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Defund The Speech Police

San Francisco has had enough. The city’s mayor recently declared that “the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,” and she promised to “take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement.”

Her get-tough pledge is, of course, shameless — if only there had been a municipal leader who could have done something before now! — but when wokeness has lost the mayor of San Francisco, it has a public-relations problem.

Following electoral defeats in Virginia, and facing a likely wipeout in next year’s midterm elections, many Democrats are scrambling away from identity politics. From crime to education to the workplace, it poisons everything, and Americans are sick of it.

Thus, we may hope that Scott McConnell is correct in predicting that wokeness “will be rolled back, its practitioners and cultural preferences first widely mocked and then ignored, its victims rehabilitated and in some cases honored.” But we should not be too sure; even if wokeness is politically toxic now, it might nonetheless win in the long run.

Identity politics’ likely resilience was highlighted in a response by Ed West as well as in a Reason article by Greg Lukianoff chronicling how the first wave of political correctness in the 1990s persisted despite its unpopularity. Put simply, identity politics holds power in key institutions, especially in tech, academia, education, the media, and Big Business. While voter anger might spook politicians on issues such as crime, wokeness in all its forms will be hard to root out of its institutional fortresses.

Thus, identity politics will remain as a powerful force in American life even if Democratic politicians avoid and downplay its more unpopular ideas (and they aren’t all giving up yet). Like a weed, snicking the head off wokeness will not kill it. Unless it is actively uprooted, wokeness will continue to embed itself within powerful institutions, just as it was doing before it broke into public view over the last few years.

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As Govt Employees Kept Paychecks, Bar Owner Gets 90 Days in Jail for Opening During Lockdown to Survive

In April, police officers located Lisa Hanson in Clear Lake, Iowa about 40 miles south of the restaurant she owns.

Officers placed her under arrest and transported her for booking. Hanson, who had not appeared for a March 10 court date, was released a few hours later. She admitted to one local news station that the experience was “unpleasant and scary.”

Hanson’s crime? She kept her restaurant—The Interchange Wine & Coffee Bistro—open in December against the order of Governor Tim Walz, who in mid November had issued a new lockdown on bars and restaurants, gyms, sports, and social gatherings. Walz’s order did not prohibit liquor stores, barber shops, salons, and retail businesses from operating.

Hanson publicly said she believed the order was unfair and a violation of her constitutional rights.

“We knew right away that it was wrong what the government was doing to us,” Hanson said following her arrest.

Eight months later, Hanson had her day in court. Last week the jury, after deliberating for an hour, found her guilty of six criminal misdemeanor charges. Judge Joseph Bueltel handed Hanson a 90-day jail sentence and fined her $1,000 in a blistering denunciation.

“You wanted to make money over the interest of public safety,” he said. “You don’t recognize the law. You don’t think you’re subject to the law.”

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Airline CEO Calls For Unvaccinated “Idiots” To Be Ostracised From Society

Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Ryanair has declared that anyone who remains unvaccinated should be completely cut off from society, including not being allowed to travel, go to the supermarket to get food, or the pharmacy to get medicine.

“If you’re not vaccinated, you shouldn’t be allowed in the hospital, you shouldn’t be allowed to fly, you shouldn’t be allowed on the London Underground, and you shouldn’t be allowed in the local supermarket or your pharmacy either,” the airline executive said, as reported by The Telegraph 

“You can sit at home and you know, get your deliveries of medicines and food. But you should not, you know, go to work or go on public transport unless you have a vaccine certificate,” O’Leary clarified.

O’Leary admitted that making vaccines compulsory is “an infringement of your civil liberties,” but added that the way around it is “you simply make life so difficult. Or [make it that] there are lots of things that you can’t do unless you get vaccinated.”

Calling the unvaccinated “idiots,” the Ryanir boss further stated “I don’t think that governments should permit those people who are not vaccinated to go and infect everybody else.”

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Prosecutors in Smollett Case Lied to the Public, Special Prosecutor Finds

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and prosecutors in her office lied and misled the public about the case against Jussie Smollett, according to a special prosecutor’s case released Monday.

Foxx, a Democrat whose campaign was backed by billionaire George Soros, initially said there was a “strong case” against Smollett for faking a hate crime against himself that would have led to a conviction. But Foxx claimed days later that certain aspects of the case “would have made securing a conviction against Smollett uncertain.”

Dan Webb, a special prosecutor appointed to probe the actions of Foxx and her underlings, said the pivot was “false and misleading.”

The office also offered a series of other false and misleading statements, Webb’s report said.

