Return of the Census Snoops

On a Sunday evening last November, a representative of the U.S. Census Bureau showed up at my house to take the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). According to a letter from the Bureau, my address had been selected by a “scientific process” from “all addresses in the United States.” My address “cannot be replaced,” but as the Bureau elsewhere explains, “the survey is voluntary, and there are no penalties for not participating.

Two household members told the Census lady we had chosen not to participate. She demanded to know why we declined to participate, so I outlined some facts from the Bureau’s own letter.

The Bureau wants to interview household members as young as 12. People from each selected address are interviewed once every six months over a three-year period for a total of seven interviews. Interviews last 25 minutes so a boy or girl of 12 can be interviewed seven times for a total of 175 minutes, nearly three hours. No sample questions are included but “the Census Bureau is required by law to protect your information.” From whom “your information” will be protected is not explained.

This amounts to government snooping, so nobody at this address was going to participate. Four months later comes another Census Bureau letter announcing that my address has been selected by a “scientific process” to take the crime survey. As the letter explains, the Census Bureau conducts the survey “for the United States Department of Justice,” which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, now by its own admission highly politicized. Anybody less than worshipful of Joe Biden is a domestic terrorist, violent extremist and so forth.

I won’t be taking the survey, but I can pass on a tip. Joe Biden has brought in some eight million illegals, many violent criminals among them. That’s bound to affect innocent people at all addresses in the United States.

Disinformation, Theirs and Ours

The terrorist attack in Moscow that killed more than 130 apparently was the work of ISIS-K, one of several ISIS franchises. That is what our intelligence agencies say, and I have no reason to doubt it. The fact that ISIS was able to upload video footage apparently recorded by the terrorists would appear to confirm that ISIS was responsible. The London Times reports:

A Russian disinformation campaign is attempting to pin the blame for the Islamic State terrorist attack in Moscow on Britain, Ukraine and the United States by publishing fake articles that purport to be from western media outlets.

One of the articles circulated by the Kremlin-run Doppelganger bot network was designed to look as if it had been written by Der Spiegel, the German magazine, according to The Insider, a Russian opposition website.

The fake article claimed that the attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, which killed at least 137 people and injured at least 182, was “clearly” organised by “Ukrainians who are trying to destabilise Russia after their military failures”. It also called on the German government to condemn Kyiv over the attack. No such article was published by Der Spiegel.

Western sources are expressing outrage over this Russian disinformation campaign, which also features fake quotes from people like Beyonce, calling on the U.S. government to stop supporting Ukraine.

In comparison with Russia, our government has it easy. There is no need to produce fake articles from respectable journals. Rather, the Democrats issue talking points and the New York Times, the Washington Post and other outlets will actually print them, even though they are wholly false. See: Russia collusion hoax. That is a much better system of disinformation than is available to the Russians.

Given that the attack was carried out by Islamic terrorists, it still has strange elements. The four assassins tried to escape, but apparently had no plausible plan to do so. They were captured and tortured by Russian security forces, which not only did not disguise their brutal treatment of the captives, but published videos of it, including administering electric shocks to one man’s genitals. The four men were visibly damaged when they were arraigned in court, one with an ear sliced off, another unconscious in a wheelchair, all showing injuries.

I assume Russian authorities did this in order to protect their own domestic reputation for toughness. The attack itself was a blow to Putin’s regime, and the perpetrators will pay a heavy price. Having first been tortured, they will be tortured some more and then executed, even though Russian “law” does not provide for the death penalty in this case.

But what did they expect? Obviously, lacking a feasible plan of escape, the four terrorists could look forward to exactly the treatment they have received. Why did they not commit suicide, like so many other Islamic terrorists? One of them was recorded saying that he had been paid something like $10,000 to carry out the attack. That is an absurd claim: no one would be foolish enough to commit such an outrage, and then forfeit his life, for such an amount. So why did the Russians make him say it? It is a little hard to understand the terrorists’ thinking, since what they are getting is exactly what anyone could have told them would be in store.

