The accusations forming the basis of a federal investigation of former President Donald Trump and his activities relating to the 2020 election do not represent illegal acts, say law experts and analysts on both sides of the political aisle.

These experts also say that Michigan citizens who were charged for acting as Trump-supporting "alternate electors" for the 2020 Electoral College committed no crime.

Challenging presidential election results is nothing new — and was never considered illegal — until the 2020 election.

Controversies and claims of "stolen" elections have occurred and notably marked the elections of 1800, 1824, 1876, 1912, 1960, and 2000.

And 2020 wasn't the first election in which "alternate" electors played a role in trying to shape the outcome of the election.

Although Michigan's attorney general filed felony charges on Tuesday against 16 Republicans who acted as alternate electors for Trump, legal precedent indicates that those alternate presidential electors committed to Trump in seven battleground states likely did not commit any crime.

Curtis Hill, a former Indiana attorney general who is a Republican gubernatorial candidate, said going after alternate electors is "nothing more than another attempt to weaponize our justice system against political opponents."

"Three times now, the Biden Justice Department has tried to silence President Trump and his supporters because they see him as a threat to their power next year," Hill said, referencing the 2024 presidential election in which Trump is a front-runner to win the GOP nomination.

"These liberal prosecutors are targeting President Trump and anyone who supported him in the 2020 election because they are worried about their own election chances in next year's election."

Michael Markey, a Republican congressional candidate for Michigan's 3rd District, said that the investigation by the state's Democrat attorney general, Dana Nessel, "should be concerning for all Michiganders across the state."

"Election integrity is important, but we secure our elections through legislation, not political prosecutions against our opponents," Markey said.

Even though Nessel is charging 16 people with eight criminal counts, including forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery, not every state dealing with the so-called "fake" electors has treated them as criminals.

Last year, the Wisconsin Elections Commission decided unanimously against sanctioning 10 Republicans, including one of the commissioners, for claiming to be presidential electors in 2020.

In a letter and legal memo, the commissioners determined that there was no reasonable suspicion that the would-be electors violated any of the laws the commission oversees.

"Wisconsin law does not prohibit an alternative set of electors from meeting," the commission's attorneys wrote in the memo.

Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is now the state's governor, told The Associated Press that he doesn't believe there was evidence that the actions of the "fake" electors in his state met the legal standards for forgery.

Nevada's Democrat attorney general has stated he won't bring charges, either.

In Georgia, a prosecutor has already cut immunity deals with at least eight of the alternate electors as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis investigates Trump's purported efforts to overturn the election in the Peach State.

Wren Williams, a sitting Republican Virginia delegate who served on Trump's Wisconsin legal team, said there is nothing illegal about selecting alternate electors.

"Selecting alternate electors is not illegal," Williams said. "In fact, there is no legal precedent to say alternate electors should be prosecuted for doing their assigned tasks."

He said Biden's Justice Department "has its man, but continues in search of a crime" by tapping state attorneys general to "carry on this absurd witch hunt."

Though some critics may argue the alternate electors were "fraudulent," an article published by liberal-leaning Slate argues that the loyal Trump electors were "acting on the basis of a well-known precedent, in the face of an even better-known feature of our Constitution."

The article pointed out that "under our law, any candidate challenging the results of a presidential election must take steps very much like what these electors did."

The outlet noted that under the U.S. Constitution, states have the power to set the "matter" in which electors are appointed and Congress has the power to say when those electors must cast their votes.

"In close elections, that deadline can create an obvious problem," the article states. "If the election is still contested in a state at the time the electors are to vote, which slate of electors should vote?"

Because Congress has a strict deadline on when electors are required to cast their votes, both slates of electors have often cast their ballots on the day that Congress chooses to set the vote.

It is a scenario that played out during the 1960 presidential election.

Hawaii was participating in its first presidential election since becoming a state, in a race between Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard Nixon.

Kennedy had already secured the necessary Electoral College votes to win the presidency, but the Aloha State still gave the win there to Nixon based on a razor-thin 140-vote margin.

Democrats decided to challenge the result, forcing a recount that was still underway on Dec. 19, the federally-mandated date on which presidential electors from around the country were required to cast their votes.

On that day, electors backing Nixon and electors backing Kennedy both signed their own certificates for their preferred candidate. Both signed certificates sent to Washington.

Kennedy ultimately became the winner following the recount, beating Nixon by just 115 votes.

The decision by Hawaii Democrats to deploy alternate electors in that race is being cited as a precedent for other states that took similar steps in 2020. No one sought to indict these electors or prosecute Kennedy over the matter.

Attorney, author, and TV and radio host Mark Levin has argued that an election isn't over until "Congress says it's done."

During an episode of his Fox News' "Life, Liberty, and Levin," he pointed out that the "system is built for objections and no election is over until Congress determines it is."

"Congress is the last check," he said. "Not the courts, not the ballot boxes."

Because Congress has the last say, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., was able to have "objected to a Republican president at one time" and why Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., objected to the 2004 election results, Levin noted.

When it comes to the issue of the so-called fake electors, Levin said that is "not a crime either."

"You might not like it," he said. "You might think it's weird; you might think it's unethical; but it's not a crime."

That there is seemingly nothing illegal about deploying alternate electors could be why former Trump election challenge lawyer John Eastman is not a target for special counsel Jack Smith's grand jury investigation of the 2020 presidential election challenge.

Eastman has been credited with coming up with the legal avenues Trump used to contest the 2020 election, including reportedly calling for Vice President Mike Pence to kick the contested Electoral College votes back to the state legislatures to reconsider their support for them.

Eastman's attorney, Charles Burnham, told Politico that Eastman doesn't expect to receive a "target letter" since "raising concerns about illegality in the conduct of an election is not now and has never been sanctionable."

Trump posted on Truth Social that he expects to be indicted by Smith's grand jury because he received a "target letter."

Politico reports that investigators have probed Trump's role in the use of alternate electors.

Two attorneys with direct knowledge of the letter told NBC News that federal statutes are mentioned, including deprivation of rights under color of law, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and tampering with a witness. (read more)

Restoration News was the first to report on the latest front in election integrity: The battle for control of the U.S. Postal Service. Now that conflict is heating up.

In May, the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) launched a new offensive to seize control of the USPS Board of Governors with the goal of transforming the $81 billion organization into the world’s biggest mail-in ballot collector. APWU protesters gathered outside the board’s quarterly meeting in Washington, D.C., to harangue Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—a Trump appointee—and demand Biden replace the DeJoy-friendly board with a “progressive” majority bent on firing him and expanding vote-by-mail.

Their agent of choice: Former Rep. Brenda Lawrence, the recently retired Democrat representing Detroit. Lawrence is a former postal worker and member of both APWU and the National Association of Letter Carriers. The other likely candidate is former Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who passed the $57 billion Postal Reform Act of 2022 (with DeJoy’s help), expanding mail delivery services and postal worker healthcare benefits.

Either woman would effectively serve as the postal unions’ representative on the board. Both support massively expanding USPS’ vote-by-mail capabilities, as do all of Biden’s board nominees, notably Republican Derek Kan.

But there’s a catch.

The 9-person board is limited by law to 5 members of either party. Democrats already control 5 seats: 4 by overt Democrats, and a fifth through the nominally “independent” Amber McReynolds. As we’ve pointed out, McReynolds is the former head of the National Vote at Home Institute, the activist organization responsible for the Left’s rapid adoption of all-mail elections in 2020, and an outspoken “progressive.”

Labeling her an “independent” is ridiculous on a board where partisan leanings matter.

There’s no reason Biden wouldn’t pick either Lawrence or Maloney to replace the outgoing Democrat Donald Lee Moak. But activists are angling for the President to also replace outgoing Republican member William Zollars, handing the Left an illegal supermajority of 6 votes—and the power to finally fire DeJoy.

The Far Left Moves In

This campaign is already in full swing. The Save the Post Office Coalition includes 300 left-wing groups ranging from the ACLU, to the government workers union AFSCME, to the radical global warmers at 350.org—evidence that the Left sees taking over USPS as a top priority, not a niche issue.

The coalition’s top priority is filling both seats with governors who will “deliver a majority on the board,” “with or without Republican support” in the Senate.

For the auto workers unions, the coalition demands union-built “emission-free vehicles” whose engines won’t “poison” “black and brown communities” with “toxic air.” Who knew gasoline-powered cars were killing people left and right?

And Congress—not the states, notice—must massively expand vote-by-mail by federalizing elections. Conveniently, the coalition points out that Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN) already has model legislation to do exactly that.

We know the Left’s modus operandi well: Fabricate a public “crisis,” magic up a fake grassroots coalition, then devise a “solution” (which invariably helps the Democrats). Just consider the array of groups backing this project:

• Virtually every major union, including the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, SEIU, National Nurses United, and National Education Association;
• The United Church of Christ;
• The Center for American Progress, the Left’s top think tank;
• Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, a mega-funder;
• Demos, the think tank of the far Left (more on its own anti-DeJoy coalition here)
• The gay and transgender group Lambda Legal;
• Vote.org, a voter registration machine;
• The “green” get-out-the-vote group League of Conservation Voters;
• Everytown for Gun Safety, the Left’s premier gun control organization;
• People for the American Way, which protests conservative judicial nominees;
• Stand Up Republic, Evan McMullin’s ever-more-leftist NeverTrump group;
• The Hub Project, a strategy front for Arabella Advisors’ $1.6 billion “dark money” network; and
• UnidosUS, a Hispanic get-out-the-vote group (formerly the National Council of La Raza, or “the Race”)

The coalition itself is managed by Take on Wall Street, a union-backed successor to the Occupy Wall Street debacle in 2008. But Take On Wall Street is actually a front for Americans for Financial Reform—itself spawned by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a professional protest group that specializes in running astroturf campaigns populated with hundreds of “progressive” groups.

