Country Music Hall of Fame member Garth Brooks has thrown himself into the Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney controversy this last week.
Brooks recently announced in an interview with Billboard that he will unapologetically be serving Bud Light as one of the beverages at his new bar opening up in Nashville, Tennessee, soon.
WhiskeyRiff covers the full interview here.
The Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk bar is ironically named as Brooks will apparently only consider you a friend if you support the moral depravity of transgenderism and companies like Anheuser-Busch who propagate it.
In the interview, he not only supported the decision to sell Bud Light but also referred to anyone boycotting the product as "a**holes" that should seek out other bars in the lower Broadway area.
The predictable backlash from former Brooks fans was swift as thousands took to Twitter to voice their outrage with the singer; many promising to dispose of his music and boycott any future concerts.
One wrote, "Now I delete every Garth Brooks song from my collection. NEVER AGAIN GARTH!"
WARNING: Some of the following tweets contains vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive.
These Elitists don’t learn.
Country music star @garthbrooks has no tolerance for Bud Light boycotters, calling them “assholes” and promising he will serve the beer brand in his new Nashville bar.
Now I delete every Garth Brooks song from my collection. NEVER AGAIN GARTH!… pic.twitter.com/GkNb8Z7bny
— CPT C for America First (@CornicelliforNY) June 10, 2023
Patriots I threw out my Garth Brooks music collection. And I will never attend another one of his concerts.#PatriotsAssemble pic.twitter.com/VLUgZ5q5a7
— HunterMAGA (@gunslinger2022) June 10, 2023
What an ass this guy is
Garth Brooks defends Bud Light, has nasty message for anyone who disagrees with him...https://t.co/eRRS5LryQP
— Amy Moreno (@VivaLaAmes11) June 9, 2023
🚨 My trash bin is full... I threw out everything that had Garth Brooks name on it 🚨 https://t.co/3s5kXozS17
— Chloe (@Chloe4Djt) June 10, 2023
#GarthBrooks defiantly sells #BudLight at his new Nashville bar and calls boycotters 'as*holes'#BoycottGarthBrooks pic.twitter.com/gYQ60vWd9P
— Giordano Bruno (@GioBruno1600) June 8, 2023
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz also took to Twitter to rightly point out the hypocritical hubris of Brooks who is a documented adulterer and philanderer who is now positioning himself as some sort of moral arbiter.
I’m sure glad we have Garth Brooks to tell us who is and isn’t an asshole.
Question, tho: Does it make someone an asshole if they cheat on their spouse, write a song about it with their paramour, and then publish the duet with THAT VERY paramour?
Or does that make for a good… https://t.co/Qjs5JGS5Oa pic.twitter.com/ELMoUCBCiL
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) June 10, 2023
Many other Twitter users shared the view that Brooks has "chosen a side" and to alienate his mostly conservative base in favor of the trans agenda which is being pushed heavily on American children.
AJ Steele of the "AJ Steel Show" acutely summarized how many feel about Brooks' betrayal.
Steel tweeted, "Fatso Garth Brooks who made millions from his conservative fans, said that folks who don't support transsexual groomers are 'a**holes' who are not welcome in his new bar. I hope there's enough deviants to fill up his joint, because when in Nashville, I'll be anywhere but there!"
WARNING: The following tweet contains vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive.
Fatso Garth Brooks who made millions from his conservative fans, said that folks who don't support transsexual groomers are "assholes" who are not welcome in his new bar.
I hope there's enough deviants to fill up his joint, because when in Nashville, I'll be anywhere but there! pic.twitter.com/WpXbl7kWao— AJ Steel Show (@ajsteelshow) June 10, 2023
Brooks' actions stand in stark contrast to other popular music stars like country star John Rich as well as Kid Rock who filmed himself shooting cases of Bud Light with a submachine gun earlier this year.
Rich owns the Nashville-based bar, Redneck Riviera Bar & BBQ and discussed from a practical standpoint that selling Bud Light after their Mulvaney stunt is severely frowned upon.
According to Fox News Digital, Rich stated, "I'm not going to stock it [Bud Light]. We've only got limited area. I've got a limited bar. It's like… I've got to put beer and whiskey and vodkas up here that people want to purchase and they want to support… And brother, I can tell you right now, it's a vicious attitude toward Bud Light."
"You know, the American public. We're never left alone anymore. We literally can't go anywhere without something divisive or political being thrown into our face."
"You've got people that have had brand loyalty to Bud Light forever, you know, since they've been drinking beer...that's what they drink. And they feel betrayed by it and they just can't believe that now when they're sitting down to relax and have a beer, at the end of the day, now it's in their face again. And I think they've just had enough of it," Rich continued.
Rich came off a bit lukewarm in his final statements in regard to not being personally offended by the affront to God that is Mulvaney being put on a Bud Light can, but he understands the financial ramifications of "going woke."
"I wasn't upset that they did it," he said, "but I thought, 'Wow, I don't think that's going to turn out like they thought.' And of course, now you look up and I think Bud, like this morning is approaching $7 billion in revenue lost already. I mean, it's pretty incredible."
I'm sure Rich also understands that Brooks' betrayal of his fanbase will drive even more business to his own bar once it finally opens in Nashville later this year.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
As a conservative political commentator, Dan Bongino doesn't make any bones about being on the right side of any question.
