Blog

The Government Gives Too Much Authority To Leftist Academics, And That Needs To Stop

When the International Association of Genocide Scholars jumped on the “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza” bandwagon, it revealed to many the extent to which one can’t “trust the experts.” But an ongoing spat between the Trump administration and numerous other professional academic groups shows how much excessive deference, and even statutory authority, has been given to such groups.

In May, President Trump fired all nine members of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation. HAC, as the body is known, was composed of academics from various fields. Its mission was to assist in producing an authoritative reference work, Foreign Affairs of the United States (FAUS), which collects and publishes primary documents in U.S. foreign policy, and is widely relied on by scholars, including myself.

All seats on the committee, which makes the declassification decisions necessary to put the volumes together, remain unfilled, and the last quarterly meeting was cancelled. The administration offered no explanation, but a look at the Historical Advisory Committee’s anomalous structure shows that removing the members is not enough. Congress must revise the entire process of staffing the committee.

Washington is rife with expert advisory committees, which allow agencies like the EPA and FDA to get structured input from people outside the government with particular technical expertise. HAC advises the Historian of the State Department on what documents to declassify for inclusion in FAUS, which has been published since the Civil War, with volumes published now covering events 30 years prior.

Six members of HAC are chosen by six professional associations, such as the American Historical Association, with each group controlling one seat. The actual selection is made by the Secretary, who for each seat can only pick the candidate suggested by the respective association.

This structure is unique among such expert committees. Numerous advisory boards involve industry associations or academic groups making suggestions to the government, but ultimately, the political officials can select whoever they want. HAC looks more like a medieval guild council than a modern administrative entity.

This outsourcing of governmental authority to private bodies is compounded by significant politicization of these associations, which makes their statutory role wholly inappropriate.

Take the Society of American Archivists, whose political interventions are uniformly left-wing. In 2020, it issued a Statement on Black Lives and Archives: “As archivists, we learn from history that this country was founded on genocide and slavery.” So the 1619 Project owns a seat on a State Department board. Their March 2024 statement on the Israel-Hamas War laments “cultural heritage sites” damaged in Israeli airstrikes, “including archival records documenting the histories of Palestine and the Palestinian people.” Apart from adopting its own foreign policy of recognition of a Palestinian state, the archivists had nothing to say about Hamas’s use of cultural institutions for military purposes.

The American Political Society is equally steeped in progressive pieties. Its “Theme Statement” for its latest annual conference is a “crisis” posed by a “resurgence of nativism and authoritarianism,” echoing last year’s conference theme, which lamented the rise of “authoritarian populists who leverage electoral victories to undermine legislatures and judiciaries.” And yes, they are talking about President Trump, among other populist leaders.

The American Society for International Law wisely avoids making statements on current events, given its desire to be a home for neutral debate on issues that are by nature one degree removed from politics. That all changed in February, when it issued a “Statement on the United States and the International Rule of Law,” which condemned President Trump’s quitting of WHO and UNESCO, his sanctions on ICC officials, and his proposed “forcible transfer of two million Palestinians out of Gaza.” This is pure politics, and in the case of “forcible transfer,” fiction.

There are countless other examples. Some of these associations may be more politicized, some less. But while all are nonpartisan in the technical sense of not endorsing candidates, they are far from apolitical. Most of their activities are nakedly and irredeemably intertwined with the far-left political views commonly held by such academics — views regarded not as opinions, but rather facts.

These highly politicized private groups are given fiefdoms within a government body. Doubtless, these associations were originally empowered for their apolitical expertise. Whatever naïve views may have been harbored in 1991 — before the publication of Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind — today these organizations are not apolitical or neutral in any sense. And their political bias all skews one way: a body appointed by such organizations cannot legitimately make decisions or suggestions that will affect the historical record available for all Americans.

Thus far, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has not moved to fill any of the vacancies. It may be that the Historian does not need the advice of academics. Certainly, FAUS was published successfully before 1991. But the statute deputizing these associations remains on the books, and limits the administration’s ability to staff the board, while ensuring a restoration by a Democratic president.

Keep reading

Former Transgender New Hampshire State Rep. Pleads Guilty in Connection to Child Sex Crimes

A former transgender New Hampshire state legislator pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of children this week.

Stacie Laughton (biological male), a Democrat who was elected to the New Hampshire House three times and resigned twice over legal problems, is facing up to 30 years in prison in connection to child sex crimes.

