A Rampantly Evil Department of Justice… and It’s Media Echo Chamber

A copy-paste of Michael Flynn, Lori Loughlin, and the Permanent Culture of Prosecutorial Abuse by William L. Anderson

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When US attorney general William Barr recently announced that the Department of Justice was reversing course and dropping all charges against former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, the response from Democrats, the mainstream news media, and Never-Trump Republicans such as David French was thermonuclear, to put it mildly. The New York Times, which many times has editorialized against prosecutorial tactics that drive people to plead guilty instead of going to trial, reminded its readers that Flynn had twice pled guilty, which to the editors constituted absolute proof of his guilt.

The NYT went on to editorialize elsewhere that Barr had “politicized” the DOJ and was using his powers to pervert justice. On the airwaves, NBC News purposely truncated a Barr quote in order to present a very different picture of his views than what Barr actually had expressed. This is not the first time NBC has done something like that, as it deliberately changed a transcript of George Zimmerman’s 911 conversation with the police shortly before he shot and killed Trayvon Martin in an attempt to make the killing look racially motivated.

Meanwhile, in another break from the near-uniformly awful coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the government policies of placing healthy citizens under house arrest, media breathlessly reported that actress Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli are pleading guilty to bribery in the so-called Varsity Blues case led by federal prosecutors. Since there is no federal bribery statute to which they could actually plead, the journalists are wrong there, too, but no matter. As I wrote earlier this year, it is a stretch to claim that Loughlin and her husband actually committed real crimes, but neither the media nor the political classes—both groups bound tightly to each other—appear to be concerned by this.

There actually is another story that includes both the Flynn and Loughlin cases, a story that goes to the very heart of why the US Constitution even has a Bill of Rights, a story that every fair-minded journalist should have written but has not. This is a story of an all-powerful federal government whose agents from the wrongly named Department of Justice can target anyone they choose and force them into prison, even if they have not committed anything one can call a real crime.

Furthermore, because the mainstream news media is allied with the DOJ and federal prosecutors, it is nearly impossible for anyone accused to get fair treatment from either the media or the political classes. Once federal agents target someone, that is it. Even if those agents are caught lying, their media will protect them. And that is the real story.

Let us look at the Flynn case and its aftermath first. Clark Neily of the Cato Institute has an excellent piece on the Flynn prosecution, a solid account that one will never read in the NYT. He writes that there are “two fundamental errors” that most critics of Flynn and the Trump administration’s role in this case have made:

Those errors, which turn out to be inextricably intertwined, are: (1) Flynn is plainly guilty of lying to FBI agents, so the attorney general’s motives in dropping the case against him must necessarily be suspect; and (2) given the character of the defendant and the alleged crime, the Flynn case must necessarily be a poor vehicle for spotlighting the pernicious role of coercive plea bargaining in our criminal justice system—as Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist George Will did yesterday.

In other words, Flynn is guilty and that is the end of it. So says the NYT and David French, and any move to drop the charges is itself an affront to Lady Justice and all those hardworking men and women in the DOJ who are unselfishly laboring to protect us from malefactors like Flynn. But maybe, writes Neily, there is more to the story—just as there is more to the Loughlin story as well, even if our media elites and political classes don’t want to hear it.

Both Neily and George Will explain the case in some detail and I will not rehash the particulars here except to say that in looking to pursue the case in the fall of 2016, James Comey (yes, THAT James Comey—more about him later) of the DOJ claimed that perhaps Flynn had violated the Logan Act, something that the media dutifully played back. That no one has been convicted of or imprisoned for violating the Logan Act, which forbids private US citizens from negotiating with foreign governments without US government permission, was unimportant, and it became quite clear to FBI agents who had wiretapped communications between Flynn and the Russian ambassador that Flynn had not even violated the law.

However, the FBI still called Flynn in for questioning and there the whole thing becomes a legal morass that the DOJ always tries to create when it doesn’t have a case. Keep in mind that the FBI already had concluded that Flynn did not break the Logan Act (which isn’t enforced, anyway), but still demanded to interview him about the law he didn’t break. As always, the FBI refuses to record or memorialize these interviews in any way that would actually permit someone to know what was said, and then, if it so chooses, the FBI can claim that the person interviewed lied, which is a felony. All an agent has to do is claim that the interviewee lied. Even though the FBI handbook specifically instructs its agents to lie during interviews, the FBI always speaks the truth when it claims that others are lying. Or so say prosecutors, the courts, and their ever adoring news media.

