The 'Honorable' Merrick Garland Goes Mum at Confirmation Hearing (VIDEO)

Ed Driscoll has a fabulous roundup, at Instapundit, "MERRICK GARLAND WATCH."

At watch, at Fox News:

Democrats 'Going Bold' on Immigration Reform?

Well, the idiot Dems are no doubt "bold" in thinking that abolishing our nation's borders is good public policy. But of course, just about everything "China Joe" has done thus far, along with his weak "majority" cohorts in Congress, has been to hammer any and all "MAGA" supporters of former President Trump. From defunding the "wall" at the southern border, to canceling the Keystone pipeline up in South Dakota, it's like the dumb Dems are just oblivious to the real concerns of American citizens in the heartland. 

Of course, we'll see how it all turns out, when the 2022 midterms roll around, but you can bet good money that a LARGE number of uber-progressive Democrat legislators will be sweating out VERY tight campaigns to keep their seats.

That'll be fun to watch. The Senate is literally tied, and only with the help of V.P Harris can Dems get anything passed in that chamber; and in the House, Speaker Pelosi looks like she's flipped her wig, with all her wild rants and distractions about "white supremacist domestic terrorists." And, never forget, Trump, sure, was impeached twice, but never found guilty of all the hateful left's bogus attacks, dating back literally to the days after the 2016 election (Hillary won the popular vote! Russia! Ukraine! Bwawhahah!). 

So, we'll see. We'll see.

At LAT, "Democrats unveil broad immigration reform bill with citizenship path for 11 million":

WASHINGTON — President Biden made official on Thursday his aggressive opening salvo in a decades-long effort to reform a broken U.S. immigration system, which ground to a near-halt under his predecessor.

Democratic lawmakers introduced the legislation that Biden officials touted on his first day in the White House — an ambitious bill that would offer a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants in the United States without legal status.

With Democrats having a tenuous hold on both chambers of Congress, progressives have pushed the Biden administration to go “big, bold and inclusive” on immigration reform, as Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Whittier) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the bill’s chief sponsors, put it in a statement Wednesday.

Republicans, for their part, began to decry the bill before it was announced, a potential sign that Biden’s proposal may join the congressional graveyard of efforts before it under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

“I look forward to working with leaders in the House and Senate to address the wrongdoings of the past administration and restore justice, humanity and order to our immigration system,” Biden said in a statement Thursday. “These are not Democratic or Republican priorities — but American ones.”

But administration officials said that “this is not a bipartisan bill,” and they signaled Wednesday that they view it more as an opening bid and don’t necessarily expect it to pass with the needed Republican support in its current form.

“It is his vision of what it takes to fix the system,” one White House official said in a call with reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity without providing a reason, “and it’s also a chance to kind of reset and restart conversations on immigration reform after the last four years.”

At a news conference Thursday introducing the bill, Menendez, the highest-ranking Latino in Congress, said he knows the path forward will demand negotiations, but he refused to make concessions from the start, calling it “the righteous thing” to do...

And you know, it's not "11 million undocumented migrants" in this country. Only Democrats push that lie, but that's who they are, and that's what they do.

Awful ghouls, all around. 

 

Lauren Boebert Rips 'Gun Control' Dems Who Mocked Her for 'Gun Fetish' on Zoom (VIDEO)

There's a piece up at "The American Independent," an obvious far-left website I've never heard of, slamming Rep. Boebert for her defense of Second Amendment rights, and her right, as a Member of Congress, to "open carry" her weapons in the halls of that august body.

I'm no expert on this area, but guns in Congress were extremely common in the 19th century, and in recent years the Supreme Court has ruled (twice) that the right to bear arms is an "individual right." So, I'm very interested to see gun control freaks try to "wish away" SCOTUS precedents on this matter.

Here's the piece, via Memeorandum, "2nd Amendment defender Lauren Boebert upset others might want to amend Constitution." (Safe link.)

And you can watch the interaction from some of the actual committee hearing in question, at the video:

RELATED: Again, while I'm no expert on this topic, SCOTUS returned to the Second Amendment in a case last year, in Thomas Rogers, et al. v. Grewal, where it states at the opinion:

The text of the Second Amendment guarantees that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” As this Court explained in Heller, “[a]t the time of the founding, as now, to ‘bear’ meant to ‘carry.’” 554 U.S., at 584. “When used with ‘arms,’ . . . the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose— confrontation.” Ibid. Thus, the right to “bear arms” refers to the right to “‘wear, bear, or carry upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.’” Ibid. (quoting Muscarello v. United States, 524 U. S. 125, 143 (1998) (GINSBURG, J., dissenting); alterations and some internal quotation marks omitted).

