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EPSTEIN WAS KILLED BECAUSE HE WOULD HAVE EXPOSED SEXUAL ABUSE AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF OUR SOCIETY. And everyone knows it.

DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Legacy Media Silent as Biden DHS Tear-Gasses Antifa Rioters in Portland.

MUCH FASTER THAN THOUGHT: Oil in the ocean photooxidizes within hours to days, new study finds.

NO PROBLEM, JUST IDENTIFY AS WOMEN:

Or, you know, launch a revolution, whatever.

The post Biden Admin Denies Lawyers Access to “Kids in Cages” Facility appeared first on The Bongino Report.

GOING DOWN: Cuomo staffers have stopped showing up to work as scandals mount.

So why has th establishment turned on Cuomo? It’s not his misbehavior — they always knew about that and didn’t care. My theory: Kamala will be president before 2024, and she’s quite unlikable and didn’t garner a single Democratic delegate in the primary. They’re trying to bump off a potential primary challenger, and with Gavin Newsom already self-neutralized, Cuomo is the biggest remaining threat.

Related: Five of Andrew Cuomo’s Other Biggest Scandals.

Missing in action: Last year’s “Cuomosexuals.”

I.D. ISN’T RACIST WHEN IT’S FOR SOMETHING DEMOCRATS WANT: Dan McLaughlin: Oh, Now You Have to Show I.D.

NBC 4 in Washington, D.C., reports that the District is concerned that too many people getting the vaccine in DC are not residents, so it’s going to do something about that. . . .

Identification to prove that people are in the right jurisdiction? Funny how this works, when a liberal government is trying to control something it actually cares about. This comes just as congressional Democrats are trying to abolish state voter-identification requirements for in-person and absentee voting and progressives are calling it racist voter suppression to ask voters to cast ballots in their own precinct. We are endlessly told that asking for ID scares people away just as surely as turning fire hoses on them. What if it turns out that this is actually just a routine way for government to verify that it is dealing with people who are entitled to what they are trying to do?

Only when it fits the narrative.

BEER BOTTLES ARE CHEAPER THAN SHOTGUN SHELLS:

 

COVERUPS ARE THE WASHINGTON WAY: Georgetown Law won’t share facts about black student performance after firing professor for saying it’s ‘lower.’

As Gail Heriot reports, they’re recapitulating their disgraceful behavior last time this came up.

Uber drivers, Etsy sellers, and others who earn income through the gig economy could get a nasty surprise from the $1.9 trillion emergency spending bill signed by President Joe Biden on Thursday.

Buried inside the 600-page bill that's ostensibly meant to provide pandemic relief is a provision requiring gig economy platforms to report information to the IRS about all users who earn at least $600 in a year. Previously, platforms were only required to provide the IRS with information on users who made at least 200 transactions or earned at least $2,000.

The tightening of the reporting requirements means a lot more paperwork and tax compliance requirements for platforms. It also means more tax headaches for anyone who might use those platforms to earn a little extra cash. Anyone earning a sizable income via rental properties on Airbnb was already covered by the old rules, meaning this change will only affect low earners. Now, even the sale of a single expensive piece of old furniture on eBay or running deliveries for Uber Eats in your spare time might trigger the new reporting requirements.

"We believe this provision will create unexpected challenges for small business owners and entrepreneurs," a coalition of trade groups and businesses, including online DIY marketplace Etsy, wrote in a letter urging members of Congress to reject the proposed change. "In a year in which small business owners and entrepreneurs are dealing with a myriad of challenges, making this change would place a burden on small business owners and entrepreneurs and further complicate an already challenging tax season for small business and entrepreneurs."

Tightening the reporting requirements is being sold as a way to crack down on tax cheating. Politico reports that House Democrats believe the change will generate about $8.4 billion over 10 years—but that's a drop in the bucket compared to the $1.9 trillion bill.

There's reason to doubt that even those paltry revenue figures will become reality. Nina Olson, a former head of the IRS taxpayer advocacy office, told Roll Call that gig workers earning a few hundred bucks are unlikely to pay up no matter what.