Finally, I can’t help contrasting Russia’s attitude toward terrorism committed in its country with its attitude toward the vastly greater and more horrific terrorist episode that Gazans inflicted in Israel on October 7:

Dmitry Medvedev, the former president and now deputy head of Russia’s national security council, said: “Terrorists understand only retaliatory terror. No courts or investigations will help if force is not countered by force, and deaths are not countered by total executions of terrorists and repressions against their families.

“Do they have to be killed? They have to be and will be,” he wrote on Monday. His comments were echoed by officials and pro-Kremlin MPs.

That’s what I say, but don’t tell it to the Israelis.

The Daily Chart: Vote Rich, Cash Poor?

At the moment polls look good for Republicans across the board for the November election. But there is one aspect of this year’s cycle where things aren’t looking as good—campaign cash.

From Bruce Mehlman’s useful weekly Substack update:

A life and death issue

Professor Jonathan Turley has concerns about the fate of the First Amendment based in part on the oral argument in Murthy v. Missouri. He writes:

In Murthy v. Missouri, the court is considering a massive censorship system coordinated by federal agencies and social media companies. This effort was ramped up under President Joe Biden, who is arguably the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. Biden has accused companies of “killing people” by resisting demands to censor opposing views. Even though the administration was dead wrong on many pandemic-related issues, ranging from the origin of COVID-19 to the efficacy of masks, thousands were banned, throttled or blacklisted for pointing this out.

Biden’s sole nominee on the court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, has long been an enigma on the issue of free speech. That is why these oral arguments had some alarming moments. While her two liberal colleagues suggested that some communications may not be coercive as opposed to persuasive, Jackson would have none of it. She believed that coercion is perfectly fine under the right circumstances, including during periods like a pandemic or other national emergencies claimed by the government. When dangerous information is spotted on social media sites in such periods, she seemed to insist, the government should feel free to “tell them to take it down.”

I trust that Justice Jackson’s views will fail to become the law of the case. To borrow a resonant phrase that fit this context, her views pose a clear and present danger to the First Amendment. If the Murthy plaintiffs lose in the Supreme Court, it may be on technical ground such as standing and the Court may think it is limiting the damage to the First Amendment in so doing. However, I fear the Court’s blessing of the Censorship Industrial Complex would have the same effect as its express adoption of Jackson’s anomalous views.

Regardless of the outcome, I found the unreality of the oral argument maddening by itself. The Court and counsel for the administration all seemed to be operating in a different universe — one in which President Joe Biden represents the kindly voice of reason instead of the heavy hand of state power. Matt Taibbi captured the unreality in his subscribers-only Racket News column “Why Government is Always the Most Dangerous Source of Misinformation.” Taibbi has now made his column accessible via the video below.

The incredible shrinking majority, WSJ edition

Let us continue to deliberate over the political genius of Matt Gaetz and his allies as they leads House Republicans into the minority. The Wall Street Journal comments in the editorial “Honey, we shrunk the majority” further to my own thoughts:

[T]he same Members who undercut the majority boast on the House floor and social media that they are the only honest conservatives in Washington. They’re posers masquerading as principled, and they’re treating the voters at home like rubes.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion Friday to oust Mr. Johnson as Speaker exposes the deception behind the coup against Mr. McCarthy. After we criticized that October coup as destructive and self-serving, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz wrote us a letter saying that in electing Mr. Johnson the GOP now had a real conservative as leader.

So what’s wrong with Mr. Johnson now? Apparently because he’s not willing to indulge kamikaze acts like shutting down the government, Mr. Johnson is a sellout too.

Conservatives have long had a strong anti-Washington [I would say limited government] impulse, which is useful given the federal government’s relentless drive to expand its own power. But breaking that drive, and rolling back that power, requires calculation and often incremental gains. All the more so in a divided government.

