Another powerful House chairman struck closer to President Joe Biden, vowing to send a criminal referral asking asking prosecutors to charges first son Hunter Biden with lying to Congress.
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Commentary: Stanford, Silicon Valley, and the Rise of the Censorship Industrial Complex
This summer the Supreme Court will rule on a case involving what a district court called perhaps “the most massive attack against free speech” ever inflicted on the American people. In Murthy v. Missouri, plaintiffs ranging from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to epidemiologists from Harvard and Stanford allege that the federal government violated the First Amendment by working with outside groups and social media platforms to surveil, flag, and quash dissenting speech – characterizing it as mis-, dis- and mal-information – on issues ranging from COVID-19 to election integrity.
The case has helped shine a light on a sprawling network of government agencies and connected NGOs that critics describe as a censorship industrial complex. That the U.S. government might aggressively clamp down on protected speech, and, certainly at the scale of millions of social media posts, may constitute a recent development. Reporting by RCI and other outlets – including Racket News’ new “Censorship Files” series, and continuing installments of the “Twitter Files” series to which it, Public, and others have contributed – and congressional probes continue to reveal the substantial breadth and depth of contemporary efforts to quell speech that authorities deem dangerous. But the roots of what some have dubbed the censorship industrial complex stretch back decades, born of an alliance between government, business, and academia that Democrat Sen. William Fulbright termed the “military-industrial-academic-complex” – building on President Eisenhower’s formulation – in a 1967 speech.
Read MoreCommentary: Civil Unrest and Radical Reappraisals are Shaping the Future of American Culture
Sometimes unexpected but dramatic events tear off the thin veneer of respectability and convention. What follows is the exposure and repudiation of long-existing but previously covered-up pathologies.
Events like the destruction of the southern border over the last three years, the October 7 massacre and ensuing Gaza war, the campus protests, the COVID-19 epidemic and lockdown, and the systematic efforts to weaponize our bureaucracies and courts have all led to radical reappraisals of American culture and civilization.
Read MoreRand Paul Says Fauci ‘Could Be Indicted’ for Deleting Records
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., contends there are grounds to prosecute Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the COVID-19 pandemic in America, based on congressional testimony from a top aide to the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“The most important knowledge that we learned is that [Dr.] David Morens, 20-year assistant to Fauci, was purposely evading FOIA, which is the law. More than that, he was also destroying evidence,” Paul told The Daily Signal, referring to the Freedom of Information Act and Morens’ testimony Wednesday before a House select subcommittee.
Read MoreCNN’s Jake Tapper Trashed Trump for Years, Now He’s Moderating Presidential Debate
CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The role is typically meant to be that of a neutral custodian of the conversation between the participants, though Tapper’s long history of harshly criticizing Trump while on the air raises questions about his ability to remain even-handed.
Read MoreEmails Show Facebook Chafed at Biden White House Pressure to Suppress COVID-19 Lab Leak Story
The preliminary staff report is the result of a months-long investigation into the alleged coercion, where President Joe Biden’s White House reportedly pushed social media platforms such as Facebook, Amazon, and YouTube, to censor books, videos, and posts.
Emails released Wednesday show Facebook officials chafed at the Biden White House pressure campaign to censor reports that the COVID-19 pandemic came from a lab leak in China.
Read MoreCommentary: The World Health Organization’s Pandemic Treaty Ignores COVID Policy Mistakes
The World Health Organization is urging the U.S. and 193 other governments to commit next month to a new global treaty to prevent and manage future pandemics. Current estimates suggest over $31 billion per year will be needed to fund its obligations, a cost most lower income countries cannot afford. But that isn’t the only reason to oppose it. Validating this treaty is a vote for the disastrous policies of the Covid years. Rather than taking time for deep reflection and serious reform, those pushing the pandemic treaty are set on ignoring and institutionalizing the WHO’s mistakes.
From the Spring of 2020, many experts warned that the panic begun in Wuhan’s unprecedented lockdown would cause wide-ranging damage—and indeed they did. School closures deprived a generation of children—especially poor children—of access to basic education. Businesses were shuttered. Vaccine and mask mandates made public health an authoritarian exercise of power devoid of science. Border quarantines promulgated the idea that the rest of the world is unclean.
Read MoreFeds, Scientists Take Fire for Allegedly Hiding COVID Origins Truth
A Republican-led Congressional committee says a scientist and top advisor to Anthony Fauci used his personal email to hide evidence related to the origins of COVID-19.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, sent a letter to the National Emerging Infectious Disease Institute asking for more information about these communications.
Read MoreHarvard Reverses Course, Brings Back Standardized Testing
Harvard announced Thursday that it will bring back standardized testing requirements for the admission process.
The Ivy League school first dropped the testing policy in June 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and later announced in 2021 that it would extend the test-optional policy for four additional years, according to the Harvard Crimson. Hopi Hoekstra, Edgerley Family dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, announced that the requirement would return “starting with next year’s admissions cycle” and claimed that the reinstatement would bring “important information back into the admissions process.”
Read MoreProminent Epidemiologist Says Data Proves COVID Lockdowns Failed, and Hurt Population
Dr. Harvey Risch, Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, says lockdowns failed to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic and had “serious repercussions for substantial fractions of the population.”
“The measures that need to be monitored for a pandemic of this sort are the number of deaths, serious hospitalizations, and serious outcomes of the infection, not the infection itself,” Risch said on a “Just the News, No Noise” special on Friday.
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