As RedState reported earlier, Tucker Carlson’s previous claims of being spied on and having his communications leaked by the NSA were true. Axios reported on the leaked emails today, which contained nothing but Carlson attempting to set up an interview with Russia’s Vladamir Putin. Of note is that NBC News interviewed Putin just a few weeks ago and there is nothing untoward about a news host seeking an interview with an adversarial figure. //

That means a lot of people who originally doubted the story look like clowns tonight (and I’ll have a separate piece on that later), and Carlson continued his victory lap by pointing out the obvious motivation of the leak — to try to paint him as a Russia agent.

It’s a go-to accusation that the left, facilitated by the left-wing hacks in our intelligence community, just can’t let go of. Of course, Carlson was simply trying to do what NBC News had done prior — land a major interview and make news. But by leaking his emails, the intel community wanted to make it seem as if Carlson had done something wrong and sinister. It’s an insidious, completely unAmerican game.

Carlson then got to the real heart of the issue — that laws were broken here. The NSA is required to keep the identity of Americans caught up in surveillance of foreign figures secret. Only via an unmasking request could his name have been revealed. After that request was clearly made, likely by someone in the Biden administration and having to have been signed off by the NSA head, they then took that information and leaked it to try to harm Carlson and Fox News.

The New York Times
@nytimes
Six months after the Jan. 6 riot, the U.S. Capitol Police is planning to expand operations outside Washington in an effort to better protect lawmakers, beginning with the opening of field offices in California and Florida. //

According to the New York Times, the U.S. Capitol Police have announced they are now planning to expand operations outside Washington “beginning with the opening of field offices in California and Florida” but the plan is to open “several additional regional offices.” Their spokesman says they need to monitor and quickly investigate threats against lawmakers.

The New York Times tries to justify this by saying that Secret Service has field offices elsewhere. But the Secret Service has multiple missions including not just covering protectees like the President or Vice President but also investigations into crimes against the financial infrastructure of the United States. They’re also part of the executive branch and subject to review and FOIA.

The Capitol Police is now basically just saying we’re going to have this huge expansion of this police power without any review or even a vote of Congress. They are completely controlled by Congress (translation: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at this point). We’ve seen how they respond to a basic question of who killed Ashli Babbitt by simply refusing to answer because they can. How do we think that’s going to work as they fan out and start investigating people across the nation? As we saw in the case of Babbitt, they are also not subject to FOIA.

Cori Bush
@CoriBush
When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom they’re referring to is for white people.

This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free.
10:48 AM · Jul 4, 2021

Keep in mind, this is a House member who grew up poor, rose to prominence via her activism, and was elected to office by the voters of Missouri. If anyone is representative of the incredible privilege all Americans enjoy at a base level to better themselves, it’s Bush. Yet, instead of showing any gratitude, she proclaims that only white people enjoy the freedom that July 4th represents. //

the term freedom has an actual meaning. For example, not being rich does not mean you lack the freedom to be rich. Yet, people like Bush try to define freedom in terms of specific results instead of freedom of opportunity. That’s asinine because it ignores that people have agency, and the moment you take agency away from people, you are depriving them of said freedom.

The Supreme Court’s unanimous judgment was a clear win not only for Catholic Social Services but for First Amendment advocates looking for a strong denunciation by the court of blatant religious discrimination by the city government.

Even so, the court’s opinion was narrower than some advocates of religious freedom would have preferred.

The Catholic agency had asked the Supreme Court to overturn Employment Division v. Smith, a problematic 1990 opinion that has restricted the free exercise of religion for decades. The court instead found that this case fell outside the parameters of Smith and declined to reexamine the precedent.

The justices split 6-3 on whether the opinion in Smith should be overturned immediately.

Roberts’ 15-page opinion, which declined to overturn Smith, was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Justice Samuel Alito penned a 77-page concurrence, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, arguing that the court should overturn Smith.

Alito offered extensive textualist and originalist analysis of the Constitution’s free exercise clause, concluding that the “case against Smith is very convincing” because of how that decision “conflicts with the ordinary meaning of the First Amendment’s terms.”

