Clinton-Appointed Judge Throws Out Palin Defamation Case Against New York Times – While Jury Still Deliberating

A federal judge on Monday tossed out Sarah Palin’s libel case against the New York Times – while the jury is still deliberating.

The lawsuit centered around a New York Times op-ed that falsely implicated Palin’s political action committee (PAC) for “political incitement” in the shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords.

In June 2017, the same day that a leftist shot Rep. Steve Scalise during a congressional baseball practice, the Times ran an op-ed headlined “America’s Lethal Politics.” The piece falsely claimed that Palin’s PAC had shared a map with 20 Democratic lawmakers, including Giffords, in “stylized crosshairs” prior to her shooting. They claimed that “the link to political incitement was clear.”

Palin says that former editorial page editor James Bennet defamed her by publishing the claim.

U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff, a Clinton appointee tossed out the case and said Palin’s lawyers did not present sufficient evidence against the New York Times.

Politico reported:

A judge has ruled that a libel lawsuit former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin filed against the New York Times over a 2017 editorial should be thrown out because her lawyers failed to produce evidence that the newspaper knew what it wrote about her was false or acted recklessly towards indications it was false.

The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff came as a Manhattan jury was deliberating on Palin’s suit, which claimed the Times defamed her by unfairly linking her to a 2011 shooting spree in Arizona that killed six people and gravely wounded then-Rep. Gabby Giffords.

Rakoff said he would continue to allow the jury to deliberate to a verdict and added that he considers an appeal in the case to be inevitable.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/just-clinton-appointed-judge-throws-palin-defamation-case-new-york-times/

Former lab director sentenced to prison for falsifying results of steel testing on parts for Navy subs

Over 32 years, metallurgist falsified results on steel parts destined for 30 Navy Submarines

https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/former-lab-director-sentenced-prison-falsifying-results-steel-testing-parts-navy-subs

30 fucking months

Former Marine Sentenced to 210 Years in Federal Prison for Using Drugs and Force to Sexually Abuse Young Girls in Cambodia

https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/former-marine-sentenced-210-years-federal-prison-using-drugs-and-force-sexually-abuse

Audit office accuses another federal grant program of favouring Coalition-held seats

https://www.anao.gov.au/sites/default/files/Auditor-General_Report_2021-22_16.pdf

The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has criticised the management of a federal grants program used to improve community safety, finding it favours government-held seats and that decisions are often made without clear and recorded justifications.

Key points:

Peter Dutton was identified as a minister who approved two grants in 2018 which did not meet selection criteria

An assistant minister was also found in the audit to award five applicants a total of $1.3 million for applications which did not meet the criteria

Some religious groups have claimed the government has given preferential treatment to Christian and Jewish groups seeking funds

The $184 million Safer Communities Fund was established in 2016 to address crime and anti-social behaviour by providing schools or at-risk organisations with money for more security cameras or streetlights.

The ANAO found almost 60 per cent of all projects funded since 2016 have been in Coalition-held electorates, compared to 27 per cent in Labor electorates.

"Funding decisions were not appropriately informed by departmental briefings and for the majority of decisions, the basis for the decisions was not clearly recorded," the audit report said.

The audit confirmed current Defence Minister Peter Dutton approved two separate applications worth nearly $200,000 that did not meet the department's selection criteria, after visiting the applicants during an earlier by-election.

In February last year the ABC revealed Mr Dutton overruled his department's recommendations on grant funding when he was home affairs minister.

In April 2021, the ANAO launched its audit into the administration of the scheme.

During Senate estimates hearings on Monday, ANAO official Brian Boyle confirmed it was Mr Dutton who approved the funding during the 2018 Braddon by-election.

"The department went through an exercise after that happened of presenting options to the minister in terms of, 'Do you wish to separately carve out an arrangement for these two to receive funding without any competition or should they be invited to apply and compete with all other applicants through a competitive process'," Mr Boyle said.

