Recurrence Rate of Melanoma in Situ Excised With a 5-mm Excisional margin

 From jamanetwork.com.

 Here is the link.

Pistol malfunctions and how to clear them

 From American Handgunner.

 Very clear with pictures showing the procedures.

Here is the link.

 https://americanhandgunner.com/discover/malfunctions-you-are-going-to-have-them/

Age of Rage: America’s Anti-Free Speech Movement Forces Us Again To Choose Between Our Rights and Our Rage

 From Jonathan Turley.

 JT is on target.

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As the nation heads into the July 4th holiday, we have rarely been more divided as a people. Ironically, we are still debating the core values that define us, particularly the right to free speech. Indeed, “debate” hardly captures the rising anger and animosity from campuses to Congress. That is also nothing new.

While I have called this “an age of rage,” it is not our first. The United States was born in rage.

Roughly 250 years ago, a group calling itself the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships and dumped almost 100,000 pounds of English tea into the Boston harbor. The “Boston Tea Party” is still celebrated as an act of defiance that helped spark the American Revolution.

It was also an act of rage, a key moment that is the focus of my book out this week, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

As a nation, we have gone through almost cyclic periods of unhinged rage, including periods of what I call “state rage.” The first victim has always been free speech, including in our current age of rage. Indeed, this is arguably the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history.

“The Indispensable Right“ is a reference to the description of Justice Louis Brandeis of core value in our nation. It is also a reference that captures our inherent conflict with free speech. Brandeis and his colleague Oliver Wendell Holmes are enshrined as civil libertarians who became the “great dissenters,” arguing for rights that remained unrealized for decades.

Yet, these two jurists would support some of the most abusive denials of free speech in our history. Holmes would supply the single most regrettable line of any opinion: that free speech protections do not allow citizens to shout fire in a crowded theater. That paraphrasing of his decision in Schenck v. United States continues to be used today as a rationalization for censorship and limits on free speech.

On free speech, Brandeis and Holmes were no heroes. Our true heroes are detailed in this book, a collection of true dissenters — anarchists, unionists, communists, feminists and others who risked everything to fight for their right to speak.

George Bernard Shaw once said “a reasonable man adjusts himself to the world. An unreasonable man expects the world to adjust itself to him. Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable people.”

These are stories of wonderfully unreasonable people like Anita Whitney, a feminist who left a family of privilege to fight for social and political justice. The descendent of a family on the Mayflower and niece of Supreme Court Justice Cyrus W. Field, Whitney defied threats of the police that she would be arrested if she spoke in California in 1919 in Oakland.

With police standing around on stage, she refused to be silent and spoke against the lynchings of Blacks occurring around the country. Her abusive conviction would ultimately go before the court (with Brandeis and Holmes) and they would vote to uphold it.

Time and again, this country has abandoned our free speech values as political dissidents were met with state rage in the form of mass crackdowns and imprisonments. It is an unvarnished story of free speech in America and for better or worse, it is our story.

Yet, we have much to learn from this history as this pattern now repeats itself. The book explains why we are living in the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history.

In the past, free speech has found natural allies in academia and the media. That has changed with a type of triumvirate — the government, corporations, and academia — in a powerful alliance against free speech values.

Ironically, while these groups refer to the unprecedented threat of “fake news” and “disinformation,” those were the very same rationales used first by the Crown and then the U.S. government to crack down on free speech in the early American republic.

The difference is the magnitude of the current censorship system from campuses to corporations to Congress. Law professors are even calling for changing the First Amendment as advancing an “excessively individualistic” view of free speech. The amendment would allow the government to curtail speech to achieve “equity” and protect “dignity.”

Others, including President Biden, have called for greater censorship while politicians and pundits denounce defenders of free speech as “Putin lovers” and “insurrectionist sympathizers.”

Despite watching the alarming rise of this anti-free speech movement and the rapid loss of protections in the West, there is still reason to be hopeful.

For those of us who believe that free speech is a human right, there is an inherent and inescapable optimism. We are wired for free speech as humans. We need to speak freely, to project part of ourselves into the world around us. It is essential to being fully human.

In the end, this alliance may reduce our appetite for free speech but we will never truly lose our taste for it. It is in our DNA. That is why this is not our first or our last age of rage. However, it is not the rage that defines us. It is free speech that defines us.

A 2024 Mid-Priced Automobile Sells for the Same $300 Price Paid for a Model T Ford in 1924

From George Reisman.

An interesting perspective about inflation.

It really does, if you can pay for it in Gold dollars. Based on the present price of gold bullion, of approximately $2,000 per ounce, a twenty-dollar US gold coin, which contains not quite an ounce of gold, sells for just about $2,000. Put together 15 of these $20 gold coins and you have 300 gold dollars, which represents $30,000 paper dollars, which is the price of a new mid-range automobile.

Who says prices have gone up? The truth is that the price of our paper money has plunged. When we had a gold standard, the price of a paper dollar was a gold dollar. Today, the price of a paper dollar is just one gold cent. So it takes correspondingly more of this cheap money to buy anything.

Here’s how to stop this process. Just repeal whatever laws are in the way of merchants accepting gold and silver coins at their actual market bullion value, not their face value. Consider, for example, that the price of silver is now about $24 per ounce. An old pre-1964 dime contains .0715 ounces of silver, a quarter contains 2.5 times as much, and a half dollar contains 5 times as much. (A silver dollar contains more than 10 times as much.) The silver content of a dime, times its current price per ounce, gives it a market value on the order of $1.70, which means, for example, that a $10 meal in a fast-food restaurant costs less than 60 cents in silver coin.

