The Durham Report

From Erick Erickson:

Our republic requires trust and order, and trust in that order. Where January 6th breached the order of our republic’s institutions, the Durham report reveals federal agents breached the trust of the system.

It is bad. If people are outraged about January 6th, they should be outraged about the Durham report. I have, overnight, taken note of the vast array of people who cannot bring themselves to care about the Durham report but care greatly about January 6th.

What the Durham report shows is partisans in the non-partisan institutions of the executive branch bureaucracy worked to undermine and spread rumors about a major party presidential candidate and, once elected, continued to undermine that President.

The Durham report shows there was no basis even to begin an investigation into Donald Trump for collaborating with the Russians, but to this day, most Democrats think the Russians handed Trump the election. There is no evidence for that, and the evidence on which the lie is based appears to be exaggerated or fabricated.

To be sure, no lawbreaking occurred. Durham is not choosing to prosecute or recommend anyone for prosecution. Though no laws were broken, trust has been breached. Yet again, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been shamed for its terrible handling of information and investigations. The Justice Department and FBI need to be cleaned up.

Likewise, we now know a lot of the Democrat congressmen on television were lying about information. They were fed falsehoods from the deep state and regurgitated them without basis on television. The entirety of the bureaucracy not just picked a partisan side but then weaponized their powers to undermine a President.

From The Wall Street Journal, FBI Faulted for Its Probe of Russian Meddling in 2016 Campaign:

He concluded the FBI was more cautious and skeptical of allegations of foreign influence on the Clinton campaign than on the Trump campaign in 2016. According to the report, the bureau didn’t aggressively pursue evidence of two instances in which foreign governments were potentially planning to contribute to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to gain influence. The speed with which the FBI opened the investigation into the Trump campaign “based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached” those other allegations, it said. The FBI provided briefings to the Clinton campaign, the report said, an approach it said stood in contrast to the lack of such briefings provided to the Trump campaign.

From National Review, Partisan Paranoia Runs Roughshod over the Rule of Law, and The Shoddy Russia Investigation.

The Media is Sacrificing Their Credibility

from Erick Erickson, Fear, Loathing, and the GOP:

In the process, the media is further alienating themselves from the truth and the public from the media. The reality is that the American public is less and less inclined to believe the media’s version of events. When the media willfully distorts stories like the election laws or the critical theory pushback in states, more people turn away.

The media is, in fact, a direct accomplice in sending people down the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories by its new boldness in openly taking sides, telling narratives over facts, and pushing a concerted and highly coordinated campaign against Republicans. They can’t help themselves. They have embraced the idea the GOP itself is bad, its voters are racists, and if only they speak even louder and with a more united voice those black and Hispanic voters drifting to the GOP will see it too.

In substituting politics for religion, the media, like much of America, finds itself seeing fulfillment by excising sin from their lives. They view any loyalty to the GOP as just that. This is a religious exercise for them as they seek a comprehensive worldview that explains how Republicans can be a racist, fascist cult and still be making gains with non-white voters. Before the election, the New York Times rationalized it as black men have a thing for toxic masculinity and Hispanic voters like bold, brash leaders like those from whom their families fled. After the election, now that the data shows otherwise, they’ve got to find something else and, in absence of a theory, they’ll just scream ever more loudly about Trump — a man who lost the presidency by just 43,000 votes in the Electoral College.

HKO

The more the media forces a narrative that does match the experience of the readers, the more it sacrifices its own credibility to political ends.

The media is the most important institution to hold the government in check and it is critical that it be objective.

Critical Race Gnosticism

From Erick Erickson on substack:

Critical Race Theory

In his History of the Church, Eusebius noted that the early church’s writings and apologetics changed in AD 100. In that year, the Apostle John died. With him, the last living friend of Jesus faded to history. It provoked the rise of the gnostics and the immediate successors to the apostles turned from defenses of what the faith was to defenses of what the faith was not.

The gnostics peddled the idea that there was a secret knowledge and to gain the secret knowledge of the truth of Christ, one must join them and get the knowledge that was not to be shared and could only be known by a few. That knowledge would open eyes and reveal the true path to salvation, but that path was actually damnation.