Hold the Line

The way to stop this scheme is simple: Refuse to confirm two Democrats to the USPS Board of Governors. Democrats have a bare majority in the Senate, but any vote relies on two swing votes by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Manchin (WV). Winning either—and keeping the GOP in line—is enough to stop the scheme.

Republicans are smart to use vote-by-mail to defeat Democrats, and in all likelihood they must if they want to win in 2024. But that also means keeping the Left from handing control over elections to Washington. If they’re serious about election integrity—and winning elections—they’ll do both. (read more)

In 2024 Republicans cannot "out-fraud" the left, cannot "out-ballot-harvest" them, cannot "out-lawfare" them, cannot "out-media" them, cannot "out–contribution mule" them, cannot "out–Justice Department" them...but sure as hell can out-compute them — and that may do it.

The left owns the election apparatus — voting equipment, ballot-manufacturing, vagrant habitats, election commissions, media intimidation of judges not to look at election fraud and driving out any lawyer who raises a valid case.

Electioneering, by both sides, currently runs 1970s technology. 

Leftists make good use of obsolete relational tech; Republicans, not so much. 

In 2024, there is an opportunity to out-compute the left.  Here's what it may look like.

Ninety percent of current election fraud comes in two buckets: election commissions jacking with voter rolls like Arizona and Wisconsin and mail-in ballots collected and illegally voted like everywhere.

Neither fraud bucket is thwarted by organizational solutions — both can be stopped with real-time compute power.

Let's define the terrain. 

Twenty twenty-four will be won or lost in six swing states. 

In each swing state, 2024 will be won or lost based on fraud turnout in two or three counties.

The leader of the free world, the end of the Deep State, for many the future of America as they have known it depends on about 17 counties.  Remember — two types of fraud — voter commissions and phantom ballots.

The problem comes into focus.

Let's start with fraudulent election commissions — at the state and county levels.

Sketchy election commissions know they can modify voter rolls when mail-in ballots go out by changing ZIP codes (Arizona), adding a fake street (Florida), putting hidden characters in voter IDs (Wisconsin), creating an inventory of nice unvoted mail-in ballots gathered by the U.S. Postal Service (Illinois and Wisconsin) given to leftists — for a fee.

Current relational technology is blind because of database latency.

In one Republican state, our team found 41,000 voters changed from inactive status to active, voted, then changed back.  In Arizona, 107,000 changes, plus 22,000 new voters added in one county alone — days before the 2022 election. 

Real-time changes all the rules — it just needs to be applied before the election, not as a data autopsy afterward (Arizona). 

In 2024, in 17 counties, let's do real-time voter registration analysis beginning six months before the election. 

Download daily, weekly, or monthly copies of voter rolls.

Compare every voter roll with every other, showing every change.  Were large numbers of addresses changed?  Were thousands of new voters added 90 days before early voting from ineligible addresses (Houston)?

Ineligible?  Who determines?

Good question, dear reader. 

With relational technology, someone must knock on the door and ask if Phineas lives there.  When told, "No, never heard of him," the canvasser fills out an affidavit, goes to the judge.  Nothing happens.

With real-time super-compute, our pal Phineas's address is cross-tabbed with the county property tax records.  They show 11 people registered in his 823-square-foot house, and the county health department says "no-no" to more than four people per 500 square feet.  Seven fake voters just got busted.

The voter integrity types will tell you nothing can be done; we hear that all the time.  But you are not dealing with their SQL limitations.  Real-time gives you choices because you see this fraud before the election — before votes are cast.

Sit down with the county registrar.  Pull out your tablet showing that on her voter list, there's a phantom nest. 

You are not saying it.  The tax records — government dox — say it. 

Look her in the eye and say, "Phyllis, we both know these addresses are ineligible.  Your health department says so.  We are taking this list to the sheriff.  If people here are mailed a ballot, we will report you for a criminal violation."

Sound harsh?  It does.  It also works. 

Chat with the team in Wisconsin who almost single-handedly shut down 40% of the phantom vote in 2022 — helping a U.S. Senate squeaky win.  They showed the phantoms, identified with real-time Fractal technology, to registrars — with a smile. 

When you have better technology than the government, the government hesitates.

This one step, alone, will reduce leftist fraud by 30 to 40%.  It is unrecoverable.  Leftists need fraudulent voter roll changes to impact their numbers — if they miss these quotas, there is no way to make them up.

Shut down election commission fraud, via real-time visibility, and you just cut election fraud in 17 counties 30–40%.  In Arizona, Kari Lake would now be governor.

We're not done.

Now for the phantoms.

There are several kinds of phantoms. 

One type signs a voter registration application at the leftist church, the homeless shelter, the gas station and never votes.  She may be dead in a tent on an Austin street.  Who knows?  Leftists do not care; they have a forever voter.

Another phantom is a not-too-interested person who registered, lives in a house, but does not vote because it is useless, an effort or a distraction.  She is the "I don't care" voter.  Leftists have a ballot and voter for her.

There are phantom ballot, not people, collection points. 

A large urban apartment building has a mail room, where hundreds of mail-in ballots collect because nobody cares to open them.  There is no check inside. 

As the junk mail gets tossed, ballots accumulate.  They aren't collected by Ronna's Kiwanis Club Republican county chairman — he's on the golf course.  They are collected by a vagrant, paid $25 for each mail-in ballot in that trash can.  They get voted while Ronna is ballot-harvesting in densely Republican churches.

Real-time compute makes this a game two can play.

With the Undeliverable Ballot Database, it can be determined where almost every ballot collects.  Skip Ronna; send a kid to that mail room and have him pick up those ballots, and give them to the sheriff — noting they were in the garbage!

Do you think this just might be more effective than Republican ballot-harvesting at evangelical churches who are going to vote anyway?

Leftists made huge, 40-year investments in corrupting voter commissions, getting their team on board, building phantom armies they could vote when needed. 

Unfortunately for them, their fraud is dependent on 1970s relational database — its limitations, its latency, its clumsy use by Republicans.

Real-time changes the outcomes. 

Every address in every county, certainly in 17, can be profiled in excruciating detail — square feet, year built, number of baths, bedrooms.  Voter roll changes can be seen the moment they are augmented by helpful leftist voter commissions.

Challenges happen now — before the election — publicly — not months afterward, when nobody cares.

In 2024, the goal is not to stop voter fraud.  Stopping fraud will take years.

Super-compute can reduce fraud by 40% or more — and that is more than enough to stop leftists who are stuck on relational technology.

The most significant confrontation on North American soil since Gettysburg will happen in 2024.  Super-compute can determine who has the high ground.

Jay Valentine led the team that built the eBay fraud detection engine and the TSA No-Fly List.  Jay's team built the world's largest election database with Fractal tech and developed the Undeliverable Ballot Database.  Jay can be contacted at https://Omega4America.com and @AmericaOme17300.

It was never about protecting Americans from the [synthetic] coronavirus; it was always about seizing power. If conservatives are to win in 2024, they must be all-in. In many states that will mean using the left’s tools against them, until principled patriots once again have the power to restore trust and confidence in our elections. That starts by understanding the left’s playbook for meddling with 2024.

Every “progressive” group supports that objective, but the left-wing NewDEAL Forum explains why in its “Democracy Playbook” for warping 2024, which the Washington Post endorsed in February.

It is worth first noting the document’s authors: Michigan's Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who wants Michigan to adopt all-mail elections after trying the scheme in 2020, and Arizona's Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who calls Republicans “fascists” and “election deniers”; Sandra Jauregui, a Las Vegas assemblywoman who introduced legislation in March to curb right-wing “domestic terrorism”; and Ken Lawrence, election board chairman for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, which voted narrowly to certify the 2020 election results despite receiving numerous ballots after Election Day.

NewDEAL wants every state to expand early voting and adopt no-excuse absentee voting—note that eleven of the fifteen states that require a reason to vote absentee are Republican-run—as well as automatically mail every voter a ballot without their solicitation. That is effectively adopting all-mail elections, something eight states currently do (only one of which, Utah, is Republican-run).

Democrats knew they needed private drop boxes purchased with “Zuck bucks” to hoover up all of those mail-in ballots in 2020, so NewDEAL recommends making them a permanent feature of all future elections. (The true goal is to turn USPS into a mail-in ballot collection machine, with drop boxes as a stopgap measure.)

NewDEAL also wants to weaken signature-matching requirements on absentee ballots because they “discriminate against voters who already face other obstacles to voting.” Any errors, the group says, can then be corrected with liberal ballot-curing laws.

But that’s not all—states, they say, should also extend the deadline for postmarking absentee ballots to Election Day, guaranteeing that ballot-counting will drag on for days or weeks after the first Tuesday in November. Eighteen states plus D.C. currently accept and tabulate ballots received after Election Day, in some cases up to 14 days later. They aren’t all blue states, either—North Dakota is engaged in a lawsuit with the right-leaning Public Interest Legal Foundation for its late-acceptance law.

