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Congress may soon enact a ‘no first use’ nuclear weapons law

Everyone in the military knows there’s an officer who follows the President of the United States around with a special briefcase known as the “football.” Since John F. Kennedy was in office, the Presidential Aide accompanied the office holder with this briefcase containing everything needed to launch a nuclear strike. 

Now, Congress may be looking to tie the president’s hands in the use of nuclear weapons. At least, it’s looking at tying his ability to launch a first strike.

Democrats from the House of Representatives and the Senate introduced legislation that will formally enact a “No First Use” policy in regard to nuclear weapons. The U.S. military is, predictably, not thrilled about the idea. The law is intended to avert an accidental nuclear war in case the great power rivalry with China or Russia starts to heat up. 

“This bill would strengthen deterrence while reducing the chance of nuclear use due to miscalculation or misunderstanding,” Rep. Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. “Codifying that deterring nuclear use is the sole purpose of our nuclear arsenal strengthens U.S. national security and would renew U.S. leadership on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.”

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Biden Lied About Yemen

The Biden administration has finally admitted that the US is indeed providing offensive material support to Saudi Arabia’s genocidal assault on Yemen, directly contradicting Biden’s February claim that it would no longer be providing offensive support in that war. We are being lied to about yet another US war by yet another US president.

“The United States continues to provide maintenance support to Saudi Arabia’s Air Force given the critical role it plays in Saudi air defense and our longstanding security partnership,” Pentagon spokesperson Jessica McNulty has informed Vox reporter Alex Ward.

“Multiple US defense officials and experts acknowledged that, through a US government process, the Saudi government pays commercial contractors to maintain and service their aircraft, and those contractors keep Saudi warplanes in the air. What the Saudis do with those fighter jets, however, is up to them,” Ward reports. “The US could cancel those contracts at any time, thus effectively grounding the Saudi Air Force, but doing so would risk losing Riyadh as a key regional partner.”

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Faculty Fear At Cornell: “I worry every day I enter class that I will say something that a student will find offensive”

I have been writing and speaking out for a long time about the toxic climate at Cornell University when it comes to free expression, particularly in light of public attacks by senior administrators on a Chemistry Professor and me over criticism of the riots and looting that took place after the death of George Floyd.

When the university as an institution, or in my case the law school, attacks dissident professors, it sends a message that only one view is acceptable to the institution. When that institutional position is framed in the manner of “we can’t fire him because he has job protection, but ….” it sends a clear message to faculty who do not have job protection, to students, and to staff, that they are at risk if they express similar views. The negative impact of such denunciations was set forth very well by the National Association of Scholars, An Open Letter to Eduardo M. Peñalver, Dean of Cornell Law School In Support of Professor William A. Jacobson.

My writing and observations were vindicated when the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (the FIRE) and two other free speech groups released a survey of students in September 2020, which I covered in this post, Cornell ranks low in campus free speech survey, abysmal on student free expression.

There is more evidence of this toxic campus climate, which shows it is not only top-down, but bottom-up. There currently are a series of Faculty Senate Working Group proposals to impose Critical Race Theory mandates on faculty and students, which of course I oppose, Statement of Prof. William A. Jacobson Opposing Cornell Faculty Senate Proposed Critical Race Mandates:

Why such compulsion? This campus already is awash in CRT-driven programs, courses, events, workshops, and faculty and student activism, and the separately proposed Center will further the breadth of CRT-based education. These voluntary educational opportunities apparently are not sufficient to those supporting Proposals F and S. Rather than being introspective as to why the message is not resonating more broadly and engaging in debate, Proposal F (and separately, Proposal S) uses administrative power to impose the ideology on the campus.

There has been unexpected pushback from many faculty, leading to a watering down of a Faculty Senate resolution for which voting starts May 5.

The original resolution stated ““Be it resolved that the Faculty Senate endorses the recommendations that are set forth in the WG-F Final Report.” The form of resolution has been changed due to “concerns” to “Be it resolved that the Faculty Senate believes that the recommendations set forth in the  WG-F Final Report.  are worthy of careful consideration by the President and Provost” with further limitations, among others, that ” broad, transparent consultation with the faculty must attend any decision to implement a WG-F recommendation.” A similar walk-back also is taking place as to the proposal for CRT educational mandates on students.

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Facebook’s ‘independent’ fact checker on vaccines is funded by … you guessed it

Accurate information about the vaccines and other vital COVID-related topics hinges upon the ability to disseminate the facts on major social media platforms like Facebook. In turn, Facebook relies on FactCheck.org, among other shady organizations, to rule on what information is admissible. FactCheck.org is funded by a grant from an organization run by Obama’s former CDC director, whose assets contain Johnson & Johnson stock. In other words, the vaccine companies control the flow of information about vaccines. Welcome to the world of “independent fact checkers.”POLL: What scares you the most?