But as a former Secret Service agent protecting Democratic and Republican administrations, he hopes he's dead wrong on this one.
And tens of millions of supporters of former President Donald Trump are hoping it with him.
In the opening of his Rumble show on Thursday, the ex-cop vented his worry that the security detail surrounding Trump on his third bid for the presidency won't be robust enough to deter an assassination attempt of a man who's a lightning rod for enemies -- both abroad and at home.
Bongino promoted the show in a Twitter post that was starkly worded:
"Hard to talk about, but I’m growing concerned about President Trump’s safety," it stated.
Hard to talk about, but I’m growing concerned about President Trump’s safety.
Don’t miss my show today on Rumble for the full story.
Available here. 👇🏻https://t.co/MBItMpBrE5— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) June 8, 2023
Near the beginning of the show, Bongino said he was spurred to talk about it by reports that suggest that "there’s an expectation that Trump may not be here for the election.”
"Having protected both Democrats and Republicans, protectees and presidents, right? I'm telling you, this guy's in real danger," said Bongino, who served in the Secret Service from 1999 -- the tail end of the Bill Clinton presidency -- to 2011, the early years of Barack Obama's tenure.
"You've got the Iranian threat out there, from his actions against the Iranians," he said. "The Chinese Communist Party doesn't like him. They don't want to see him back in power.
And that doesn't even include the American left, which has made a campaign strategy out of stoking Trump hatred to a fever pitch since 2015, and has the assistance of the establishment media and leftist celebrities in doing it.
"There's a unique, witches' brew of threat for this guy," Bongino said.
Check it out here (the quoted material here is all from Bongino's opening, which takes up the first eight minutes or so):
Bongino made it clear he wasn't just talking about the juvenile rhetoric of over-the-hill hacks -- like comedian Kathy Griffin and her "decapitation" of Trump in 2017 or actor Robert DeNiro and his fake tough guy act throughout the Trump presidency, or the countless other vainglorious children of Hollywood and the left lying about their willingness to put their precious selves at risk in an attack on Trump.
He's talking about a real, life-endangering threat -- and one he said is made more likely because Trump's level of protection is not where it needs to be.
[ic_related]
For political considerations, he said, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, could hamstring Trump's security. (DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the man overseeing and facilitating the current invasion of the United States by literally millions of illegal aliens, hasn't exactly covered himself with glory when it comes to preventing problems.
"My real concern here is, due to the partisan hatred of Donald Trump, that they may be pressured to not give him the security detail he needs ... because they don't want to make him look presidential, or different than the other candidates," Bongino said.
Considering the malicious indifference of the Mayorkas tenure at DHS, Bongino's worries about Trump's level of protection can't be dismissed as groundless.
And considering the persistent poisoning of Trump's public image ever since he announced his first presidential bid in 2015, Bongino's fears about an attack on the former president -- launched by his foreign enemies, his domestic enemies, or some unholy alliance of the two -- can't be brushed aside.
Now that FBI Director Christopher Wray has all but completed the work former Director James Comey, acting former FBI Director Andrew McCabe and the rest to turn the bureau into a brothel of dishonesty, now that the malevolently scheming Merrick Garland has done the same with the Department of Justice, it could well be that the Secret Service is the last remaining federal law-enforcement agency that retains a modicum of trust among the American people.
If anything like an assassination attempt against Trump were to succeed, or even come close to success, that trust would be destroyed too.
And one more tenuous thread of unity that holds the country together would be snapped asunder.
Dan Bongino has been right many, many times in his life as a political commentator. Even liberals should hope he's wrong on this one.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
One clip from NBC's "Little Big Shots"-- though fairly old -- has been making its rounds on the internet.
Heidi St. John, founder of MomStrong International, posted it on Instagram recently with the caption, "Facts so basic even a child can explain."
View this post on Instagram
The video featured a remarkable 4-year-old girl named Brielle explaining the differences between men's and women's anatomy, particularly the pelvis, to Steve Harvey.
"It's the only bone in the body that's gender specific," she told Harvey with an adorable lisp that had the audience chuckling.
"Which means it's different in boys and girls."
"Is it?" Harvey responded.
"Yes. The pelvis's job is to protect the organs used for digesting and reproduction, which means growing babies," she whispered confidentially to the amazed Harvey.
While undeniably adorable, the reason this clip has generated so much interest of late is that this intelligent young girl effectively highlighted a fundamental truth that has been muddied in ideological rhetoric and clever wordsmithing of today's society.
There are only two genders, each with distinct biological differences created for specific biological purposes, including procreation.
This simple, universal, biological fact should be the only information about sex necessary to provide to students at the school level.
The primary mission of schools is to provide students with an education that equips them with knowledge, critical thinking skills, and the ability to apply that knowledge in various contexts.
Academic education encompasses subjects like mathematics, science -- including biology -- history, and languages, which provide students with the foundation to understand the world around them and navigate their future endeavors.
It is no secret that our nation's school system is failing our kids, leaving them behind children in many other countries and unprepared for the future. Our National Assessment of Educational Progress report, also known as The Nation's Report Card, shows "plummetting" scores for math and reading in U.S. schools.
Yet our nation's leadership and school boards across the country run by left-wing academics are intent on pushing an agenda that does nothing to empower these children to succeed in life.
Instead, vital funds earmarked for education are spent on "pride" celebrations featuring drag queens and explicit books about sex, which have no educational component.
