No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
A Florida lawyer is challenging former President Trump’s ability to run for president in 2024 under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, citing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Lawrence Caplan, a tax attorney in Palm Beach County, filed the challenge in federal court Thursday, pointing to a clause in the amendment that says those who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government cannot hold office.
The update ends like all the other attempts at this novel legal theory and misreading of the 14th Amendment – failure. The update to this story is this JUST THE NEWS:
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by a Florida tax attorney that claimed former President Donald Trump could not run for office on the basis of fomenting an insurrection.
… CONTINUING
BREITBART has a good short article discussing the idea a bit when they say:
The text specifically lists “Senator,” Representative,” and “elector of President and Vice President,” but does not specifically mention the president or vice president. Some of those who advocate using Section 3 to disqualify Trump suggest that the president falls under the category of “any office.” Law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen argue, for example, that the language of Section 3 must be interpreted broadly.
But there is also the legal convention of expressio unius est exclusio alterius (“the express mention of one thing excludes all others”), meaning that if a list omits something, it is presumed to have done so deliberately.
Again, another source likewise notes the idea:
Expressio unius est exclusio alterius | A Latin term literally meaning “the expression of one thing is the exclusion of the other”. This is a common law principle for construing legislation which holds that a syntactical presumption may be made that an express reference to one matter excludes other matters. (THOMPSON REUTERS PRACTICAL LAW)
Section 3 specifically lists representatives, senators, and electors of POTUS and VP, but does not specifically list POTUS and VP. Clearly the 14th excludes the President and Vice President from the listed elected offices barred under the amendment.
Byron York in his WASHINGTON EXAMINER post shows the recent arguments from those that wish to remove Trump — then goes on to explain how these arguments fail. (Michael McConnell is a contributing author to the book on the right)
It all seems a little too simple, doesn’t it? A voice of caution in all this comes from Michael McConnell. First, McConnell is skeptical about applying the word “insurrection” to the events of Jan. 6, 2021. “Section 3 speaks of ‘insurrection’ and ‘rebellion,'” he wrote. “These are demanding terms, connoting only the most serious of uprisings against the government, such as the Whisky Rebellion and the Civil War. The terms of Section 3 should not be defined down to include mere riots or civil disturbances, which are common in United States history. Many of these riots impede the lawful operations of government, and exceed the power of normal law enforcement to control. Are they insurrections or rebellions, within the meaning of Section 3?”
McConnell continued: “I would hazard the suggestion that a riot is the use of violence to express anger or to attempt to coerce the government to take certain actions, while insurrections and rebellions are the use of violence, usually on a larger scale, to overthrow the government or prevent it from being able to govern.”
Then, McConnell questioned Baude and Paulsen’s belief that all sorts of actions fit under the heading of “insurrection,” even actions that many people would consider constitutionally protected speech. The authors’ idea, apparently, is to define the offense so broadly that Trump is sure to be guilty of it. “Baude and Paulsen maintain that Section 3 ‘covers a broad range of conduct against the authority of the constitutional order, including many instances of indirect participation or support,'” McConnell wrote. “They explicitly state that Section 3 trumps the First Amendment. The terms ‘broad range of conduct’ and ‘indirect support’ are ominous, especially since they also say that Section 3 trumps the First Amendment and does not require due process. What could go wrong?”
A lot could go wrong. And then, there is the problem of letting state secretaries of state make so momentous a decision as to remove a major political party’s presidential candidate from the ballot on their own authority. “We must not forget that we are talking about empowering partisan politicians such as state Secretaries of State to disqualify their political opponents from the ballot, depriving voters of the ability to elect candidates of their choice,” McConnell wrote. “If abused, this is profoundly anti-democratic.”
And then what? If Section 3 can be reactivated in this way, then reactivated it will be. Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify, and not only for president, but for any race where Democrats present someone who said or did something that can be represented as “aid and comfort” to enemies of the United States. Didn’t progressive Representative Ilhan Omar once seemingly equate al-Qaeda with the U.S. military? Do we think that her political enemies will accept that she was making only a stupid rhetorical point? Earlier this year, Tennessee Republicans tossed out of the legislature two Black Democrats for allegedly violating House rules. Might Tennessee Republicans next deem unruly Democrats “rebels” forbidden ever to run for office again?
Finally, McConnell noted that Congress has passed a law against insurrection, which, like the 14th Amendment, also carries the penalty of disqualification to hold public office. The Justice Department could actually charge people with insurrection if it chose. The cases would then “proceed through the ordinary course of prosecution by the executive, trial by a court, decision by a jury, and appeal to appellate courts, with due process at every step,” McConnell wrote. “It is significant that the Department of Justice has prosecuted hundreds of persons for their involvement in the January 6 incursion at the Capitol, but has not charged anyone, including Trump, with insurrection under this or any other statute. It is not obvious that partisan officials in state governments, without specific authorization or checks and balances, should apply broad and uncertain definitions to decide who can run for office in a republic, when responsible officials with clear statutory and constitutional authority have not done so.”
McConnell’s objections are contained in a brief letter to the Volokh Conspiracy blog, but they capture in some depth the essential danger of the latest 14th Amendment craze in the anti-Trump world. In addition, no one’s analysis, so far at least, has really explored the effect such a stunt would have on our political system. But you can be sure of one thing: Someone is going to try this. Some official somewhere will cite the new interpretation of the 14th Amendment, Section 3, to remove Trump from a ballot. And then, who knows what will happen?
Again, the widely accepted and understood legal convention is “if a list omits something, it is presumed to have done so deliberately.” Another TWEET I liked was this one:
Art. VI, § 3 where the Constitution lists who is required to swear or affirm to support the Constitution, the President is NOT included in the broad category of “executive officers”. That’s because Art. II S 8 specifies the oath (different from that of an officer) required by the President. There is no title of Commander in Chief in any military or govt branch. It’s exclusive.
Obviously the framers viewed the President as something greater than an executive officer.
14th amd. Sec3 DOES amend qualifications for Congress by textually excluding former members guilty of insurrection. It also textually excludes insurrectionists from being POTUS electors. BUT it avoids textually excluding or including a former POTUS because there again he is not an officer. The framers obviously didn’t go there. In the 2nd bogus impeachment trial Trump was acquitted of inciting an insurrection by the Senate, a branch of the US govt. The opinion that he is constitutionally barred is flawed, easily debunked and an insane interpretation!
I just discovered that Wiki considers NO right-leaning outlet “reliable.” Not Fox News Politics, The Daily Wire, the Daily Caller, the FDRLST, or New York Post. What DOES Wiki consider “reliable?” CNN, MSNBC, Jacobin, Vox, and Buzzfeed! Give me a break!
Wikipedia Co-Founder Condemns WIKI: “Most Biased Encyclopedia in History” The entire opening/interview starting at the 10:37 is HERE.
….Sanger says he noticed a bias creeping in around 2006, particularly in areas of science and medicine. Around 2010, he started noticing that articles about Eastern Medicine were being changed to reflect blatantly biased positions, using “dismissive epithets” to paint this ancient tradition as quackery.
In 2012, evidence also emerged revealing a Wikipedia trustee and “Wikipedian in Residence” were being paid to edit pages on behalf of their clients and secure their placement on Wikipedia’s front page in the “Did You Know” section, which publicizes new or expanded articles — a clear violation of Wikipedia rules.
“It really got over the top … between 2013 and 2018,” Sanger says, “and by by at the time Trump became president, it was almost as bad as it is now. It’s amazing, you know, no encyclopedia, to my knowledge, has ever been as biased as Wikipedia has been …
I remember being mad about Encyclopedia Britannica and The World Book not mentioning my favorite topics, [and] presenting only certain points of view in a way that establishment sources generally do. But this is something else. This is entirely different. It’s over the top.”….
In 2007 a hacker and tech whiz named Virgil Griffith revealed that the CIA, FBI and a host of large corporations and government agencies were editing pages on Wikipedia to their own benefit (or the benefit of associates). Now Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is reporting that the intelligence agencies are still at it, routinely editing pages relating to the Iraq War body count, treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and China’s nuclear program. In the video below Jimmy mentions Aaron Maté. Jimmy Dore interviewed him regarding this incident of the Syrian chemical attack (HERE), and the article can be found on Aarons GRAYZONE.
The changes may violate Wikipedia’s conflict-of-interest guidelines, a spokeswoman for the site said on Thursday.
