So then we have Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. These two have actively campaigned, promoted, and paved the way for legislation that makes/keeps abortion a legal procedure. But if you're a faithful and practicing Catholic, you don't believe this is morally correct. In fact, you believe it is morally wrong. There are groups like Catholics for Choice who think abortions are ok, but they're really just support groups for people who feel guilty and need others in the pen with them to make them feel less guilty. These people are nominal Catholics who reject one of the core teachings of the Church, and so they should just go join another outfit more aligned with their views. //

What disturbs me, though, is that we have two people who wave their Catholicism in our faces, and yet they still support the act of abortion. This makes them nominal Catholics who use their faith to further their own political careers...in my opinion. And this is bad. //

Biden and Pelosi, though, are a lot worse than these people because they use their positions as legislators to further what their Church calls a moral evil, all the while claiming and touting their Catholicism. How do they square that circle? Well, they simply tell us that while they don't personally believe in abortion, as lawmakers, they cannot force their religious views on their constituents who want abortion to be legal. How virtuous of them. And they promote abortions to make the voters happy so that they won't get kicked out of power by them. This is also known as "Selling Your Soul." You surrender your values on morality to serve another diametrically opposed to your own. //

There's no room to thread the needle here for a practicing Catholic. And what we have in Biden and Pelosi are two individuals who have been, unfortunately, temporally successful in doing just that. And now, each with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, I wonder what goes through their minds. Pelosi is probably thinking that she'll change God's mind by hook, crook, or bribery. And Biden? Well, he's going to visit the pope shortly. Maybe he'll be looking for absolution from Francis.

A Florida grand jury investigation ordered by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis reveals a "pattern of deceptive and obfuscatory behavior" by pharmaceutical companies and federal agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of Florida's 22nd Statewide Grand Jury and their forward-looking recommendations highlight concerns about vaccine safety data, the effectiveness of lockdown measures, and captured regulatory oversight. //

The grand jury's report delivered a stark assessment of pandemic policies, stating:

"This wasn't an 'information' problem, it was a 'judgment' problem."

They found that solid scientific research about handling pandemics existed before COVID-19 but was largely dismissed by public health officials and media outlets. //

On the issue of masking, the grand jury was unequivocal:

"We have never had sound evidence of their effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 transmission."

Instead of acknowledging this, federal agencies promoted what the report calls "flawed observational and laboratory studies." //

DeSantis wrote:

"The Grand Jury has made a number of recommendations that should be followed. The status quo cannot continue. The American people deserve transparency on how Big Pharma is using their federal tax dollars, and they deserve regulating entities that operate as watchdogs, not cheerleaders."

In their conclusion, the Grand Jury wrote:

"Somehow, because of panic, hubris, ineptitude or some unfortunate combination of the three, this widely rejected idea not only made its way back into scientific discourse in 2020, it became the law of the land in most of the United States between 2020 and 2022. It is clear to this Grand Jury that whatever benefits inured from these mandates, they were not worth the price." //

anon-78cb
an hour ago
Not only did the government become unpaid advertisers for the covid shots, they also made claims that would have been illegal for the drug companies themselves to make. The drug companies cannot make unproven claims in their advertising, but the government sure as hell did. Remember the PSAs claiming that the shots would prevent transmission? All lies. The drug companies couldn't go that far in their advertising, but they didn't need to because the government did it for them.

A recent post at the BBC, titled “Seven proven ways to help the planet in 2025,” claims that the planet is threatened by global climate change due to human activity, and lists seven changes people can make in their lives save the planet by curbing emissions. The suggestions include: giving up meat; stopping flying; buying fewer clothes; reducing the carbon footprint of keeping a pet, if you keep one at all; using alternative home heating technologies; supporting fossil fuel divestment; and reducing plastic use. While none of these suggestions are novel, they are also not going to accomplish what the BBC claims, both because human activity is not threatening the planet via carbon dioxide emissions, and because many of these suggestions actually do not reduce emissions or are targeting areas that won’t have any measurable impact even if emissions reductions were desirable. //

The BBC makes no effort to deal with the fact that every one of these suggestions is bad for our modern lifestyles; they are hazardous to our health, our comfort, and our longevity. //

After all, the elites know what’s best, the hoi polloi must sacrifice to save the planet.

End-to-end encryption for things that matter.
Keybase is secure messaging and file-sharing.

