… to an affair with the prosecutor she appointed in the case against Trump.
Only it’s called a “personal relationship,” which is a nicely generic term:
Embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis admitted to having a “personal relationship” with lead prosecutor Nathan Wade but says this shouldn’t warrant tossing out the charges against former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants.
“In 2022, District Attorney Willis and I developed a personal relationship in addition to our professional association and friendship,” Wade wrote in an affidavit released by Willis’ office in court papers they filed Friday.
But the filing said there was no “personal relationship” at the time Wade was hired.
“Although District Attorney Willis and Special Prosecutor Wade have been professional associates and friends since 2019, there was no personal relationship between them in November 2021 at the time of Special Prosecutor Wade’s appointment,” the court papers said.
I would say that being “friends” for several years is a type of personal relationship, although in this pleading the word “personal” is an obvious stand-in for “sexual.” And it’s certainly possible – although I wouldn’t take Willis’ or Wade’s word for it – that their relationship didn’t become sexual till after they were working on the Trump case. But I find it hard to believe that, since they knew each other rather well prior to the appointment, Willis and Wade didn’t at least have the possibility of something like that in mind from the start.
Whether or not the court rules this matters in the Trump case depends on additional things, such as how qualified Wade was to try the case, whether he did enough work to justify his high salary, and whether Willis benefited from the extra money he was paid.
Even if is ultimately found that every bit of the hanky-panky occurred after Wade’s appointment, and even if he was highly qualified for the job, I find the degree of recklessness here to be interesting. I think both were drunk on power – the ability to bring the evil Trump down – and we all know that power is an aphrodisiac.
The story of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and whose wax wings melted and caused his death, is often considered a warning against hubris.
So that’s why I refer to people such as this – and he is not alone – as a modern-day Icarus. It’s not a compliment.
The title of the NY Times article is “”Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis? Interest in sun shields, once a fringe idea, has grown. Now, a team of scientists says it could launch a prototype within a few years.” Here’s some of the text:
“To block the necessary amount of solar radiation, the shade would have to be about a million square miles, roughly the size of Argentina”….A shade that big would weigh at least 2.5 million tons — too heavy to launch into space, [Dr. Rozen] said. So, the project would have to involve a series of smaller shades. They would not completely block the sun’s light but rather cast slightly diffused shade onto Earth…. Dr. Rozen said his team was ready to design a prototype shade of 100 square feet and is seeking between $10 million and $20 million to fund the demonstration.
There will be more of this sort of thing. How will it be regulated or stopped? Will it be regulated or stopped?
(1) Montana parents lose custody because of their refusal to cooperate with transitioning their daughter.
(2) The Disney lawsuit against DeSantis is dismissed.
(3) Harvard loses another huge donor in protest of its DEI policy. Harvard has a ton of money anyway, but this trend must disturb it at least somewhat. If so, good, and it’s about time.
(4) Perhaps Republicans are finally understanding how to try to use mail-in voting to their advantage. If they can’t stop easy mail-in voting – and in red states and even many purple states, they can’t – they may as well learn how to employ it to encourage their own voters to vote.
(5) A James O’Keefe undercover video indicates that Democrat operatives would like to but cannot figure out how to get rid of Biden and Harris as candidates in 2024. Also, if the person talking on the video (Charlie Kraiger, who is a cybersecurity policy analyst at the White House) is telling the truth, Michelle Obama does not wish to run. It’s funny, but all of these things agree with what I’ve been writing. My opinions aren’t based on inside info, of course; they’re just my reactions to what I see.
Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Cori Bush (D-MO) were the only House members to vote against a bill that would bar Hamas members and those who participated in the attacks against Israel last year from entering the United States.
The House passed the bill, No Immigration Benefits for Hamas Terrorists Act, 422-2-1, on Wednesday evening. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) voted present, and Tlaib and Bush were the sole votes against the measure, which now heads to the Senate.
While Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad members were already prohibited from entering the U.S. under existing laws, the new bill now expands to officers of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the governing body of the Palestinian enclave, and anyone who was involved in the Oct. 7 attacks against the Jewish state who is not listed as a member of a terrorist group.
Tlaib said this: “”It’s just another GOP messaging bill being used to incite anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim hatred that makes communities like ours unsafe.” It’s Republican-promoted Islamophobia, don’t you see – even though almost every other Democrat in the House voted in favor of it.
This is a bill about legal entry, by the way. But it is probably the case that most operatives would enter illegally, since the Biden administration has so thoughtfully made that very easy to do.
A month or two ago I watched a video interview with Peter Hitchens about Israel/Palestine. In it, he said that Hamas was popular in Gaza because it was not corrupt. And that wasn’t just a passing remark, either; he went on for some time about it. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
In a quick look right now I haven’t found the clip – the interview was long, and I’d have to listen to the whole thing, but my guess is it was with John Anderson. Here’s a different short excerpt from that interview in which Hitchens shows more stupidity, or perhaps it might rightly be called naivete. I’m really not sure what to call it, but here he says that you can’t destroy an idea by killing Hamas terrorists.
