Not Satire: China Wants Nobel Prize for Wuhan Lab
No, this is not a headline from our favorite satire site, The Babylon Bee: The Chinese Communist government brazenly claims that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — the same lab most likely responsible for unleashing the global coronavirus pandemic — deserves to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
According to China’s state-run media:
The award is mainly given to individuals or research groups who have made or demonstrated significant achievements in the past five years. … China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson stressed at Thursday’s press conference that scientists working at the WIV should be awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine, rather than being blamed for being the first to discover the gene sequence of the novel coronavirus.
Why not the Nobel Peace Prize for killing at least 3.8 million people by lying about the virus in the early days when it could have been contained?
In its appeal, Beijing highlights the work of Shi Zhengli, famously (or infamously) nicknamed the “Bat Woman” due to her study of bat coronaviruses, as well as the director of the WIV biosafety lab, Yuan Zhiming. Shi recently claimed that “bat viruses in China could be studied in BSL-2 labs because there was no evidence that they directly infected humans.” For context, BSL-2 labs work with what are considered moderately dangerous viruses like hepatitis or HIV, whereas BSL-4 labs are the highest level of control and containment for those viruses considered most dangerous and contagious, such as ebola.
Political analyst Jim Geraghty observes:
Shi’s argument wants it both ways. Part of the argument in support of the zoonotic theory of SARS-CoV-2’s origins is that new viruses jump from animals to people all the time, and thus that is what most likely happened in this case. … [At the same time], it’s extremely unusual for bat viruses to infect human beings — which makes SARS-CoV-2 extremely different from most viruses found in horseshoe bats, suggesting something about the virus may have changed or been altered to make it more contagious among human beings. Or another option is that it isn’t so rare for bat viruses to infect human beings, which would suggest that these viruses shouldn’t be studied in BSL-2 laboratories. Pick one.
In other words, Shi’s assessment of the nature and danger of coronaviruses is a transparent attempt to deflect away from the growing international consensus for the origin of COVID being a leak from the Wuhan lab, and thus the accompanying blame put on the ChiCom regime.
Speaking of the lab leak theory, part of the explanation for the sudden about-face taken by both the bumble/socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden administration and mainstream media over COVID’s origins — going from calling it a fringe conspiracy theory to now entertaining it as the most plausible source — may have to do with a rumored defection of a top Chinese official. It’s being reported that China’s number two official in charge of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), Dong Jingwei, defected to the U.S. and brought with him valuable information exposing Beijing’s knowledge of COVID’s origins.
Regardless, the deadly truth is that the ChiComs lied big and are now aiming to shore up the lie by boldly demanding a prize for it. ~The Patriot Post
Senator Whitehouse’s White Privilege
With the possible exception of Arkansas’s John Boozman, the best name in the U.S. Senate belongs to Sheldon Whitehouse. There simply isn’t another member of the upper chamber whose name rolls off the tongue as smoothly and sweetly, or that conjures up such images of competence, sobriety, and dignity. Put simply, if Mitt Romney looks like a president, “Sheldon Whitehouse” sounds like a president.
Unfortunately for the Rhode Island Democrat, that’s as far as the comparison goes. When it comes to the important work of the Senate, Whitehouse is all hat and no cattle, and his colleagues know it. As we’ve documented before, he’s a hard-left hater of the First and Second Amendments, he routinely ascribes ill will to his Republican opposition, and he’s inclined to invoke the RICO statute on those who wonder whether global warming climate change is every bit the existential threat that he thinks it is. His infamous 2018 exchange with the-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh showed the rest of the world just how unserious the senator with the serious-sounding name is:
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ccXpDhMmBY
Worse yet, but not at all surprising, Whitehouse is a hypocrite with a clear-cut preference for racial homogeneity. “As the nation prepared to celebrate Juneteenth and the end of slavery in America,” writes Andrew Stiles in the Washington Free Beacon, “at least one Democrat was pushing back against his party’s woke obsession with racial equity.”
That one anti-equity Democrat would be Whitehouse, who's been dragging his feet for years about his membership in an all-white beach club in the elite oceanside town of Newport. Last week, a local reporter finally caught up with him to inquire about his progress toward integrating Bailey’s Beach Club — a promise he’d made back in 2017 after having pledged to cancel his club membership 11 years before that. It didn’t go well:
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUmCZpratVs
“I think the people who are running the place are still working on that,” said the senator, “and I’m sorry it hasn’t happened yet.” But not to worry, he says, such clubs have “a long tradition in Rhode Island.”
