Law schools across the country are abandoning their decades-long principles going woke and the move could prove disastrous for attorneys, current law students, and prospective law students across the nation.
Let Amanda break down the situation in the video below.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Last week the world was hit by the purported news of a Russian missile strike into NATO member country, Poland.
And now the award-winning AP reporter who wrote it has been fired.
Based only on a single, unnamed ‘senior U.S. intelligence official,’ the initial Associated Press (AP) story by James LaPorta, a former U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan, was widely disseminated and quickly caused a barrage of other reporting.
Most of it was alarmist and panic-causing, with many in the news media and blogosphere quickly demanding harsh action against Russia.
As the Blaze reports:
Fox News and the Daily Mail similarly carried the AP reporter’s suggestion, the former running a piece entitled, “Russian missiles cross into NATO member Poland, kill 2: senior US intelligence official,” and the latter stating, “‘Russian bombs’ kill two in POLAND.”
CBS Evening News tweeted “RUSSIAN MISSILE STRIKE: Two Russian missiles crossed over the Ukrainian border into Poland, a NATO country, killing two civilians.”
A Russian attack on Poland could have triggered articles 4 and 5 of the NATO charter, potentially putting the U.S. into direct conflict with nuclear power.
Article 4 requires full consultation at the North Atlantic Council, the alliance’s political decision-making body, while Article 5 requires joint NATO action to repel an attack.
As MSN explains: “Article 5 states that the parties to the NATO treaty ‘agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.’”
Article 5 also states that each NATO member must take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
This of course would make the U.S. a direct combatant in this war and could escalate to a nuclear exchange.
As such, I wrote about the ‘errant’ strike the same day, albeit in more careful ways.
My headline was more matter-of-fact and far less alarming, and it didn’t mention a direct Russian missile strike: “Escalation in Russia-Ukraine War Leads to Emergency Crisis Meeting.”
In the piece I did note the ramifications of any foreign missiles crashing into Poland, writing: “In what might be the greatest (albeit perhaps accidental) escalation since Russia invaded Ukraine, the war just crossed the border into a NATO country.”
And, yes, I like to say ‘albeit.’
I added:
According to a senior U.S. intelligence official, as Russia pounded Ukraine’s energy facilities Tuesday with the largest barrage of missile strikes to date, some reportedly ‘stray’ Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland and struck a site in Poland about 15 miles from the Ukrainian border.
The allegedly errant strike killed two persons in the Polish village of Przewodów and provoked an emergency crisis meeting of Poland’s national security team, which will be held Tuesday evening.
While I did refer to a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman who said Russia used X-101 and X-555 cruise missiles in the latest attacks against Ukraine, and reports that expressed the belief that “one or more of these cruise missiles were the ones that struck Poland,” I was very careful in how I reported all this.
Note the extensive use of the words “accidental,” “allegedly,” “reportedly,” “errant,” and “stray” missiles in my report. I also explained that the incident had provoked an “emergency crisis meeting” in Poland.
The rest of my piece focused on the confirmed, massive Russian barrage of missile strikes against Ukrainian energy and infrastructure targets throughout the country.
In the end it appears that the missile that struck Poland was a Russian-made Ukrainian air defense missile that missed its mark and fell back to earth rather than self-destructs.
And even after its country of manufacture was known, outlets like CNN kept calling it a ‘Russian-made missile’ without adding that Ukraine uses lots of Russian-made missiles.
Of course, in my view, Russia is still to blame for this, albeit indirectly, since no one would be firing armed missiles near a NATO country if it weren’t for the unprovoked Russian invasion, and its reckless and dangerous strikes near NATO’s borders.
The Blaze added that:
After having updated the initial report several times, the AP indicated [November 16] that a new assessment from three U.S. officials “contradicts information” in the original article. Shortly thereafter, the article was reportedly taken offline.
The AP issued a retraction later that day…
On Nov. 21, LaPorta was fired.
But let’s use this incident as a teachable moment.
Lesson one – as sophisticated news consumers, be circumspect with the news you read until it is fully verified.
Lesson two – be wary of reports using only one or two anonymous sources.
And lesson three – journalists, and social media posters, should use words like ‘reportedly’ a lot more, and make it clear that there is room for doubt or questions when the reports are still fresh and early.
The most important rule I’ve learned in journalism, and in intelligence, and also during my stint on Wall Street, is that – it’s never as good (or as bad) as first reported.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
The Georgia Senate runoff election is going to be a heated battle and neither candidate is giving up ground. Trump-endorsed candidate and former University of Georgia football legend Herschel Walker (R) is nearly tied against incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock as they continue campaigning for the Dec. 6th election.