Yet this policy is “the most voter-friendly,” the group assures us, with my emphasis

allowing voters to fill out and mail their ballot on Election Day. While this method could result in a longer waiting period to determine the winner of an election, it allows the most voters to participate.

The parties have known for decades that voting by mail is the least-secure way of conducting elections. That was a central finding of the 2005 bipartisan Carter-Baker report. Both Team Obama and Clinton protested a recount in Florida’s 2008 presidential primary because officials wanted to hold it via mail, with Obama campaign manager David Plouffe voicing his “real deep concerns” about the “reliability and security of a mail-in vote.”

One of the ugliest features of the 2020 and 2022 elections was the way counting dragged on long past Election Day, creating ample opportunities for mischief and secrecy. No one seriously thinks codifying these malpractices will encourage trust in election security—that was never the point.

Democrats have put all their resources into building a gigantic ballot-harvesting machine that can register and turn out tens of millions of voters each cycle. But this juggernaut relies on unreliable voters who fail to register or show up on Election Day. So operatives have staked everything on mail-in ballots, believing they can ensure those ballots are marked and counted, and each of these policies makes their job easier.

For conservatives, the goal must be to block Democrats from expanding the all-mail election project in red and purple states while also teaching Republican voters to vote early and by mail.

The 2020 election proved the left’s multi-million-dollar voter registration machine’s worth, by unseating a sitting president and seizing narrow control of Congress. Restoration News has written extensively on the premium Democratic operatives place on voter registration, something conservatives gave up on doing 15 years ago. Leftists have only doubled-down since then.

The Brennan Center, the think tank largely responsible for devising this strategy, wants to cement the left’s advantage with automatically registering every citizen to vote. This is a key provision of the Democrats’ extreme “For the People Act” (H.R.1) that the think tank takes credit for first proposing. In practice, that means that individuals are “automatically signed up to vote,” when they “give information to [government] agencies.” Twenty-three states and D.C. currently do this, only three of which are reliably Republican. The Brennan Center estimates this policy would add 50 million people to the voter rolls nationwide—roughly one-third the number of ballots cast in 2020.

Automatic voter registration’s “sister” policy is same-day registration (also in H.R.1), which allows individuals to register to vote and cast a ballot on the same day—often Election Day—leaving little time for officials to verify their eligibility. If that sounds trifling, consider that New York has both same-day registration and no ID requirement to vote. What is to stop a non-citizen from registering and voting under a fake name and address?

NewDEAL Forum supports both of these policies while pretending they are fair and absolutely, positively won’t favor Democrats. NewDEAL also proposes pre-registering 16-year-olds to vote when they turn 18. But that is a smokescreen; the real objective is to lower the voting age to 16, something supported by the leftist group FairVote and enshrined in legislation introduced in January by Democratic Rep. Grace Meng of New York—with endorsements from Rock the Vote, Generation Citizen, and other left-wing activist groups.

As if that was not enough, the Brennan Center urges states to automatically restore voting rights to felons, or even allow inmates to vote from prison. But they don’t want prisoners voting in their home states, but rather the states they are incarcerated in—giving them inroads into many southern and southeastern states such as North Carolina and Texas.

The right conservative response is clear: Halt the advance of automatic voter registration laws and roll back same-day registration in Virginia, North Carolina, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, New Hampshire, and Iowa. The left demands you expand their pool of voters for zero conservative gain. Republicans, tell them to pound sand—do not be bullied by whiny self-servers.

“The number one threat to democracy is unending misinformation,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steven Simon blasted in 2022. NewDEAL Forum agrees. Until recently, the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” were confined to warcraft and espionage—then the left turned them into weapons to use against conservatives.

Living in a free society means enduring opinions you dislike, whether spread by accident or by liars. The First Amendment to the Constitution does not recognize any authority (beyond God) to define “facts” and acceptable political speech. But that is exactly what the efforts to police mis- and disinformation are: A way to dictate politically expedient “facts” by a power-hungry party, Pravda-style.

Conservatives rightly booed Biden’s Disinformation Board, but they haven’t paid enough attention to Democrats’ efforts to criminalize election integrity advocates’ speech in the states. NewDEAL wants election officials to “aggressively counter misinformation” in part by “form[ing] relationships with journalists”—doubtless those at the New York Times and not, say, Tucker Carlson—and supplying them with the “facts.” NewDEAL also wants heftier laws to prosecute voter “intimidation,” which the left may define as any effort by conservative groups to monitor election administration and polling places.

Meanwhile, the Brennan Center goes much further. To counter “misinformation,” the center writes, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) should spread “accurate information” through “public-private partnerships.” The center wants states to “prohibit the spread of materially false information concerning the time, place, or manner of voting with the intent to prevent voters from exercising their right to vote.” But who is to prove intent?

Further, the think tank demands, states must “establish [an] authority to prohibit individuals who violate election laws from administering elections and to decommission jeopardized equipment.” In practice, that almost certainly means barring anyone who raised objections to certifying the 2020 election from ever working in elections again. The center also proposes laws allowing “affected voters and other aggrieved parties to sue individuals...[who] deliberately spread election falsehoods,” an act that would unleash the ACLU and other professional litigation groups upon anyone who questioned the 2020 election results.

And for those electors who threatened not to certify the Electoral College results in December 2020, the Brennan Center wants to open them up to lawsuits if they fail to certify by a certain deadline. Such a law would reduce the Electoral College to an absurd formality, rather than what the Founders meant it to be: One more check to prevent tyranny.

But Americans don’t want the totalitarianism the left offers. Even run of the mill Democratic voters don’t consider “expanding voting rights” anything like a top priority, per a recent poll by the leftist group Data for Progress.

House Republicans’ newly introduced ACE Act suggests they might be. Almost every provision in the bill is designed to counter or preempt these measures, from mandating photo ID for first-time mail voters, to banning private funding for elections, to prohibiting non-citizens from voting in state and local elections.

The ACE Act is an excellent start, but it needs to go further. Conservatives are learning that saving the country means learning to out-fox the enemy in mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting. That may look ugly to many, but they should remember this: The true glory we aim for is not simply to win an election, but to restore our republic. (read more)

The Achilles Heel of Mail-In Ballot Fraud

The difference between the Republican ballot operation and that of the leftists is that the leftists manufacture ballots, whereas Republicans only collect them.

Elections are for big stakes.  Pretty much everything is political, and thus, who controls the Legislature gets the goodies. 

If you are a government pro, you live or die according to whether your team is in power.  You do what the pros do — you make sure you control your food source.

The laughable RNC “out-ballot-harvest the left” plan is one any sentient adult knows cannot work. That of course leaves out Republican state operatives, for whom hope exceeds common sense.

Leftists learned early that running out of ballots to cast on election day is like running out of beer on July 4.  They took that lesson and improvised in ingenious ways.

Ballot-manufacturing appears pretty easy at first but has lots of little complexities.  Mastering those complexities gives our leftist pals unlimited numbers of ballots to handle any surging MAGA candidate.

Manufacturing ballots requires two ingredients: an address and a person.

 On the person side, leftists do all the obvious stuff: register college kids in droves, do voter drives in homeless shelters where vagrants come in and out, build apps and pay anyone who will sign up a few dozen new voters (Wisconsin) with no regard to whether these are eligible voters.

With these and scores of other techniques, the inventory of names aggregates.

That burgeoning list is permanent — voter integrity teams in most states report they cannot get many of these people off voter rolls even when they prove that those people are long gone.  Leftists control most of the voter commission apparatus, so that inventory remains safe.

Try to get those names off the voter list, and you will be attacked by leftist press , threatened by the Justice Department, or doxed on social media.

The other ingredient for ballot-manufacturing is the address. 

Addresses and voters have fundamentally different characteristics. 

Addresses can be misspelled in innumerable ways yet still be considered correct.  Addresses do not move — they are a plot of dirt with a number.   Addresses do not have lawyers, and they do not have 40 years of leftist court opinions to protect someone challenging their authenticity.

Addresses cannot be manufactured.  Voters can.

Leftists can create all the voters they want from homeless shelter lists, but they face a constraint: every voter must tie to an address.  It is this constraint — fixed addresses — that is the Achilles heel for mail-in voter fraud.

Addresses conveniently have the world’s singularly most accurate, current database maintained in every county in America — the real estate property tax record.  These records are consulted daily by real estate agents doing comps.  Tax authorities review them monthly, ensuring they squeeze every dollar from the citizen for any improvement.

Addresses, dear reader, are the key to stopping ballot-manufacturing. 

Addresses have not been analyzed at scale in granular detail — down to the square footage, the number of bedrooms, baths, year built — because the tools to do so were not there.  They are now.

The Fractal team was asked by some state legislatures to compare voter rolls with real estate tax rolls.  They couldn’t do it themselves — they did not have the compute power — in a major state.  That is why it has never been done before.

Two adjacent counties may report similar real estate data in different fields.  Each county may use different nomenclature for the same record.  Records are stored in relational databases with the address field broken into multiple segments — almost impossible to easily resurrect in real time with traditional tech. 

These systems were built to be accessed one file at a time, not comparing the entire database with another.

Comparing detailed property tax records — think 120 columns of info — against voter files lights up where a ballot will be mailed but not meet an eligible voter.

This week, the Fractal team ran a test.  We used current relational SQL technology, of which we are masters, and Fractal to ingest the property tax roll for a major county.  The Fractal system was able to finish in hours — with a real-time system giving answers in seconds. 

 After several days, the SQL team reported the originating data from the county — in a SQL relational file — was so complicated that it would take them several weeks to prepare for real-time retrieval.

We were also able to project response times.  The property tax records with Fractal were instantaneous.  With SQL, complete database comparisons would take days, perhaps a full week.

Leftists continue to pad voter rolls with vagrants and other transients, but they must tie them to an address.  That is a pretty hard card to hide.

When voters are added to large apartment buildings, leftists cannot add the apartment number, or the legit resident will probably get that ballot.  The trick is to mail the ballot to the main address, where it collects, and the Postal Service retrieves it for the bad guys. 

Another strategy is to create an address.  126 Chestnut Street and 130 Chestnut street are contiguous properties.  Our leftists create 128 Chestnut, which does not exist, and will generate a floating ballot. 

Often, college dorms are used to send thousands of ballots to students who left years ago.  We recounted many stories about 106-year-old voters in frat houses still casting a ballot.

Then there are the construction sites, where leftists have 224 registered voters in an apartment building — under construction.  No roof, no walls, no electricity, but 224 solid votes.

In Florida, our leftist pals created an entire fake street — then moved real voters there — and when ballots were sent out, they accumulated.  Innovation!  Never ceases to impress!

These and hundreds of other schemes fail in a single click when the real-time real estate property rolls come into play.  With that one click, one can see every address that does not exist in the property roll — yet has voters.

Another click shows every apartment building, compared with every voter record, kicking out the list, by street, of every person without that unit number — thus ineligible.

One more click, and every voter registered at a location with more than four people per 500 square feet of living space — thus challenging the county health regs — pops out.

What we have here is something of true beauty: one government database showing the nonsense in another government database.  When leftists say “show me the fraud,” one needs only to do one click — “voters who voted in 2022, who the government tax records note are ineligible.”

In 2024, the leftists are pulling out all the stops.  Hundreds of thousands of American voters will wake up in the 90 days before the election with strangers living in their homes, apartment buildings, the local 7-11, or the vacant field. 

 Those are the Trump anti-votes.

The difference between 2020 and 2024 is that they will become visible months before the election.  They will be challenged the week they register.  Press conferences will be held on that construction site lawn, next to the cement mixer, noting that this address houses “224 real voters.” 

Dare the Justice Department to intervene — the real estate tax rolls are challenging an address, not a person.  Meet the Undeliverable Ballot Database ^TM. 

.Now that Fractal makes every address in any county visible, across every of those 120 or more columns, and compares them with voter rolls in seconds, from a phone, our 2024 pal Achilles may find us grabbing him by the heel — or maybe somewhere where it hurts even more!

Jay Valentine runs Omega4America , collaborating with state legislators to compare voter rolls with real estate rolls.  Jay led the team that built the eBay fraud engine and the TSA No-Fly List.  Jay’s team delivered the Undeliverable Ballot DataBase .  Jay can be reached at Omega4America.com and on Twitter at AmericaOme17300

While it might sound odd, and as a consequence of the spotlight provided by Mr Aldean, intolerance to chaos, small-town values, peace, respect, kindness and neighbor helping neighbor is now declared by the grievance experts as an exhibition of profound racism.  It all seems rather bizarre, because redefining social values is typically Marxist.

Making things even more odd, Country Music Television agreed with the grievance team and immediately pulled the Aldean video from the network.  However, perhaps as an outcome of the interest created by this oddball controversy, viewers and listeners have driven the song and video to the top of the charts.

(Fox Business) – […] According to Luminate, which tracks streams and music sales, the audio and video streams from Aldean’s latest song went from 987,000 to 11.7 million, a 999% increase in the week following the release of the music video.

Luminate also confirmed to FOX Business that sales for “Try That In A Small Town” have spiked as well. The week before Aldean released the music video, it sold 1,000 tracks. Last week, the country music song sold 228,000 tracks, per Luminate.

Another major accomplishment for Aldean came in on Monday. “Try That In A Small Town” came in second on Billboard’s Hot 100 list. This marks the country music singer’s first number two spot on the chart. (read more)

I’ve watched this video a few times, and I still don’t see what makes it controversial.

Mr Aldean released this statement in the face of the controversy.

[Source Link]

After 13 years of service to Lowe's, an elderly white woman has been fired after she received a beating and black eye from black shoplifters brazenly rolling $2,100 worth of goods out of a store in Georgia. That's the steep price she paid for heroically trying to thwart the trio's theft -- in violation of Lowe's policy. 

“They say that if you see somebody stealing something out the door, not to pursue, not to go out. I lost it,” Donna Hansbrough told the Effingham Herald. “I grabbed the cart. I don't actually remember going out but I did. And I grabbed the cart that had the stolen items in (it).”

Police say that cart was being pushed on June 25th by Takyah Berry, who punched Hansbrough in the face three times, leaving her with a black eye that lingers almost a month later. Berry was allegedly accompanied by her uncle, Joseph Berry, and a man named Jarmar Lawton. After attacking Hansbrough, Berry and her accomplices left with the stolen goods. Lawton is in police custody on unrelated charges, but the two Berrys are at large. 

Like many good citizens, it seems Hansbrough simply lost her patience with corporate America's widespread toleration of shameless, daylight robberies.  “I just got tired of seeing things get out the door. I just, I lost it. I basically lost all the training. Everything they tell you to do, I just…I just lost it," she said.

With more than a dozen years working at the Lowe's location in Rincon, Georgia -- about a half hour north of Savannah -- Hansbrough expected consequences but wasn't braced for Lowe's' cruel reaction to her selfless reflex that drove her to try to stop wrongdoing. 

“I didn’t expect to get terminated,” the now-former live-plants customer associate said. “Maybe a reprimand or a suspension.” Choking back tears as she contemplated her sudden unemployment, Hansbrough told WJCL, "A lot of people know me as the plant lady...and it hurts, because I like them all." 

Lowe's policy prohibiting employee intervention against criminals is typical of major retailers, who seek to reduce the associated risks that intervention presents to employees and to the company.

The result, however, is a rising wave of theft that costs untold billions -- Target alone said thievery slashed its latest fiscal-year gross margins by $600 million. Those costs will inevitably be passed along to honest consumers in the form of higher prices -- a new form of wealth redistribution in a society that already has too much of it.

[News] Aubri
Brighton, Colorado. — (@ppv_tahoe) Different Angle from video I posted a few days ago showing thieves stealing shopping cart full of merchandise at King Soopers. pic.twitter.com/yqNoa4hexn

— PPV-TAHOE - News Journalist (@ppv_tahoe) June 2, 2023

It's one thing for companies to adopt such policies after their own risk assessment, but now liberal politicians want to make it illegal for employees to stop thieves. Last month, the California Senate passed just such a measure, which would only compound the state's ongoing cultivation of criminal behavior -- best exemplified by Prop 47, the law that made shoplifting of up to $950 of merchandise a misdemeanor. 

Meanwhile, as she looks for new work, let's salute Donna Hansbrough and people in America and around the world who team up to stop criminals:

Shop assistants have to forcefully take loot from shoplifters pic.twitter.com/Z9Yops4c1M

— Ghost Browser (@AlliedDemocracy) July 21, 2023

*

pic.twitter.com/5Capojnf0i

— thieves getting fucked (@RobberyFaiI) July 22, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/mouse-whored-william-kilpatrick/

https://www.gulf-insider.com/disneys-lightyear-flops-in-opening-weekend-after-lesbian-controversy/

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/05/19/disney-partners-with-pride-to-develop-content-for-children-n551994

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/02/06/disney-still-going-all-in-on-woke-n528718

https://ktla.com/news/theme-parks/disneyland/these-disney-characters-are-set-to-appear-at-disneylands-first-ever-after-dark-pride-event/

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/gay-chorus-that-sang-about-converting-kids-into-lgbt-cult-partners-with-disney-for-pride-concert/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/08/disneys-woke-agenda-continues-first-trans-character-will-debut-disney-channel/

Thousands of young illegal immigrants with tuberculosis were released from U.S. government custody across one year, officials have revealed in a new report.

The illegal immigrants, all under 18 years of age, were released to family members or other responsible adults despite having latent tuberculosis infection, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a recent disclosure.

The dates of each release were not clear. HHS officials notified state officials from June 1, 2022, to May 31, 2023, of the tuberculosis-positive youth over a web-based system operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Aurora Miranda-Maese, an HHS official, told a court in the report.

The Washington Times first reported on the report, which runs 35 pages and covers other aspects of managing illegal immigrant youth who are transferred to HHS by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after crossing the border.

A person with latent tuberculosis infection, or an infection without symptoms, requires three to nine months of treatment to prevent potential progression to active disease, according to HHS officials. Without treatment, 5 to 10 percent of infected people will develop active tuberculosis, or tuberculosis disease, according to the CDC.

The CDC says that people with the disease are infectious, can transmit the disease to others, and can die if not treated. If tuberculosis becomes active, that is “a threat to both the individual’s and the public’s health,” according to Ms. Miranda-Maese.

Minors do not typically receive treatment while in HHS custody because most are released before one month elapses, she said, opening up the possibility of problems such as the development of drug-resistant tuberculosis if treatment is initiated and discontinued before completion.

To that end, HHS developed in 2018 a system that notifies state officials of illegal immigrant minors who have been sent to live in their states.

