U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz says he will endorse against the 21 Republicans who voted with Democrats against school choice in the Texas House.
Cruz made the comments during an interview on the Chris Salcedo Show, where he acknowledged that getting involved in state-level races is abnormal for U.S. senators.
“There are 100 senators. To the best of my knowledge, 99 of them do not get involved in state legislative races. And the reason is getting involved in state legislative races in primaries in your state is stupid, it hurts you politically,” said Cruz. “To the best of my knowledge, I am the only one who not only gets involved, but I make a regular practice of it.”
The main factor in Cruz’s endorsements this cycle? Their support for school choice.
“My basic rule is, if you have supported school choice and you are otherwise relatively conservative, you’re quite likely to get my support. If on the other hand, you voted against choice, the odds of getting my support are zero. And I am very likely to endorse your primary opponent. When I do so I don’t do so gently. I cut TV ads and radio ads and I come in and we beat you,” said Cruz.
Earlier this month, 21 Republicans in the Texas House sided with Democrats in killing a school choice proposal. While some of those members have already announced their retirement, Cruz says he is prepared to replace them with more conservative members.
“l’ll tell you this, the 21 Republicans that voted this last session to kill school choice, every one of those 21 I want to make an invitation to their primary opponent: run against them and I will back you.”
“I’m going to do everything I can to beat those 21 Republicans,” he added.
This is not the first time Cruz has endorsed candidates based on their support for school choice. In the 2022 primary, Cruz said it was a “critical factor” in earning his support.
For years the powers behind Joe Straus, Dennis Bonnen and Dade Phelan have constantly thwarted conservative priorities in the House thanks to a small cadre of squishy Republicans willing to buck the party on central priorities. The combination of the Paxton impeachment farce and killing school choice may finally have prodded key Republicans into replacing those squishes with actual conservatives.
On Friday, Judge Thomas S. Kleeh issued a decision striking down the federal prohibition against 18 to 20-year-olds purchasing handguns.
The plaintiffs in the case are Steven Robert Brown, Benjamin Weekley, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the West Virginia Citizens Defense League.
Judge Kleeh, a Donald Trump appointee, is Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia.
Kleeh put the case in context:
This case requires the Court to assess the protected right of the people under the Second Amendment to the Constitution to keep and bear arms. U.S. Const. amend. II. Plaintiffs Robert Brown (“Brown”) and Benjamin Weekley (“Weekley”), individuals, are “law abiding, responsible adult citizens who wish to purchase handguns.”…Brown and Weekley are citizens of West Virginia and the United States of America and are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. Brown and Weekley, as law-abiding, responsible adult citizens, would purchase handguns and handgun ammunition from Federal Firearms Licensees (“FFLs”) but for the right proscribed by 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(b)(1) and (c)(1).
He went on to explain that Brown and Weekley had each tried to buy a handgun but were “refused the sales because they were under twenty-one years of age.”
Kleeh noted that the plaintiffs sought summary judgment against the statute while the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), Attorney General Merrick Garland, and ATF Director Steven Dettelbach sought to have the case dismissed.
He sided with the plaintiffs and quoted extensively from Bruen (2022) to show the manner at which he arrived at his decision.
Here is one of Kleeh’s quotes from the Bruen decision:
To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest…To demonstrate the regulation of that conduct is within the bounds of the Second Amendment, “the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historic tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”
It’s taken a bit of time, but we’re finally seeing Bruen test standards used to strike down gun-grabbing laws. Hopefully a whole lot more will be struck down in the near future…
As promised, here’s a second LinkSwarm for your reading enjoyment and edification!
“The chief of staff for Department of Defense Education Activity schools in the U.S. was arrested last week during a two-day human trafficking operation in Coweta County, Georgia, according to local authorities. Stephen Hovanic, 64, of Sharpsburg, Georgia, was arrested Nov. 15 in a sting that netted 25 additional suspects on charges related to prostitution as well as drugs, weapons and warrants, according to the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office and its Police to Citizen Portal website.” Our country is in the best of hands. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
I missed the announcement in August that Rep. John Raney, one of Dade Phalen’s school choice opponent/Ken Paxton impeachment supporters, is also not running for reelection. (Hat tip to reader David Besly.)