In 2023, Laughton, 41, of Nashua, New Hampshire, and his former intimate partner and daycare worker, Lindsay Groves, were charged with child exploitation.

Groves admitted to taking sexually explicit photos of children at the daycare center and sending them to Laughton.

Laughton was charged with one count of sexual exploitation of children – and aiding and abetting, according to the DOJ.

“According to the charging documents, a preliminary forensic review of Groves’ cellphone allegedly revealed over 10,000 text messages between Laughton and Groves that included discussion about, and transfer of, explicit photographs that Groves had taken of children while employed at Creative Minds daycare – including at least four sexually explicit images of children who appear to be approximately three to five years old, as well as explicit descriptions of sex with each other and others, including children,” the DOJ said.

Groves was charged with one count of sexual exploitation of children and one count of distribution of child pornography.

“The charge of sexual exploitation of children provides for a sentence of at least 15 years and up to 30 years in prison, at least five years and up to a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case,” the DOJ said.

Keep reading

James Comey’s Own Notes Prove He Knew The Russia Hoax Was A Clinton Plot

On Monday, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan filed an extraordinary batch of documents in the public docket of her case against former FBI Director James Comey. The exhibits range from Comey’s communications with his handpicked FBI leaker, Daniel Richman, a Columbia law professor the bureau employed specifically to funnel Comey’s preferred narratives to the press, to text messages between Richman and New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt. But the most significant document by far is Comey’s own handwritten notes proving, beyond any doubt, that he knew early on the entire Russia collusion story was a Clinton campaign fabrication.

In other words, Comey knew he should have been investigating Hillary Clinton for orchestrating the most dangerous political hoax in American history, falsely accusing the Republican nominee of colluding with Russia. Instead, he chose to weaponize that lie, using the full force of the FBI to try to destroy Donald Trump. While the majority of the 14 new exhibits reveal how Comey lied and manipulated media narratives through his anonymous conduit — for example, to polish his own image or to make Trump look bad — the most striking takeaway is that we now have proof Comey knew the Russia collusion story was orchestrated by the Clinton campaign.

It is remarkable that these documents survived at all. They were found in an FBI “burn bag,” a method for destroying sensitive materials. For reasons still unknown, several of these bags, reportedly five in total, were never incinerated. Instead, they were placed inside an unused, locked Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) at FBI headquarters. Why they ended up there remains a mystery. Perhaps a silent whistleblower or conscientious staffer intervened.

According to a July 2025 internal FBI document opening an investigation into potential crimes surrounding the burn bags, it appears they were placed in the unused SCIF in the days leading up to Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025. This suggests that the documents — which also included materials related to the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, and the highly classified annex to Special Counsel John Durham’s report detailing how U.S. intelligence uncovered in the summer of 2016 that the Russia collusion plot was a Clinton fabrication — were either being collected for destruction and then forgotten, or time ran out or some other factor derailed that plan, or they were stored secretly to be discovered by the incoming Trump team.

Be that as it may, whether through luck, providence, or a quiet act of integrity, the burn bags remained in the SCIF, where they were discovered earlier this year by FBI director Kash Patel and his team. Their contents now form the backbone of the case against Comey.

Keep reading

SHOCKING REVELATION: Transgender Individual in Viral LA Gym Bathroom Controversy Was Previously CONVICTED of Assaulting Ex-Wife — Then Adopted Her Name After Transition

A disturbing new twist has emerged in the viral Los Angeles gym bathroom controversy.

The transgender individual at the center of the viral Los Angeles gym locker room incident has been exposed as a convicted domestic abuser, who later took the name of the very woman he brutally assaulted.

According to the New York Post, the person now known as Alexis Black, who recently caused an uproar at a Gold’s Gym in Beverly Hills, was previously convicted of assaulting his wife while living as a man in Ohio.

Court records confirm that Black, formerly known as Kyle Grant Freeman, pleaded guilty in 2022 to viciously beating his then-wife, Alexis Freeman, leaving her with a compound fractured jaw that required surgery.

“Kyle Grant Freeman caused serious physical harm to the victim. The victim suffered a compound fractured mandible, which resulted in her needing surgery,” read court documents obtained by the Post.

Black served one year in prison and had prior convictions for domestic violence, drug trafficking, and resisting arrest, among other offenses.

