Have they no shame?

The Friday Letter / No. 535 / April 7, 2023
Good Friday / Third day of Passover
Updated at 5:35 p.m. ET with additional reporting

I was riding the backwoods of Florida this week and last, and I only heard a one-sentence report that Jacob Chansley had been released from federal prison. The lack of coverage is understandable.

Chansley's kangaroo court trial and sentencing are an embarrassment to the nation (but not to the Democrat Party), and Tucker Carlson's airing of long-suppressed video tapes brought the matter into clear light. Democracy dies in darkness, the Washington Post likes to say, and its lefty-lib journalists did their best to keep the Chansley story far from the prying sun.

Carlson came under attack from all the forces desperately trying to keep us voters from re-electing Trump in 2024: Democrats and their pals in the Uniparty, including among others the usual swamp-dwelling Senators McConnell, Romney, Thom Tillis, and even Trump supporter Lindsey Graham.

Back at the ranch, I nosed around and found an online story at Time Magazine. Honestly, I didn't know it was still in business. Its report was heavy on fantasy and light on facts, a textbook example for future reporters – not journalists – to study. It begins with an outright lie:

“Jacob Chansley, the convicted Jan. 6 rioter who was dubbed the 'QAnon Shaman' . . .”

Time says Chansley “was perhaps the most visible rioter to storm the Capitol, carrying a spear and wearing a horned fur hat and face paint on Jan. 6. He was also one of a small number of rioters to make it to the floor of the Senate Chamber, where he used a bullhorn to rile up the mob. . .”

Nice try. The video clearly shows that Chansley was not rioting, storming, or up-riling. It clearly shows Capitol Police escorting him around the Capitol checking for an unlocked door to let him into the Senate chamber. Inside, he prayed aloud for the police and thanked them for their courteous treatment of him. Does this sound like riling up a mob?

Time then cites a law professor's contention that Chansley's early release had nothing to do with the video tape evidence. She said the Bureau of Prisons pays no attention to press reports and bases its decisions solely on the rules granting early release for good behavior.

Perhaps so. But just for fun, let's throw out another possibility, that the evidence of Chansley' innocence is so overwhelming that The Biden-Garland Justice Department urgently needed a way to wipe the egg from its face. You could doubt that as well, because it's hard to imagine the Biden enforcers even caring what the rest of us think – about anything.

As the Constitution crumbles (continued)

A federal jury in Brooklyn last week convicted Douglass Mackey of trying to “deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote,” because he tweeted a spoof during the 2016 election campaign that Democrats could text their vote for Hillary Clinton. He faces up to 10 years in federal prison.

“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said.

It's ironic that Peace invoked the constitutional right of free speech to justify the government's denial of that right.

Breitbart reprinted a tweet from a woman called Kristina Wong that said “Hey Trump supporters, skip poll lines at #Election2016 and TEXT your vote! Text votes are legit. Or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday.” She was not arrested, nor should she have been.

(Her silliness had no effect, of course. Trump voters don't enjoy the level of blissful stupidity that allows Democrats to live in la-la land.)

We'd like to ask Mr. Peace if he intends to charge Joe Biden with telling Black voters in 2012 that Republicans would “put y'all back in chains” if they elected Mitt Romney president. Or a Trump PAC that claims, falsely, that Ron DeSantis voted to cut Social Security benefits.

Or economist Paul Krugman's assertion in the New York Times that the financial markets would never recover with Trump's election, with the notation that “Under any circumstances, putting an irresponsible, ignorant man who takes his advice from all the wrong people in charge of the nation with the world’s most important economy would be very bad news.”

Krugman missed the mark a bit, but he was never arrested: Even left-leaning Business Insider acknowledged that the Dow Jones Industrial Average grew at an annualized rate of 11.8 percent during Trump's term.

Our society suffers an alarming growth in the number of college students who tell pollsters that limits on free speech are justified when the information – as defined by them – is hurtful to their ears. Hang this one, as usual, on our public indoctrination/education system.

NPR: Not Particularly Reliable

Trapped in my pickup truck far from rational radio and 500 miles in front of me, I picked up the only clear signal I could find, taxpayer-funded state radio NPR. I was greeted with a lesson on how Republicans in the Tennessee General Assembly are solely responsible for the six innocent lives taken March 27 at the Covenant School in Nashville.

With only a single, fleeting reference to the cross-dressing psychotic killer, the NPR journalist/commentator explained that it was the guns, not the shooter, who committed the murders. But since you can't indict a gun, somebody must take the blame. In state media's world, that would not be a woman who pretends to be a man. As a protected class, self-identified transsexuals are not responsible for anything.

While we're on this subject, let's stipulate that there is no such thing as a transsexual or a misnamed transgender. (Unless you try to change, for example, the gender of a French noun from la maison to le maison, in which case you would be considered an ignoramus and laughed out of the country.)

The nutjob who murdered the Christian students and their teachers was born a female and died a female, regardless of whatever mutilation surgery she may have undergone. That's a fact the rainbow crowd wants you to ignore.

She advertised her intentions on social media. The police, her friends, even her own parents whose home she shared with her guns – nobody did anything about it. Former NYPD Commissioner Howard Safir wonders how social media has time to censor political thought but no time to flag attention-seeking killers. It's a conversation we should be having.

NPR blames Tennessee Republican legislators for failing to enact gun control laws the left favors. In a story that ran seven or eight minutes, that point was hammered home repeatedly. Everything was about gun-loving Republican lawmakers and their Republican governor.

If guns were illegal, everyone would be safe. Right?

Apparently the Covenant School doesn't allow guns on campus, and everyone clearly was not safe. If the headmaster, a teacher, or a custodian had been armed, we would be reading a different story today.

Short takes on the news

News Busters
In the second half of March, the major TV networks devoted 273 minutes of coverage (4 hours, 32 minutes, 56 seconds) to Trump investigations while zero seconds to Biden crime family corruption. The networks had nothing to say about the House Oversight Committee's revelations that Hunter Biden, Jim Biden and Hallie Biden have received payments from a Chinese energy firm.

Just the News
An Obama federal judge, Richard Andrews, rejected a legal challenge by the Delaware Sportsmen's Association to Delaware's ban on semi-automatic weapons. Andrews ruled that “Plaintiffs have furnished no evidence that they cannot adequately defend themselves without the regulated weapons, or, indeed, that their ability to self-defend has been meaningfully diminished.”

By longstanding custom, felons and the mentally ill may not possess firearms. Otherwise, the Second Amendment says the right of self-defense may not be infringed. Andrews' ruling attempts to establish a precedent whereby prospective gun owners must first prove the need to the government. If the Second has any remaining standing, the ruling will be nixed on appeal.

The Blaze
Wisconsin's Supreme Court flipped to majority liberal Tuesday when Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Dan Kelly. She was backed by Hillary Clinton, Planned Parenthood, Eric Holder, and other left wing supporters. In a state trending blue since Trump's win in 2016, conservatives expect the high court to overturn Wisconsin's voter ID law, making a GOP win in 2024 there a near impossibility. Currently, voting requires a photo ID, issued free to people who need them. They also fear the court will overturn Wisconsin's right-to-work law and school voucher programs, and upend redistricted congressional maps.

Better news comes from the North Carolina General Assembly, where Rep. Tricia Cotham switched from Democrat to Republican. It's a big deal, because House Republicans now have a veto-proof majority. They previously failed to override several of Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes by a single vote. Cotham represents Mecklenburg County in District 112.

Quick picks. Like father, like son: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will challenge Biden for the Democrat presidential nomination. He's an activist opponent of mandatory coronavirus vaccinations and our endless, bankrupting wars. . . . When is enough enough? FBI goons on a training exercise stage a midnight raid on a Delta Airlines pilot's Boston hotel room and hold him handcuffed for 45 minutes before realizing they had the wrong room. . . . SCOTUS rules a 12-year-old West Virginia boy can compete on his middle school girls track team, with only Alito and Thomas dissenting. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett joined the court's four liberals. The AP says the boy, who calls himself Becky Pepper-Jackson, “regularly finishes near the back of the pack” on cross-country runs. . . A Michigan teenager made a poor choice of targets when he played cop by pulling over a driver using the red and blue flashing lights on his BMW. He identified himself at a Detroit Police office. His victim identified herself as a Waterford Township officer, a real one. The teenager escaped with practically no bond and is back on the streets. . . . Endorsements: Trump, by Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida; DeSantis, by Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

Quote for today

“The North Pole will be ice-free by the summer of 2013 because of man-made global warming.” – Al Gore, 2009

To contact Steve: stephencombs@substack.com. The Friday Letter is published in the op-ed section of USSA News. Ask your friends to read the Friday Letter and sign up for a free or voluntary paid subscription. It's easy: Just go to fridayletter.us.