If precious-metal coins could be used at their market value, Gresham’s so-called “Law” that “bad money drives out good money,” would be totally reversed. Good money, i.e., gold and silver, would drive out bad money, i.e., irredeemable paper money. People would see every day, when they went shopping, that prices were rising only in paper money, not in the precious-metal money (or paper money redeemable on demand in precious metal). They would turn against the paper, unless and until they could have confidence that it could easily be redeemed for precious metal.

Mohs surgery in the treatment of melanoma

 From the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Here is the link.

Here is the abstract.

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Mohs Micrographic Surgery (MMS) for treatment of melanoma offers several advantages over wide local excision (WLE), including complete histologic margin evaluation, same-day resection and closure, and sparing of healthy tissue in critical anatomic sites. Recently, a large volume of clinical data demonstrating efficacy in MMS treatment of melanoma was published, leading to emerging patient safety considerations of incurred treatment costs, risk of tumor upstaging, and failure of care coordination for sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB). MMS offers a safe, effective, and value-based treatment for both melanoma in situ (MIS) and invasive melanoma (IM), particularly with immunohistochemistry use on frozen sections. Compared to wide local excision, MMS treatment demonstrates similar or improved outcomes for local tumor recurrence, melanoma-specific survival, and overall survival at long-term follow-up. Tumor upstaging risk is low, and if present, alteration to clinical management is minimal. Discussion of SLNB for eligible head and neck IM cases should be done prior to MMS. Though challenging, successful multidisciplinary coordination of SLNB with MMS has been demonstrated. Herein, we provide a detailed clinical review of evidence for MMS treatment of cutaneous melanoma and offer recommendations to address current controversies surrounding the evolving paradigm of surgical management for both MIS and invasive melanoma (IM).

Association of physical activity pattern and risk of Parkinson’s disease

 Here is a link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-024-01135-3

 Here is the abstract.

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Increasing evidence suggests an association between exercise duration and Parkinson’s disease. However, no high-quality prospective evidence exists confirming whether differences exist between the two modes of exercise, weekend warrior and equal distribution of exercise duration, and Parkinson’s risk. Hence, this study aimed to explore the association between different exercise patterns and Parkinson’s risk using exercise data from the UK Biobank. The study analyzed data from 89,400 UK Biobank participants without Parkinson’s disease. Exercise data were collected using the Axivity AX3 wrist-worn triaxial accelerometer. Participants were categorized into three groups: inactive, regularly active, and engaged in the weekend warrior (WW) pattern. The relationship between these exercise patterns and Parkinson’s risk was assessed using a multifactorial Cox model. During a mean follow-up of 12.32 years, 329 individuals developed Parkinson’s disease. In a multifactorial Cox model, using the World Health Organization–recommended threshold of 150 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week, both the active WW group [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.58; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.43–0.78; P < 0.001] and the active regular group (HR = 0.44; 95% CI = 0.34–0.57; P < 0.001) exhibited a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease compared with the inactive group. Further, no statistically significant difference was observed between the active WW and the active regular groups (HR = 0.77; 95% CI = 0.56–1.05; P = 0.099). In conclusion, in this cohort study, both the WW exercise pattern and an equal distribution of exercise hours were equally effective in reducing Parkinson’s risk.

--------------------

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

 The most trustworthy statistical studies to evaluate treatment efficacy are prospective, double-blind, and randomized. Participants are assigned to the treatment and placebo groups randomly and then tracked over time. This study is prospective. However, the treatment (exercise) group is not chosen randomly. Existing active and inactive groups were used. This is a fundamental flaw because there can be an association between a tendency to exercise and a predisposition to develop Parkinson’s disease.

 The study does not justify the conclusion that an inactive person can reduce his/her Parkinson’s risk by becoming active.

Unintended Deformation of Stents During Bifurcation PC

 From Cardiology.

This suggests about a 4% chance of an undetected complication that materially increases the risk of a serious cardiac event.

Here is the link.

Why is Biden still the likely Democrat candidate?

I wonder - - - 

 Assumptions

    Biden is not running the Government.

    One or more people (the Bosses) other than Biden have control of the Government.

    The Bosses' primary concern is their retention of power.

    The Bosses retain power if Biden is the Democrat candidate and he wins.

    The Bosses lose power if Biden is the Democrat candidate and he loses.

    A Biden alternative is likely to exercise considerable power if he/she wins.

    The Bosses are likely to lose considerable power if a Biden alternative wins.

    The Bosses lose power if a Biden alternative loses.

Implications

    The only scenario in which the Bosses are likely to retain their current power is if Biden is the Democrat candidate and he wins.

    The Bosses are likely to support Biden until the bitter end.

Victor Davis Hanson provides insights about the Left

 VDH is on target.

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The Left Knows Leftism Doesn’t Work

Do not expect the radical left to survey the wreckage of socialism and communism in history and accept that statism impoverishes people and erodes their freedoms. There will never be admissions by our elite that progressivism exists mainly for the acquisition of power by the utopian and virtue-signaling few, who ensure that they are never subject to the baleful implementation of their ideological agendas on the rest of us.

Still, leftists look around at what they have done to America in the last four years and implicitly know that the plan did not work, the people detested it, or both.

How do we know this? By a variety of barometers.

None of the major Biden “achievements”—10 million illegal aliens across a nonexistent border, key components of the cost of living 25-30 percent higher than in 2020, wars and chaos abroad, DEI racial and tribal obsessions, wars on fossil fuels—poll at even 40-45 percent. Biden’s own approval ratings, as the nominal architect of the most left-wing agenda since the Roosevelt administration, hover between 36 and 34 percent.

But most importantly, the left is not running on its record of the last three-and-a-half years but instead studiously ignoring it, at least temporarily through November. Suddenly, we aren’t hearing so much about cancelling pipelines and freezing federal oil leases, or so much demonization of the “greedy” oil companies. Instead, Biden is further draining the strategic petroleum reserve and begging OPEC in general and the no-longer-demonized Saudi Arabia in particular to pump oil as fast as possible.

