Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A former FBI supervisory special agent has allegedly confirmed key portions of an IRS whistleblower’s testimony that President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, received preferential treatment during an investigation into felony tax crimes, according to the House Oversight Committee.

“Today, a former FBI supervisory special agent assigned to the FBI’s Wilmington office and the Biden criminal investigation confirmed key portions of the IRS whistleblower’s testimony,” committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a July 17 statement.

Mr. Comer did not reveal the identity of the former FBI agent.

He further claimed that the night before the interview of Hunter Biden, “both Secret Service headquarters and the Biden transition team were tipped off about the planned interview.”

“On the day of the Hunter Biden interview, federal agents were told to stand by and could not approach Hunter Biden—they had to wait for his call. As a result of the change in plans, IRS and FBI criminal investigators never got to interview Hunter Biden as part of the investigation,” he continued.

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.

Mr. Biden’s son has been under federal investigation for alleged tax fraud since 2018. According to prosecutors, he received more than $1.5 million in taxable income in 2017 and more than $1.5 million more in 2018 and was required by law to pay more than $100,000 in income tax for his earnings each of those years but failed to pay the tax.

‘Obvious Conflicts of Interest’

Mr. Comer’s statement comes after Gary Shapley, an IRS supervisory special agent, earlier this year claimed that the Department of Justice and the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office interfered in the investigation into the younger Mr. Biden in an attempt to delay the probe.

According to Mr. Shapley, the DOJ provided the younger Mr. Biden with preferential treatment, “slow-walked the investigation,” and “did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation.”

The former IRS agent additionally told prosecutors that the case into Hunter Biden had been “handled differently than any investigation” he’d ever been part of in his 14 years of service to the IRS and that some aspects of the case appeared to be influenced by politics.

Another whistleblower, a criminal investigator with the IRS identified only as Whistleblower X, has made similar claims.

The DOJ has denied any interference in the investigation into Hunter Biden.

Meanwhile, Mr. Biden has denied any wrongdoing on behalf of his family or himself.

Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax in a deal with the U.S. government in June, according to a letter from U.S. Attorney David Weiss to the U.S. court in Delaware.

The agreement to plead guilty meant he avoided prosecution on a separate gun charge. He is set to appear in court on July 26.

According to Mr. Comer, who cited a transcribed interview with the former FBI supervisory special agent, multiple witness interviews were planned for Dec. 8, 2020, and Mr. Shapley and the former FBI agent were assigned to interview the president’s son.

Read more here…

Hollywood is in deep trouble, but not for the reasons we are hearing from entertainment journalists. 

With WGA and SAG strikes now underway production in Tinsel Town has all but disappeared.  Talk among insiders is that the strikes could very well destroy the industry for years to come.  But what if this scenario is exactly what flailing media companies needed?    

The implosion of the mainstream movie business gestated long before the strikes; it started with the injection of woke politics and propaganda into the western pop culture space.  Since 2016 (a year marking the “coming out party” for extreme intersectional feminism, critical race theory and trans ideology in movies) movie ticket sales have plummeted by around 40%. 

Box office revenues have collapsed to levels not seen since 2001, and keep in mind that the stats get much worse once they are adjusted for inflation.  

Initially, film studios tried to use the covid lockdowns and fear of the virus as the reason for their declining numbers.  However, hit films like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Top Gun: Maverick proved that the covid rationale was nonsense.  People were more than willing to go to the theaters by the millions, but only for non-woke movies.  Nobody cared about covid.

It’s now 2023 and the pandemic excuse is dead.  Hollywood is left with no scapegoat to blame their problems on and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that if you “Get Woke” you will in fact “Go Broke.” 

Almost every major film production containing far-left propaganda or common woke tropes such as race swapped characters, gender swapped characters, feminism, trans ideology, CRT, climate change cultism, “girl boss” propaganda and deconstructed male heroes is now tanking at the theaters to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in losses per film.

The problem is that production companies continue to double down and refuse to admit the real reason they are collapsing.  Disney, for example, is now openly discussing a fire sale on pieces of the company in order to shore up their finances.  This is after they fired 7000 employees.  Yet, the political nature of their downfall is rarely if ever broached. 