On the eve of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, Mark Levin warned, “We’re standing at the precipice and we’re looking into the abyss.”. //

Weeks after Biden took office, Sky News host Cory Bernardi told viewers the only thing worse than Biden’s mental condition is the extent to which the mainstream media covers it up. He said, “Never before has the leader of the Free World been so cognitively compromised. … It’s clear to me at the least that U.S. President Joe Biden is struggling with dementia and is clearly not up to the task he’s been sworn in to do.”. //

America’s return to normalcy arguably began the moment Trump secured victory. From a global perspective, adversaries quickly recognized that a strong, unpredictable, and bold leader—occasionally ruthless—would soon replace the feeble and ineffectual figure currently occupying the White House.

Things will be very different the second time around. Trump’s unfamiliarity with Washington’s inner workings left him unprepared for the injustices he faced during his first campaign and presidency. It’s fair to say he was naive, taking advice from those who sought his failure and placing trust in the wrong people.

Yet, despite relentless attempts by Democrats to destroy him—through impeachments, indictments, and slander—Trump remains standing, stronger and wiser. //

Trump emphasized, “The bottom line is to get the right people. If you put the right individuals and teams at the heads of these massive agencies, you’ll achieve tremendous success. And now, I know these people better than anyone.”. //

We have already begun our climb out of the abyss.

Welcome to yet another edition of The Federalist’s annual notable books column. At the end of every year, we ask the staff at The Federalist, as well as some of our more esteemed contributors, to make some book recommendations based on whatever they read in the last year that was enjoyable or edifying. So without further ado …

To preserve the status quo as this Court awaits resolution by the Eleventh Circuit of the similar Emergency Motion, to prevent irreparable harm arising from the circumstances as described in the current record in this emergency posture, and to permit an orderly and deliberative sequence of events, it is ORDERED AND ADJUDGED as follows:

1. Pending resolution of the Emergency Motion filed in the Eleventh Circuit and/or any further direction from the Eleventh Circuit, Attorney General Garland, the Department of Justice, Special Counsel Smith, all of their officers, agents, and employees, and all persons acting inactive concert or participation with such individuals, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(d)(2), TEMPORARILY ENJOINED from (a) releasing, sharing, or transmitting the Final Report or any drafts of such Report outside the Department of Justice, or (b) otherwise releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions in the Final Report or in drafts thereof. This Order remains in effect until three days after resolution by the Eleventh Circuit of the Emergency Motion, unless the Eleventh Circuit orders otherwise. //

USA_Proud anon-nn7q
13 hours ago
While it will take a while to change the leadership in the DOJ even after the top gets appointed, it will be very risky for Any DOJ Employee to leak that report. I believe that the Trump Administration would be very likely to collect a few proverbial 'scalps' on defiant DOJ Law deniers early in their Administration, and this would be an excellent test case. The report had material from Grand Jury testimony, that by law, is not releasable. It was collected by a person not eligible by Law to collect it. A Federal Judge ruled against its release. If it does get leaked by a Federal Employee, they not only will be liable for many Criminal charges, they also would be liable to civil charges by the US Citizens illegally disparaged by the leak of this information. That would be grounds for denying their Pension, or having it awarded to those so disparaged. While I would be upset that innocent citizens would be disparaged by its leak, there is some comfort that there would be both punitive and compensatory effects of this leak.

"Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?

Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. …As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your [human] patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.". //

At some point, this age will also come to an end. It's unclear how or why, but what we fought so hard to escape will call itself by a different name, and it will have fresh new causes that take advantage of the people's needs and desires of the time. Those leading that movement will cause the people to turn away from the lessons they learned previously, as the new age will seemingly render them obsolete, and the pendulum will swing back.

We are currently moving toward a peak. We will reach it. Then we will descend.

You cannot stop this, but what you can do is make sure that when the descent starts, that it's not one that will plunge as deeply as this previous age did. The key is to destroy government control over society to the greatest extent possible, put laws in place that will severely restrict it going forward, localize politics as much as possible, and then continue to be prosperous until the age ends.

We will hit a new valley, but in our diligence, we won't have as deep of one as last time.

We have a great opportunity to do this now. We shouldn't waste it, because bad times are coming, but if we're prepared enough, and the framework is in place to help, those bad times could be less of an issue than before. While the law of undulation is absolute, like any universal law, it can be used to your advantage. //

frylock234
10 hours ago edited
The other key to preventing as deep a descent is to not overreach as badly as the left did. The harder and farther the pendulum pushes, the worse the inevitable swing back will be. That does not mean we cannot push back and make considerable progress, but we need to push slowly and relentlessly, by increments rather than radically and suddenly. Heat the frogs slowly over time so they are more inclined to stay in the pot. //

C. S. P. Schofield
10 hours ago
This is one of the reasons I hope to see a shift toward sanity in the Democrat party. The mess we are in now is a consequence of a long period when both parties were Big Government Prigressive, and we only started to come back with the election of Reagan. The absence of an opposition isn’t good for ANY movement. Our system is built around two parties keeping each-other’s extremes in check.