Watch Amanda break it down below.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – The incessant drumbeat of the left’s campaign to keep the Capitol Riot in the news every day for nearly two years had some of its intended effects.
It probably helped persuade some voters not to pull the lever for those ‘dangerous’ MAGA Republicans during the midterm elections.
It also may dissuade others not to vote for Trump or the GOP in 2024.
And some of that concern may be justified.
But the GOP and the right also failed miserably by not forcefully pushing the truth about the ‘other insurrection’ – the one against Trump and the White House by violent leftists under the BLM flag in May/June 2020.
I was a risk advisor to foreign TV news crews during both violent riots.
I also strongly condemned both, writing of the Capitol rioters at the time: “…many were goons and criminals, and yes, ‘terrorists.’ No better than Antifa or BLM, or the #NotMyPresident rioters who disrupted Trump’s Inaugural four years ago.”
I added of the violent Capitol rioters: “Whoever they were, they should be seen and treated as criminals. Arrested and prosecuted.”
This sentiment didn’t apply to the hundreds who simply entered the Capitol non-violently, but that’s another issue altogether.
Unfortunately, the left, colluding with the establishment media and Democrats in Congress and the White House, only ‘remembers’ one riot and erased that other one from history.
If they mention the violent BLM riot at the White House at all, they focus on Trump’s Bible photo op the next morning at St John’s Episcopal Church, the site across from the White House of an attempted arson the night before.
They also forget how they aggressively attacked any attempt by Trump, and federal and local authorities, to bring order to the violence.
I even had a Canadian TV news reporter claim to me months after the protests at the White House that they were totally peaceful.
She said this nonsense despite the fact that the violence was reported, albeit briefly.
And I had to forcibly intervene to protect one of her colleagues, a cameraman who was savagely beaten by two ‘BLM’ assailants without justification, while the crew was simply changing batteries and reorganizing away from the main battle lines.
The cameraman fortunately was wearing a helmet at my suggestion, and ‘only’ suffered a mild concussion.
I personally witnessed hundreds of rioters almost break through the thin improvised line of U.S. Park Police and Uniformed Secret Service in the park, while DC Metropolitan Police, for political reasons, assembled on the sidelines.
As a security expert, I was concerned that there weren’t enough police to stop the large violent mob from crashing the fence at the White House; a concern apparently shared by the Secret Service who at one point that night rushed Trump to the protected underground bunker.
A claim Trump sadly denied.
I also witnessed everything described by CNN below, and more.
As CNN reported at the time on May 31, 2020:
More than 60 US Secret Service Uniformed Division officers and special agents were injured starting Friday night through Sunday morning near the White House as protests rocked Washington, DC, following the death of George Floyd last week, according to a statement from the Secret Service.
The officers and agents were injured when protesters threw “projectiles such as bricks, rocks, bottles, fireworks and other items,” according to the statement. “Personnel were also directly physically assaulted as they were kicked, punched and exposed to bodily fluids.”
CNN teams were on hand for much of the protests and witnessed protesters throwing objects at officers and pulling temporary fencing away from them.
Eleven Secret Service employees were transported to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. A secret service officer suffered a head injury after being assaulted by BLM & far-left rioters trying to storm the White House. Dozens of other Secret Service agents were injured as well.
This was also a violent riot, or call it an insurrection, but in this case against President Trump, the Executive Branch, and the politically sacred space of the ‘People’s House.’
Perhaps with GOP control of the House, we can see a real congressional investigation of this ‘other insurrection.’
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Following Joe Biden’s new rule restricting feds from investigating or arresting journalists and the ongoing outcry against FBI agents using ‘storm-trooper’ SWAT-style raids against peaceful American pro-life activists, the Bureau goes and does it again.
Most recently, Joerg Arnu, owner of www.Dreamlandresort.com, a popular Area 51 website issued a statement after heavily armed federal agents reportedly raided his homes at gunpoint several weeks ago.
Dreamlandresort.com was founded in 1999 and has long hosted information about the restricted military base widely known as Area 51, but also called Homey Airport or Groom Lake.
The extremely well-guarded Area 51 is classified as a ‘Military Operating Area’ by the Pentagon, but for most in the military, it’s simply known as the Nevada Test and Training Range, part of Edwards Air Force Base.