Suffice it to say, Whitehouse’s word appears to be nearabout worthless, and he appears to be about as influential with his fellow lily-white beach-clubbers as he is with his senatorial colleagues. As Stiles put it, “Opponents of white supremacy will have to pry Bailey's membership from his cold dead hands.”
All this is of a piece, though, with the Democrat Party’s free pass on issues of race. Were Whitehouse a Republican, his Senate colleagues would be holding hearings by now. As commentator Lisa Boothe quipped, “Whitehouse is a member of a whites-only beach club, the Gov of Virginia either wore black face or a Ku Klux Klan robe, and bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden said he didn’t want his kids to grow up in a racial jungle. But Democrats want to lecture about racism in America.”
That pretty much sums things up. ~The Patriot Post
The entire reason liar-Hunter Biden’s profitable corruption was (or should have been) big news isn’t because it was liar-Hunter Biden, but because bumble/socialist/ scumbag/liar-Joe Biden was behind it. Scranton Joe was the “big guy” running the family show from the Senate and then from his position as Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s vice president. bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe’s family found his “public service” to be quite lucrative. It shouldn’t be any surprise that nepotism continues in bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s own administration.
If you prefer, don’t take our word for it. Take the word of The Washington Post, which reports that despite bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s promises not to employ his family members, his “vow did not extend to his senior staff and their relatives” because “at least five children of his top aides have secured coveted jobs in the new administration.”
And take the word of scumbag/liar-nObama’s director of the United States Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub. Reacting to the Post’s story, Shaub had some strong words:
I’m sorry, I know some folks don’t like hearing any criticism of him. But this royally sucks. I’m disgusted. A lot of us worked hard to tee him up to restore ethics to the government and believed the promises. This is a real “f-ck you” to us — and government ethics.
EVEN THE F-ING HEAD OF PRESIDENTIAL PERSONNEL, WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE KEEPING THEM HONEST, HAS A CHILD WHO’S A RECENT COLLEGE GRAD WORKING IN THE ADMINISTRATION. AND THE SPOUSE OF THE WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. This is ridiculous. What a f-cking failure.
At least it’s not as bad as Donald Trump’s White House, Shaub and the Post couldn’t help but say.
Now, is this the end of the Republic? Hardly. We’ve survived far greater scandals than the director of presidential personnel having a daughter hired by the administration.
Yet it’s just one more sign of bumble/socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden’s hypocrisy. “No one in our family and extended family is going to be involved in any government undertaking or foreign policy,” bumble/ socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden declared in January. “And nobody has an office in this place.”
Not from his family, at least, and not “in this place.” But his son made plenty of bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden bucks peddling influence in China and Ukraine.
Meanwhile, his press secretary, liar-Jen Psaki, and her deputy, Andrew Bates, each took pains to defend Biden with the same refrain. “We have the highest ethical standards of any administration in history,” insisted liar-Psaki. Bates added, “The president has instituted the highest ethical standards of anyone to ever hold this office.”
Sure thing.
On a final note, liar-Hunter Biden is selling “art” for $500,000 a pop. Shaub doesn’t like that either, saying, “The notion of a president’s son capitalizing on that relationship by selling art at obviously inflated prices and keeping the public in the dark about who’s funneling money to him has a shameful and grifty feel to it.”
But hey, if a president’s former crack addict son can’t blow paint through a straw and cash in, what is the American Dream anyway? ~The Patriot Post
A Religious Liberty Win That Wasn’t Really a Win
In a nine-zip smackdown to the City of Philadelphia, the Supreme Court ruled that city officials could not ban Catholic Social Services (CSS) from Philadelphia’s foster care system for CSS’s refusal to place children with same-sex or unmarried couples. At first blush, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia sounds like a slam dunk for religious liberty and the Rule of Law. But not so fast.
Sadly, this is the same kind of mixed-bag jurisprudence we’ve come to know and expect from the Roberts Court — a unanimous, seemingly pro-conservative ruling with a zero-to-negative impact on the flawed underlying law. In other words, Fulton has all the hallmarks of a textbook Roberts Court: Consensus trumps Constitution.
As background, Philadelphia and CSS had enjoyed an amicable relationship for over 50 years with no issues. No issues, that is, until 2018, when the Leftmedia provoked an issue, highlighting CSS’s refusal to consider same-sex or unmarried couples as foster parents. None had even applied, but that was beside the point. In the wake of further activist pressure, Philadelphia terminated its contract with CSS, forcing CSS into court in defense of its religious liberty.