Investigative reporter Sarah Fields wrote on X, “Grant Freeman, the man who was found in the women’s locker room of Gold’s Gym, was charged with three counts related to drugs: trafficking, possession, and failure to comply. He was ALSO charged with a 3rd degree felony for domestic violence and was convicted in November 2022. He spent 12 months in the Department of Corrections with a 219-day credit. The man spending time in the women’s locker room is a drug addict and violent abuser. Color me surprised.”

Keep reading

Telegram Pushes Back as Australia’s Online Censorship Battle Heats Up

Australia’s continuing clash over online speech has deepened after the Federal Court ordered Telegram to define the limits of its lawsuit against eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant by November 7.

The directive followed complaints from the regulator that Telegram had widened its challenge beyond what it originally filed, introducing new arguments at a late stage.

The dispute centers on the controversial Online Safety Act 2021, which gives the eSafety Commissioner broad authority to demand information from online platforms about their handling of “harmful” content and to impose penalties for non-compliance.

Telegram is challenging both the Commissioner’s authority under that law and the A$957,780 ($622k) fine issued earlier this year after it allegedly missed a reporting deadline.

In March 2024, eSafety issued notices to six major technology companies, including Google, Meta, X, Reddit, WhatsApp, and Telegram.

The notices required detailed reports about how each company was combating material connected to “terror and violent extremism” and demanded responses within 49 days.

According to eSafety, Telegram failed to comply within that timeframe, leading to the fine on February 24, 2025.

Telegram has rejected both the fine and the regulator’s jurisdiction.

The company argues that it is not a “provider of social-media services” under the law and therefore cannot be bound by Section 56(2), which authorizes eSafety to compel cooperation from social media or electronic service providers.

Telegram also claims that it never received the March 2024 notice because it was sent to an incorrect address in Dubai and to unrelated email inboxes. The company maintains that it only learned of the request in late August 2024 and still provided responses in October “in circumstances where it was not compelled to do so.”

During a recent hearing, eSafety’s lawyer Philip Solomon said Telegram had suddenly expanded its case to challenge not only the legality of the reporting notice but also the fine itself.

Keep reading

Senators Say Bondi And Patel Are Being ‘Sabotaged’ On Epstein Files; Massie Isn’t Buying It

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., is challenging explanations that FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi lack full control of their agencies nearly a year into the Trump administration, particularly when it comes to their handling of Jeffrey Epstein investigation files.

Sen. Ron Johnson recently suggested that Patel and Bondi face significant internal resistance. While discussing newly released Arctic Frost investigation documents late last month, Johnson emphasized that records came from whistleblowers rather than official channels.

“We need to do everything we can to assist Director Patel and AG Bondi in making sure they have the staff to take control over these agencies,” Johnson said per a report by Blaze Media. “I think they’re being sabotaged within.”

Johnson added that partisan actors remain embedded in both agencies. “Right now I think Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are overwhelmed by all the mess they’re trying to clean up,” he stated. “There’s still partisan actors burrowed in, trying to sabotage their efforts.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah., echoed these concerns, writing that Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino are “undoubtedly being sabotaged from within the FBI.”

Keep reading

Palantir, Fractal And Your Personal Data Privacy – Get used to being used, because YOU are the product

Who controls the data the government collected from you for a generation?

Your insurance company collected data on your driving – so did your Lexus – who owns that data?

You told your doctor about controlled substances you used – and now it gets brought up in an interview.

If you can’t exclude someone from using your data, then you don’t control it. That means you really don’t own it. It’s that simple.

What does “own” mean here, let’s define the terms.

Owning the data means you can do anything you want with it – share it, sell it, mine it or build an A.I. language model with it.

From birth until the last Social Security check gets cashed, your data is collected by federal and state agencies, corporations and of course the internet.

Your teen daughter puts every waking moment on Facebook or Instagram – so who owns those hundreds of images?

TSA Pre Check, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, government or military retirement, Tri-Care, veterans hospitals, and of course, the IRS – gather more data about every citizen than has ever been gathered in the history of mankind.

Each agency gathers different data, at different times, for slightly different purposes. And those purposes may change over time.

Who owns the rights to that data?

It’s a far stickier question than you think.

The knee jerk response is the government owns the data. They collected it for their purposes, so it’s theirs.

The government will certainly say so.