The big difference is that now the IRS will have their personal information and can go after them.

"Workers who are under-reporting their income now will become guilty of nonpayment next year and subject to penalties and actions by the agency," Olson told Roll Call, adding that an IRS collection action "can destroy a person's life."

Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative think tank that opposes tax increases, notes that the change to income reporting requirements for gig workers—whose income is reported on IRS form 1099-K—bears a striking resemblance to a widely loathed tax originally included in the Affordable Care Act when it was first passed in 2010. That provision, which required businesses to report all purchases of more than $600 to the IRS via the 1099 system, created huge headaches for small businesses and was repealed in bipartisan fashion just a year after Obamacare became law.

The new reporting requirements are likely to be just as big of a mess for gig economy platforms and the independent contractors who use them.

If all of this seems like it has virtually nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, then it actually has a lot in common with the rest of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. From bailing out private pension plans to throwing money at states that don't need the aid, Biden's first major legislative initiative is a mishmash of Democratic policy priorities and excessive spending, with a dash of actual pandemic relief on the side—only about 5 percent of the bill's $1.9 trillion price tag is earmarked for public health efforts.

Congress and Biden just agreed to spend $1.9 trillion the country doesn't have, but don't you dare forget to pay taxes on the few hundred bucks you made selling your old junk on eBay.

The post Record Number of “Kids in Cages” for Longer Than Legal Period Under Biden Administration’s Watch appeared first on The Bongino Report.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF: Yesterday a Georgetown law professor was fired for getting too close for comfort to the truth about the effects of race-preferential admissions. But it was not the first hullabaloo on that topic to erupt at Georgetown. Here’s the story:

In early 1991, a third-year law student—I’ll just call him “John Doe” here—took a job as a part-time file clerk in the admissions office. He probably figured it would be a good way to earn some extra money without cutting too much into his study time. If he had only known …. In a few weeks, this former Peace Corps volunteer would be vilified by the Georgetown University faculty, his fellow students, and the editorial pages of some of the nation’s major newspapers. Over the course of the next year and a half, he would be fighting for his right to practice law.

Doe had heard many times that affirmative action was all about putting a gentle thumb on the scale in favor of minority applicants. It was a tiebreaker, nothing more. But the admissions files he was seeing told a different story. The gap in academic credentials between white and African-American admittees was very stark.

He therefore decided to do a test. Taking what he regarded as a random sample of the files, he did a few back-of-the-envelope calculations and found that the average white student accepted to the law school had an LSAT score of 43 and an undergraduate grade point average of 3.7. The average accepted black student, on the other hand, had an LSAT score of 36 and an undergraduate grade point average of 3.2. To put those figures in perspective, an LSAT score of 43 was just a hair shy of the top 5 percent among those who took the exam. A score of 36, on the other hand, was only in the top 30 percent.

To be sure, students in the top 30 percent are good students, all fully capable of becoming, in one form or another, successful lawyers. They are not, however, typical of highly competitive, academically-oriented schools like Georgetown, which holds itself out as a law school for outstanding students, not just for good students. Rightly or wrongly, the admissions office would not have given a white student with an LSAT score of 36 and an undergraduate GPA of 3.2 a second glance: Of over 100 white admittees sampled, not a single one had an LSAT score under 39.

Doe published his findings in the student-run newspaper—the Georgetown Law Weekly—along with an essay critical of the school’s separate and less-demanding admissions standards for African Americans. He called the credentials of white and African-American admittees “dramatically unequal,” and argued that Georgetown was being dishonest in failing to inform its students about the gap.

The failure to disclose the credentials problem made enrolling a racially-diverse class seem easy, he wrote. It made it appear that, if the school didn’t have enough African-American students, it was because the school just didn’t care enough to reach out and encourage them to attend.

The campus went crazy. Within days, students had filed a formal complaint demanding that Doe be expelled. The next week, 600 Georgetown law students crammed into a lecture hall for an emotionally-charged “town meeting,” while others spilled over into another classroom to watch the event on closed-circuit television.

