One of the participants suggested recategorizing “concerning” behavior as a public health matter to make people more comfortable with coming forward.

In another press release, AFL discussed how the group labeled supporters of former President Donald Trump as “domestic terrorists.” In one instance, a participant described “indicators of extremists and terrorism” to be members of the military or “religious.”

The group asserted that there exists a “political backdrop” to supposed threats of domestic terrorism. It said that most of this threat “comes from supporters of the former president” and that “people have attacked the government and its institutions for the last six years.” //

anon-bjep
2 hours ago
If the answer was "military and religious", the question must have been "Who will be least willing to bend the knee to our rule"

 Golden Rule
4 hours ago
German owned magazine since 1986. Germany does not allow homeschooling.

anon-055q Golden Rule
2 hours ago
In Germany, any "rights" that citizens have are bestowed by Daddy Government.

Indeed. In that respect, the term "Fatherland" assumes an almost literal meaning!

This has, alas, been a leitmotif of German social thought for centuries.

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) devastated Germany. The aftermath of that brutal conflict witnessed the widespread development of political thought that emphasized the need for a strong state to protect against, inter alia, the prospect of rampant invasions by foreign armies slaughtering the local populations and plundering the countryside.

This was a central theme of Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan", and directly inspired, (albeit, from afar) by the horrific events of that conflict.

That war had profound effect on German thought - starting in its immediate aftermath. The Saxon jurist, Samuel Pufendorf, strongly influenced by Hobbes, wrote in, "The Elements of Essential Jurisprudence" of the empirically demonstrated need for a strong political authority to acquire and maintain the military and financial means of protecting the polity from such depredations by foreign powers and actors. This, in turn, provided the justification for royal absolutism of the monarch over the rest of society - to the detriment, alas, of the status of individual rights that have been the basis of (especially, but not exclusively, American political thought.

The idea of individual rights that could be legitimately claimed against the desires and interior the state, has, thus, never really taken hold in Germany - even with the advent of the Republic of Germany after World War II.

And,I haven't even touched upon other historical factors that further buttressed authoritarian political thought in Germany, such as the Reformation.

Unfortunately, Martin Luther was a servant believer in absolute submission to state authority. This, ultimately, also had the unfortunate effect of rendering the Lutheran Church largely subservient to the monarch and state - in sharp contrast to the American experience.

All of these (and more) military, political, religious, legal, and cultural developments in Germany eventually combi ed to produce a social milieu where the author of the state was almost invariably presumed to be dispositive over the preparative of the individual.

Given that, is is not surprising (unfortunately) that the rights of parents with respect to their children's education have been historically weak in Germany.

And more's the pity!

In a June 17 newsletter, "Scientific American" Magazine, based on numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), suggested that federal regulations be put on homeschooling. NCES shows that almost three percent of American students are homeschooled, roughly 1.5 million kids. But it is not the call for federal regulations that is the most disturbing thing about Scientific American's suggestion; the best part is that they also suggest that parents of homeschooled kids "undergo a background check." First, just one question: What does this have to do with "science?" //

Fatherhood Reforged @fathersreforged
·
When they want to regulate homeschooling,

what they're really regulating is parenting.

When they say,

"Homeschool kids need to be checked on",

what they're really saying is,

"Parents can't be trusted with their kids".
6:00 PM · Jun 18, 2024 //

What better way to create a comprehensive database of conservatives and be able to know exactly where they are than to require them to undergo a background check? What sort of information would be required from a background check? Political affiliations, ownership of firearms? Imagine what the Biden administration would do with a database of conservatives — think January 6, and we already have a pretty good idea. //

Robert A Hahn
4 hours ago
Leftists wreck everything they touch. This used to be such a wonderful magazine. It was so scientific that much of the content went right over my head.

As Becky says, this article isn't science. This is leftist BS dressed up in a science suit. These bastiges did the same thing to Science News, which was also a wonderful little magazine until it turned into Al Gore's Climate Bugle. I hate these people. They wreck everything. //

MCPR
4 hours ago
Homeschooling succeeds BECAUSE it’s not regulated. Everything the government regulates turns into poop. “It takes a State to raise a child, comrade. Now stand aside while we indoctrinate your children.”

Daily Caller
@DailyCaller
·
Follow
John Kennedy Tells Chief Biden Regulator Point Blank That His Agency Is 'Operating Illegally'

11:30 AM · Jun 12, 2024

“For the longest time, the Federal Reserve was earning money, but that stopped in September 2022,” Kennedy said. “Now they are losing money. They don’t have any earnings. They’re no longer transferring earnings to the general fund, and the Supreme Court based its decision on saying, this funding scheme is Constitutional under the appropriations clause, by saying that these earnings would go to the general fund from the Federal Reserve so getting them directly from the general fund is no big deal,” he added.