Keep reading

Outrage over video leak of Israeli soldiers’ gang rape of Palestinian exposes rot in Israeli society

Israelis are having a meltdown over the leak of a video of Israeli soldiers gang raping a Palestinian prisoner at the  notorious Sde Teiman torture camp. 

The uproar isn’t about the dozen or so Israeli soldiers who inserted a sharp object into a Palestinian prisoner’s anus and ripped his rectum apart. No, it’s over the fact that it was made public at all — and leaked by Israel’s Chief Military Advocate, no less.

On Sunday night, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the top lawyer supposedly in charge of making sure the Israeli army follows the law, was arrested after having revealed last Friday that she was the one who had leaked the infamous rape video to the media over a year ago. 

The court case against the suspected rapists — who are not even charged with rape, but “aggravated abuse” and “causing aggravated injury” — is still ongoing. Meanwhile, Tomer-Yerushalmi is now being leveled with charges such as “breach of loyalty,” “breach of trust,” “dereliction of duty,” and “disrupting investigative operations,” Israel’s Channel 12  reported in Hebrew.

In her resignation letter, the ex-Military Advocate said she approved the video leak “in an attempt to rebuff the deceitful propaganda against the law-enforcing elements in the army.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netantahu did not miss the opportunity to dramatize the matter, portraying the whole case as an attack on the nation: “This is perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment,” he railed.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called the case a “blood libel,” promising that “all required sanctions” would be taken against Tomer-Yerushalmi, including stripping her of her rank.

“Anyone who falsely spreads blood libels against IDF soldiers and prefers the welfare of the Nukhba terrorists over theirs is not worthy of wearing the IDF uniform and belongs in prison,” the Defense Minister said. Although, as the Times of Israel and other news sources clarified, the Palestinian detainee who was raped by the reservists in Sde Teiman was a civilian and not a Hamas fighter.

Even still, the leak is playing to the rapists’ favor, since the nature of the leak might end up compromising the position of the prosecution. 

What’s notable about all this is the popular outrage in Israel, with widespread sympathy toward the “wronged” soldiers turning the affair into a national story — in support of their right to rape Palestinians with impunity. 

Keep reading

Reelected Kansas Mayor Faces Charges Of Voting As Noncitizen  

The day after Coldwater, Kansas, Mayor ​Joe Ceballos was reelected to a second four-year term this week, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach filed election fraud charges against him. Ceballos, 54, is not a U.S. citizen, but he is not in the country illegally; “he is a legal permanent resident of the United States and a citizen of Mexico,” Kobach said.

“In Kansas, it is against the law to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen. We allege that Mr. Ceballos did it multiple times,” Kobach said in a statement.  

Ceballos faces three counts of voting without being qualified and three counts of election perjury. The charges are “nonperson felonies” that could cost Ceballos more than five years in prison. He is alleged to have voted at least in the 2022 and 2023 general elections and the 2024 primary election, although he has apparently been registered to vote since 1990.

He was not charged for holding office, although it is a problem.

“Kansas law at KSA 15-209 requires a city officer to be a qualified elector. And being a qualified elector requires that person to be a United States citizen,” Kobach said during a press conference. “It is not a criminal offense to be in violation of that law, but it is worth noting.”

According to KWCH, Ceballos ran unopposed for his second term in Coldwater, population 687. The rural town is an hour outside of Dodge City and more than 200 miles from the nearest major city, Oklahoma City.

“State law generally requires that candidates for elected city office must be a qualified elector, or eligible to vote, and be a resident of the city,” Kobach’s statement reads. “However, cities have home rule power. It will be up to the city attorney to decide whether Ceballos is eligible to continue in his role as mayor.”

Coldwater City Attorney Skip Herd told local television outlet KWCH that Ceballos “is a green card holder and there were red flags raised with his interest in pursuing permanent citizenship. ‘He’s been a registered voter since 1990. He applied for citizenship in February of this year, and through that, raised the issue of whether he was a legal citizen,’ Herd said.”

According to KWCH, Coldwater officials decided that Ceballos can finish his term, which ends in two months, and, unless his citizenship is approved during that time, council President Britt Lenertz will be named mayor.

“While the recent allegations involving the mayor are understandably concerning, we will allow the proper legal process to take its course before making any further comments. It’s important that we respect both due process and the integrity of our local government,” Lenertz posted on Coldwater’s Facebook page.