Officials in 44 states received more than 2,450 alerts of illegal immigrant minors with tuberculosis in the year ending May 31, 2023, according to HHS.

The CDC, which is part of HHS, declined to comment. HHS did not respond to requests for comment.

States

Some states confirmed that they’ve been told of minors with active tuberculosis, in addition to latent cases.

“The department, in conjunction with local health departments, coordinates care and appropriate follow-up for anyone with active tuberculosis reported through this mechanism,” a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Health told The Epoch Times via email.

And some minors, by the time states are alerted to cases, have already moved elsewhere.

“Some individuals relocate prior to case interviews,” a spokeswoman for the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources told The Epoch Times in an email.

Even if they haven’t, minors can choose not to undergo offered treatment, according to the spokeswoman for the Indiana Department of Public Health.

Critics said President Joe Biden was to blame for the situation.

“Biden’s broken border policies continue to welcome millions of lawbreakers into our country, including countless thousands with infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) told The Epoch Times via email. “Rather than protecting Americans, the Biden regime is quite literally bringing disease and death to our doorstep.”

Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said that the releases of children with tuberculosis and other communicable diseases “is another example of the administration prioritizing the quick release of migrants over all other considerations, including public health, public safety, and national security.”

“Of all the endangered species, Truth is the most endangered. I am watching it go out.” Paul Craig Roberts, September 4, 2019

What makes Paul Craig Roberts’ writing so powerful, is his ability to cut through false narratives and identify the elite agendas that are shaping events. This is the work of a truth-teller which is the designation that is typically applied to Roberts. The term refers to a person of deep moral convictions who devotes his life to exposing the lies and fabrications of the state and its corrupt allies. This is what Roberts has been doing for more than 40 years, and this is why thousands of people around the world flock to his website every day. They know his posts will be hard-hitting, well-researched and engrossing. More importantly, they know he will make every effort to bring them the unvarnished truth just as he has for more than four decades.

Roberts’ latest collection of essays, titled Empire Of Lies, is an assortment of articles that show the remarkable scope and depth of the author’s knowledge. Frequent visitors to his website will notice some familiar themes here while other topics may not have been as thoroughly explored. For example, there are many essays on the fragile US economy, the “experimental” Covid-19 vaccine, the war in Ukraine, the stolen presidential election and the January 6 fraud. At the same time, there are a number of other articles that one might not typically associate with Roberts. These include a short but riveting post on 9-11, ominous reflections on the year 2022, the manipulation of the bullion markets, and an astonishing piece titled “Germany did not Start World War 2”. Here’s a brief excerpt from the article:

“The aims of the National Socialist German Workers Party…(was) to correct the unemployment caused by unjust reparations forced on Germany… following World War 1 and to put Germany… back together.…

World War 2 began when the Churchill government and the French… declared war on Germany.……

The German leader, Adolf Hitler, had reacquired German territories given to Denmark, France and Czechoslovakia by the humiliating Versailles Treaty and had united with German Austria without war…. The British guarantee emboldened the Polish military dictatorship to refuse to negotiate the return of German territory…. All Hitler contributed was to force countries given German territory by the Versailles Treaty to release the lands and the Germans, who were heavily persecuted in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Hitler’s restoration of Germany’s national boundaries was misrepresented in the British and US press as ‘German aggression.’....

This fake news story of German aggression was used to to build the case that Germany, which was merely recovering its national territory, and rescuing German people from persecution in Czechoslovakia and Poland, was an aggressor with world conquest as its goal…

Hitler stated many times that he did not want, or intend, war with Britain and France and only intended to recover the lost German populations stolen from Germany by the unjust Versailles Treaty.” Empire Of Lies, Paul Craig Roberts, Korsgaard Publishing, page 280, 2023

In these few paragraphs, Roberts obliterates the foundation upon which our understanding of World War 2 rests. The author challenges the ideas that:

1. That Hitler started the war
2. And that Poland represented the first step in Hitler’s broader plan to conquer the world.

If neither of these is true, then we need to ask ourselves why Hitler’s invasion of Poland was used as a pretext for a full-blown world war instead of treated as a regional ‘border dispute’ as one would expect? Clearly, there was no need for France and England to declare war on Germany when Germany was simply gathering back the territories it had lost after Versailles. Had cooler heads prevailed, World War 2 could have been avoided. Here’s more from the text:

“During his political rise, Hitler had hardly concealed his attempt to dislodge Germany’s tiny Jewish population from the stranglehold they had gained over German media and finance, and instead run the country in the best interests of the 99% German majority, a proposal that provoked the bitter hostility of Jews everywhere. Indeed, immediately after he came into office, a major London newspaper had carried a memorable 1933 headline announcing that the Jews of the world had declared war on Germany, and were organizing an international boycott to starve the Germans into submission.” (Empire Of Lies, Paul Craig Roberts, Korsgaard Publishing, page 286, 2023)

This is another astonishing excerpt that conflicts with historical narratives propagated in the West. In the United States, students are told that Hitler’s treatment of the Jews was fueled by his insatiable antisemitism, but here the author suggests that there were social and economic reasons for his policies as well. That doesn’t diminish the gravity of Hitler’s depredations, but it does create a more plausible explanation for why events unfolded the way they did. At the very least, Roberts provides a thought-provoking analysis that veers from the oversimplified “Hitler was a homicidal maniac” narrative that is used to answer every question and to effectively blunt critical thinking. In contrast, Roberts’ treatment of the topic generates curiosity which points the reader in the direction of more research which is the author’s intention.

Roberts treatment of the Civil War is equally provocative. In a chapter titled How We Know The So-Called “Civil War” Was Not About Slavery, Roberts disputes the widely-held view that the war between the states was launched to free the slaves. Here’s an excerpt from the piece that helps to explain:

“Two days before Lincoln’s inauguration as the 16th president, Congress, consisting of only the northern states, passed overwhelmingly on March 2, 1861, the Corwin Amendment that gave constitutional protection to slavery. Lincoln endorsed the amendment in his inaugural address saying, “I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

Quite clearly, the North was not prepared to go to war to to end slavery when on the very eve of war the US Congress and incoming president were in the process of making it unconstitutional to abolish slavery.”

Here we have absolute total proof that the North wanted the South kept in the Union far more than the North wanted to abolish slavery.”....

The real issue between the North and South could not be reconciled on the basis of accommodating slavery. The real issue was economics as DiLorenzo, Charles Beard and other historians have documented. The North offered to preserve slavery irrevocably, but the North did not offer to give up the high tariffs and economic policies that the South saw as inimical to its interests.” (Empire Of Lies, page 221)

Later in the text, Roberts lifts a quote from Lincoln’s inaugural address that further supports his point of view. Lincoln says:

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Roberts presents his case rationally and persuasively, but Lincoln made other comments that appear to conflict with those above. He also said, “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. Even so, the passing of the Corwin Amendment in 1861 strongly suggests that Congress was not planning to go to war to end slavery otherwise they wouldn’t have supported the bill. So, how is it that so many Americans cling to the idea that the Civil War was a struggle to end slavery?

Just as historians have tried to describe World War II as a “morally unambiguous” intervention, so too, historians have transformed the Civil War from a bloody dispute over tariffs into a righteous struggle against human bondage. Unfortunately, the propaganda does not align with the facts which suggests that more mundane factors were involved. Lincoln’s actions were not guided by some higher principle any more than FDR’s efforts to drag the country to the Second World War was aimed at “defeating fascism”. In both cases, the presidents pursued policies that were aimed at crushing their enemies while increasing the power of the state. It’s the job of the court historian to make these recurrent bloodbaths look like lofty moral crusades, but they are not, which is why we are fortunate to have researchers like Roberts to strip away the fakery and expose the self-serving machinations of raw political ambition.

In another chapter titled The Proof is In: The Election Was Stolen, Roberts contests the outcome of the 2020 presidential election not based on voting machine snafus or the mail-in ballot fiasco or any of the other technical glitches that beset the election. Instead, he presents a number of “common sense” observations that reveal the utter implausibility of a Biden victory. Take a look:

Consider that Joe Biden’s Twitter account has 20 million followers.
Trump’s Twitter account has 88.8 million followers.
Consider that Joe Biden’s Facebook has 7.8 million followers
Trump’s Facebook account has 34.72 million followers.

.How likely is it that a person with 4 or 5 times the following of his rival lost the election?
Consider that Trump’s campaign appearances were heavily attended but that Biden’s were avoided…..
Consider that despite Biden’s total failure to animate voters during the presidential campaign, he won 15 million more votes than Barack Obama did in his 2012 re-election.
Consider that Biden won despite under-performing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 vote in in every US urban country, but outperformed Clinton in Democrat-controlled Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia the precise cities where the most obvious and blatant electoral fraud was committed.
Consider that Biden won despite Trump bettering his 2016 vote by ten million votes and Trump’s record support from minority voters.
Consider that Biden won despite losing the bell-weather counties that have always predicted the election outcome and the bell-weather states of Ohio and Florida.
Consider that Biden won in Georgia, a completely red state with a red governor and red legislature both House and Senate. Somehow a red state voted for a blue president.
Consider that Biden won despite the Democrats losing representation in the House.” (Empire Of Lies, Paul Craig Roberts, Korsgaard Publishing, page 324, 2023)

There are many more of these eye-opening observations in the book, but they all underscore the same dismal fact; that the election was stolen and that the wrong man now sits in the White House. It’s very clever of Roberts to avoid abstruse technical issues and to make his case based on the glaring inconsistencies that ordinary people can understand. The idea that Joe Biden, who was unable to draw enough supporters to fill a small gymnasium, got 15 million more votes than Barack Obama is laughable in the extreme. Roberts should be applauded for taking the time to create this compelling compilation that greatly reinforces his thesis that the election was rigged.