In a separate concurrence, Gorsuch noted that the court’s failure to address the old opinion hands the Catholic agency a rather tenuous win. As Gorsuch explained, that opinion allows governments to restrict religious exercise through laws that are “neutral” and “generally applicable.”

In the Philadelphia case, the majority opinion found that the law in question contains a clause that made it not “generally applicable,” rendering the law’s restriction of religious freedom unconstitutional.

Gorsuch noted that “with a flick of a pen, municipal lawyers may rewrite the city’s contract” to remove the problematic clause and make the law generally applicable.

If this happens, Gorsuch said, the Catholic agency will find itself “right back where it started,” in danger of being shut down by the government and in a new round of litigation. For this and other reasons, Gorsuch supported Alito’s recommendation to overturn Smith.

Lachlan Markay
@lachlan
New: 15 GOP state treasurers are threatening to pull state assets from any banks that accede to John Kerry-led admin efforts to discourage lending to/investment in fossil fuel companies
States threaten to pull assets from banks that drop coal
axios.com //

This is the right move. You are never going to convince a bunch of woke, left-leaning CEOs that they shouldn’t do something with faux appeals to principle. All they understand is financial pain, and every legal tool should be used to inflict it until they learn their lesson. //

Freedom does not become any less crushed if it’s private, big business doing the crushing. Trying to control people without their consent by using the power of large corporations is not capitalism. It’s cronyism. Republicans that recognize that will be equipped to fight the battles that are undeniably coming our way. Republicans that don’t should get out of the way because the rest of us aren’t content with being subjugated by the left under the guise of principle.

So, yet again, America, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. has once again saved us from ourselves. I mean, one look at the declared purpose of the 1776 undertaking by commissioners tells you all you need to know about these very dangerous people:

“The declared purpose of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission is to ‘enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.

“This requires a restoration of American education, which can only be grounded on a history of those principles that is ‘accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling.

“And a rediscovery of our shared identity rooted in our founding principles is the path to a renewed American unity and a confident American future.” //

As reported by The Washington Examiner on Friday, the education advisory commission will resume operations, despite being disbanded by Biden — with the added objective of undermining the insanity of critical race theory now metastasizing in schools across America.

The 1776 Commission is scheduled to convene on Monday in Washington on the annex campus of Hillsdale College to plot its next steps. An agenda for the private meeting, which is closed to the media, was not available.

But in an interview with the Washington Examiner, Matthew Spalding, the 1776 Commission’s executive director, said the group sees a major role for itself in the explosive debate over the teaching of the history of the United States in public and private schools.

The battle lines are clearly drawn.

On one side, “traditionalists,” as described by the Examiner, who believe in de-emphasizing race and ethnicity. Spalding told the Examiner the commission doesn’t intend to “whitewash” America’s history slavery and racism, but wants to promote a curriculum that defines “racial equality” as an American “tenet”: — “the founding creed of the Declaration of Independence: all men are created equal” — and Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a colorblind nation.

On the other side, critical race theory — the “decades-old academic study of U.S. history, more prevalent recently,” argues that racism remains deeply embedded in all aspects of American life. According to CRT, the only way to “unravel this systemic racism and bring about a just society” is for institutions, public and private, to place race and ethnicity at the center of policymaking, hiring, and how people are treated generally. //

Spalding then pointed to the obvious, unintentionally — meaning he precisely described the objective as an intended part of his comment.

“Current arguments about identity politics and critical race theory that … present themselves as merely responding to perceptions of their current assessment of American society, but do so by introducing as their principle that we should look at people based on the color of their skin, strikes us as a fundamental denial of the idea that all men are created equal.

“And that’s a problem for politics. That’s a problem intellectually and historically.”

CRT “teaches” — indoctrinates — that all “men” are not created equal. On the contrary, CRT contends that “white people” are born “racist,” and there is nothing “white people” can do about it, other than spend the entirety of their lives atoning for their “whiteness” and apologizing to “black people” for being “racist.” //

Martin • 3 hours ago • edited

Critical Race Theory is evil. The people who came up with it, are evil. The people who teach it, are evil. The people who believe in it or practice it, are evil. The people who enable it or defend it in any way, shape or form, are evil.