A New Hampshire high school is facing heat for using thousands of dollars left over from its Covid-19 funds to put on a drag show featuring men parading around in inappropriate clothing for children. https://t.co/phkLuANnP0 pic.twitter.com/Yp5LKbDULX
— Parents' Rights In Education (@RightsParents) June 5, 2023
While teachers, as caregivers, are sometimes called to look after the mental health of their students, we have lost sight of the fact that schools and learning institutions are not intended to serve as psychiatrists' offices. Nor is it the school's place to teach children about their access to dangerous procedures to help them mutilate their bodies during a period in their lives when their minds are still developing and may be experiencing confusion.
Let our schools prioritize learning and foster an environment where students are encouraged to think, reason, and develop skills that prepare them for life and the workforce.
That is their job.
Anything else should be considered malpractice.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
With former president Trump now facing federal charges over a litany of spurious charges, it might be time to reflect on the fact that Biden, the man whose Justice Department is behind the indictment, seemingly has some nasty secrets of his own.
On Friday, journalist Chanel Rion, chief White House correspondent for One American News Network, took to Twitter to remind Americans of a very disturbing fact - that the former Ukrainian prosecutor general has a document that could ruin the president.
Back in 2019, as Congress was getting ready to impeach Trump for the first time, Viktor Shokin, who formerly served as Ukraine's top prosecutor, told OAN that he had been investigating the money laundering activities of Hunter Biden regarding his holdings in the company Burisma.
In the interview, Shokin alleges that he was forced to end his investigation of Hunter by the then-president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, who said that then-Vice President Joe Biden was threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine unless the investigation ended.
Poroshenko, who desperately needed American aid in the face of Russian aggression, demanded that Shokin halt the investigation, and when Shokin refused, he dismissed him.
Shokin then claimed that there are transcripts of Biden's phone calls with Poroshenko that prove that he was trying to bribe Ukrainian officials to end their investigation of his son.
“The transcripts of Biden’s telephone conversations with Poroshenko is where the truth will show itself," Shokin said, "Americans must demand it."
"And if they do," he continued, "they will see, broad as day, Joe Biden was illegally influencing foreign officials in order to protect his son Hunter and shield illegal money laundering activities.”
Fmr Ukraine Prosecutor Gen. Victor Shokin on #BidenBribery:
“The transcripts of Biden’s telephone conversations with Poroshenko is where the truth will show itself.
Americans must demand it.
And if they do, they will see, broad as day, Joe Biden was illegally influencing… pic.twitter.com/uS3TYXmwKC
— Chanel Rion OAN (@ChanelRion) June 9, 2023
To be clear, none of Shokin's claims have been proven true, but they nonetheless could cause major problems for the president.
Joe Biden's personal interest in Ukraine is at the heart of the allegations of corruption and bribery against his family, and there is a very high-ranking Ukrainian official who claims to have proof of it.
Bear in mind, this is not just some random Ukrainian government worker, Shokin was the country's top prosecutor and it would have been his job to oversee the investigation of Hunter Biden.
The transcripts, if real, would prove that Biden knew of his son's illegal activities and abused his position as vice president to cover for him.
That would be problematic on a number of levels, for obvious reasons.
Right now, the nation is focused on the indictment of Donald Trump, a case that has the potential to cause serious problems for him. But the accusations against Biden are no less damming.
Should these alleged transcripts actually exist, they would prove everything that conservatives have said for years about the Biden family, and the president would be unable to deny his involvement.
Americans need to know if their president was involved in these illegal activities.
If the transcripts are real, Americans deserve to see them.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
In another example of the liberals' war against women, a leftist judge who is sold out to the extreme transgender agenda has ruled against a Seattle spa, saying that, despite the owners' Christian faith, their rule against allowing men claiming to be women to use the facilities was a crime.
Seattle District Court Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein -- who was first appointed to the bench by Jimmy Carter in 1980 -- ruled that a traditional Korean spa where women participate in the nude will be required to allow men who pretend to be women to walk around in the nude with their male genitalia in full view. In effect, the 84-year-old judge has ruled that transgenderism is a chief American principle.
The Olympus Spa was dragged into court when transgender agitator Haven Wilvich filed a civil rights discrimination complaint against the spa when operators told him he could not walk around nude among the women because they had a "women-only" rule, and transgenders who had not fully transitioned were not allowed.
Spa operators said their "women-only rule … is essential for the safety, legal protection, and well-being of our customers," the New York Post reported.
The business did allow transgender men who went the full transitioning distance and had their male genitalia removed to complete the cosmetic fantasy that they are women. But men who still had their male genitalia were not allowed.
Korean Women’s Only Spa in Seattle has been forced to allow Transgender customers with penises to use the spa, even though all customers must be naked.
After a biological man, Haven Wilvich, who identifies as trans filed a discrimination suit for being denied access to the… pic.twitter.com/Q3FvnWCyn9
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) June 9, 2023
Wilvich, though, claimed that merely "identifying" as a woman should be enough to allow him entry to the spa and claimed that the business was discriminating against him and breaking the State of Washington's extremely liberal "human rights" laws.
Proving that he is merely an activist and not really an aggrieved customer, reports noted that Wilvich never once even went to the spa to try to gain entry. He launched his attack after merely hearing about the spa's "women-only" rule. Wilvich has admitted that he filed his complaint after only speaking to the spa on the phone and after he was told that "pre-op trans women were not allowed."