The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a Web site that was quickly overwhelmed with searches.
The program allows users to track the source of computers used to make changes to the popular Internet encyclopedia where anyone can submit and edit entries.
WikiScanner revealed that CIA computers were used to edit an entry on the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A graphic on casualties was edited to add that many figures were estimated and were not broken down by class.
Another entry on former CIA chief William Colby was edited by CIA computers to expand his career history and discuss the merits of a Vietnam War rural pacification program that he headed.
[….]
It violates Wikipedia’s neutrality guidelines for a person with close ties to an issue to contribute to an entry about it, said spokeswoman Sandy Ordonez of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s parent organization….
This is really a story about a GOVERNMENT INDUCED SHIT SHOW. The artificial inflation of a segment of the market that will “trickle-down” (so-to-speak) to many aspects of our lives. And so, with billions given to EV production from the Inflation Reduction Act will accomplish the exact opposite of what the Democrats promised it would do. Of course we all knew this, I am just pointing out the EV connection. As one article notes below,
The automakers are still healing from the chip shortage, which we talked about in one of our previous articles: Chip Shortage Puts a Brake on Automotive Production. They are now faced with lithium supply constraints which are not expected to ease down for a couple of years. And then there is also a looming threat of a shortage of other minerals such as graphite, nickel, cobalt, etc., which are also critical for the production of EV components.
It will take years for economists to sift through the wreckage of Big-Government edicts and messianic proclamations to “save the planet.” For now, all I can do is sound the alarm bells, in my own corner of the WWW.
QUOTE w/MEDIA
This is a FLASHBACK that originally aired on the radio Jul 2, 2013. Dennis Prager interviews George Gilder about his new book, “Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World.” I found this small bit on Dodd-Frank interesting as it leads to government interference creating a business atmosphere that nets zero information — or — creativity, entrepreneurial investment, or new growth and business.
“A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge” | George Gilder(The Fuller Interview Is Here)
EDITOR’S NOTE: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This economic law enforcers George Gilder’s contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works. Only the free-market can do this.
Why the posting of this key idea, or, rightly called an economic law. There are two stories I wish to share that brought me to think about this old audio I uploaded to my YouTube, and just fixed and reuploaded to my RUMBLE.
The United States is making $12 billion available in grants and loans for automakers and suppliers to retrofit their plants to produce electric and other advanced vehicles, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters Thursday.
The Biden administration will also offer $3.5 billion in funding to domestic battery manufacturers, Granholm said.
For the advanced vehicles, $2 billion of the funding will come from the Inflation Reduction Actwhich Democrats passed last year, and $10 billion will come from the Energy Department’s Loans Program Office, Granholm said…….
EV share of the new-vehicle market flattened out at 7.1 percent across the first half of the year after growing steadily in 2021 and 2022, according to U.S. new-vehicle registration data from Experian.
Is the party over? Hardly.
But in the fast-growing U.S. market of the moment, as microchip supplies improve and the production of popular gasoline-engine autos returns in force this summer, EVs are no longer outpacing the rest of the car business — at least for now…..
ALSO:
EVs sat at dealerships for an average of 92 days in the second quarter of 2023 versus 36 days for the same period in 2022. (U.S. NEWS and WORLD REPORT)
However, the push by governments to replace fossil fuels will increase production of these EV vehicles, reducing inflation will be impossible as prices of all sorts of items will greatly increase. 2-billion wasted and doing just the opposite of what Democrats say it would do.
The below articles will deal primarily with Nickel, but the overuse of this material as well as others in battery production due to this artificial inflation by governments will create interference in knowledge to be produced allowing the market [people] to make choices based on supply and demand.
What this means is that a shit show will trickle-down the supply chain. To the cost of stainless steel, to other ingredients key to electronics and all batteries. In other words,
Nickel is a chemical element and a transition metal. It is mostly used for high-grade steel manufacturing, and increasingly so, in batteries. Global production of nickel from mines was estimated to amount to a total of 3.3 million metric tons in 2022. The major countries in nickel mining include Indonesia, Philippines, Russia, and New Caledonia. Home to the world’s two largest nickel mines based on production in 2022 was Russia, with the Kola MMC Mine’s production amounting to 151,030 metric tons and the Sorowako Mine producing 77,270 metric tons of nickel. Indonesia has the largest reserves of nickel, tied with Australia, and followed by and Brazil in third place. Interestingly, nickel reserves are among the metals and minerals with the least remaining life years, however, because nickel is a highly recyclable material, this poses less of a problem.
Nickel Mining Companies
The leading companies based on nickel production worldwide as of 2022 were Tsingshan Group and Delong from China, Nornickel from Russia, and Jinchuan Group from Hong Kong [China]. Tsingshan Group alone accounted for a 20 percent share of global nickel production that year. The world’s leading nickel producing companies based on market capitalization as of July 2023, however, were a different cohort: BHP from Australia had the leading market cap, at 155.2 billion U.S. dollars. The Brazilian company Vale came in second, with a market cap of nearly 62 billion U.S. dollars…..
In a sweeping long-term agreement, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the two most powerful autocrats, challenge the current political and military order.
n their matching mauve ties, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping last week declared a “new era” in the global order and, at least in the short term, endorsed their respective territorial ambitions in Ukraine and Taiwan. The world’s two most powerful autocrats unveiled a sweeping long-term agreement that also challenges the United States as a global power, nato as a cornerstone of international security, and liberal democracy as a model for the world. “Friendship between the two States has no limits,” they vowed in the communiqué, released after the two leaders met on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics. “There are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
Agreements between Moscow and Beijing, including the Treaty of Friendship of 2001, have traditionally been laden with lofty, if vague, rhetoric that faded into forgotten history. But the new and detailed five-thousand-word agreement is more than a collection of the usual tropes, Robert Daly, the director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, at the Wilson Center, in Washington, told me. Although it falls short of a formal alliance, like nato, the agreement reflects a more elaborate show of solidarity than anytime in the past. “This is a pledge to stand shoulder to shoulder against America and the West, ideologically as well as militarily,” Daly said. “This statement might be looked back on as the beginning of Cold War Two.” The timing and clarity of the communiqué—amid tensions on Russia’s border with Europe and China’s aggression around Taiwan—will “give historians the kind of specific event that they often focus on.”….
…One of the key commodities to realizing this ambition is nickel. Unlike other battery materials such as cobalt and lithium, nickel is unique in not being primarily driven by global battery demand. About 70% of the world’s nickel production is consumed by the stainless steel sector, while batteries take up a modest 5%.
S&P Global Market Intelligence forecasts global primary nickel consumption to rebound year-on-year due to stainless steel capacity expansions in China and Indonesia. Demand outside China is expected to be the main driver of global growth in volume terms in 2022 and global consumption is forecasted to rise at a compound annual growth rate of about 7% between 2020 and 2025.
The battery sector’s nickel demand is also expected to accelerate substantially, with many predicting it to near 35% of total demand by the end of the decade….
With more electric vehicle orders than ever, can our international supply chain keep up with the demand? Or can the U.S. constrict its own battery plants in time?
Consumers have never been more interested in electric cars and climate change goals. But with automakers scrambling to produce more EVs than ever, we could be facing a problematic shortage in the near future.
Jerry, your favorite super car app, breaks down why the predicted lack of inventory could be much worse than the current computer chip shortage.
A Storm Is Brewing
With a looming battery shortage, carmakers are doubling down on mining raw battery materials like lithium, nickel, and cobalt. The shortage would affect not only sourcing materials but processing and building the actual batteries as well.
Some companies are taking battery manufacturing into their own hands and constructing exclusive battery plants.
Rivian Automotive Inc. Chief Executive RJ Scaringe said, “Put very simply, all the world’s cell production combined represents well under 10% of what we will need in 10 years,” according to Market Watch. Essentially, at least 90% of the necessary supply chain to keep up with demand does not exist.
…CNN notes that “the United States sources about 90% of the lithium it uses from Argentina and Chile, and contributes less than 1% of global production of nickel and cobalt, according to the Department of Energy. China refines 60% of the world’s lithium and 80% of the cobalt.”
No Ev Battery Plan For The Long-Term
We all know about Biden’s goal to ensure that at least half of all vehicles will be electric by 2030. We’re talking a $7.5 billion electric vehicle charging infrastructure. California even pledged that by 2035, all cars must be zero-emission vehicles.