Foxx recused herself from the case in 2019 because she was rumored to be related to or have a relationship with Smollett or his family. But, according to legal rules, Foxx had to recuse her entire office and ask the court to appoint a special prosecutor. Foxx instead chose to keep in place a prosecutor she appointed from within her office to oversee the case.

The office and Foxx “made the decision to ignore this major legal defect seemingly because they did not want to admit they had made such a major mistake of judgment,” Webb wrote, adding that they “then compounded the problem by making a false statement to the media” about the matter.

Foxx and/or prosecutors in her office also falsely said Smollett had no criminal background when they dismissed the initial case against him, falsely represented that $10,000 was the most Smollett could have been ordered to pay in restitution, and were misleading when they claimed the dismissal was not unusual because they could not identify any similar cases, according to the report.

Foxx’s office engaged in substantial abuses of discretion and breached obligations of honesty and transparency, Webb concluded.

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Boston’s vaccine mandate will not apply to professional athletes

Boston’s COVID vaccine mandate for indoor venues, set to go into effect on Jan. 15 2022, will not include professional athletes.

The wording of the vaccine mandate allows for “a professional athlete/sports team who enters a covered premises as part of their regular employment for purposes of competing” to not be vaccinated. It will apply to both resident and visiting athletes.

According to the Boston Globe, right now, people 12 years old and older need to show either a recent negative COVID test or an up-to-date vaccine card in order to gain access to the TD Garden.

After the Jan. 15 2022 deadline, the option for the negative test will no longer exist, and all people wishing to enter the premises will have to show proof of vaccination.

The new vaccine mandate was revealed on Monday by Michelle Wu, Boston’s mayor, and, similar to other vaccine mandates worldwide, also applies to many other types of indoor businesses.

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DOD Issues New Policy on Extremism That Includes ‘Likes’

The Pentagon has updated its policy regarding extremism among military personnel.

The revised policy comes as the result of a Counter Extremist Activity Working Group established in the Spring by Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin.

Officials say the new policy does not seek to focus on any one ideology, thought, or political orientation, but to define more clearly what qualifies as prohibited extremist activity.

A report issued Dec. 20 provides a lengthy definition of “extremist activities” that range from advocating or engaging in political violence to knowingly displaying paraphernalia, words, or symbols in support of extremist activity.

This can include “liking” content on the internet, according to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby.

“The physical act of liking is, of course, advocating,” Kirby told reporters Monday. “And advocating for extremist groups—certainly groups that advocate violating the oath of the Constitution, overthrowing the government, terrorist activities. Liking is an advocation.”

According to the report, extremist activity can include posting, liking, sharing, re-tweeting, or otherwise distributing content—when such action is taken with the intent to promote or otherwise endorse extremist activities.

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Leaked Hillary Clinton Emails Reveal Concerns About ‘Biological Weapons’ Created At Wuhan Lab

Leaked State Department emails reveal Hillary Clinton knew about the dangers of Communist China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology while she was Secretary of State.

The State Department cables from June 2009 obtained by WikiLeaks reveal Clinton warned France that gain-of-function activities at the Wuhan lab could cause “biological weapons proliferation concern.”

The cables were sent to all embassies in member nations ahead of the Australia Group plenary session in Paris from September 21-25, 2009.

The Australia Group is an “informal” international export control forum created to prevent the spread of technologies and research that could contribute to the development of chemical and biological weapons.

“We believe it is important to focus on emerging chemical and biological technologies, trends in the trade of CBW-related goods and threats,” former Secretary Clinton stated.

Directed to France, the email continues: “The U.S. believes participants would benefit from hearing about your experiences assisting China in setting up a Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology from the export control and intangible technology transfer perspectives.”

“We are particularly interested to know how China plans to vet incoming foreign researchers from countries of biological weapons proliferation concern,” Clinton added.

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Amazon deleted reviews of Chinese president’s book on government’s orders

Didn’t like Chinese President Xi Jinping’s book? Keep your mouth shut.

That’s what China told Amazon, according to a new report, when the country pushed the bookseller to delete all comments and reviews related to “The Governance of China,” a compendium of Xi’s speeches and writings.

Amazon complied. It’s another example of a US company bending to Chinese pressure in order to keep doing business in the huge and growing economy.

The government edict was delivered two years ago, according to the Reuters report citing two people familiar with the matter, but had never before been disclosed.

Now, on Amazon sites accessed within China, there are no reviews or star ratings for the book.

The censorship demand was made after some reviewers gave the leader’s tome less-than-stellar marks, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

It was a negative review that prompted the wholesale ban on reviews and ratings on the book, according to a source. The ban was for the book’s Amazon listing in China.

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