90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Musk Sets His Sights on Groups Backed by Soros and Clinton Operatives: 'Let's Investigate'

With Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, there has been a call for major brands to boycott the company if Musk goes through with his plan to end content policies, which are supposedly meant to limit hate speech and misinformation.

But when Musk became aware of this call for a boycott, he tweeted that he wants to investigate who is behind the idea.

Who funds these organizations that want to control your access to information? Let’s investigate …https://t.co/dBFsGjOMC8

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 3, 2022

In a letter sent to major brands, like Coca-Cola, Disney, Kraft and others, more than 20 civil society groups said that marketers should secure commitments from Twitter that the social media platform will keep its policies on civic integrity and hateful conduct on the platform, CNN reported.

These civil society groups said that if Twitter refuses to do so, the brands should pull funding and advertisement money from the platform.

“As top advertisers on Twitter, your brand risks association with a platform amplifying hate, extremism, health misinformation and conspiracy theorists,” the letter said.

“Your ad dollars can either fund Musk’s vanity project or hold him to account,” the letter added.

Twitter told advertisers in an investor filing on May 2 that “we have no planned changes to our commitment to brand safety” but that the company “cannot speculate on changes Elon Musk may make post closing.”

Musk, however, began tweeting that he wants to find out who exactly is behind this boycott movement.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” the billionaire tweeted.

When one Twitter user suggested that an organization related to George Soros will likely be one of the groups behind the boycott, Musk replied, “I will call him and ask.”

Musk then tweeted again, “George, please slide into my DMs!”

The New York Post reported that the organizations behind the letter are also backed by “former Clinton operatives,” the European Union and the Canadian government.

“Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among those already most vulnerable and marginalized,” the letter said.

They also warned that Musk will turn Twitter into a place for...

The Left sees success only through altering the rules of governance or changing the demography of the electorate—or both.

Court packing—the attempt to enlarge the size of the Supreme Court for short-term political purposes—used to be a dirty word in the history of American jurisprudence.

The tradition of a nine-person Supreme Court is now 153 years old. The last attempt to expand it for political gain was President Franklin Roosevelt’s failed effort in 1937. FDR’s gambit was so blatantly political that even his overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress rebuffed him.

Yet now “court packing” is a law school cause célèbre. It is hailed as a supposedly quick fix to reverse the current 5-4 conservative majority.

Recently, a rough draft of an opinion purportedly overturning the Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion in all 50 states was leaked to the media by someone inside the court.

That insider leak of a draft opinion was a first in the modern history of the Supreme Court. It violated all court protocols. Yet it was met with stunning approval from the American Left.

The leaker either intended to create a preemptive public backlash against the purported court majority in the hope that one or two justices might cave and switch under pressure—or to gin up the progressive base to fend off a likely disaster in the November midterm elections.

The recent leak, however, is consistent with a left-wing assault on the Court that has intensified over the last five years. Democrats have gone ballistic ever since George W. Bush and especially Donald Trump’s appointees solidified a conservative majority.

During Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in 2018, protestors stormed the Senate chambers in protest. The Left rallied behind the now-convicted felon Michael Avenatti, who publicized crazy, wildly untrue charges about a teenaged Kavanagh.

Later in spring 2020, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) whipped up a protest crowd right in front of the Supreme Court. He directly threatened Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

What exactly did Schumer mean by “you will pay the price” or “you won’t know what hit you”?

Who or what would hit the two justices—and how exactly?

But it is not just the Court the Left is targeting. Long-standing institutions and even constitutional directives are now fair game.

At the 2020 funeral of Representative John Lewis (D-Ga.), former President Barack Obama crudely proposed bringing in Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. as states—and with them likely four left-wing senators.

Obama’s “eulogy” also damned the 180-year-old Senate filibuster. Yet as a senator, Obama himself resorted to the filibuster in an effort to block the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

The Electoral College is under continued assault, especially since George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 were elected without winning the popular vote.