Your government in action: “A traditional Catholic family was allegedly ‘dragged out of their home at gunpoint, handcuffed and locked in a van’ earlier this year after the FBI “goaded” their 15-year-old son to post “offensive memes” online. The teen, a volunteer firefighter and altar boy, was then hospitalized on mental health pretenses, according to his father, Jeremiah Rufini. The FBI’s aggressive “investigation” only resulted in a misdemeanor conviction against the boy for breach of peace, but financially devastated the family with substantial legal expenses.”
The Disney Grooming Institute had the worst box office year imaginable in 2023. Couldn’t happen to a nicer den of thieves of children’s innocence.
After losing $106 million on Lightyear (2022) and another $152 million on Strange World (2022) — both of which featured prominent gay plotlines aimed at little kids — the Disney Grooming Syndicate roared into 2023, hoping for a much better year. But…
Thanks to Disney’s cratered reputation and string of terrible movies where good storytelling and relatable characters took a backseat to divisive politics, 2023 was an even bigger disaster.
Snip. Here are his numbers condensed. John Nolte seems to be adding in market cost and going with 2X cost to breaking even, though usually I’ve seen estimates go with 2.5x production costs.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania…Deficit: -$37 million
Chevalier [unknown, but with a $4.147 million gross, I’m pretty sure we can assume it lost money – LP]
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3…Profit: +98 million
The Little Mermaid [live action remake]…Deficit: -$40 million
The Boogeyman…Deficit: -$14 million
Elemental…Deficit: -$1.5 million
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny…Deficit: -$158 million
“Vox Media Lays Off 4% of Staff in 2nd Round of Cuts This Year.” Well, that’s a start. I was unaware they owned The Dodo, maybe because three minute animal rescue videos on YouTube don’t require you to interact with their Coral commenting system.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully made it to the last month of 2023! Give yourself a cookie!
I’ve spent most of today getting my latest book catalog ready to send out, so I’m probably going to have to break this LinkSwarm into two parts. This part: More Biden corrupton evidence, Big Brother wants all your tweets, Jihadi gets stabby in Ireland, and a couple of fairly notable political deaths.
A bank money-laundering investigator expressed serious concerns about a transfer of funds from China that ultimately trickled down to President Biden in the form of a $40,000 check from his brother, James Biden, according to an email obtained by the House
Biden received a $40,000 personal check from an account shared by his brother, James Biden, and sister-in-law, Sara Biden, in September 2017 — money that was marked as a “loan repayment.” The alleged repayment was sent after funds were filtered from Northern International Capital, a Chinese company affiliated with the Chinese energy firm CEFC, through several accounts related to Hunter Biden and eventually down to the personal account shared by James and Sara Biden.
Northern International Capital sent $5 million to Hudson West III, a joint venture established by Hunter Biden and CEFC associate Gongwen Dong on August 8.
On the same day, Hudson West III then sent $400,000 to Owasco, P.C., an entity owned and controlled by Hunter Biden. Six days later, Hunter Biden wired $150,000 to Lion Hall Group, a company owned by James and Sara Biden. Sara Biden withdrew $50,000 in cash from Lion Hall Group on August 28 and then deposited the funds into her and her husband’s personal checking account later that day.
On September 3, 2017, Sara Biden wrote a check to Joe Biden for $40,000.
We all know that if Trump did something remotely close to this, he’d already be in prison.
Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted former President Donald Trump’s tweets leading up to the January 6 riot, according to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released Monday.
Smith’s comprehensive search warrant sought the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner’s search history, direct messages, and “content of all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by his account from October 2020 to January 2021.
The special counsel also demanded a list of all devices used to log into Trump’s then-Twitter, now X account, as well as information on users who interacted with the then-president in the months leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, the court filings show.
Among the information Smith sought were lists of all Twitter users who “favorited or retweeted” Trump’s tweets, “as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account” in “mentions” or “replies.”
The special counsel also requested a list of every user Trump “followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” and a list of users who took any of the same actions with Trump’s account during the aforementioned timeframe.
“There is no benign or reasonable justification for that demand,” wrote former FBI agent/whistleblower Steve Friend on X.
Henry Kissinger, the legendary diplomat who played a central role in advising Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford on foreign policy, died at his home in Connecticut late Wednesday at age 100.