We were lied to for nearly four years that the border was “secure,” as 10 million foreign nationals flooded across. Then we were told Biden was helpless to stop the deluge since he had no legal right to enforce federal immigration law through executive orders—a ridiculous excuse that even he would soon drop. Despite their eagerness for new constituencies, no one on the left dares to openly praise the influx of the last four years, much less demand more illegal immigration.

Instead, as November looms, Biden is suddenly reinstating the very Trump executive orders that once, despite deep state and court obstruction, finally closed the border—and which Biden himself had originally overturned. Note that Biden is now partnering with the Mexican government—which terribly fears another Trump presidency endangering Mexico’s annual $60 billion in remittances from mostly illegal aliens in the United States—to curb some of the illegal immigration before the November election.

The administration’s pandering at election time is a de facto admission that its agendas did not work, permanently alienated the people they hurt, and are now being forgotten or reversed—albeit temporarily—to retain power at all costs.

Few on the left praise the disastrous COVID lockdown, the canonization of Dr. Fauci, the mask and social-distancing craze, and the gospel that endless boosters were necessary to protect Americans. Even the left, although again quietly, assumes that the lockdowns did more damage than the virus, that Dr. Fauci repeatedly lied when he swore he did not subsidize gain-of-function viral research at the Chinese top-security virology lab at Wuhan, and that the virus came not from the lab but from a wandering pangolin or errant bat.

Biden and his supporters are no longer blaming or firing the police but rather trying (albeit quietly) to get more law-enforcement officers to serve—given the predictable crime wave that followed the George Floyd riots.

Ditto for all the left-wing hysterias of the last eight years. No one any longer claims that Christopher Steele’s dossier was factual. No one insists that Hunter Biden’s laptop was likely “Russian disinformation”, or that “Anonymous” was a courageous “top-ranking” administration official. All these hysterias, it is tacitly admitted, were cooked-up left-wing canards to emasculate the Trump candidacy and presidency.

Outside of politics, leftists are quiet as their failed bromides are being undone. The idea of the FBI partnering with social media to suppress politically-dangerous news is something the left is not eager to repeat.

The same recognition is beginning to apply to the lawfare waged against Donald Trump. Jack Smith’s crusade to get Trump is undermined by prosecutorial misbehavior concerning the evidence seized at Mar-a-Lago and by the asymmetrical treatment by another special counsel accorded Biden in comparison with Trump. Smith’s efforts to speed up the trial before the election only made his persecution more politically transparent.

Fani Willis’s outrageous behavior will likely delay indefinitely her weaponized indictments. The James and Bragg convictions will likely be overturned and were intended mostly to embarrass Trump, bankrupt him, and harm his presidential campaign.

All of the left’s once-grandiose ideas of packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, admitting two new states to win four more liberal senators, and destroying the Electoral College have little public support and will go nowhere. Corporations like Disney, Target, and Anheuser-Busch have all begun backtracking on their money-losing, market-share-eroding woke/DEI agendas.

Universities are terrified that their endowment income is either static or in decline, given a rising drop-off in public and alumni giving. They know their race-based, non-meritocratic admissions and hiring are increasingly destroying their brand names. To accommodate their new non-meritocratic student bodies, they have variously inflated their grades to the point of parody, watered down work requirements, or introduced gut courses—and as a result, they are quickly losing their once-coveted prestige. Some campuses are already reinstating the SAT and ACT requirements that were thrown out in 2020-21 in the hysteria that followed the death of George Floyd. Harvard and Stanford aren’t boasting that the erasure of the SAT created a more competitive student body and raised standards to new levels.

The twin ideas of foreign-funded Middle-Eastern-studies centers and of admitting tens of thousands of affluent, full-tuition-paying Middle-Eastern students led to institutionalized anti-Semitism on campus and eliminationist rhetoric right out the old Klan playbook. The appeasement by university presidencies only whets the appetites of those who unlawfully occupy, vandalize, deface, and disrupt. Their pro-terrorist chants and emblems are bleeding the universities of billions of dollars in lost donations.

In short, the policies that the left has given us over the last years—hyperinflation, spiking staple and gas prices, racial and tribal chauvinism, dangerous streets, an emasculated and politicized military, and wars abroad—did not work, and are now being masked to retain power, put on hold, or even reversed.

The reasons for the failure are ancient, given that socialism and progressivism are contrary to human nature.

Borders are essential to national sovereignty and confidence and delineate the unique values, traditions, and customs of a people, without which they revert to mere tribes without social commonalities and political cohesion. No society can pick and choose which national laws are enforced and which ignored—and still remain a nation of laws.

People obey laws because, in a cost-benefit analysis, they fear the consequences of lawbreaking. Otherwise, the laws of the wild prevail and the strongest dictate to the weaker. Citizens must be discouraged, not encouraged, from favoring their own tribe and race, tribalism being the oldest of human biases. Money is not a construct but represents the real value of capital and labor and cannot be printed into national wealth. Abroad, most nations are illiberal and their aggressiveness is deterred only through guarantees that they will lose more than they will gain through war.

We sometimes forget all that unpleasant human baggage, due to irrelevant distractions, or the utopianism that is the handmaiden of affluence and leisure. Often, the opulence and freedom arising from free-market economies and limited constitutional government create so much prosperity and liberty that its beneficiaries believe such good fortune to be their natural and commonplace birthright and so begin destroying the very system that blessed them.

But if Biden and his handlers have taught us anything, human nature cannot be fooled, and the current four-year experiment will have to end before it ends us—and soon.