“The most natural reading of this definition encompasses public carry.” Peruta v. California, 582 U. S. ___, ___ (2017) (THOMAS, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 5). Confrontations, of course, often occur outside the home. See, e.g., Moore, supra, at 937 (noting that “most murders occur outside the home” in Chicago). Thus, the right to carry arms for self-defense inherently includes the right to carry in public. This conclusion not only flows from the definition of “bear Arms” but also from the natural use of the language in the text. As I have stated before, it is “extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen.”

Quite right. 

So, again, I only suggest, as a "non-expert," that idiot leftist gun-control freaks back the f*ck off, sheesh.

(And note, SCOTUS denied certiorari in Rogers, because the lower courts had already affirmed previous SCOTUS rulings holding that the Second Amendment indeed confers an individual right the bear ("carry") arms in public. But no matter, I stand with Rep. Boebert, and I hope she continues to hammer her arguments in defense of the Second Amendment.)

 

Now Joe Klein, of "Anonymous" Fame, is Writing at the Bulwark?

I guess the folks over at the Bulwark ran out of Lincoln Project sexual predator-enablers to post their "Never Trump" crap at their crappy "Never Trump" website.

So now they're going with Joe Klein? Joe Klein, really? I haven't heard a peep outta that guy, since, I don't know, I saw "Primary Colors" in theaters? 

But here he is, at the bullsh*t Bulwark, and whether he's hip to the ignominious origins of that foul outlet is anyone's guess, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

He's blathering on about "unity," as if such a touchy-feely notion's gonna fix one iota of our entrenched mutual partisan hatred and polarization in this country, a hatred that's actually gotten worse since the new "unity" president (China Joe Biden) was elected.

See, "What We Mean When We Talk About 'Unity'":

It’s not about voting on a policy. It’s about fighting the insurgents trying to destroy our democracy.

Sure Joe. Who cares about "voting on policy" when you've got a majority party now in Washington filled with demonic Democrats located far to the left of Castro's Cuba. 

Brilliant! 

Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino Implosion (VIDEO)

You'd think this would have been big national news, at least ahead of time, but Trump's Atlantic City hotel and casino was blown to bits this morning, it turns out. 

And NYT does have it, and the reporters were no doubt giddy as they pushed the publish button.

See, "Watch the Trump Era in Atlantic City End With 3,000 Sticks of Dynamite":

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — It was not the biggest or the best implosion ever.

An auction for the right to detonate the dynamite to begin the implosion of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., fizzled.

Front-row seats to view Wednesday morning’s spectacle were sold on the cheap. Onlookers in cars hoping to witness the symbolic finale of the former president’s casino empire in the seaside resort city were charged $10 and herded into a lot most recently used as a pandemic-era food distribution site.

The implosion of what was once the premier gaming destination in Atlantic City came less than a month after its best-known former owner, Donald J. Trump, left the White House after losing re-election and became the first president in history to be impeached twice. He was acquitted on Saturday of inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

The tower came down shortly after 9 a.m. amid a huge cloud of dust and an eruption of cheers.

“It’s an end of a not-so-great era,” said Jennifer Owen, 50, who bid $575 to win a front-row seat at a V.I.P. breakfast in an oceanfront pavilion with a direct view of the implosion...

This Ms. Owen must've been a "Never Trumper." She paid $575 to watch? Pfft. It's obviously not that exciting, but Trump haters gonna hate, and watching a Trump property come crumbling down could be replacement therapy after the former president was acquitted during his "snap" impeachment ordeal on Capitl Hill last week.

The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot

It's Glenn Greenwald, one of the only online personalities, of any stripe, who gets what's going on. 

On Substack:  

Insisting on factual accuracy does not make one an apologist for the protesters. False reporting is never justified, especially to inflate threat and fear levels.

What took place at the Capitol on January 6 was undoubtedly a politically motivated riot. As such, it should not be controversial to regard it as a dangerous episode. Any time force or violence is introduced into what ought to be the peaceful resolution of political conflicts, it should be lamented and condemned.