Critical theory is a twenty-first century version of gnosticism. Those who do not believe it are considered unable to articulate it. Only the adherents can accurately describe it.

Like the gnosticism of the first century, this gnosticism brings damnation not salvation. It posits that justice and reality are shaped by power. Whoever controls words, controls reality. Critical theory believes all the world is about power and the map of that power flows through intersections of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, “ableism,” etc. Doubt is elevated over truth and exceptions become the rule while the rule becomes the exception.

Critical theory also assigns us to classes and our individuality does not matter. It is why racial reconciliation is actually impossible through critical theory — oppressors just become oppressed and the oppressed become the oppresses with each person wedded to a class, not an individuality. Critical theory fosters neo-racism where the races are and always will be separated and we must see and acknowledge race. We cannot judge people by the content of their character but must judge by the color of one’s skin.

Neo Racist Progressives

from Erick Erickson on substack, Time Scott Dominates the Coverage Over Biden

Having Joy Behar on The View lecture a black man from South Carolina on systemic racism is part of this. Behar probably doesn’t even know what it means, but the rich, white elite use the buzzword, so she will too. Rich white people who don’t know Jesus tend to run in herds and do weird things like juice cleanses, pilates, veganism, and anti-racist training.

People like Tim Scott and others who reject the idea that the United States is a racist nation have to be silenced and treated as racists by the Neo-racist progressives. Those people, having replaced God with government, need an original sin narrative. They settled on racism. They’ll burn any dissenter as a heretic like the Pharisees crucifying Jesus for not telling them what they wanted to hear.

HKO

Erick hits a new point with the idea of neo racism- The systemic racism canard is not accepted because it delivers justice to minorities but because it serves the agenda of rich white elites. Serving the wishes of wealthy elites may satisfy the media, but it will not be readily accepted by the working class minorities. Attacking Tim Scott will only drive more minority votes to the GOP.

The biggest threat to Democratic hegemony is just to see Black support for the GOP shift from 10% to 20%.

The Georgia Election Reform Reader

Some reactions to the hypocrisy and hyperbole greeting the Georgia Election reform bill. It pays to get the whole story though this rarely happens in our partisan world ruled by narratives rather than facts.

Blue State Voter Suppression. by Karl Rove in WSJ (paywall)

Both Georgia and Iowa are continuing no-excuse mail-in absentee voting, a favorite of Ms. Abrams, Ms. Harris and the Democratic left’s anti-“suppression” brigade. But if they’re really concerned about protecting this essential tool of democracy, they’ve missed a couple of suppression efforts. New York state is one of 15 that doesn’t allow no-excuse absentee voting, along with fellow deep-blue Connecticut and Delaware. If attempts to constrain or limit no-excuse mail-in voting are prima facie evidence of racism, what does it say about states whose statutes don’t allow it at all? Calling Gov. Andrew Cuomo —voting scandal on aisle 3!

Jim Eagle and GA voting law. from WSJ Editorial Board

So what does the Georgia law do? First, it gets rid of signature matching, so election workers aren’t trying to verify mail ballots by comparing John Hancocks. This subjective process should concern both sides. It creates avenues for contested outcomes, with fighting over ambiguous signatures. In 2018 about 2,400 ballots in Georgia were rejected for issues with the signature or oath, according to a recent paper in Political Research Quarterly. Those voters were 54% black.

Instead of signature matching, voters will submit a state ID number with their mail ballots or applications. This way there’s no arguing over handwriting: The ID number either matches or it doesn’t. Georgians who vote in person are already asked to show identification. Anyone who lacks an ID can get one for free.

Jim Crow is Not on the Ga Ballot also from the WSJ Editorial Board

The House would also order that voter wait times be measured at large precincts. If they reached an hour, adjustments would be required before the next election. On the Senate side, one bill would let workers begin processing piled-up mail votes, in strict confidence, eight days before the election. Some states already do preprocessing, which cuts delays in reporting final numbers. It’s a good change, and other states—ahem, Pennsylvania—should do the same.