"It was then through the assessment process that they didn't come up as being those assessed as the most meritorious, but they were selected for funding in any event."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-15/audit-office-accuses-federal-grant-program-favouring-coalition/100830062

>>15627675

>https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1493336390137958404

Where's Ball Psaki?

>>15627692

He just said the Ottawa protest is unlawful

MOVIE IS GETTING GOOD!

"Hunter's Law" - GOP Reps Introduce New Bill Barring US Gov't From Giving Out Free Crack Pipes

Following last week's revelation by the Washington Free Beacon that the Biden Administration had provided free crack pipes and "safe smoking kits" to drug addicts in San Francisco and elsewhere, it appears two Republican lawmakers have proposed a new bill dubbed "Hunter's Act", which aims to prevent the Biden administration from spending taxpayer dollars on crack pipes and other drug paraphernalia.

Penned by Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Dan Bishop of North Carolina and submitted on Feb. 10, the act’s name is an apparent reference to Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who admitted to struggling with crack addiction in his 2021 memoir "Beautiful Things."

According to the original report from WFB, the federal government had been planning to use some of a $30 million grant program to purchase crack pipes and other items for a 'safe smoking kit'. Since the news broke, the White House has denied that the program existed.

Speaking during a recent interview, Rep. Boebert said that she and Bishop were “standing up and saying, heck no” to the “ridiculous” funding allocation by the Biden Administration. She added that “our tax dollars should not be funding the death and destruction of crack addicts.” While “Republicans just want to give people in need a good job" their rivals from the Democratic party “want to give them crack pipes.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted that crack pipes "were never a part of the kit" and accused the WFB of "inaccurate reporting." She added that smoking kits may have included "alcohol swabs, lip balm, other materials to promote hygiene and reduce the transmission of diseases like HIV and hepatitis", but not crack pipes.

Despite all the official denials, the Biden administration has also caught some flak from nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, which lamented the removal of "pipes from safe smoking equipment" as "deeply disappointing," calling it a "missed opportunity to be preventative of more deaths due to overdose."

As we noted when the reports of the Biden Admin doling out crack pipes first broke, we couldn't help but share the following (heavily edited) video:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hunters-law-gop-reps-introduce-new-bill-barring-us-govt-giving-out-free-crack-pipes

The Mask Is Off: Illinois Has No Science Behind Its School Masking Mandate

Last week an Illinois reporter finally asked what scientific support the state has for mandating masks on school children. At the Wednesday press conference, Gov. JB Pritzker had Dr. Emily Landon, one of his top COVID policy advisors, give the answer.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has a whole web page on it, Landon answered, and she vaguely referenced some Minnesota study (which we cannot find and Landon did not identify). The video is here…

That’s it. That’s all we have ever gotten from the Pritzker Administration on its science behind masks on kids, so that is what we will look at in this column.

There was no follow up question and, as always, no reporter confronted Pritzker or his advisors with the vast evidence and expert opinion now published showing that masks on school kids have little if any value, which in any event is outweighed by harm being done to our children.

Since Illinois has blindly followed all CDC guidance on COVID, we will also look beyond the web page Landon referred to and consider other claims the CDC and Landon have made on the subject.

The CDC page Landon apparently was referring to is linked here. It’s what the Illinois Department of Public Health sent me when I asked for it and any other science they cared to offer. They also referred me to Landon directly, whom I emailed for the same, though she never responded.

Look through that CDC page yourself if you want. Go to the “Mask use” section. That’s the only portion relevant to whether masking school kids is worth it. Among the problems that should be immediately apparent:

The studies cited on the CDC page lump masking in with a variety of other mitigation measures, rendering them useless as a measure of the efficacy of masks on children.

All the supposed science was written before the December arrival of the omicron variant, rendering it meaningless. Omicron defeats masks far more easily because it is far more contagious than earlier variants and accounts for almost all current COVID infections.

Most importantly, none of the material cited by the CDC attempts to weigh any supposed benefit of masks on school children against the vast harm done to them and their education.