There should be no compromise with these people. You should call them evil to their faces with zero hesitation.

Again, they're not wrong; they are evil.

In one fell swoop, the CDC did to private contracts and the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment what had already been done to the First Amendment.

As I’ve said time and again, the real purpose in virtually all regulations promulgated to allegedly prevent the spread of the Wuhan virus were simply stalking horses to increase the power of the administrative state and undercut the ability of the citizenry to object to curtailment of freedom because of a “public health emergency.” We’re slowly seeing the courts correct the overreach by bureaucracies and by particularly fascistic governors. Whether the cases decided in the favor of freedom will be able to hold in the face of some future assault carried out by our betters to keep us safe from ourselves remains to be seen.

The setup is that Jordan asks Fauci for the metrics he will use to reopen the country. This is a reasonable question given the damage the Insane Clown Posse at NIH/NIAID/CDC has inflicted on our economy and society. The question is at the 0:58 mark on the first video.

Jordan: What…what measure? What I mean are we just going to continue this forever? When does wind doesn’t when do we get to the point? What measure, what standard, what objective outcome do we have to reach before Americans get their liberty and freedoms back?

Fauci: You know you’re indicating liberty and freedom, I look at it as a public health measure to prevent people from dying and going to the hospital.

Jordan: You don’t think Americans’ liberties have been threatened last year Dr. Fauci? They’ve been assaulted, their liberties have.

Fauci: I don’t look at this as a liberty thing, Congressman Jordan…

Jordan: Well, that’s obvious.

Fauci: …as a public health thing but I disagree with you on that completely…

Jordan You think the constitution is suspended during a virus, during a pandemic? It’s certainly not.

It is hard to conceive of a more tone-deaf and hubristic answer. //

Jordan: And I’m asking a question: what measures have to be attained before Americans get their First Amendment liberties back?

Fauci: I just told you that.

Jordan: You haven’t given anything specific. You said we hope when this certain…tell me specifically…

Fauci: Right now, right now we have about 60 000 infections a day which is a very large risk for a surge. We’re not talking about liberties; we’re talking about a pandemic that has killed five hundred and sixty thousand Americans. That’s what we’re talking about. //

He can’t answer the real question, so he goes for the “higher purpose” argument. He seems to want to say, “I don’t care about your rights and your families; I’m busy doing God’s work.” We actually aren’t talking about whatever number of Americans had died from the virus. We can do nothing for them, and, more to the point, nothing Fauci and Friends did helped them. They are dead, and our focus has to be on the living. Having demonstrated empirically that nothing that the CDC recommended has had any measurable impact, the real question Fauci needs to be wrestling with is how to detach himself from this tar baby with a shred of credibility.

Breaking911
@Breaking911
BREAKING: House Democrats have introduced a resolution to abolish the electoral college
1:31 PM · Apr 15, 2021

Breaking911
@Breaking911
Democrats introduce court-packing legislation, say Trump ‘stole’ Supreme Court seats - https://breaking911.com/democrats-introduce-court-packing-legislation-say-trump-stole-supreme-court-seats/

Breaking911
@Breaking911
BREAKING: House Oversight Committee advances D.C. statehood bill
11:17 AM · Apr 15, 2021

Talk about demolishing norms. Two of those are right in the Constitution. And the other — a nine-justice Supreme Court — has been around since 1869.

But the Democrats under a Joe Biden executive office don’t care about that, apparently. Probably because, much like with their efforts to push the PRO Act and H.R.1 — both of which would override state laws related to right-to-work and elections, respectively — they need to upend the regular order so they can find ways to win that don’t rely on their having better, successful policy ideas. All five of these efforts are intended to change the system to clear a path for a permanent progressive majority. //

Washington Examiner
@dcexaminer
.@Jim_Jordan: "You don't think Americans' liberties have been threatened the last year, Dr. Fauci?"

Fauci: "I don't look at this as a liberty thing... I look at this as a public health thing."

Jordan: "You think the Constitution is suspended during a virus, during a pandemic?"