The Supreme Court ruled by 7-2 vote in May that the unconventional way the CFPB obtains funding is constitutional. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the dissenting opinion that the ruling could establish a precedent wherein a federal agency can “bankroll its own agenda without any congressional control or oversight.”

“How are you entitled to any money right now?” Kennedy asked. “The Federal Reserve doesn’t have any earnings.”

The answer, according to the statute and according to Senator Kennedy, "bigger than Dallas," is that the CFPB is not operating within the law. //

What will come of these congressional grillings? Sadly, probably not much. There is nothing so enduring as a government program or agency; one might be forgiven for suspecting that these will survive the heat-death at the end of the universe to somehow arise again in the next universe to vex information-seekers and taxpayers in whatever replaces our reality.

Anderson Cooper 360° @AC360
·
CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan explores why many MAGA Republicans are claiming that America is a republic, not a democracy.

9:34 PM · Jun 13, 2024 //

Applebaum even tried to claim there wasn't much difference between the terms "republic" and "democracy."

The Founders specifically rejected a pure democracy or direct democracy because they were concerned about mob rule. They wanted to protect individual liberties and minorities, they wanted a rule of law that would endure and protect those rights. Hence, while we can be called a representative democracy because the people elect their representatives -- it is more accurate and specific to say a Constitutional Republic. That difference is very significant because while in a pure democracy, mob rule could take away your rights, in a Constitutional Republic, you have checks from the courts who will uphold the rule of law and protect individual liberties.

Indeed, if we just had a pure democracy, politicians would only ever reach out to the most populous states and urban areas and completely ignore the smaller states in order to win elections because that's all they would need to do to hold control. But with things like the Electoral College, we ensure some greater balance. Those are just a couple of reasons why what we have is far superior to a pure democracy. //

Applebaum even tried to claim there wasn't much difference between the terms "republic" and "democracy." //

Here's what it says in the Constitution.

Article IV, Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Here's a good Prager University breakdown of the basic difference. https://youtu.be/wbsfpeMELGE //

The better question is, why do Democrats seem to want to deem America a democracy and downplay or ignore the "Constitutional Republic" that we are? Are they just ignorant, or do they not know the difference? Or is there some more problematic movement going on here? //

If Democrats succeed in getting rid of the Electoral College, they can completely skip Middle America and pitch to their base in New York and California. They can ignore those people Hillary termed "a basket deplorables," and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) tried to term an "immoral majority." Then so much for the interests of the other, smaller states.

But if kids are not taught the nature of our government, they will not know that we have these protections like the Electoral College or what they are about. They will be more easily bamboozled and untethered and more easily seduced into apostasies like Communism instead of celebrating the rule of law, which is what makes our nation special.

If they just hear "democracy," they won't understand we are so much more than that. Democrats appear to want to make us much less. //

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands. ... //

Atrox
20 hours ago
Hearing the House bitch, moan, complain, demand and lose every time, is just trying. The HOUSE controls the money, but they never use it. IF you want change and you want to make demands, cut the money off and watch what happens. ... //

Tech in RL Atrox
18 hours ago
This problem can be laid at the feet of Jimmy Carter. It was during his administration that the government adopted current services baseline budgeting, which means everything in last year's budget is moved forward to the next year's budget along with automatic inflation increases UNLESS Congress votes to rescind funding or a sunset provision was provided in previous budgets. That's how you get "cuts" when they're just reductions in increases. The increases are automatic, and to interfere with that is a "cut".

Because of this, rescinding funding to DOJ, FBI, etc. is almost impossible because it requires those amendments to be passed by both the House and Senate and signed by the president. Under sane budget rules, the House could simply omit funding, but under insane current budget rules, they actually have to pass language that says they are removing funding, something that cannot happen without bipartisan support.

The rest of the world uses zero-based budgeting, which means everything in a budget must have explicit language including spending. Our insane policies include everything from last year's budget with the written budget amending what was spent last year.

In other words, even if every Republican supported zeroing out the DOJ's budget, they could not do it without Senate and presidential approval. //

INTJ ECoolidge19
5 hours ago
Congressional Budget Act of 1974, correct.

In a CBS/YouGov poll, 62% of Americans embrace mass deportation. The anti-Israel anarchy is a microcosm of our greater national anarchy, and people are getting fed up. //

CBS News
@CBSNews
A nearly six in 10 majority of voters say they would favor, in principle, a new government program to deport all undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, a new CBS News poll shows.