This behavior suggests that the woke cult is more important to Hollywood than making a profit or even saving their businesses.  The bottom line?  Americans and most of the world are tired of far-left concepts being forced into entertainment, but Hollywood would rather go down with the ship than build a life raft by acknowledging that woke is sinking them.  It’s truly insane; a perfect expression of mental illness.      

And make no mistake, these companies are going down.  They might be hoping for a bailout in the future, but it’s not coming.  Not in time to save the industry as it exists today.  The ESG establishment has far more important things to worry about than keeping companies like Disney afloat.

But, if the goal is to avoid admitting at all costs that woke ideology is a massive failure among the majority of the population, then studios now have an excellent scapegoat in the form of the WGA and SAG strikes.  In a year’s time they can claim that it was the strikes that killed the movie business, not political zealotry.  And let’s not forget that a large number of writers and actors have been participants in the leftist destruction of media, so they don’t really deserve any sympathy either.  

This all rests, of course, on the strikes lasting longer than a couple months.  If they don’t, then the Hollywood establishment will be right back where they started.  They’ll be force to fire their woke staff and start making good films again, or, they’ll burn as the public dances on the ashes.   

Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

With former President Donald Trump saying that he’s been notified that a Washington-based grand jury is investigating him in relation to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol protest and breach, a commentator who’s been closely following Jan. 6-related trials is pointing to seditious conspiracy as a charge Mr. Trump likely will face.

Mr. Trump said he was informed of being the target late on July 16 through a letter from the office of Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Mr. Trump’s involvement in the January 6 incident as well as his retention of documents from his time in the White House.

“This witch hunt is all about election interference and a complete and total political weaponization of law enforcement!” Mr. Trump commented in a July 18 post on Truth Social, his social media platform.

He said he has been given four days to show up before the grand jury; it isn’t clear whether he is being invited to testify voluntarily or subpoenaed.

‘Tactical Move’

Prosecutors should first ask for a voluntary appearance before subpoenaing the target of a criminal investigation, according to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Justice Manual.

Also, lawyers usually discourage their clients from going before a grand jury if they are the target of the investigation—it can be avoided by invoking the right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment, says Marc Ruskin, a former FBI agent and assistant U.S. attorney.

However, that may be Mr. Smith’s goal, according to Mr. Ruskin.

He noted that Mr. Trump is already facing indictments in New York and Florida and pleading the Fifth in Washington gives another talking point to his opponents.

“It could be a tactical and procedural move just to make him look bad,” he said.

“You have Trump, a former president who is running to be president again, pleading the Fifth. I guess from their point of view, it’s going to help make him less attractive as a candidate.”

If the target is not asked to testify, “the prosecutor, in appropriate cases, is encouraged to notify such person a reasonable time before seeking an indictment in order to afford him or her an opportunity to testify before the grand jury,” the manual says.

Mr. Trump indicated he believes charges against himself are imminent, saying that being told to report to the grand jury, “almost always means an Arrest and Indictment.”

Some commentators have long predicted Mr. Trump will face charges in the probe, including Julie Kelly, an independent journalist who had closely followed the trials of Jan. 6 participants.

“I’ve warned of this for over a year. I take no pride in being right,” she commented in a July 18 tweet.

“Only question now is what charges Smith will bring (strong possibility he’ll seek indictment on seditious conspiracy) and who is charged with him. (Any conspiracy charge requires at least one conspirator).”

In April, she highlighted several members of the pro-Trump Proud Boys group who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Ms. Kelly believes the DOJ approached the Proud Boys trial in a way that seemed to lay the groundwork for bringing the same charge against Mr. Trump.

During the closing arguments, it seemed to her that prosecutors tried to tie Proud Boys to Mr. Trump, particularly regarding a comment by Mr. Trump during a 2020 presidential debate that the Proud Boys should “stand down and stand by.”

She pointed to a comment by one of the prosecutors that “defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what.”

“Convictions of 4 members of the Proud Boys set the stage for Smith to pursue a seditious conspiracy indictment against Trump because DOJ made the former president an unindicted co-conspirator of sorts during the trial,” Ms. Kelly told The Epoch Times via text.