The founders’ arguments for the Electoral College are never mentioned. But the drafters of the Constitution felt it forced candidates to visit rural areas. They believed it would discourage European-style multiple splinter parties. It made voter fraud more difficult on a national scale. And it emphasized the United States of America. That is, America today is 50 unique states that are represented as such in presidential elections.

The Biden Administration also narrowly failed to push through a...

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New study: Face mask usage correlates with higher death rates

Using data from 35 countries and 602 million people, peer-reviewed study confirms previous research and cautions use of face masks "may have harmful unintended consequences."

A new peer-reviewed study entitled: "Correlation Between Mask Compliance and COVID-19 Outcomes in Europe" has demonstrated that use of face masks, even widespread, did not correlate with better outcomes during the COVID epidemic, based on data from 35 European countries with populations of over one million people each, encompassing a total of 602 million people.

The study noted that the average proportion of mask usage in the period investigated (October 2020 until March 2021) was 60.9% ± 19.9%.

Governments and advisory bodies have recommended and often mandated the wearing of face masks in public spaces and in many areas mandates or recommendations remain in place, despite the fact, the study notes, that randomized controlled trials from prior to and during the epidemic have failed to show a benefit to the wearing of such masks with regard to COVID transmission.

"Positive correlation between mask usage and cases was not statistically significant," the study also found, "while the correlation between mask usage and deaths was positive and significant (rho = 0.351, p = 0.039)." That is to say, more mask usage correlated with a higher death rate.

The study used a variety of statistical methods to study correlation but "none of these tests provided negative correlations between mask usage and cases/deaths ... Surprisingly, weak positive correlations were observed when mask compliance was plotted against morbidity (cases/million) or mortality (deaths/million) in each country."

The study also noted that the public may have gained the impression that masks could be helpful due to the fact that mandates were usually implemented after the first peak of COVID cases had passed. However, it became evident that masks were not in fact helpful later that same year, when widespread mask usage does not appear to have mitigated the severity of the COVID wave of winter 2020.

"Moreover," the study concludes, "the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe also suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences."...

Texas lawsuit exposes regulatory change limiting judges' power to deport, creating numerous loopholes for aliens.

Facing mounting losses in the courts over its immigration policies, the Biden administration has invented a new tactic for keeping as many illegal aliens in the country as possible: Create a circular bureaucratic process loop indefinitely delaying deportation.

The newest tactic was exposed last week in a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenging obscure regulatory changes by the Homeland Security Department that shifted the power to deport away from immigration judges to civilian bureaucrats while allowing aliens multiple means of delaying and appealing.

"The Interim Rule sets forth all kinds of exceptions from the procedures and timelines in the new regulations, generally always inuring to the alien's benefit," Paxton wrote in his lawsuit.

"In summary, the Interim Rule transfers significant authority from immigration judges to asylum officers, grants those asylum officers significant additional authority, limits immigration-judge review to denials of applications, and upends the entire adjudicatory system to the benefit of aliens," the suit added.

File Texas v. Biden (Asylum Rule Complaint) (as-filed 04.28.2022).pdf

The vast majority of asylum cases that reach an immigration judge are rejected, about 71% of the time under President Trump, though it fell to 63% in the first year of the Biden presidency. And most aliens are then subjected to expedited removal.

What the Biden administration did is create interim rules that significantly bypass the immigration judges, allowing civilian bureaucrats working for the Customs and Immigration Service to take new actions that delay or circumvent expedited removal.

The Texas lawsuit noted several of the changes, including that "individuals subject to expedited removal and found to have a credible fear of persecution or torture would have their claims for asylum, withholding of removal ... or Convention Against Torture ... protection initially adjudicated by USCIS following a nonadversarial interview before an asylum officer."

Aliens who lose at the immigration court level now can appeal and and get reconsidered by the CIS bureaucracy under most favorable conditions, the Texas suit noted. And aliens who lose at both the court and CIS level and facing "expedited removal proceedings would be eligible for consideration for parole."

John Zadrozny, a former White House immigration adviser to President Trump, told Just the News the new rules have simply created a circular bureaucratic process with little end in sight, meaning most aliens who enter it can stay in...