Well, of course not; whoever said you could? Jihad is an idea in more places than Gaza and it comes from more groups than Hamas; would that it were limited to them, but it’s not. However, strangely enough – and Hitchens should know this – war can destroy an idea and/or much weaken a particular group acting out that idea. Just take a look at Germany and Japan today as an example. Of course, it wasn’t just the waging of a bitter and bloody war but also how the peace afterwards was dealt with, but that’s too big a subject to tackle in this post except to say that it’s part of the picture. But the picture starts – unfortunately – with killing people, quite a lot of them if it’s a big group of perpetrators.
Hitchens states another stupid/naive idea here, which is that if only Israel hadn’t started the kind of war its waging in Gaza in retaliation for October 7, it had an opportunity to unite the Western countries in its favor to somehow stand together against Hamas et al. Dream on, Hitchens; dream on. He seems to think that anti-Israel sentiment is caused by Israel’s defending itself in this manner, and that if they desisted then there wouldn’t be so much anti-Israel opinion. But it’s the other way around – no other country would be widely criticized for a counter-attack such as Israel’s under like provocation. Israel is treated differently because of leftist propaganda combined with anti-Semitism, not because of anything it does or doesn’t do.
Of course, if Israel would just lay down and die I suppose the world would praise it. But as a commenter to the Hitchens video at YouTube writes [typos corrected by me]:
So Hitchens’ plan is to do nothing and be pitied. I think Golda Meir’s comment on the matter is pertinent. [Paraphrase] “Given a choice of being dead or unpopular, then we choose unpopular.”
I’ve read quite a few comments there, and the vast majority disagree with Hitchens. Here’s a sampler:
Peter’s naivete on this is astounding. If Israel did not respond it would be seen as vulnerable and weak by its own people – never mind the world. They had no choice.
No country on earth would tolerate having Hamas in power next door to it after what Hamas did on October 7th.
I respect and understand Peter’s opinion here, but how else is Israel supposed to deal with Hamas?? If you have thousands of terrorists next door that want to completely annihilate your nation and your people, how else are you supposed to respond?
Sorry Peter, I disagree with you on this, something I very rarely do. Even great minds (and hearts) such as yours can be wrong. God bless you.
An interesting perspective but erroneous. The world has always been fickle with respect to support of Jews and their country. Israel was caught off guard and if it does not respond decisively Hezbollah and Iran will most certainly attack – and that would pose an existential threat. In this region the only currency that matters is deterrence by force.
What planet is Peter on?
What planet indeed – the planet “British intellectual.” Or, as another commenter there writes:
… when Peter finishes his talk, where is he going? home or hotel? where do Israelis who live up to 50 km from Gaza should go? what about their normal lives? I’m Israeli, I’m a left minded person and still – we should throw Hamas out now! why? cause everybody else just talks and thinks – see what happens to people to “talk and think” – they get killed. It happened to us in Europe and now at home – no more!!!
Another point at which Hitchens shows his naivete is when he says that the left turned on Israel because of the 1967 war. He ignores the influence of Russian propaganda, which used that war to turn the Western left against Israel. I wrote about that in this post.
[NOTE: Also please this about Gandhi and the Jews.]
For many years, Iran has had an operational alliance with the Marxist totalitarian regime in Venezuela. This gives Iran a toehold in the West and a well-trod route to infiltrate operatives across the southern border. Biden has appeared blithely indifferent to this — which is no surprise when we remember the debacle last fall: Biden agreed to a “prisoner exchange” in connection with the $6 billion ransom that he paid Iran for the release of American hostages. Then it turned out that most of the Iranian prisoners, who had been or were being prosecuted by the Justice Department for clandestine activities on behalf of Tehran, were “U.S. persons” who got to stay in the United States rather than being returned to Iran.
Biden is facilitating illegal immigration from Venezuela (among other South and Central American countries) through a lawless visa scheme. In a post earlier today, I drew on a report by Andrew Arthur (of the Center for Immigration Studies) about the staggering number of illegal immigrants (371,000) who entered the country last month. Arthur relates that, despite the fact that Biden reserves for Venezuela a healthy share of the annual (illegal) parole grants from his CHNV program (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela), tens of thousands of additional aliens from those countries are showing up illegally every month. Last month, of 61,500 such illegal aliens, 47,000 were from Venezuela. That’s bad . . . but not as bad as the 51,833 from Venezuela in September.
The mind reels. Does any rational person think Iran is not capitalizing on this scheme?
Well, I suppose there are some people who are rational and approve, either because they favor Iran or hate the US or both.
The more important question, I think, is whether anyone in the Biden administration (or the Obama administration) is rational. In other words, are they all fools or are they all knaves? I think there is a combination of the two, but the latter outnumber the former. However, they work synergistically.