Biden Botches the GA Voting Law

Nothing Jim Crow In GA Election Law

What’s Really in the GA Election Law

The Voter Suppression Lie

Biden’s Four Pinochios.

Oh The Horrors

Biden’s Election Reform Deception from Karl Rove at the WSJ

Unlike Iowa and Georgia, Delaware forbids no-excuse mail-in absentee voting. Only voters who meet a specific criteria can vote by mail, such as government employees; students; those with work or religious prohibitions, an illness or a disability; or those vacationing or living outside the U.S. Some have critiqued Georgia for capping the number of additional dropboxes for absentee ballots beyond the one required for each county at one per 100,000 active voters (of which the state has nearly 7.4 million) or one for every early voting site, whichever is fewer. But Delaware has about half as many dropbox locations per capita—only four across the entire state.

Moreover, both Iowa (since 1990) and Georgia (since 2004) have long had no-excuse in-person early voting. It’s available in Iowa during an election’s last 29 days. This year’s Georgia reforms require 17 mandatory days and two optional Sundays of early voting, up four days from last fall.

By contrast, Delaware has never allowed no-excuse early voting. To date, only voters eligible to cast mail-in absentee votes were allowed to vote early in-person. That is set to change in 2022, but even then Delaware will allow no-excuse, in-person early voting for only 10 days.

How about the bugaboo about requiring voter ID at the polls? All three states require it and accept many of the same forms (driver’s license, passport, etc.), though Iowa and Georgia provide free identification cards upon request. If Delaware voters don’t have such ID, they can “sign an affidavit of affirmation that the voter is the person listed on the election district record,” opening them to fines and possibly jail time if they aren’t.

Why State Election Reform Bills Don’t Signal a New Jim Crow Era

Georgia is Where the Lies Are- from Charles Cooke at National Review

The Voter Suppression Lie

Georgia Should Stand Up to Corporate Bullies

Jim Crow? Really? Are you too lazy to actually read the bill or too intellectually bankrupt to get beyond pejorative fundraising slogans? Utterly shameless.

PS 4/7/21

Setting the Record Straight on Georgia’s New Voter-Access Law from the Ga Secretary of State

Anyone Using the ‘Jim Crow’ Charge as a Political Weapon Should Hang His Head in Shame

It’s axiomatic in American political debate that anyone calling someone a Nazi has automatically lost.

Resorting to the Nazi charge is a sign of rhetorical and intellectual desperation. It shows an inability or unwillingness to make distinctions, since whatever is being condemned is unlikely ever to be anything like Nazism. Finally, it exhibits a moral bankruptcy by taking the unspeakable suffering of countless millions of people and using it to make what is typically a cheap argument for self-serving ends.

It’s time to begin to think of invocations of Jim Crow in the contemporary debate as just as loathsome and self-discrediting as the Nazi charge.

Moving the MLB All-Star Game to Denver Makes Zero Sense

Denver’s black population, on the other hand, is somewhere around 9 percent. You want to see a segregated city, come visit Denver. That might be something Manfred, who runs a league with one black majority owner, could ponder as his limo drives by the blinding whiteness of neighborhoods like “Stapleton” — officially changed to the anodyne “Central Park” less than a year ago — on his way from Denver International to downtown.

Dem Abuses Prompted Georgia Voting Law’s Food-and-Drink Rule

The food-and-drink provision of Georgia’s law is based on a similar provision in New York state’s election law..

The reason for the new provision was to cut down on the real, and increasingly abused practice of line warming, which already was against the law in Georgia, the authors of the state House and Senate election-security bills told National Review. The two bills were eventually merged into Senate Bill 202, which was signed in late March by Georgia governor Brian Kemp.

Stacey Abrams, Fount of Disinformation

Abrams should be more understanding of the practical considerations at work in such decisions, given that she used exactly this kind of reasoning in 2011 to justify slashing the days available for early voting in Georgia. As a member of the state legislature, she cosponsored legislation, which was passed and signed into law, to cut the days for early voting from 45 all the way down to 21.