Though the Biden administration has pushed for more EV production in the short term, there aren’t long-term plans pertaining to electric batteries. Did you know it can take at least seven to 10 years to set up a mine?
Unfortunately, the U.S. is very dependent on foreign countries that have the manufacturing capacity and raw materials that we don’t.
If for political reasons China shut down the world’s electric vehicle transition, what happens then? It’s also possible that China could restrict “exports of lithium hydroxide to give its domestic electric battery and vehicle manufacturers an advantage,” according to CNN.
As you can imagine, the price for critical battery metals has shot through the roof. According to CNN, “Some automakers like Tesla have made deals with suppliers of raw materials recently, which may help insulate them from shortages.”
If you’ve looked into buying an electric car recently, you’re very familiar with the federal tax credit awarded to EV car owners.
According to CNN, “The government has offered subsidies for electric vehicle purchases and charging infrastructure, but the mining sector hasn’t seen similar support, the battery metals experts say.”
Electric vehicle battery costs soared in 2022. But that doesn’t seem to have slowed the pace of automakers planning to adopt ever larger battery packs to satisfy ever-higher EV driving range claims.
As Bloomberg recently calculated, using EV models from the U.S., Europe, and China, the average pack size is now around 80 kwh, from in the vicinity of 40 kwh in 2018, and the growth trend is expected to continue for some years.
Meanwhile, average global EV range is now at 210 miles—up dramatically versus the average range of 143 miles in 2018.
That also means average EVs are less efficient, the byproduct of a shift to larger EVs.
EV driving range has been increasing at a rate of about 10% each year. Bloomberg sees the market finally reaching a ceiling in its demand for more range at 250-310 miles depending on the size of the EV, with the smallest city cars well below that range.
[….]
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the Silverado EV’s pack, topping 200 kwh, represents $25,000 to $27,000 of direct cost to GM. That happens to be as much as a well-equipped 2024 Chevrolet Trax crossover, or a base 2024 Chevrolet Trailblazer SUV.
The Chevy Silverado EV won’t even have the biggest battery among full-size electric trucks. Ram plans a gigantic 229-kwh pack for its upcoming Ram 1500 REV.
The Silverado EV’s battery pack has more than twice the capacity versus that of the top Lucid Air that can go more than 500 miles on a charge. It’s also enough to power an average American house for almost three weeks, based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2021 household daily average of 10.632 kwh.
Ford isn’t going to go to 600 miles of range and thinks the sweet spot is around 350 miles. Mazda has said that long-range EVs aren’t the future…..
Global sales of electric cars are set to surge to yet another record this year, expanding their share of the overall car market to close to one-fifth and leading a major transformation of the auto industry that has implications for the energy sector, especially oil. That’s according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) recent report, “Global EV Outlook, 2023”, accessible here [as a PDF], which, in its 142 pages, shines a bright light on the remarkable dynamics that have unfolded in the field of battery demand for Electric Vehicles (EVs). This gallery summarizes the IEA report to navigate six compelling sides of the industry’s transformative journey. It begins with a surge in battery demand for EVs, outlining how, in 2022, it soared by approximately 65%, reaching a colossal 550 GWh from 330 GWh in 2021. This growth, fueled by a 55% increase in electric passenger car registrations, is a global phenomenon, yet it finds its epicenter in China and the United States.
[….]
1. Battery demand by mode and region, 2016–2022:
IEA’s report states that the demand for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries in the automotive sector surged significantly in 2022, rising by approximately 65% to reach 550 GWh, up from about 330 GWh in 2021. This remarkable growth was primarily attributed to the increasing sales of electric passenger cars, which saw new registrations rise by 55% in 2022 compared to the previous year.
In China, the demand for batteries in the automotive industry experienced an even more substantial increase, exceeding 70%. This coincided with an 80% increase in electric car sales in 2022 compared to 2021. However, this upward trajectory in battery demand was somewhat tempered by the rising prevalence of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs).
Meanwhile, in the United States, the demand for vehicle batteries also witnessed robust growth, expanding by approximately 80%, even though electric car sales only saw a comparatively modest increase of around 55% in 2022 relative to the preceding year.
2. Overall supply and demand of battery metals by sector, 2016–2022
The surge in battery demand is spurring the need for essential materials. In 2022, there was still an imbalance between the demand for lithium and its supply, a situation that persisted from 2021. This discrepancy occurred despite a significant 180% rise in production since 2017.
This chart shows that in 2022, EV batteries accounted for approximately 60% of the demand for lithium, 30% for cobalt, and 10% for nickel. In contrast, just five years prior, in 2017, these proportions were roughly 15%, 10%, and 2%, respectively.
The transition to Electric Vehicles (EVs) is picking pace with concentrated efforts to achieve the net-zero carbon scenario by 2050. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that global EV sales reached 6.6 million units in 2021, nearly doubling from the previous year. IEA projects that the number of EVs in use (across all road transport modes excluding two/three-wheelers) is expected to increase from 18 million vehicles in 2021 to 200 million vehicles by 2030, recording an average annual growth of over 30%. The estimation is based on policies announced by governments around the world as of mid-2021. This scenario will result in a sixfold increase in the demand for lithium, a key material used in the manufacturing of EV batteries, by 2030. With increasing EV demand, the industry looks to navigate through the lithium supply disruptions.
Lithium Supply Shortages Are Not Going Away Soon
The global EV market is already struggling with lithium supply constraints. Both lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) and lithium hydroxide (LiOH) are used for the production of EV batteries, but traditionally lithium hydroxide is obtained from processing of lithium carbonate, so the industry is more watchful of lithium carbonate production. BloombergNEF, a commodity market research provider, indicated that the production of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) was estimated to reach around 673,000 tons in 2022, while the demand was projected to exceed 676,000 tons LCE. In January 2023, a leading lithium producer, Albemarle, indicated that the global demand for LCE would expand to 1.8 million metric tons (MMt) (~1.98 million tons) by 2025 and 3.7 MMt (~4 million tons) by 2030. Meanwhile, the supply of LCE is expected to reach 2.9 MMt (~3.2 million tons) by 2030, creating a huge deficit.
There is a need to scale up lithium mining and processing. IEA indicates that about 50 new average-sized mines need to be built to fulfill the rising lithium demand. Lithium as a resource is not scarce; as per the US Geological Survey estimates, the global lithium reserves stand at about 22 million tons, enough to sustain the demand for EVs far in the future.
However, the process of mining and refining the metal is time-consuming and not keeping up pace with the surging demand. As per IEA analysis, between 2010 and 2019, the lithium mines that started production took an average of 16.5 years to develop. Thus, lithium production is not likely to shoot up drastically in a short period of time.
Considering the challenges in increasing the lithium production output, industry stakeholders across the EV value chain are racing to prepare for the anticipated supply chain disruptions.
[….]
The automakers are still healing from the chip shortage, which we talked about in one of our previous articles: Chip Shortage Puts a Brake on Automotive Production. They are now faced with lithium supply constraints which are not expected to ease down for a couple of years. And then there is also a looming threat of a shortage of other minerals such as graphite, nickel, cobalt, etc., which are also critical for the production of EV components. While the world is determined and excited about the EV revolution, the transition is going to be challenging.
So challenging in fact that GOOGLE years ago admitted the problem:
We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
[…..]
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
Google Joins the Common Sense Crew On Renewable Energies ~ Finally! (RPT)
Here’s what could happen if demand outstrips supply.
The automotive industry could be in for a shock, with a new report predicting that a lithium shortage is on the horizon. Citing BMI, a research unit of Fitch Solutions, CNBC reports that by 2025, demand will outstrip supply. The BMI report puts this down to China’s soaring appetite for the alkali metal.
“We expect an average of 20.4% year-on-year annual growth for China’s lithium demand for EVs alone over 2023-2032,” reads the report. Lithium is an essential component in electric vehicle batteries. It is used in most battery packs, including those found in popular vehicles such as the Tesla Model S. According to Euronews, the electric sedan uses approximately 26 pounds of lithium in its battery pack.
While China’s lithium demand will increase by 20.4% year-on-year, the country’s supply will only grow by 6% over the same time. It’s worth noting that China is the world’s third-largest lithium producer after Australia and Chile…..
