Month: July 2021

Yet another major diplomatic blow-up involving Russia and Baltic NATO states is developing Tuesday, after Russian intelligence announced the detention of Estonia’s St. Petersburg consul, according to Deutsche Welle. The Estonian diplomat, identified in reports as Mart Lätte, is being accused by the Kremlin of “receiving classified information from a Russian citizen.” The FSB made the arrest and is reportedly interrogating Lätte in what will earn swift condemnations from Western allies. 

“The Russian Federal Security Service in St. Petersburg have detained Estonian diplomat — consul of the Consulate General of the Republic of Estonia in St. Petersburg Mart Lätte — caught red-handed while receiving classified materials from a Russian citizen,” the FSB’s Center for Public Relations (CPR) was cited in Russian news agency Interfax as saying.

“This activity is not compatible with the status of a diplomatic employee and has a clear hostile nature towards the Russian Federation,” the FSB statement said further. “Measures will be taken against the foreign diplomat in accordance with the norms of international law” – meaning he’ll likely eventually be expelled from Russian soil.

The whole emerging incident appears a tit-for-tat style “answer” to recent allegations which have seen Russian diplomats and military attaches get kicked out of Europe for mirror image charges. Even the FSB statement’s language echoes that of prior cases centered on allegations against the Kremlin. 

Consider the big diplomatic row in Italy in early April, for example, where the Russian consulate and a military officer were said to be caught “red-handed” – and then expelled:

Italy expelled two Russian officials on Wednesday after an Italian navy captain was caught red-handed by police selling secret documents to the Russians.

The Italian frigate captain was arrested on spying charges after officers tailing him saw him late Tuesday in Rome in a “clandestine meeting” with a Russian military officer, according to a police statement.

The ensuing months witnessed a period of multiple instances of Russian diplomats and officials being expelled from Eastern European capitals, also as accusations over the Navalny affair raged.

This also comes after the European Union rejected a push by Germany’s Merkel and France’s Macron to re-enter formal dialogue with Putin’s government in hopes of repaired relations, also as Berlin and Moscow are actively coordinating on completion of the Nord Stream 2 Russian-to-Germany natural gas pipeline.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in USA Today on the Supreme Court’s rejection of the challenge to the Arizona’s new election rules. The 6-3 decision undermines the claims raised in the new challenge to Georgia’s election law.  Indeed, the Biden Administration is pursuing a new challenge that could result in a sweeping loss under the Voting Rights Act.

Here is the column:

With its decision Thursday in the voting rights case of Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court closed its term with a decision that will resonate not just legally but politically for years to come.

The 6-3 decision upheld Arizona’s new voting rules in Arizona over claims of racial discrimination. While the court said it would be imprudent to create a sweeping rule for all future such cases, it was equally imprudent for the Biden administration to ignore the forthcoming decision in filing a new challenge to Georgia’s new voting rights. The lawsuit against Georgia’s new voting rules was clearly timed to beat the court to the punch, but Brnovich delivers a haymaker for those seeking to block such state laws. Indeed, the decision magnifies the concern that the Georgia challenge is more of a political than a legal statement from the Biden administration.

In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito upheld two new voting rules in Arizona that barred “harvesting” of votes by political groups and discarded ballots cast in the wrong precinct. The lower courts divided on the question. Some rejected the discrimination claims. However, the Ninth Circuit reheard the case and struck down the provisions. Alito rejected claims that such laws are presumptively racist and more narrowly construed the reach of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which forbids restrictions that abridge the right to vote on account of race.

The Supreme Court agreed with a lower court that upheld the laws, that “the spark for the debate over mail-in voting may well have been provided by one Senator’s enflamed partisanship, but partisan motives are not the same as racial motives.”

Many of us anticipated the reversal of the Ninth Circuit. That appears to include many in the Biden administration. Usually when the court is about to issue a major interpretation of a federal statute, the Justice Department will wait to read the opinion before filing a major action.  Instead, the administration filed the challenge to Georgia’s new voting law just days before the end of the term.

The problem with the filing was captured by President Joe Biden himself who repeatedly misrepresented the Georgia law, calling it  “Jim Crow on steroids.” 

Even The Washington Post awarded him four “Pinocchios” for his characterization of the law. 

For example, Biden declared, “it’s sick. It’s sick … deciding that you’re going to end voting at 5 o’clock when working people are just getting off work.”

Biden repeated this claim despite it being untrue.

The election law actually does the opposite. It guaranteed that, at a minimum, polls would remain open for a full workday while allowing extended hours commonly used on Election Day.

Biden also claimed that the law prevents water from being given to voters waiting in line at polling places: “Imagine passing a law saying you cannot provide water or food for someone standing in line to vote, can’t do that? C’mon!”

That is also untrue.

The law does not prevent providing water to people standing in line. The law allows “self-service water from an unattended receptacle” for voters waiting in line. Instead, it blocks campaigns from directly supplying such drinks and allows anyone to give water to voters outside of a limited area around the polling place. In reality, the Georgia law has considerable overlap with provisions in other states.

Nevertheless, the complaint in United States v. Georgia hits these same provisions.

While the court just stated a narrow interpretation of Section 2, the Biden administration advanced a sweeping interpretation and a strikingly unfocused claim of racial discriminatory impact. While the claims are not identical, this case will now go forward in conflict not only with the general thrust of Brnovich, but in reliance on the same type of presumptions of racism rejected by the court. This follows the court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that effectively ended preclearance requirements for states like Georgia under the Voting Rights Act.

Ironically, the Justice Department filed on the eighth anniversary of the Shelby decision, but chose to file before it could read the last post-Shelby opinion on laws burdening the right to vote. In the new decision, the court declared that all voting rules create some sort of burden but “mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation of Sec. 2.”

None of that bodes well for the Georgia lawsuit. Indeed, it strongly suggests that the Biden administration is setting itself up for failure. The case is weak, the precedent is hostile, and timing is suspect. So why would Attorney General Merrick Garland green light a case that seems likely to fail in spectacular fashion?

While I have great respect for Garland, this does seem like a rare moment of weakness in yielding to political pressure from the White House and Congress. The lawsuit legitimates Biden’s over-heated rhetoric on Republicans dragging the nation back into the Jim Crow era.

Garland has been under increasing pressure for failing to use the Justice Department more aggressively against Republicans. Critics want the Justice Department to get with the program and support these key narratives going into the midterm elections. Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin just a few months ago heralded Garland in a headline as “the right pick” for attorney general but in June denounced him as “the wrong man” for not using the department to pursue Trump and Republicans.

The Justice Department has long followed a “first do no harm” approach to lawsuits. If you truly value voting rights, you do not want to advance cases that are likely to fail and further limit voting rights laws. Instead, the Biden administration filed a lawsuit before hearing from the court on the very provision that it is raising in lower courts. Those lower courts are required to follow precedent of the Supreme Court, not the politics of the moment.

In her dissent to Brnovich, Justice Elena Kagan criticized the “cramped reading” of the court that “undermines Section 2 and the right it provides.” However, the Biden administration just filed a Section 2 case that would easily take a “cramped reading” and turn it into a categorical disaster just before the 2024 presidential election.

Scorching temperatures return to the West, persisting through mid-week, and reappear this weekend as multiple heat waves develop. Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, and Nevada, are still grappling with record-setting heat and diminishing water supplies from last month’s heat wave. The next round of daytime highs may climb into the 90s and or triple digits. There’s no end in sight to the hellacious climate. 

“Excessive and oppressive heat across the Northwest will continue through at least the first half of the week where daytime highs will climb well into the 90s and low 100s,” the Weather Prediction Center (WPC) wrote. “Daily record highs will, once again, be challenged by Tuesday and Wednesday for parts of the Great Basin and northern California.”

Eastern Oregon, Nevada, and Idaho could hit daily high records this week as temperatures may print in the high 90s to triple digits.

“This will bring near-record temperatures and could possibly be the warmest day of the year thus far,” the National Weather Service in Boise (NWS) said.

As of Tuesday, excessive heat warnings have already been posted for eastern Oregon and western Idaho. There are also heat advisories with temperatures expected to reach triple digits in Northern Nevada, Northern California, and Southern Oregon. 

Wildfire risks continue to rise for western states as a megadrought continues to dry out vegetation. 

This week’s heat wave is expected to peak Wednesday for most of the region, but temperatures will remain above averages. Another heat wave is expected to appear in some parts of the West into the weekend. 

Eastern Washington, Oregon, and Idaho could see daily records taken out by the weekend. Highs in some parts of Northern California may print north of 110. 

Western states will remain well above average temperatures through early next week. 

Here are some problems for residents in western states that may arise due to excessive heat: soaring power costs, rolling blackouts, worsening drought conditions, and dwindling water supplies. 

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

A huge national debate about our most important national symbols has erupted, and it is rapidly becoming one of our hottest political issues.  But what most people don’t realize is that this isn’t really a debate about our past.  Rather, it is a debate about what our future is going to look like.  Those that are demonizing the American flag, the national anthem, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are not doing so for the purpose of winning a historical debate. 

Their true goal is to “cancel” those symbols and replace them with new ones, because our existing national symbols represent values and principles that are diametrically opposed to the values and principles that they wish to impose upon society.