(That isn’t purely partisan, it includes a third of Democrats. It rises to nine in 10 Republicans.)
7:01 PM · Jun 11, 2024. //

4fun | June 11, 2024 at 9:25 pm
“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge And Decisions

Something as big, complex, and interactive as a major city, if it is going to be livable, requires predictability and control. The citizens of our cities have to know that every morning they will be able to go to work unimpeded, to do their jobs, to go home again; they have to know that their children are safe walking or riding the bus to school, that they can go to a store without worrying about a flash mob showing up to loot the place. //

And while I am and always will be an advocate of minimal government, this is one of the government's few truly legitimate roles: To protect the liberty and property of the citizens. In that, the government of these cities has failed. //

the blame can only be placed on the elected officials in those cities, the ones who make policy - and, yes, on the voters who elected them.

In 1919, in his poem "The Second Coming," W.B. Yeats wrote:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I wish I could say that these political prosecutions won’t increase. But they likely will. Authoritarians on the left are becoming even more brazen in their efforts to use the criminal justice system against political opponents.

The objective is clear: They seek to cow the public into abiding by their political views. With the threat of government force, they want to compel people to either embrace their political philosophy, or at least shut up about it. Dissent will increasingly become less tolerated if these officials are allowed to continue weaponizing the government.

Lo and behold, after apparently considering the consequences of losing the lawsuit and setting a precedent, Biden administration officials granted a permit to allow the mass to take place on the cemetery grounds: //

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares summed up the case, perfectly:

I’m pleased that the Petersburg Knights of Columbus was granted access to observe Memorial Day and gather to pray and mourn the loss of fallen military personnel. The First Amendment very clearly allows religious and non-religious groups to hold these types of gatherings on government grounds. It’s shameful and un-American that they were denied in the first place.

"Devout Catholic" Joe Biden was unavailable for comment. //

GBenton
12 hours ago
This Judeo-Christian drive at the heart of Marxism is about one thing: Our rights come from God and they hate that. They have to destroy God so they can have total power. They want to be god. //

anon-4az6
14 hours ago
I would disagree that anyone can be a Christian "at some level." Either you are or you are not. There are no degrees of Christian. ... //

Milldad anon-4az6
11 hours ago
Agree with the gist of your statement about being a Christian “at some level.” I think another New Testament description of such people is “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” Tragic.

Central to the former Justice Antonin Scalia law clerk's arguments in January and Thursday is that when a man becomes president, he becomes a part of the constitutional machinery, no longer a regular citizen.

In this construct, the president is always the president, and the only way to laicize him is through a House impeachment and a Senate conviction for conduct that then becomes vulnerable to criminal prosecution. //

etba_ss Cappy Hamper
2 hours ago
It is actually worse. Roberts is the worst sort of justice, where in an attempt to preserve the "integrity" of the Court and avoid wading into political matters, his decisions are always guided by politics, not the law. In an effort to appear above politics, he is the most political creature on the Court.

Not political in the sense of advancing one party, but political in that every decision is filtered through the lens of how it will be viewed, the consequences, attacks, and preserving the Court's power. He sees himself as the hero of the SCOTUS, whose job it is to protect its power far more than to correctly interpret the Constitution and the law. This is why he upheld Obamacare under the "tax" provision, while ignoring that he had to disagree with his own opinion to take the case up. This is why he wanted to uphold the LA law in Dobbs, but not overturn Roe.

I think it would be preferable if they had pictures of him. Instead, he really just is this cowardly, feckless, weak and depraved. //

Random US Citizen etba_ss
2 hours ago
Roberts has turned the SC in to My Lai--he's destroying the court in order to "save" it. History isn't going to look kindly on that, either because constitutional order will fail and Roberts attacks on the rule of law will be seen as one cause of the collapse, or because constitutional order will prevail (an unlikely outcome) and he'll be seen as an obstacle that had to be overcome.

Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. //

anon-of-yo-biz
2 hours ago
Is it really being argued that Bin laden was a "political" enemy? Was Hitler a "political" enemy? Can we never object against tyranny, hatred, and murder unless we have compatible political or religious views? It seems that the word bigot has grow to include all forms of just resistance. //

Cafeblue32 anon-of-yo-biz
an hour ago edited
This is intentional. The left is destroying language by making specific terms no longer their definition, or getting rid of them altogether. The purpose of language is clear and precise comminication so as to not be misunderstood and creat a bunch of unneccesary problems.The left's purpose is to deconstruct language to be less clear, so specific sexes become they/thems, Catperson, or whatever the hell. They remove gender indicators in gender-specific languages. They use persons instead of men and women, family units instead of marriage and family, how is everyone instead of "How are you guys doing?" The more generic they can make the language, the more they can re-invent it to mean whatever they want it to mean.