I don’t know what excesses the Populist movement now ascendant will lean towards, but there will be some. If the self-destruction of the Democrats goes on too long, we’re likely to find out.

DonnaM
9 hours ago
I'm thinking that a "deal deal" with Greenland and Denmark could be structured like an economic development corporation (EDC). These are nonprofits that work with geographic areas in cities cooperating with businesses to supply plans and services to develop that area. I'm a humble marketer and no expert, but I'd bet that the Trumps have worked with plenty of them. That way we get security and access to resources, kick out the Chinese (mandatory), help Denmark on their issues with Greenland, Greenlanders are part of the EDC representation, run their affairs, improve their economy, yet the Danes keep it as a territory or state. We don't take it on as a US colony or territory, but it's supervised, planned against specified goals. A win all around. //

anon-201n
9 hours ago
This idea of acquiring Greenland at first sounds crazy, but as noted Harry Truman wanted to buy it from Denmark in 1946, at a time when the USSR was beginning to flex its post-war muscles. Greenland has lots of natural resources but also. has a coastline that would open into a northwest passage. Both China (declaring itself an Arctic country!!!) and Russia are eying the Arctic Ocean for its trade routes and natural resources. Greenland has had an uneasy relationship with Denmark over the recent years and is subsidised by Denmark (but also restricted). Trump eyes Greenland as an ally and a trade source and is playing the art of the deal.

Damocles Gordon of Cartoon
9 hours ago
This from Wikipedia:
In 2016, the BBC published a report which stated that the administration of United States President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981) had extensive contact with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his entourage in the prelude to the Iranian Revolution of 1979.[1][2] The report was based on "newly declassified US diplomatic cables".[1][2] According to the report, as mentioned by The Guardian, Khomeini "went to great lengths to ensure the Americans would not jeopardise his plans to return to Iran - and even personally wrote to US officials" and assured them not to worry about their interests in Iran, particularly oil.[1][2] According to the report, in turn, Carter and his administration helped Khomeini and made sure that the Imperial Iranian army would not launch a military coup

There are a lot of people here in the USA that do not know that Carter Gave the Ayatollah Khomeini a crap ton of money (read: Millions) and allowed them to take over Iran. The thanks for using our tax money was a bunch of hostages held for over a year.
Look it up people! //

epaddon
9 hours ago
The context of giving away the Panama Canal stemmed from all the 1970s self-flagellation America went through in the wake of Vietnam. The idea of America a force of evil in the world, which gained ascendancy with opposition to the Vietnam War, combined with the rise of "revisionist" scholarship on the Cold War which blamed America, not Stalin for why the Cold War started, and all the trashing of America over getting rid of Marxist regimes in Guatemala and Chile is why Jimmy Carter felt that giving away the Canal would be a way of showing America making amends for all those things they never had to apologize for in the first place.

It didn't help that he not only got the backing RINO Senator Howard Baker, but also the backing of William F. Buckley. Indeed, there was a big "Firing Line" debate between Buckley and Reagan on the Canal and its telling that on Buckley's side was George Will, while Reagan's side had Pat Buchanan. George Will of course now stands exposed as Never-Trumper fake. //

Almost Sane
7 hours ago
Jimmy Carter was a virulent anti-Semite. He hated Israel and did his best to always side with their enemies, even after he was out of office. He was responsible for the ayatollah taking over Iran and responsible for our embassy being overrun and our diplomats taken hostage for over 440 days. Everybody praised him for his Habitat for Humanity project, but failed to read his antisemitic writings long after he was no longer president. //

anon-pabn
9 hours ago
This all may be Trump leveraging the canal to bring to light what China is trying to do with Taiwan. "Go after Taiwan and say goodbye to controlling the Panama Canal." Of course he would refuse to take military action off the board. He is playing 3 dimensional chess while the MSM is playing Candy Crush.

Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok
·
TRUMP: “If those hostages aren’t back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East. And it will not be good for Hamas. They should’ve given them back a long time ago. They should’ve never taken them. There should’ve never been an attack on Oct 7th.”