Read more here…

Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

“The ambition of this book is to reveal the inner history of America’s cultural revolution, tracing the arc of its development from its origin point to the present day.”

– Christopher Rufo, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.

Christopher Rufo may have been setting out the ambition of his new book, America’s Cultural Revolution, but there is no mistake that this work itself is ambitious, given the scale of material (the cultural revolution and pre-revolutionary ideas, and the creation and progression of that movement, for starters) and the connection from leftist thought leaders of the mid-20^th century to the absurdities and very real cultural and political dangers we see today.

But his task is also necessary, as the proper answer to the question of “where we are” – one of disagreement even among conservatives, some of whom deny we are in a revolutionary age – requires an exploration of how we got here and the ideas that led us to this point. The revolutionary lineage from the 1960s (and before) carries on to this day – albeit in an arguably stronger form. What was radical is now the orthodoxy. Those calling for sexual liberation in 1955, for example, would no doubt be shocked – and proud – at the evolution and success of that idea. We add that political liberation and sexual liberation are indeed intertwined, as they both can lead to spiritual bondage.

Rufo, to his credit, achieves that ambitious goal. America’s Cultural Revolution is divided into four parts: Revolution, Race, Education, and Power, with each including a biography of the prophets of the cultural revolution. There is an exacting focus on the prophets’ writings (supported by hundreds of footnotes) concerning “liberation”, political violence, anti-racism, and the destruction of institutions – many of which we see regurgitated, exercised, and acted upon to this day.

Your humble author is especially thankful for Rufo’s deep dive into the history of the revolutionaries, which helps to give a biography of the movement. We often see the ridiculous (the shop teacher with z-cups) and the concerning (statues toppled) and the evil (public school teacher-led gender transitions), but we’re left without an understanding of where all this originated and how it came to be.

The words of the left’s prophets, as Rufo demonstrates, became the blueprint for societal change, for violent upheavals, and leftist control of institutions that will take a revolution to undo. In the first few chapters, for example, he goes into great detail discussing the demands and views of Herbert Marcuse, a German-born philosopher dubbed “the father of the revolution” who argued:

“modern capitalist society had created the perfect means of repression, anesthetizing the working class with material comforts, manufactured desires, and welfare programs, which stabilized the system and allowed for the creation of external scapegoats.”

The solution to this problem was nothing short of unrest and dissolution, through violence if necessary. It would require “the revolt of the affluent white intelligentsia, the radicalization of the black ‘ghetto population,’ the capture of public institutions, and the cultural repression of the opposition.”

Rufo observes that “all of these objectives have been realized to some degree.” It’s hard to disagree with that assessment – especially considering how Rufo dedicates later chapters solidifying that point through discussions of the liberal domination of academia, the use of race as a means to target the American system as a whole, the far left’s long march (which can also be called a historically short march) through the institutions (including universities, local schools, business, and federal bureaucracies), and the increasingly accepted and forceful censorship and repression regimes, both public and private. In doing so, Rufo effectively makes the argument that for even those paying close attention, things might be worse than we thought, that the revolution we face is stronger than reported.

His exposition on the evolution of revolutionary ideas is particularly compelling. By the time Rufo gets to discussing Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the later chapters, we have a better understanding of the originators, history, and vulnerabilities of basic elements to CRT. And Rufo provides necessary context, both in historical criticisms of CRT and his own accurate assessment of the movement:

The elements of critical race theory are, in fact, a near-perfect transposition of race onto the basic structures of Marxist theory. “White supremacy” replaces “capitalism” as the totalizing system. “White and black” replaces “bourgeoisie and proletariat” as the “oppressor and oppressed.” “Abolition” replaces “revolution” as the method of “liberation.” This is not a mere metaphor or post hoc comparison. The critical race theorists appeal directly to Marxist theoreticians and the Marxist-Leninist figures of the black liberation movement.

With this knowledge, Rufo is by all means qualified to discuss where the movement goes from here. He warns:

This movement seeks to establish itself in every layer of the public and private administration, which will be refitted to advance the substitute morality of critical race theory and replace governance by the Constitution with governance by the bureaucracy. 