On the positive side, the Court ruled for CSS. The Court found that CSS had been discriminated against by city officials who adeptly exploited the discretionary loopholes drafted into the contract between CSS and Philadelphia. These loopholes permitted officials to decide in their sole discretion whether an exception to the city’s nondiscrimination rules would apply to a particular service provider.
In reviewing the issue, the Court referenced the judicial standard for religious liberty, the Supreme Court case Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith (1990), written by the legendary Justice Antonin Scalia — and perhaps his only clear “miss” in a record of otherwise impeccable jurisprudence. Smith held that as long as laws are generally applicable and equally burden both the religious and nonreligious alike, those laws do not offend the First Amendment’s Free Exercise (of religion) provisions.
This decision seems reasonable on its face — it certainly sounds very ecumenical, at least, in its method of reviewing a law in terms of whether the law applies evenhandedly to all. But Smith is fundamentally flawed, and we’ll come back to that.
Citing Smith, Justice Roberts distinguished the actions of Philadelphia’s city council by saying, “A law is not generally applicable if it invites the government to consider the particular reasons for a person’s conduct by providing a mechanism for individualized exemptions.” The contractual carve-out effectively provided such a mechanism, Roberts argued, so the law was not “generally applicable” and thus faced examination under a much narrower lens.
A policy will survive vetting through that sharper lens only if it furthers a compelling governmental purpose and is narrowly tailored to accomplish that purpose. Few laws can withstand this gauntlet, and Philadelphia’s was no exception. But as Roberts noted, this issue had nothing to do with discriminating against homosexual couples; rather, it centered on whether Philadelphia could force CSS to act directly against its religious beliefs. The Court’s answer: No. So far, so good.
Beyond this cursory review of the case, however, the wheels start to come off, as the underlying law from Smith is itself shown to be problematic.
The first evidence of the fault lines in current religious liberty jurisprudence arise from the fact that this “unanimous” decision comprised four separate opinions. Roberts was joined in his Opinion of the Court by the three leftist justices — Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan — as well as by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Meanwhile, Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurring opinion joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. Gorsuch also wrote his own concurrence, which was joined by Thomas and Alito. And Barrett wrote a concurrence joined by Kavanaugh and partially joined by Breyer.
A deeper dive into these concurrences reveals the underlying problems of Smith, along with exposing the Court’s failure to address the question of whether Smith should be overturned. For example, Alito’s 77-page concurrence reads more like an anti-Smith treatise than a concurrence. Gorsuch’s concurrence goes even further, becoming a scathing attack of Roberts’s cowardice to address Smith. And Barrett’s concurrence straddles the judicial fence, in essence stating that while Smith was wrongly decided, replacing it might be a difficult task, thus her support for deciding Fulton on narrower grounds.
Like us, the Court’s three most conservative justices, Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch, all favor striking down Smith. Alito’s well-reasoned concurrence best explains this rationale by pointing out the fact that while CSS has won this particular battle, because the Court has refused to address Smith, this war is far from over. If Philadelphia were to make its nondiscrimination policy absolute (i.e., no exemptions), for example, the new law would have “general applicability” and would treat both the religious and nonreligious alike, in compliance with Smith.
As Alito puts it, “Voilà, today’s decision will vanish — and the parties will be back where they started.” He added, “This decision might as well be written on the dissolving paper sold in magic shops.” Indeed, as CSS will soon discover, this is only a brief respite in its fight to preserve its religious freedoms against an array of increasingly hostile activism.
Gorsuch drives even further: “A majority of our colleagues, however, seek to sidestep the question. … On the surface it may seem a nice move, but dig an inch deep and problems emerge.” Gorsuch goes on to accuse the majority of playing a “statutory shell game,” contorting the facts and law to dodge Smith, in effect. Unmistakably directing his comments to the Chief Justice’s lack of courage, Gorsuch hammers home his point:
What possible benefit does the majority see in its studious indecision about Smith when the costs are so many? … Perhaps our colleagues believe today’s circuitous path will at least steer the Court around the controversial subject matter and avoid “picking a side.” But refusing to give CSS the benefit of what we know to be the correct interpretation of the Constitution is picking a side. Smith committed a constitutional error. Only we can fix it. Dodging the question guarantees it will recur tomorrow. These cases will keep coming until the Court musters the fortitude to supply an answer. Respectfully, it should have done so today.
