90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

A Hollow Kind of Freedom

If you haven’t figured it out yet, you are the final check in our Constitution’s checks and balances. Get up, there’s work to do!

Earlier this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a pre-dawn raid on the home of James O’Keefe, the founder of the investigative journalism organization Project Veritas. The FBI was reportedly searching for a diary allegedly stolen from Ashley Biden, daughter of Joe Biden. The diary, which up until that point had not been authenticated, reportedly contained allegations of sexual improprieties within, and among, the Biden family.

Project Veritas had received the diary from an unknown source. After unsuccessfully attempting to authenticate the document, the organization decided not to report on the contents, subsequently turning the diary over to the police. At 6 a.m. on Saturday, November 6, the FBI raided O’Keefe’s home, handcuffed him in his underwear, and seized his cell phones and other electronic media. Less than a week later, the FBI leaked the contents of O’Keefe’s electronic devices to the New York Times, which is a defendant in an already existing defamation lawsuit brought by O’Keefe and Project Veritas.

Exactly why the FBI felt the need to conduct a pre-dawn raid on a journalist, then leak the contents of the material it seized, is unknown. O’Keefe was fully cooperating with law enforcement regarding the diary and was not a threat or a suspect in a crime. Instead, the predawn raid appears to be a blatant effort at intimidation and harassment of an investigative journalist who has repeatedly exposed the corruption of Washington’s ruling class. The raid violated O’Keefe’s First and Fourth Amendment rights and sent a strong signal to other journalists that crossing the Biden regime will have undesirable consequences.

Separately, in the ongoing saga of the January 6 political prisoners, on November 2 the U.S. Marshals Service said it would remove 400 federal inmates from the Washington, D.C. jail after a surprise inspection revealed the jail did not meet minimum correctional facility standards. These January 6 prisoners are in pre-trial confinement for misdemeanor charges—held without bail on the basis of their political affiliation. In some cases, prosecutors have claimed they are a threat to public safety because they are veterans of the U.S. armed forces. (Let that sink in—because they are veterans who served this country, they are being denied their constitutional rights.)

The U.S. Marshals and civil rights attorneys are now conducting a review of D.C. jail operations after District Judge Royce Lamberth referred the January 6 prisoners’ treatment to the Justice Department for a civil rights investigation. Earlier in October, Lamberth had placed top officials in the U.S. Department of Corrections in contempt for routinely violating the rights of the January 6 prisoners. Lamberth accused the officials of denying medical care to the prisoners and preventing them from meeting with their attorneys or reviewing legal discovery documents. The January 6 prisoners have claimed brutal treatment from D.C. jail corrections officers to include beatings, withholding food and water, and punitive solitary confinement.

Last week, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal court injunction against Biden’s vaccine mandate. Biden’s original vaccine mandate covering businesses with over 100 employees was the subject of a temporary injunction after Attorneys General from Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah challenged the statutory and constitutional legitimacy of the mandate. Following the injunction, Biden ordered businesses to ignore the court order and proceed with the mandate or face...

Culture Wars and the Degradation of Language

Like truth, the integrity of words is another casualty of war.

From Thucydides to George Orwell, the degradation of language during war and political conflict has been recognized. As Thucydides wrote of the brutal and violent civil war in Corcyra, “Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.” Like truth, the integrity of language is also a first casualties in culture wars.

The culture war that has been waged for over half a century––and is now reaching a destructive absurdity in “wokism,” “cancel culture,” and blatant censorship and suppression of free speech––has made debased language one of its most important weapons. So insidious has been this process that even conservatives opposed to the progressive left’s illiberal and unconstitutional excesses legitimize these transformations of language by using that ideologically corrupted vocabulary.

Take, for example, using the word “gender” instead of “sex.” First introduced in the Fifties by sexologist and suspected pedophile John Money, this change in usage was popularized in the Sixties to reinforce the dubious idea that sex-identity is not binary by nature, but comprises multiple variations, just as linguistic gender is not restricted to masculine or feminine, but can classify nouns by other qualities such as “animate” or “inanimate.” Male and female, masculine and feminine thus are not facts of nature, but social, cultural, and political “constructs” that serve the interests of the prevailing regime of power.

In other words, using the word “gender” to mean “sex” insidiously reinforces the constructivist ideology underlying as well Marxist theory and its antihumanist economic and political determinism. It also gratifies modernity’s fatal hubristic conceit: that human reality can be manipulated, changed, and reinvented at will by “technicians of the soul,” as Stalin called the self-proclaimed improvers of human nature.

One malign fruit of this bad idea is the transgender movement, the destructive consequences of which include...

I'll tell you a little something that my daddy told to me.

My basic fundamentals if you want to be free.

'cause son, there's something wrong internally.

So, if you want your freedom son.

Don't want your country to be overrun.

You got to keep America number one.

My daddy told me "son, don't let 'em take your gun.

That's what they tryin' to do.

Son, don't let 'em take your gun.

They're takin' your bill of rights away from you."

My daddy said "son, don't let 'em take your gun.

That's what they tryin' to do.

Son, don't let 'em take your gun.

Don't let 'em take your gun away from you."

Ex-Boxer Jessie Vargas Running for U.S. Congress as a Republican Supported Illegal Immigrants, Wished Violence on Trump

Vargas also shared a video of former President Barack Hussein Obama claiming that Trump was “unfit” to be president:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #66

Documents Reveal Kindergarteners Being Forced To Learn About Transgenderism

Woke ‘Social Emotional Learning’ nonsense “is being presented as factual to very young children.”