Doe had obviously touched a raw nerve. One student called the article an attempt to chill Georgetown’s “commitment to legal education for African-Americans.” “The central issue is racism,” said another. “I think the article is assaultive. People were injured. I think this kind of speech is outrageous.”

While they were not numerous, a few students defended Doe, who had made the decision not to attend himself. A third-year student told the crowd that affirmative action had been “swept under the rug before, because white people were afraid to say anything and black people felt threatened.” Doe was thus performing a service of sorts by getting the issue into the open. “Are we really going to say that because we don’t like what [Doe] said we are going to throw him out of school?” he asked.

The question may have been intended as rhetorical, but it was not treated as such. Shouts of “Yes!” rang up from some in the crowd. Tempers were flaring.

All during the meeting, the dean blandly assured the crowd that Doe had gotten his facts wrong. The gap was not what he suggested it is—or so she implied. She steadfastly refused, however, to provide the actual figures or to provide any details whatsoever as to Georgetown’s actual affirmative action policy. This caused even supporters some unease.

As the story leaked out to the mainstream press, the dean kept up her assurances that Doe had gotten it wrong and that his “random sample” was not random at all. Doe had evidently taken a large pile of admissions files, representing students who had been admitted, but he had no way of knowing whether that pile was really a random sample.

Following her lead, the New York Times editorialized that Doe was “without the scarcest hint that he knows what a random sample is.” Even if true, this was harsher than necessary for the Times editors to make their point. This was a law student they were attacking, a law student writing in a school newspaper who was no doubt astonished to find himself suddenly thrust onto the national stage. Surely the editors of one of the world’s leading newspapers could pick on someone their own size.

But the editors showed no mercy. They went on to ridicule Doe, accusing him of writing “pretentiously” and stating that “he has learned very little” and that “he hasn’t a clue about the broad purpose of a great law school.” The raw nerve Doe had touched evidently reached into the editorial offices of the New York Times.

As it turned out, Doe was more likely understating the gap than overstating it. Shortly after the controversy exploded, an internal memorandum surfaced, the authenticity of which was confirmed to the Washington Post by university sources. Authored by the Georgetown admissions director, it stated that the median LSAT score for full-time African-American students at Georgetown in 1989 “increased to 33, up from 32 last year and 30 two years ago.” According to the memorandum, the median for the entering class as a whole in 1989 was 42, which would make Doe’s figure of 43 for white students in particular about on target.

A score of 33 was not quite in the 56^th percentile, and score of 32 was in the 52^nd percentile. Both scores were thus quite ordinary among test takers nationally. Among actual law students, however, they were below average, since low scorers on the LSAT frequently do not attend any law school. A score of 30 was in the 41^st percentile—below the average for test takers and much below the average for actual law students.

In the midst of the fury over his article, Doe was charged by the school with violating confidentiality (although he had disclosed no individual information and had published only the kind of information found in the admissions director’s memorandum and reported to the American Bar Association and U.S. News & World Report). The case was to be tried by a panel of two professors and one student, where possible sanctions included expulsion. Fortunately for Doe, his lawyers were able to negotiate a settlement with Georgetown. Rather than being expelled, he was issued a letter of reprimand and allowed to graduate.

This did not sit well with everyone. An unhappy faculty group accused the administration of “a panicked reaction” that failed to “celebrate and vigorously defend” affirmative action. On graduation day, approximately a month and a half after the offending article was published, a number of students wore green ribbons to protest the settlement. A few carried placards, like the one that read, “Ethics … A Meaningless Word.”

But unfortunately for Doe, the story didn’t end there. After graduation, he took and passed the bar examination. But he was found to be unfit for the practice of law by a panel of the committee that passes on applicants’ character. Only after protracted litigation was he able to practice the profession he had trained for.

After such a story, no one can claim surprise to learn that there are only a small number of intrepid souls who are willing to bring facts about affirmative action to public light or even to debate it.

The post Biden Executive Order Reverses Due Process for College Students Accused of Sexual Misconduct appeared first on The Bongino Report.

Eight House Republicans voted in favor of the measure, with one Democrat voting against.