Ever since Benjamin Franklin used the rattlesnake to represent the 13 Colonies, its meaning has been debated, most notably as part of the Gadsden Flag, which includes those four iconic words: Don’t Tread on Me. But what was its original intent? Who used it first, and what were they seeking to portray? We tried to answer those questions, and for additional context, brought in Peter Ansoff, President of the North American Vexillological Association — the world’s largest organization of flag enthusiasts and scholars. Relying on primary sources and proprietary research, Peter describes the (probable) first time the Gadsden Flag flew; the uniquely American roots of the rattlesnake; the ebbs and flows of the rattlesnake as a symbol; and how both have been used in more recent political movements.
The Gadsden Flag: The American Revolutionary period was a time of intense but controlled individualism – when self-directing responsible individuals again and again decided for themselves what they should do, and did it- without needing anyone else to give them an assignment or supervise them in carrying it out.
Such a person was the patriot Colonel Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina. He had seen and liked a bright yellow banner with a hissing, coiled rattlesnake rising up in the center, and beneath the serpent the same words that appeared on the Striped Rattlesnake Flag – Don’t Tread On Me. Colonel Gadsden made a copy of this flag and submitted the design to the Provincial Congress in South Carolina. Commodore Esek Hopkins, commander of the new Continental fleet, carried a similar flag in February, 1776, when his ships put to sea for the first time.
Hopkins captured large stores of British cannon and military supplies in the Bahamas. His cruise marked the salt-water baptism of the American Navy, and it saw the first landing of the Corps of Marines, on whose drums the Gadsden symbol was painted.
A Colorado Springs school has reversed course after booting a 12-year-old boy off campus for refusing to remove a patch on his backpack depicting the patriotic “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flag.
According to video footage, administrators at The Vanguard Secondary School had told a seventh grader named Jaiden that he could not step on campus while wearing the backpack with the patriotic patch. Staff at the charter school, part of Harrison School District 2, reportedly argued that the banner featuring a rattlesnake and the words “Don’t Tread on Me” is associated with “slavery” and the “slave trade.”
Yet The Vanguard School Board of Directors sent a message to the community Wednesday reversing course.
“The Vanguard School Board of Directors called an emergency meeting,” reads the message from the board, which was posted online by Connor Boyack, president of Libertas Institute. “From Vanguard’s founding, we have proudly supported our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the ordered liberty that all Americans have enjoyed for almost 250 years.”
“The Vanguard School recognizes the historical significance of the Gadsden flag and its place in history,” the message adds. “This incident is an occasion for us to reaffirm our deep commitment to a classical education in support of these American principles.”
“At this time, the Vanguard School Board and the District have informed the student’s family that he may attend school with the Gadsden flag patch visible on his backpack.”….
MORE INFO:
REPORT: School Removes 12-Year-Old From Class Over Revolutionary War Flag Patch (DAILY CALLER)
Colorado Boy Removed From Class Over ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ Patch (WASHINGTON TIMES)
Colorado Controversy Raises Questions Over the Meaning of the Gadsden Flag [Updated] (JONATHAN TURLEY)
The Meaning Of The Gadsden Flag, ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ Symbol That Got Colorado Boy Briefly Booted From School (NY POST)
School TREADS ON KID Over ‘Racist’ Gadsden Flag Patch (SEAN SPICER)
I have to say that my jaw hit the floor for the reason why this flag was banned… because the Washington Post said. Lol. What, does everyone go off of NYT and WaPo articles? The FBI? The CIA? Special Counsels? School districts? I guess the difference between the school district and the FBI is that they didn’t leak the false info to WaPo, then use the article as evidence to get a FISA Warrant.
Also used for “scholarly” support? Oregon Live, The Conversation, and Military. com.
Here is the email noting why the flag was being banned initially. Jeff Yokum literally says, “I am providing you the rationale for determining the Gadsden Flag is considered an unacceptable symbol.” And then links left leaning articles. Lol.
The response from the mom was awesome! here is THE BLAZE-TV talking about it:
A 12-year-old boy from Colorado Springs is standing up to his school’s policy that he cannot wear the “Don’t Tread On Me” Gadsden flag because it is supposedly racist. Jaiden was taken out of the classroom because his backpack had a flag patch on the back, and he refused to take it off. His mother went up to the school to defend her son, and she taught school officials just exactly what the flag symbolized and that it is not, in fact, tied to slavery.
JUST AN ASIDE: The female host mentions the “okay” symbol as used by white supremacists. This was not the case toill after 4-Chan posted it as a hoax, and the Left and the media (MSM) fell for it and pushed it as true did the racist whites start using it:
How did it become connected to “white power”?
It started in early 2017 as a hoax. Anonymous users of 4chan, an anonymous and unrestricted online message board, began what they called “Operation O-KKK,” to see if they could trick the wider world — and especially, liberals and the mainstream media — into believing that the innocuous gesture was actually a clandestine symbol of white power.
“We must flood Twitter and other social media websites with spam, claiming that the OK hand signal is a symbol of white supremacy,” one of the users posted, going on to suggest that everyone involved create fake social media accounts “with basic white girl names” to propagate the notion as widely as possible.
The 4chan hoax succeeded all too well and ceased being a hoax: Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white nationalists began using the gesture in public to signal their presence and to spot potential sympathisers and recruits. For them, the letters formed by the hand were not O and K, but W and P, for “white power”.
JUSTICE THOMAS
Like an upload discussed regarding Trump [and really “conservative ideals”] being punk, this is the new punk-rock.
Benny Johnson interviews Based Jaiden:
I sat down with Based Jaiden, the Patriot who stood up to his school — and won, after they tried to get him to remove his Gadsden Flag patch from his backpack for a meme review!
The Governor of Colorado even commented on the issue:
That’s right!
Here is a portion of an excellent article by PATRIOT WOOD discussing the Gadsden Flag:
It was also used by the Continental Marines as an early motto flag. The use of rattlesnakes as a symbol of the American colonies can be traced back to the publications of Benjamin Franklin. (MORE)
LEGAL INSURRECTION has this perfectly times story to throw in the face of the world Western “do-gooders.”
A new study from Europe suggests those paper straws may contain “forever chemicals” that are harmful to both humans and the environment and were observed more often than in a sample of plastic straws.
Belgian researchers tested 39 straw brands from restaurants and retailers for synthetic chemicals known as poly and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The study found that the majority of straws contained those chemicals, but they were most common in those made from paper and bamboo.
The chemicals are referred to as “forever chemicals” as they can remain for thousands of years in the environment. The chemicals have been associated with health issues including thyroid disease, increased cholesterol, liver damage and kidney and testicular cancer and can harm the environment as well.
Of the brands tested, 90% of the paper straws contained PFAS, compared to 80% of bamboo straws, 75% of plastic straws and 40% of glass straws. None of the steel straws contained the chemicals.
I had a perfectly lovely “Lava Flow” cocktail ruined by a paper straw that disintegrated on me during my last vacation. I, for one, will encourage a return to sanity and plastic straws.
Next, a new study suggests substituting single-use plastic cups with their paper counterparts is not the environmentally friendly solution that was once believed.
Findings from the University of Gothenburg published in Environmental Pollution reveal that paper cups, once discarded in the environment, can cause harm due to toxic chemicals. In their study, researchers examined the impact of disposable cups crafted from various materials on butterfly mosquito larvae, discovering that paper and plastic cups exhibited comparable levels of toxic damage.
…The researchers explained that paper used in food packaging lacks resistance to fats and water, requiring the application of a surface coating to enhance its performance. This coating, typically made of plastic material, safeguards the paper from contact with substances like coffee.
In contemporary packaging, this plastic film is frequently composed of a bioplastic known as polylactide (PLA). Unlike conventional plastics derived from fossil fuels, bioplastics like PLA are sourced from renewable materials, such as corn, cassava, or sugarcane. While PLA is often considered biodegradable, indicating its ability to break down more rapidly than traditional oil-based plastics under specific conditions, recent research suggests that it can still possess toxic properties.
“Bioplastics do not break down effectively when they end up in the environment, in water. There may be a risk that the plastic remains in nature, and resulting microplastics can be ingested by animals and humans, just as other plastics do. Bioplastics contain at least as many chemicals as conventional plastic,” said lead researcher Bethanie Carney Almroth, professor of Environmental Science at the Department of Biology and Environmental Science at the University of Gothenburg.
Personally, I find plastics greatly contribute to my quality of life. I am very skeptical of the dangers associated with “microplastics,” especially when such analysis fails to consider the benefits of plastic…..