“The base itself is fairly small, but the restricted area around it is over 90,000 acres — partly to prevent prying eyes and partly because they need to test classified aircraft,” Benjamin Radford, a writer on the subject, told Space.com earlier.
The raid of Arnu’s Nevada home, conducted jointly between the FBI and U.S. Air Force, was first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
In his statement on Nov. 3, Arnu said that an FBI search warrant was executed and his “laptops, phones, backup drives, camera gear and my drone were seized.”
Arnu told Business Insider (BI) that he had “not been charged with a crime,” adding that since the Nov. 3 search, he has “not heard from the FBI agent in charge at all, despite numerous attempts to reach him to discuss the damages and return of my items.”
In response to an inquiry from BI, Lt. Col. Bryon McGarry, with the U.S. Air Force stated minimally that: “Nellis Air Force Base is aware of the joint-AFOSI (Department of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations), FBI investigation involving Mr. Arnu.”
However, as non-informative as the Air Force was, the FBI declined to comment at all.
The Epoch Times reported further on the seemingly outrageous incident:
Elaborating to news outlets, Arnu said that some 15 to 20 federal agents arrived at his home in “full riot gear.” He said the search pertained to photos that were posted on his website.
“The doors were broken open and I in [sic] Rachel and my girlfriend in our Las Vegas home were detained and treated in the most disrespectful way,” he told Insider. “My girlfriend was led out into the street barefoot and only in her underwear in full view of our neighbors; I was led outside, handcuffed and only in t-shirt and sweats in sub-freezing temperatures.”
Arnu added: “I am not sharing anything on my web site that cannot be found on dozens of other web sites and news outlet publications. Considering how this went down I have no intention of removing any more material unless ordered to do so by a federal judge.”
In his interview with Insider and Fox News, Arnu said he will now pursue legal action against the federal government.
“The federal government has the right to harass and traumatize random citizens that are not accused of any crime,” Arnu told Fox on Saturday. “Kick in their doors, manhandle them and take whatever they want from them. Said citizens have no rights whatsoever to reimbursement of their damages, return of their property or compensation for the trauma they were subjected to.”
Arnu added to Fox that “this is America … land of the free.” But now, it’s “not so much from where I am standing right now. Everyone should know about this injustice. It could be your door that is kicked in next!”
The seizure of Arnu’s aerial video drone may hint at a potential motive for the raid, as there are signs all around the military installation warning that photography in the area is prohibited and that drones cannot be flown in its vicinity.
However, if that is the case, then the FBI and AF-OSI should tell Mr. Arnu this and make a public statement to that effect.
Either way, the storm-trooper-type armed raid used against a well-known, elderly amateur journalist is outrageous and just the latest example of the FBI’s increasingly heavy-handed tactics being employed against peaceful American citizens.
Add this to the long list of FBI abuses the new, GOP-led Congress must investigate in 2023.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Highlighting the real domestic security threat by China, the FBI is apparently ‘very concerned’ about, and investigating, the alleged Chinese Communist (Chicom) police stations likely set up illegally in New York, among other cities.
This is yet another domestic security failure by a Biden administration obsessed with Jan 6 and persecuting conservatives instead of combatting real foreign threats to the nation.
I have written about these dangerous and repressive Chicom police outposts in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere before.
While ostensibly run by China’s Ministry of Interior via its police forces, and using ‘volunteers,’ the feared Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) – which is both an intelligence and security service – is likely heavily involved with this effort.
China claims the outposts are merely police service centers to help Chinese ex-pats living abroad.
But if you believe that, there is also a bridge for sale in Brooklyn.
These outposts are mostly being used to monitor, coerce, and sometimes forcibly remove Chinese dissidents living overseas.
The heightened scrutiny on them follows a September report by Safeguard Defenders, a Europe-based human rights organization, that revealed the existence of dozens of Chinese police ‘service stations’ in major cities around the world, including New York.
Safeguard Defenders reported that China has set up at least 54 “overseas police service stations” around the world, including one in New York City and three in Toronto. The group said its list was based on official statements, but the actual number may be higher.
While tasked with cracking down on Chinese-related illegal activities overseas, the police stations represent “the latest iteration in [China’s] growing transnational repression, where it seeks to police and limit political expression far beyond its own borders,” the report said.
While congressional Democrats obsessed myopically on Jan 6, Republicans in Congress have taken this Chicom threat seriously, requesting answers from Team Biden administration about their legality and influence.
And finally, we see some response.
