☕️ FOURTH WAVE ☙ Friday, May 19, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

It's a good news roundup: Justice Gorsuch critiques the pandemic; Feinstein's odd new injuries; Fetterman Senate fashion; House weaponization committee hearings; NYC public schools; sportswear; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday, and the board is lit! Your terrific roundup today includes lots of puzzle pieces to snap together. If you combine Justice Gorsuch’s comments about executive overreach during the pandemic with the democrat meltdown in the Senate, with the House weaponization committee hearings, with the disclosure of Feinstein’s real injuries, with New York’s retreat from housing illegal aliens in public schools, and then add the backlash to Adidas’ gross new sportsmodel, you get a picture of a society where a 30,000-ton pendulum is starting its backswing.

🗞💬 *WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 💬🗞

🔥 Yesterday, the Supreme Court sent a procedurally-complicated Title 42 lawsuit back to DC Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case as “moot,” mostly because the official covid state of emergency is now over. It was a simple one-line order, and in spite of the related and legitimately-worrisome border issues, was legally uncontroversial.

That’s not the story.

The story is, Justice Neil Gorsuch decided to add some thoughts of his own to the one-sentence order, in an eight-page “statement” starting immediately below the order itself.

Gorsuch’s statement was rhetorical ammonium nitrate.

I suggest you read the whole thing, it will make your weekend. Although it’s eight pages long, it’s only eight Supreme Court pages, each of which is really only about a third of a regular page. But I will still excerpt the best bits for those of you who are allergic to reading legal documents. Here’s the full link.

Justice Gorsuch’s statement was a passionate and eloquent critique of government overreach during the pandemic. In the first four pages, Gorsuch described the Title 42 issues, which were just a warmup exercise for his real theme, which began by accurately describing the tyrannical excesses of out-of-control local and state executives during the pandemic:

Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.

Rounding out his critique of the executive branches — local and state, so far — the Justice also described the federal government’s tyrannical contributions, including the mandatory vaccines and even covid censorship:

Federal executive officials entered the act too. Not just with emergency immigration decrees. They deployed a public-health agency to regulate landlord-tenant relations nationwide. They used a workplace-safety agency to issue a vaccination mandate for most working Americans. They threatened to fire noncompliant employees, and warned that service members who refused to vaccinate might face dishonorable discharge and confinement. Along the way, it seems federal officials may have pressured social-media companies to suppress information about pandemic policies with which they disagreed.

Then, to be complete and perfectly fair, he also mentioned the other two branches as well, which were guilty not so much by what they DID, but because of what they didn’t do:

While executive officials issued new emergency decrees at a furious pace, state legislatures and Congress—the bodies normally responsible for adopting our laws—too often fell silent. Courts bound to protect our liberties addressed a few—but hardly all—of the intrusions upon them.

Gorsuch wrapped it up suggesting that state and federal emergency authority should be reined in:

It is hard not to wonder, too, whether state legislatures might profitably reexamine the proper scope of emergency executive powers at the state level… Make no mistake—decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others. And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.

Gorsuch’s thoughts are now part of the Supreme Court’s official permanent record, and will help explain the pandemic as long as America continues to be a nation, in other words, at least until next weekend. Just kidding. Mostly. As I explained to a reporter last night, Gorsuch’s statement opens a window into the thinking of the majority-conservative side of the Supreme Court.

It seems the experience of the pandemic may have taught the Court it needs to help trim executive authority, and several pending cases will provide it with some appropriate opportunities.

Gorsuch seems to have perfectly diagnosed the problem, which is that our government has gotten out of whack, distorted, bent the frame. The Constitution set up a three-branch government, requiring the three branches to have EQUAL powers and authorities.

But if you did a “man on the street” survey, I bet most folks would pick the Presidency — the executive branch — as the most powerful branch of government. And most of that problem sprouts from federal agency powers, like those wielded by the CDC, NHS, DOJ, IRS, CIA, and the FBI, which are all controlled by the President, and which have all become regulatorily morbidly obese.

There’s just too much power in the executive branch.

That’s not Constitutional. If outsized executive authority was already a problem before the pandemic, then the pandemic turned the problem hypersonic. Gorsuch’s statement laid bare the problem.

They can write off Gorsuch as a conservative. They can try to justify his long laundry list of authoritarian executive-branch excess as “necessary in the emergency.” And even as we keep picking up the pieces of all the lives broken by government’s so-called “mitigation measures,” they can continue pretending like the virus was worse, just like the officials in the old nursery tale who tried to pretend the King was fully clothed until everyone else knew he was naked but them.

But they can’t ignore Gorsuch. They can’t ignore him because he is one of the Nine, and also because his words are so genuine, undeniable, and ultimately persuasive.

Haha, here’s the Washington Times’ goofy hot-take:

Dummies. Gorsuch didn’t scold “Americans.” If he scolded anyone, which is debatable, he scolded politicians in the executive branch.

More progress.

💉 Next, you are going to think I’m making this story up. Once you realize I’m not making it up, you are going to wonder how in the Flat Earth they let this information get out?

But it’s out now. And it’s a doozy.

The Hill ran a story yesterday afternoon headlined, “Feinstein’s Complications From Shingles More Serious Than Previously Disclosed.”

Uh-oh.

Feinstein has seemed to have deteriorated pretty quickly since her three-month hospital stay. Observe the Crypt-Keeper, I mean the Senator from California:

I’m not laughing at the 89-year-old Senator, who should be spending her remaining time with her grandchildren, not propped up in the Senate chamber, Weekend-at-Bernie’s-style, so the democrats can confirm a few more judges. But the story is even more entertaining than the Hill’s headline suggests, once you learn about Feinstein’s diagnosis.

Although Feinstein, 89, insisted to reporters that “no! I only had a cold!” — denying even her widely-reported shingles infection — a spokesperson from the Senator’s office confirmed yesterday that, in addition to shingles, Feinstein is also suffering from brain-swelling encephalitis AND Ramsay Hunt syndrome, just like Justin Bieber, causing facial paralysis and, ominously, “other symptoms.”

Do I need to show you all the studies linking encephalitis and Ramsay Hunt to the injections?

Democrats insist Feinstein is still “up to the job.” The Senate is a joke.

Along those lines, Fetterman was back in gym shorts and a hoody yesterday, while all the other politicians were wearing suits and acting like everything was perfectly normal; he’s just doing the best he can, bless his heart:

Hey, those aren’t Walmart cargo pants.

Fetterman is dressing up and acting like someone with Down syndrome. It’s not cute. It is an insult to real Down syndrome people, who would probably perform better in the Senate than Fetterman and also dress better.

Yesterday, Fox News ran a story headlined, “John Fetterman’s Office Has Doctored Several of His Quotes to Make Him Sound More Coherent, Review Finds.” Fox discovered that Fetterman’s staffers have been “cleaning up” the Senator’s comments and giving the cleaned-up versions to reporters as original quotes. For example, they changed this rambling jumbled-up nonsense…

I’m really excited by it, because here in Pennsylvania one of my friends really [inaudible] it, Nikil Saval, he was one of the literally — quite literally — as hard left as a politician I’m aware of — you know — certainly in the Senate. Um, he really helped shepherd that. And he got linked up with the Republicans, and he actually created the first kind of a program like this in the nation, you know. And one of my colleague — Mr. Vance — talked about well if there’s a leak in the ceiling, what if you don’t have the money to fix that? What can happen to that, kinda things? I come from a community down in Braddock, Pennsylvania, where there’s a lot of — your home can go bad quickly if you were having those kinds — so I’m a big — you know — I’m incredibly, I think I’m excited that could take from Pennsylvania and go federal.

… into this concise position statement:

I come from a community here, in Braddock, Pennsylvania, where your home can go bad really quickly. And I’m really excited that we can take something like that, which is happening in Pennsylvania, and take it federal.

I get it, if you squint you can make out what Fetterman’s trying to say in his original statement. But it’s not okay for backroom staffer to retcon his quotes and pretend like Fetterman said something normal.

The Senate is a joke, and the United States is not a serious country. Not at this point, not with Biden, Kamala, Fetterman, and Feinstein.

🔥 New York parents and public school kids who were delicately protesting — not against the migrants, no, never — against HOUSING migrants in their public schools, seem to have won the day. The NY Daily News ran a story Wednesday afternoon headlined, “NYC Backs Off Plan to Shelter Migrants in Public School Gyms — but Could Revive Idea if Needed, Says Mayor Adams Aide.”

“We support asylum seekers but NOT at school.”

Aides explained it was definitely NOT a reversal, nobody’s saying migrants aren’t welcome at public schools, no, never, they’re just “tweaking” the plan. There was nothing wrong whatsoever with their brilliant idea of housing a bunch of undocumented, single, military-aged males in high-school gymnasiums. What could go wrong with that?

🔥 I’m going to have more to say on all these socially-related stories, but here’s another one: yesterday the House Committee on the ‘political weaponization of the federal government’ hosted several FBI whistleblowers, who have all been savagely and illegally retaliated against by the FBI for speaking out.

Matt Gaetz expressed the issues well during a pre-hearing briefing for the press: Under the Biden Administration, the FBI has been weaponized and aimed at Catholics, school board moms, abortion protestors, January 6th rally-goers, and other purely-political targets.

One of Gaetz’s clips showed an FBI agent who testified that, when asked to investigate January 7th rally-goers in its jurisdiction, his office pushed back, asking for the complete J6 videos so they could confirm the persons to be investigated had actually been in the Capitol. But the field officers were told by DOJ — ominously — that they could not have the video, because it would expose undercover field agents and confidential human sources who were also inside the Capitol.

So there’s one more conspiracy theory that has come true. Check your 2023 bingo card.

Here’s how Gaetz introduced the video clips from witnesses interviewed for the hearings that were then played for reporters:

Thank you chairman… the FBI has been victimized by political capture. And that politicization has manifested in the targeting of Americans who never deserved to have this government weaponized against them. Whistleblowers saw those bad acts, they stepped forward, and they were retaliated against and crushed as a consequence. And our work today will build on the work of Special Counsel Durham, who said recently that at the FBI there is confirmation bias, an over-willingness to rely on information from individuals connected to political opponents, and action without appropriate objectivity.

Here’s the clip (about 8 minutes):

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1659194024027213824

I like how Gaetz is framing it as the FBI being victimized by political capture. That’s an elegant way to put it, and accounts for the many good FBI agents struggling to stay afloat in their politically-weaponized agency.

Who would have thought Matt Gaetz would become arguably one of the most prominent and important Republicans in the House? I think he’s terrific. And there’s not many issues more important than what he is working on right now.

The two-tier, politically-captured, ideologically-lopsided justice system must be stopped.

Don’t expect any help from corporate media. There’s not one single story on the Wall Street Journal’s web site about these hearings, the testimony of the whistleblowers, the response by the FBI, the retaliation, nothing, not even about democrat outrage. None of those things are, apparently, at all newsworthy to the WSJ.

Nor was it newsworthy to the New York Times, which was equally devoid of commentary about the weaponization hearings, not even an op-ed. But don’t worry, the Times did feature THIS informative piece of diligent investigative journalism:

In other words, some reporter got paid to be a sex tourist. Brilliant. Hopefully your own city is not on that New York Times list. Otherwise, I’m very sorry, sad-face-with-tear. And I mean it.

🔥 With apologies to your virgin eyeballs, meet the official new delictably-thin, gracefully-muscular sportslady modeling Adidas’s bikinis. Note anything, well, outsized?:

Never mind that. Just look at those taut glutes, and low body fat. And haha, the ratings.

Think about this, ladies. These days, if Mega Corp, Inc. gives the CFO job to a trans woman (i.e., a she-male), they’ll get lots more ESG points than they would by picking a legit gal for the job. So.

You see what’s happening here, right? Men, tired of watching ladies floundering around like gaffed salmon, have finally taken action, stepping in to show you guys how to do it, breaking sexist glass ceilings FOR YOU, shattering sports records FOR YOU to show that women’s athletic performance can be just as good as men’s, and taking the reins to shoot past new career milestones previously denied to women because patriarchy and stuff. Men are doing it FOR YOU.

So, that’s fourth-wave feminism, the best kind yet.

It’s just that we love you all so much. We could see you gals needed a little help there. There’s no need to effusively thank us men or anything. But a little gratitude would be nice. You could make us a sandwich.

And, you’re welcome!

I don’t think I could possibly improve on Conservative Mama’s take: Thanks for trying, women, but men will just take things from here:

https://twitter.com/conmomma/status/1653113661861560320

Have a fabulous Friday! I’ll see you guys back here tomorrow for the Weekend Edition.

Join C&C in moving the needle and changing minds. I could use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/-learn-how-to-get-involved-

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