"They were breaking Washington state law and I reported that violation," the extremist told the media.
Because it is a traditional Korean spa of gender-segregated bathhouses called "jjimjilbang," the rules require women to be nude in the pool area, Yahoo News added.
The owners of the spa, Myoon Woon Lee, and company's president, Sun Lee, told the courts that they are "unwilling to remake the ‘jjimjilbang’ we have worked so hard over many years to build and preserve, simply for the sake of promoting gender neutrality."
Lee said that he feared that allowing men to walk around nude would expose his business to lawsuits and maybe criminal penalties from women, especially minors. He also said that naked men in the spa have already cost him customers who will never return.
But the pair also cited their Christian religious beliefs to reject transgender customers who have not fully transitioned.
Wilvich had initially sent his complaint to the Washington State Human Rights Commission in 2020 and that body had ruled against the spa, ordering them to allow pre-operative transgender women to parade around nude to their heart's content.
But in 2021, the spa launched its own lawsuit against Andreta Armstrong, the commission’s executive director, alleging that Armstrong violated the spa owners' First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and religion, and their right to freedom of association.
Unfortunately, Rothstein ruled against each of these points, as can be seen in excerpts of her ruling at Reason's Volokh Conspiracy blog. Rothstein's ruling promulgates Wilvich's fantasy that he is a woman and basically elevates that as a more important principle than the more than 200-year-old American ideals of free speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association.
In her ruling, the judge pointed out that the WSHRC says "sexual orientation" includes those whose "gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior, or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the sex assigned to that person at birth," Yahoo reported.
Wilvich, of course, was thrilled with his victory. Indeed, the extremist celebrated on social media by calling himself "more woman" than any real woman because he chose transgenderism -- a practice that has been linked to mental illness.
"I’m more woman than any TERF will ever be because I am an intentional woman whereas they are only incidental," he wrote, according to the Post.
He also doubled down on that sentiment, telling the media, "I think that’s true. I think ‘chosen’ womanhood is just as valid, if not more valid, than people who don’t analyze their gender, who don’t think critically about the role that they’ve been given in society."
Despite his pride in helping to destroy the safety of women, not to mention the business of the Olympus Spa, Wilvich is also blasting both the court and the WSHRC for including his name in the proceedings.
"My name never should have been part of the public record," Wilvich said, adding that it's a "dangerous precedent to be set for minority people."
In other words, Wilvich is looking to eliminate another long-held American tradition, the one where people accused of crimes are allowed to face their accusers. Like all these left-wing loons, he evidently believes no American principle or tradition is worth keeping; all must be destroyed in service to radical transgenderism.
The law has been thoroughly perverted to serve the transgender agenda, putting women and girls at risk in nearly every corner of this country. And it will only get worse from here as sick-minded men realize they can use the cover of transgenderism to force themselves into women's spaces. Worse, they know the courts will serve as their enforcers.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
For anyone who thought that the chaotic and unprecedented week that former President Donald Trump just had would somehow dampen his spirits -- bad news, bub.
If a recent Truth Social post is any indication, the former president isn't just surviving -- he's thriving while cooking up big plans for the future of the country.
Take a look at this post in vintage Trump all caps:
"AMERICA WENT TO SLEEP LAST NIGHT WITH TEARS IN ITS EYES," Trump posted.
Indeed, it's obvious why any Trump supporter would be upset -- a second spurious indictment has been brought against him consisting of a whopping 37 counts.
Even if you think Trump did himself no favors with the amount of rope he appeared to hand his political enemies, it's undeniable that a sitting president just allowed his Justice Department to indict his chief political rival, something that has literally never happened before.
That's so antithetical to the very foundations this country was built on that it should terrify you regardless of whether you support Trump.
Obviously, we all know it doesn't terrify the radical left, as there are few things they enjoy more than seeing Trump suffer.
Again, bad news for them: Trump doesn't appear to be suffering.
If anything, the former president made it very clear that those smug leftists should get their laughs in while they still can.
"SOMEDAY SOON, HOWEVER, [AMERICA] WILL BE ABLE TO WIPE AWAY THOSE TEARS AND SMILE, BIGGER THAN EVER BEFORE, FOR WE WILL HAVE DEFEATED THE RADICAL LEFT MARXISTS, FASCISTS, COMMUNISTS, LUNATICS, & DERANGED MANIACS, & CLEARED THE PATH TO PUT AMERICA FIRST & THEN, QUICKLY, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"
To his credit, Trump appears to be taking things in stride after a very bad, no-good, all-around crummy week (albeit with a glimmer of good news).
On Thursday, the former president was indicted by the Justice Department on a litany of charges related to his handling of government documents after leaving the Oval Office.
In the immediate aftermath of the indictment, Trump took to Truth Social to proclaim himself "AN INNOCENT MAN!"
Trump has maintained his innocence since the beginning of this ordeal when the FBI charged into Mar-a-Lago last August and seized the documents in question.
And whatever you may think of Trump's bravado in the face of these charges, you can't deny that he at least has the fortitude to address the controversy head-on.
You'll get no such openness from President Joe Biden, who himself is embroiled in an explosive scandal in which he has been accused of taking a $5 million bribe during his time as vice president.
The best response Biden could muster to those damning allegations was to call them "a bunch of malarkey," which is... not exactly a stirring or inspiring defense.