So, let us recount how this goes (the same nightmare that Martha Stewart experienced). The FBI already knew that Flynn had not broken the law but then claimed that he lied to them about not breaking the law, just as it claimed that Stewart had lied to them when she said that she did not engage in insider trading. The FBI charged her with lying but did not charge her with insider trading, just as it charged Flynn with lying but not with breaking the Logan Act, which supposedly had really been worrying Comey.

To make matters worse, it is doubtful that Flynn even lied, at least according to Neily:

it now appears the two FBI agents who conducted the interview with Flynn on which the subsequent false-statements charge was predicated at first reported to their superiors that they did not think Flynn had been deceitful during the interview and that any inaccurate responses to their questions were the result of a memory lapse, not a deliberate attempt to deceive.

To make sure that it prevailed, the DOJ did what it often does—take hostages. In forcing a guilty plea from Michael Milken for actions the government never before—or after—had labeled as crimes, federal prosecutors agreed not to prosecute Milken’s brother and his ninety-year-old grandfather. The feds got Flynn to plead guilty to lying by promising not to prosecute his son. Since Flynn already owed millions of dollars to his attorneys and had to sell his house, he lacked the financial ability to continue to fight.

Likewise, in the case of Loughlin and her husband, federal prosecutors (and, once again, their adoring amen corner with the media) threw out the possibility of the two spending forty years in prison should they be convicted at trial, leaving their daughters without parents. This is Hostage Taking 101.

Indeed, for Loughlin, the plea deal in which she will spend two months in federal prison (her husband will spend five months) will seem quite sweet compared to spending the rest of her life in a government cage. (We won’t know the final sentences until August 21.) So, what was the “crime” to which they pleaded? According to CNN:

Loughlin pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and Giannulli pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and honest services wire and mail fraud.

Note that not one of these “crimes” actually involves engaging in behavior that has harmed anyone. As I wrote in a previous article on this case:

the fact is that most of the parents who took part in this scheme are white, wealthy, prominent, and utterly unfamiliar with how federal criminal law works. That is why the feds can threaten Loughlin and her husband with up to forty-five years in prison if they are convicted. That is more than most murderers, rapists, and armed robbers receive for their crimes. Yet Loughlin harmed no one. Yes, one can argue that if her daughters had been accepted at USC undeservedly, two other perhaps more promising students would have been denied entry. However, that clearly would be a civil, not criminal, matter, and any students who were left out can seek remedy in court.

This is not an endorsement of what Loughlin and her husband did, but they hardly were masterminds of any criminal activity. Yes, they were dishonest, but they never engaged in the kind of dishonest behavior we see regularly from federal agents that actually is destructive, ruins families, and drives people to their graves.

As I noted earlier, I will write more about Comey. I end with something that former investment banker Frank Quattrone recently posted on his Facebook page about Comey and the morally bankrupt universe in which he operates. (In 2004 I wrote about Quattrone  and his short-lived conviction in federal court, a conviction that a federal appeals court later overturned.) I can assure readers that Quattrone neither is ranting nor exaggerating. Unlike Comey, he is telling the truth:

Another reminder from my trial—the government and media conspired to dirty me up in advance of my trial to make sure the judge and jury would view me in the most unsympathetic light possible.

James Comey, then US Attorney for the Southern District of NY, made material false statements about me on national TV, breathlessly and falsely accusing me of instructing my team to destroy documents I knew were called for by a subpoena, when all I had done was reinforce a teammate’s reminder to follow a document retention policy that requires employees to SAVE all docs covered by subpoena.

The government also threatened my teammates with indictments to try to coerce them to provide false testimony against me, forced my employer to waive attorney client privilege to produce documents helpful to the prosecutors while blocking them from producing such documents that were helpful to our case, and even sued my communications consultant to try to obtain confidential documents of our internal communications with my lawyers (we prevailed in court).