He makes that warning with the understanding of what the movement wants, the answer to which is “found in the original literature of critical race theory”: the abandonment of equal justice under the law, the redistribution of wealth along racial lines, and the prohibition of speech that is considered harmful or hateful. But we think he makes that warning not just based on their words, but because he understands and respects their zealotry, their dedication, their patience, their resentment (another word for hatred), and the lengths they will go to accomplish their desires.

As I read this book, I couldn’t help but ask whether this was always going to be the end result of liberalism or whether this is liberalism hijacked by its more radical elements. That’s not really a focus of the book (there are only so many pages), but it’s worthy to explore whether liberal democracy is authoritarian by its very nature and susceptible or predestined to adopting forms of fundamentalism to achieve its ends. Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed and Ryszard Legutko’s The Demon in Democracy are good places to start, if you’re interested in looking into those questions further.

If there is a revolution, then consider this book to be part of the counter-revolution. In conclusion, Rufo concentrates on the response to the revolutionaries and the necessary elements of the opposition: hope, a fight against collectivism and racial reductionism, a fight for natural rights and the Constitution and individual dignity. The counter-revolution he proposes goes much further than vanquishing the far left and retaking the institutions. It requires decentralization, local control, self-governance, a system of government that protects the rights of the individual while scaling back its own authority. It’s not just an improvement. It’s a return.

That seems ambitious in 2023. But so too were the revolutionary ideas of 1968.

America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything is available for purchase through Amazon.

Subscribe here to the reactionary.

Over the past few years, tens of millions of consumers witnessed a remarkable increase in their credit scores, primarily due to helicopter money dished out by the federal government, rock-bottom interest rates, and a pause on student-loan payments. However, the party has come to an abrupt end as credit scores plunge. 

Bloomberg reports Synchrony Financial is closing inactive accounts and capping card limits for a number of clients as macroeconomic headwinds mount. 

“What we are seeing is people who are doing significant score migration — a 680 or a 690 going to a 620,” Synchrony Financial CFO Brian Wenzel said in an interview. 

Wenzel said, “Folks who had paid down debt, their scores had gone up, and now they’re reverting back to more normal performance.”

The Stamford, Connecticut-based consumer financial services company hasn’t tightened underwriting standards for new accounts but is beginning to notice consumer stress 16 months into the Federal Reserve’s interest rate tightening cycle.

Two years of an inflation storm has sent real wage growth to negative levels, forcing many consumers to drain personal savings and overutilize credit cards to make ends meet. We noted this in “Credit Card Debt Explodes At 2nd Fastest Pace On Record Just As Rates Hit All-Time High” and “Credit Card Debt Keeps Surging Even As Interest Rates Hit Record High.”

Consumers have racked up record amounts of credit card debt while interest rates on these cards have surged to the highest level ever of around 21% on average. Surging debt loads and high rates make paying off outstanding balances even harder for some consumers. 

A lower credit score means consumers will have increasing trouble qualifying for new credit lines, thus cutting off their lifelines. Perhaps that’s why we’ve seen a surge in Google searches for “pawn shop near me” as consumers pawn off items for quick loans. 

Just wait until student-loan payments restart … this will crush consumers even more as millions must divert even more income into debt servicing payments. Maybe consumers are heading into a period of a balance sheet recession. 

Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

Did you know that 2022 was the WORST year for US Treasuries in American history?

The benchmark 10-year Treasury fell nearly 18%, and the 30-year Treasury collapsed over 39%. Many other bonds did even worse.

Even if you go back 250 years, you can’t find a worse year for Treasuries, the foundation of the colossal global bond market.

It should forever end the ridiculous—yet pervasive—delusion that Treasuries are “risk-free.”

Many people and almost every financial institution have long thoughtlessly accepted this trope.

As a result, bonds in general—and Treasuries in particular—became the store-of-value asset of choice and the de facto savings account for savers and investors worldwide.

Today, the global bond market has grown to be worth more than an estimated $133 trillion as the masses parked their savings there because conventional wisdom said it was the “safe” thing to do.

By contrast, all the mined gold in the world is worth about $12.7 trillion, less than 10% of the bond market.

It may be tempting to think the worst is over for bonds—it’s not. As you’ll see, the pain for bondholders is just starting.

Although most don’t realize it yet, bonds will become a graveyard for capital. They will no longer be the “go-to” savings vehicle because they will no longer be a reliable store-of-value asset.

I believe the opposite will be true; bonds will become a guaranteed way to lose value. Investors will flee them in droves.

The implications of that are profound.

If not bonds, where will people, companies, and nation states park their savings?

Much of the value stored in the $133 trillion global bond market will move elsewhere—voluntarily to superior store-of-value assets or involuntarily to bankrupt governments and their cronies as they accelerate the largest wealth transfer in history.

That is the Big Picture reality that most people don’t understand… yet.

Until recently, bonds had been in a bull market that lasted more than 40 years. Therefore, it’s not surprising that complacency is ingrained and widespread.

The Big Picture

In the post-WWII era, Treasuries were a stable foundation for the global bond market as the US dollar reigned supreme as the world’s premier reserve currency.

However, that foundation has rotted. It is on the path to collapse as the petrodollar system falls apart and a multipolar world order emerges.

In short, the supply of Treasuries is increasing at an accelerating rate while there’s a shrinking number of suckers (i.e., buyers).

The inevitable is imminent as the US government can no longer delay or disguise its impending bankruptcy.

The US federal government has the biggest debt in the history of the world. And it’s continuing to grow at a rapid, unstoppable pace.

Today, the US federal debt has gone parabolic and is over $32.5 TRILLION.

To put that in perspective, if you earned $1 a second 24/7/365—about $31 million per year—it would take you over 1,029,860 YEARS to pay off the US federal debt.

And that’s with the unrealistic assumption that it would stop growing.

Observation #1: The US government can’t repay its debt. Default is inevitable.

This isn’t exactly a revelation, but it’s important to remember.

Therefore, the question is not whether the US government will default but how.

When faced with a choice, politicians always choose the most expedient option. In this case, that means issuing more debt rather than making tough budget decisions or explicitly defaulting.

Consider the recent debt ceiling farce, which raised the debt ceiling for the 105th time since 1944 to avoid an explicit default.

Observation #2: It will not be an explicit default.

In reality, there is no meaningful limit on the debt and spending.

Congress is racing towards ever-increasing spending and debt now that they’ve normalized multitrillion-dollar deficits.

Below is a chart of the Congressional Budget Office’s deficit projections for the next decade. These estimates will almost certainly be too rosy, as they often are.

Even by the CBO’s optimistic projections, the US government will have a cumulative deficit of over $20 TRILLION for the next ten years that will have to be financed by issuing more Treasuries.

Observation #3: The debt will continue to grow at an accelerating pace.

Historically, there has been a vast foreign appetite for Treasuries, but not anymore.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US government has launched its most aggressive sanctions campaign ever.

As part of this, the US government seized the Russian central bank’s reserves—the nation’s accumulated savings.

It was a stunning illustration of the political risk associated with the US dollar and Treasuries. It showed that the US government could seize another sovereign country’s reserves at the flip of a switch.

In short, the US dollar—and Treasuries—have become weaponized in a way they had not been before.

In addition to being terrible investments, Treasuries are now clearly political tools for Washington to coerce others.

There could even soon be “woke sanctions”…

For example, the US government recently threatened to sanction Uganda over its LGBT policies, which means that countries’ domestic policies may make them targets of US sanctions.

The rising political risk attached to Treasuries has made them even less attractive as a store of value. Many countries are undoubtedly wondering if the US government will seize their savings if they run afoul with Washington in even the most trivial ways.

China is one of the largest holders of US Treasuries, and it indeed took note of what is happening. There’s little doubt that this is the reason China continues to dump Treasuries.

Beijing has sold about 25% of its Treasuries since 2021, an enormous change in such a short period.

Even US allies, like Japan, have cut their Treasury holdings.