But none of that justifies lying about what happened that day, especially by the news media. Condemning that riot does not allow, let alone require, echoing false claims in order to render the event more menacing and serious than it actually was. There is no circumstance or motive that justifies the dissemination of false claims by journalists. The more consequential the event, the less justified, and more harmful, serial journalistic falsehoods are.

Yet this is exactly what has happened, and continues to happen, since that riot almost seven weeks ago. And anyone who tries to correct these falsehoods is instantly attacked with the cynical accusation that if you want only truthful reporting about what happened, then you’re trying to “minimize” what happened and are likely an apologist for if not a full-fledged supporter of the protesters themselves.

One of the most significant of these falsehoods was the tale — endorsed over and over without any caveats by the media for more than a month — that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by the pro-Trump mob when they beat him to death with a fire extinguisher. That claim was first published by The New York Times on January 8 in an article headlined “Capitol Police Officer Dies From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage.” It cited “two [anonymous] law enforcement officials” to claim that Sicknick died “with the mob rampaging through the halls of Congress” and after he “was struck with a fire extinguisher.”

A second New York Times article from later that day — bearing the more dramatic headline: “He Dreamed of Being a Police Officer, Then Was Killed by a Pro-Trump Mob” — elaborated on that story...

After publication of these two articles, this horrifying story about a pro-Trump mob beating a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher was repeated over and over, by multiple journalists on television, in print, and on social media. It became arguably the single most-emphasized and known story of this event, and understandably so — it was a savage and barbaric act that resulted in the harrowing killing by a pro-Trump mob of a young Capitol police officer.

It took on such importance for a clear reason: Sicknick’s death was the only example the media had of the pro-Trump mob deliberately killing anyone. In a January 11 article detailing the five people who died on the day of the Capitol protest, the New York Times again told the Sicknick story: “Law enforcement officials said he had been ‘physically engaging with protesters’ and was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.”

But none of the other four deaths were at the hands of the protesters: the only other person killed with deliberate violence was a pro-Trump protester, Ashil Babbitt, unarmed when shot in the neck by a police officer at close range. The other three deaths were all pro-Trump protesters: Kevin Greeson, who died of a heart attack outside the Capitol; Benjamin Philips, 50, “the founder of a pro-Trump website called Trumparoo,” who died of a stroke that day; and Rosanne Boyland, a fanatical Trump supporter whom the Times says was inadvertently “killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt to fight through a police line.”

This is why the fire extinguisher story became so vital to those intent on depicting these events in the most violent and menacing light possible. Without Sicknick having his skull bashed in with a fire extinguisher, there were no deaths that day that could be attributed to deliberate violence by pro-Trump protesters. Three weeks later, The Washington Post said dozens of officers (a total of 140) had various degrees of injuries, but none reported as life-threatening, and at least two police officers committed suicide after the riot. So Sicknick was the only person killed who was not a pro-Trump protester, and the only one deliberately killed by the mob itself.

It is hard to overstate how pervasive this fire extinguisher story became...

Still more.

 

Trump Acquitted in Democrats' 'Snap' Impeachment: Seven G.O.P Senators Break With Former President in Second Sham Retaliation Bid to Punish Trump and His Supporters (VIDEO)

I've had CNN on this afternoon, and while it's still early, I can tell you, the folks over there are absolutely crushed that Trump wasn't convicted. 

And the seven Republican senators who voted to convict didn't do themselves any favors. G.O.P. Sen. Bill Cassidy has already been censured by the Louisiana Republican Party, so he's lucky he was just reelected to his Senate seat this last November, since he'll at least have six long years for his constituents to "forgive" him for his treason to the Trump cause. 

And no doubt some of the others Republicans who voted to convict will sooner or later pay the price for siding with the demonic Democrats in this farce of an impeachment.

In any case, FWIW, at the Los Angeles Times, "Despite 7 Republicans voting guilty, Senate acquits Trump in attack on Capitol":

WASHINGTON — The Senate acquitted former President Trump on Saturday in his second impeachment trial, even as seven members of his own party delivered a historic rebuke by joining Democrats in voting to convict him of inciting the deadly insurrection last month at the U.S. Capitol.

The 57-43 vote to find Trump guilty fell short of the 67 votes needed for conviction, but it was the most bipartisan such vote in any presidential impeachment trial, exposing the fractures in a Republican Party divided over its future after Trump’s presidency.