…Scientists and environmental advocates expressed alarm about this tsunami of waste from the jump. They foresaw the dire ecological ramifications of our mask waste — especially once those masks made their inevitable way into the earth’s waterways. Elastic loops pose entanglement hazards for turtles, birds, and other animals. Fish could eat the plastic-fiber ribbons that unfurl from a discarded mask’s body. Then, there is the untold menace to human health that would likely present, at the microscopic level, once masks began to disintegrate.
Now, two years into the pandemic, governments have had ample time to grapple with this serious conundrum: How do we keep people safe from a highly communicable pathogen without unleashing an environmental catastrophe? But instead of heeding the chorus of expert warnings and pouring money into biodegradable and reusable alternatives, world leaders have ignored the problem. And once the immediate public-health emergency superseded ecological concerns — the heads of Big Plastic made sure it stayed that way.
“The plastics industry saw COVID as an opportunity,” John Hocevar, the oceans campaign director at Greenpeace USA, told me from his office in Washington, D.C. “They worked hard to convince policymakers and the general public that reusables were dirty and dangerous, and that single-use plastic is necessary to keep us safe.”
Stateside, Big Plastic’s PR campaign may have hit its apex in July 2020, when the president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association testified before Congress to argue that single-use plastic was a pandemic health necessity, stating that “plastic saves lives.”
The fear-mongering worked. The global consumption of single-use plastics has increased by up to 300% since the pandemic began, according to a 2021 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report. The plastic industry’s canny COVID strategy also provided a plausible cover for government inertia in funding sustainable solutions to disposable masks.
[….]
The need to address the growing pile of discarded masks has only grown over the course of the pandemic. A December 2021 study reported a 9,000% rise in mask litter in the UK during the first seven months of the pandemic. And as more transmissible variants like Delta and Omicron led public-health officials to promote the use of heavy-duty disposable masks and respirators like KN95s and nonsurgical N95s — instead of the less-protective reusable cloth models that were encouraged earlier in the outbreak — it is clear that companies will be cranking out disposable masks for months to come.
As we enter our third year of COVID-19, research not only supports environmentalists’ early fears surrounding mask pollution in waterways but has introduced new concerns. Sarper Sarp, a professor of chemical engineering at Swansea University in Wales, led a contamination study that tested nine readily available single-use masks. After submerging the masks in water and letting them sit, Sarp and his team discovered both micro- and nanoplastic particles released from every single one. The leachate from those masks — that is, the particles they emitted into fluid — amounted to a sort of toxic tea.
The masks were also found to expel nanoparticles of silicon and heavy metals like lead, cadmium, copper, and even arsenic. Sarp says that he was astonished by what he and the team found after a relatively brief period of submersion, and by the quantity of particles released by each mask. The masks released hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of toxic particles — particles that can potentially disrupt entire marine food chains and contaminate drinking water.
The presence of silicon nanoparticles was of particular concern. Silicon is a common material in healthcare products, easy to sterilize and maintain. “But when it comes to nano size,” said Sarp, “it’s a whole different story.”
Microplastic particles are shed by all sorts of single-use plastics, from water bottles to grocery bags. While hardly ideal for marine ecosystems, Sarp explains that these particles can be filtered to a significant extent by our digestive systems and lungs. But nanoparticles — of plastic, silicon, or other materials — are so minute in size that they can breach cell walls and damage DNA, affecting both human and nonhuman life-forms at the cellular level. Recent research on silicon nanoparticles, in particular, has shown that if a particle is very small in nano scale, it can act almost as a tiny, carcinogenic bomb. Multiply that by a minimum of several hundred per mask, at a rate of 50,000 masks disposed per second, and the scope of the dilemma grows vivid.
“I think this is a bit of an urgent situation, as both a scientist and as an environmental expert,” Sarp said….
On my Facebook I linked a story from LIFE SITE quoting a DAILY MAIL article about harmful chemicals from masks worn to “combat” covid.
Here is the gist of my Facebook post:
New study finds extended use of ‘best’ COVID masks may cause cancer, liver damage
South Korean researchers found that KFAD and KF94 disposable masks, South Korea’s equivalent of N95 masks made out of the same material, release eight times the EPA’s recommended safety limit of toxic volatile organic compounds.
As some institutions in the United States begin to reimpose COVID-19 mask mandates, a new study suggests that the types of masks billed as most effective may actually contain dangerous and potentially even cancer-inducing chemicals.
The Daily Mailreports that according to a study by researchers from South Korea’s Jeonbuk National University, published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety and on the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) website, KFAD and KF94 disposable masks release eight times the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) recommended safety limit of toxic volatile organic compounds (TVOCs).
It was immediately “fact-checked“, and this is the reason for this post.
The study also wasn’t published by the NIH, but by a scientific journal unaffiliated with the NIH.
[….]
In the wake of this news, a Daily Mail article published on 27 August 2023 claimed that a “mask study published by NIH suggests N95 Covid masks may expose wearers to dangerous level of toxic compounds linked to seizures and cancer”.
[….]
Finally, the study was published in the journal of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, not by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), as the Mail claimed. The journal is part of the MEDLINE database, which is maintained by the U.S. Library of Medicine. That the study is made available on the NIH website doesn’t mean the NIH published it, just as a book being part of a lending library’s collection doesn’t mean it’s published by the library.
Firstly, all the articles I have seen clearly state the NIH wasn’t the author of the study, but merely shared it. Here is this portion of the “fact-check”
But a study quietly re-shared by the National Institutes of Health in spring
[….]
The study was published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety and on the NIH’s website.
[….]
The NIH said: ‘Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.’
N o w h e r ein the Daily Mail article do they say the NIH was the origin of the study, nor did they even hint at it. Everything the “fact check” said the Daily Mail article said. On to the next part. No matter the link you post on Facebook, you get the same dumb “check”:
But a study quietly re-shared by the National Institutes of Health in spring [….] The study was published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety and on the NIH’s website, but the NIH pointed out that didn’t mean they accepted its conclusions: The NIH said: “Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.” — RED STATE
…published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety and on the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) website [….] The NIH website contains a disclaimer that it does not necessarily endorse studies it publishes… —LIFE SITE
So the “fact-check” misses the truth embedded in all these articles.
Another point they note is this regarding the study the “check” says:
While KF94 and N95 masks are considered to be functionally comparable, it’s important to note that the study’s results suggest that VOC levels differ depending on the material used to make the mask. Based on the study’s Table 5, the KF94 masks tested in the study were composed primarily of polypropylene and polyurethane nylon. Most N95 masks use polypropylene, according to Meedan’s Health Desk. The study didn’t test any N95 mask, so it doesn’t offer data about N95 masks that allows us to objectively compare VOC levels between N95 and KF94 masks.
What is laughable is that the “check” acts like this is a big difference. That is between the materials used in KF94 (polypropylene and polyurethane nylon) and the N95 (polypropylene). NEW YORK MAGAZINEbelow that both “are made of the same synthetic material and [also] filter out and capture 95 percent of particles in the air”. And REUTERSalso likewise says, “[t]hese masks and their international counterparts known as KN95s and KF94s are often made of multiple layers of polypropylene, a synthetic fiber.”
KF94
N95
They are essentially the same exact mask, one has an extra layer, almost like a second mask, across the front. It is disingenuous for this “fact check” to say “we don’t know because this exact mask “model number” wasn’t tested.
At any rate, the conclusion of study everyone is talking about has this… I will emphasize the part that caught my eye:
As the number of problems that require mask wearing (including air pollution and COVID-19) grows, masks are increasingly important. Now that masks are all but required, the harmful chemicals that can be released from them must be evaluated. In this study, VOCs generated from various types of masks, including commonly used KF94 disposable masks, were assessed. The types and concentrations of VOCs that humans are likely to be exposed to from these masks under various conditions (i.e., emission time, temperature, and mask types) were calculated and compared. This study demonstrated that disposable masks (KF94) released higher concentrations of TVOCs in comparison to cotton masks, with values of 3730 ± 1331 µg m–3 for KF94 and 268 ± 51.6 µg m–3 for cotton masks. The concentrations of TVOCs in KF94 masks are high enough to pose a concern based on indoor air quality guidelines established by the German Federal Environment Agency. However, when KF94 masks were opened and left undisturbed for 30 min at room temperature, TVOC concentrations significantly decreased to 724 ± 5.86 µg m–3 (a 78.2 ± 9.45% reduction from levels measured immediately upon opening). It is clear that particular attention must be paid to the VOCs associated with the use of KF94 masks their effects on human health. Based on our findings, we suggest that prior to wearing a KF94 mask, each product should be opened and not worn for at least 30 min, thereby reducing TVOC concentrations to levels that will not impair human health.
