Deborah Birx: Snake In the Grass

 

We knew The Scarf Lady was lying.  But some of us had no idea who some of her co-conspirators were. Raheem Kassam at The National Pulse reports:

Writing in her book Silent Invasion, former White House COVID task force member Ambassador Deborah Birx admits that her “go to” connections to push pro-lockdown policies in the White House were none other than Vice President Mike Pence, and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Mr Kassam cites chapter-and-verse with these direct quotes from her book:

Somehow, I had to cut [Dr. Scott] Atlas off from any degree of influence he might try to exert on anyone short of the president, whether during my absence or while I was still there. Individually, I contacted Marc Short, Mark Meadows, and Jared Kushner. I communicated clearly to everyone: “I won’t be in any meetings any longer if Scott Atlas is present at them. If that means a meeting in the Oval Office[,] it doesn’t matter. If it’s at the task force, it doesn’t matter. If it’s at the Covid Huddle, I don’t want him there.”

. . .

Earlier in the book, Birx admitted to “devis[ing] a work-around for the governor’s reports,” where she claims she would “reinsert what [the White House] had objected to, but place it in… different locations. I’d also reorder and restructure the bullet points so the most salient—the points the administration objected to most—no longer fell at the start of the bullet points. I shared these strategies with the three members of the data team also writing these reports. Our Saturday and Sunday report-writing routine soon became: write, submit, revise, hide, resubmit. Fortunately, this strategic sleight-of-hand worked. That they never seemed to catch this subterfuge left me to conclude that, either they read the finished reports too quickly or they neglected to do the word search that would have revealed the language to which they objected.”

She’s admitting all this with no sense of regret or shame – not over her disloyalty, her dishonesty, nor, even worse, any concern for the terrible cost to the American public over the two years of mandates and lockdowns.  Read Mr. Kassam's full report here.

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Ohio Issue #1 and the "First Step" proposal

On November 6, Ohio voters rejected Issue #1, an amendment that would have reduced the penalties for drug trafficking under Ohio law. Cleveland Tea Party blogs urged a “No” vote here, here, and here. 

The Trump administration is proposing reform to the federal criminal justice system that is running along parallel lines to Issue #1. Ken Blackwell reports:

The FIRST STEP Act is the beginning of a transformation of America’s federal criminal-justice system into what it should have always been: a system that makes America safer. This legislation unites conservatives, police and civil rights advocates, civil libertarians, business leaders and supporters of social justice. Supporting this legislation means supporting ideas that all Americans want - from police to Democrats to Republicans - an America that is fair, an America that puts Americans first, and that makes America safe. 

Blackwell concludes that “This is a law and order President who believes in justice and the First Step Act will get us closer to true justice.” Among those standing with President Trump at his press conference were Sen. Tim Scott and Pastor Darrell Scott.  But Ann Coulter vigorously disagrees, and she is not one to pull her punches:

In the systematic dismantling of common sense in America, Jared Kushner's "sentencing reform" bill is the coup de grace -- a Mack Truck hurtling down the highway about to take out thousands of Americans. The Idiot Army is already in place to fight and win this battle.

Jared and the hip-hop artists currently advising him have decided that too many people are in prison. If you think you've heard this before, you have: Genius insights of this sort have preceded nearly every major crime wave this country has experienced, from Philadelphia to California to a bloody period known as "the Warren Court."

. . .

We're incessantly told that sentences will be cut only for "nonviolent drug offenders."

If you are even passingly familiar with our justice system, you know that virtually everyone in prison is there as the result of a plea bargain -- "97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases," according to The New York Times.

You don't strike a deal with the prosecutor to plea to the worst crime you've committed. You plea to the least serious offense.

Coulter hammers both the facts and stats concerning previous crime waves, and she also directs her outrage at President Trump and his son-in-law. Whether she is correct in attributing a motive to Trump’s support of this initiative, her analysis of past efforts at criminal system reform is worth considering, and some of her arguments will resonate with those against Ohio’s Issue #1. (Full column by Ms. Coulter is here.)

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