The posers of the House GOP remind us of a comment by former Sen. Jim DeMint that he’d rather have 30 Senators who agreed with him than a Republican majority. Congratulations to Mr. DeMint. The current House GOP is close to realizing his ambition.

Oh, yeah, I know. RINOs! GOPe! Uniparty! I concede I may be missing something, but I’d prefer to have a majority that can do something to block the Biden regime than a minority that can’t do anything.

Return to Shifa, cont’d

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari is the IDF spokesman. I posted his briefing on the current IDF operation at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital last week. The operation continues. Yesterday Hagari provided a three-minute update on the operation (video below). This is what he said:

Today is day 6 of the IDF’s operation against Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Shifa Hospital. 170 terrorists were neutralized in or around the Shifa Hospital compound while firing at our forces.

The IDF apprehended hundreds of terror suspects with confirmed ties to Hamas or Islamic Jihad, making this one of the most successful operations since the start of the war. A large number of these terrorists were involved in planning and executing the brutal massacre of October 7.

This operation is not over. Right now, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists are barricading themselves inside Shifa hospital wards.

Hamas is destroying Shifa hospital.

Hamas is firing from inside the Shifa Emergency Room and Maternity Ward and throwing explosive devices from the Shifa Burn Ward.

Terrorists hiding around the hospital fired mortars at our forces, causing extensive damage to the hospital buildings.

I repeat: Hamas is firing mortars at the Shifa hospital.

Hamas is destroying the Shifa hospital.

Hamas hijacked the Shifa Hospital and hides behind the sick and injured, waging war from inside Shifa Hospital.

The IDF operates with precision and acts with care towards the patients and medical staff inside the hospital.

We do this because we distinguish between Hamas terrorists and the civilians they are hiding behind.

We do this because our war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza. And our actions prove this.

Since the beginning of this operation against Hamas at Shifa Hospital, the IDF has assisted the sick and wounded and helped move many of them out of harm’s way.

We brought dozens of medical devices; over 10 thousand units of medications; hundreds of medical supplies; as well as food, water, and other equipment into Shifa Hospital.

When Hamas’s attacks resulted in the failure of the hospital generator, our troops helped restore electricity to the hospital.

Our operation at Shifa Hospital proves once again: Hamas systematically uses hospitals to wage war and consistently uses the people of Gaza as human shields.

I wonder if Vice President Harris has “studied the maps” on this operation. It would be good to get her “thoughts” on what it’s all about

One survivor remembers

Watching the Netflix documentary World War II: From the Front Lines, I was riveted by the interviews with Gerda Weissmann Klein and Kurt Klein in the sixth episode of the series. Mrs. Klein lost her family and closest friends in the Holocaust. She worked as a slave laborer until the SS put her on a 350-mile death march with other women survivors of her work camp at the end of the war. Most of them died along the way. The SS deposited the remainder in an abandoned factory and placed a time bomb on it intended to kill them all. Hearing of the women locked in the warehouse, United States Army Lieutenant Klein took off with a fellow soldier to rescue them.

Mrs. Klein told her own story in All But My Life and several other books as well as in the 40-minute documentary One Survivor Remembers (posted on the site of the United States Holocaust Museum and here on YouTube). The documentary won an Academy Award in 1996. Mrs. Klein was awarded a 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in February 2011. The video of the documentary is unembeddable because it is not appropriate for all ages, but you can click on the links to view it.

The documentary is full of Mrs. Klein’s unbelievable eloquence in her second or third language. She is a natural storyteller. Full of heartbreaking moments, the documentary illustrates the persistence of memory, the bonds of family and friends, the inexplicable coincidences and ironies of life, all set against the backdrop of the overwhelming evil of the Final Solution. Although it has an ending that vindicates hope, her vivid recollections remain haunting. Her story also resonates with Israel’s current ordeal.

Mrs. Klein died in 2022 at the age of 97. The New York Times obituary by Clay Risen captures some of the drama of her life, but there’s nothing like hearing it from her.