Bill Maher provides perspective on recent protests

 Bill Maher at his best.

Wake up kids.

Here is the link.

How to destroy a housing market

 From Aaron Gonzalez at the Epoch Times.

Supply-Demand curves anyone? 

Don't think politicians are stupid enough to believe this will work out (well, some of them are). It's that they will get the credit but not the blame (because the problem is stupid voters).

Remember the South Bronx under rent control?

Housing supply and quality will decline in this case, too. The "remedy" is likely to be public housing. That worked out great in New York, too. :-(

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New California Law Further Protects Renters From Evictions and Rent Hikes
Seeing renters still prone to being booted or priced out of their units, supporters of the new law say it toughens the Tenant Protection Act of five years ago.

Confronting California’s housing crisis, lawmakers passed the Tenant Protection Act of 2019 to provide renters more stability by limiting rent increases and tightening eviction rules.

But advocates for the homeless found that many tenants remained vulnerable.
Senate Bill 567, which took effect April 1, builds on the 2019 law by expanding protections against eviction and laying out a stiff penalty for landlords who defy the cap on rent increases.

With the new law, authored by Sen. María Elena Durazo and called the Homelessness Prevention Act, a significant obstacle to any “no-fault, just-cause” eviction arises when the property owner wants to move into the residence, or when the landlord plans to displace the tenant for a major renovation.

SB 567 says property owners must move in themselves or have a family member move in within 90 days of asking tenants to leave and must occupy the property as their primary residence for at least 12 months.

The law also says that if a landlord displaces a tenant for demolition or major remodeling but does not start or complete the work, the landlord must offer the tenant the property back at the same rent as when the tenant vacated.

It also requires landlords to give tenants written notice with a description of major remodels or demolition, the expected duration of repairs, and copies of necessary permits.

SB 567 takes aim at rental increases too. Supporters of the bill pointed out that even those who are protected by the Tenant Protection Act can face annual rent hikes of up to 10 percent. Under AB 1482, rent increases were limited to 5 percent plus the local rate of inflation, or 10 percent of the lowest gross rental rate charged at any time during the 12 months prior to the increase, whichever is lower.

SB 567 would make a landlord who charges more than the maximum allowable rent subject to a civil lawsuit, with the tenant able to seek damages up to three times the amount by which the rent exceeded the maximum.

The new law’s supporters say the steady rise in rent often pushes individuals and families toward homelessness.

A 2020 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that a $100 median rent increase led to a 9 percent increase in homelessness.

“Too many tenants are facing unjust evictions, because of loopholes in existing law and because rents are rising at a rate working class Californians simply cannot afford,” Ms. Durazo said.

The bill was sponsored by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, PICO California, Public Advocates, and Western Center on Law and Poverty.

Research by Zillow in 2018 concluded that communities where people spend more than 32 percent of their income on rent tended to see the most rapid increase in homelessness.

“Loopholes in just-cause protections have allowed landlords to evict long-term tenants and raise rents to truly unaffordable levels, leaving many unprotected during the most vulnerable years since AB 1482’s adoption, which have included the pandemic, an economic recession, and times of historically high inflation,” the Service Employees International Union—California State Council said.

Opponents of SB 567 call it “an extreme approach.”

The Southern California Rental Housing Association said AB 1482 was a carefully negotiated bill with a 10-year lifespan. The continued chipping away at it makes it harder for property owners to effectively manage their properties, said the association.

“To now propose to rewrite AB 1482—claiming the need for more stringent rent caps and necessary cleanup in the law—fails to acknowledge the extensive good faith work that was done,” the California Apartment Association said. “AB 1482 was a major undertaking. No amendments to the law are necessary.”

Because SB 567 changes the procedures for California property owners to evict tenants, fix- and-flip investors planning to substantially remodel or rebuild a property for resale will face new challenges and regulations while adhering to the bill’s provisions.

In addition to SB 567, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed AB 12, which takes effect July 1.

Authored by Assemblyman Matt Haney, D-San Francisco, the law prohibits landlords from requesting security deposits exceeding one month’s rent.

“Despite skyrocketing rents, laws on ensuring affordable security deposits haven’t changed substantially since the 1970s,” Mr. Haney said. “This new law is a simple common-sense change that will have an enormous impact on housing affordability for families in California, while also balancing a landlord’s need to protect themselves against potential liability.”

Opponents of the bill said more landlords may decide to leave the market if they can’t collect security deposits that will cover potential damages.

Subverting democracy and the fate of the Jews

 Jonathan Tobin at the Jewish World Review.

JT is on target.

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The last eight months have shaken the faith of many American Jews in the future of their community. The surge in antisemitism, especially on college campuses, has shattered any illusions we might have had about ensuring that Jew-hatred would be confined to the fever swamps of the far right and left in U.S. society. But as grievous as that threat to their safety may be — and the gravity of that peril cannot be overestimated — the Jewish community should also be pondering just how secure they can be in an America whose democratic norms and the rule of law can no longer be relied upon.

The prosecution and now the conviction of former President Donald Trump in a New York City courtroom on dubious charges and via a judicial process that is, at best, questionable, forces us to ask that question.

Breaking norms and precedents

To broach this topic and consider the consequences of a partisan prosecution of both a former president and the choice of the Republican Party for the 2024 election, one needn't be an admirer of Trump or even be planning to vote for him in November. Trump is a singular figure in American political history and has broken all sorts of precedents with his behavior and speech — before, during and after his presidency. But at this point, the same can be said of his opponents, who seem to believe that his allegedly unique awfulness not merely permits but obligates them to break rules and precedents in their efforts to stop him from governing while he was president, to prevent his re-election, and now, to thwart him from gaining a second term in 2024.