FLASHBACK | Old Posts
August 2nd, 2018
In light of the moonbat jihad against drinking straws (see here, here, and here) having reached the point that providing customers with straws is now punishable with jail time in Santa Barbara, see if you can guess whether this is a legitimate story or fake news from the Babylon Bee…. (MOONBATTERY)
MOONBATTERY has more on the origin of this “500-million” number:
You may have heard that Starbucks — ever at the vanguard of moonbattery — has proclaimed that it will eliminate all single-use plastic straws by 2020. You may also have heard that the lids it will use that allow drinking without a straw require more plastic than if they just stuck with the straws. You may be aware that the liberal jihad against plastic straws is reaching critical mass:
In July, Seattle imposed America’s first ban on plastic straws. Vancouver, British Columbia, passed a similar ban a few months earlier. There are active attempts to prohibit straws in New York City, Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. A-list celebrities from Calvin Harris to Tom Brady have lectured us on giving up straws. Both National Geographic and The Atlantic have run long profiles on the history and environmental effects of the straw. Viceis now treating their consumption as a dirty, hedonistic excess.
It began with a 9-year-old boy named Milo Cress and his 2011 campaign, “Be Straw Free,” which launched to raise awareness about plastic waste.
His big finding? Americans use more than 500 million drinking straws daily, enough to fill 125 school buses. That figure has become highly touted since, referenced in straw ban coverage from The New York Times and National Geographic to reports from the National Park Service (and USA TODAY).
Young Milo came up with the outlandishly improbable 500 million straws per day stat himself. Adult moonbats ran with it…..
August 26, 2018
I combine two different segments of John and Ken discussing California’s #FakeNews regarding straws and the environment. (The first segment is from Thursday’s show, the second is from Wednesday’s show [starts at the 7:15 mark]) Some funny and frustrating stuff.
Everyone expects the “Spanish Inquisition” nowadays because this is the tactic of the Left to silence common sense and disagreement. And science… biology.
In fact, I am sure more people [by far] have been affected — burned at the stake in todays modern parlance — in 10-years than the real Spanish Inquisition in it’s entirety. During the 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition, between 3,000-5,000* people were sentenced to death (about 1 per month). The Church executed no one. Still horrible, but the Left has literally killed thru “communal governments” [communism and fascism] many [many] more people in 100 years; and now through modern-day witch hunts.
Kim Russell was gaslit, chastised into silence, and forced to express remorse by college administrators for opposing males competing in women’s sports. Here’s why she refuses to apologize.
Kim Russell, the head women’s lacrosse team coach at Oberlin College in Ohio, spoke out against the college for retaliating against her after she shared a social media post critical of male athletes participating in women’s sports, according to a video released by Independent Women’s Forum on Tuesday.
Russell shared a social media post on her personal Instagram account in support of Emma Weyant, who had placed second behind former transgender athlete Lia Thomas during the 500-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championship, after the competition took place, she said in a video interview with Independent Women’s Forum. A student athlete forwarded the post to the college’s athletic director, who brought Russell in for several meetings with administrators and students where she was chastised for her views.
“I felt like I was burned at the stake. I felt like I was stoned and hanged all at the same time,” Russell said in the video, recalling a meeting held with the team. “It was what I would call the mob mentality . . . That meeting turned into anybody being able to say anything they didn’t like about my coaching style or my assistant’s coaching, anything.”
[….]
Russell still works at Oberlin College, but is unsure of how long she will continue to have a job at the college, according to USA TODAY. She admitted that going public with her story might result in negative repercussions, but wanted to speak out so that other women would feel empowered to stand up for themselves, she told the outlet.
“Right now I feel like women are afraid to speak up for women because they’re afraid to be canceled and afraid to be looked at as a part of a hate group when this is not about hate,” Russell told USA Today.
A 2023 survey found that nearly 70% of Americans do not support transgender athletes competing in categories outside of their biological gender, according to NBC News.
* In recent years, however, the Vatican opened up its secret archives for historical investigation. Inquisition records that were made by and for the Inquisition were allowed to be researched for the first time in history. Since then, the above facts have been generally discoverable in modern history books (whether Catholic or not). Corrected Inquisition history can be found in sources such as Inquisition by Edward Peters and The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision by Henry Kamen. Comparative secular documentaries include The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition (BBC) and the more sensationalistic The Spanish Inquisition (History Channel).
The years in which the Inquisition was extremely active was between 1480 and 1530. Henry Kamen estimates about 2,000 executed, based on the documentation of the autos-da-fé, the great majority being conversos of Jewish origin. He offers striking statistics: 91.6% of those judged in Valencia between 1484 and 1530 and 99.3% of those judged in Barcelona between 1484 and 1505 were of Jewish origin. (WIKI, and Kamen’s book).
converso, (Spanish: “converted”), one of the Spanish Jews who adopted the Christian religion after a severe persecution in the late 14th and early 15th centuries and the expulsion of religious Jews from Spain in the 1490s. In the minds of many Roman Catholic churchmen the conversos were still identified as Jews, partly because they remained within the Jewish communities in the cities and partly because their occupations (merchants, doctors, tailors) had been monopolized by the Spanish Jewish people. Such identification caused many Christians to regard conversos as a subversive force within the church.
In 1499 a staunch and somewhat fanatical Roman Catholic, Pedro Sarmiento, wrote the anti-Semitic Sentencia-Estatuto, which prohibited conversos from holding public or ecclesiastical offices and from testifying against Spanish Christians in courts of law. That statute was followed by the 16th-century laws of purity of blood (limpieza de sangre) which further strengthened the laws against anyone of Jewish ancestry and were more racial than religious in nature. It was not until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that some of the legalized prejudice against Jews in Spain was modified.
In Castile the incidence of executions was probably higher. In the auto de fe at Ciudad Real on 23 February 1484, thirty people were burnt alive and forty in effigy; in the auto at Valladolid on 5 January 1492, thirty-two were burnt alive. The executions were, however, sporadic and concentrated only in the early years. In rounded terms, it is likely that over three-quarters of all those who perished under the Inquisition in the three centuries of its existence, did so in the first half-century. Lack of documentation, however, makes it impossible to arrive at totally reliable figures. One good estimate, based on documentation of the autos de fe, is that 250 people were burnt in person in the Toledo tribunal between 1485 and 1501 . Since this tribunal and that of Seville and Jaen were among the few in Castile to have had an intense level of activity, it would not be improbable to suggest a figure five times higher, around one thousand persons, as a rough total for those executed in the tribunals of Castile in the early period. Taking into account all the tribunals of Spain up to about 1530, it is unlikely that more than two thousand people were executed for heresy by the Inquisition.
This will be my first installment to a legal challenge just getting underway in keeping Trump from office. Some say this is new, it is not. Some say Trump being charged with “insurrection” isn’t needed, it is. David Frum correctly says the Court will decide in the end. Frum also notes that if this tactic is opened up, our body-politic will be riddled with keeping our political foes from office. More distortions of the law will surely come as the Left uses Lawfare to attack the “Democracy” they say they want to protect. As more is written on these challenges and the hyperbole from the MSM and politicians splash into our lives, I will be posting on this more in the future.
Two Federalist Society law professors have published their findings stating that Trump is disqualified from serving as President based on the originalist interpretation of the 14th amendment ban on anyone who has engaged in insurrection against the United States from running for office. (MTN)
Donald Trump is ineligible to become president again, leading conservative scholars argue. “The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 says that anybody who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and thereafter engages in or gives aid and comfort to an insurrection cannot hold any office under the United States, period,” Harvard University Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus Laurence Tribe tells Joy Reid. (YAHOO NEWS)
Firstly, as much as the Left opines that an insurrection conviction isn’t needed, it is, in reality, in order to bar Trump from office. If the Left tries to push this thru without a solid legal ground, the electorate will clearly note this and there will be hell to pay.
And, I assume, in the end the Supes will need to get involved. Especially if pushed thru before the election like Trump’s 2nd shampeachment.
More on SCOTUS from David Frum below.