This is what we have come to expect from Roberts who always goes the extra mile to bring the truth to his readers. His latest contribution, Empire Of Lies, follows in that same tradition. The book is a varied digest of the author’s recent work covering a broad range of topics that include everything from Neo-Nazis in Ukraine to the manipulation of gold prices. It’s a fascinating read that moves quickly due to uniqueness of the subject-matter and Roberts blunt but explosive writing style. Simply put, there’s something here for everyone. I’ll finish with a quote from Harold Pinter’s Nobel acceptance speech which, in many ways, could have been a description of Paul Craig Roberts:

“A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. … You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie…

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.” Harold Pinter, Nobel Lecture, 2005

Repeat: “…unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination.”

Indeed, that is Roberts in a nutshell. (read more)

The entertainment industry's liberal elites are mad at country music star Jason Aldean.

CMT, or Country Music Television, is no longer airing the music video for Jason Aldean's "Try That In A Small Town," even as the song reaches No. 1 on iTunes charts.

The music video, which features Aldean singing in front of a government building with an American flag, incorporates footage from various protests - including those associated with Antifa and Black Lives Matter - was released Friday.

CMT played it through Sunday before pulling it Monday.

The media reaction was, well, unhinged...

Variety's Chris Willman exclaims, in a story titled: "Jason Aldean Already Had the Most Contemptible Country Song of the Decade. The Video Is Worse", "Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” is close to being the most cynical song ever written..."

The Daily Beast published one of the most high-profile criticisms of the song its article, "Jason Aldean Catches Heat for Racist, Pro-Gun Lyrics: 'a Modern Lynching Song.'"

Hyperbole much?

Not everyone was horrified...

Just so we’re clear it’s cool if hip-hop songs glamorize rape, domestic violence, misogyny, racism, murder, killing the President, gang warfare , guns, violence and hate but if @Jason_Aldean talks about what’s actually happening it’s racist?

— Rosie Memos (@almostjingo) July 19, 2023

And in a similar vein, the top comment on the song's YouTube video states:

"Interesting how countless rap songs encourage murder sprees, drug dealing, pimping, and countless other crimes, and they're celebrated by the media, but a video by a country singer about self defense and neighbors looking out for each other is banned,"

Here are the lyrics...

Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like

Cuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you're tough

Well, try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Try that in a small town

Got a gun that my granddad gave me
They say one day they're gonna round up
Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck

Try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Try that in a small town

Full of good ol' boys, raised up right
If you're looking for a fight
Try that in a small town
Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town
Ooh-ooh
Try that in a small town

Taking to Twitter, Mr. Aldean refuted claims that the song contains racial undertones or supports lynching, stating that the references made against him are “not only meritless but dangerous.”

“In the past 24 hours, I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song … and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests,” Mr. Aldean wrote on Twitter.

“These references are not only meritless, but dangerous.”

The Epoch Times' Caden Pearsen reports that Mr. Aldean denied any racist intent in his song, asserting that “there is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it.” He also stressed that the accompanying music video features “real news footage” and contains no imagery that could be construed as promoting violence or hatred.

“While I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music—this one goes too far,” he said.

The country singer, who was on stage at the tragic 2017 Route 91 Harvest music festival shooting, emphasized that he has personally experienced the devastating consequences of senseless violence.

“NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart,” he added.

“Try That in a Small Town,” according to Mr. Aldean, is rooted in nostalgia for the tight-knit community he grew up in, where people cared for their neighbors regardless of their backgrounds or beliefs.

He asserted that the song is not about promoting any specific political agenda, but rather about the desire for a return to normalcy where headlines are less consumed by tragedy and division.

“My political views have never been something I’ve hidden from,” Mr. Aldean added, acknowledging that not everyone in the country shares the same opinions on how “we get back to a sense of normalcy where we go at least a day without a headline that keeps us up at night.”

Nevertheless, he emphasized that the song’s essence lies in the yearning for a better future, free from the constant specter of violence and discord. That’s “what this song is about,” he says.

Mr. Aldean insisted that the song’s intentions have been grossly misinterpreted.

He concluded his statement by expressing his hope that fans and critics alike will listen with an open heart and understand the true message behind the song.

You don’t need to explain or defend yourself. I’m sorry they made you feel you had to. I’m glad you didn’t apologize. Don’t. “If you give the devil an inch you’ll make him your ruler.”

— Keri Smith Deprogrammed (@RealKeriSmith) July 19, 2023

Here's the full video. Racist or not-racist, you decide...

BREAKING: CMT just CANCELLED this music video by Jason Aldean about the Antifa-BLM riots

You know what to do pic.twitter.com/9xf5KBQnKA

— Jack Poso (@JackPosobiec) July 19, 2023

     It happens that he is running for the nomination of that very party knocking itself out to destroy him. To win that prize he would have to put a thousand top Democrats through some grueling act of repentance and contrition — and then you’ve got to ask yourself: who would even want to win the support of such vile creatures as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jerrold Nadler, and Adam Schiff, let alone be associated with them in the same club?

    Elsewhere around the scene this week, we have the ever more degenerate antics of the FBI on view as whistleblowers pour out of the woodwork disclosing the rot behind Director Chris Wray and his boss AG Merrick Garland. This Deep State Blob of turpitude has been growing and festering with so many overlapping cover-ups that they’ve run out of rugs to sweep their crimes under. The massive moneygrubbing misdeeds of Hillary Clinton from Skolkovo and Uranium One beat a direct path through the Ukraine coup of 2014, to RussiaGate, to the Biden Family’s global influence-peddling operation and every mendacious act in-between including the FISA falsehoods, the J-6 entrapment caper, hundreds of malicious and deceitful prosecutions, the Covid-19 fraud, the censorship and medical tyranny, and God-knows how many ensuing deaths from a poisonous vaccine… and now, a brain-dead government trifling with nuclear war.

     And whose brilliant idea was it, anyway, to install this disgusting and incompetent grifter, “Joe Biden,” as our head-of-state? They surely knew well before 2019 that his bag-man son was rooting out bribes in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere, at the same time he was consorting with whores and trafficked children while destroying his brain with crack and downing a fifth of vodka a day. And you’re telling me that the CIA and FBI did not know about any of this, even before October 2019 when Hunter’s laptop stuffed with graphic evidence fell into their hands? If they didn’t know any of this, then what’s the point of having an intel community?

     My guess is that it was Barack Obama’s idea to stick “Joe Biden” in the White House in the vain effort to use this captive criminal to stave off any accounting for the aforesaid villainies that occurred during Mr. Obama’s two terms. The mission was originally Hillary Clinton’s — she had plenty at stake herself — but she botched the job in 2016 and allowed the Golden Golem of Greatness to slip into power. It is amazing to look back and see how the mighty Blob congealed after that election — like a giant rogue macrophage — to surround and eliminate Mr. Trump, who apparently did not know for many months what he was up against: the entire permanent bureaucracy. Obviously, the Blob only partly succeeded in deactivating Mr. Trump, who has worked sedulously since 2021 to marshal about half the country militantly against the Blob and Blobism, while he still suffers one rear-guard legal affront after another.

     Trouble is, the Blob itself has become an immune disorder for the polity known as the USA, and now threatens to destroy everything the country stands for and all the stuff deployed on the landscape from sea to shining sea, if the hypersonic nukes fly. These are dangerous weeks ahead. The pedal’s on the metal… the rubber’s meeting the road, and we seem to be watching a Thelma and Louise type denouement writ large.

     The Blob itself, with the Democratic Party at its nucleus, and evil organelles Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and their like floating in the endoplasmic reticulum, has gone insane trying to protect its Precious, liberalism’s sacred bowling trophy, Barack Obama, from scrutiny. To call Mr. Obama to account, of course, would be viewed as the ultimate act of American “racism,” a place too many will not go. So, he may evade responsibility until he (and the rest of us) are gone and history catches up with him.

     But is there any doubt now that “Joe Biden” must go, and as soon as possible? Surely there is enough evidence to mount an impeachment in the House, and rev it up as expeditiously as the Democrats revved up their two Trump impeachments. An impeachment would, of course, force a trial in the Senate. It is probably the one news event that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN can’t run and hide from — as they have been hiding from this week’s whistleblower hearings and Mr. Kennedy’s sturdy performance against the House censorship activists. In a Senate trial, the rot will finally be laid out before the people to judge, whether the Senate can bring itself to convict “JB” or not. Anyway, it will end this president’s pretense of running for reelection, and on the off-chance he’s convicted, his pardon powers do not extend to that particular extraordinary Senate proceeding. And then we can see about Ms. Harris. (read more)

Throughout most of my life, Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn was generally regarded as the greatest Russian literary figure of our modern era, and after reading all of his works, including The First Circle, Cancer Ward, and The Gulag Archipelago, I certainly concurred with this assertion, and eagerly absorbed Michael Scammell’s brilliant thousand page biography. Although Russian himself, many of his closest friends were Jewish, but during the 1980s and 1990s, whispers of his supposed anti-Semitism began floating around, probably because he had sometimes hinted at the very prominent role of Jews in both financing and leading the Bolshevik Revolution, and afterward staffing the NKVD and administering the Gulag labor camps. Late in his life, he wrote a massive two-volume history of the tangled relationship between Jews and Russians under the title Two Hundred Years Together, and although that work soon appeared in Russian, French, and German, after nearly two decades, no English translation has ever been authorized. His literary star also seems to have greatly waned in America since that time, and these days I only very rarely see his name mentioned in any of my regular newspapers.

Samizdat versions of major sections of his final work may easily be located on the Internet, and a few years ago Amazon temporarily sold a 750 page hard copy edition, which I ordered and lightly skimmed. Everything seemed quite innocuous and factual, and nothing new jumped out at me, but perhaps the documentation of the very heavy Jewish role in Communism was considered inappropriate for American audiences, as was the discussion of the extremely exploitative relationship between Jews and Slavic peasants in pre-revolutionary times, based on liquor-dealing and money-lending, which the Czars had often sought to mitigate.

When a ruling elite only has a limited connection to the population it controls, benevolent behavior is far less likely to occur, and those problems are magnified when that elite has a long tradition of ruthlessly extractive behavior. Enormous numbers of Russians suffered and died in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, and given the overwhelmingly Jewish composition of the top leadership during much of that period, it is hardly surprising that “anti-Semitism” was deemed a capital offense. Kevin MacDonald may have been the one who coined the term “hostile elite,” and discussed the unfortunate consequences when a country comes under such control.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, reborn Russia soon fell under the overwhelming domination of a small group of Oligarchs, almost entirely of Jewish background, and a decade of total misery and impoverishment for the general Russian population soon followed. But once an actual Russian named Vladimir Putin regained control, these trends reversed and the lives of Russians have enormously improved since that time. America’s media organs were overwhelmingly friendly toward Russia when it was under Jewish Oligarchic rule, while Putin has been demonized in the press more ferociously than any world leader since Hitler. Indeed, our media pundits regularly identify Putin as “the new Hitler” and I actually think the analogy might be a reasonable one, but just not in the way they intend.

Jewish lives have infinite value, and non-Jewish ones none at all, which has obvious policy implications. For example, in a published article a prominent Israeli rabbi explained that if a Jew needed a liver, it would be perfectly fine and indeed obligatory, to kill an innocent Gentile and take his. Perhaps we should not be too surprised that today Israel is widely regarded as one of the world centers of organ-trafficking.

As a further illustration of the seething hatred traditional Judaism radiates towards all those of a different background, saving the life of a non-Jew is generally considered improper or even prohibited, and taking any such action on the Sabbath would be an absolute violation of religious edict. Such dogmas are certainly ironic given the widespread presence of Jews in the medical profession during recent centuries, but they came to the fore in Israel when a religiously-minded military doctor took them to heart and his position was supported by the country’s highest religious authorities.

And while religious Judaism has a decidedly negative view towards all non-Jews, Christianity in particular is regarded as a total abomination, which must be wiped from the face of the earth.
(source)

A viral video on Sunday showed a group of fully nude cyclists performing in front of children at the LGBTQ pride parade in Seattle, Washington.

Similar to a video from the Seattle Pride Parade in 2022, Sunday’s video showed men waving their exposed genitals in front of child spectators, some of whom appeared to be younger than five. Warning — video contains full nudity:

A group of nude adults on bicycles exposed themselves to the family-friendly crowd at #SeattlePride. pic.twitter.com/dTtgQRWmto

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) June 25, 2023

Subsequent videos of the parade show naked men bathing at a fountain where children were present. Warning — Nudity:

BREAKING SEATTLE PRIDE: Naked men are now playing in the fountain where children are present.

Their genitalia is fully-exposed as they cool themselves off and wash each other down with water.

Video by: @KatieDaviscourt pic.twitter.com/X5vuyf02E5

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 25, 2023

As Breitbart News reported, an LGBTQ pride parade in New York City took a dark turn recently when marchers were seen chanting, “We’re coming for your children.”

“We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children,” some could be heard shouting.

NYC Drag Marchers chant “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children” https://t.co/ucK1qM4fv5 pic.twitter.com/OhBguhWwZY

— Timcast News (@TimcastNews) June 24, 2023

Breitbart News also reported in 2021 that the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus had removed a music video of singers vowing to “convert” children into the LGBTQ ideological cult.

“You think we’re sinful. You fight against our rights. You say we all lead lives you can’t respect. But you’re just frightened. You think that we’ll corrupt your kids if our agenda goes unchecked. It’s funny. Just this once, you’re correct,” the lyrics said.

“We’ll convert your children. Happens bit by bit. Quietly and subtly, and you will barely notice it. You can keep him from disco, warn about San Francisco. Make him wear pleated pants. We don’t care. We’ll convert your children. We’ll make them tolerant and fair,” the lyrics continued.

This month, a video revealed fourth graders at an elementary school in Charlottesville, Virginia, reading a book titled ABC Pride at a pride event. Obtained by the Daily Signal, the video featured a little girl at Johnson Elementary School reciting to other children over a microphone the meaning behind the letters in LGBTQ — lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer.

NEW: @DailySignal obtained a video from a Charlottesville elementary school’s "student led" celebration of Pride Month where fourth-graders tell the rest of the elementary school about LGBTQ acceptance. pic.twitter.com/hUQZfFfOal

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) June 13, 2023

Also this month, the children’s show Sesame Street continued its ongoing celebration of all things LGBTQ by sharing the multi-colored progress pride flag amid smiling flowers on the official Sesame Street Twitter account.

“On our Street, we celebrate inclusion, belonging, and freedom of authentic self-expression. Happy #PrideMonth to all the people in our neighborhoods!” it read.

On our Street, we celebrate inclusion, belonging, and freedom of authentic self-expression. Happy #PrideMonth to all the people in our neighborhoods! pic.twitter.com/4ErE22oCh4

— Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) June 12, 2023

In another post, Sesame Street shared an animation of various puppets holding hands so their colors form the rainbow flag.

“This #PrideMonth, let’s celebrate diversity and unity and spread love and acceptance. Together, we can make the world a kinder place for all,” it said.

This #PrideMonth, let's celebrate diversity and unity and spread love and acceptance. Together, we can make the world a kinder place for all. pic.twitter.com/9EaK8egQjy

— Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) June 2, 2023

Other children’s shows have also jumped aboard the LGBTQ Pride Month train this June, including the U.K.-based Peppa Pig and Looney Tunes.

BIG GAY….PRESCHOOLER ENTERTAINMENT https://t.co/Gd8Llq9YCC

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) June 2, 2023

Happy Pride, get your drag on pic.twitter.com/W8FccfjEUZ

— Looney Tunes (@LooneyTunes) June 1, 2023

Also this month, Disney’s The Little Mermaid star Melissa McCarthy had a starring role in West Hollywood’s LGBTQ pride parade that featured explicit BDSM sex acts.

“Melissa McCarthy wore a headpiece with the words ‘Say Gay’ as she rode her own float during the parade, which took over a large section of Santa Monica Boulevard running through the heart of West Hollywood,” Breitbart News reported.

Melissa McCarthy is seen at WeHo Pride on June 4, 2023, in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by MEGA/GC Images)

(read more)

Anticipating US entry into WWII in 1939, the Commanding General of the US Army ordered a large-scale military exercise to be conducted. It took place in a large part of Louisiana and through the Carolinas in late summer and early fall and involved 400,000 men. It became known as the Louisiana Maneuvers.

Jennifer McArdle writes:

Sept. 15 was the start of the Louisiana Maneuvers, a series of four exercises that took place over two separate venues — the Louisiana-Texas border and the Carolinas — with each spanning vast, scarcely populated areas of dense forests, uncharted swamps, and river crossings. The maneuvers can be heralded as a logistical achievement: At no other time has there been such a concentration of man and materiel on U.S. soil. However, their true worth was as a “combat college for troop leading” and as a field laboratory to test and train for emerging operational concepts. Indeed, notwithstanding some adjudicatory, training, and bureaucratic limitations, the mass exercises played a pivotal role in confirming the necessity of deploying tanks alongside infantry as a combined arms force. Anti-tank guns were verified as an effective countermeasure to armored vehicles. Air-ground integration, despite an initial Army Air Corps bias towards high-altitude precision daylight bombardment, was shown to have value. Perhaps most importantly, the Louisiana Maneuvers confirmed — to Americans, allies, and adversaries alike — that a ragtag group of “civilians in khaki pants” had been molded over the previous two years into a fighting army. While not a panacea, the maneuvers, in short, were the denouement of the U.S. Army’s pre-war mobilization.

(source)

A great deal was learned from the exercise and many who became great leaders in the coming war emerged from it including General George S. Patton who became the greatest US General of WWII.

Conducting a similar exercise today would expose our military leadership as the incompetent and inept frauds they are, including the Commanding General, Mark Milley. It would also expose the deplorable state of present personnel, and their inability to operate successfully in the field. Thought it would be virtually impossible to conduct an exercise of this magnitude today, our Republican Congress should order the military to conduct similar, though smaller exercises so the state of our military capabilities and efficiency could be assessed.

“The ambition of this book is to reveal the inner history of America’s cultural revolution, tracing the arc of its development from its origin point to the present day.” Christopher Rufo, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.