And here we are-men are women, Israel is genocidal, Palestine is a legitimate state, Putin is ready to roll into New York, illegal able bodies men wearing expensive jeans and sneakers are refugees, illegal squatters are residents, the American flag is racist and the LGBTGFY flag is to fly high above them all everywhere an American flag is flown around ther world. Working class conservatives are racists and fascists while Palestininas calling for the end of Jews and demand for sharia law are freedom fighters. Etc etc.

Rush said it long ago: words mean things. That's why they work so hard to destroy them.

Edward Snowden @Snowden
·
This is a textbook case of Congressional capture. With a single briefing, the intelligence agencies routinely transform their most strident critics into the tamest of cheerleaders. //

Scott Adams:

If I correctly understand our system of government, when a president or leader in the Congress gets into office, someone in the CIA pulls them aside for “the talk” and completely changes their priorities.

The public is then told the leaders now have secret knowledge the public can never know.

But the leader has no way of knowing the “secret” information is true and in context.

That puts the secret-keepers in firm control of the government’s big decisions. If the secret-keepers agree with a government policy, they stay out of it. If they disagree with a policy, they say the UFOs will attack — or some other unverifiable thing — and by the way, we have recordings of every phone call you ever made, and scare the leaders into compliance.

Right in front of us. None of this is secret. //

Justin Truedope
2 days ago edited

I will splinter the CIA into ab thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds. -- JFK

JFK had sworn to get rid of the CIA and the Deep State but unfortunately, they got rid of him first. Remember that Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that President Donald Trump was “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community over its fake Russia narrative. He's probably repeated that same sentiment to Mike Johnson, who rightly interpreted it as a credible threat.

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer had told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. What Chucky really meant was that he knows that the Deep State controls everything, including the Fake News narrative, but unlike President Trump, he's far too cowardly to ever try to do anything about it. #Trump2024 #VOTE

Debt is never truly canceled, only transferred. And Biden’s latest election year stunt could transfer nearly $150 billion of student loan debt onto your backs, even though 87% of American adults don’t have student debt. We need your help to fight back.

A groundbreaking new study commissioned by Revolver News concludes that COVID-19 lockdowns are ten times more deadly than the actual COVID-19 virus in terms of years of life lost by American citizens. //

Revolver News set out to commission a study to do precisely that: to finally quantify the net damage of the lockdowns in terms of a metric known as “life-years.” Simply put, we have drawn upon existing economic studies on the health effects of unemployment to calculate an estimate of how many years of life will have been lost due to the lockdowns in the United States, and have weighed this against an estimate of how many years of life will have been saved by the lockdowns. The results are nothing short of staggering, and suggest that the lockdowns will end up costing Americans over 10 times as many years of life as they will save from the virus itself.

when we won, when we had an injunction in place actually for the Biden administration to keep this very important protection in place, they ignored it. We had to go back in front of a judge time and time again to get them to abide by the law. But what we have found out from this administration — and Secretary Mayorkas specifically — is that he is willing, he himself is willing, to subvert the law, to believe that he is above the law, to lie and to commit a felony that this chamber now has said doesn't rise to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor — forever. That is the precedent forever. //

And as the back and forth in that United States v. Texas and Missouri case, from Justice Kavanaugh to the solicitor general of the United States indicated, what is the remedy here? And the Department of Justice's own lawyer said, 'Well, they have the remedy of impeachment.' But I guess we don't actually have that anymore. //

The Senate lost an opportunity to hear evidence to hold someone accountable today. //

anon-fe9p
an hour ago edited
This should give the answer to everyone demanding Biden's impeachment... If they wouldn't even hold the trial for Mayorkas there is no way they will hold one for Biden so voting to impeach him just became entirely irrelevant.

At this point they just need to keep the investigation going and keep feeding the information they gain about his corruption into the news cycle all the way through November so he can't get away from it. The political blow with voters is the only thing of any relevance that can come out of an impeachment inquiry now. //

kamief
an hour ago
Okay, here is how I see this.
The dems, must have known that if an impeachment trail where to happen, some things even worse was going to come out than what the impeachment was about? Correct me if that is a wrong assumption.
Otherwise, way play this out this way when they know that they are setting a rule that could come back to bit them in ass. How important is Mayorkas?

What am I missing? //

Sklish
an hour ago
There will be no more impeachments, ever. Chuck U has seen to that. Unless they try and impeach him for treason. If they ask for volunteers to carry out the sentence, there won't be enough ammo in stock to meet the demand.

California lawmakers are moving to create a "genealogy office" that would help determine an individual's eligibility for reparations. //

"Apologies alone are inadequate reparations to victims," it continued. "But when combined with material forms of reparations, apologies provide an opportunity for communal reckoning with the past and repair for moral, physical, and dignitary harms."

Despite their seeming determination to make amends for historical wrongs, California has never been a slave state. In fact, California's admission to the Union back in 1850 was contingent upon its entry as a free state, which meant that slavery was prohibited within its borders.

The GOP-controlled House failed to add an amendment proposed by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., that would have altered Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to mandate that federal authorities obtain a warrant before surveilling American citizens. Johnson and 85 Republicans joined Democrats in killing Biggs’ proposal through a tied House vote. //

The House passed the bill 273-147 to re-authorize the government’s use of FISA for the next two years, with 126 Republicans and 147 Democrats voting in favor. The bill must clear the Senate before it hits President Joe Biden’s desk for signature. //

the White House’s Jake Sullivan and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “call[ed] members on the Hill” this morning to pressure them into squashing Biggs’ amendment.

Jake Sherman @JakeSherman
·
VERY intense W.H. lobbying effort on the warrant issue.

• Jake Sullivan/Merrick Garland made calls
• NSC attorney Josh Geltzer and Deputy homeland security adviser Jen Daskal were right outside the floor with representatives from DOJ/CIA to talk to members

On Monday, Donald Trump announced that his stance on abortion is that the states should decide the intricacies of their abortion laws within their respective territories. I found this to be a very solid move for a few reasons, chief among them is that it is the constitutional view, and it makes the abortion fight for pro-abortion groups that much harder to win. //

As I wrote later, the Republican Party could actually use this avenue of handing power to the states to great effect. They could remove a lot of the deciding power about a lot of subjects from the federal government, craft laws for the government that close the doors on these subjects forever, and hand all the deciding power to the states. They could rightfully bill it as giving the power back to the people.

This would have an insane amount of benefits. Not only would the Republican Party become the party of the people, but it would also result in far less chaos around the nation as power becomes more localized. //

I know this is a very solid path to take and that this iron is hot to strike thanks to the people being made well aware of just how bad centralized power can be, compliments of the Biden administration. The Democrats are well aware of the danger of this as well, and they actually reached out to corporate media sources to swiftly have them correct headlines about Trump's stance.

The House of Representatives failed to pass legislation renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a controversial provision allowing federal agencies to spy on noncitizens without a warrant.

Amid a strong push to “KILL FISA” from former President Donald Trump, more than a dozen Republican lawmakers voted against the measure, which would have renewed Section 702 for another five years. //

If Congress fails to pass legislation renewing Section 702 by the April 19 deadline, it is poised to sunset. This could signal that the tool might no longer be available for federal agencies to use for surveillance purposes.

In Federalist 83, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the plan of the Constitution is that the powers granted to Congress

“shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended.”

This sounds so good. But it appears that he lied to us.

Perhaps Hamilton meant what he wrote at that time. But, once he became Secretary of the Treasury under President Washington, he did everything in his power to violate his own maxim. His scheme for the Bank of the United States is just one example. Where, o’ where does the Constitution provide Congress with the power to create a bank, or for that matter, any business corporation? Naturally, my question is rhetorical. //

And yet Hamilton, once he tasted power, quickly turned to “loose constructionism.” Indeed, his story is that of nearly every person in history who has exercised significant power. Man turns towards evil, and evil men (and women) love power. Many of us are familiar with Lord Acton’s “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” dictum. However, I think Erick von Kuehnelt-Leddin said it best: “A good man will not be corrupted by power, and a bad man will be corrupted with no power at all.” (Leftism Revisited, 317)

Hamilton’s problem is ours today in spades. Nearly all of us having fallen for the trap of loose constructionism, especially those who exercise power over us. We daily practice it- in the way we read our laws and the way we read things like the Bible. In fact, the proliferation of laws and regulations demands that we become loose constructionists, for if we tried to abide by the 4,000 plus new regulations our federal government promulgates each year, we couldn’t even live life. In this manner, the entire culture has been corrupted.

There are many today who support such things as a Convention of the States to redress the train wreck we are about to witness.

But unless we have a revival of strict constructionism, especially regarding higher law in our Constitutions and Scripture, we will merely change cars on the same doomed train.