Considering the fact that Democrats are abandoning all hope of getting any Republican support in the Senate for Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package, there is a growing movement to throw all sorts of radical proposals into the bill, which is now almost certain to be rammed through Congress using the reconciliation process.
The biggest outrage being proposed by Democrats is giving a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens.
A hundred House Democrats led by the Hispanic Caucus signed a letter to the House leadership asking that "Undocumented essential workers, Dreamers and temporary protected status recipients" be given a path to citizenship in the pandemic relief bill.
"As you continue to work on assembling a COVID-19 reconciliation package and begin work on an economic recovery and jobs package, we urge you to include a pathway to citizenship for essential immigrant workers, Dreamers, and TPS holders, as well as their families," the group of Democrats wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, shared first with POLITICO. "The inclusion of these protections is not just a necessity for economic recovery, it is an issue of economic and racial justice for communities that have been the most vulnerable to the crisis and left out in previous relief packages," they added.
Moderate Democrats might cave if they think the pandemic relief bill may not pass otherwise.
The Biden administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill have said passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill is a top priority for them.
Politico estimates that legalizing "Essential workers," DREAMers, TPS recipients, and their families, would amount to 5 million undocumented workers gaining a pathway to citizenship.
Sunday, January 31, 2021
Dems Smuggle Pathway to Citizenship Into COVID-19 Relief
All in the Family: Mad Maxine Waters Has Given Over $1M in Campaign Cash to Daughter
Those are the words of Rep. Maxine Waters in 2004, in reference to a report by the Los Angeles Times that found various Waters family members had pocketed a total of more than $1 million over eight years from businesses and campaigns with a connection to the congresswoman.
As reported by Fox News on Saturday, Waters has given more than $1 million to her daughter through her campaigns since 2003, according to federal election data.
Maxine Waters has given over $1 million in campaign cash to daughter, according to federal election data.
Of the roughly $1.1 million Karen Waters received from her mother, $250,000 came from the 2020 election cycle, as reported by the Federal Election Commission.
Waters made over 30 payments to her daughter during the 2020 campaign cycle, the funds largely going to Slate Mailer Management Fees.
There [have been] over 160 payments funneled to Karen Waters from the California congresswoman since 2003, that the FEC has recorded.
So Waters was back in the news, recently - actually something Waters said in 2018 was back in the news - as reported by my RedState colleague Jen Van Laar on Friday.
Should Legal Restrictions Get Credit for the Recent Decline in New COVID-19 Cases?
During the same period, daily deaths leveled off and dipped slightly, and they should decline in February given the recent downward trend in daily new cases.
According to Worldometer's numbers, the nationwide seven-day average of new cases yesterday was about 163,000, down 36 percent from the average on January 11 but still more than four times the level recorded in mid-September.
Researchers at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that "Deaths often occur 2-8 weeks after the onset of COVID-19 symptoms." That suggests the recent decline in daily new cases will be reflected in fewer daily deaths during the next month.
Did government-imposed restrictions help curb virus transmission? A comparison of California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a new lockdown on December 3, and Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has not imposed any new restrictions, does not provide much evidence that such measures make an important difference.
In California, the seven-day average of daily new cases has fallen by nearly half since January 13.
The seven-day average in California tripled between December 1 and December 22.
Despite taking a much stricter approach than Texas, California saw a bigger surge in cases, and that surge continued for weeks after Newsom's order.
The Senate's Problem Isn't the Filibuster, It's a Lack of Open Debate
Unlike in the House of Representatives, where a simple majority can vote to end debate at any point, the Senate's rules require a three-fifths majority to end debate over senators' objections.
In the past, senators rightly understood that their ability to filibuster was not absolute; it merely gave individual senators leverage to force their colleagues, the House, or the administration to negotiate with them in a debate.
Once a source of leverage that specific senators could use in negotiations, the filibuster morphed into a veto that Senate minorities could use to block legislation favored by the majority.
Even the prospect of a filibuster is a powerful force-in recent years, gun-related legislation has stalled in the Senate, not because a committed minority is filibustering it but because senators on both sides are threatening to filibuster it.