The vote was immediately followed by a blistering indictment of Trump on the Senate floor by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who had voted to acquit saying that impeachment of a former president was unconstitutional, but painted Trump as an unhinged menace to democratic institutions.

The Republicans who voted for conviction were Sens. Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Trump is the first American president to be impeached twice, and this trial, which lasted just five days, was the first of a former president. The House impeached him last month on a charge of inciting the insurrection Jan. 6, when a violent mob of his supporters broke into and ransacked the Capitol. The assault left five people dead, including a police officer.

“It is now clear beyond doubt that Trump supported the actions of the mob, and so he must be convicted,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in his closing arguments. “If that’s not grounds for impeachment — if that’s not a high crime and misdemeanor against the republic of the United States of America — then nothing is. President Trump must be convicted for the safety and security of our democracy and our people.”

“This trial, in the final analysis, is not about Donald Trump,” Raskin continued. “The country and the world know who Donald Trump is. This trial is about who we are.”

In their closing arguments, as they did during the trial, House Democrats played a collection of videos that showed graphic violence from the rioters’ attack, including heretofore confidential security video that revealed how close the mob got to lawmakers and staff. The videos — some filmed just steps from where the trial took place — provided an emotional punch to the case...

You can see how the lame "MSM" news outlets are trying to frame things. The "seven" Republicans who voted to convict are the heroes of the story. The New York Times made it sound like acquittal was the first step toward some kind of ultimate reckoning within the Republican Party. That's of course highly doubtful, since now that Trump's acquitted he can toy with running for reelection in 2024 all he wants, and I doubt the state-level prosecutions around the country (in New York, especially) will have their intended effect of destroying Trump, much less his huge MAGA movement, which is the ultimate bane of deranged leftists everywhere.  

Glenn Greenwald on the Left's Obsession with 'Domestic Terrorism' (VIDEO

Following-up, "A Domestic Terrorism Law Is Debated Anew After Capitol Riot."

I'm not a huge fan of Glenn Greenwald's, particularly in light of his shady operations in years past. 

I'll swear though, he's probably the most prescient thinker who gets significant media coverage, if only on Tucker Carlson's show. Whatever the case, he's worth a listen.

Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban Ordered Team to Stop Playing National Anthem and No One Noticed (VIDEO)

Of course no one noticed. 

The NBA's a black league and besides the NFL loser Colin Kaepernick, the NBA's been the biggest bastion of BLM-style cheerleading. And the MSM? You think this might have been news before the season's 13th game? Nah. MSM types hate the patriotic anthem just as much as Antifa and Black Lives Matter terrorists.

At Bro Bible, "Mark Cuban Ordered the Mavs to Stop Playing the National Anthem This Season and No One Noticed Until After the Team’s 13th Home Game."

Naturally, this Sky News video (from Australia!) was the only one that came up on a YouTube search, probably not because YouTube's censoring any outlets --- there just are no American outlets that are interested in reporting the story. For shame. 

George Friedman, The Storm Before the Calm

At Amazon, George Friedman, The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond.

"Everybody today is talking about this Time magazine story by Molly Ball, which looks an awful lot like a secret plan to rig the election, but you're not allowed to say 'rigged' or 'stolen,' because if you do, you’re an 'extremist' and potentially a terrorist..."

 At great piece, at the Other McCain, "You Can’t Say ‘Rigged’":

One of the things you learn, if you spend as many years in the news business as I have, is that the news is not random. That is to say, the question of what stories will appear on the front page of the New York Times is not merely matter of what happened the day before, because all kinds of things happen every day, and there is only so much space on the front page of a paper. Actual choices have to be made, by human beings called “editors,” to determine what’s front-page news, what gets stuck back on Page A14, and what never gets reported at all.

The process of deciding what is “news” is not random, as I say, even though some events are of such unquestioned importance that they must be at the top of the front page. If you picked up any American newspaper on Sept. 12, 2001, this was rather obvious, but such historic events are rare, and on most days the question of what goes on A1 leaves a fair amount of leeway to the editors to make their own choices. There may be one or two stories of such unquestioned importance that they must be on the front page, but when it comes to the rest — Story 3, Story 4, Story 5, etc. — the editor’s have more room to exercise discretion.

