Libertarian Leanings

Majority of Voters Say Ukraine Attack Doesn’t Happen Under Trump

Washington Times:  Poll: 62% of voters say Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president (paywall)

Most U.S. voters say Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump were still president, according to a newly released survey.

The Harvard-Harris poll first reported Friday by The Hill found that 62% of registered voters surveyed believe the attack on Ukraine would not have happened with Mr. Trump in the White House, including 85% of Republicans, 63% of independents, and 38% of Democrats.

In addition, 59% agreed that Mr. Putin took military action against Ukraine because “he sees weakness in President Biden,” while 41% disagreed.

There was little in the way of good news for Mr. Biden in the poll, conducted Feb. 23-24 with 2,206 registered voters by the Harris Poll with the Harvard Center for American Political Studies, which was posted online Saturday by Interactive Polls.

The survey found that 53% have doubts about Mr. Biden‘s mental fitness; 64% believe he is showing himself to be too old for the office, and 54% say he is unable to “handle difficult international issues like defending Ukraine from the Russians.”

The president’s approval rating also fell to the lowest point of his presidency at 38%, down from 39% in the Jan. 22 survey.

Mr. Biden had trouble stacking up against Mr. Trump. More than half of registered voters surveyed, or 54%, said that the Republican was a better president versus 46% who said Mr. Biden has been better.

Read the rest here.

Historical Origins of the Left

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Ukrainian model Tetiana Gaidar

UK Government Accepts COVID Lab Leak Theory — But Which Lab?

 Legal Insurrection:  The UK Govt Accepts COVID Lab Leak Theory ‘Behind Closed Doors’

Additionally, scientists find covid virus contains a DNA sequence patented by Moderna three years before the pandemic began.

For those of us at Legal Insurrection, a new report from the United Kingdom holds little to no surprises.

However, consumers of mainstream media who were co-opted by Biden’s Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci and his minions in their quest to promote “natural origins” of the virus that causes covid, a new report from the British government will be shocking.

The British newspaper The Telegraph indicates that behind closed doors, authorities believe a lab leak in Wuhan, China, is now considered the most likely origin of the pandemic.

[...]

And in breaking news that further strengthens the lab leak argument, a study recently published in “Frontiers in Virology” indicates that scientists have identified genetic material owned by Moderna in the virus’s spike protein.

They identified a tiny snippet of code that is identical to part of a gene patented by the vaccine maker three years before the pandemic.

Read the rest here.

Thought Crime: Guilty of Questioning the 2020 Election

Julie Kelly:  On the Eve of the Show Trials

Now that the first trials are finally getting underway, the public can assess whether the government prosecutors and federal judges who created America’s first class of political prisoners were justified in doing so, or were shamefully complicit in Joe Biden’s vengeful prosecution of Donald Trump supporters.

Guy Reffitt is one of hundreds of protesters not charged with committing a violent crime on January 6. According to his initial indictment, Reffitt did not assault police officers—to the contrary, he was attacked by law enforcement with rubber bullets and mace—or vandalize any public property. In fact, he never even entered the Capitol building.

But based on the government’s mostly hearsay evidence, a D.C. federal magistrate last year denied Reffitt’s release—and it had little to do with his alleged criminal behavior on January 6. 

“[The] gravity of the offense is not captured by the offenses because it was an attack upon the democracy and the lawful administration of that democracy as there was a transition of power,” Judge Zia Faruqui said during an April detention hearing. “My concern is that he still harbors the belief even after the election results were certified, the Electoral College was processed, that he continued to harbor the belief, the false belief that something untoward was happening with the democratic process.”

Read the rest here.

Giant Humpbacks ‘Blow Rainbows’

Epoch Times:  Photos: 2 Giant Humpbacks ‘Blow Rainbows’ Into Air, Leaving Whale Watchers Stunned

These whale watchers were stunned when two giant humpbacks approached their boat and started shooting “rainbows” out of their blowholes.

More amazing pictures here.