COURT CASE ALREADY STARTED
Here is a recent news story of a Florida case already being pushed thru:
A Florida lawyer is challenging former President Trump’s ability to run for president in 2024 under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, citing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Lawrence Caplan, a tax attorney in Palm Beach County, filed the challenge in federal court Thursday, pointing to a clause in the amendment that says those who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government cannot hold office.
Here is a video, also Left leaning, explaining the issue well:
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on a new disqualification lawsuit filed against Donald Trump in Florida federal court under the 14th Amendment Section 3.
PUSHING BACK ON THIS IDEA
[As an aside: just to note officially on my site, the current cases against Trump are being rushed through the courts, however, Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley both say isn’t going to happen.]
….Despite the scenes of the attack on the Capitol and extensive investigations, the American people do not seem to agree that Trump took part in an insurrection or rebellion. Almost half the respondents in a THE HILL rejected the claim that the events of Jan. 6 were an actual “insurrection” (with the divide tracking partisan lines), and 76 percent viewed it as a “protest gone too far.”
Other considerations also call into question the claim that Trump instigated an “insurrection” in the constitutional sense. If it were clear that Trump engaged in insurrection, the Justice Department should have acted on the Jan. 6 Committee’s referral for prosecution on that charge. Special Counsel Jack Smith should have indicted him for insurrection or seditious conspiracy, which remain federal crimes. If it were obvious that Trump had committed insurrection, Congress should have convicted him in the two weeks between Jan. 6 and Inauguration Day. Instead, the House impeached Trump for indictment to insurrection but the Senate acquitted him.
The Senate’s acquittal is the only official finding by a federal or state institution on the question of whether Trump committed insurrection. The failure of the special counsel to charge insurrection and the Senate to convict in the second impeachment highlights a serious flaw in the academic theory of disqualification.
According to Luttig and Tribe, it appears self-evident that Trump committed insurrection. They assume Trump violated the law without any definitive finding by any federal authority. According to their view, he must carry the burden of proof to show he is not guilty of insurrection or rebellion — a process that achieves the very opposite of our Constitution’s guarantee of due process, which, it so happens, is not just provided for by the Fifth Amendment, but reaffirmed in the same 14th Amendment that contains the disqualification clause. It would be like requiring Barak Obama to prove he was native-born (a constitutional prerequisite for being president) if state election officials disqualified him for being foreign-born.
The Electoral College Chooses Presidents, Not State Officials
If this academic view were correct, it would throw our electoral system into chaos. One of the chief virtues of the Electoral College system is that it decentralizes the selection of the president: State legislatures decide the manner for choosing electors, with each state receiving votes equal to its representation in the House and Senate. States run the elections, which means that hundreds, if not thousands, of city, county, and state officials could execute this unilateral finding of insurrection. A county state election official, for example, could choose to remove Trump’s name from printed ballots or refuse to count any votes in his favor. A state court could order Trump barred from the election. A state governor could refuse to certify any electoral votes in his favor. The decentralization of our electoral system could allow a single official, especially from a battleground state, to sway the outcome of a close race in the 2024 presidential election.
Allowing a single state to wield this much power over the federal government runs counter to broader federalism principles articulated by the Supreme Court. In our nation’s most important decision on the balance of power between the national government and the states, McCullough v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall held that a single state could not impose a tax on the Bank of the United States. Marshall famously observed that “the power to tax is the power to destroy.”
Marshall may well have frowned upon single state officials deciding to eliminate candidates for federal office on their own initiative. The Supreme Court lent further support for this idea in United States Term Limits v. Thornton (1995), which held that states could not effectively add new qualifications for congressional candidates by barring long-time incumbents from appearing on the ballot. Writing for the majority, Justice Stevens argued that allowing states to add term limits as a qualification for their congressional elections conflicted with “the uniformity and national character [of Congress] that the framers sought to ensure.” Allowing state election officials to decide for themselves whether someone has incited or committed insurrection, without any meaningful trial or equivalent proceeding, would give states the ability to achieve what term limits forbid.
[….]
We are not apologists for Trump’s spreading of baseless claims of electoral fraud or his efforts to stop the electoral count on Jan. 6. But as with the weak charges brought by the special counsel, the effort to hold Trump accountable for his actions should not depend on a warping of our constitutional system. Prosecutors should charge him with insurrection if they can prove it and have that conviction sustained on appeal. Congress should disqualify Trump if it can agree he committed the crime. Ultimately, the American people will decide Trump’s responsibility for the events of Jan. 6, but at the ballot box in 2024’s nominating and general elections for president…
TRUMP NOT CHARGED with INSURRECTION
Insurrection is still key in this endeavor, and, as mush as Laurence Tribe thinks it is self evident, the case has not been made. In THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR has a great little article worthy of noting,
For 31 months, the Democrats and their allies in the corporate media have characterized the Capitol Hill chaos that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021 as an “insurrection.” The House of Representatives reinforced this version of events by impeaching then-President Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” The Senate acquitted him, of course. Nonetheless, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack referred the case to the Justice Department for further investigation. Consequently, it was something of a surprise that the formal indictment unsealed last Tuesday by Special Counsel Jack Smith failed to charge Trump with fomenting insurrection.
This must have been particularly frustrating for those who have long insisted that the 14th Amendment prohibits Trump from serving a second presidential term. The primary purpose of the 14th Amendment was, of course, to grant citizenship to emancipated slaves. However, it also includes language in Section 3 that bars anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States]” from holding office in the federal government. This passage was included to prevent former officials of the Confederacy from returning to Congress and creating more mischief. The problem with using this clause against Donald Trump is explained by constitutional law professor Josh Blackman in Reason:
In some legal circles, advocates contend that it is so obvious that Trump committed insurrection. Yet, the special counsel, after studying the issue for months, opted not to bring that charge. Why? Perhaps Smith determined that he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump engaged in insurrection. Or maybe Smith determined there were considerable legal questions about how to obtain such a conviction – most critically, was there an actual insurrection? (Yes, for the Supreme Court to knock Trump off the ballot, you need five votes to say that there was an insurrection as a matter of law – good luck with that!)
It evidently never occurred to the victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome that “insurrection” is a legal term with an actual definition in the U.S. Code. In order to convict former President Trump of this crime, the Special Prosecutor must prove that he fits the following description in 18 U.S.C. § 2383: “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto.” Anyone convicted of insurrection can expect a long prison term and a hefty fine. It would be difficult to convict Trump under this statute, considering that not one participant in the Jan. 6 riot has been charged with insurrection…..
DAVID FRUM’S ATLANTIC PIECE
And it may be a 50-state attempt, which will push it to the Supes sooner rather than later. David Frum, a #NeverTrump guy, notes this will be a failed endeavor by simply stating in his ATLANTIC piece:
“The fourteenth amendment won’t save us from Donald Trump.”
Continuing he states:
….The least of these problems is the legal one: whether Trump’s scheme to seize the presidency by fraud, then violence, amounts to a “rebellion” or an “insurrection” under the amendment. There will be a lot of disagreement on that point, enough to generate litigation. But let’s suppose that the excluders win in court or that the courts abdicate altogether, kicking the dispute back to the elected branches of government as a “political matter.”
In that case, the use of the section to debar candidates would not stop at Trump. It would become a dangerously convenient tool of partisan politics.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Because Section 3’s meaning seemed so obvious in 1866, a lot of the hard questions about its interpretation and application were shrugged off. I’ll nominate just two examples.
First, the section does not apply only to candidates for president—it does not even mention the president. It mentions senators, House members, electors, and civil and military officers of the United States or any state. The section appears to apply to the presidency only as part of that final catchall category.
Second, that phrase “aid and comfort to the enemies thereof”—what does that mean? The language is copied from Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution. But there, the language was drafted to make it difficult to convict an accused person of crime: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment strips away all of the 1787 restrictions: the overt act, the two witnesses, the requirement of public confession. The question of what constitutes “aid and comfort” is left to the judgment of … wait—Section 3 gives no clue about how it should be enforced or by whom. Again, that’s understandable. In 1866, none of this looked complicated. But in a modern context, that enforcement question of a reactivated Section 3 will be nasty.
Consider the scenario in which Section 3 is invoked against Trump in 2024. Although he has won the Republican nomination, Democratic secretaries of state in key states refuse to place his name on their ballots, as a person who engaged in insurrection against the United States. With Trump’s name deleted from some swing-state ballots, President Joe Biden is easily reelected.
But only kind of reelected. How in the world are Republicans likely to react to such an outcome? Will any of them regard such a victory as legitimate? The rage and chaos that would follow are beyond imagining.
And then what? If Section 3 can be reactivated in this way, then reactivated it will be. Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify, and not only for president, but for any race where Democrats present someone who said or did something that can be represented as “aid and comfort” to enemies of the United States. Didn’t progressive Representative Ilhan Omar once seemingly equate al-Qaeda with the U.S. military? Do we think that her political enemies will accept that she was making only a stupid rhetorical point? Earlier this year, Tennessee Republicans tossed out of the legislature two Black Democrats for allegedly violating House rules. Might Tennessee Republicans next deem unruly Democrats “rebels” forbidden ever to run for office again?
Where are the federal courts in all this? Do they actually stand aside as local officials exercise veto power over who’s a loyal enough American to be listed on the ballot for county commissioner? Do they really let the “elected branches” decide? And what would that mean in practice? The section transfers an otherwise presidential prerogative, the pardon power, to Congress. If the courts step back, does that not imply that the House and Senate must somehow find a way to wield the power of the section together?
That seems unlikely. But the alternative of judicial decision is fraught with institutional risks too. Imagine a serious effort to block Trump from appearing on ballots in 2024, and then suppose he challenges that block in court—and ultimately wins a ruling in his favor from the Supreme Court, by a margin of 5–4 or even 6–3. Now the rage and chaos would be reversed. A pro-Trump Thomas-Alito-Gorsuch-Barrett-Kavanaugh majority might obliterate whatever deference the Court still commands among Democrats and liberals. Although much is wrong with the present Court, this country will not be in a better or happier place if it loses its last, imperfect arbiter….
UPDATED ON 09/18/2023 | CNN Transcript
A CNN interview was just pointed out to me where a “not-fan of Trump” said rationally what David Frum said, and that is, allowing states to go down this path will create vindictive cross-fire that will spread through our body-politic:
STERLING: What we need to do is focus on the voters. We have a Constitutional Republic of laws that essentially empowers voters to make decisions. They make good ones. They make bad ones. They generally come out OK. We have to trust the voters in this.And anybody using an electoral scheme or a constitutional interpretation to remove anybody from the ballots is going to be a dangerous precedent.
Because I can guarantee you what happens, it start up from the Bork hearings in ’86. One side does one thing, the other side does something else. The other side blames the last side for doing it. There will be a Republican saying, you have violated your oath of office under the Constitution. I’m barring you from the ballot. That’s all we’re going to see happening.We need to have grown-ups in the room look at the long term implications of these things. Whether we disagree with the individual candidate or loved a individual candidate.
FRUM IS RIGHT
Bottom line?
IN THE END, SCOTUS SAVES THE DAY
And Frum is exactly right on this point as well: Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify. As much as I love the GOP using the Dems tactics against them. Take for instance Mitch McConnell’s warning to Harry Reid, which came to fruition when the Republicans [thankfully] used to get judges onto the bench that were center-right. If this “insurrection/sedition” tactic is unleashed, our system will have a ton of these potholes, forever disrupting the turnover of power peaceably.
ALREADY TRIED
The WASHINGTON TIMES also notes that this effort has already been unsuccessful with other Republican candidates
….According to the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan shared staff to congressional committees and members of Congress, “Invocation of the Disqualification Clause raises a number of novel legal questions involving the activities that could trigger disqualification, the offices to which disqualification might apply, and the mechanisms to enforce disqualification.”
CRS’ analysis of the 14th Amendment relating to the Capitol events adds, “The clause has been seldom used, and the few times it has been used in the past mainly arose out of the Civil War—a very different context from the events of January 6.”
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have joined Free Speech for People with plans to hit Mr. Trump‘s campaign with legal broadsides under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
They have written letters to state election officials requesting them to block Mr. Trump from the ballot and are preparing voter lawsuits and state election board complaints.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War during Reconstruction, disqualifies someone from holding office after taking an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution but later engages in “insurrection or rebellion” against the country.
The clause was intended to deal with Confederate rebels who went to war against the Union or provided aid or comfort to national enemies.
Throughout 2022, liberal organizations such as Free Speech for People and Our Revolution sent letters urging election officials in all 50 states to disqualify Mr. Trump and his allies from qualifying for the ballot.
The groups cited the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, to make a case for barring lawmakers and the former president from running campaigns because of their perceived role in inciting the protest.
Liberal activists’ 2022 legal attempts under the 14th Amendment, however, to throw Republican House lawmakers they contended were “insurrectionists” off ballots in their home states were all unsuccessful.
These lawmakers were Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
A law firm recently filed a lawsuit arguing that former President Donald Trump can be disqualified from the elections. And while this is new, it pulls from an agenda that the establishment has been proposing since 2021. The basis is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 just after the Civil War. It says a person can be banned from election or appointment to any level of government office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The establishment has been arguing this could apply to President Trump’s actions to challenge the 2020 election, and for his alleged role in Jan. 6.
HOWEVER, as pointed out, Joshua Philipp points out this has already been tried, and failed:
EXCERPT ONE:
John Yoo Says That January 6th Was “Thee Most Important Legal Event”
In this excerpted discussion John Yoo notes that the January 6th stuff is not nearly as strong as the Mara-Lago case (and in the fuller video he throws cold water on that as well). John Malcolm also discusses the ability of counsel to delve into all sorts of avenues of legal thought and advice. Jack Smith laid out an argument that undercuts his and Georgia’s entire case [should watch the above linked video for more]:
3.The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He w6as also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful. (HERITAGE FOUNDATION)
EXCERPT TWO:
Insurrection and Sedition Not Part of Indictments | PLUS: Trump’s State of Mind
In this excerpted discussion John Yoo notes the lack of “insurrection” or “sedition” in the indictments. John Malcolm speaks to Trump’s clear words of “peacefully and patriotically marching” – which he says is not in the record of the indictment. Trump’s state of mind is discussed a bit.
EXCERPT THREE:
Brad Raffensperger/Trump Phone Call Dissected by John Malcolm
In this excerpted discussion John Malcolm quickly notes the failure of any criminal law breaking in the phone call between Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Donald Trump regarding the “finding” of votes. The worst of intentions is applied to Trump by those that dislike him, however, the law done well looks beyond people’s opinions of him.
EXCERPT FOUR: A Question About What Type Of Legal Advice John Eastman Gave
This is a question regarding John Eastman’s legal advice from the Q & A portion of the video.
Why is McCulloch v. Maryland considered such an essential case? Prof. David Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin’s Law School explains how McCulloch v. Maryland helped identify fundamental principles of federalism.
“I thought things had changed. I was able to literally, not figuratively, talk Strom Thurmond into voting for the Civil Rights Act before he died. And I thought well maybe there’s real progress. But hate never dies, it just hides.”
There is literally, not figuratively, nothing accurate in Biden’s entire claim. Strom Thurmond voted against the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Joe Biden didn’t graduate college until 1965. He didn’t get out of law school until 1968 and didn’t run for the US Senate until 1972. When exactly did Biden do all of this ‘convincing’?
Like I said, it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between Biden’s lies and Biden losing his mind. But one thing is very clear, the garbage media isn’t going to expose any of this.
FLASHBACK: In 1991, Biden Touts Work W/ Sen. Thurmond To Pass Strict Crack Cocaine Penalties
In 1991, Joe Biden bragged about working with segregationist Strom Thurmond to pass mandatory minimums for a quarter-size of crack cocaine. He praised Thurmond’s help passing laws to incarcerate Black Americans. Racial justice begins by retiring Joe Biden from public life. (YOUTUBE)
“No one has ever shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming… And if it could be shown, then you would have to show that the 97% of emissions which are natural, do not drive global warming. Game over. We are dealing with a fraud.”
Professor Ian Plimer is Australia’s best-known geologist. He is currently professor emeritus of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne and formerly a professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide and head of geology at the University of Newcastle. Mr Plimer is also the former director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies and has published more than 120 specific papers on geology. Professor Plimer was also Managing Editor of Mineralium Deposita, president of the Society for Geology Applied (SGA), president of International Association on the Genesis of Ore Deposits (IAGOD), president of the Australian Geoscience Council and sat on the Earth Sciences Committee of the Australian Research Council for many years. He is most famously known for his controversial book Green Murder
I met John on the streets of NYC and was surprised to see a man with such a faith just picking up bottles. His story reminded me that nobody is perfect, and yet we are all deserving of grace.