Kissinger was the only person to simultaneously be secretary of state and hold the position of White House national-security adviser. In 1973, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho for their work in brokering the 1973 Paris Agreement ending America’s involvement in Vietnam.
Kissinger was born in Germany in 1923. Three months before Kristallnacht, his family fled, bound for New York City. Kissinger served in the Army during World War II and was assigned to the 84 Infantry Division, voluntarily staying behind at the Battle of the Bulge to reportedly conduct “hazardous counter-intelligence duties” while also “making good use of his German.”
Kissinger was a key Cold War figure as Secretary of State, and one who doesn’t deserve all of the extensive condemnation he receives (for different reasons) from left and right, nor the hosannas of praise he received from the mainstream media during is heyday. The instantly betrayed peace treaty with North Vietnam (the won he won the Nobel Peace Prize for) was shameful, but LBJ’s incompetence and Washington elite failure of nerve probably doomed South Vietnam before Kissinger even got to the negotiating table. The opening to China was a brilliant move to counter the Soviet Union at the time, and helped usher in a brief period of economic and political liberalization that has now been almost completely undone. SALT1 and the ABM treaties were violated by the Soviet Union before the ink was even dry.
Kissinger was at his best down deep in the intricacies of face-to-face diplomacy, and played a key role in negotiating details after the Yom Kippur War. Indeed, Kissinger’s goal of stabilizing the Middle East (at least as far as preventing another major Arab-Israeli War) was met.
Kissinger was ultimately wrong for favoring detente over rollback, but that preference was also emblematic of the Washington foreign policy establishment of the time, and it would take Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 to set America on the right course (and the Soviet Union to the dust-heap of history).
Sandra Day O’Connor dead at 93. Eh, she wasn’t the worst Republican appointee to the Supreme Court.
Irish riot over illegal alien stabbing spree against children. Rioting is bad, mmkay, but Irish citizens, like those across the rest of the EU, are tired of the enforced consensus for allowing unassimilable Islamic immigrants to cross the border and immediately apply for the welfare rolls.
Not just Ireland. “‘We are here to stab white people’: Teen killed, 16 others wounded in French village after migrant gang reportedly descends on winter ball.”
High prices and “lot rot” are doing CarMax in. Not to mention the Biden recession…
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton announced Thursday that his office is suing Pfizer, claiming that the company violated state law when it allegedly lied about the efficacy of its Covid-19 vaccine.
Paxton’s office claims the pharmaceutical giant violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by engaging in “false, deceptive, and misleading acts and practices by making unsupported claims” about the vaccine.
The AG’s office said Pfizer’s claim that its vaccine is 95 percent effective against Covid-19 infection is “highly misleading.”
“Pfizer created the false impression that its vaccine provided a substantially greater amount of protection against COVID-19 infection than what it afforded in reality,” Paxton’s office said, accusing the company of launching a “continuous and widespread campaign” to mislead the public about the efficacy of its vaccine.
The “deceptive conduct was reinforced and extended by Pfizer’s efforts to censor persons who sought to disseminate truthful information that would undermine its ongoing deception,” the statement adds.
Paxton claimed Pfizer relied on a “relative risk reduction” assessment to arrive at the 95 percent efficacy figure. The FDA says such assessments leave patients “unduly influenced” and vulnerable to “suboptimal decisions.”
“We are pursuing justice for the people of Texas, many of whom were coerced by tyrannical vaccine mandates to take a defective product sold by lies,” Paxton said in a statement. “The facts are clear. Pfizer did not tell the truth about their COVID-19 vaccines. Whereas the Biden Administration weaponized the pandemic to force illegal public health decrees on the public and enrich pharmaceutical companies, I will use every tool I have to protect our citizens who were misled and harmed by Pfizer’s actions.”
The lawsuit comes nearly eight months after Paxton first announced plans to investigate Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson for their potentially misleading claims about the efficacy of each of their Covid shots and whether or not they “engaged in gain-of-function research.”
Absent from the press release is whether Pfizer engaged in false, deceptive and misleading acts and practices in supressing information about adverse side effects from their vaccine. I hope the Attorney General’s office is pursuing that line of inquiry as well.