Kobach and Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab are using the moment to highlight the problem of noncitizens registering to vote and participating in U.S. elections.

Keep reading

Russia Can ‘Mirror’ in Venezuela What West Is Doing in Ukraine

When regional relations Iran and Syria called on Russia to help defend them against attacks by America, Israel, and a swarm of former ISIS militants, they received no answer. Analysts at the time said, and the President of Ukraine in fact celebrated, that it was because of Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine that assistance could not be rendered to protect Moscow’s interests abroad.

In contrast, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro has called for help, and Moscow has answered, with Russian outlet Gazeta confirming that additional Russian-made air defense systems have arrived in the South American country.

“Information about the volumes and exact names of what is brought from Russia is classified, so surprises may await the Americans,” said Alexei Zhuravlev, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee. “According to the latest information, the Russian Pantsir-S1 and Buk-M2E systems were delivered to Caracas by transport Il-76 just the other day”.

Flightradar24 recorded an Il-76 cargo aircraft flown by Aviacon Zitotrans – a sanctioned Russian airliner known to carry defense and military articles – arriving in Caracas in late October. Regarding the “surprises,” Zhuravlev said he didn’t see any “obstacles to supplying a friendly country” with the Oreshnik or Kalibr cruise missile systems, from existing international obligations.

Another high-ranking Duma official, Sergey Mironov, leader of the opposition (and socialist) party released a statement in which he suggested his country could and probably should “provide the necessary assistance to the country to guarantee its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

“We can give the United States an opportunity to see what its policy in Ukraine towards Russia looks like…” Mironov said, who like Zhuravlev, singled out the Kalibr cruise missile by name. “In other words, Russia can ‘mirror’ in Venezuela the scenario that the West is implementing in Ukraine by supplying weapons to the Kyiv regime. The only significant difference is that Venezuela does not threaten anyone, and we have no plans to use this country as an anti-American springboard”.

Even short of the cruise missiles, which would give the Trump Administration a substantially different paradigm to work in regarding its plans for Venezuela, the arrival of air defense weaponry cuts right at the heart of the longest-standing foreign policy consensus in Washington: the Monroe Doctrine. Named after the 5th President of the US, James Monroe, the 19th century policy’s 21st century reinterpretation calls for US hegemony of the entire Western Hemisphere, and was invoked in response to Soviet Russia’s actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and during the first Trump Administration’s attempt to overthrow Maduro.

Some unverified reports claim that Wagner Group personnel, which have worked in the country before, are in Venezuela training domestic military on at least the Pantsir-S1 system, as it requires specialized knowledge of radar operation and targeting software that it’s not clear the domestic military would possess. If Wagner was in situ preparing the Venezuelans to shoot down American drones, missiles, or pilots, it wouldn’t be any different than what CIA assets have been doing in Ukraine for three years now, but will undoubtedly mark a new, dangerous escalation between US and Russian relations.

One can only imagine how far those relations may fall in a situation whereby Russia begins funneling weapons into a successful defense of Caracas by the Maduro regime against the US.

A ‘Red’ herring

Venezuela’s arsenal is a mixture of old and modern Russian weaponry. The most significant threat the country wields is twenty-one Sukhoi SU-30 fighter aircraft which it acquired between 2006 and 2008. These fourth-generation fighter aircraft carry beyond-visible-sight, supersonic, air-to-air missiles, which could pose a substantial challenge to US F-35s or MQ-9 Reaper drones if the Venezuelan air force can actually scramble and avoid destruction on the tarmac as happened in both Iran and in Syria.

In terms of the ground-to-air weapons, Venezuelan forces man the Russian-made S-125 Pechora-2M and S-300 long-range anti-air missile systems for targeting both aircraft and ballistic missiles, around 12 of the Buk-2M mid-range missile defense platforms, and several hundred anti-air 23mm autocannons.

Some of these systems are old, and most date to Soviet manufacture, but one deceased Ukrainian MiG-29 pilot named Andrii Pilshchykov who spoke with TWZ said that the Buk-M2 was the most concerning threat he faced during operations in defense of his country.

Perhaps more impactful than any of these headline items is the Igla-S24, a shoulder-fired anti-air rocket and the only system in Venezuela’s air defense network that is up to date. Its maximum range is 5,000 feet farther than the US-made Stinger missile, and the military was said in 2017 to have an arsenal of over 5,000 of these according to a report from Reuters.

Keep reading