Christopher Rufo may have been setting out the ambition of his new book, America’s Cultural Revolution, but there is no mistake that this work itself is ambitious, given the scale of material (the cultural revolution and pre-revolutionary ideas, and the creation and progression of that movement, for starters) and the connection from leftist thought leaders of the mid-20^th century to the absurdities and very real cultural and political dangers we see today.

But his task is also necessary, as the proper answer to the question of “where we are” – one of disagreement even among conservatives, some of whom deny we are in a revolutionary age – requires an exploration of how we got here and the ideas that led us to this point. The revolutionary lineage from the 1960s (and before) carries on to this day – albeit in an arguably stronger form. What was radical is now the orthodoxy. Those calling for sexual liberation in 1955, for example, would no doubt be shocked – and proud – at the evolution and success of that idea. We add that political liberation and sexual liberation are indeed intertwined, as they both can lead to spiritual bondage.

Rufo, to his credit, achieves that ambitious goal. America’s Cultural Revolution is divided into four parts: Revolution, Race, Education, and Power, with each including a biography of the prophets of the cultural revolution. There is an exacting focus on the prophets’ writings (supported by hundreds of footnotes) concerning “liberation”, political violence, anti-racism, and the destruction of institutions – many of which we see regurgitated, exercised, and acted upon to this day.

Your humble author is especially thankful for Rufo’s deep dive into the history of the revolutionaries, which helps to give a biography of the movement. We often see the ridiculous (the shop teacher with z-cups) and the concerning (statues toppled) and the evil (public school teacher-led gender transitions), but we’re left without an understanding of where all this originated and how it came to be.

The words of the left’s prophets, as Rufo demonstrates, became the blueprint for societal change, for violent upheavals, and leftist control of institutions that will take a revolution to undo. In the first few chapters, for example, he goes into great detail discussing the demands and views of Herbert Marcuse, a German-born philosopher dubbed “the father of the revolution” who argued:

“modern capitalist society had created the perfect means of repression, anesthetizing the working class with material comforts, manufactured desires, and welfare programs, which stabilized the system and allowed for the creation of external scapegoats.”

The solution to this problem was nothing short of unrest and dissolution, through violence if necessary. It would require “the revolt of the affluent white intelligentsia, the radicalization of the black ‘ghetto population,’ the capture of public institutions, and the cultural repression of the opposition.”

Rufo observes that “all of these objectives have been realized to some degree.” It’s hard to disagree with that assessment – especially considering how Rufo dedicates later chapters solidifying that point through discussions of the liberal domination of academia, the use of race as a means to target the American system as a whole, the far left’s long march (which can also be called a historically short march) through the institutions (including universities, local schools, business, and federal bureaucracies), and the increasingly accepted and forceful censorship and repression regimes, both public and private. In doing so, Rufo effectively makes the argument that for even those paying close attention, things might be worse than we thought, that the revolution we face is stronger than reported.

His exposition on the evolution of revolutionary ideas is particularly compelling. By the time Rufo gets to discussing Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the later chapters, we have a better understanding of the originators, history, and vulnerabilities of basic elements to CRT. And Rufo provides necessary context, both in historical criticisms of CRT and his own accurate assessment of the movement:

The elements of critical race theory are, in fact, a near-perfect transposition of race onto the basic structures of Marxist theory. “White supremacy” replaces “capitalism” as the totalizing system. “White and black” replaces “bourgeoisie and proletariat” as the “oppressor and oppressed.” “Abolition” replaces “revolution” as the method of “liberation.” This is not a mere metaphor or post hoc comparison. The critical race theorists appeal directly to Marxist theoreticians and the Marxist-Leninist figures of the black liberation movement.

With this knowledge, Rufo is by all means qualified to discuss where the movement goes from here. He warns:

This movement seeks to establish itself in every layer of the public and private administration, which will be refitted to advance the substitute morality of critical race theory and replace governance by the Constitution with governance by the bureaucracy. 

He makes that warning with the understanding of what the movement wants, the answer to which is “found in the original literature of critical race theory”: the abandonment of equal justice under the law, the redistribution of wealth along racial lines, and the prohibition of speech that is considered harmful or hateful. But we think he makes that warning not just based on their words, but because he understands and respects their zealotry, their dedication, their patience, their resentment (another word for hatred), and the lengths they will go to accomplish their desires.

As I read this book, I couldn’t help but ask whether this was always going to be the end result of liberalism or whether this is liberalism hijacked by its more radical elements. That’s not really a focus of the book (there are only so many pages), but it’s worthy to explore whether liberal democracy is authoritarian by its very nature and susceptible or predestined to adopting forms of fundamentalism to achieve its ends. Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed and Ryszard Legutko’s The Demon in Democracy are good places to start, if you’re interested in looking into those questions further.

If there is a revolution, then consider this book to be part of the counter-revolution. In conclusion, Rufo concentrates on the response to the revolutionaries and the necessary elements of the opposition: hope, a fight against collectivism and racial reductionism, a fight for natural rights and the Constitution and individual dignity. The counter-revolution he proposes goes much further than vanquishing the far left and retaking the institutions. It requires decentralization, local control, self-governance, a system of government that protects the rights of the individual while scaling back its own authority. It’s not just an improvement. It’s a return.

That seems ambitious in 2023. But so too were the revolutionary ideas of 1968. (read more)

First, supporters of racial preferences always pushed back the goal posts for the program’s success. Was institutionalized reverse bias to last 20 years, 60 years, or ad infinitum? Parity became defined as an absolute equality of result. If “equity” was not obtained, then only institutionalized “racism” explained disparities. And only reverse racism was deemed the cure.

Second, affirmative action was imposed on the back end in adult hiring and college admissions. However, to achieve parity, remediation early at the K-12 school level would have been the only solution. Yet such intervention was made impossible by teachers’ unions, the rise of identity politics and government entitlements. All were opposed to school choice, self-help programs, critiques of cultural impediments, or restrictions on those blanket entitlements,

Third, class, the true barometer of privilege, was rendered meaningless. Surrealism followed. The truly privileged Barack and Michelle Obama and Meghan Markel lectured the country on its unfairness—as if they had it far rougher than the impoverished “deplorables” of East Palestine, Ohio.

Fourth, affirmative action supporters could never square the circle of proving that racial prejudices didn’t violate the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the text of the Constitution. What they were left with was the lame argument that because long ago the 90% white majority had violated their own foundational documents, then such past bad unconstitutional bias could legitimately be rectified by present-day “good” unconstitutional bias.

Fifth, supporters never adequately explained why the sins of prior generations fell on their descendants who grew up in the post-Civil Rights era. Nor could they account for why those who had never experienced institutionalized racism, much less Jim Crow apartheid or slavery, were to be compensated collectively for the suffering of long-dead individuals. No wonder 70% of the American people in many polls favored ending affirmative action including a half of African-Americans.

Sixth, there never was a “rainbow” coalition of shared non-white victimhood—a concept necessary to perpetuate the premise of white privilege, supremacy, and rage, so integral to race-based reverse discrimination. More than a dozen ethnicities earn more per capita than do whites.

Asians have been subject to coerced internment, immigration restrictions and zoning exclusions. Yet on average they do better than whites economically and enjoy lower suicide rates and longer life expectancies. The arguments for affirmative action never explained why Asians and other minorities who faced discrimination outperformed the majority white population. As a result, affirmative action ended up discriminating against Asians on the premise they were too successful!

Seventh, no one ever explained when affirmative action was to apply. Blacks, for example, were vastly “overrepresented” in merit-based professional football and basketball. Yet no one demanded “proportional representation” to address such “disparate impact,” despite underrepresentation of all other demographics.

Yet if blacks were “underrepresented” in baseball, then reparatory measures were supposed to address that fact—even if Latino players were “overrepresented” and whites “underrepresented as well. No one in our race-obsessed culture, of course, objected that white males died at twice their demographics in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Eighth, in our increasingly intermarried mass-immigration society, few could adjudicate who was what, or much less what standard gave one racial preference. In lunatic fashion, pink, blond Senator Elizabeth Warren became Harvard’s first “Native American” law professor due to her “high cheekbones.” Light-skinned Latinos were considered marginalized while some darker Italians or Greeks were not.

Ninth, an odious wokism absorbed affirmative action and changed it into something even more abhorrent—as the original spirit of the Civil Rights movement was trashed. So Americans were asked to stomach a return to distasteful segregated dorms, “separate but equal” graduation ceremonies and racially exclusive workshops.

Tenth, and finally, affirmative action was insidiously destroying meritocracy. That hallmark American value of tribally-blind inclusivity had once explained why the nation outshone the world by discarding the old class prejudices of Europe. But increasingly this value seemed to have been abandoned.

When Stockton Rush, the late captain and inventor of the ill-fated Titan deep-sea explorer was quoted postmortem bragging that his company had no need of “old white guys” with long military expertise in submarining, Americans realized that woke racial discrimination was not just repulsive but could get you killed.

A nation whose pilot training, medical-school admissions, and military high command promotions were increasingly adopting racial, gender, or sexual-orientation essentialism was a country headed for the sort of Third World tribalism characteristic of failed states abroad.

In the end, the court finally stepped in to end this unconstitutional aberration, more like the old Soviet commissariat than our ideals of equality under the law.

The American people concurred. And the only regret seemed to be why not sooner? (read more)