Indeed, as Justice Gorsuch alludes to, many laws favored by radical leftists stand to run roughshod over the religious freedoms of millions, since these radicals could trample others’ religious freedoms with abandon, provided those laws are evenhandedly applied. Citing the example of the plight of cake baker Jack Phillips in the case Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), Gorsuch ads:
After being forced to litigate all the way to the Supreme Court, we ruled for him on narrow grounds similar to those the majority invokes today. Because certain government officials responsible for deciding Mr. Phillips’s compliance with a local public accommodations law uttered statements exhibiting hostility to his religion, the Court held, those officials failed to act “neutrally” under Smith. But with Smith still on the books, all that victory assured Mr. Phillips was a new round of litigation — with officials now presumably more careful about admitting their motives. A nine-year odyssey thus barrels on. No doubt, too, those who cannot afford such endless litigation under Smith’s regime have been and will continue to be forced to forfeit religious freedom that the Constitution protects. (citations omitted).
Indeed, Phillips just lost the first round of yet another such battle for refusing to make a “gender transition cake” for an activist who intentionally targeted the Christian cake maker with another round of legal harassment. This is not what the First Amendment intended by its Free Exercise Clause — thus the alarm bells conservatives are sounding everywhere over Smith. And as to Barrett’s concern over replacing Smith, Free Exercise jurisprudence did just fine prior to Smith; it will do fine without it, once again.
For now, this hollow victory in Fulton will briefly permit CSS to exercise its religious freedoms. But by kicking the Smith can down the road, the Roberts Court has once again upped the ultimate jurisprudential costs when the tab comes due. Unfortunately for CSS, Jack Phillips and other frontline fighters in this constitutional struggle, this decision is simply one more in the whack-a-mole war for religious freedom arising in the wake of Smith. As it stands, if a highly discriminatory practice against a religious belief is instituted across the board and with no exceptions, as far as the Supremes are concerned, this First Amendment guarantee remains intact: “[Government] shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].”
Orwell would be proud. ~The Patriot Post
No Wonder Grassroots Patriots Fear Election Theft
The Left has often claimed that the rhetoric of conservatives causes violence. For instance, take the false accusations over the years that Sarah Palin incited the Tucson shooting that killed six and left a dozen wounded, including Representative Gabby Giffords, critically so. But when it comes to incidents like the attempted assassination of Steve Scalise (and others) by a Bernie Sanders-supporting Rachel Maddow superfan, the Left and the establishment don’t say much, even when there seems to be a much stronger link between the rhetoric and the violence.
That’s why some recent comments on social media deserve notice. When Joe Biden took cheap shots at Donald Trump and the Republican Party at the G7, Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch, among numerous others, rebuked him. But Matthew Dowd, a former ABC bigwig whose Twitter profile claims “Democrats are only vehicle today to save the Republic,” responded by claiming the GOP is “an antidemocratic entity,” going on to say that “our politics will only be detoxified if the gop [sic] as it currently constituted is gone.” Ron Fournier, formerly an AP “journalist,” added a comment implying that “terrorist-backing, anti-democratic forces” are fair game.
Those social media exchanges only reinforce what we noted when we called out David French, also of The Dispatch, for falsely claiming conservatives were lying when we said the Left hates grassroots Patriots and seeks to silence them. Our commentary in February, when left-wing “national security experts” openly compared the Republican Party to a terrorist cell that would be raided or bombed, also touched on the dangerous rhetoric coming from the Left. While we have said those who broke the law on January 6 should be punished, we also have said that the reckoning needs to extend across the board.
But part of that reckoning includes addressing the past. Grassroots Patriots who have seen themselves smeared as racists (or worse) over the years have every right to question what that rhetoric — and the Republican/ conservative establishment’s failure to stand up to it — could lead people to do.
The smears continue, with an accident being falsely portrayed as a terrorist attack, and then Florida Governor Ron DeSantis facing phony claims he enabled it.
Dennis Prager has not been wrong to point out that the constant portrayal of Trump as an illegitimately elected Russian puppet who thought white supremacists were “very fine people” and was an existential threat to democracy could have not just had effects on the 2020 election, including the need to “fortify” it. That rhetoric also probably provoked violence against conservatives as well. Just ask the attendees of this year’s Western Conservative Summit and the journalists who covered it.
When a former media bigwig says the only way to detoxify politics is to wipe out the GOP, and another once-prominent reporter paints Biden’s political opponents as “terrorist-backing, anti-democratic forces,” it’s fair to question whether the bumble/socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden administration is scheming to weaponize the Justice Department against political opponents, particularly given the track record of abuses and lies grassroots Patriots have witnessed.
The Left and “Never Trump” types can try to gaslight about “norms and standards” all they want, and they can try to paint grassroots Patriots as paranoid. But the fact is, what comes out of their own mouths and keyboards often prove grassroots Patriots are right to fear what the Left’s hateful rhetoric can lead to — that things won’t stop with a “fortified” election. ~The Patriot Post
HANS VON SPAKOVSKY
What Merrick Garland Gets Wrong About U.S. Elections
Partisan, political, designed to inflame. That’s what Merrick Garland’s recent speech on voting rights was. It certainly was not objective, measured, and deliberate—the kind of speech you expect from an attorney general.
What’s worse, his central assertion — that state efforts to improve the integrity of the election process will make it “harder” for eligible citizens to vote — is demonstrably false.
Garland’s speech started to go off the rails when he talked about the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which he said “drastically weakened” voting rights protections. It did not.
That decision left untouched the most important parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, including Section 2 — a permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting. Garland’s Justice Department can use Section 2 to fight voting discrimination wherever it occurs.
(Fortunately, such discrimination is so rare these days that, in eight years, the Obama administration filed only four cases alleging voting discrimination under Section 2 — a fact Garland neglected to mention.)
What the court did in Shelby County was end the preclearance provisions of Section 5 that required a very small number of states and local jurisdictions — like Alabama and Georgia — to get the Justice Department’s approval before making any changes in their voting laws. Section 5 was meant to be only a temporary provision, addressing what was happening in 1965.
The Supreme Court ended the preclearance requirement because, unlike Garland, it recognized that time had not stood still — that “nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically.” Systematic, widespread voting discrimination had disappeared. Voter registration and turnout rates among black and white residents in Section 5 states showed no statistically significant disparities.
Garland went on to claim that since the Shelby County decision, there has been a “dramatic rise in legislative efforts” to restrict voting. Yet the states correctly say those same efforts are meant only to protect voters by enhancing the security of their elections.
Who to believe? Well, census data clearly doesn’t support Garland’s claim. The Census Bureau’s 2020 election survey reports that last year’s election logged “the highest voter turnout of the 21st century.”
That’s right, seven years after the Shelby County decision and passage of state election laws that Garland finds so restrictive, 66.8% of voting-age citizens turned out to vote — just short of the all-time turnout record (67.7%) set in 1992. Moreover, polls consistently find that most voters, no matter their race or party preferences, support the so-called restrictive measures, such as voter ID laws, viewing them as common sense reforms.
Garland also criticized the election audits currently being conducted in various jurisdictions. He charged, without offering examples or evidence, that the auditors are using “abnormal post-election audit methodologies that may put the integrity of the voting process at risk and undermine public confidence in our democracy.” It is more likely that the exact opposite is true.
Election audits, just like the routine audits conducted in the business world, are intended to ensure that election rules and procedures were complied with and that voting equipment functioned correctly. The intent is to identify and remedy any problems that may have occurred in last year’s election and to instill greater public confidence in our democracy, not to diminish it.
Take, for example, the ongoing audit in Windham, New Hampshire, that uncovered a serious problem in local voting machines misreading absentee ballots. The miscounted ballots did not change the outcome of the election, but without the audit, local officials would not have known they had a problem that needs to be fixed before the next election.
Indeed, every election jurisdiction in the country should conduct post-election audits, and Garland should encourage them, not try to stop them.
Garland’s bizarre claim that these “audits may violate provisions” of federal voting laws is simply wrong. As J. Christian Adams and Maureen Riordan, both former career attorneys inside the department’s Voting Section, recently told the Arizona Legislature, “Conducting an audit of a past election does not violate the Voting Rights Act or any other federal law.”
In fact, they noted, “the Justice Department has never — in the entire history of the existence of the Civil Rights Division — interfered in or investigated an election audit because its past leadership has understood it has no legal authority to do so.” Garland’s criticism has no basis in the law and appears intended to scare off audits that might find problems that many liberals don’t want revealed.
Garland promised that over the next 30 days he will double the staff of the Voting Section because he “need[s] more lawyers” to deal with all of these alleged problems. With little to no evidence of actual voting discrimination, this partisan public relations ploy would simply be a waste of taxpayer money. ~The Patriot Post
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