Mike Pompeo
@mikepompeo
On the 4th of July, we celebrate America and our many freedoms. One of those freedoms is that YOU get to decide if you want to have family and friends over in your own backyard, NOT the government.

Daily Caller
@DailyCaller
BIDEN: "If we do our part... by July 4, there's a good chance you, your families, and friends will be able to get together in your backyard or in your neighborhood and have a cookout or a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day... Small groups will be able to get together" //

Dan O'Donnell
@DanODonnellShow
Biden says by the Fourth of July, we might be able to gather in small groups again, and "that will make this Independence Day something truly special." Buddy, Independence Day is special because in 1776 we got fed up with government telling us how to live our lives. //

Daily Caller
@DailyCaller
Tucker reacts to President Biden's speech:

"How dare you tell us who we can spend the Fourth of July with."

What we’re witnessing is the dangerous normalization of a dystopian concept of “freedom” in which government dominates your life “for your own good.”
By Carina Benton
When the Australian state of Victoria issued a 48-hour warning on New Year’s Eve that its border with the neighboring state of New South Wales would be indefinitely closed, it likely secured the award for the most egregious measure by a western government to curb COVID-19. //

The dramatic border closure, and the devastating consequences for affected residents, betrays a steady, unnerving trend of human rights violations corrupting western nations. Freedom of movement and free speech, freedom to earn a living and provide for one’s family, all hallmarks of a thriving democracy, are now dismissed as superfluous. Efforts to safeguard them are decried as divisive, destructive, and dangerous. “Health and safety” have taken precedence over liberty, a horrifying trend that that has caught too many off guard and is spiraling out of control.

Over two centuries ago, on June 18, 1812, Jefferson Democrats declared war on Great Britain. At that time, Jefferson Democrats controlled 107 of 143 congressional seats, 26 of 34 senate seats and Thomas Jefferson’s hand pick successor, James Madison, was president. Meanwhile in the city of Baltimore a Federalist publisher named Alexander Contee Hanson lived. Hanson owned one of the most powerful Federalist newspapers in the entire nation, the Federal Republican. //

During the war of 1812, Federalists opposed the war as they believe it was manufactured by the Jefferson Democrats to further that party’s political interests. As soon as war started, Alexander Hanson used the Federal Republican to denounce Madison and the war. Within days, a mob of Jefferson Democrats destroyed the newspaper’s office including the printing press. //

No sooner had the citizens of Baltimore heard of Hanson’s return than they planned a second mob attack. This time, though, Hanson was not going down without a fight— he brought over seventy men into his office to assist him. Among the men defending Hanson were revolutionary leaders Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, father of Robert E. Lee, and General James M. Lingan. //

Lee and Madison were classmates at Princeton. They had a long-standing friendship. Since Lee was one of the nation’s foremost military experts, Madison may have asked Lee to come out of retirement to assist in the defense of his country. Lee had provided Madison advice on how to prepare the country’s defenses. Because the mob, in its frenzy, sought to silence Hanson and publish his supporters, it may have altered the course of the War of 1812. If, for example, Madison had the experience of Lee by his side, the British would never have captured and burned Washington, D.C.

The world this week lost a great defender of economic freedom with the passing of the great American economist Walter E. Williams. He was 84.

Williams’ legacy will be one of fighting for lasting liberty at every turn against those who would be dictators over their fellow man.

As an economics professor at George Mason University, Williams gave numerous speeches at The Heritage Foundation over the years, and he always had fascinating things to say. His mind was sharp and clear as he saw things for the way they are, putting him at odds with those seeking Big Government policies for shortsighted solutions.

There have been only a small number of economists in modern times who have challenged and overturned more wrongheaded economic thinking than Williams. //

In his December 2019 column “Why Capitalism Is Morally Superior to Other Systems,” Williams made a succinct case for free-market capitalism for young people by pointing out:

Free markets are morally superior to other economic systems … . In a word or so, our protest should not be against capitalism. People should protest crony capitalism, where people use the political arena to buy government favors.

If millennials and others want to wage war against government favors and crony capitalism, I’m with them 100%. But I’m all too afraid that anti-capitalists just want their share of the government loot.