12:34 PM · Jan 7, 2025 //

Trump and his choice for Middle East envoy intimated that some headway was being made behind the scenes: //

SESummers
5 hours ago
From the river to the sea, Palestine will no longer be.

bubbavirus
6 hours ago
From the liver to the knees blam blam blam 💥

Eric Daugherty
@EricLDaugh
·
Follow
🚨 #BREAKING: Trump announces the Gulf of Mexico will be renamed to the "Gulf of America."

"It has a beautiful ring. It covers a lot of territory. The Gulf of America. What a beautiful name. And, it's appropriate."

11:52 AM · Jan 7, 2025. //

Jon Clark
11 hours ago
Trump is a well timed squirrel launching machine for the media. He seems to have an endless bag of squirrels.

Liberty Belle Jon Clark
11 hours ago
I am totally tickled by the idea of Trump with a bag of squirrels and a squirrel-launcher.

Roxanne Beckford Hoge
29 minutes ago
"Nixon’s legacy was tarnished by Watergate. Biden’s legacy was tarnished by… Biden."

Spot on.

Salieri Roxanne Beckford Hoge
20 minutes ago edited
I will never forget the apoplexy from the media when Nixon died as the outpouring of love and admiration for the man was nationwide. Despite their best efforts to denigrate him over the years. People lined up everywhere along roads to say goodbye as the hearse drove by.

The Crooked Cadaver can forget ANY of that. //

anon-x8p1
20 minutes ago
LBJ was one of the worst; Nixon over all was probably up there with the best. The media jackets have skewed this reality for far less valid criteria.

Before I go full throttle with my story, here's something I like to tell my kids when they wonder which side is telling the truth: The side that's trying to silence others are the liars. This is a complete rip-off from the teachings of the great Dennis Prager, but it consistently holds true.

And, oh how Zuck did silence us. //

Turns out, we weren't the only ones who amused themselves during lockdown by mocking our enfeebled president.

The botched Afghanistan withdrawal was our undoing. Zuck just wasn't going to let you criticize Joe Biden over this. //

Sorry, but Zuck's newfound love of free speech is just words at this point. His half-hearted pledge to improve things rings hollow to conservatives who have been under the ban hammer for at least a decade. An apology would be a good place to start, but being a leftist means never having to apologize.

There was some talk on X Tuesday about Facebook providing reparations to all the conservative accounts they damaged over the years, and I'm all for it. Zuck should put some money where his mouth is and prove he's serious about stopping the censorship.

Reparations for conservatives! //

Robert A Hahn
3 hours ago
All true, but we can't forget Dog 101: When the dog finally does something you've been trying to get him to do, give him a treat.

Doesn't have to be a big treat.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is moving forward with a regulatory rule in the final days of the Biden administration that would effectively ban cigarettes currently on the market in favor of products with lower nicotine levels, which could end up boosting business for cartels operating on the black market, an expert tells Fox News Digital. //

It's not a done deal yet; the rule has yet to be finalized. Fortunately, there is a process for these things, and this one is still in the works — and, presumably, open for a new presidential administration to point out that this doesn't pass the stupid test. //

The Biden administration appears to have learned nothing from Prohibition, or any other time the federal government has tried this kind of heavy-handed approach. The Mexican cartels, when they learn of this, will be rubbing their hands together in glee; another billion-dollar black market will soon be opening up, courtesy of the Biden administration, complete with turf wars and all that goes with it. //

anon-hllt
4 hours ago
This a plot. A plot for us smokers to smoke more to cope with lowered nicotine, and thus to pay even more taxes. It’s a hike of the sin tax clothed in another “see how the government cares about you?” lie. It will backfire spectacularly, just like everything else this administration has done under the guise of “caring.”. //

Watt stickdude90
5 hours ago
The process appears to have started during the first Trump administration.

https://natlawreview.com/article/ctp-advances-proposal-set-maximum-nicotine-level-cigarettes

We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.

This was disputed by the former fact-checkers in a New York Times article headlined, and I swear I'm not making this up, Mark Zuckerberg Says Meta Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False. //

While the fact-checkers may be technically correct that they didn't have the authority to meddle with content on Facebook and Instagram, that is sort of like the guy working in the Zyklon B factory claiming he never gassed anyone. Of course, they knew what the result of their work product was, and of course, they acted with political bias. //

When we first reported rumors of a lab leak at Wuhan, we were forced to choose between staying in business and withdrawing a post. Both Mike Ford and I had posts pulled that dealt with January 6. These people were not only evil, but most of them were profoundly stupid. They literally did not understand the subject matter they were reviewing and made no effort to do so; on the bright side, there was no internal check on their journalistic terrorism by Meta, so YOLO; //

On Wednesday morning, the International Fact-Checking Network (there actually is such a thing) will convene an emergency meeting of its members to decide what to do. The money stream has dried up, and the few remaining clients for KGB-like editorial control don't have deep pockets. Most of them will, if there is justice, spend a long period of time unemployed and suffer financial devastation. //

Zuckerberg knows he's up to his eyebrows in highly questionable censorship activity at the behest of the Biden administration and that no one is around to rescue him now.

Hopefully, this will change the culture in Big Tech from defaulting toward fascistic government control to favoring individual freedom. Only time will tell.

When the FBI urges E2EE, you know it's serious business. //

In the wake of the Salt Typhoon hacks, which lawmakers and privacy advocates alike have called the worst telecoms breach in America's history, the US government agencies have reversed course on encryption.

After decades of advocating against using this type of secure messaging, "encryption is your friend," Jeff Greene, CISA's executive assistant director for cybersecurity, told journalists last month at a press briefing with a senior FBI official, who also advised us to use "responsibly managed encryption" for phone calls and text messages.

In December, CISA published formal guidance [PDF] on how to keep Chinese government spies off mobile devices, and "strongly urged" politicians and senior government officials — these are "highly targeted" individuals that are "likely to possess information of interest to these threat actors" — to ditch regular phone calls and messaging apps and instead use only end-to-end encrypted communications.

It's a major about-face from the feds, which have historically demanded law enforcement needs a backdoor to access people's communications — but only for crime-fighting and terrorism-preventing purposes.

"We know that bad guys can walk through the same doors that are supposedly built for the good guys," Virtru CEO and co-founder John Ackerly told The Register. "It's one thing to tap hardline wires or voice communication. It's yet another to open up the spigot to all digital communication." //

Pete 2Silver badge
Who's who?

"We know that bad guys can walk through the same doors that are supposedly built for the good guys,"

Although which are the good / bad guys is increasingly difficult to determine. //

Aleph0
Reply Icon
Re: Who's who?
The Patrician to Captain Vimes, in Guards! Guards!: "I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people," said the man. "You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.". //

Al fazed
Reply Icon
WTF?
Re: I bet . . .
and the only people interested in spying on you are good people, who have your best interests at heart.

A few of us don't believe this bullsh*t, even here in the UK.

ALF. //

Caffeinated Sponge
Reply Icon
Re: I bet . . .
The last I heard, British Conservatives were still all over the idea that 'only people with something to hide should want encryption'.

Of course, as with the Sir Pterry quote above, whilst this is actually true it is built around the easy to sell misconception that the only people with anything to hide are bad people.

The World Bank’s mission has been subverted by green ideologues who assert that a low-carbon world benefits the world’s poor but fail to acknowledge that making energy much more costly increases poverty. The World Bank tags itself as ‘working for a world free of poverty’ … In making its choice between development and sustainability, the World Bank has decided it is going to try and ‘save the planet’ on the backs of the poor.

By abdicating its founding principles for alleviating global poverty, the World Bank has taken a lead role among multilateral financial institutions in denying vast financial resources to poorer countries. It has hypocritically vetoed the right of developing countries to adopt the path of economic growth and environmental improvement that the now-rich countries had taken up successfully since the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago. The World Bank’s obsessive support for intermittent, low-yield renewable energy such as solar and wind power comes at the cost of its central charter to help the poor, an outcome that can only be described as egregiously unjust.

At the end of each year—only hours before a new year begins—Roberts releases his “Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary.” Think of it as a written “State of the Judiciary” address. In this latest report, he focused on “four areas of illegitimate activity that … threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends.”

What are those threats? According to Roberts, they’re “(1) violence, (2) intimidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.”

Unfortunately, Trump cannot undo Biden’s executive order.

Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), a law established in 1953, states, “the President of the United States may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the Outer Continental Shelf.”

Trump needs Congress to change the law. That could happen since the GOP controls the House and Senate.

No one can receive a lease to drill for oil, gas, or other minerals in those areas.

OCSLA lacks language that allows a future president to undo an executive order under Section 12(a).

Former President Barack Obama issued a similar executive order on December 20, 2016.

In April 2017, Trump signed an executive order to undo Obama’s order.

Activist groups challenged Trump’s order.

In 2019, US District Court Judge Sharon Gleason, based in Alaska, overturned Trump’s executive order, leaving in place Obama’s protection of the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea and the East Coast of America.