Using the filibuster to obstruct the majority regularly requires minority-party senators to be willing to expend considerable effort to succeed.
Rule XIX limits how many times a senator may speak on the floor in a debate and it stipulates that when a senator is no longer able to talk, he or she has no choice but to yield the floor.
The Senate will rarely need to go to such lengths to overcome filibusters because simply debating a bill before trying to pass it creates buy-in among senators and builds bipartisan support for it.
https://reason.com/2021/01/30/the-senates-problem-isnt-the-filibuster-its-a-lack-of-open-debate/
You Will Be Made to Believe Implausible Things
The Obamas' $65 million book advances still lead the way to the most lavish, though the notion that even Democrat politicians' relatives, like Chelsea Clinton, would offer ghostwritten pap worth anything is something you just have to believe.
If you believed Hillary Clinton made so much money investing shrewdly in cattle futures and not out of some manipulation, you will certainly agree that speaker Nancy Pelosi's $1 million investment in Tesla stock call options shortly before the Biden administration announced it planned to make the federal automobile fleet electric was just another example of stock trading genius by a high-ranking politician.
You know you can ignore James's report and credit Dr. Fauci's praisee of Cuomo's performance because Joe Biden said "Dr. Fauci isn't just one of our foremost experts on combating viruses - he is a good man and a tireless public servant.... Our administration, and our country, will be stronger because of his guidance."
If mistakes were made, as the Biden administration claims, they are Fauci's.
Take Fauci's serenity back on January 21 last year, when he assured us that the virus convulsing China at the time "Is not a major threat for the people of the United States and this is not something the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about." [snip] The following week, he was at it again, vehemently opposing President Donald Trump's proposed flight ban from China, which Biden at the time decried as "Xenophobia."
On Biden's first day last week, Fauci said we would have "100 million people vaccinated in the first 100 days" and specified he meant both "Primary and boost" shots, a total of 200 million shots in arms.
Democrats had been collecting bail fund donations for mass arrests in post-election protests and even a "Separate fund to raise money for the families of anyone killed in violence on or around Election Day." And then they pivoted from prepping body bags to declaring that insurrection was a national emergency which will require the National Guard to sleep in parking lots where they won't annoy Democrat House members until Biden sees his own shadow.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/you_will_be_made_to_believe_implausible_things.html
A Wave of Abusive Federal Prosecutions Is Coming
The violent protest at the US Capitol on January 6 has long been over, but the upcoming Biden administration's response to it is likely to do greater violence to the US Constitution and the rule of law than anything the worst of the protesters could have accomplished.
Thanks to the response of the George W. Bush administration and Congress to the 9/11 attacks almost two decades ago, Joe Biden's prosecutors will have plenty of legal ammunition to go after their political enemies.
For now, my guess is that Biden will unleash federal prosecutors who will face no constraints whatsoever, and that means a lot of innocent people are going to have their lives ruined.
Before going into more detail, I explain why the Bush administration nearly twenty years ago made Biden's job much easier for him than it ever should be under the rule of law.
The same journalistic and political elites who excoriated Donald Trump for sending some agents to protect the federal courthouses in Seattle and Portland from Antifa mobs apparently had no problem with Biden dispatching thousands of federal troops to turn Washington, DC, into an armed camp.
Not all who are considered to be on the left are good with Biden's internal spying plan, including Tulsi Gabbard, the former member of Congress who angered fellow Democrats with her appeals to civil liberties during her appearance in the presidential primary last year.
Journalists who are going to claim that a bunch of lights in paper bags symbolize a Joe Biden group hug are not going to be intellectually or professionally capable of taking a hard look at the government's attempt to arrest and imprison political and religious conservatives and libertarians, since they already have convinced themselves that these people constitute a dire threat to what is left of the republic.
https://mises.org/wire/wave-abusive-federal-prosecutions-coming
Dem Governors Aren't Returning Troops From D.C. Occupation, They're Sending More
The coronavirus is spreading among the National Guard troops occupying D.C. as part of Biden's political theater.