There are numerous other examples. The bottom line is that it’s clear the world isn’t hungry for US debt right now, at the moment when supply is exploding higher.

Observation #4: Foreigners are not buying as many Treasuries.

In the bond market, when demand for a bond falls, the interest rate rises to entice buyers and holders.

However, it is worth noting that the amount of federal debt is so extreme that even a return of interest rates to their historical average would mean paying an interest expense that would consume more than half of tax revenues. Interest expense would eclipse Social Security and defense spending and become the largest item in the federal budget.

In short, allowing interest rates to rise high enough to entice natural buyers would bankrupt the US government because of the higher interest costs.

Observation #5: The US government cannot allow interest rates to rise much further.

So, if higher interest rates cannot entice more buyers, who will finance these growing multi-trillion dollar budget deficits?

The only entity capable is the Federal Reserve, which buys Treasuries with dollars it creates out of thin air.

Observation #6: The Federal Reserve is the only significant buyer of Treasuries stepping up, which means currency debasement.

Here’s the bottom line.

The US government can’t pay off its debt.

They won’t explicitly default.

They can’t entice a meaningful amount of new Treasury buyers by allowing interest rates to rise much higher.

Then what can they do?

Financial repression is their only practical option… and it will devastate bondholders.

It could all go down soon… and it won’t be pretty.

It will result in an enormous wealth transfer from savers to the parasitical class—politicians, central bankers, and those connected to them.

Countless millions throughout history were wiped out financially—or worse—during periods of profound change because they failed to see the correct Big Picture and take appropriate action.

Don’t be one of them.

That’s exactly why I just released an urgent new report with all the details, including what you must do to prepare. It’s called, The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years… the Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now. Click here to download the PDF now.

On Wednesday, smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted down to North Florida, coinciding with Saharan dust approaching South Florida. 

Mike Boylan of Mike’s Weather Page first pointed this out as “there’s no escape from the haze” for Flordia. 

“Crazy weather today, Wednesday… especially for Florida. Canadian wildfire smoke has made it south. And African dust has made it west. Both can be seen on AM satellite here,” Boylan tweeted. 

Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel once called Mike’s Weather Page a “one-stop shop” for the latest tropical updates. Data on the site shows the National Hurricane Center predicts a 20% chance of cyclone formation in the next seven days in the Atlantic Basin. 

Other tropical activity shows Tropical Storm Don swirling in the Atlantic and expected to remain at tropical-storm strength through the weekend as it approaches the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. 

In the Central Pacific, Gov. Josh Green declared a state of emergency as Tropical Storm Calvin battered Hawaii’s Big Island. 

In the Lower 48, an unrelenting heat dome roasts tens of millions of people from California to Florida. 

The good news is that 5,10,30-year average temperatures for the Lower 48 plateau on a seasonal basis. However, forecasts show average temperatures across the US could rise to as high as 85 degrees Fahrenheit by next Friday, with the possibility of cooler temps into early August. 

Rather than blaming global warming solely on human activities, like billionaires flying around on private jets and sailing on mega yachts, readers must consider the El Nino weather pattern is a significant contributor to the warm spell gripping the planet. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

In July 1991, Clarence Thomas, a relatively unknown D.C. Circuit judge, was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to replace Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court.

Thomas soon found out that the only thing more perilous than replacing a historical icon on the Court is replacing a liberal with a conservative.

Thomas would become an icon in his own right for conservatives: an unyielding defender of textualism and conservative jurisprudence. Yet, liberals seem more preoccupied by his race than his rigidity. This week, a leading Democrat, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison unleashed another openly racist attack on Thomas and neither the media nor the political establishment condemned the remarks.

Ellison condemned Thomas as a house slave working for white people, analogizing him to the vile character “Stephen,” played by Samuel L. Jackson in the film “Django Unchained.” (Jackson himself called Thomas “Uncle Clarence” after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade). Ellison added that, because he disagreed with Thomas’ conservative opinions, the justice is “illegitimate” and “needs to be impeached.”

That is, of course, nonsensical from a constitutional standpoint. However, what was most striking is the response to statements. The racist attack from the top lawyer in the state of Minnesota was not condemned by a single democrat.

