Quick Hits

ALec Baldwin could be charged again with negligent homicide in the Rust shooting.

The DA dropped the charges when a report claimed that the gun could have discharged without Baldwin pulling the trigger. But now a new report says the trigger was pulled.

Alec Baldwin could once again face manslaughter charges, after a forensic report released Tuesday found that his Colt .45 revolver would only fire if the trigger was pulled.

Baldwin was initially charged with involuntary manslaughter in the October 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. But the charge was dropped after the defense noted that the gun had been modified, which raised doubts about whether it was working properly at the time of the shooting.

Baldwin has denied that he pulled the trigger. Hutchins, 42, was killed after being struck with a live round on the set of the film "Rust" near Santa Fe, N.M.

The special prosecutors on the case, Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis, commissioned a new forensic examination of the gun and have been waiting on the results before deciding whether to refile the charges. The report, by Lucien and Michael Haag, was submitted to them earlier this month and released Tuesday in a public court filing.

The experts reconstructed the gun, which had been broken during earlier testing by the FBI, and concluded that it could only have been fired by a pull of the trigger.

"This fatal incident was the consequence of the hammer being manually retracted to its fully rearward and cocked position followed, at some point, by the pull or rearward depression of the trigger," the report concluded. "Although Alec Baldwin repeatedly denies pulling the trigger, given the tests, findings and observations reported here, the trigger had to be pulled or depressed sufficiently to release the fully cocked or retracted hammer of the evidence revolver."

The prosecutors had previously stated that Baldwin will be charged again if the gun was working properly.

I linked this story in yesterday's Quick Hits but very Lamontishly forgot to include any juicy quotations.

A Fifth Circuit judge blasted the Biden Administration's "strong-arming" and mafia-like tactics in pressuring social media companies to censor for the benefit of the current rancid government, and rejected their claims that, as David French maintains, the government was merely "jawboning" them.

This hearing was about the injunction put into place by the trial judge ordering the Biden Administration to stop talking to social media companies entirely. The Biden junta wants this order lifted, because they want to be free to "jawbone" allegedly private corporations into working their partisan and corrupt will once more.

Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod declared in court that the Biden administration's efforts to persuade social media companies to remove, throttle and suppress purported misinformation on COVID-19, Hunter Biden's laptop and elections reminded her of a mafia movie.

That was just one of the most memorable examples of the frosty reception Justice Department Civil Division lawyer Daniel Tenny received Thursday from the three-judge panel considering whether to lift or modify last month's ban on several forms of contact between the feds and companies -- currently stayed by the 5th Circuit -- as the First Amendment lawsuit led by Missouri and Louisiana proceeds.

The back-and-forth at Thursday's hearing resembled that between 6th Circuit judges and DOJ's lawyer at a June hearing in a related social media censorship lawsuit against federal officials by users of X, formerly known as Twitter. Both panels were appointed by Republican presidents.

Echoing the injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, the 5th Circuit judges repeatedly cited specific conversations from the factual record that suggest social media companies feared legal consequences for not complying with White House and agency requests to censor or diminish the reach of websites or social media postings of which the Biden administration disapproved.

When Tenny claimed the injunction's wording was so broad and vague it could ban the government from alerting the public about "untrue statements" about a natural disaster, Judge Don Willett countered that documented private conversations were the issue.

Federal officials appeared to practice "fairly unsubtle strong-arming" and make "not-so-veiled threats" in the vein of "this is a really nice social media platform you've got there, would be a shame if something happened to it," Willett said.

Tenny, upon hearing what the judges appeared to be interpreting as coercive pressure, tried to soft pedal the severity of that pressure. "The government is generically going to be angry" when companies resist taking action, but the communications show officials and companies alternating between "friendly" and "testy" conversations, not specific orders to comply "or else."

Judge Elrod didn't seem particularly convinced, telling Tenny that "Or else" isn't required when the government and companies have a "very close working relationship" that resembles a supervisor addressing a subordinate. The "irate messages" actually show high-ranking officials badgering counterparts about why they hadn't taken action against specific accounts as requested, Judge Elrod said: "It's like 'jump and how high.'"

Drilling down on that issue, and pointing to COVID claims specifically, Elrod queried if high-level government officials asked companies "in a coercive manner to propagate certain things that the government knew were untrue, and to deamplify certain things that it knew were true ... but didn't fit its message, would that be able to be enjoined?"

...

"Time and again," what the government labels as mis-, dis- and malinformation, "always with great fervor," is vindicated as true, Willett said. Elrod pointed to then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins' internal request to issue a published takedown of the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration. Tenny tried to downplay the government's influence, say that Collins merely asked to rebut its "premises."

...

Asked by Judge Edith Brown Clement if the feds were still communicating with social media platforms, Tenny clarified he wasn't claiming they "entirely stopped" but evaded whether they maintained "day-to-day involvement."

So the Biden junta admits it is ignoring and flouting a federal injunction? Apparently so.

That's some quality jawboning.

A new lawsuit aims to force the CIA to admit what role it had in perpetrating a massive psyops disinformation campaign on the country -- namely, the "51 former intelligence officials" letter. As you may recall, a CIA functionary recommended signing that hoax to one of the former 51 intelligence officers.

So the CIA already had one hand in it that we know of -- but how much more did America's own secret interior police do to foist this lie on the nation?

A new lawsuit filed on Thursday by Judicial Watch seeks to obtain information from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) about its role in the publication of a letter signed by 51 former intelligence community officials which claimed Hunter Biden's Laptop from hell bore "all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign." The lawsuit comes after the CIA failed to respond to Judicial Watch's initial FOIA request for the information.

While Hunter's laptop and the letter from former intelligence officials are now well-known, many may not be aware that the CIA's Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) reviewed the letter and approved it just days before it was cited by candidate Joe Biden in his second debate against then-President Donald Trump. As Judicial Watch explains of the timeline and CIA's involvement:

In October 2020, in the run-up to the presidential election, the New York Post reported that Hunter Biden's laptop, which was abandoned at a Delaware computer shop, contained embarrassing and possibly incriminating information about the Biden family. In a May 10, 2023, report the House Judiciary Committee revealed that on October 19, 2020, three days before the second presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat candidate Joe Biden, then-Acting CIA Director Michael Morell sent the PCRB the finalized letter for review, calling it a "rush job," and quickly secured its approval.

The new lawsuit comes after a previous public records request from Judicial Watch received no response from the CIA....

That information is sought by more than just Judicial Watch. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have been seeking such information to conduct oversight of the CIA based on knowledge of at least some communications from within the Agency that would be responsive to such requests. In addition, Judicial Watch noted that lawmakers "have received evidence that the CIA, or at least an employee of the CIA, may have helped to solicit signatories for the statement about Hunter Biden."

Geraldo Riviera boasts that some Fox employees praised him for attacking Tucker Carlson as "malevolent."

This is not the brag that Geraldo thinks it is. 75% of Fox's employees are stone-cold progressives who couldn't get a job at MSNBC and so settled for Safety School Fox.

"I got calls within Fox, 'Right on. We're shocked, we're outraged by what Tucker trying to do. Thank you for speaking out,' people that could not speak out. I even advised some prominent people just to cool it. I could take the heat because I felt I was more bulletproof...I felt that I could say things that others, perhaps more vulnerable or early in their careers, could not say," Rivera explained.

"It was pathetic, really pathetic," he continued. "[Carlson] really got way too big for his britches. The worst thing about what he did was the ruthless pragmatism that he displayed. I'm going to do this because that's what the audience wants. In other words, it wasn't the malevolent media leading the audience. It was the audience leading the malevolent media."

"What he did was unforgivable," he added. "He made a mockery of the tenets of journalism."

Yes, it is Tucker Carlson who made a mockery of journalism, Geraldo.

Remember Geraldo's autobiography? Boy, bragging about the (made-up) claim that you slept with 1,000 women is super quality journalism.

I've hated Fox for years for hiring this guy, just because he would hyperemotionally call Taliban jihadist "rats." That's supposed to make him acceptable for a "news" channel that allegedly provides pushback against leftwing media bias?

What was shocking to me was that Geraldo Rivera is so arrogant and confident in his stupid opinions despite not having any real achievements besides "keeping a job in the ghetto sections of broadcast TV" and sexually assaulting Bette Midler (??!?!!?).