The NASD (now FINRA) brought a series of false accusations about our business practices and, after I had already provided two days of testimony, ordered me to appear for additional testimony, knowing that whatever testimony I provided could be used in the pending criminal trial and that by refusing to do so on advice of counsel they could ban me for life from the securities industry.

The media did its part in spreading these falsehoods and the government rewarded them by leaking out of context emails they could use for additional articles painting me as an unethical criminal—but only on the condition that if they wrote our side of the story they would no longer receive such leaks.

Of course years later I prevailed on every single charge brought by the NASD, but meanwhile their dirty work helped pave the way for my wrongful conviction for obstruction, in which I also ultimately prevailed almost five years after Comey made the false statements.

He ends with this prophetic statement that needs no further explanation:

It’s important to call the government and media on this unholy alliance whether you view their targets as sympathetic or not. If we stay silent when they come for our enemies, they will ultimately come for us.

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The Darwinian Inquisition, and a Humane Response

Just a copy-paste, “for the record”.

Our Master’s Malice

From the article, “Nobody Expects the Darwinist Inquisition”? I Do by David Klinghoffer

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As a reader and supporter of Evolution News, you must have noticed the same thing I have. It’s an ominous sight to observe the two waves approaching each other. On one side is an intensifying drive to police social media, where countless people get most of their information. On the other are biologists who (according to a Darwinist scientist!) spend a fifth of their time fretting about how to “combat intelligent design,” as we reported here the other day.

One prominent scientific journal, BioEssays, has already brought the waves together. They have called for Internet censorship of intelligent design, identifying Discovery Institute by name as being in need of special attention by the censors. If giants like Facebook and Twitter don’t follow through on the threat, then says biologist Dave Speijer, the government should “Make them.” It’s only because we are changing how people think about life and its origins — thanks to you! — that we have attracted this malice.

“Drilling Down to Essential Matters”

Don’t doubt that their idea has a bright future with what journalist John Zmirak calls Darwin’s “Inquisition.” “Nobody Expects the Darwinist Inquisition,” as Zmirak says in a headline at The Stream, a wry homage to a famous line from a Monty Python sketch. Well, I expect it! He cites the BioEssays article that takes aim at Discovery Institute and its Center for Science & Culture:

They’re drilling down to essential matters, to the fundamental divide of basic worldviews. That is, the yawning chasm between Darwinian nihilism, and a universe designed and replete with meaning. 

Zmirak adds that ideology isn’t all that motivates the would-be Internet police: “It’s the classic will to dominate, to bully and rule your neighbor.”

As editor of Evolution News, I appeal to you to join us in resisting these moves. “A universe designed and replete with meaning” is a vision that strict Darwinists can’t stand. They will do what they can to suppress it. The fact that a designed universe is supported by responsible science, as we make clear here every day for our growing audience, is what really drives them to the edge.

Every indication suggests that before long, they will take action against those who argue in public for design in life and in the cosmos. Please consider donating now to the Center for Science & Culture and its campaign for Evolution News and for freedom of speech. They’ve already come for the professors. Next they’ll come for us. Expect it.

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To Humanize Humanity… Once Again

…and then, one of the needful responses to the problem.

From Why “Humanize”? A New Effort to Defend the Unique Dignity of Human Beings by Wesley J. Smith

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Hello. My name is Wesley J. Smith and I am honored to be chairman of Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. I am writing to you here to introduce the CHE’s new blog, which we call Humanize. Humanize will complement and supplement the important work of the Center for Science & Culture and its invaluable Evolution News site. 

Why did we choose “Humanize” as the name for the site? The once self-evident truth of human exceptionalism is under intensifying attack, as readers of Evolution News know well. Indeed, one of the tragic trends in thinking about evolution has been to blur the distinction between humans and animals. History warns us not to regard this lightly. Recent documentaries by Discovery Institute Vice President John West, Human Zoos and The Biology of the Second Reich, illuminate the evils that came from this tendency in the past century.

Today, whether it is to denigrate the intrinsic equal dignity of all human beings or the proposed or actual breaching of our human duty to care for the weakest and most vulnerable of our fellow humans, the time is ripe to robustly advocate for the unique dignity and equal moral worth of all human beings.

Our approach will be principled and intellectually rigorous, standing steadfastly for human equality, without being unduly esoteric. For example, we have joined the world’s rising chorus against the forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China, the mass incarceration by that country’s government of Uyghur Muslims, and the establishment of a tyrannical “social credit” system that deploys powerful technologies such as facial recognition and AI to effectively persecute religious believers and heterodox thinkers with societal excommunication.

Public Health and Public Good

Our work is as current as today’s headlines. In the current COVID-19 crisis, we have supported medical efforts to limit the spread of the virus, but have also insisted that the pandemic not become a justification to dehumanize and abandon devalued people such as our frail elderly in the name of protecting the public health. In this regard, we are not naïve and understand that there are times of emergency when unthinkably difficult choices may have to be made. Thus, at the height of the crisis — when it appeared that there might be insufficient medical resources to treat all who needed care — we explained the crucial moral distinction between the awful, but sometimes necessary medical act of triage, in which all patients are viewed as equals, while forcefully rejecting utilitarian approaches to rationing care based on ideologies such as the inherently discriminatory and invidious “quality of life ethic” promoted ubiquitously in bioethics literature.

When it comes to the environment, we enthusiastically endorse the human duty to treat our world responsibly and with proper approaches to conservation and remediation of polluted areas, while rejecting misanthropic approaches that would unduly interfere with human thriving and liberty. For example, a new “nature rights” movement would declare geological features such as rivers and glaciers to be akin to “persons” with the “right” to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and processes in evolution.” These laws have the potential to thwart most enterprises because they permit anyone to sue to defend the supposedly violated rights of nature. Such an approach has the potential to bring economic development to a screeching halt. Alarmingly, “nature rights” has been endorsed by science journals and the movement has succeeded in having four rivers and two glaciers declared to be rights-bearing entities.

Animal Rights Versus Animal Welfare

Similarly, Humanize will support the establishment of proper animal welfare standards, while rejecting “animal rights.” The former concept recognizes the crucial moral distinction between humans and animals, recognizes the propriety of making use of animals for our benefit, while also insisting that animals be treated humanely and with due respect for their ability to experience pain and feel emotions. In contrast, “animal rights” is an ideology that denies any moral distinction between humans and animals, and that seeks ultimately to prevent all human ownership of animals or their use for any reason. The harm this would cause, for example, to medical research is beyond quantifying.

Humanize will also focus readers’ attention on bioethical issues and controversies that roil our public discourse. We see assisted suicide/euthanasia as a profound abandonment of those who are most in need of our support and care. We will fight against the ongoing drive to allow infanticide of babies born with disabilities or not wanted by parents, and will resist deconstructing the ethics of organ donation, for example, the proposal to permit vital organs to be harvested as a means of voluntary euthanasia. And we will resist the “transhumanist” movement’s attempt to deploy technology to manufacture a “post-human species.”

A Cross-Program Effort

In addition to my contributions here, our Research Fellow Tom Shakely will also be a regular writer, bringing with him a youthful energy and understanding of contemporary cultural trends to enliven the discussion. 

The Center on Human Exceptionalism reflects Discovery Institute’s larger vision of human uniqueness, of “purpose, creativity, and innovation,” as Discovery President Steven Buri has summarized the Institute’s mission. Humanize will thus share the work of Fellows representing other Discovery Institute programs. For example, we will feature John West’s powerful critiques of the threat of a new eugenics, discussed in his book Darwin Day In America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, as well as neurosurgeon Michael Egnor’s cogent takes on technology, the neurological sciences, and theories of the mind. The latter are points of emphasis for Discovery’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. Evolution News editor David Klinghoffer, of the Center for Science & Culture, recently contributed a thoughtful reflection on the potential dehumanizing impact of ubiquitous wearing of masks during the pandemic. All of Discovery’s programs, an intellectual community serving the public and made possible by our supporters and our readers, are advanced by this exchange of ideas.

We hope that you will subscribe — it’s free — and join us in the understanding that the morality of the 21st century will depend on our responding energetically and affirmatively to this simple but profound question: “Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human?” 