But then again, it's hard to remember the last time Biden was either stirring or inspiring.
Trump? His immense popularity is due in no small part to his natural ability to stir and inspire.
That's never been clearer than with his latest Truth Social post.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
When Jack Smith was named special counsel to look into multiple cases against former President Donald Trump, he was painted by the media as an impartial man, "a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague who’d cut his teeth in New York prosecuting state and federal crimes, including the brutal beating of a Haitian immigrant by police."
He'd come to the top of the Department of Justice's public integrity unit in 2010 after then-Attorney General Eric Holder needed to clean house because of an embarrassing overturned conviction against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens in which it was revealed, according to The Associated Press, the public integrity section had withheld exculpatory evidence from the Republican lawmaker's legal team.
Since then, we've learned a great deal about Smith, his five year tenure at the head of the public integrity unit and what he's been up to since then -- including about the overturned guilty verdicts against Republican lawmakers he was responsible for prosecuting, his association with one infamous Obama-era figure, and his wife's association with Michelle Obama herself.
That glowing "war crimes prosecutor" copy was from the AP, reporting on Smith's appointment as special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November of last year.
"Jack Smith told The Associated Press in an interview [in 2010] that he’d read about the Stevens case and couldn’t resist the chance to step in and run the section," the wire service reported.
“I had a dream job and I had no desire to leave it, but opportunities like this don’t come up very often,” Smith said. “I left the dream job for a better one.”
Well, now he has the dream indictment of any career Democrat: a 37-count indictment against Trump, including charges of willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and false statements, according to Fox News.
But wait, isn't Smith supposed to be impartial? Even Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law scholar who has often sided with Trump in the past, called it "an extremely damning indictment" from "a serious prosecutor," which is a whole "different ball game" than the charges filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Trump, for his part, called Smith a "deranged lunatic" in a post on Truth Social. While that might be a bit much and Smith's charges are a "different ball game" from Bragg's farcical Manhattan case, just because Smith might be a "serious prosecutor" doesn't make him a politically neutral one.
Take, for instance, the biggest knock on Smith: his involvement with Obama-era Internal Revenue Service figure Lois Lerner and the scandal that led to her resignation.
Lerner, director of the Exempt Organizations Unit, slow-walked the approval of Tea Party-affiliated and other conservative groups before the 2012, blunting the impact they might have. As head of the Department of Justice's public integrity unit, the Washington Examiner noted, Smith was closely involved in targeting the Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny.
“Jack Smith was looking for ways to prosecute the innocent Americans that Lois Lerner targeted during the IRS scandal,” said Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, now the head of the House Judiciary Committee, in a statement to the Washington Examiner upon Smith's appointment as special counsel in November.
Both Jordan and GOP California Rep. Darrell Issa, who led the House Oversight Committee at the time, tried to get Smith to testify back in 2014 about his role in the targeting scandal.
“It is apparent that the Department’s leadership, including Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith, was closely involved in engaging with the IRS in wake of Citizens United and political pressure from prominent Democrats to address perceived problems with the decision," the representatives said in a media release at the time.
Citizens United v. FEC was a landmark Supreme Court case which held that prohibitions on independent expenditures by corporations or private groups in elections was an unconstitutional breach of the First Amendment's right to free expression. The IRS targeting scandal was, in large part, triggered by the lifting of those prohibitions, with Lerner telling an audience at Duke University the IRS was under pressure to "fix the problem" the decision created before the 2010 midterms.
Just days before the speech, Issa and Jordan said in the letter, “the Justice Department convened a meeting with former IRS official Lois Lerner in October 2010 to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits. This meeting was arranged at the direction of Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith.”
Lerner would apologize and resign, but Smith would never testify on the matter.
Smith inserted the DOJ into what would become the Lois Lerner IRS scandal targeting conservative nonprofit groups during the Obama years.
— Francis Brennan (@FrancisBrennan) June 9, 2023
“The witness said the conversation detailed "how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits."https://t.co/4k4bVXdkON
— Francis Brennan (@FrancisBrennan) June 9, 2023
And then there's the case of Virginia GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell, who was convicted on corruption counts in 2014 after being prosecuted by Smith; the government argued that McDonnell took improper gifts from a political donor.
However, as Politico noted, the conviction was overturned by a unanimous 8-0 Supreme Court decision in June of 2016. (The case came after Justice Antonin Scalia had died and while President Obama was trying to get a certain Merrick Garland appointed to the court -- unsuccessfully, thank heavens.)
In the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts blasted the prosecution for relying on a "boundless" definition of what could constitute corruption.
Smith convicted former Republican Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, which was later UNANIMOUSLY overturned by the Supreme Court.
— Francis Brennan (@FrancisBrennan) June 9, 2023
"The decision from the eight-justice court could make it tougher for prosecutors to prove corruption cases against politicians in cases where there is no proof of an explicit agreement linking a campaign donation or gift to a contract, grant or vote," Politico's Josh Gerstein wrote. "The court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, rejected the government’s position that simply agreeing to meet with someone on account of such largesse could be enough to constitute an official act that could trigger a corruption conviction."
“There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that. But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the Government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute,” Roberts wrote in his decision.
“A more limited interpretation of the term ‘official act’ leaves ample room for prosecuting corruption, while comporting with the text of the statute and the precedent of this Court.”
