42.3%, up from 37.1% in early July. Yet, doubts persist over how she has managed to rise in the polls without significantly improving her historically low job approval ratings.

In what may be described as an attempt to sabotage her own election odds, moments after the close Bloomberg reported that Kamala Harris’ Justice Department – because let’s be honest, Joe Biden is officially a vegetable – sent subpoenas to Nvidia and other companies as it seeks evidence that the chipmaker violated antitrust laws, an escalation of its investigation into the dominant provider of AI processors, in the process sending the stock prices sliding even more.

The DOJ, which had previously delivered questionnaires to companies, is now sending legally binding requests that oblige recipients to provide information, Bloomberg reported citing sources. That takes the government a step closer to launching a formal complaint against a company, which may well have its flaws but monopolizing the industry, when its competitors such as Intel are simply criminally incompetent, is not one of them.

According to antitrust officials, Nvidia is making it harder to switch to other suppliers and penalizes buyers that don’t exclusively use its artificial intelligence chips. Which is idiocy: if anything, it is the capabilities of Nvidia chips that are forcing every tom, dick and harry to order one even if the chatGPT idiocy is nowhere near the paradigm shifting discovery idiots on TV make it seem to be. Meanwhile, all Nvidia is doing is sitting back and capitalizing by selling the “picks and shovels” to those same idiots who in about a year will realize that they spent millions on chips to power chatbots that generate zero returns.

Nvidia shares, which already suffered a record-setting rout on Tuesday when they lost a historic $280 billion in market cap, fell further in late trading after Bloomberg reported on the subpoenas, bringing its total drop today to $340 billion!

Some speculated if the idiots that are runnings Kamala’s campaign are now intentionally looking to sabotage her election odds by crashing the market-leading generals ahead of the November elections.

Kamala’s admin crashing the market by destroying the most important stock in the world 2 months before the election is a bold strategy. https://t.co/KbYeegquMr

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 3, 2024

As part of the probe, investigators have been contacting other technology companies to gather information. The DOJ’s San Francisco office – where one Kamala Harris was Attorney General not that long ago – is taking the lead running the inquiry.

As Bloomberg reports, in the DOJ probe, regulators have been investigating Nvidia’s acquisition of RunAI, a deal announced in April. That company makes software for managing AI computing, and there are concerns that the tie-up will make it more difficult for customers to switch away from Nvidia chips. Regulators also are inquiring whether Nvidia gives preferential supply and pricing to customers who use its technology exclusively or buy its complete systems.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said he prioritizes customers who can make use of his products in ready-to-go data centers as soon as he provides them, a policy designed to prevent stockpiling and speed up the broader adoption of AI.

While the stated reason for the DOJ probe is laughable, what is far more likely is that in typical Democrat fashion, the administration is making it clear it will get its pound of flesh in bribes, kickbacks and penalties, from what is at the moment, the world’s most important company.  Analysts project that Nvidia will generate over $120 billion of revenue in calendar 2024, up from $16 billion in 2020, with most of that money coming from its data center unit. In fact, Nvidia is set to bring in more profit this year than the total sales of its nearest rival, Advanced Micro Devices. As for one-time chip giant icon Intel, well… rest in peace.