Trudeau Revokes Use of Emergencies Act

Epoch Times:  Canada’s Trudeau Revokes Use of Emergencies Act

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced today that he is revoking the use of the Emergencies Act, saying the situation is no longer an emergency.

Trudeau defended invoking the act in the first place, saying “It was the responsible and necessary thing to do” and there was evidence that individuals wanted to “undermine and even harm Canada’s democracy.”

He made the announcement at a press conference in Ottawa on Feb. 23 as the Senate was debating whether to confirm the government’s decision to invoke the act, after MPs on Feb. 21 passed a motion along party lines to approve a 30-day extension of the act.

Trudeau originally invoked the act on Feb. 14 to deal with the protests and blockades, declaring a public order emergency.

[...]

Interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen reacted to the announcement in a statement.

“Today’s announcement is proof that the Prime Minister was wrong when he invoked the Emergencies Act,” she said.

“Nothing has changed between Monday and today other than a flood of concerns from Canadian citizens, bad press, and international ridicule.”

Bergen added her party would seek answers, especially concerning when the government will announce its plan to “end the unscientific mandates and restrictions.”

Read the rest here.

A Message from the Freedom Convoy

U.S. convoy organizer with a message for Biden: pic.twitter.com/zFLXmgtWay

— Suburban Black Man 🇺🇸 (@goodblackdude) February 23, 2022

Have you ever heard of Ops-Trust?

Margot Cleveland:  Let’s Hope The Special Counsel (And Others) Are Investigating The People Who Watch You Online

A revelation buried in a cache of documents opens a new and potentially important investigative corridor for Special Counsel John Durham. The shady tech executive who featured prominently in the federal indictment of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was also communicating with a covert group of computer scientists skilled in mining internet data. This revelation raises concerns that the man referred to in special counsel documents as Tech Executive-1, Rodney Joffe, may have shared sensitive government and private internet data more broadly than previously thought.

[...]

So where did Joffe’s group get access to the data it had reviewed? And what was the community this group was part of that has “unusual access” to the D.N.S. lookup data of “private companies, public institutions, and universities”? A random email, forwarded by Joffe to Georgia Tech’s Antonakakis, provides a possible answer: Ops-Trust.

Ops-Trust is a self-described “highly vetted community of security professionals focused on the operational robustness, integrity, and security of the Internet,” that “promotes responsible action against malicious behavior beyond just observation, analysis and research.”

According to the scant public portion of its webpage, “the community’s members, span the breadth of the industry including service providers, equipment vendors, financial institutions, mail admins, DNS admins, DNS registrars, content hosting providers, law enforcement” and other third-party security-related organizations. Membership in Ops-Trust is extremely limited with new candidates accepted only if nominated and vouched for by their peers.

Read the rest here.

Be the Quit in Equity

Noah Carl:  The "Resign for Diversity" campaign

In a recent article announcing his resignation as a tenured faculty member, Jordan Peterson chastised his fellow academics for capitulating to the DIE agenda (Diversity, Inclusion and Equity). And he didn’t mince words:

All my craven colleagues must craft DIE statements to obtain a research grant. They all lie (excepting the minority of true believers) and they teach their students to do the same. And they do it constantly, with various rationalizations and justifications, further corrupting what is already a stunningly corrupt enterprise.

Peterson concludes:

And all of you going along with the DIE activists, whatever your reasons: this is on you. Professors. Cowering cravenly in pretence and silence. Teaching your students to dissimulate and lie. To get along. As the walls crumble. For shame.

It’s hard to disagree with this. A large part of the blame for the encroachment of woke activism in academia has to be placed on those academics who go along with it publicly, despite opposing it in private. This is called being a coward. Why on earth did you become a scholar if not to state the truth as you see it?

Of course, most of the blame must be placed on the activists themselves. But if you go along with something by obediently paying lip-service to its core tenets, you’re no longer an innocent bystander. You become an active participant.

Read the rest here.