Six anti-abortion activists found guilty and face possible long sentences

The New Neo Posted on by

From Legal Insurrection:

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, Niall Ferguson, Shylock

The New Neo Posted on by

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.

Two members of the “Squad” having some troubles of their own making

The New Neo Posted on by

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.

One of those Republicans is Ron DeSantis:

Another is the Majority Whip:

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.

Research deception: Harvard’s chief diversity officer and her husband, and they are not alone

The New Neo Posted on by

Claudine Gay has gotten the most press recently, but there are more allegations of plagiarism at Harvard in the DEI area:

Harvard University’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own husband—according to a complaint filed with the university on Monday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston’s thin publication record. In her 2009 dissertation, submitted to the University of Michigan, Charleston quotes or paraphrases nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution, the complaint alleges. And in her sole peer-reviewed journal article—coauthored with her husband, LaVar Charleston, in 2014—the couple recycle much of a 2012 study published by LaVar Charleston, the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, framing the old material as new research.

Through that sleight of hand, Sherri Ann Charleston effectively took credit for her husband’s work. The 2014 paper, which was also coauthored with Jerlando Jackson, now the dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education, and appeared in the Journal of Negro Education, has the same methods, findings, and description of survey subjects as the 2012 study, which involved interviews with black computer science students and was first published by the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.

So this involves academics at three universities: Harvard, the University of Wisconsin, and Michigan State. Computer programs can check this sort of thing these days much better than in the past, and my guess is that various sorts of deceptive practices are rampant, and not just in DEI-related areas. For example, in the world of science:

Allegations of research fakery at a leading cancer center have turned a spotlight on scientific integrity and the amateur sleuths uncovering image manipulation in published research.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, announced Jan. 22 it’s requesting retractions and corrections of scientific papers after a British blogger flagged problems in early January.

The blogger, 32-year-old Sholto David, of Pontypridd, Wales, is a scientist-sleuth who detects cut-and-paste image manipulation in published scientific papers. …

California microbiologist Elisabeth Bik, 57, has been sleuthing for a decade. Based on her work, scientific journals have retracted 1,133 articles, corrected 1,017 others and printed 153 expressions of concern, according to a spreadsheet where she tracks what happens after she reports problems. …

… She published an analysis in the American Society for Microbiology in 2016: Of more than 20,000 peer-reviewed papers, nearly 4% had image problems, about half where the manipulation seemed intentional.

It’s not a new phenomenon. For example, Piltdown man was an early example of outright fraud in physical anthropology.

NOTE: I suppose the current Steyn/Mann “hockey stick” defamation trial is relevant. This is a fairly comprehensive discussion of the trial so far.

Biden blames his open border policy on Republicans

The New Neo Posted on by

I kid you not. I kid you not.

From the horse’s mouth:

Only now that the sheer numbers of illegal aliens causing mayhem and busting budgets in Democratic cities like New York have become an electoral liability has Biden had an epiphany.

So he is doing what he does best: telling lies to weasel out of blame.

Now he claims he needs Republicans in Congress to give him the “authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed … I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”

But he already has the authority. He could shut down the border today. He has spent three years lying that the border is “secure” and now he’s lying that he needs new laws to secure it.

He could stop suing Texas to prevent Gov. Greg Abbott from sealing his border with Mexico, for starters.

Is there anyone who can’t see through this kind of transparent gaslighting?

And we have the GOP in the Senate, still led these days by our old friend Mitch McConnell:

They are supporting a “bipartisan” bill that pretends to secure the border, when all it would do, at best — if Biden kept his word, which would be a first — would be to slow the number of illegal border crossings to 5,000 per day.

Yes, really. FIVE THOUSAND invaders per day. That’s what Senate GOP leadership thinks is tolerable.

Back in the Barack Obama era, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson called 1,000 a day a “crisis.” And we’re supposed to be thankful for five times that number because it’s half of the 10,000 a day who streamed across the border in December.

Problem is, although that sounds awful and is awful, that’s probably all they realistically can do. They are not a majority. Even if they were, they can’t override a Biden veto. They don’t have Democrat support except by holding Ukraine aid hostage until the Democrats approve at least some reduction in the number of illegal aliens flowing across the border.

And who are these people coming across, anyway? If you want to read something chilling, try this.

Republicans in the House, by the way, are preparing to impeach Mayorkas over the border issue.

Biden and Iran: three US military killed in Jordan by Iranian proxies

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s richly ironic that Joe Biden was promoted and elected with the idea that he would represent an experienced, moderate, and steady hand on the tiller. “Experienced” he certainly was. But that experience was at often using bad judgment during his Senate days, and then being a VP yes-man to Obama’s terrible policies. As such, he went right along with Obama’s appeasement and enabling of one of America’s (and the world’s) worst enemies, Iran.

As president, Biden has followed right in Obama’s footsteps regarding Iran. Whether this is because Obama is still telling him what to do, other Obama allies are telling Biden what to do, or Biden has learned the lessons well and is applying them himself, it hardly matters. The point is, for whatever reason – and we’ve had discussions here for years on the possible motives – Biden’s actions as president towards Iran and elsewhere have greatly facilitated Iran’s ability to attack its enemies. It does this through terror group proxies, and thanks to Biden it has plenty of money with which to finance them, and little fear of reprisal.