Illinois has long followed CDC guidance reflexively and without scrutiny, yet it’s difficult to imagine how anybody following the subject affords any credibility to the CDC.

https://wirepoints.org/the-mask-is-off-illinois-has-no-science-behind-its-school-masking-mandate-wirepoints/

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/mask-illinois-has-no-science-behind-its-school-masking-mandate

Fmr DNI Ratcliffe: I Expect ‘Quite a Few More Indictments’ to Come from Durham Probe

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said Monday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” that he expected “quite a few more indictments” from Department of Justice special counsel John Durham’s investigation.

Anchor Bill Hemmer said, “On these new allegations from John Durham, the special counsel, he is still at work, folks. He claims in a court filing that multiple Clinton staffers hired a technology company to infiltrate servers at Trump Tower and then at the White House in order to establish a link between Donald Trump and Russia.”

Ratcliffe said, “To remind viewers, it was in September of 2020 that the first time the public found out when I declassified John Brennan’s handwritten notes, there was a Hillary Clinton campaign plan to create fake Russia collusion allegations or scandal involving Donald Trump. I met with John Durham in my capacity as DNI to share with him some of those documents that have been now declassified but also many other intelligence community documents that evidence what that Hillary Clinton campaign plan involved and who was involved with it that still remain classified. This latest filing as it relates to one of Hillary Clinton’s lawyers Michael Sussman, all of these filings are details the public is now finding out as John Durham is alleging it as parts of what was the Hillary Clinton campaign plan to falsely accuse Donald Trump of collusion with Russia.”

He added, “I would expect there to be frankly quite a few more indictments. I think this conspiracy — I do think there was a criminal conspiracy —is broad and deep. I hope that, obviously, John Durham is moving carefully. But I would expect and anticipate based on the intelligence I’ve seen there will be quite a few more indictments relating to this.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/02/14/fmr-dni-ratcliffe-i-expect-quite-a-few-more-indictments-to-come-from-durham-probe/

Issue of Ukraine’s membership in any alliances not on agenda — German chancellor

The freedom of the choice of alliances, the fundamental Helsinki principles cannot be a subject for discussion, Olaf Scholz also pointed out

KIEV, February 14. /TASS/. The issue of Ukraine’s membership in any alliances is not on the agenda, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday after talks with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev.

"The issue of [Ukraine’s] membership in alliances practically is not on the agenda" he said, adding that it is strange that Moscow presents this matter as "a serious foreign policy problem." "However, it is a challenge we are facing. When something that is absolutely out of the question becomes a problem," he said. He stressed that the freedom of the choice of alliances, "the fundamental Helsinki principles" cannot be a subject for discussion. Nevertheless, he called for reckoning with the reality.

He evaded the question about possible weapons supplies from Germany to Ukraine, saying only that the German government considers each such request individually. "I would like to repeat once again that Germany provides the biggest financial support to Ukraine and it will continue this way on our part," he pledged. "As for certain possibilities we have, we are considering requests under a new pattern and when the check is over, we will be able to say something."

The West and Kiev have recently been echoing allegations about Russia’s potential invasion of Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov castigated these claims as "empty and unfounded", serving as a ploy to escalate tensions, pointing out that Russia did not pose any threat whatsoever to anyone. However, Peskov did not rule out the possibility of provocations aimed at justifying such claims and warned that attempts to use military force to resolve the crisis in southeastern Ukraine would have serious consequences.

Berlin has been against supplying weapons to Kiev but Germany is under strong pressure from its European Union partners, primarily Poland and the Baltic countries, and the United States, which demands Berlin send clear signals to Moscow. Some Ukrainian politicians have accused Germany of "betraying its friends." Ukraine’s embassy in Berlin earlier referred a verbal note to the German foreign ministry with a list of weapons Kiev would like to receive. It is not ruled out that Scholz’s "mild" response was meant to reduce tension in relations with Kiev.

https://tass.com/world/1403105