Ten days ago, the AG office announced it was suing Pfizer and Tri Pharma over “providing adulterated pharmaceutical drugs to Texas children in violation of the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act.”
If the Powers That Be expected their attempted impeachment to throw a scare into Paxton, they were obviously mistaken. Was Pfizer one of those shadowy Powers? It wouldn’t surprise me. I note that Texas House Speaker (and Paxton nemesis) Dade Phalen received campaign contributions from Pfizer in the 2022 and 2014 election cycles, which is…interesting, but hardly an iron-clad case.
Here’s a story I’m covering just for the “What the hell?” factor.
The Tron blockchain has overtaken Bitcoin as the cryptocurrency network most favored by groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, which are designated as terror organizations by the U.S., U.K. and other jurisdictions, Reuters reported on Monday.
There has been a sharp rise in cryptocurrency seizures from Tron wallets since 2021 and a decline in those from Bitcoin wallets, Reuters’ analysis found.
Israel has made 87 such seizures from Tron wallets this year, two-thirds of the total number going back to July 2021. These include 39 from wallets the country said in June were owned by Lebanon-based Hezbollah and 26 in July from Hamas ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
“Earlier it was Bitcoin and now our data shows that these terrorist organizations tend to increasingly favor Tron,” Mriganka Pattnaik, CEO of blockchain analysis firm Merkle Science, said.
The things that jump out at me are:
Evidently there’s a cryptocurrency called “Tron,” because nothing says “Cool” quite like a 41 year old Disney movie.
Hezbollah and Hamas have been using it, because financing an illegal terrorist network across international borders is one of the few use cases for the anonymous transactions that cryptocurrency currently supports. But that doesn’t seem to matter, since…
Israel was still able to seize the money, which seems to suggest that whole “anonymous, untraceable” appeal of cryptocurrency has some fairly sizeable holes in it.
Tron evidently is worth about 10 cents per coin, which seems slightly higher than the going rate for Dogecoin right now. Bitcoin is somewhere around $38,000.
How terrorist networks came to use cryptocurrency would be a really, really cyberpunk story if it weren’t so dull…
A criminal complaint filed against Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo was referred to the Texas Rangers for investigation on Monday according to information obtained by The Texan from Constable Mark Herman’s (Pct. 4) office.
The complaint stems from a press conference Hidalgo held on November 10, the day after news broke that the Texas Rangers would be executing new search warrants in relation to an $11 million COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract the county awarded to a highly connected Democratic strategist in 2021. Hidalgo’s comments were made on county property and livestreamed on the Office of the County Judge’s official social media accounts.
During the event, Hidalgo accused District Attorney Kim Ogg of leaking the new warrants to the media, although they had been posted to the district clerk’s website and were available to the public.
“This is just the same dirty politics she’s been playing out for years,” said Hidalgo, adding that Ogg stood in the way of changes to the criminal justice system.
Knowing Hidalgo’s soft-on-crime approach, maybe it’s best someone did stand in the way of any changes she wants to make.
Ogg is a more interesting figure. She was initially backed by George Soros, but she has edging away from him, and got primaried from the left in 2020 for not being radical enough, and Soros backed primary opponent Audia Jones.
“She’s up for re-election March 5, and I happen to know her opponent Sean Teare,” said Hidalgo. “He is a well-respected, very experienced, strong opponent.”
“I literally spent the day yesterday before this stuff was leaked working on the endorsement of him Monday.”
Under Texas Election Code using an elected office to engage in political advertising is a Class A misdemeanor, and under the Penal Code misuse of government property, services, or personnel constitutes an Abuse of Official Capacity, which could be classified as a misdemeanor or state jail felony depending on the value of the thing misused.
Following the press conference, attorney Mark McCaig filed a civil complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission (TEC) and a criminal complaint with Harris County Constable Precinct 4.
After McCaig made his complaint with the TEC public, video of the press conference was removed from the county’s official social media sites, but the conference is available here.
“Due to nature of the complaints and the allegations being made against an elected official here in Harris County, our office contacted the Texas Department of Public Safety where it was agreed that the Texas Rangers would investigate the allegations made by this complainant,” Herman told The Texan.