Trust me, there is often a lot internal disagreement over such things. When I was at The Washington Times, some reporters would get very angry if a story they had pitched for A1 didn’t make the cut. It was generally the policy that A1 would have at least one Metro story, and on most days also there would be something from Sports or Features on the front page, so that out of a total of seven or eight front-page stories, the National desk would only get five or six. Well, if Bill Gertz had a story about the Chinese military that he felt deserved to be on A1, he’d get rather peeved — and understandably so — if his story was bumped back to Page A3 so that we could have, say, a feature about Georgetown University basketball on the front page. It happens.

Human beings make decisions about what counts as front-page news, and there is a certain amount of selectivity involved. You know who figured this out? Matt Drudge. The story is that when he was working as the overnight clerk at a 7-Eleven in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., he would read all the newspapers to pass the time in the wee hours when there were no customers. Reading the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Times, the New York Post, USA Today, etc., back-to-back every day for weeks on end, Drudge began to notice the different choices reflected in the content of the papers. From that insight sprang his subsequent approach to aggregating news at the Drudge Report (which, alas, he seems to have turned over to a gang of liberal dimwits in the past couple of years). Thanks to the Internet, all of us now have more access to different sources than was possible for most people back when Drudge was reading all those newspapers at 7-Eleven, so there is more widespread understanding of how media bias operates.

“Why is this story national news?”

That’s the question you have to ask, whenever a crime story makes it to CNN or to the network evening news broadcasts. Because America is a very large country, with more than 325 million people, the vast majority of crime in the United States is strictly “local news.” There were more than 16,000 murders in America in 2019, which works out to about 45 murder per day. How many of those murders even get mentioned on CNN? Not many. So when something like the Trayvon Martin shooting or the death of George Floyd becomes national news — hourly updates 24/7 on CNN — this means that a decision was made by someone. These stories didn’t just coincidentally become national news. On the day that George Floyd died, about 40 other Americans were shot to death, but none of those other deaths were deemed newsworthy by CNN...

Keep reading.

And at the American Spectator, "Why Is Identity Politics Destroying America?"

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Moans About 'Revicimization' and Decries Those Challenging Her Lies About Being 'In Fear" for Her LIfe on January 6th (VIDEO)

I mean, Gayle King, who's surprising fair usually, considering she's a gushy progressive most of the time, doesn't press "Sandy" Cortez about her outright falsities about her "harrowing" experience during the so-called "right-wing domestic terrorist siege" of the Capitol. Everybody know she was safe and secure in her office, and wasn't about to be "murdered" by Ted Cruz, or anyone else.

She's just a perpetual victim, and it's frankly sad and unbecoming for such an otherwise hip and talented woman. But that's the Dem playbook, and she's the Pied Piper of leftist-Dem "bawling" victimization scams. 

FWIW, at CBS News This Morning:

Previously, "Outrage as Claims Surface That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Was Shelting in Her Office in the Cannon Office Building, Not Capitol Hill, Where Riot Broke Out (VIDEO)."

And check new freshman G.O.P. Congresswoman Nancy Mace obliterating A.O.C.'s lies on Twitter, "I'm two doors down from @AOC and no insurrectionists stormed our hallway..." And check Mace's whole Twitter feed, where she keeps pushing back against the "revictimization" meme pushed by the entire "Squad."

Also see, Matt Walsh on Twitter, "Democrats who sat back and cheered while millions of Americans were impacted by rioting all summer have now spent the night on the House floor tearfully describing their own trauma from a riot in which none of them were harmed. I truly despise these people. Dirtbags. All of them."

The 'Primal Scream' of Working Moms Trying to Handle At-Home Teaching Amid the Pandemic

 At NYT (with the usual disclaimers), "“I wish I had the energy to scream. All my energy just goes into getting through every day, until I can go to sleep. I have three kids, all in virtual schools since March, and work full time. And it just feels like failing, every day, at everything I do. And I just want to change, want to be by myself for one minute. I don’t know how to keep doing this. But there isn’t really another option”:

“I cannot remember the last time I did not worry, I did not spend my day worrying about so much stuff. Every day is something different. I just want to wake up and go through my day and not worry, and not wonder, and not know what the future holds. Because this right here sucks. And I’m sick of it. I’m so sick of this.”

“There is just so much talking. Talking all the time. All day long. Words. Words. Words. So much talking. I just, I need no more talking. No more words. I need no more. No more. So much talking. I just need silence. Please. Silence.”

“I love my kids. I love my family. But we are together all of the time. Like, I never appreciated teachers and school as much as I did now. I don’t want to be my child’s teacher. I am not doing good with this. But, all things considered, things are cool. Somebody else rear my children, please. I miss going out. I miss being drunk. I miss dancing.”

William Jacobson Launches 'Critical Race Training In Higher Education' Website (VIDEO)

I was watching this segment on Tucker tonight. William Jacobson started out pretty much as an everyday blogger about 10 years ago, and he's turned his blog into an entire project to literally hit-back at the radical left, across the entire country, in this case, with initiatives and programs that are available to all. He's a real mensch, heh.

In any case, see, "[W]hat’s being taught on campuses is that the … most important thing … is the color of your skin":

My appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight about our new database and interactive map of Critical Race Training in Higher Education, criticalrace.org: "we’re trying to empower parents and students."

Marjorie Taylor Greene Set to Be Removed from Committee Assignments in House Vote (VIDEO)

I've already said my piece about the disgusting CNN hack Jack Tapper, seen at the video below. Boy, has he really O.D.'d on the Kool-Aid, man.

But here's WSJ's write up on Representative Greene, who unlike Liz Cheney (as noted) is actually a movement conservative, despite her loony-bin statements and tweets (those mostly being "weaponized" by hate-mongering leftist-Dems at almost all the network and cable news shows). I'm not defending her whatever "Q-Anon" affiliations, or what not, not at all. My point, and any reasonable person's as well, is that if she's to be punished by the "uniparty" leadership in Congress, it's not going to end up well, especially for Republicans currently throwing her under the bus.

See, "Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She Regrets QAnon Comments":

WASHINGTON—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she regretted past social-media comments embracing conspiracy theories, hours ahead of an expected vote by the House to sanction the freshman Georgia Republican by stripping her committee assignments.

In a speech on the House floor Thursday, Mrs. Greene said she regretted posts she made about QAnon, the far-right-wing, loosely organized network and community of believers who embrace a range of unsubstantiated beliefs. Mrs. Greene said she realized in 2018 that she was receiving misinformation and stopped believing it.

“I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true and I would ask questions about them and talk about them and that is absolutely what I regret,” she said Thursday, wearing a “Free Speech” mask. “If it weren’t for the Facebook posts and comments that I liked in 2018, I wouldn’t be standing here today and you couldn’t point a finger and accuse me of anything wrong, because I’ve lived a very good life that I’m proud of.”

Democrats criticized Mrs. Greene’s speech, saying her remarks fell short of an apology. “It was unpersuasive,” said Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D., N.C.). “It is so easy to say ‘I am sorry.’ Those are three important words in our culture.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) opted Wednesday not to remove Mrs. Greene from her committees over her incendiary past comments, but urged her to publicly denounce them. Democrats said they would hold a vote to kick her off unless Republicans acted first.

The resolution, which Democrats can pass with a simple majority, would push Mrs. Greene out of her spots on the budget and education committees. But Republicans warned that Democrats would be setting a dangerous precedent by unilaterally ousting lawmakers from the other party off committees, and that such a move would open the door for Republicans to retaliate, should they retake the House majority next year.

“I remain profoundly concerned about House Republican leadership’s acceptance of extreme conspiracy theorists,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) told reporters Thursday. She said she wasn’t concerned about the possibility of GOP retribution. “If any of our members threaten the safety of other members, we’ll be the first ones to take them off of committee,” she said.

Stripping committee assignments is seen as a severe punishment by taking away a lawmaker’s ability to shape and influence legislation. Former GOP Iowa Rep. Steve King was stripped of his assignments by fellow Republicans in 2019 after questioning what was wrong with white supremacy. He lost his primary in 2020.

A loyalist to former President Donald Trump, Mrs. Greene emerged as the most contentious new House Republican before arriving in Washington. While running for the GOP nomination last year, her online activity began to draw attention, including posts tying her to QAnon and other conspiracy theories, as well as comments vilifying Muslims and other groups...

RTWT.

 

Outrage as Claims Surface That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Was Shelting in Her Office in the Cannon Office Building, Not Capitol Hill, Where Riot Broke Out (VIDEO)

I do not know, and I'm making no claims one way or the other, but prominent Twitter personalities have painted a pretty clear picture that she was sheltering (cowering) in her office across the street from the Capitol Building during the "white supremacist domestic terrorist" siege on January 6th. 

The full truth will come out, of course, but as she's a known fabulist, it's easy to see why she can't be trusted. (See, for example, at the Dallas Morning News, "AOC to Ted Cruz: ‘You almost had me murdered’," which is pure crap.)

At London's Daily Mail, "She wasn't even in the building! AOC is accused of exaggerating her 'near-death' Capitol riot experience as it's revealed the office where she cowered was down the street and UNTOUCHED - as #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett trends on Twitter."

The New York Post, "AOC blasted for exaggerating her ‘trauma’ from Capitol riot experience."

Attacking Jack Posobiec, A.O.C. tweeted yesterday:

This is the latest manipulative take on the right.

They are manipulating the fact that most people don’t know the layout the Capitol complex.

We were all on the Capitol complex - the attack wasn’t just on the dome.

The bombs Trump supporters planted surrounded our offices too.

On previously on MSNBC:

 

Liz Cheney and Marjorie Taylor Greene

Whatever happens to these two, in this bad and ugly kerfuffle, could be decided as soon as tomorrow, and it's all like a wrecking ball just hanging above the halls of Congress, just a few feet above both parties (that is, the "uniparty" elite in Congress), ready to crush the living shit out of them all.

NYT has updates, "Live Updates: House to Vote Thursday on Removing Marjorie Taylor Greene From Committees." There's also a longer, "conflicted" piece on Ms. Cheney, who indeed represents the "swamp" to many, many voters back home in her at-large congressional constituency in Wyoming. Trouble's brewing, and it's scalding.

Whatever, here's an LAT story trying to wrap it all together, "McCarthy faces choices as GOP divides over Reps. Liz Cheney and Marjorie Taylor Greene": 

WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy faced unrest Tuesday from opposing ends of the Republican spectrum over Reps. Liz Cheney and Marjorie Taylor Greene, underscoring GOP fissures as the party seeks its pathway without Donald Trump in the White House.

Hard-right lawmakers were itching to oust Cheney, a traditional conservative and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, from her post as the No. 3 House Republican after she voted to impeach Trump last month. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised Cheney and aligned himself with party moderates trying to isolate or punish Greene, a first-term congresswoman gaining renown for embracing outlandish fictions such as suggestions that mass school shootings were staged.

McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) met with Greene for about 90 minutes in his Capitol office Tuesday night. Aides to the two representatives offered no immediate comment afterward.

The looming House decisions on Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Greene (R-Ga.) represent a moment of reckoning for a party struggling with its future. Two weeks after Trump left office, House Republicans are essentially deciding whether to prioritize the former president’s norm-shattering behavior and conspiracy theories and retain the loyalty of his voters over more establishment conservative values.

“At the very moment that Joe Biden is lurching to the left is the moment that the Republican Party is lurching out of existence,” GOP pollster Frank Luntz said of the new Democratic president, who is preparing to try to muscle a mammoth COVID-19 relief package through the narrowly divided Congress.

“We can either become a fringe party that never wins elections or rebuild the big tent party of Reagan,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, one of the few elected Republicans who routinely rebuked Trump, said in a written statement. Without mentioning Cheney or Greene, he added, “I urge congressional Republicans to make the right choice.”

But pro-Trump forces in and out of Washington remain powerful. John Fredericks, who led Trump’s Virginia campaigns in 2016 and 2020, warned that there would be party primaries against Cheney defenders.

“We’ve got millions and millions of woke, motivated, America-first Trump voters that believe in the movement,” Fredericks said. “If you’re going to keep Liz Cheney in leadership, there’s no party.”

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), a leader of the effort to oust Cheney, says he has enough support to succeed.

“She’s brought this on herself,” Rosendale said. He said Cheney, who was joined by only nine other Republicans in backing impeachment, was wrong to not forewarn colleagues about her decision.

House Republicans planned a meeting for Wednesday, when Cheney’s fate as leader could be decided. A House vote on a Democratic-led move to strip Greene of committee assignments could also occur Wednesday.

Greene, who has suggested that school shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Parkland, Fla., might be hoaxes, was selected to serve on the House education and budget committees. Democrats told McCarthy this week that if he didn’t remove Greene from her committees, the House would vote to do so, according to a person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

Republicans say that GOP members would unite against a Democratic move to remove Greene from her committee assignments and that such an effort would help Greene cast herself as a victim of partisan Democrats...