Any discussion of which side is worse in this debate can be attributed to the type of "whataboutism" that involves justifying things that shouldn't be justified. But suffice it to say that when he took office in 2017, he rejected the idea of having his administration pursue criminal charges against his opponents, in particular, his 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. In what for him was a relatively rare instance of rising above feuds, Trump rightly understood that following up on the irresponsible rhetoric about "locking her up" that was heard at his campaign rallies was the last thing the country needed, regardless of whether a partisan prosecutor could have resurrected charges about her violating the rules about the handling of classified information.

But his opponents, outraged at the thought of Trump sitting in the White House, did not reciprocate. They promoted the Russia collusion hoax — a conspiracy theory about Trump being a Russian agent for whom Moscow supposedly stole an election — for years and then impeached him on a partisan charge of withholding foreign aid to Ukraine. Silicon Valley oligarchs that control the virtual public square and major media outlets then conspired to suppress stories about corruption charges against the family of his 2020 opponent.

All of this was done because of the conviction that Trump was an opponent of democracy, though there was no evidence of any efforts on his part to behave in this manner while president. But his reaction to the 2020 vote seemed at least in part to confirm the claims that he was not prepared to accept an election loss. While he can be blamed for the events that led to the disgraceful Capitol Riot on Jan. 6, 2021, it was no insurrection, and, though he behaved recklessly and without grace, he peacefully left office that month.

It is possible that the Republican Party might have been prepared to choose an alternative to Trump in 2024, but once Democrats began efforts to confiscate his income, throw him off the ballot and then jail him on a raft of charges that were not just flimsy but politically motivated, the chances of the GOP moving on from him were over. Convinced — and not without reason — that what was going on was a campaign of lawfare, akin to the sorts of bills of attainder (in which the British parliament and crown had historically legislated against specific individuals) specifically prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, his party rallied around him.

Burning down democracy to save it

Undaunted by the idea that they were essentially burning down democracy to supposedly save it, Democratic prosecutors, cheered on by their party base, moved ahead. The most dubious of those charges was the case brought against him in a New York state court. In this instance, a prosecutor who had gained election by promising to jail Trump conjured up an unprecedented indictment involving not only murky legal theories but also a state trial on federal election law. It did involve a disgraceful (though not necessarily illegal) hush money payment by Trump to a former porn star. While designed to humiliate the ex-president, it was also conducted in such a blatantly unfair manner that it did nothing to undermine support for him. The pre-ordained guilty verdict is unlikely to be sustained in the appellate courts but, like the trial, it constitutes a form of election interference that both parties would denounce as the stuff of banana republics or President Vladimir Putin's Russian regime if it were happening elsewhere.

None of this represents a reason to vote for Trump or President Joe Biden. Still, the effort to imprison an American political leader, no matter how controversial, in this manner is a crossing of the Rubicon that could have devastating consequences going forward. At this point, it no longer matters who did what to whom first. The only thing to be considered is that Democrats are trying to imprison the leader of the GOP and that it is unlikely that Republicans will refrain from playing the same game in the future, especially if, as the polls currently indicate, they return to power in January 2025.

What does this have to do with the fate of American Jewry?

Like all Americans, Jews have a stake in the preservation of their country's democratic form of government. What made the United States a haven in the history of the Diaspora was its particular brand of constitutional democracy based on the ideal of equal justice under the law. That allowed Jews to ascend to leadership positions in virtually every sector of American society, secure in the belief that there were no religious tests to constrain them and that the rule of law protected them in a way it had never consistently done elsewhere. America wasn't a Jewish utopia, but it did provide an opportunity for freedom without requiring Jews to give up their identity, faith or interests.

On the surface, the Trump drama and the backlash it is causing may not seem to have anything to do with the Jews. But if the United States is, as it might be, on the verge of no longer being a place where we can count on the rule of law as well as one with a political culture in which the major parties will seek to jail each other's leaders, then even a cursory knowledge of Jewish history, would teach us that Jews will no longer be safe from persecution.

A surge in antisemitism

The post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism has already shaken confidence in the Jewish future. A form of left-wing Jew-hatred — rooted in toxic ideas like critical race theory and intersectionality — has created a new orthodoxy in academia by which Jews and Israel could be smeared and delegitimized as "white" oppressors and undeserving of rights. The willingness of mainstream corporate media outlets to normalize this new antisemitism remains deeply troubling. Their willingness to treat prejudicial canards about Zionism being a form of racism — a blatant lie that has its roots in Marxist and Soviet propaganda of the past — as something that decent people should agree to disagree about has resulted in Jews being marginalized, shunned and endangered.

If you add this factor of newly fashionable antisemitism to a toxic brew of political instability caused by the anti-Trump lawfare campaign, it's possible to imagine a scenario where the sort of Jew-hatred on college campuses spreads with unimaginable consequences. The strife at academic institutions, which is part of a broader battle over the future of America and the West, again illustrates that the Jews are always the canaries in the coal mine. We can't know where all this will end, but in an atmosphere of this sort of political strife, it isn't unreasonable to wonder about scenarios in which American Jews will be targeted in ways that seemed unimaginable not that long ago.

The only reason I can give for optimism is that I'm reasonably sure that the vast majority of Americans don't want any of this. They may be bifurcated in their politics and distrust people on the other side of the political aisle. But if there is anything that I've learned in my travels around the country in the last eight years, it is that most Americans don't want their politicians to be at each other's throats and oppose extremism of all kinds. The talk of "civil war," which was given full expression in a recent dystopian film of the same name, seems easy to imagine among the chattering and governing classes yet abhorrent to the overwhelming majority of people they hope to influence and rule.

The conviction of Trump on the most unreasonable and openly partisan charges against him may mean that there is no turning back. In spite of that, reasonable people must urge their political leaders to step back from the abyss. The surge in antisemitism is a warning to Jews and non-Jews alike that ideas essentially at war with American exceptionalism pose an immediate danger to our society. If we are now to add a new political norm whereby those who lose elections must fear prosecution, regardless of their actions, then it is entirely possible that the era when Jews could regard America as a safe place could well be over.

Laptop Deniers

 From Jonathan Turley.

JT is on target.

Know any chumps?

What is the moral of this story?

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Laptop Deniers in Delaware: The Media Shrugs as the Biden Laptop is Authenticated in Federal Court
Below is my column in Fox.com on the authentication of Hunter Biden’s laptop in the Delaware trial. The government has denounced the Russian disinformation claims as a “conspiracy theory” and put on evidence that there is no evidence of tampering with the laptop. The FBI declared the laptop to be “real” and “authentic” and the court agreed. It was introduced as evidence before many reporters who previously embraced the debunked “conspiracy theory.” As discussed below, Houdini’s elephant was just revealed on stage and most of the audience looked away.

Here is the column:

Watching the coverage this week out of Delaware was like finding oneself in a parallel universe. There were ABC, NBC, CBS, the Washington Post and other news outlets reporting matter-of-factly that the Hunter Biden laptop showed no evidence of tampering and was both real and authentic.

These are the same outlets, and some of the same reporters, who eagerly spread the false claims that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”

Yet, what followed the testimony of FBI agent Erika Jensen was absolute crickets. There was no effort to track down the signatories of the now-debunked letter from former intelligence officials just before the election. In the letter, figures such as Leon Panetta, former CIA director in the Obama administration, claimed that the laptop had all the markings of a Russian disinformation effort by intelligence services. (Panetta continued to make the assertion even in late 2023 in pushing what the federal government is now calling a “conspiracy theory.”)

There was no attempt by the media to confront associates of the Biden campaign (including now Secretary of State Antony Blinken) who pushed a long effort to get former intelligence officials to sign a letter.

There was no attempt to question President Joe Biden, who made this false claim in the presidential election to deflect any questions about the evidence of corrupt influence peddling on the laptop.

Years ago, I wrote that the Biden campaign had pulled off the single greatest political trick in history. As I wrote back then, the key to this Houdini-esque trick was to get the media to invest in the deception like audience members called to the stage.

Houdini used to make his elephant Jennifer disappear on stage every night because he knew that the audience wanted her to disappear. They were part of the act. The Bidens made the media part of the act, and these reporters have to back the illusion or admit that they were part of the deception.

They are all laptop deniers, but they know that there are few who will call them to account for their conspiracy theory. Rather, it is social media where readers can see videos of leading media claiming that the laptop is the work of Russian intelligence.

In 2020, CBS News’ Lesley Stahl literally laughed mockingly at then-President Donald Trump when he raised the Hunter Biden laptop and what it revealed about the Bidens.

Figures like former Chief of Staff at the CIA and Department of Defense Jeremy Bash, who told MSNBC that the laptop “looked like Russian intelligence” and “walked like Russian intelligence.” He dismissed the relevance of the laptop before the election by declaring that “this effort by Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post and Steve Bannon to cook up supposed dirt on Joe Biden looks like a classic, Russian playbook disinformation campaign.”

Bash added that it made Trump an effective agent of Russian intelligence since he kept referencing the laptop: “[when] Rudy Giuliani suddenly comes forward with these mysteriously created emails, probably hacked through a Russian intelligence operation, we have to acknowledge the fact that the President of the United States is supporting, is condoning, is welcoming a Russian intelligence operation in 2020. … This is collusion in plain sight.”

Bash, like others behind the conspiracy theory, was later given an intelligence position by Biden.

The New York Times and The Washington Post both eventually verified Hunter Biden’s laptop after big tech dismissed the New York Post’s bombshell reporting during the 2020 presidential election. The Post reporting was famously censored by Twitter ahead of the 2020 election.

CNN’s Alex Marquardt told viewers, “We do know it is a very active Russian campaign.”

Indeed, the Washington Post has continued to suggest that this reporting was accurate. One of the leading purveyors of this false story was the Post’s Philip Bump, who slammed the New York Post for its now proven Hunter Biden laptop story.

In 2021, when media organizations were finally admitting that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bump continued to suggest that “the laptop was seeded by Russian intelligence.”

After Bump had a meltdown in an interview when confronted over past false claims, I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims. The Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that they stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including the laptop conspiracy theory. That was in August 2023.

Of course, this trick would not have been possible without the assistance of 50 former intelligence officials who were reportedly organized through Clinton campaign associates to issue the infamous letter.

These figures then continued to spread the false claim.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of the 50 who signed the letter, also claimed that the laptop bore “the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.”

James Clapper, a former director of National Intelligence and CNN analyst, said the laptop was “classic, textbook Soviet, Russian tradecraft at work.”

Members of Congress also repeated the false claims, including Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., who told the media not to join Giuliani as a “vehicle for Russian disinformation.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, insisted that the laptop was clearly “Kremlin propaganda.”

This long-debunked claim was even recently repeated in Congress by Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., who claimed that the laptop could not be authenticated even though it was just authenticated and introduced in a federal prosecution.

All of those who pushed what the U.S. government is now calling a false “conspiracy theory” have flourished in the wake of Biden’s victory. Intelligence officials like Bash received plum positions while others like Clapper were given media contracts. Schiff is expected to be elected to the Senate and is running, ironically enough, on his record with intelligence investigations of Trump.

Conversely, the New York Post and reporters like Miranda Devine have received no recognition for their work in disclosing the contents and defying attacks from politicians and media alike. While reporters were given a Pulitzer for reporting the now debunked Russian collusion story, Devine and others will never receive a Pulitzer for uncovering the true story behind the laptop.

Devine, the New York Post, and others simply refused to get in on the trick. As is often said, there are some facts simply “too good to check” in the media. The Hunter Biden laptop disappeared from the stage like Houdini’s elephant because the media wanted it to disappear.

The reappearance of the laptop in a Delaware courtroom might be awkward for most people, but not the media or intelligence officials or politicians who pushed the conspiracy theory. After all, they were all in on the trick. It was the voters who were played for chumps.

J6 Committee delayed Secret Service Driver From Refuting False Limo Story

 From Jonathan Turley.

JT is on target.

Moral of the story: Politics should not be left to politicians?

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Just the News is reporting that the January 6th Committee rebuffed repeated efforts from a Secret Service agent to refute the false story related by Cassidy Hutchinson alleging a violent episode with Trump in the presidential limousine during the Capitol riots. The J6 Committee staff repeatedly delayed the testimony of the agent to disprove the widely reported allegation.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, the chairman of the House subcommittee that is investigating the Jan. 6 riot, has obtained a transcript of the driver’s interview that was conducted months after he first offered to testify. However, it turns out that committee staff were asked repeatedly by counsel for the agent to let him present evidence debunking the claim. Despite being reported by virtually every news outlet, the Committee slow walked his appearance as the story went viral.

The transcript of the driver’s testimony contains express objections by the lawyer that his client had offered to testify in July, August and September of 2022, but was “rebuffed” by the committee.

The account reaffirms a major criticism of the committee. After Democrats refused to allow the GOP to pick its members (as a long-accepted practice in the House), the Democrats selected two anti-Trump Republicans who did little to push for a full and fair display of witnesses and facts. The Committee was chaired by Rep. Benny Thompson, a Democrat, with Rep. Liz Cheney, as Vice Chairwoman.

Cheney and the committee members clearly knew that Hutchinson’s account was debunked by the very driver who allegedly struggled with Trump. Yet, they allowed the media to report the incident for months while rebuffing the requests of the driver. Loudermilk is quoted as saying “We’re talking about the driver of the limousine, and the head of the entire protective detail. They were brought in by the select committee to testify, but they weren’t brought in until November.”

The false account was given by Hutchinson in June of that year.

The Secret Service driver testified Trump never tried to reach for or grab the wheel of the SUV.

Notably, the transcript shows Cheney trying to explain the delay as due to the need for the Secret Service to produce all documents in the January 6 investigation.

Yet, she had no problem with making the false story public through Hutchinson before such supporting material was supplied. She also did not suggest any countervailing testimony or witnesses on the issue as the media ran with the account. Instead, Cheney publicly teased the claim that they had much more evidence of crimes against Trump, which never materialized. Cheney ended one hearing by calling for more officials to come forward and noting that Trump family members and former officials have now come forward with their own public “confessions.”

Many of us support the effort to bring greater transparency to what occurred on Jan. 6th and these hearings have offered a great deal of important new information. Indeed, it has proven gut-wrenching in the accounts of lawyers and staff trying to combat baseless theories and to protect the constitutional process.

Yet, the heavy-handed approach to framing the evidence by the Committee was both unnecessary and at times counterproductive. The strength of some of this evidence would not have been diminished by a more balanced committee or investigation.

We previously discussed the highly scripted and entirely one-sided presentation of evidence in the Committee. Indeed, witnesses were primarily used to present what Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to as “the narrative” where their prior videotaped testimony was shown and they were given narrow follow-up questions. They at times seemed more like props than witnesses — called effectively to recite prior statements between well-crafted, impactful video clips. It had the feel of a news package, which may be the result of the decision to bring in a former ABC executive to produce the hearings.

That framing led to glaring omissions. The Committee routinely edited videotapes and crafted presentations to eliminate alternative explanations or opposing viewpoints like repeatedly editing out Trump telling his supporters to go to the Capitol peacefully.

What is striking was that offering a more balanced account, including allowing the Republicans to appoint their own members (in accordance with long-standing tradition), would not have lessened much of this stunning testimony. Yet, allowing Republicans to pick their members (yes, including Rep. Jim Jordan) would have prevented allegations of a highly choreographed show trial. It would have added credibility to the process.

If the Committee had a single member with a dissenting or even skeptical viewpoint, testimony on issues like the fight in the presidential limo could have been challenged before it was thrown before the world.

That was clearly not in the interests of the J6 Committee or the media, which eagerly spread this false account.

The Trump Conviction Presents a Target-Rich Environment for Appeal

 From Jonathan Turley.

Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.

JT is on target.

This Trump prosecution simply continues our Country's downtrend of respect for the Law and Freedom. This is no accident - too many voters share this lack of respect. The educational system shares much of the blame for this.

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Buzz Kill: The Trump Conviction Presents a Target-Rich Environment for Appeal.

Below is my column in the Hill on the most compelling grounds for an appeal in the Trump case after his conviction on 34 counts in Manhattan. There has been considerable criticism of the defense team and its strategy in the case, including some moves that may undermine appellate issues. However, after the instructions became public, I wrote a column that I thought the case was nearly un-winnable, even for those of us who previously saw a chance for a hung jury. Clarence Darrow would likely have lost with those instructions after the errors in the case by Judge Juan Merchan. At that point, it became a legal canned hunt. So the attention will now shift to the appellate courts. While it may be tough going initially in the New York court system for the former president, this case could well end up in the federal system and the United States Supreme Court. The thrill kill environment of last week may then dissipate as these glaring errors are presented in higher courts.

Here is the column:

The conviction of former President Donald Trump in Manhattan of 34 felonies produced citywide celebrations. This thrill-kill environment extended to the media, where former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that it was “majestic day” and “a day to celebrate.” When I left the courthouse after watching the verdict come in, I was floored by the celebrations outside by both the public and some of the media.

