In 2017, Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley and a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, called Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa the “most influential man of the 20th century and, arguably, the beginning of the 21st.”

He was the man who pulled back the curtain to reveal the disinformation that was being churned out from the Soviet bloc. Unfortunately, most people remained unfamiliar with Pacepa and his work.

In the early morning hours of Feb. 14, 2021, COVID-19 accomplished what a $2 million bounty and two separate teams of Romanian-sponsored assassins could not. Ion Mihai Pacepa, “Mike” to those who knew him, was called home to his eternal reward. //

Eventually the CIA convinced Carter of Pacepa’s bona fides, and Western intelligence agencies tapped the invaluable information he provided. Most important was his explanation of the way Soviet agents planted disinformation to deceive and undermine faith in Western governments, leaders, history, and institutions—especially the churches. When Pacepa later attained U.S. citizenship, the CIA gave him a letter thanking him for his “important and unique contribution to the United States.”

In Romania, Ceaușescu created a special Securitate unit charged with the sole task of assassinating Pacepa. The dictator also put two separate $1 million bounties on his head and dispatched the infamous assassin “Carlos the Jackal” to carry out the job, as well as a second team of assassins. They came close. Twice Pacepa’s secret identity was compromised and he had to undergo plastic surgery and rebuild his life with his American wife, a CIA agent whom he met while being debriefed.

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is probably the most ideologically intoxicated, most dogmatic political party of Leninist stripe in human history. Yet, we don’t tend to think of the CCP that way.”

Tonight, we sit down with Miles Yu, who served as Senior China policy adviser to Mike Pompeo when he was secretary of state. While many today still harbor illusions about the Chinese regime, the CCP seeks to “replace the U.S.-led international order with its own authoritarian model of governance,” Yu says. And “their internal designation of the United States as chief adversary has never changed.”

Miles Yu grew up during China’s Cultural Revolution, a decade of revolutionary change and violence in which millions were killed. In 1985, he came to the United States as an exchange student.

He’s been a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy for 26 years and after finishing his time at the State Department, he’s now a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute.

Van der Veen stressed—when addressing the issue of what Trump did or didn’t do while the riot was occurring—that the House’s single article of impeachment is for incitement and not for anything else.

“To claim that the president in any way wished, desired, or encouraged lawless or violent behavior is a preposterous and monstrous lie,” van der Veen said. “In fact, the first two messages the president sent via Twitter once the incursion of the Capitol began were ‘Stay peaceful’ and ‘No violence because we are the party of law and order.’ The gathering on Jan. 6 was supposed to be a peaceful event. Make no mistake about that.” //

Schoen complained about a lack of due process for Trump, including the House’s impeachment and the Senate’s trial.

“The hatred that the House managers and others on the left have for President Trump has driven them to skip the basic elements of due process and fairness,” Schoen said.

A bigger problem was the lack of opportunity for Trump’s lawyers to review the integrity of the evidence, he said:

On Wednesday of this week, countless news outlets repeated the Democrat talking point about the power of ‘never-before-seen’ footage. Let me ask you this: Why was this footage never seen before? Should the subject of an impeachment trial, this impeachment trial, President Trump, have the right to see the so-called new evidence against him?

More importantly, the riot and the attack on this very building was a major event that shocked and impacted all Americans. Shouldn’t the American people have seen this footage as soon as it was available? For what possible reason did the House managers withhold it from the American people and President Trump’s lawyers? For political gain? How did they get it? How are they the ones releasing it?

The evening of May 31, 2009, was like any other in Rio de Janeiro. As the crew of an A330 prepared for departure, it would have been like any other flight home. A long stretch over the deep black of the Atlantic, dodging thunderstorms as they made their way back to Paris. Tragically, a few hours later the aircraft would enter a deep stall and fall into the ocean.

After a lengthy investigation, it was found that the pitot tubes which help detect the airspeed had momentarily frozen. This gave the crew conflicting and confusing information on the screens which ultimately led the speed to drop so low that the wings were not generating enough lift to keep them flying.

If anything positive came from this awful event it’s that it served as a wake-up to the industry to the dangers of unreliable airspeed and how it is handled by crews. It forced manufacturers and operators to review their procedures and improve training for pilots.

How the problem is dealt with very much depends on the aircraft type and how the airspeed is sensed and presented in the flight deck. As a result, when training on a new type of aircraft, it is important that we as pilots know exactly how the pitot-static systems works and what to do should they fail.