Many Republican governors stepped up to end the occupation when troops were forced to sleep in parking garages because they had offended a Democrat staffer.
Democrat governors are doubling down on the authoritarian occupation of D.C. and are deploying more soldiers to intimidate Americans.
"Gov. J.B. Pritzker activated 500 Illinois National Guard troops Thursday, with plans to send them to Washington D.C."at the request of the Department of Defense, his office announced.
Pritzker might consider sending some troops to Chicago where the weekend started with 15 people being shot.
In response, Republican members of Michigan's congressional delegation are seeking an "Immediate" intelligence briefing from federal officials to justify the state's Guard returning to Washington.
Governor DeWine of Ohio, one of the few Republican governors to contribute to the Democrat military occupation of the nation's capital, is sending more troops.
America's Fake European Friends
What better evidence is necessary to show that Donald Trump was right to trash the Eurocrats and question America's commitment to faithless friends who take Washington's support for granted? Actually, there is better evidence: a new poll from the European Council on Foreign Relations.
As ECFR noted, "Whereas, at the beginning of the century, European public opinion on the U.S. used to be divided along the lines of Donald Rumsfeld's 'old' and 'new' Europe, the current poll shows a great deal of convergence. Many differences between European societies remain, but the clear dividing lines have been blurred."
The survey posited an "In America We Trust" tribe, which ranged between 3 percent and 22 percent.
One of the most striking findings of ECFR's survey is that at least 60 per cent of respondents in every surveyed country - and an average of 67 per across all these countries - believe that they cannot always rely on the U.S. to defend them and need to invest in European defense.
European governments remain committed to NATO, principally because they realize they get a phenomenal deal: U.S. protection from a nuclear-armed great power.
If Europeans won't choose America over Russia, it should come as no surprise that they won't go with the U.S. over China.
Not so much today: "While all European governments will try to build a close relationship with the Biden administration, they will not feel that they have public support to make major concessions on high-profile issues of national importance."
Tulsi Gabbard Torches Pelosi For Describing GOP As 'Enemy Within The House'
Earlier this week, we reported that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had slammed her Republican colleagues as the "Enemy within the House." Now, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is speaking out to let Pelosi know that she feels this was inappropriate of her to say.
Pelosi used her weekly press conference on Thursday to shame Republicans, saying, "I do believe, and I have said this all along, that we will probably need a supplemental for more security for members when the enemy is within the House of Representatives, a threat that members are concerned about in addition to what is happening outside."
Gabbard went on "The Ingraham Angle" on Friday night to slam Pelosi for these comments.
As for Pelosi's claim that Republican lawmakers threatened "Violence on other members of Congress," Gabbard called for Pelosi to get law enforcement involved if the threats are legitimate.
"What Speaker Pelosi is talking about is a very serious thing," Gabbard told Fox News host Lauran Ingraham.
"If you think there is someone among the Republican caucus who's actively plotting the murder of Nancy Pelosi or other members of Congress, that could then bring violence upon those individuals."
Not stopping there, Gabbard issued a challenge to Pelosi.
DOJ Announcement Provides Huge Evidence Trump Didn't Incite Insurrection
If Democrats impeaching former President Donald Trump hoped they could convince Republicans it's in their interest to treat Trump's speech before the Capitol incursion as incitement, you would think the arrests of several alleged far-right militia members would buttress their case.
Paradoxically, indictments like these provide major evidence Trump didn't incite the crowd.
In an interview with the conservative-leaning publication, Kevin Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, suggested the prior planning indicated that no matter what Trump said, the Capitol incursion was going to happen anyway.
In the article of impeachment, the quote cited as an example of incitement was "If you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore." While the speech will almost certainly go down as the low-water mark of the Trump presidency, he made it clear in other parts of the address that protesting should be done peaceably.
If Trump had given a brief, placid speech, the riot in the Capitol would have almost certainly happened.
If Trump gave the speech he gave, the riot in the Capitol would have almost certainly happened.
If Trump recited the Gettysburg Address or Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" or the opening monologue to "The Jerk," the riot in the Capitol would have almost certainly happened.