A parent activist group has revealed documents that show children as young as kindergarten age in Connecticut are being forced to learn about ‘social justice standards’ including transgenderism and gender identity.

Parents Defending Education published the documents after concerned parents from West Hartford contacted them to expressed dismay that their children were being exposed to “social emotional learning through an equity lens.”

The report notes that one of the parents was particularly troubled by a book assigned to children titled When Aidan Became a Brother which details how a girl decides to become a boy after being born in the “wrong” body.

A synopsis of the book states that “When Aidan was born, everyone thought he was a girl. His parents gave him a pretty name, his room looked like a girl’s room, and he wore clothes that other girls liked wearing.”

It continues, “After he realized he was a trans boy, Aidan and his parents fixed the parts of his life that didn’t fit anymore, and he settled happily into his new life.”

The concerned parent stated “I am troubled by When Aidan Became a Brother (4th grade) which is full on gender theory, that the sex you’re assigned at birth is ‘wrong’ and you’re actually a boy. This is being presented as factual to very young children.”

The parents were also told that they could not opt their children out of...

More Mencken:

On The Kind Of Man Who Demands That Government Enforce His Ideas...

Mencken On The Motives Of False Leftist Memes..

Every Normal Man Must Be Tempted At Times To Spit On His Hands, Hoist The Black Flag, And Begin Slitting Throats...

H.L. Mencken Quotes

The Most Dangerous Man To Any Government...

Kyle Rittenhouse prosecutors HELD BACK high-def drone footage of Kenosha shootings from defense and gave them low quality video - sparking them to file mistrial motion that could see teen walk free

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger initially shared low quality drone footage from the night of the shooting with the defense
The defense claims Binger only shared the high-definition footage after evidence had closed on Saturday
According to a motion filed today by the defense, 'The problem is the prosecution gave the defense a compressed version of the video'
'What that means is the video provided to the defense was not as clear as the video kept by the state,' the motion states
Lawyers for Rittenhouse filed their motion for mistrial with prejudice based on this and several other grounds

Prosecutors in the Kenosha shooter trial withheld evidence from the defense that was 'at the center of their case,' only sharing the high-definition drone video footage on which they have hung their prosecution after the trial had concluded, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger played the enhanced drone footage to the jury during his closing statements and claimed that it showed Rittenhouse 'pointing his gun' at people – an assertion that opened the door to the state claiming Rittenhouse provoked the violence of the night of August 25, 2020.

Now, in the motion obtained by DailyMail.com, Rittenhouse's defense insist that the state only shared it with the defense after evidence had closed on Saturday November 13.

According to the motion, 'On November 5, 2021, the fifth day of trial on this case, the prosecution turned over to the defense footage of a drone video which captured some of the incident from August 25, 2020.

'The problem is the prosecution gave the defense a compressed version of the video. What that means is the video provided to the defense was not as clear as the video kept by the state.'

The motion goes onto explain that the file size of the defense video is just 3.6MB while the prosecution's is 11.2MB.

The motion states that this larger file was not provided to the defense 'until after the trial concluded'

It reads, 'During the jury instructions conference, the defense played their version of the video for the court to review. The state indicated their version was much clearer and had their tech person come into court to have the court review their clearer video. The video is the same, the resolution of that video, however, was not.'

In fact, the state did not provide the larger file until two days before closing arguments and after the evidence had been...

Since U.S. companies prioritize profit over national security, stopping their assistance to the Chinese military requires market-oriented solutions in addition to legislation.

The U.S. Department of Defense recently released its annual report on China’s military power, which shows that China’s military has made astounding advancements to “modernize its capabilities and improve its proficiencies across all warfare domains” in a relatively short period. The report also made it clear that one of the main objectives of the Chinese military’s modernization is to fight and win wars “against a strong enemy,” a not-so-subtle reference to the United States.

The most significant advancement of the Chinese military is its navy, which was almost non-existent four decades ago and now is the largest in the world, “with an overall battle force of approximately 355 ships and submarines, including approximately more than 145 major surface combatants.” By contrast, the U.S. Navy has a battle force of 293 ships as of early 2020. The DOD report also highlights that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has heavily invested in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).

The PLA’s goal is to “make weapons systems and military operations more networked and autonomous” and change “the future of warfare faster than expected.” Some military experts believe China is already surging ahead of the United States in the arms race for AI.

How did the PLA manage to modernize at such an astonishing speed? Besides heavy investment from the Chinese government, western companies have played a crucial role. Here are three examples.

German Engines Powered the Chinese Navy

German media recently disclosed that several types of Chinese navy warships are “powered by engines that were either developed or built by German manufacturers.” MTU, one of the German manufacturers, “was a regular supplier of engines for Luyang III class missile destroyers through a licensed production plant in China.” Luyang-class destroyers are equipped with state-of-art weapons systems and can launch land-attack cruise missiles, long-range surface-to-air missiles, and anti-submarine missiles.

Additionally, MTU supplied “engines that were used in China’s Song-class submarines.” A strong navy has enabled China to expand its territorial claim in the South China Sea, intimidate neighboring countries, disrupt standard commercial and exploration activities, and strengthen its ability to invade...