JOANNE JACOBS: Researchers say school closures endanger children. “Children are no more likely to die Covid-19 than they are of seasonal flu, write Dr. Tara O. Henderson, Dr. Monica Gandhi, Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg and Dr. Daniel Johnson. They are much more likely to die of suicide, in some cases ‘driven by school closure’.”

FASTER, PLEASE: New spherical nucleic acid ‘drug’ kills tumor cells in humans with glioblastoma.

GOVERNMENT: If Social Security were a private retirement fund, we’d sue.

All that money you’ve poured into the Social Security trust fund over the years earned less than 1% during 2020, the funds’ administrators have revealed.

The S&P 500 index SPX, +0.60% ? Try 18%.

Even a simple balanced fund of U.S. stocks and bonds, such as the Vanguard Balanced Index Fund VBIAX, +1.08%, earned 16%.

And the giant pension and investment fund run by the government of Norway earned 10.9%.

The returns earned by Social Security is the scandal that keeps on taking. The previous year, the Norwegian pension fund gained 20%, the balanced index fund 22%, and the S&P 500 31%.

Your and my Social Security dollars? Just 2.2%.

Why should Congress care what happens to your money once they have it to spend?

IT DOES KIND OF HARSH THE NARRATIVE: LA teacher warns union members not to post vacation pics while classrooms are still closed.

LIBERAL PUNDITS: WE SHOULD BE MORE LIKE CHINA. China detains family members of Radio Free Asia Uyghur editor Eset Sulaiman.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Andrew Cuomo Was Paid $65 For Every Book He Sold.

At the risk of breaking the Fourth Wall, here’s a story about peer reviews that weren’t — and shouldn’t have been. Since mid-February, four different Elsevier journals have invited me to review papers about COVID-19. Now, it is true that we will occasionally review — often with our researcher, Alison Abritis — papers on retractions … Continue reading Elsevier journals ask Retraction Watch to review COVID-19 papers

BRENDAN EICH’S REVENGE: Cancelled Tech Genius Behind Brave Preps the First New Search Engine.

The post Google and Urban Dictionary Censor “Blue Anon” Term Mocking Liberals appeared first on The Bongino Report.

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: “Safer at Home” Isn’t.

The Nature article is here. At the very least, this undercuts the self-righteous certainty that led to people who disagreed with established policy being labeled as “anti-science” murderers.

Will there be any apologies or accountability? Doubtful.

AND CHRISTOPHER WRAY HAS PROVEN HIMSELF TO BE A DISHONEST POLITICAL HACK:

That's from a John McWhorter column [link fixed, d'oh!] on the Kilborn controversy, which came out in late January but which I somehow missed; here's the introduction:

Law professor Jason Kilborn cited the N-word (and the B-word) on an exam thusly: n****, b****. It was in a question about an employment discrimination case. He has done so for years previously to no comment – as all reading this but a sliver would expect.

But this year, a group of black students initiated a protest against him for harming them in exposing them to this expurgated rendition of the N-word. That is, in a class training them in litigation in the real world.

One black student claimed that they experienced heart palpitations upon reading the words. During an hours-long Zoom talk with a black student representing the protesters, Kilborn made a flippant remark to the effect that the law school dean may suppose that he is some kind of "homicidal maniac" – upon which the student reported to the dean that Kilborn indeed may be one. Kilborn is no longer teaching the class, is relieved of his administrative duties, and because of the possible physical threat he poses to black students because of the Hyde-like tendency he referred to, he is barred from campus.

No, this is not an SNL parody or a heightened storyline on a show like The Good Wife or Law and Order. This has actually happened, to and with and by real human beings here and now….

(For a relatively new version of Randy Kennedy's and my draft article on this general subject, see here.)

What's a home worth?

It's a tough question, and it's one that Vicki Baker found herself trying to answer the hard way after a SWAT team mutilated her house in McKinney, Texas, during a standoff with a fugitive who had barricaded himself inside.

"For two days, I couldn't quit crying," Baker says. "The tear gas was everywhere. It was on the walls. It was on the floors. It was on the furniture. It was everywhere."