Researchers only drilled through an Antarctic ice shelf to sample sediment. Instead, they found animals that weren't supposed to be there. //

Bivouacked in the middle of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf—a five-hour flight from the nearest Antarctic station—nothing comes easy. Even though it was the southern summer, geologist James Smith of the British Antarctic Survey endured nearly three months of freezing temperatures, sleeping in a tent, and eating dehydrated food. The science itself was a hassle: To study the history of the floating shelf, he needed seafloor sediment, which was locked under a half mile of ice.

Between 10 and 15 million voters in this country decide the outcome of Presidential elections and the partisan makeup of the Congress. These are the voters who “swing” from one party to the other during election cycles. Capturing the majority of these voters is the path to winning control of the government. //

The amplification of her views through the megaphone of her Hollywood celebrity could not be tolerated by maybe the wokest of woke companies in Hollywood — Disney, a world-wide media behemoth. That one of their topline stars would align herself with the non-woke in such public ways was not tolerable. She could not be a source of conservative thought extending its reach via Disney portals of entertainment and communication.

Wow, what coincidental timing.

The story claiming that a police officer was murdered by Trump supporters during the Capitol Hill protest on January 6 is, for all practical purposes, retracted by the NYT the day after Pres. Trump is acquitted on the impeachment charge of having instigated those protests — which were declared by Democrats and the media an “insurrection” against the government. //

Was Officer Sicknick beaten or wasn’t he? Three individuals died from medical emergencies and one person was shot and killed by Capitol Hill Police. So Officer Sicknick was the other person “killed by hostile action.”

But the truth is that the NYT no longer has any interest in the truth of what actually happened to Officer Sicknick. The story can no longer be wielded as a political weapon against Donald Trump, and that was the entire purpose of the exercise from the beginning.

Scientists were expecting to find an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6397, but instead they found evidence of a concentration of smaller black holes lurking there. New data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have led to the first measurement of the extent of a collection of black holes in a core-collapsed globular cluster.

Religious dissident Sun Yi, locked up by China in the Masanjia Labor Camp, used his sparse English vocabulary to pen numerous SOS letters -- one of which was found by Julie Keith.

Trump War Room
@TrumpWarRoom
WATCH: @MarkMeadows highlights how former President Trump requested the National Guard two days before the events of January 6, 2021. //

Meadows had previously said that in an interview on Fox with Maria Bartiromo, according to Real Clear Politics.

Even in January, that was a given, as many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the Secretary of Defense. That was a direct order from President Trump and yet here is what we see, all kinds of blame going around but yet not a whole lot of accountability. That accountability needs to rest with where it ultimately should be and that’s on Capitol Hill. //

Here’s the timeline that shows that Trump approved the guard on Jan. 3. It also shows they offered a quick reaction force from the National Guard but Bowser on Jan. 5. said that she needed no further support. //

It appears that they had the Guard then mobilized about 3:04 p.m. when the breach was about 2:20. But while it was put on availability by Trump and Christopher Miller, it wasn’t asked for, apart from limited traffic detail kind of stuff, before everything went wild on Jan. 6.

So if Trump were trying to actually incite an insurrection it doesn’t match the reality that he authorized the Guard and even encouraged 10,000 to be delegated if Miller is correct. That’s one of the things they didn’t want people to know because it would kill the whole false story that Trump never authorized the Guard

Compression Garment Reduces Orthostatic Tachycardia and Symptoms in Patients With Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome //

Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) is a chronic form of orthostatic intolerance associated with a significant symptom burden. Compression garments are a frequently prescribed treatment, but the effectiveness of waist-high compression has not been evaluated in adults with POTS.

Objectives
This study evaluated compression garments as a treatment for POTS using a head-up tilt test (HUT), and a noninflatable core and lower body compression garment. //

Conclusion
Abdominal and lower body compression reduced heart rate and improved symptoms during HUT in adult patients with POTS. These effects were driven by improved stroke volume with compression. Abdominal compression alone might also provide a clinical benefit if full lower body compression is not well tolerated. (Hemodynamic Effects of Compression in POTS;

Early in my career as a prosecutor, I learned a valuable lesson from a seasoned and highly regarded criminal defense attorney.