As Reuters reported, Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers at the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that he is “very concerned about this. We are aware of the existence of these stations.”
However, Wray declined to detail the FBI’s investigations into this threat.
Wray added:
I have to be careful about discussing our specific investigative work, but to me, it is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop, you know, in New York, let’s say, without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes.
When asked by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., if such stations violated U.S. law, Wray said the FBI was “looking into the legal parameters of it” and had talked to the Justice Department and the Department of State about unsanctioned operations.
Wray added that the United States has indicted a number of Chinese government assets involved in harassing, stalking, surveilling, and blackmailing opponents of China’s leader-for-life Xi Jinping who are living in the United States.
Many of these indicted assets were involved in a notorious Chicom effort to repatriate Chinese dissidents back to China known as “Operation Fox Hunt.”
“It’s a real problem and something that we’re talking with our foreign partners about, as well, because we’re not the only country where this has occurred,” Wray said.
According to AP most of the Chinese overseas police stations are concentrated in Europe.
The Irish government said last month it had asked China to shut down a police station operating in Dublin. The Dutch government said it was looking into whether two stations named in the report were established in the Netherlands.
In the two months since the Safeguard Defenders’ report was released, at least 14 governments, including those of Britain, Canada and Germany, have opened investigations into the operations, according to Safeguard Defenders.
VOA News reported that:
In response to China’s increased use of transnational repression, the Biden administration has adopted a whole-of-government approach that includes visa restrictions, export controls, and the investigation and prosecution of perpetrators, Uzra Zeya, undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights, told a congressional panel in June.
These are all good first steps, but much more needs to be done to neutralize China’s extraterritorial repression in the U.S. and allied nations.
And do so quickly.
Among additional moves, Team Biden must pressure all the nations listed as having extraterritorial Chinese police stations. This includes Germany, which sees no issues with the Chicom police outpost there.
But as with its meekness in facing Russia, Germany has a history of turning a blind eye to the threat posed by the Chinese Communists as well.
It’s time the U.S. makes a very public example of ‘delinquent’ Germany, as President Trump did earlier.
But don’t expect this current administration to do much.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has reinstated former President Donald Trump’s access to his infamous Twitter account which was notoriously blocked following the Jan. 6th Capitol riot.
While the former President has yet to make his re-entrance to the Twitter sphere, instead opting for his own TRUTH Social platform, the idea is enough to make liberals’ blood boil over.
Watch Amanda break down the situation below.
Pro-Trump superstar Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (CO-3rd) has faced a contentious post-Election Day battle as she fights for another term in Congress.
Watch Amanda explain the ongoing ballot fiasco below.
ANALYSIS – ‘Red ripple.’ For at least the last several elections, pollsters have consistently oversampled Democrats and undercounted Republicans, wrongly skewing the polls in the Dems’ favor.
This is something I have written about before, and the pollster errors include the ‘shy Trump supporter’ effect where conservatives simply shun pollsters or avoid giving their true views out of fear of retribution or being ‘canceled.’
Frank Luntz, a political strategist said to The Hill: “We knew from 2016, 2018 and even 2020 that Trump voters tended not to respond to pollsters because they thought that the results would be used against them.”
This time around the pollsters seem to have screwed up in the opposite direction, overcompensating by overweighting Republican supporters and predicting a ‘Red Wave’ in the midterm elections that never materialized.
I must admit, I too assumed that the pollsters would continue to err in favor of Dems and hence believed the polling was still undercounting Republicans.
But as they say – you should never assume because then you make an ‘ass out of u and me.’
And as Luntz added, “past errors caused pollsters to over-index Republicans.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation just did a solid analysis on this latest pollster screw-up.
As the Daily Caller reports:
Weighting Republican respondents more heavily than Democratic respondents in polls led to an overestimation of GOP support, which created the mirage of a “red wave” this midterm season, polling experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In the House of Representatives, FiveThirtyEight, based on an aggregation of major polls, predicted a 228-seat GOP majority as the most likely outcome, while RealClearPolitics had projected at least 227 seats, with additions from 34 tossup races. In the Senate, FiveThirtyEight forecast 51 seats for the GOP, with 52 and 53 seats being as likely, while RealClearPolitics forecast 53 seats for Senate Republicans.
The results were significantly different from these projections. Though some races are yet to be called, Democrats retained control of the Senate, having won 50 seats as of writing, while Republicans, though projected to win the House, will have a narrow majority close to the 218 seats necessary for one.
The Daily Caller continues:
In the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, former President Donald Trump significantly overperformed polling in several states that pegged him to lose, with his unexpected 2016 wins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina giving him an Electoral College majority to win. Though Trump lost the 2020 election, he still won states like Florida and Ohio and came close to winning races in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, which polling firms had estimated would be easily won by Joe Biden.
In all, in 2020, polls underestimated the presidential popular vote, swing-state vote, Democratic House majority and the Democratic Senate majority. The American Academy of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) called it the “worst performance for polls since 1980.”
And this appears to have caused the severe pollster overcompensation we saw leading up to the midterms.
In artillery, you often fire beyond (long) and before (short of) a target to close in on it and ‘fire for effect.’ This is called ‘bracketing.’
The idea is that on the third salvo you should hit the target close to spot on.
Let’s see if these varied pollster results that undercounted GOP voters and then overcounted them were the ‘bracketing’ needed prior to their getting the 2024 polls right.
I’m not optimistic. GAND
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – During Joe Biden’s two-year term in office, the number of illegal migrants swarming into the U.S. has swelled to its highest number in decades.
Many of these illegals have serious criminal records and Team Biden can’t confirm how many or who they are.
So, what does the administration do?
Rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Joe Biden’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Chris Magnus was forced to resign over the weekend by Department of Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas.
While Magnus, an incompetent leftist ideologue, failed miserably as CPB chief, his firing was purely political, making him a scapegoat for Team Biden’s broader border and immigration disaster.
Analysts believe Magnus was forced to resign to avoid him testifying at future GOP-led House committee hearings.
The real villain here is Mayorkas who really needs to go.
As a Senate-confirmed cabinet official, he has been derelict in his constitutional duties to protect the U.S. homeland.
He needs to resign or be impeached by the GOP House next year.
As Senator Ted Cruz,( R-Tx.), told Fox News Digital:
The Biden administration found their fall guy for the chaos at the border. Responsibility for the border crisis lies with Joe Biden and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and real accountability starts with Mayorkas being impeached. Every moment the border continues to remain open only heightens the present humanitarian and national security crisis.
Other GOP lawmakers echoed Cruz’s remarks. Fox News reported:
“The Biden administration has completely failed to protect our borders, and now it’s trying to find a scapegoat,” Burchett said. “Mayorkas should be the one to resign.”
“When Republicans take over the House, we’re gonna bring some rational thought back to our border security operations,” he continued.Texas Republican Rep. August Pfluger also called on Mayorkas to hit the road, telling Fox News Digital the DHS secretary tried to use Magnus’ departure as a cover-up of his own “failures.”
And Texas congressman Lance Gooden tweeted about Magnus’s resignation: “Accountability would be DHS Secretary Mayorkas joining him.”
Now, GOP lawmakers with the House Homeland Security Committee confirmed that Mayorkas cannot guarantee that no convicted criminals are among the roughly two million border crossers and illegal aliens who have entered the U.S. since Joe Biden took office.
Breitbart News reported:
During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) grilled Mayorkas over the roughly 1.4 million border crossers and illegal aliens that have been released into American communities since February 2021, as well as the 600,000 illegal aliens who are known to have successfully crossed the southern border in Fiscal Year 2022.
“Now can you answer definitively … that none of the 600,000 individuals who are now in the United States amongst our communities that got away are gang members or criminals?” Cammack.
“Your question highlights precisely why we have sought to prioritize national security and public safety threats in our Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehension and removal efforts,” Mayorkas said, evading the question.
Breitbart continued:
Mayorkas also did not provide data on how many of the nearly 30,000 convicted criminal illegal aliens apprehended in Fiscal Year 2022 went on to claim asylum after arriving at the southern border.
Cammack pressed Mayorkas on whether criminal records exist for those released into the U.S. under the Biden administration thus far.
“In Fiscal Year 2022, you have now released 1.4 million into the United States and my question to you now is can you guarantee that none of those people have criminal records?” Cammack said, to which Mayorkas did not answer directly.
This failure to respond by Mayorkas, and failure to account for, and confirm the identity and whereabouts of a large number of criminal illegal aliens in the U.S. under his watch, is cause for impeachment.
As Breitbart noted: “In April, Mayorkas failed to guarantee to lawmakers that none of the illegal aliens on the FBI Terrorism Watch List or No-Fly List, apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border at the time, had been released into American communities.”
For all these reasons, and many more, Mayorkas has failed in his constitutional duties and he should be the first Biden cabinet official to go when the GOP takes over Congress in January.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