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Cultural Transformation, Short-term and Long-term

What happened to the influential born again movement of the ‘70s and ‘80s? There was an unhealthy reliance on short-term political solutions to our nation’s problems. Politics was seen as the immediate savior. Activist lawyer John Whitehead again writes: “The most alluring reason activists movements are absorbed by the establishment is immersion in politics, to the extent that politics becomes an all-consuming religion. This has essentially wiped out the leftist movement of the ‘60s,and it will all but destroy the Christian activism of the ‘80s.”

Politics is the “quick fix” approach to cultural transformation. “The next presidential election will turn the tide. A change in the Supreme Court will bring our nation back to righteousness. If we could only get more conservatives elected to office.” None of this will do it. Only a long-term effort to change all facets of society will bring about significant and lasting transformation. This means changing the hearts and minds of millions of people. All this takes time, time that is not on the side of the pretribulational premillennialist.

[….]

The devil wants us to remain passive in the face of hostile opposition to the Christian faith. And, when we do get involved, he directs us to follow only defensive measures.  The devil isn’t too concerned if we battle humanism. He knows that in time we’ll go home. For most Christians, there’s no long-term strategy to implement. What angers, frustrates, and motivates the devil is when we start building to supplant humanism. When we start building schools, the devil-inspired humanists who have succeed in claiming the seats of judicial power swoop down on us to try to shut us down.

Gary North & Peter Leithard, The Reduction of Christianity: A Biblical Response to Dave Hunt

The well-groomed, intensely anti-Christian upper classes don’t worry about whatever babble they’re meowing about powerlessly in the totally irrelevant seminary or in the typically fourth-rate Christian college.

What Our Betters hate, and push to have eliminated, are non-conformist Christian families raising Christian children at home, following an independent Christian curriculum, to secure Christian goals.

Know Your Enemy.

Blood Above Law

A few of these letters are sent by people who, if they are not fools, certainly do a passable imitation. If I were to answer every critical letter, it would only encourage the crazies. They would just write more letters, demanding more responses. In the name of Christian humility, they always demand my immediate detailed response. Any leader in any field who gets involved in writing detailed letters to the crazies on his mailing list (let alone outsiders) places a low value on his time. His written replies will only encourage the nuttier of the letter-writers. It makes them feel important. They are not important. They are loonies. (The ones who enrage me most are the racists, who implicitly place genetics above the covenant as an explanation for social change. They are a fading influence today, but they still exist in right-wing circles. I am not charitable with these people. They belong on someone else’s mailing list. The sooner they are off of mine, the better.)

Gary North, in Christian Reconstruction

I know: “You can see blood, but you can’t see law.”

True that.

But it was an Aryan who lead the Aryans to destruction.

And it was the Pure Japanese who led Imperial Japan to disaster.

And a Chinaman who killed more Chinese than even the Imperial Japanese did!

And this plague of abortion and sterile perversity is a near-100% Euro-American production… with an ugly impact on Euro-American demographic birth rates.

Law – Divine Law – is a better choice than Blood & Soil, even if it isn’t so easy for mentally lazy people.

First, begin to restore justice: the equal application of the law. Second, begin to restore hope, especially regarding children’s futures. More boots on the ground will not solve the problem.

Gary North, Solutions for Ferguson

This was written six years ago. It’s now 2020, in the middle of a (hyped-up) pandemic, and the lawless riots are on again, because of a rampant and murderous injustice.

(Perhaps with a little bit of police instigation, to get the heat off the boys in blue.)

In any case, the financial pressure on black people on the ghettos and the hoods is just going to get worse in the coming Depression years.

Sure, smashing corporate welfare will yield a lot more money than eliminating the poor man’s welfare cheques: but the poor don’t have well-heeled, well-connected defenders in the Circles of Power, so the urban poor will get hit first and hardest.

Expect bad consequences.

(If you happen to live there… get out.)

In the immediate aftermath of the recession a decade ago, the unemployment rate hovered around 9 percent. Once expanded benefits were rolled back, it started dropping. This is roughly the inverse of what happened when Lyndon B. Johnson declared “war on poverty.”