The best defense in a trial before a jury is to attack the case that the prosecution doesn’t make. Fight on the ground that the prosecution has looked past or ignored. If the prosecution tries to “circle back” and cover that ground, the defense becomes about what the prosecution missed — or better yet, what didn’t they want the jury to know when they chose to ignore it in the first instance. //

When the prosecutor calls a young agent to the stand — and there is almost always at least one youngster involved in order to get the experience — that agent is going to spend a long time answering questions from me about all the things he/she did not do during the course of the investigation. That sets in the jurors’ minds the idea that I know more about how the investigation should have been handled than the investigators do, and that the investigators took shortcuts and ignored evidence. It’s not necessarily evidence of “innocence”, just the fact of ignoring evidence calls into question the completeness of what they did and their competence doing so.

That’s what Lindsey Graham did today — likely aided by Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and a couple of other GOP Senators with trial experience in a courtroom. I’m not sure there is a single good trial lawyer among the Democrats in the Senate.

Stunning rare photographs published by Nasa have revealed the extent of gold mining - much of it thought to be illegal - in Peru's Amazon rainforest.

Fifty years ago this week, NASA astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. made space history when he took a few golf swings on the Moon during the Apollo 14 mission, successfully hitting two golf balls across the lunar surface. Space enthusiasts have debated for decades just how far that second ball traveled. It seems we now have an answer, thanks to the efforts of imaging specialist Andy Saunders, who digitally enhanced archival images from that mission and used them to estimate the final resting spots of the golf balls.

Saunders, who has been working with the United States Golf Association (USGA) to commemorate Shepard's historical feat, announced his findings in a Twitter thread. Saunders concluded that the first golf ball Shepard hit traveled roughly 24 yards, while the second golf ball traveled 40 yards. //

Saunders, whose forthcoming book is entitled Apollo Remastered, estimates that a professional US Open golfer like Bryson DeChambeau could, in theory, hit a ball as far as 3.41 miles on the Moon, with a hang time of 1 minute 22 seconds—much farther (and longer) than Shepard's feat. As he told the BBC:

Unfortunately, even the impressive second shot could hardly be described as "miles and miles and miles," but of course this has only ever been regarded as a light-hearted exaggeration. The Moon is effectively one giant, unraked, rock-strewn bunker. The pressurized suits severely restricted movement, and due to their helmet's visors they struggled to even see their feet. I would challenge any club golfer to go to their local course and try to hit a six-iron, one-handed, with a one-quarter swing out of an unraked bunker. Then imagine being fully suited, helmeted, and wearing thick gloves. Remember also that there was little gravity to pull the clubhead down toward the ball. The fact that Shepard even made contact and got the ball airborne is extremely impressive.

And of course, the astronaut's legacy as the first human to play golf on the Moon remains secure.

First of all, the headline itself is completely misleading, as there was nothing “skewed” whatsoever in the Droz team spreadsheet. Indeed, the AP article completely failed to prove that the data was skewed or that their assessment was correct.

Second, the fact-checker included ad hominem against Droz by imputing that his long-time activism “rejecting the science of climate change” somehow discredits his team’s analysis of 2020 election lawsuits. That’s yellow journalism – and, by the way, there is no proven “science of climate change” in any event. Indeed, the fact-checker’s inclusion of that phrase is additional confirmation of leftwing bias.

Third, the ad hominem attack used the phrase “self-described physicist” as a kind of grammatical pejorative. One would have thought that the fact-checker could have discovered that Droz holds physics degrees from Boston College and Syracuse University.

Fourth, the article concludes that information in the spreadsheet has been “misinterpreted” by readers of at least one blogsite (LifeSiteNews) to conclude that President Trump “could still overturn the election results.” This is a classic strawman argument, as the lawsuit list in the Droz team spreadsheet has nothing to do with that claim.

Fifth, the AP article identified a single database as the source for the Droz team spreadsheet and analysis. This is misleading, as the spreadsheet itself lists eight (8) separate sources for the information compiled.

Sixth, the AP article uses a cited example (Ritchie v. Polis) to “prove” that “some of the cases in the report are also wrongly coded as wins for Trump when they didn’t directly deal with the presidential election.” In fact, Ritchie v. Polis was not just about “petition-signing,” as the AP article states, but rather addressed the much broader situation of whether a governor has the authority to override a state legislature concerning election laws and regulations (the court ruled that the governor does NOT have that authority). Droz has subsequently confirmed that the fact-checker knew the truth about this lawsuit she cited, but chose to ignore it to maintain the false narrative of the article.