And just in case you wanted to know where the Smith family stands, the special counsel's wife produced this hagiography of Michelle Obama for Netflix:
As the New York Post noted: "Katy Chevigny is credited as a producer on 'Becoming,' a 2020 documentary about Obama, and Federal Election Commission records show that she donated $2,000 in support of Biden’s presidential run that same year."
The special counsel's wife, the Post reported, "also worked on the 2018 documentary titled 'Dark Money.' The film is described as a 'political thriller' that 'takes viewers to Montana – a front line in the fight to preserve fair elections nationwide – to follow an intrepid local journalist working to expose the real-life impact of the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.'”
Completely neutral.
To what extent Smith's political leanings affected his judgment in this case remains to be seen. Both the current president and the woman who wished to become president in Trump's stead, Hillary Clinton, have had their own run-ins with classified document issues and there were no special prosecutors or charges there.
In this case, one might assume Attorney General Garland knew exactly the right man for the job -- and he was hardly going to be independent. After Trump, one can only guess who he goes after next.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
An embattled electric vehicle company has just received more bad news that could damage its image even further.
At the beginning of June, Yahoo Finance reported that electric vehicle startup Rivian had seen its stock price plummet 90 percent from its record high, meaning that the company is on the verge of being pushed out of the NASDAQ 100 Index.
While that may seem like the worst news a company could get, the situation has since only deteriorated for Rivian, as one of its flagship products malfunctioned -- and that's putting it lightly.
According to Carscoops, on Monday, a video emerged of a Rivian R1T truck suddenly bursting into flames while charging at an Electrify America station in Mill Valley, California.
Firefighters quickly rushed to the scene to put out the blaze. A spokesperson for Rivian later gave a statement to Carscoops.
“We are aware of the incident, and we are conducting a full investigation,” the spokesperson said. “Nobody was harmed, and at this time, it does not appear that the vehicle’s high voltage battery was involved.”
WARNING: The following video contains language that some may find offensive.
Video of that @Rivian fire the other day.
It appears something exploded (maybe the 12v battery?). Rivian says the high voltage battery didn’t appear to be involved.
Fire possibly started at the charger port (using @ElectrifyAm). pic.twitter.com/lv5riLNZK6
— Matthew Donegan-Ryan (@MatthewDR) June 8, 2023
As of June 8, the automotive news outlet reported, "there is still no official explanation regarding the cause of the fire. However, several commentators have theorized that the fire may have originated near the charge port before spreading to the [trunk]."
This is the absolute worst thing that could have happened to Rivian, as the company had been tanking in the stock market due to similar instances that had occurred in the past.
In May 2022, local NPR outlet WGLT reported that there had been at least three fires in the previous seven months at the Rivian plant in Normal, Illinois: one in a battery that had been in a repair area, one in a vehicle that caught fire inside the plant and one in the automated battery assembly area.
Rivian already had a reputation for this, and now, this latest incident with one of its flagship products could scare away other investors, thereby sealing its fate in the stock market.
However, this is about much more than Rivian. This is a reminder of the challenges facing electric vehicle technology in general.
The left keeps pushing electric vehicles as a climate-friendly alternative to gas-powered vehicles. While EV technology certainly has a lot of potential and is worth exploring further, it still has a long way to go before it can be as useful as a gas engine.
Rivian is not the only company to experience these challenges, as other electric vehicles have proven time and again to be fire hazards.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in 2022, Florida Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis complained to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about problems firefighters encountered with EVs.
“I ... saw with my own eyes an EV continuously ignite, and continually reignite, as fireteams doused the vehicle with tens-of-thousands of gallons of water,” he wrote.
"Subsequently, I was informed by the fire department that the vehicle, once again reignited when it was loaded onto the tow truck. Based on my conversations with area firefighters, this is not an isolated incident.
“As you can appreciate, I am very concerned that we may have a ticking time bomb on our hands.”
Electric vehicles are also proving to be unreliable in their current state. They break down much more easily, they lose energy quickly and they take a long time to charge.
Their high price tag -- an average of $58,385 as of February, compared to $44,697 for a standard non-luxury vehicle, according to Kelley Blue Book -- puts them out of reach for most Americans, meaning that there really is no good reason why anyone would want to buy an electric vehicle right now.
If electric vehicles can be manufactured in a way that makes them safe, reliable and affordable, then their development should be cheered as a climate-friendly technological advancement.
But for now, the electric vehicle has a long way to go before that day comes.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
I guess it shouldn't be surprising that former Fox News talk show host Tucker Carlson's staggering more than 70 million views in less than 24 hours of the debut of his new online show "Tucker on Twitter" has left former CNN host Brian Stelter with an even more pronounced pucker from the sour grapes.
Since numbers don't lie, Stelter had to pick on something else to mock the groundbreaking broadcast, which some conservatives claim "broke the media matrix."
Stelter picked up on the fact that Tucker was using a teleprompter controller to run his own prompter while on the show, tweeting, "Notice his right hand in the wide shot: He's using a TelePrompTer controller to run the prompter himself."
"Tucker on Twitter" is how @TuckerCarlson's video is branded. Notice his right hand in the wide shot: He's using a TelePrompTer controller to run the prompter himself pic.twitter.com/mzpJ9SFG88
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 6, 2023
While an astute observation, Stelter's tweet did not have the effect he intended it to. His catty comment was meant, I assume, to draw attention to the fact that Tucker most likely has a small crew and budget for this new venture, unlike his days on the well-produced "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox.