This isn’t about Amy Coney Barrett or Justice Neil Gorsuch or Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The truth is that this has been in the works since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States four years ago.

The good news is that Senate Republicans saw this coming and began laying the groundwork to push back against the Democrats’ efforts to destroy our institutions. In March 2019, my colleagues and I introduced a constitutional amendment that would limit the Supreme Court of the United States to nine justices.

It is telling that no Democratic senator has cosponsored my constitutional amendment, which would merely keep the Supreme Court at the same number of seats it has had since 1869. Now, every Republican who cares about preserving our institutions should join us. //

Protecting our legal institutions is critical. Over the past two centuries, they have defended and upheld Americans’ natural rights and made the United States the most exceptional nation in all of human history.

But this is about more than our institutions -- it is about what happens to our country, our communities, and our way of life if the radical left and the Democratic Party destroy them. It is clear they don’t want to pack the Supreme Court just to cancel out the votes of Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and soon Amy Coney Barrett. They want to pack the Court to cancel out your ability to resist their radical agenda. //

Our Founders believed in a radical idea: that all men are created equal and that their rights came from God, from our Creator. That idea -- the very premise of our nation’s founding -- is increasingly under assault from the left. They would have you believe that America and its founding is irredeemably racist, and that nothing short of a revolution is acceptable.

This cultural revolution will come at a great cost to our personal freedoms and natural rights, but our nation’s institutions stand as a bulwark against the effort to remake America.

The Senator revealed to us that he wrote his book “on his couch” in March after his self imposed COVID 19 quarantine. Never did he imagine just six months later the relevance of this book after the recent passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Did you know these important cases were decided by a 5-4 vote?

1. Religious Liberty and Van Orden v. Perry
2. School Choice and Zelman v. Simmons-Harris
3. Gun Rights and District of Columbia v. Heller
4. Sovereignty and Medellín v. Texas
5. Abortion and Gonzales v. Carhart
6. Free Speech and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
7. Crime, Law and Order, Capital Punishment, and Kennedy v. Louisiana

In our interview, we touched on these cases and discussed the Democrats’ plans of “packing the Supreme Court” and adding Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states to solidify their power for years.

The Democrats are promising to contest next month’s election if they come up short. Failed 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton has declared that Biden should not concede if the election is close. The stakes have never been higher.

As Americans head to the polls, One Vote Away reminds voters that in casting their ballot this November, they are selecting the leader whose appointments could build a Court that preserves freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to bear arms, or irrevocably changes the future of the nation for decades to come.

“Even in an emergency,” wrote Judge William Stickman IV, of Pennsylvania’s Western District Court, “the authority of government is not unfettered. The liberties protected by the Constitution are not fair-weather freedoms — in place when times are good but able to be cast aside in times of trouble.”

His eloquent summation continued, “(T)he solution to a national crisis can never be permitted to supersede the commitment to individual liberty that stands as the foundation of the American experiment. The Constitution cannot accept the concept of a ‘new normal’ where the basic liberties of the people can be subordinated to open-ended mitigation measures.

“Rather,” Stickman wrote, “the Constitution sets certain lines that cannot be crossed even in an emergency. Actions taken by the defendant crossed those lines.”

God help us all

For those who value freedom and still believe the Constitution matters, you have reason to celebrate. On September 14, a federal judge ruled that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s coronavirus lockdown measures are unconstitutional.

According to the judge, “The court believes that defendants undertook their actions in a well-intentioned effort to protect Pennsylvanians from the virus. However, good intentions toward a laudable end are not alone enough to uphold governmental action against a constitutional challenge.”

The judge also wrote, “even in an emergency, the authority of government is not unfettered. The Constitution cannot accept the concept of a ‘new normal’ where the basic liberties of the people can be subordinated to open-ended emergency mitigation measures.”

When government's first reaction in a crisis is to restrict your freedoms, it's not actually fighting anything. //

The first reaction of a government during a crisis shouldn’t be determining what it can restrict you from doing. That’s the thought process of someone who believes more government can fix things, when all this crisis has shown us is that more government creates a bigger mess.

Mandatory masking policies stifle the American spirit and are segueing us right into mandated COVID-19 vaccines. Here's how.