Chris2
41 minutes ago
In light of the holiday, I pulled an old AP fact-checking article from the library:

CLAIM: Black people have Constitutional rights. In a pamphlet, Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln claim Black people have rights under the U.S. Constitution.

AP ASSESSMENT: FALSE. As SCOTUS correctly held, "A Black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect." No American court has acknowledged the Constitutional rights of Black people; this false pamphlet meme is based on a single case from a British court, and the author neglects to mention that we fought two wars (the Revolution and the War of 1812) to avoid living under British law. Therefore, we assess Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln's claims to the contrary to be FALSE. Please read the AP's endorsement of Democrat Stephen Douglas, who has called for a return to normalcy and decency on the slavery issue.

See how much fun we can have when we rely upon courts for our facts? Well-educated people recognize the appeal to authority fallacy, but liberals can't. Indeed, the appeal to authority fallacy is pretty much their entire thought process, so...

Chris2
31 minutes ago
To me, the fact that the courts largely rejected Trump's allegations is the best evidence that he was telling the truth. Let's remember what our courts have also held: the unborn can be murdered, Black people have no rights that white people must respect, the government can intern people based on race, the government can sterilize people it deems unfit, the government can ban homosexuality, oops the government can't discriminate against gays, the 14th Amendment doesn't prohibit segregation by race, oops - it does, but take your time doing anything about it, Obamacare is a tax & it's still okay w/o the tax part, and on and on and on. The courts are the friends of the status quo (aka the rich and powerful); the courts do NOT protect individual rights. Fools point to a few "correct" decisions & ignore all the errors. Remember the "good" decisions are merely PARTIAL fixes to the bad ones. Congress banned discrimination on race in the 1870s; the courts rejected those statutes until they slowly began changing the law & - even then - they made enforcement difficult. The courts aren't the friends of liberty; they wanted to defeat Trump & they invented legal excuses to do so - they did not even pretend to be interested in justice or law. I read those decisions, briefs etc - it was all a joke. The powers-that-be wanted Biden, and the courts obliged, as they always do. Eventually, they'll get around to fixing the election laws & then we'll hear how great they are. Courts have good press, but they're terrible for human rights. Don't believe me? Ask all the slaves they freed (none); ask all the people they sentenced to segregation for decades; ask all the unborn they sent to the slaughterhouses. Courts protect the rich and powerful; they function like a House of Lords to ensure that change happens slowly & w/ the elite's approval - and you'd know that if you judged by the facts & not the hype.

if this had been a regular trial, how do you pull a move like this after both sides have already rested?

They had their chance to present witnesses in the House. They didn’t even bother to have a hearing, they went ahead with a vote on impeachment without even that or any evidence. They didn’t even move to have witnesses earlier in the Senate trial. Talk about a last minute move to try to save their case.

But Americans hopefully have seen how hypocritical they are. They don’t care about doing the people’s work. It’s about doing anything they can to stop their political opponent, even after he’s already out of office.

Hopefully Americans make them pay heavily for this at the ballot box

Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
CNN is no longer a news organization. They’re Dem propagandists.

Facts they are ignoring:

(1) senators are NOT jurors, as Dem Sen. Harkin clarified: https://tinyurl.com/4tvlnnl3

(2) Schumer repeatedly confers w/ House managers, as always & fully appropriate.

Three GOP senators meet with Trump's lawyers on eve of impeachment defense presentation
cnn.com //

Indeed. Also, I must have missed the CNN report that talked about how an “impartial” Democratic “juror” (Pat Leahy) presiding over the trial “told us all we need to know.”

The 10 minute video the defense showed was absolutely brutal, and Rep. Maxine Waters, Schumer, Biden, and Harris took center stage in them. They also used a full two minutes of Sen. Elizabeth Warren talking about bringing “the fight” and not backing down: //

There are legal arguments being made and political arguments being made during the trial by both sides. While the minds of the senators watching are likely to remain unchanged by any of it, it was imperative that the defense team show the American people the darker, much less “tolerant” side of Democrats that the mainstream media has desperately tried to keep hidden.

Why? Law professor Jonathan Turley broke it down earlier this week:

If this trial boils down to irresponsible political rhetoric, the public could find it difficult to distinguish between the accused, the “prosecutors” and the “jury.” That is the problem with a strategy that seems focused not on proving incitement of an insurrection but some ill-defined form of political negligence.