If they ultimately get their way, the United States will eventually become an extremely repressive high tech dystopian society where absolutely no dissent is tolerated. 

In other words, we would look a whole lot like communist China does today.

When I was growing up, the “godless communists” on the other side of the globe were the “bad guys”, and I was raised to greatly love the flag and the freedoms that it represented.  But now our flag is regularly demonized by the corporate media.  For example, the New York Times just published an article in which the flag was described as “alienating”…

What was once a unifying symbol — there is a star on it for each state, after all — is now alienating to some, its stripes now fault lines between people who kneel while “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays and those for whom not pledging allegiance is an affront.

And it has made the celebration of the Fourth of July, of patriotic bunting and cakes with blueberries and strawberries arranged into Old Glory, into another cleft in a country that seems no longer quite so indivisible, under a flag threatening to fray.

At one time, it would have been unthinkable for a major newspaper to publish such a statement, but times have changed.

And calls for our existing flag to be replaced with a new one are starting to grow louder.  The following comes from a widely circulated opinion piece that singer Macy Gray authored last month…

President Biden, Madame Harris and members of Congress: the American flag has been hijacked as code for a specific belief. God bless those believers, they can have it. Like the Confederate, it is tattered, dated, divisive, and incorrect. It no longer represents democracy and freedom. It no longer represents ALL of us. It’s not fair to be forced to honor it. It’s time for a new flag.

Of course it isn’t just the flag that they want to replace.

Right now, there is a Change.org petition that is calling for a new national anthem…

The petition, started by Lawrence Johnson, cites three reasons why the national anthem should be changed:

The “Star Spangled Banner” contains “racism,” elitism and even sexism embedded in its third and fourth stanzas, which have no place in the national anthem of a democracy that claims that all men (and women) are created equal, the petition says.

That particular petition is suggesting that “American The Beautiful” should be the new anthem, but a lot of people are also now referring to “Lift Every Voice And Sing” as a “national anthem”…

PBS has sparked tense backlash with its decision to have Vanessa Williams perform the “black national anthem” during its July 4 coverage — with critics blasting the move as divisive and un-American.

Williams’ performance on the station’s annual Capitol Fourth program Sunday evening is intended to celebrate the recognition of Juneteenth’s establishment as a federal holiday.

In the end, they aren’t going to be satisfied with changing just one or two things.

The goal is for all of the symbols of our founding era to be “canceled”, and this even includes our most important founding documents.

Earlier today, I was stunned to learn that NPR is now publicly claiming that the Declaration of Independence is filled with “flaws and hypocrisies”…

In an online article, NPR stated: ‘Over the past 32 years, Morning Edition has broadcast a reading of the Declaration of Independence by NPR staff as a way of marking Independence Day.

‘But after last summer’s protests and our national reckoning on race, the words in the document land differently.’

In reference to the ‘flaws and hypocrisies’ within the historic document, NPR wrote: ‘It famously declares “that all men are created equal” even though women, enslaved people and Indigenous Americans were not held as equal at the time.’

And Congresswoman Maxine Waters is publicly attacking it as well…

July 4th… & so, the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal. Equal to what? What men? Only white men?

“All men are created equal” is a phrase that has been a beacon of hope for men and women all over the globe for more than two centuries, but now Maxine Waters would like us to believe that it is actually an insult.

Sadly, I am certain that it won’t be too long before someone out there comes up with a “new Declaration of Independence” to replace the old one.

Of course the U.S. Constitution is under relentless assault as well.  When I was in law school, my liberal professors taught me that it was a “living, breathing document” that could be changed to make it say anything that we wanted it to say.

But these days that is not enough for many on the left.  A lot of them now want to get rid of that “flawed” document entirely and start over.

The endgame is to create an entirely different country from the one that our founders originally established, and every year they make a little bit more progress toward that goal.

Of course there are still millions of patriotic Americans that are absolutely determined to keep them from winning, but the other side has far more money and far more power at this stage.

This is a point that Victor Davis Hanson made very well in one of his recent articles…

Name one mainline institution that the woke left does not now control — and warp. The media? The campus? Silicon Valley? Professional sports? The corporate boardroom? Foundations? The K-12 educational establishment? The military hierarchy? The government deep state? The FBI top echelon?

The left absorbed them all. But this time around, members of the left really believe that “by any means necessary” is no mere slogan. Instead, it is a model of how to disrupt or destroy American customs, traditions and values.

All throughout our history, Americans have sacrificed so much so that future generations could live free.

But now all of our precious freedoms are on the line, and the other side is absolutely determined to permanently destroy everything that our founders worked so hard to build.

We have reached such a critical moment in our history, and America’s future hangs in the balance.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.