For M.J.T., the outcome to me is much more interesting than for Ms. Cheney, who has her dad's reputation to fall back on if she attempts a political comeback. 

Ms. Greene is generally a grassroots force, and while she's freakin' looney and has a nasty online profile she's now desperately trying to scrub, she won her district in her general election race with a 75 percent share of the two-party vote! Of course she's not going to stand to the side while she gets singled out by CNN and all the other hack leftist "news" networks, because, she'd have a damn good argument that her removal from Congress should be up to the voters in HER district to decide, not the bought, corrupt "leaders" from both parties in Congress, who do not care what happens to her.

CNN's Big Trump Ratings Bubble Begins to Collapse

Anyone with a half-working brain could see this coming, and I've personally called out the "stupid" and "idiotic" hacks on the air constantly at CNN, especially the revolting Jack Tapper, who has been let loose by the Time-Warner higher-ups in Atlanta (or wherever) to spew non-stop lies and hate towards anything related to Trump, Trump's voters, the alleged "insurrection" on Capitol Hill, and on and on. It's actually sick. The dude needs to get some help, sheesh. 

Sad too, because I've always enjoyed watching the "Situation Room," with Wolf Blitzer, and even a pretty decent and fair-mined guy like him has been kowtowing to this fake outrage inflamed by lies. It's disgusting, to say the least.

And thinking about it, amid the network's ratings collapse, I've been posting Tucker Carlson videos, and just you watch, he'll soon again have the Number 1 rated prime-time cable show, in just a matter of days and weeks, if not very much longer. Regular people can't stomach non-stop hatred on the news shows all the time, so they're naturally gonna tune out. That's an obvious point the Einstein's at CNN have systematically avoided. 

At Red State:

In all fairness, this is one week into it, and short-term data is not always the most reliable. But, this dip was anticipated by most media observers, and it’s a large part of the reason networks are still so focused on Trump, his impeachment, and stories regarding the last days of his presidency. They are trying to keep that high going.

It’s also why they are laser-focused on politicians like Marjorie Taylor-Greene. Not because it’s abnormal for politicians to hold weird or controversial views, but because they want to tie those views to the larger Republican base. The Democratic Party is all-too-happy to take advantage and keep the spotlight on these issues, but at this point, they are all fairly moot.

CNN has been one of the biggest disappointments of this era. While CNN has always had a left-of-center lean, they had good folks on the air and several who genuinely tried to stay relatively balanced. But as the editorial edicts came down, it was clear that there was a marketing decision that was made to make everything as much about Trump as possible, and there was more than enough leeway given to otherwise balanced guys like Jake Tapper to absolutely let loose with all their biases. It has been tragic to see.

RTWT. 

This 'Open Letter' Was Produced by Democrat Congressional Aides, But There's No Mention of Party Affiliations or 'Bipartisanship' at the Letter, Which Can Only Be Viewed as Another Lie Leftist-Dems Keep Perpetuating About the Capitol Hill 'Insurrection'

You can read the letter if here, "An Open Letter from Congressional Staff to Senate."

I googled the first five names from the long list of signatories, and they're ALL Democrat congressional staffers. And it's not like you wouldn't know that from just reading the letter, which looks like Pelosi and Schumer just wrote it themselves and stapled on the names from the list of all their "horrified" Dem staffers "cowering" for their lives amid the "right-wing domestic terrorist insurrection" from January 6th.

It's cheap and dishonest. It's agitprop.

These people lie. If they had any standards besides double-standards perhaps folks might believe them, sheesh.

Via Memeorandum, where I spy a blurb from NYT's story about the letter, "More than 370 Democratic aides issued an unusual public appeal, notable because congressional staff members rarely publicly express their own views." 

No matter though, it's just part of the Leftist-Dem-Big Tech-Media Complex's campaign of a massive, nationally-geared gaslighting operation. Don't trust them, ever. 

Tucker Carlson from Last Night (VIDEO)

I know a lot of folks on the right are hatin' on Fox News, but frankly, I mostly just watch "Tucker" and "Ingraham," and that's only if I'm in the mood. All the cable networks are over the top right now, especially "moderate" CNN (and Jake "Asshole" Tapper, especially).

Anyway, Tucker is always worth a watch. Here's his opening segment from last night: