Well ain’t this a coincidence! Here’s testimony by DC DHS director last year about how the agency used the FirstNet network to coordinate first responders on January 6.

What is FirstNet, you may ask? pic.twitter.com/MF5a3klFFH

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) June 26, 2022

Interesting fact.
Roberts voted to sustain the Miss. law. That means he assigned the Opinion to Alito. He certainly knew what Alito was likely to write. And he ended up not joining the opinion, only the outcome.

I'm going to guess he wasn't originally with the majority.

— Shipwreckedcrew.substack.com (@shipwreckedcrew) June 26, 2022

Maybe the leak of Alito's draft opinion encouraged Roberts to join the conservative majority to put an exclamation point on the decision. After all, the Chief Justice did say, "To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed. The work of the Court will not be affected in any way." 

And then, by assigning the opinion to Alito he straddled the fence, upholding the Mississippi law, while at the same time saying he wouldn't have struck down Roe v. Wade.

Scott Johnson, PowerLine:  The O’Keefe Project: Unseal Me Here

I’ve followed the government’s investigation of James O’Keefe and Ashley Biden’s diary since the New York Times broke the story with a little help from its friends in the national security establishment. What did O’Keefe do wrong? What makes it a federal case? This much is clear to me: the Biden Justice Department is out to get James O’Keefe.

Pending before the court that signed off on the search warrants executed on O’Keefe et al. is a motion to unseal the “search warrant materials” (i.e., “the search warrant application, supporting affidavit, return, and any other related judicial documents filed in connection with the Search Warrant” that was “executed at the residence of James E. O’Keefe, III, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Project Veritas, in connection with an ongoing federal grand jury investigation”).

The motion has been brought by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The ACLU supports the motion as an amicus. The RCFP has set up a page devoted to its efforts to unseal the records here. SDNY prosecutors resist it.

Read the rest here.

PowerLine Blog: THE WEEK IN PICTURES: LIBERAL HUBRIS EDITION

The Ted Kennedy Memorial Bridge?

See the rest here.

Clarice Feldman, American Thinker:  Perspectives on the Dodd Decision Overruling Roe v. Wade

There has been much perfervid shouting and rending of garments (or these days, parading about with red splotches on the crotches of their clothing or performative displays in Handmaid's Tale costumes -- red hooded capes) to protest the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. On the other hand, those opposed to abortion hail this decision, claiming abortions will end or be much reduced.

Neither side is right. I believe the decision will not substantially lessen the number of abortions. On the other hand, I do think that it signals a significant retreat from the days when the Supreme Court creatively crafted imaginary rights to strip the states of their constitutional role. Federalism is back.

I also believe the attorney general’s response to the rioting and threats by Roe proponents and to the Bruen decision on gun ownership reveals him as a man insufficiently respectful of the Supreme Court and unwilling to perform his sworn duty to impartially enforce the law. He deserves to be impeached.

Read the rest here.

Good morning to everyone who now realizes the same people who have been lecturing us about Jan 6th and threats to democracy are now threatening democracy. They are big mad abortion rights will be left to voters/states and they want to get rid of the Supreme Court.

— Julie Lewis (@supersleuthgrl) June 25, 2022

Tom Luongo, Gold Goats 'N Guns:  Media – The End of the European Colonial Powers, The Tyranny of Physics

Long time readers know that I’ve been handicapping the collapse of the European Union for years.

That idea isn’t based on my personal antipathy for Eurotrash commies and eugenicists, though it is quite large. In fact, the deeper we go into 2022 the more that antipathy rises to near unquenchable levels. The sheer arrogance and stupidity of Europe’s leadership is nothing short of breathtaking.

Today we are looking at a situation where an entire continent’s leadership is in the process of committing ritualistic suicide and yet is obsessed with portraying these self-inflicted wounds to the world as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fault.

A common trait among all malignant narcissists is the inability to take any responsibility for their own actions, seeking to always shift blame onto someone else. You see this behavior in children. And it only manifests itself in adulthood because the parents refused to put any boundaries on the child or inflict any consequences on them.

Look at Europe’s leaders today and to a person, man or woman, there is not one shred of self-reflection or contrition. The problem is just as endemic here amongst the Davos-affiliated American leadership. Fungal President Joe Biden keep yammering on about the “Putin Price Hike” or blaming oil companies for not being patriotic enough to keep gas and diesel prices affordable for nearly every American.

Read the rest here.

Bari Weiss, Common Sense:  The Post-Roe Era Begins

How did we wind up with a feminist movement that is policing our ability to say the word woman, but has been unable to safeguard second-wave feminism’s most important victory?

In the coming days we’ll bring you reporting and analysis on such questions.

One thing I keep thinking about is a piece that Alana Newhouse, the editor in chief of Tablet, wrote for us last year about the urgency of state power—the dawn of a renewed federalism in the 21st century.

“For decades, a strong federal government was the preferred soldier for me, and for many people I knew,” she wrote. No longer. In the era of lockdowns and vaccine passports and, especially, the emergence of social credit systems, federal power no longer looked so benign. 

“In the face of this seemingly omnipresent power, where can one find shelter?” she asked. Her answer: the states. Don’t like the lockdowns in Brooklyn? Move to Miami. Don’t like the income tax in Los Angeles? Consider Juneau.

“In ways the founding fathers did not foresee—or did they?—we seem to be facing something quite unexpected. A new era of the states is upon us,” Alana wrote.

Read the rest here.

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism:  Growing Revolt Among Medical Practitioners Against Vaccinating Toddlers for Covid

Physicians are hearing that the pharmacists in the entire Publix chain of grocery stores in the SE USA were in such an uproar about it, that Publix will not be offering these vaccines to under 5 kids. The Tampa Bay Times confirmed that Publix won’t give the Covid jab to kids below 5. Good on them.

The “pharmacists refusing” isn’t yet reported the press, but I did track it down with my cousin, a Publix pharmacist in VA. He confirmed the story. Lots of pharmacy pushback because a) many do not want to give it to babies b) many do not feel adequately trained to give to babies. My cousin feels fine giving to toddlers but he too feels about as conflicted as I do that the data does not support it. “I would not give any other drug with no evidence special treatment……why should this vaccine be any different”….

Similarly, in the infectious disease conference yesterday AM (a regular and large Zoom meeting of doctors affiliated with a major teaching hospital), this topic came up. The retired infectious disease doc that has been one of my heroes stood up and had a single slide:

There have been 350 deaths of under 18 with COVID since the beginning of this pandemic – and we know that at a minimum more than half those kids died with COVID not from COVID. 350.

And when I did a VAERS search yesterday – for patients aged 0-17 – 0-3 days post inoculation this is what I found:

Death and Permanent Disability
J&J 1
Moderna 37
Pfizer 237
Total 275

Hospital Admissions or ER visits
J&J 13
Moderna 266
Pfizer 5527
Total 5806

So in the same time we have had a mere 350 (and probably more like half that number) of kids die from COVID – we have killed at least 275 with the vaccines, and sent 5806 to hospital or ER…….And this is moral? This is ethical? Can someone please explain to e how this is not a violation of the Nuremberg Code?

I can readily tell from my interactions with other large academic Zoom conferences and also multiple consults with tertiary docs the past few weeks that the worm is turning. The injuries these things are causing are just no longer going to be hidden. AND WE ARE DOING THIS TO TODDLERS.

I personally looked over the 37 Moderna deaths today on VAERS just to see if these seemed to be placed in the system by docs or confabulators. As a physician, you can usually tell if the medicalese is real. And most of them are signed with names and addresses. They are very likely all genuine. That is all the time I had to go over those 37 – but please realize this system is also likely very under-reported.

Read the rest here.

Hat tip Mark Wauck, Meaning in History.

Don Bolduc: It’s Time To Tame Big Tech

Big Tech has spent years silencing and censoring conservative voices.

There is little debate about that – and there is mounting proof, even if anecdotal, in the latest Twitter saga.

So, why are some Republicans so quick to side with the liberal democrats and defend them? The answer is simple. The answer is money.

While it is no secret my opponent, Maggie Hassan, has raked in thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Big Tech companies like Amazon, their employees, and trade associations, Big Tech is now targeting Republicans in Congress to help them defeat antitrust legislation that would finally allow us to hold these companies accountable.

The liberal Silicon Valley tech giants continue to seize control of the dialogue around our elections in an attempt to influence outcomes. If you want to understand why liberal and career politicians are constantly doing Big Techs’ bidding you need only to follow the money.

Big Tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and their employees are consistently some of the biggest donors to campaigns, and as a result, they are able to wield an uncomfortable amount of influence over our elections. Recent efforts to pass antitrust and data privacy legislation have the tech giants worried. Look no further than millions of dollars spent lobbying the House and Senate lately – with Apple reportedly spending more on lobbying last quarter ($2.5 million) than in any previous quarter.

We must ask ourselves if we want to continue electing politicians who are bought and paid for by Big Tech.

Right here in the Granite State my opponent, Maggie Hassan has spent her entire time in the Senate pushing for Big Tech’s interest. Amazon alone has shelled out thousands of dollars in contributions to her campaign, and the employees of some of the largest tech companies have contributed tens of thousands more.

Antitrust legislation is a way to fight back against the tech giants that have dominated the market, stifled innovation, and suppressed conservative voices. If a few big companies control the market, consumers don’t have choices. And choices have long made America the greatest nation in the history of humanity – choices that range from simple everyday items to electing the leader of the free world.

These companies have spent years harvesting consumer data only to turn around and use it to suppress conservative voices and censor information. Big Tech has risked our national security by allowing bad actors like China and Russia to infiltrate our data and security to weaponize and influence elections.

Google, Facebook, and Amazon’s reign over our data privacy, free market, and free speech need to end. Holding members of Congress accountable for how they vote on this legislation is the best way for us to send a message to Big Tech that our views as conservatives will not be silenced anymore.

One thing I can promise you as your next United States senator is that my allegiance will always be to Granite Staters and our working families – not to the elites in Silicon Valley. Together, let’s stand up to these bullies, get rid of the censorship, and continue to make our economy freer and fairer for everyone.

About the Author

Don Bolduc Retired Brig. Gen. Donald C. Bolduc is a former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command Africa. He served 10 tours in Afghanistan and received two Purple Hearts. He lives in Stratham and is seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. He wrote this for NHJournal.com.

Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit:

It’ll take a few years to shake out, but we’re likely to wind up with what we would have had by 1976 or so if Roe had never been decided — a spectrum of laws around the country that will be adjusted over time based on experience and the views of the electorate. Though, of course, the norm may be stricter than it would have been without Roe, which called into being a huge pro-life movement that probably wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

Read the rest here.

That's what I've been thinking, but Glenn offers better analysis.

Khaleda Rahman, Newsweek:  Is Abortion Illegal? Your Rights in Every State as Roe v. Wade Overturned

Researchers say that without Roe, abortion will probably become illegal in about half of the country, primarily in Southern and Midwestern states.

Twenty-five states are likely to prohibit abortion without Roe, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

They are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, lists a slightly different group of 26 states that are certain or likely to ban abortion if Roe is overturned or fundamentally weakened. It includes Florida, Iowa and Montana, but omits North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

According to Guttmacher, almost two dozen states have laws in place that could be used to restrict abortion without Roe.

Thirteen states have "trigger laws" that immediately ban all or most abortions if Roe is overturned. Those are: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.

Several states have abortion bans that preceded Roe on the books, which could be enforced again. Those are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Utah) have near-total abortion bans that can take effect now Roe has been overturned.

Eleven states have six-week abortion bans that are not in effect, while Texas has a six-week ban that is currently in effect.

However, 16 states and the District of Columbia have laws that protect the right to an abortion.

Colorado, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont and the District of Columbia have codified the right to abortion throughout pregnancy without state interference.

Twelve states explicit permit abortion prior to fetal viability or when necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person. Those states are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island and Washington.

Read the rest here.

Mark Wauck, Meaning in History:  Post-Roe America?

Whether or not America will enter a post-Roe period—or, more accurately, a post-Casey period—characterized by restrained judicial interpretation of the US Constitution and respect for the states’ role within our federal system will be largely up to We the People. The Bruen 2A decision yesterday and Dobbs today stand as testimony to what determined and principled opposition to government overreach can accomplish. Certainly the 6-3 opinion gives stability to the decision—despite Roberts’ concurrence with Alito’s opinion. Changes in the current status of abortion law will now be largely left up to the states—or, seemingly, up to the women in those states:

p. 7

Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office.

Hmmmm. I’m not sure how that works.

Anyway, the opinion expressly concerns only abortion—with the proviso that the Court’s obvious skepticism regarding “substantive due process” could make a difference in cases in the future. However, the majority went out of their way to reject the notion—advanced by the dissenters—that this decision applies to any issue other than abortion (more below).

Read the rest here.

Paula Bolyard, PJ Media:  BREAKING: Supreme Court Issues Landmark Ruling Solidifying Gun Rights

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a 6-3 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, expanding gun rights for the first time in more than a decade.

The majority opinion, authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, held that New York’s “proper cause” requirement for obtaining a concealed carry license violated the Constitution because it “prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.”

New York’s restrictions, enacted more than a hundred years ago, required those who wish to carry a concealed weapon for self-defense to show “proper cause” rather than have a presumption of the right to carry. Similar laws exist in Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Jersey, Maryland, and California, where this ruling will have a huge ripple effect.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined the majority, with Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissenting.

“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,'” Thomas wrote in the opinion. “The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different. New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.”

Read the rest here.

A shocking but welcome surprise:

How the Left Succeeded in the Culture.

Watch this amazing analysis from a Harvard grad. pic.twitter.com/MrRPCGsP3i

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) June 23, 2022

Hans Mahncke, Epoch Times:  WHO and Lancet Commission Chiefs Come Out in Support of Lab Leak Theory

World Health Organization (WHO) Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reportedly admitted to a senior European politician that the virus that causes COVID-19 most likely came out of a Wuhan lab. The Daily Mail reports that Tedros made the admission citing a catastrophic lab accident.

The disclosure comes on the heels of a WHO investigative report that was published earlier this month, concluding that the pandemic may have started at a Wuhan lab and that Chinese authorities have been blocking access to crucial data.

At the same time, Jeffrey Sachs, leader of the Lancet Commission on COVID-19, now says that he is convinced that the pandemic started in a lab and that SARS-CoV-2 was created with the aid of U.S. biotechnology.

Sachs made his stunning admission last week at a conference in Spain where he had been invited by former Spanish prime minister José Luís Zapatero.

Read the rest here.

Later on, we'll most likely find out it was deliberate.

James Rosen, RealClear Politics:  Watergate at 50: Revelations From Newly Declassified Evidence

It took an outsider to offer the paper’s only clear-eyed assessment of Secret Agenda. In his review of the book for the Post, Anthony Marro, managing editor of Newsday, presented numerous criticisms while conceding: “What [Hougan] offers up is not so much a totally revisionist history as a history with a significant new dimension and perspective.”

Hougan has attacked the official record of Watergate with persistence and considerable skill, pointing up scores of questions, flaws, contradictions and holes.… He has added an enormous amount of raw data and information to the record, and his book should lead to a reexamination and reassessment of important parts of the story.

Central to Hougan’s challenge to the Established Order were the two discoveries that represented, amid all the incredible sleuthing he accomplished, his twin masterstrokes: the evidence that the Democratic National Committee in the spring of 1972 was, like the Nixon White House and the Committee to Re-elect the President, engaged in criminal conduct.

It took courage for Hougan to declare nothing less than that all the armies of investigators had missed the heart of the Watergate scandal – that Woodward and Bernstein and the rest of the national news media had gotten it wrong. Nowhere in the official Woodward and Bernstein canon – All the President’s Men (1974), The Final Days (1976), and The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat (2005) – do the names Spencer Oliver or Maxie Wells even appear. The key Eugenio Martinez struggled to conceal was, as Secret Agenda put it, “quite literally the key to the break-in”: its presence on “Muscolito” pointed to the critical role played by the CIA in the operation and to the mission’s true target.

No less startling was Hougan’s unveiling of the official correspondence between Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert and the FBI laboratory. With painstaking methodology, the bureau’s lab technicians presented unassailable evidence to buttress their conclusion that the Democrats themselves had planted the crude and inoperative bugging device they “discovered” on Oliver’s telephone, and announced to the press, in September 1972 – three months after the arrests.

“No one seems to have asked the obvious,” Hougan wrote at a separate point in Secret Agenda – yet nowhere else in the Watergate saga was this observation more apt than with respect to the September Bug. Here were the top officials of the Democratic National Committee, in an election year, announcing their discovery of a bugging device in their headquarters three months after the bugging suspects had been arrested on the premises, and after the FBI had made three exhaustive sweeps of the DNC telephones and found no devices installed.

That this planting of evidence, this obstruction of justice, didn’t blow the Watergate scandal wide open, didn’t trigger the dismissal of the charges against the burglars, Hunt and Liddy, was only because federal prosecutors wrongly withheld the September Bug correspondence – exculpatory evidence in any bugging case – from the defendants’ attorneys.

Read the rest here.

My, how things have changed in just a few years.

You need to have eyes in the back of your head in America’s cities now…pic.twitter.com/DuF7xDiX4o

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) June 18, 2022

...we began construction on the cabin.

It looks more like this today, but it's still a work in progress.