The leftwing mayor of the self-proclaimed Sanctuary City of Chicago loves illegal aliens so much he wants to ship them to the non-sanctuary suburbs.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says the city of Chicago has had conversations with suburban leaders in Cook and other counties about the possibility of moving migrants into their communities.

Thousands of migrant families have arrived in Chicago over the past year. City officials have placed many in police stations, YMCAs and Daley College.

Johnson said the city is looking at other towns to help with housing migrants.

"We've had conversations with mayors across not just Cook County but the surrounding counties, and we have had tremendous feedback," Johnson said. "We see some real support on the horizon."

Who does he think he is, the mayor of Martha's Vinyard?

In further proof that the Maui wildfires were caused by leftwing disdain for reality, the
man responsible for diverting water to reservoirs to make it available for fire-fighting failed to do so.

From the Star-Advertiser:

On the day after the fire, the West Maui Land Co. Inc. sent a letter to Deputy Director M. Kaleo Manuel of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, or CWRM, describing the events and communication problems that resulted in delaying the diversion of streams to fill reservoirs with water being made available to fight the fire....

According to the letter, although the initial fire was contained at 9 a.m., there were reports of fallen power lines, fierce winds, outages and low reservoir levels, prompting the company to reach out to the commission to request approval to divert more water from streams so it could store as much water as possible for fire control.

Instead of approving the request, CWRM asked the company whether the Maui Fire Department had requested permission to dip into the reservoirs and directed it to first inquire with the downstream user to ensure that his loi and other uses would not be impacted by a temporary reduction of water supply.

...

'At around 6:00 p.m., we received CWRM's approval to divert more water,' Tremble wrote. 'By then, we were unable to reach the siphon release to make the adjustments that would have allowed more water to fill our reservoirs.

'We watched the devastation unfold around us without the ability to help. We anxiously awaited the morning knowing that we could have made more water available to MFD if our request had been immediately approved,' he said.

There were reports of the fire moving so quickly and at such temperatures that water was spewing out of melting pipes and depressurizing the lines that also supplied the fire hydrants.

Tremble's letter said it is unknown whether filling the reservoirs at 1 p.m. would have ultimately made a difference.

But 'we know that fires spread quickly. We know that we need to act faster during an emergency. We know that the community we serve relies on the water as a defense from spreading fire. We know that we must have water available for MFD before MFD needs it. We know we can do better. We're all in this together.'

And he practices what is being called "faith-based water management," insisting that water should not be used, only "revered."

And his management resulted in hundreds of deaths? Who could have seen this coming?

Thanks to Shain S. and Anonysaurus Wrecks.

Biden, who is a congenital liar -- it's not just that he's demented; he's been casually and prodigiously lying since he was 20 -- claims he reduced the deficit by $1.7 trillion.

By "reduce the deficit," he certainly doesn't mean he cut spending. No, he jacked up taxes by trillions.

But that has nothing to do with the budgets for 2021-2022, which is when he claims his $1.7 trillion deficit drop took place, because those tax increases began this year, as even CNN begrudgingly acknowledges in a rare "fact" check of Biden.

This CNN story is from March. Biden just keeps telling this lie, no matter how many times he's corrected.

President Joe Biden falsely said on Wednesday that his new corporate minimum tax is the reason the federal budget deficit declined in 2021 and 2022. In reality, that tax didn't even come into effect until the beginning of 2023.

Biden has repeatedly taken credit for reducing the deficit in 2021 and 2022 even though experts have said that the vast majority of this reduction occurred simply because emergency Covid-19 pandemic spending from 2020 expired as planned -- and that Biden's own initiatives made the deficits higher than they otherwise would be.

We've described Biden's previous deficit boasts as misleading or missing key context. But he went further in his Wednesday speech in Las Vegas on lowering prescription drug costs, delivering a version of the story that is just not true.

Biden said: "And by the way, you know everybody said, well, how was I able to have these new programs and still cut the deficit $1.7 trillion the last two years? Well, it's pretty -- pretty straightforward. There were 550 companies of the Fortune 500 that made $40 billion that didn't pay a penny in tax -- zero, nothing -- in taxes. So I said the -- you know, outrageous. And we got votes for it. I said they ought to pay a minimum of 15%. Fifteen percent. That's less than you all pay. And guess what? It allowed me to cut the deficit."

Hmmmm....

posted by Ace at 06:17 PM

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