McCarthy continues:
… [W]hat Biden officials will never tell you is that, because the president has failed in his most basic duty to secure America’s borders, the administration has no idea how many Iranian operatives may be in the country — how many Iranian jihadist cells could be activated if our military responds forcefully to Sunday’s drone attack in Jordan, by which Iran killed three of our troops and wounded at least 34 others.
Or even if our military doesn’t respond forcefully.
Iran means business when it calls the US “The Great Satan” and yells “Death to America!”
Here’s another recommended video, about Iran’s aspirations:
A federal jury convicted six pro-life activists of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) and a felony conspiracy against rights.
There’s that conspiracy charge again, a way to up the ante on any group of people who act in concert. In this case, it was a nonviolent protest that involved praying, singing hymns, and sitting in front of a door at an abortion clinic. If I’m understanding the case, it was the blocking of the door – the location of their protest – that constituted the violation of the law, which says these are possible elements of the crime:
(1) intentionally injuring, intimidating, or interfering with, or attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere, any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services; … (3) intentionally damaging or destroying the property of a facility, or attempting to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damaging or destroying the property of a place of religious worship.
They face the possibility of 10+ years in prison, but have not been sentenced yet so there is also the possibility of lighter sentences. But that conspiracy charge indicates that the prosecution would certainly like long sentences.
The statute is not just about abortion clinics; it also applies to other facilities:
The statute protects all patients, providers, and facilities that provide reproductive health services, including pro-life pregnancy counseling services and any other pregnancy support facility providing reproductive health care. Where state statutes and local ordinances also prohibit certain types of conduct directed at health care providers, federal, state and local authorities work together to determine what charges are appropriate to bring.
As Mary Chastain – the author of the Legal Insurrection post – points out, however, has the FACE act also been used against the perpetrators of many acts of vandalism against pro-life pregnancy centers? When I did a quick search, I found this from last October:
In a separate incident the year prior, in June 2022, CompassCare’s [a pro-life center] location in Buffalo was firebombed. Footage has revealed two masked males were responsible, and they remain unidentified. Harden previously stated, “… [O]ver 300 attacks on pro-life entities have occurred with zero convictions. Both federal House and Senate judiciary committees are investigating the DOJ and FBI’s refusal to thoroughly investigate and prosecute violent crimes against pro-life pregnancy centers like CompassCare.”
That indicates another two-tier system of justice enforcement. The statute protects both types of center, but it seems that the DOJ and FBI pick and choose which type to protect through criminal charges:
The FACE Act prevents both pro-abortion and pro-life protestors from obstructing or interfering with reproductive health facilities, including pro-life pregnancy centers, though it has primarily been used against pro-lifers. …
Though there have been numerous prosecutions of pro-lifers for FACE Act violations, pro-abortion attacks have largely gone unpunished, despite the fact that attacks against PRCs and other pro-life facilities skyrocketed following the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade. Last November, FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted that “probably in the neighborhood of 70% of our abortion-related violence cases or threats cases are cases of violence or threats against […] pro-life organizations.” Despite this, PRCs like CompassCare have had to fight for help in identifying the vandals and putting an end to the violence.
“It is ridiculous that as pro-life citizens we are forced to do the job of both the FBI and DOJ,” said CompassCare’s CEO James Harden in a statement to The Washington Times. “The FBI refused to investigate so we hired private investigators. The DOJ refuses to indict, so we brought FACE charges.”
If anyone knows of a DOJ prosecution of someone for defacing or blocking a pro-life pregnancy clinic, please put a link in the comments.
Caroline Glick has an excellent video, as usual. In it, she refers to two articles that I happen to have read prior to listening to her video, and I recommend them as well. Here’s the one about Shylock at the UN. And here is “The Treason of the Intellectuals” by Niall Ferguson (he discusses the article in this YouTube video, if you prefer that medium).
And here’s Glick:
It occurs to me that Jews have long been criticized for supposedly meekly going “like lambs to slaughter” during the Holocaust, although it’s not true (I’ve written about Jewish resistance quite a few times before; see this, for example). Now Jews are condemned for fighting back to resist slaughter, as any other nation would, only taking even more care not to harm civilians than other nations would. This is classic anti-Semitism: whatever Jews do or don’t do is labeled as wrong.
Cori Bush may have had some extra people on the payroll:
As RedState reported on Monday, a House Democrat is currently under criminal investigation for the misuse of government funds under the guise of paying for “security” services. Heavy speculation revolved around that Democrat being Rep. Cori Bush, and that has now been confirmed.
Confirmed by “six sources familiar with the investigation,” that is. It remains to be seen if anything will come of this.
And it remains to be seen whether anything will come of this:
Republicans have started demanding the resignation of Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) after a speech surfaced of her putting American interests third behind Somalia and Muslims.
Ilhan Omar’s appalling, Somalia-first comments are a slap in the face to the Minnesotans she was elected to serve and a direct violation of her oath of office. She should resign in disgrace.https://t.co/O3lAEGlokt
I don’t see any chance of her resigning voluntarily. Republicans could expel her from the House, if they were totally united on it. But I very much doubt that will happen.