The celebrants would be wise to think twice before mounting this trophy kill on the political wall. The Trump trial is a target-rich environment for an appeal, with multiple layers of reversible error, in my view.

I am less convinced by suggestions that the case could be challenged on the inability of Trump receiving a fair trial in a district that voted roughly 90 percent against him. The problem was not the jury, but the prosecutors and the judge.

Some of the most compelling problems can be divided into four groups.

The Judge

Acting Supreme Court justice Juan Merchan was handpicked for this case rather than randomly selected. This is only the latest in a litany of Trump cases where Merchan has meted out tough rulings against Trump and his organization. With any other defendant, there would likely be outrage over his selection. Merchan donated to President Biden. Even though the state bar cleared that violation based on the small size of the contribution, it later stressed that no such contributions were appropriate for a judge. We learned later that Merchan has contributed to a group to stop the GOP and Trump. Merchan’s daughter is also a Democratic organizer who has helped raise millions against Trump and the GOP and for the Democrats.

To his credit, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig has previously said that this case was legally dubious, uniquely targeted Trump and could not succeed outside of an anti-Trump district. On the judge, he recently challenged critics on the fairness of assigning a Biden donor who has earmarked donations for “resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s radical right-wing legacy.” He asked “Would folks have been just fine with the judge staying on the case if he had donated a couple bucks to “Re-elect Donald Trump, MAGA forever!”? “Absolutely not.”

What is equally disturbing is the failure of Merchan to protect the rights of the defendant and what even critics admit were distinctly pro-prosecution rulings in the trial. It is not just the appearance of a conflict with Judge Merchan but a record of highly biased decisions. In watching Merchan in the courtroom, I was shocked by his rulings as at times incomprehensible and conflicted.

The Charges

A leading threshold issue will be the decision to allow Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to effectively try Trump for violations of federal law. The Justice Department declined any criminal charges against Trump under federal election law over the alleged “hush money” payments. The Federal Election Commission likewise found no basis for a civil fine. With no federal prosecution, Bragg decided to use an unprecedented criminal theory not only to zap a dead misdemeanor into life (after the expiration of the statute of limitation) but to allow him to try violations of not only federal election law but also federal taxation violations. In other words, the Justice Department would not prosecute federal violations, so Bragg effectively did it in state court.

Even when closing arguments were given, analysts on various networks admitted that they were unclear about what Bragg was alleging. The indictment claimed a violation under New York’s election law 17-152 that the falsification of business records were committed to further another crime as an unlawful means to influence the election. However, in a maddeningly circular theory, that other crime could be the falsification of business records. It could also be violations of federal election and taxation laws, which Trump was never charged with, let alone convicted of.

The Evidence

Judge Merchan allowed a torrent of immaterial and prejudicial evidence to be introduced into the trial by the prosecution. That included testimony from porn actress Stormy Daniels that went into details about having sex with Trump. She included a clear suggestion that Trump raped her. After this utterly disgraceful testimony, Merchan expressed regret but actually blamed the defense counsel, despite their prior objections to the testimony. He had previously chastised counsel for making continued objections, but now he criticized them for not continuing to make objections.

Merchan was equally conflicted in his other orders. For example, he allowed the prosecutors to introduce the plea agreement of Michael Cohen to federal election violations as well as the non-prosecution agreement of David Pecker on such violations. However, it was allowed only for the purposes of credibility and context. He issued an instruction that the jury could not consider the plea or the agreement to establish or impute the guilt of Trump.

The prosecutors then proceeded to expressly state that it was “a fact” that federal election violations occurred in this case and that Trump ordered those violations. They also solicited such statements from witnesses like Cohen. Merchan overruled the objections that the prosecutors were eviscerating his instruction. Merchan also barred the use of a legal expert, former FEC Chair Brad Smith, who was prepared to testify that such payments cannot be viewed as federal election violations and would not affect the election even if they were considered contributions, since they would not even have had to be reported until after the election.

Merchan is likely to be upheld in denying the expert, since the court retains the authority to state what the law is to the jury. The problem is that Merchan failed to do so. Worse still, he allowed the jury to hear the opposite in the repeated false claim that these payments were campaign contributions.

The Instructions

Even with all of the reversible errors, some of us held out hope that there might be a hung jury. That hope was largely smashed by Merchan in his instructions to the jury. The court largely used standard instructions in a case that was anything but standard. However, the instruction also allowed for doubt as to what the jury would ultimately find. When the verdict came in, we were still unsure what Trump was convicted of.

Merchan allowed the jury to find that the secondary offense was any of the three vaguely defined options. Even on the jury form, they did not have to specify which of the crimes were found. Under Merchan’s instruction, the jury could have split 4-4-4 on what occurred in the case. They could have seen a conspiracy to conceal a federal election violation, falsification of business records or taxation violations. We will never know. Worse yet, Trump will never know.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that the requirement of unanimity in criminal convictions is sacrosanct in our system. While there was unanimity that the business records were falsified to hide or further a second crime, there was no express finding of what that crime may have been. In some ways, Trump may have been fortunate by Merchan’s cavalier approach. Given that the jury convicted Trump across the board, they might have found all of three secondary crimes. The verdict form never asked for such specificity.

These are just a few of the appellate issues. There are other challenges, including but not limited to due process violations on the lack of specificity in the indictment, vagueness of the underlying state law and the lack of evidentiary foundation for key defenses like “the legitimate press function.” They are the reason why many of us view this case is likely to be reversed in either the state or federal systems. None of that is likely to dampen the thrill in this kill in Manhattan.

But if Biden wins the election before this conviction is overturned, history’s judgment will be deafening.