What he may not have realized is that the fact that "Tucker on Twitter" is not like one of the highly controlled big network productions -- and that is exactly the point.
It's what Tucker wants.
It's what we all want.
As Brandon Strake put it, "The guy is a one-of-a-kind genius."
lol- he writes his 10-15 minute monologues himself- EVERY NIGHT.
The guy is a one-of-a-kind genius.
Who gives AF if he uses a teleprompter to deliver HIS OWN material?— Brandon Straka (@BrandonStraka) June 7, 2023
A genius who understands what the American people want.
The dramatic rise of Fox News since its inception in 1996 was primarily because it filled a void, offering "fair and balanced" journalism without the filters of the leftist agenda.
Unfortunately, over time, the network succumbed to the pressures of the corporate world with increasingly produced news shows tightly controlled by media executives and influenced by advertisers.
Tucker offered us what conservative viewers have always wanted.
The plain and simple truth and the respect from those who bring us the news to allow us to make up our own minds. Nothing more.
Conservative political commentator, Benny Johnson, explained the genius behind Tucker's new format perfectly. "Tucker broke the corporate media monopoly matrix tonight & it's never coming back, " he tweeted. "Tucker uploaded a 10 min monologue. No ads or interruptions. No pricy subscriptions. Watch on demand. The result? - 17M views - 90K RTs - 25K comments In under 180 mins We are the media now."
Tucker broke the corporate media monopoly matrix tonight & it’s never coming back.
Tucker uploaded a 10 min monologue.
No ads or interruptions.
No pricy subscriptions.
Watch on demand.The result?
- 17M views
- 90K RTs
- 25K commentsIn under 180 mins
We are the media now🔥 pic.twitter.com/3X2vLIBiNz
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 7, 2023
At the end of his first "Tucker On Twitter" broadcast, Tucker made it clear that he did not intend to be controlled, comparing his show to a "short-wave radio under the blankets."
"We are told there are no gatekeepers here," Tucker said. "If that turns out to be false, we'll leave."
It remains to be seen if the powers that be will allow Tucker to continue to share his refreshing brand of truthful journalism.
The corporate wheels have begun turning, and Fox News has already started legal proceedings against their former star for breach of contract.
[firefly_poll]
The undeniable fact remains that American viewers are increasingly seeing through and rejecting the polished facades of mainstream news shows and turning to less-produced, more honest reporting.
If "Tucker on Twitter" survives, it has the power to awaken millions of sleeping Americans and unveil the truth behind the curtain.
For Tucker's sake, but more so for the sake of the American people, we pray it does.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
How far have we come in 30 years? We've gone from viewing adultery as a disqualifying factor for seeking the presidency to being on the precipice of normalizing the biggest sexual taboo our society has, Tucker Carlson said in his second Twitter episode since his dismissal from Fox News on April 24.
Carlson's monologue came one day after The Wall Street Journal published the results of an investigation by the paper and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst that found Instagram's algorithms allow pedophiles to effectively communicate with one another like no other social network does.
"Pedophiles have long used the internet, but unlike the forums and file-transfer services that cater to people who have interest in illicit content, Instagram doesn’t merely host these activities," the Journal reported Wednesday. "Its algorithms promote them.
"Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests, the Journal and the academic researchers found.
"Though out of sight for most on the platform, the sexualized accounts on Instagram are brazen about their interest. The researchers found that Instagram enabled people to search explicit hashtags such as #pedowhore and #preteensex and connected them to accounts that used the terms to advertise child-sex material for sale.
"Such accounts often claim to be run by the children themselves and use overtly sexual handles incorporating words such as 'little slut for you.'"
The report noted that Instagram parent company Meta "said it has in the past two years taken down 27 pedophile networks and is planning more removals."
"Since receiving the Journal queries, the platform said it has blocked thousands of hashtags that sexualize children, some with millions of posts, and restricted its systems from recommending users search for terms known to be associated with sex abuse," the Journal said. "It said it is also working on preventing its systems from recommending that potentially pedophilic adults connect with one another or interact with one another’s content."
This is disgusting stuff -- and, as Carlson noted, Instagram's response was indicative of just how far down into the sewers our society has sunk.
Not only that, he said, but this was all intentional, noting that if "you wanted the power not simply to control people's behavior, but to control how they think, not just their bodies, but their minds, as a God would. ... You'd need to take charge of the society's taboos."
"A taboo is something that by popular consensus is not allowed," the former Fox News host said. "A taboo may not be illegal, but it doesn't need to be. Over time, social prohibitions are more powerful and more enduring than laws. Societies are defined by what they will not permit -- as are, famously, religions."
Our taboos are changing fast, Carlson said, and that's something that is "not happening organically."
Take, for instance, the first campaign of our 42nd president.
"As recently as the 1992 presidential campaign, adultery was considered disqualifying for anyone seeking higher office. Bill Clinton was very nearly derailed in the New Hampshire primary by his affair with Gennifer Flowers," Carlson said. "Clinton went to elaborate lengths to lie about the relationship because he had no choice."
But, by the time of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, he said, any questions about a character's personal life were off the table. And more and more taboos began to fall off the table, too: drug use, stealing, shameless hypocrisy and "taking other people's money for not working."