Before Uncle Sam got involved, the poverty rate had been in clear free fall. Once he joined the battle, that trend was arrested, never to escape an 11–15 percent range.

It Seems That Everyone Who Isn’t a Hard-Core Leftist Is a “Libertarian”, by Christopher E. Baecker

You have to remember what didn’t work, in order to sniff out things that have worked before, or may well work in the future.

Homeschool Mamas on YouTube, and the End of Pavlovian Dogs

A sample of the people who are going to shape the leadership of America’s next generation.

Or, using North’s brutal and unfeminine — but factually correct — language:

No more Pavlovian-trained dogs!

Yes, I know that North gripes – justifiably! – about the small number of homeschoolers, maybe 2-3% of the population. I will only reply that the American Jews amount to 1.7–2.6% of the U.S. population, but have a lot more than 1.7–2.6% of the leadership positions in American society.

Hard work, independent thinking, good study habits, close-knit families, a vision of the future, and a certain spiritual toughness in adversity are good habits to take up for a minority. A minority that has no intention of being an oppressed minority, and every intention of being a leading minority.

And perhaps not a minority, given enough time, faith, and sacrificial commitment. The benefits of being focused on faith, rather than bloodlines.

Summary: Pavlovian Dogs follow. They do not lead.

Christians are called to lead, to excel, to be filled with the Holy Spirit as they redeem the world, disciple the nations to obey Christ, and be a blessing to mankind.

As opposed to a curse on the world, destroying wealth, freedom, families, and even objective thought. The way anti-Christ cultures and belief systems work.

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Kristi Clover

Rooted In Rest

This Gathered Nest

Grace & Grit

Mama Approved

Homeschool On A Hill

Erica Arndt (Confesions of a Homeschooler)

The FallCo Family

My Busy Bees & Me

Rebecca Spooner

Jaimie Knight

Advisory: Note that The Good & The Beautiful is a Latter Day (“Mormon”) work, not a Christian one.

Even on YouTube, discernment is advised.

(Perhaps especially on YouTube!)

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Note that the above YouTubers were recommended by a poster on the Christian Homeschooling Families group on Facebook.

Not a bad list, to my eyes: but no one is perfect, so keep your wits about you.

“Use the brains God gave you!”

Why Police Aren’t Biblical

On the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis…

I don’t know why so many people still fall for this narrative, but let me try to state the obvious again:

Looting during protests is not some private individuals who just went out on a spree. It is instigated, organized, and conducted by police. And that with the specific purpose to deflect attention and criticism, or any attempt at reform. Police has been using this tactic from the very beginning of their existence, and Communist police was especially proficient in it.

Just think about it. Why is it that police arrives at peaceful protests in combat gear, armored vehicles with water canons, tear gas canisters etc, and yet, when real riots and looting happens, they never even fire a shot, only take photos and videos? Because there’s too many of their own doing the looting, that’s why. And indeed, there have been many reports of cops in plain clothes spotted at riots.

Think before you accept the official narrative. The real conspiracy is much closer to home.

Bojidar Marinov

On General Police Corruption

Here is something for those who believe that cops can’t instigate or organize looting or other violation of the law:

Several years ago, I used to make some of my money by offering private tutoring in Math and Physics. Since I had to advertise on Craig’s List, every time I post my ad, I would almost immediately get a “request” that would read something like this:

“Hello. I am looking for a tutor for my daughter who is 14. I will be out of town for three weeks and I need someone to tutor her during that time. What is your hourly rate?”

The messages were different, like it would be daughter, or stepdaughter, or nephew, or niece, or grandson or granddaughter, and the phone numbers would be different, and usually not from the Houston area, but two elements were the same: the student would be underage, and the adult guardian would be “out of town” for a period of time.

I felt something was not quite right, so I either responded that I didn’t take anything unless I have the legal guardian present, or that I was not interested, but the sender sent the same message every time I would post, sometimes several a day. I eventually decided to google the phone numbers and try to find out what is going on.

Most of the phone numbers were old disconnected numbers with no data whatsoever, but a few showed to have been registered as late as 10 years prior to police departments across the country (Alabama, California, Oregon and some others).