I have to think this is pretty small potatoes stuff for the Texas Rangers to investigate, but the law is the law.
More interesting to me is the sheer number of allegations against Hidalgo for various high crimes and misdemeanors, as well as the split between her and Ogg.
Blue-on-Blue tiffs always have a certain fascination…
Fortunately, we’re no longer going to have him around to do Dade Phalen’s bidding in killing conservative legislation.
Exactly two weeks before the filing deadline for the Texas primary election, state Rep. Kyle Kacal (R-College Station) announced he would not seek re-election to the state House.
The decision is a reversal of his announcement in September that he would seek a seventh term.
The six-term lawmaker characterized Texas as the “envy of the nation” and expressed satisfaction with his record in the Legislature.
Well, that makes one person satisfied with his record.
Republican Ben Bius forced Kacal into a runoff in the March 2022 Republican primary. Bius even had the endorsement of outgoing Rep. Ben Leman (R-Anderson).
Kacal voted for the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton. He also voted for an amendment by Rep. John Raney (R-Bryan) to remove education savings accounts from the public education bill currently under consideration in the fourth special session. Critics of the plan say education savings accounts are operationally the same as vouchers.
During the 87th Legislature in 2021, Kacal joined Democrats and only eight other Republicans to back the expansion of Medicaid.
There were 21 Republicans voting against school choice. Andrew Murr already announced he wasn’t seeking. That leaves twenty more that need to be retired, one way or another.
One reason to be cautiously optimistic of anarcho-capitalist outsider Javier Milei’s victory in their presidential election is just how freaked out the international left is over it.
In a world with two (or more) major wars going on, China imploding, and a major U.S. recession, a libertarian winning election in Argentina is suddenly the new Worst Thing Ever.
“This came after years of far left fascist rule which has plunged the country into crisis, with the inflation rate hitting 143% earlier this month. Argentina has gone from a wealthy nation with an enviable standard of living to one destroyed by socialist lunacy.”
“That’s why firebrand Javier Milei, a conservative, a libertarian, a vehemently anti-socialist, anti-woke outsider won the presidential election in a landslide.”
“The world’s media went into a predictable meltdown, similar to when Italy’s center-right Giorgia Meloni was elected prime minister last year.”
“But the election results show Argentinians, including young Argentinians, importantly, have finally woken up to the lunacy of watching close to half the population live in poverty despite being blessed with abundant natural resources.”
Milei “has been clear in his desire to tackle the bloated bureaucracy that has so poorly served the country.”
And yes, he still intends to shut down Argentina’s central bank. “This weekend he confirmed that it was an absolute, non-negotiable.”
He wants to eliminate the Ministry of Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity, and Ministry of Public Works.
Says Milei: “We are crushing them in the cultural battle! We are not only economically superior, we’re culturally superior, we are aesthetically superior, we are better than them at everything, and that triggers them!”
And since they can’t beat him in the field of ideas, “they use the repressive power of the state to destroy their enemies.”
You know who else likes the cut of Milei’s jib? Donald Trump.
“Congratulations to Javier Milei on a great race for President of Argentina! The whole world was watching, and I’m very proud of you! You will turn your country around and truly make Argentina great again!”
There are a lot of reasons to celebrate Javier Milei’s election as president of Argentina, the biggest of which is that he’s going to apply free market, limited government principles to reviving Argentina’s moribund economy.
“People are not free in China, they can’t do what they want and when they do it, they get killed,” he told Bloomberg News on Wednesday, referring to Beijing’s government. “Would you trade with an assassin?”
Milei shook Argentina’s political establishment last weekend after receiving more votes than a probusiness opposition bloc and the ruling Peronist coalition, putting him in the lead to be the country’s next president. His election in October would generate shock waves across a region largely ruled by leftist leaders.
In his blanket refusal to do any kind of business with “socialists,” he lumped Communist China in the same category as Argentina’s biggest trade partner, Brazil, led by leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. China is the second-largest buyer of Argentine exports and provides a crucial $18 billion swap line with the central bank that’s being used to pay the International Monetary Fund.
He described his foreign policy proposals as a global “fight against socialists and statists.”
Libertarians critical of communists? What are the odds?
It probably means that Argentina won’t be buying any of China’s crappy jet fighters, either.