"All of these things used to be considered unacceptable in America," Carlson said. "Not anymore. So it probably shouldn't surprise us that the greatest taboo of all is teetering on the edge of acceptability: child molestation.
"A generation ago, talking to someone else's children about sex was widely considered grounds for a thrashing. Touching them sexually was effectively a death penalty offense," the former Fox News host said.
"When Jeffrey Dahmer was bludgeoned to death in the bathroom of a Wisconsin prison in 1994, the Milwaukee district attorney had to caution the public not to turn Dahmer's killer into a folk hero," he noted. "Jeffrey Dahmer had molested and murdered children. People felt justified in celebrating his death."
Yet, as Carlson noted, when one of the men shot and killed in self-defense by Kyle Rittenhouse, Joseph Rosenbaum, was revealed to be a child molester himself, "the media cast [him] as the victim of the story. Kyle Rittenhouse, meanwhile -- an underage boy fending off violence from a child molester -- was denounced as the villain. Ultimately, he was indicted for murder.
"One of the things that this tells us is the people who run our country no longer see child molesters as the worst among us."
While one could argue there were shades of gray in the Rittenhouse case due to the Black Lives Matter movement automatically making a martyr out of anyone it deemed a soldier for its cause, no matter what their past transgressions were (Rosenbaum was convicted of having sex with a minor in Arizona in 2002), there was no moral middle ground in the Instagram matter -- or there shouldn't have been, anyway.
As Carlson pointed out, the algorithm on the Meta-owned social media site was recommending the phrase "incest toddlers" to users, among other heinous, despicable things.
"By the way, no one at Instagram denied that any of this had happened," Carlson noted. "Nor did Mark Zuckerberg, who controls the company. The Journal story was accurate. It was all pretty shocking -- but not as shocking as what happened next."
In fact, what happened next was a whole lot of nothing -- no investigations from the Department of Justice or Congress announced immediately, no firings, nothing.
The man who runs Instagram, Adam Mosseri, still has his job. And while he didn't tweet anything about the Journal's report, what's interesting is what he did tweet on May 31 -- and what he's kept pinned to the top of his Twitter account. It explains how the algorithm works -- and, given the content of the Journal's story, it doesn't make him or his employer look good.
How the “Algorithm” Works 📝
- “The Algorithm” (or actually algorithms)
- Ranking Stories
- Ranking Feed
- Ranking Reels
- Ranking Explore
- “Shadowbanning”
- How to Grow Your AudienceMore details here: https://t.co/AzFTwRCp6e pic.twitter.com/ZUJDT37aaD
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) May 31, 2023
"We'll often talk about 'the algorithm.' But there is no one algorithm for Instagram; there are many algorithms and ranking processes we use to try to personalize the experience to make it as interesting as we can for each and every person who uses Instagram," the Instagram head said in the video.
"We believe in this idea of personalization -- what you're interested in and what I'm interested in is different, and so your Instagram and my Instagram should be different."
Right: "You're interested in children," Carlson said. "That's why you're getting all the incest toddler posts. It's a highly personalized experience."
"Of course, everybody at Instagram -- in fact, everyone everywhere in authority -- will still claim to think that child molestation is bad," he continued. "But the tone has changed unmistakably.
"When they say it's bad, they mean it in a kind of abstract way, bad like a civil war in central Africa is bad. You wouldn't prefer it, but there are reasons it happens. That's why we now refer to pedophiles as 'minor-attracted persons,' because honestly, who can judge?" Carlson said.
"These people are a sexual minority, so pause before you attack them. And in any case, it's not like pedophiles are barging into the Capitol building to sit in Nancy Pelosi's chair or asking uncomfortable questions about the last election."
Ep. 2 Cling to your taboos! pic.twitter.com/45AeVdtwOu
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 8, 2023
Meanwhile, as the former Fox News host noted, President Joe Biden was giving speeches about how "white supremacy" was the greatest threat to America -- although neither he nor anyone else wants to define what "white supremacy" really entails -- and violating the unspoken code of wokeness could lead to dire consequences personally, professionally and legally.
This slippery slope, Carlson said in closing, is why we desperately need to hold on to our taboos and not let the left redefine them.
The non-wokeness taboos, he said, "were organic. They derive from collective experience and instinct, the two most reliable guides to life. They evolved for a reason. They still do."
"Our job at this point is to protect them, despite the hectoring, the nonstop hectoring, from the people in charge," Carlson said. "You know the outlines of right and wrong. You're born knowing them.
"So don't let them talk you out of what you can smell. Don't let them rationalize away your intuitive, moral sense. Cling to your taboos like your life depends on them -- because it does. Cherish and protect them like family heirlooms. That's exactly what they are."
Well, talk about being unchained; Carlson isn't tied to Fox News anymore -- and fans are loving it.
We’re so back 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
— Joel Valdez (@realJoelValdez) June 8, 2023
Aside from that, though, he's right about clinging to our cultural taboos like our lives depended on it. If we don't, we'll continue down the slippery slope we're on now.
School libraries and major corporations will continue to sexualize children. "Minor-attracted persons" will continue to be a phrase more and more of us use until it replaces "pedophile." And one day we'll wake up and, poof, the taboo will have been basically engineered away.
In 1992, Bill Clinton had to lie about adultery to get elected. In 2024, it could be revealed that every candidate had committed it and hardly an eyebrow would be raised.
Consider that when you think about how important the Instagram algorithm revelations really are.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