That’s when I figured out that this was actually undercover cops trying to bait me into committing a crime and frame me.

Now, this is ILLEGAL on two accounts: First, it is false advertising, which is fraud (I specifically said on Craig’s List that my phone is for business only, not for solicitation), and second, it is baiting into crime, which is also illegal.

When I figured that out, I started replying to every message with the following:

“I know you are a cop. I am compiling a database of all the phone numbers you are using, and I will publish it online with a full story of your attempts at baiting me. I will also take the messages and the database to a judge, and will try to initiate investigation into what you are doing, hopefully exposing your identity and posting it online.”

After I sent the same reply several times, the messages stopped abruptly, and I never got another such message.

So, dear cop worshippers. Your heroes in blue are not only likely to break the law. They are trained to break the law, and they break the law every day as part of their job. You can’t be a cop without breaking the same law you have sworn to uphold. The worst criminals in this country are the police; police is simply the largest crime syndicate in this country, an official crime gang, legalized by the law. Nothing more than that.

Thus, instigating and organizing looting is just another business for them. And if you think it is impossible, you are incredibly naive, and just another useful idiot for the police state.

Bojidar Marinov

Of course, the real reason why the police aren’t Biblical is that they just can’t be found in the Bible. There is no executive function there (at least none extended outside of the Godhead): as a rule of thumb, no one has the right to charge you for a crime, except the victim.

(People who are murdered and who are kidnapped are the main exceptions: and for both, the death penalty applies, so far as God is concerned.)

Also, people themselves are expected to look out for each other, and not to a Kindly Government Agency who Only Has Your Best Interests in Mind.

*roll eyes*

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Article for the day: Disarm the Police by Gary North

“Do Face Masks Work?”

The executive summary:

Wrap your mind around that: after spending $100 billion on pandemic readiness over the past decade, scientists still don’t know if face masks work. 

From What Scientists Know by Michael Egnor

My bet: the 100 billion dollars was not spent to get useful findings. It was spent to feed the system, so various Important Men and Senior Bureaucrats could feed off the public trough.

The games will go on, until the money stops.

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From What Scientists Know by Michael Egnor

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Sometimes a couple of points in public discussion intersect in a way that takes your breath away, and point to a much deeper problem. Here’s an example, one from Yale neuroscientist Steven Novella and another from Fox News.

Do Facemasks Work?

The question of whether or not wearing a facemask “works” is incredibly complicated. It may not seem so at first, but let me list some of the specific questions contained in that broad question. We need to consider different kinds of masks — cloth, surgical, N95. We need to consider who is wearing the mask …

Dr. Novella discusses several variables that we should examine in determining mask effectiveness, but this question is hardly “incredibly complicated.” We probe the Big Bang, we land spacecraft on asteroids, we decode genomes, and we explore the inner workings of subatomic particles. 

Surely we can compare different kinds of face masks. Sounds like a nice 7th-grade science project. 

Novella, after reviewing the scientific literature on this (literally) life-and-death issue, concludes:

… [s]o wear the mask properly, but act as if the mask does not work.

*Sigh*

COVID-19’s $100 Billion Question

Here’s a second news report, that, in light of Novella’s post, ought to give us pause:

Feds spent nearly $100B on pandemic readiness, health security in decade leading up to coronavirus crisis

Numbers from a paper in the academic journal “Health Security” released in late 2018 indicate that the government spent between $10 billion and $12 billion each year from 2010 to 2018 across several agencies on programs that contribute to “biosecurity,” the management of “pandemic influenza and emerging infectious diseases,” and “multiple-hazard and general preparedness” programs that assist in readiness for and response to different types of health threats, including diseases like the coronavirus.

Wrap your mind around that: after spending $100 billion on pandemic readiness over the past decade, scientists still don’t know if face masks work. 

That’s not the only thing they don’t know. The COVID crisis has been remarkable for the number of hairpin turns taken by scientific opinion. Early on, public health experts warned of infection through contact with surfaces. Now that advice is abruptly reversed: “Virus ‘does not spread easily’ from contaminated surfaces or animals, revised CDC website states” (Washington Post).

Goodness gracious. What scientists don’t know is astonishing. Even I’m amazed.

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