Over the past year, Facebook has censored nearly every one of my articles and commentaries questioning the science behind lockdowns or mask mandates. More recently, it has placed a blockade on any information raising questions about the vaccines. Facebook has also blocked people from sharing my articles promoting cheap, lifesaving drugs, such as ivermectin, or even studies showing how sufficient doses of vitamin D and zinc can prevent critical illness from SARS-CoV-2.

In each instance of censorship, Facebook has posted a notice misleading anyone who wishes to share the article into thinking that the particular points raised in the article were independently fact-checked and found to be false. First, it’s critical to note that almost no article Facebook employees censor is fact-checked by anyone; they merely rely on an initial fact-check of one person’s article critical of masks — just to give an example — and then trot out that same fact-check as an excuse for zapping any article questioning the wisdom of mask-wearing, even if the points raised in said article are completely different from the issues addressed in the first fact-check.

However, there is something much more insidious going on with the fact-checking industry. The inmates are running the asylum and the foxes are guarding the henhouse. When the vaccines began to be dispensed to the public in December, FactCheck.org started “SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project” to specifically focus on the flow of information pertaining to the vaccines. The site has a disclaimer on the top of the website stating: “SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.”

Comically, the next sentence reads, “The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.”

In fact, the views expressed almost assuredly do reflect the views of the foundation. FactCheck.org claims, “The goal is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.” Yet have you ever seen the organization offer balanced coverage or flag a single post on the other side of this debate as false, no matter how outlandish the claim might be, including articles advocating experimental emergency use authorization vaccines for little children?

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Biden Administration To Propose Ban On Menthol Cigarettes

Joe Biden is set to announce a new ban that is going to have cigarette users furious.

This week the Biden administration is expected to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes because of the damage it apparently does to black communities, The Washington Post reported.

The Biden administration is expected to announce this week that it will propose a ban on menthol cigarettes, an action urgently sought by tobacco opponents and civil rights groups that say African Americans have been disproportionately hurt by the industry’s aggressive targeting of Black communities.

The administration also is poised to say it will seek to ban menthol and other flavors in mass-produced cigars, including small cigars popular with young people, according to administration officials familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss it publicly.

It could be years before such bans would take effect, but the administration’s announcement is likely to be hailed by antismoking organizations as a critical and long-overdue step in curbing tobacco use and improving public health. Despite sharp declines in smoking in recent years, tobacco use remains a leading source of illness and death in the United States and worldwide, especially among people of color.

Antismoking groups have been frustrated for years by Washington’s inaction on menthol cigarettes and have turned to states and localities to request bans, with mixed success. They became more optimistic about a possible federal ban in recent months amid President Biden’s repeated vows to reduce health disparities made glaringly obvious by the coronavirus pandemic, and efforts by the Black Lives Matter movement to focus on institutionalized racism.

“There is not an open question on whether menthol in cigarettes is harmful — the evidence is overwhelming and consistent,” director of commercial tobacco control programs at the Public Health Law Center at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Minnesota said.

“The Biden administration doesn’t know how to solve every problem. But they know what to do here, and they can do it,” he said.

This month 10 groups sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra in which they asked for the Food and Drug Administration to begin the process of banning menthol cigarettes.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Aides Orchestrated Nursing Home Scandal Coverup

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aides used their power and influence to repeatedly cover up how many nursing home patients in the state died of COVID-19 as well as the Democrat administration’s role in creating the deadly scandal, the New York Times reports.

When health officials, under the watchful eye of the state administration, began to evaluate how many nursing home patients succumbed to COVID-19 after Cuomo directed long-term care facilities to accept positive patients in March 2020, the governor’s aides expressed concerns that the report was too critical of the Democrat leader and his policy.

“We are getting anxious over here on this report,” Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, reportedly wrote in a June email to health and Cuomo officials noting that the report seemed too harsh on the governor’s deadly policy “from my perspective.” “Needs to be able to stand up to scrutiny and definitively tell the story.”

While Cuomo aides altered the last version of the report to omit the deaths of approximately 9,000 nursing home residents who contracted COVID-19, the health department did another version of the study “aimed at the scientific press and drafted at the same time by nearly a dozen health officials” that estimated a much higher number of deaths than was included in the original report. The version that estimated “approximately 35 percent” of all COVID deaths in the state then “were nursing home residents,” however, was not released.

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Media Mistakes in the Biden Era: the Definitive List

A Politico article by with three bylines, EUGENE DANIELS, KRYSTAL CAMPOS and MICHAEL CADENHEAD, wrongly stated that Rep. Byron Donalds was “Florida’s first-ever Black Republican in Congress.”

In fact, he is third.

A correction added to the article didn’t explain how the basic research impacting the very premise of the article wasn’t done prior to publication.

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