Not Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who previously falsely declared that hate speech is not constitutionally protected under the First Amendment and declared himself a champion against bigotry and racist rhetoric.

Not from senior Senator Amy Klubuchar, who has repeatedly denounced racist tropes and rhetoric of Republicans.

Not from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who rightfully condemned the comments of Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville on white nationalism but made no comment on a racist attack of Thomas in the same week.

Not from President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly denounced racial rhetoric and “codes” by Republicans.

Indeed, the day that Ellison’s comments were being aired nationally, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre went to the press room to denounce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at length for his statements suggesting that Covid-19 may have been engineered to spare Jewish and Chinese people. Jean-Pierre declared that “it is important that we essentially speak out” when such racist or anti-Semitic comments are made, but then made no mention of the racist attack on Thomas as nothing more than a house slave.

Thomas knew that being a conservative black jurist would not be easy when he was nominated for the bench. Thomas replaced Robert Bork on the D.C. Circuit. Bork was also savagely attacked when he was nominated for the Court. Indeed, “borked” is now a term of art for destroying nominees in the confirmation process.

Thomas’ confirmation became a battle royale after Anita Hill accused him of of sexual harassment. What followed was famously described by Thomas as “a high tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas.”

The attacks on Thomas would never end. His very presence on the Court seemed to disgust liberals who made continual reference to his race. One Democratic legislator on the Georgia Senate floor called him an  “Uncle Tom” who “sold his soul to the slave master.”

The Smithsonian’s African American museum even skipped over Thomas in its selection of great African Americans at its opening despite being the second African-American appointed to the highest court.

(His Senate confirmation-hearing accuser, Anita Hill, did make the cut.)

It was only after a public outcry that the Smithsonian relented to include Thomas.

The media has been unrelenting in its hostile and one-sided coverage of Thomas. While running gushing pieces heralding the backgrounds of liberal justices, there has been a virtual news blackout on Thomas’ amazing life story, one of the truly most inspirational accounts of overcoming every possible obstacle in life.

Thomas was born on the Georgia coast in Pin Point, Georgia and grew up speaking Gullah, the creole dialect. He was raised in a one-room shack with dirt floors, no plumbing, and no Dad.  When he was eventually sent to a Catholic school, he had to learn to read and write in English. He overcame segregation and prejudice to eventually go to Holy Cross and then was offered admission to Yale, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania law schools. He would become the chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1982, a federal appellate judge, and the second African American to join the Court.

Few of these critics could have walked the path of this man from Pin Point to Capitol Hill. He did so by being his own man — relying on his faith and his intellect to face seemingly insurmountable barriers before him.

Some 32 years ago, Thomas objected to the treatment of an “uppity black” jurist who thinks for himself. Others have made the case for him. For years, commentators have singled out Thomas for his race among the conservative majority. Now, in the face of yet another raw and racist attacks, the political and media establishment is again silent.

Ironically, the thing that made Stephen hate Django in the movie was that he would not yield to the demands of the white owners. Django defiantly admitted that he was “that one [black man] in ten thousand.” For the liberal establishment, Thomas was a threat because others might emulate him. That is why other black leaders like Sen. Tim Scott from South Carolina have faced continual racist tropes from the left, including a Maryland Delegate Gabriel Acevero stating that “Tim Scott isn’t naive, he’s cooning” to please white people.

The bitter irony is that Thomas is the antithesis of the Stephen character. He has always refused to yield to the demands of others on how he should think as a jurist due to his race.

The attacks are meant to chill others from even considering conservative or libertarian views. Ellison has long valued intimidation as a political weapon. He previously praised the ultra-violent group Antifa as useful to “strike fear in the heart” of Trump and Republicans.

Of course, Django is all about righteous rage as a license for the most extreme actions.

That is why Ellison may have had the right movie, but the wrong character. Call it the Django syndrome. When you are “one in ten thousand” who refuses to yield, you become not simply an annoyance but an obsession.

The president of Stanford University has resigned after an independent review of his prior research found ‘significant flaws’ in studies he supervised going back decades.

Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced on Wednesday that he would resign as president of Stanford after the review, conducted by an outside panel of scientists, found that an important 2009 Alzheimer’s study contained “multiple problems,” and “fell below customary standards of scientific rigor and process,” but that it did not include falsified data which Tessier-Lavigne then covered up.

The panel concluded that the claims, published in February by The Stanford Daily, the campus newspaper, “appear to be mistaken” and that there was no evidence of falsified data or that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne had otherwise engaged in fraud.

As a result of the review, Dr. Tessier-Lavigne said he would retract a 1999 paper that appeared in the journal Cell and two others that appeared in Science in 2001. Two other papers published in Nature, including the 2009 Alzheimer’s study, would also undergo what was described as comprehensive correction. –NY Times

Following the Stanford Daily’s initial report about manipulated studies last November, the college’s board formed a special committee, led by former federal prosecutor Carol Lam, to review the claims. The committee then engaged former Illinois federal judge Mark Filip, and his law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, to conduct the review.

“I expect there may be ongoing discussion about the report and its conclusions, at least in the near term, which could lead to debate about my ability to lead the university into the new academic year,” said Tessier-Lavigne in a statement describing his reasons for resigning.

The university has named Richard Saller – a professor of European studies, as interim president, effective Sept. 1.

The panel’s report, which is 89-pages long, was based on more than 50 interviews and a review of more than 50,000 documents which concluded that members of Tessier-Lavigne’s labs engaged in inappropriate manipulation of research data or deficient scientific practices which resulted in significant flaws in five papers which listed Tessier-Lavigne as the lead author, the Times reports.

The panel found that in many instances, he took insufficient steps to correct mistakes, including the 2009 Alzheimer’s paper after subsequent studies revealed that its key finding was incorrect.

The accusations had first surfaced years ago on PubPeer, an online crowdsourcing site for publishing and discussing scientific work. But they resurfaced after the student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, published a series of articles questioning the accuracy and honesty of work produced in laboratories overseen by Dr. Tessier-Lavigne.

The newspaper first reported claims last November that images were manipulated in published papers listing Dr. Tessier-Lavigne as either lead author or co-author.

In February, the campus newspaper published an article with more serious claims of fraud involving the 2009 paper that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne published while a senior scientist at Genentech. -NY Times

The panel found that claims by the Stanford Daily that “Genentech had conducted a fraud investigation and made a finding of fraud,” was “mistaken,” and that no such investigation had been conducted.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Ahead of a major hearing scheduled to take place in the House next week, National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that UFOs are having a “real impact” on the ability of U.S. Air Force pilots to operate.

“We wouldn’t have stood up an organisation at the Pentagon to analyse and try to collect and coordinate the way these sightings are reported if we didn’t take it seriously,” Kirby said responding to a question on unidentified aerial phenomena.

“I mean, some of these phenomena we know have already had an impact on our training ranges for, you know, when pilots are out trying to do training in the air and they see these things, they’re not sure what they are and it can have an impact on their ability to perfect their skills. So it already had an impact here,” Kirby said, admitting that the military does not know “what they are.”

“Now we’re not saying what they are or what they’re not, we’re saying that there’s something our pilots are seeing, we’re saying it has had an effect on some of our training operations, and so we wanna get to the bottom of it. We wanna understand it better,” Kirby added.

Watch:

White House National Security Council Coordinator, Admiral John Kirby was asked about Senator Schumer’s UAP legislation. 💥

-White House takes it seriously

“Some of these phenomena we know have already had an impact on our training ranges.” pic.twitter.com/CNeJ8Efj6z

— UAP News (@HighPeaks77) July 17, 2023

In announcing the upcoming hearing, Republican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett tweeted Monday “We’re done with the cover-ups.”

The House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on UAPs on Wednesday, 7/26.

We’re done with the cover-ups.

— Rep. Tim Burchett (@RepTimBurchett) July 17, 2023

The announcement came on the heels of Democrat Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds submitting an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would mandate government records related to UAPs “carry the presumption of disclosure.”

Schumer said, “It’s long past time [Americans] get some answers,” adding “The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena.”

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