Prior to the SWAT showdown, Baker's daughter, Deanna, gave officers a key to the home, as well as a garage door opener and the back gate code. Agents took a different route. They smashed six windows. Instead of using the code, they maneuvered a BearCat armored vehicle through her fencing. Instead of using the clicker, they detonated explosives to blow off the garage entryway. And instead of using the key, they drove right on through her front door.

"It was after the insurance company told me there was no coverage that I really fell apart," Baker adds. The company furnished a clause that protects them from liability in cases where the government is at fault for the damage. But the city demurred: There would be no coverage from them. She was not a victim, according to the state.

"I've lost everything," Baker says. "I've lost my chance to sell my house. I've lost my chance to retire without fear of how I'm going to make my regular bills."

On July 25, 2020, news broke that a man named Wesley Little had kidnapped a 15-year-old girl. He arrived at Baker's home, where he had done some work as a handyman about a year and a half prior; Baker had terminated him after Deanna said she felt something wasn't right.

It was Deanna who answered the door that day. Having seen the news reports, and frightened for her safety, she let him in, left the home, and called the police. Little eventually released the girl unharmed but refused to leave himself, which is when the SWAT team swooped in. After destroying the house, they found Little inside, dead from suicide.

Baker had recently located a buyer for the home. The 76-year-old, who is battling stage 3 breast cancer, was set to begin retirement with her husband in Montana. Predictably, the sale fell through, as the house was no longer livable. She spent about $50,000 making repairs, a chunk of which she took from her retirement, though some things couldn't be remedied: An antique doll collection from her late mother, which she hoped to gift to her granddaughter, was left covered in tear gas, and her daughter's dog was rendered deaf and blind. Baker eventually landed another buyer—for significantly less than she did prior to police declaring war on the structure.

Over the last year, debates around law enforcement accountability and immunity have rapidly moved from little-known doctrines to dinner-table conversations. The legal concept central in Baker's case has yet to gain traction in the mainstream dialogue, however: The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires that the public be compensated for property taken or destroyed by the government, but some lower courts have bafflingly exempted state actions from that if they were pursued under "police power."

A lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice (IJ) in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas aims to clarify that.

"They're forcing unlucky individuals to shoulder the burden of doing something that's good for society," says Jeffrey Redfern, an attorney with IJ. "Taking dangerous criminals off the street is good for society. If the city decides that it really needs to put a road through your house, that might be the right call. It might be something the community really needs. But that doesn't justify making one unlucky owner bear the cost of doing something that's good for everyone."

Whether or not the police needed to attack the modest McKinney home with brute militaristic force perhaps more appropriate for a battlefield is indeed an important topic for debate. "I have a very high regard for the police," says Baker, who identifies as a Christian conservative. "I'm very grateful for them." But she remains skeptical of their tactics that day: "I thought it was a bit over the top," she adds. She tells me she in no way supports calls to "defund the police" but she sees a need for reform.

Baker is not the first to lose her home to SWAT tactics gone awry, nor is this the first such case picked up by IJ. SWAT agents in 2015 totaled a $580,000 house in Greenwood Village, Colorado, while in pursuit of a shoplifter who had broken into the residence. The city handed the family a cool $5,000, and the Supreme Court subsequently declined to hear the case. Just last summer, police in Charlotte, North Carolina, decimated a home as they tried to coax a suspect out. The problem: He wasn't even there.

I ask Baker how she'd like to see this nightmare end—what exactly would bring closure? "I'd like to get some of this money back," she says. "I would. But the main reason I wanted to do this, and go through whatever it took to do it, was to set [a] precedent."

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: ‘Space hurricane’ that rained electrons observed for the first time.

World Obesity Federation found 90% of COVID deaths occurred in countries in which more than half of adults are overweight

Six months ago I wrote an article discussing the evidence on hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for covid. My conclusion then, based on the small number of trials that had been completed at that point, was that hydroxychloroquine did not appear to be an effective treatment for covid. Many of you were unhappy with that conclusion, and I’ve since then received multiple requests to look … Read more

The post Hydroxychloroquine for covid: Lifesaving or useless? appeared first on Sebastian Rushworth M.D..