Which brings us to the recent drone attack that killed three members of the US military in Jordan:

The drone hit their container housing units.

The Pentagon has identified the three soldiers killed in the Iranian-backed militia drone attack in Jordan.

Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Ga.
Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Ga.
Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Ga.

The drone attack killed the soldiers on Sunday.

How did this happen, with all our advanced technology?:

A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News the drone from an Iranian proxy that killed 3 American service members in Jordan and injured others got past the air defenses for Tower 22 because it was mistaken for a U.S. drone expected to return to the base at the same time.

Was this planned on the part of the people who launched the attack, or was it serendipitous as far as they were concerned?

Biden has said he will “take action.” I bet the mullahs are quaking in their shoes.

A little history:

Three American service members paid that cost in blood this weekend — their murders subsidized by the billions in sanctions relief Biden has provided Tehran and all but guaranteed by the president’s refusal to hold Iran accountable for nonstop attacks on US forces.

The deadly assault on a US base near the Jordanian-Syrian border was the 159th Iran-directed attack on American forces in the Middle East since Oct. 17.

Those attacks have included suicide drones, mortars, rockets and close-range ballistic missiles, leaving dozens of other Americans injured. …

US Central Command’s chief testified to Congress last year that Iran had directed 78 attacks on American forces in Iraq and Syria from January 2021 to March 2023.

These attacks left two other contractors dead and many more Americans injured.

Tehran never once paid a price for these strikes. Nor does it today. …

When the IRGC directed similar attacks on US forces in Iraq in late 2019, killing an American contractor, former President Donald Trump responded by taking out IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani.

Trump’s action seemed to have had a deterrent effect. But fortunately for the mullahs, Trump failed to win re-election in 2020, and he was replaced by their friend Biden.

Ilhan Omar: my first allegiance is to Somalia and Islam and I don’t care who knows it

The New Neo Posted on by

Perhaps, with all the Palestine-philia going around, Omar thinks it’s finally not only safe to say this sort of thing, but admirable, and that it will earn her votes:

Rep. Ilhan Omar, an evidenced antisemite, has often suggested in various ways that anyone who supports Israel has “dual loyalty” and is somehow being paid off by Jews. Ironically, she’s the one who has a real dual loyalty problem, or worse, a singular loyalty to a foreign nation. …

During a recent speech, of which clips are now going viral, Omar left nothing to the imagination. She proclaimed to the crowd that Somalis control the U.S. government and that it exists to “safeguard the interests of Somalia.” She also stated that she is Somalian first and Muslim second. There was no mention of any allegiance to the United States despite her serving in its Congress.

If Somalis really do control the US government these days, that would actually explain a lot.

My theory that the pro-Hamas demonstrations have given her the boldness to “come out,” as it were, is backed up by this Omar quote. Note the resemblance between what she says about Somalians vs. Kenyans and Ethiopians, and the rhetoric of the pro-Palestinian crowd versus Israel:

Somalia is for Somalis only as over 45 percent of Somalia’s population are not even ethnic Somalis. Somalia is one nation. We are all brothers and sisters. Our land can not be divided. Ethiopia and Kenya have stolen and continue to occupy the Somali region state, which belongs to Somalia. We will liberate the occupied territories stolen from Somalia…

Another way in which Omar reminds me of Palestinians is that apparently she made this speech in Somali to a Somali crowd. I doubt she would have said the same things in English, and probably didn’t expect much attention because of the language barrier. That’s very much what Arafat used to do: give one speech in English, and a much nastier and more fiery one in Arabic. It took quite a while before the world caught on, and many never did.

The dread “Esmeralda” variation

The New Neo Posted on by

First of all, I dislike this particular ballet variation even when adult soloists perform it. It’s herky-jerky and show-offy in a sharp and to me unpleasant way. There’s a tendency for the women to look as though they’re ferociously looking to bite somebody.

When I was young, the variation wasn’t especially popular, but with the growth of the competition circuit it’s a perennial favorite and has become a recurrent showpiece number, even for children. It encourages the worst acrobatic excesses of the current ballet scene, being basically a gymnastics “trick” variation.

Of course, I bet Plisetskaya could have made something wonderful out of it, but I can’t find a video of her performing it and perhaps she never did.

Here’s a little 6-year-old girl doing the variation. I’m not criticizing the girl, who has plenty of talent but in my opinion is being coached improperly to give a lot of emphasis to showing off her extreme extensions rather than a pleasing and beautiful line and flow (granted, hard to accomplish with this particular variation):

Here are three well-known adult soloists doing the same variation. They’re all good, but in my opinion only the third one gives it an interesting quality, trying desperately to squeeze out some sort of feeling and musicality other than “look at how high I can kick my leg to the side and bam this tambourine with it!” One of my other least favorite parts of the variation is when the dancer does a couple of diagonal turns known as piques and then must immediately stop that momentum, plant herself and try to orient herself for the stationary double or triple pirouette. It looks somewhat stressed and strained to me no matter who does it:

For contrast, here’s another little girl doing a much more appropriate variation and showing dance ability more than acrobatic or gymnastic ability. Her teachers haven’t tried to get her leg sky-high, but have instead emphasized a charming flow of movement, with proper epaulement: