Hollywood Activist: If You Think Murder Is Reasonable, Vote Republican

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Left-wing Hollywood activist Chelsea Handler blamed “the racist right” for rising extremism and hate by leftists and said those who “think … murder is reasonable” should “vote Republican.”

“The more racist the right becomes, the more radical we become,” Handler said on Friday, justifying increasing left-wing hysteria by blaming the right who she accuses of racism. “The more intolerant the right becomes, the more intolerant we become of you. The more you claim religion, the more you make a fool of religion. If you think hate wins, and murder is reasonable, vote Republican.”

Handler has a chequered TV career. She has hosted a list of TV talk shows that were all canceled, and critics panned her most recent Netflix documentary about white privilege. Indeed, critics said that Handler was benefiting from the very white privilege that she purported to criticize in her documentary.

Friday’s tweet, though, is nothing new from the TV host and comedienne. Handler regularly indulges unhinged, leftist rants.

(Read more from “Hollywood Activist: If You Think Murder Is Reasonable, Vote Republican” HERE)

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Declassified Docs Show Obama Knew Intimate Details of Gen. Flynn’s Wiretapped Calls, Shocking Top DOJ Official

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By Fox News. President Obama was aware of the details of then-incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn’s intercepted December 2016 phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, apparently surprising then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, according to documents released Thursday as exhibits to the government’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case.

Obama’s unexpectedly intimate knowledge of the details of Flynn’s calls, which the FBI said at the time were not criminal in nature, raised eyebrows because of his own history with Flynn — and because top FBI officials secretly discussed whether their goal was to “get [Flynn] fired” when they interviewed him in the White House on January 24, 2017.

Obama personally had warned the Trump administration against hiring Flynn, and made clear he was “not a fan,” according to multiple officials. Obama had fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014.

On January 5, 2017, Yates attended an Oval Office meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, according to the newly declassified documents, including an FD-302 FBI witness report. . . A previous memo from [national security adviser Susan] Rice stated that Biden also stayed behind after the main briefing had ended. . .

After the briefing, Obama asked Yates and Comey to “stay behind,” and said he had “learned of the information about Flynn” and his conversation with Russia’s ambassador about sanctions [and] was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information.” (Read more from “Declassified Docs Show Obama Knew Intimate Details of Gen. Flynn’s Wiretapped Calls, Shocking Top DOJ Official” HERE)

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AG Barr Defends Michael Flynn Reversal: ‘History Is Written by the Winners’

By CBS News. . .In a motion filed in U.S. district court, federal prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss the single count of making false statements to the FBI, claiming the government concluded that the FBI’s interview of Flynn “was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation.”

Attorney General William Barr joined CBS News senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge to discuss the reasoning behind the motion. . .

[Catherine Herridge:] In closing, this was a big decision in the Flynn case, to– to say the least. When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written? What will it say about your decision making?

[AG Barr:] Well, history is written by the winner. So it largely depends on who’s writing the history. But I think a fair history would say that it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law. It helped, it upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.

(Read more from “AG Barr Defends Michael Flynn Reversal: ‘History Is Written by the Winners’” HERE)

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Levels of This Vitamin Correlated With COVID-19 Death Rates

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Researchers have discovered a strong correlation between vitamin D deficiency and mortality rates from the novel coronavirus, a new study reveals.

A research team led by Northwestern University analyzed data from hospitals and clinics across China, France, Germany, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Patients from countries with high COVID-19 mortality rates, such as Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, had lower levels of vitamin D compared to patients in countries that were not as severely affected, according to the study.

The researchers also found a strong correlation between vitamin D levels and cytokine storm, which is a hyperinflammatory condition caused by an overactive immune system. (Read more from “Levels of This Vitamin Correlated With COVID-19 Death Rates” HERE)

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Moving Goalposts: Oregon Governor Now Demanding COVID-19 Cases Drop BELOW Flu Levels to Reopen

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If you think the coronavirus fascism will die with the flattening of the coronavirus curve, I have a wet market to sell you in Wuhan.

It’s becoming abundantly clear that the lockdown was not a temporary, unprecedented strategy to flatten the curve, but is a pretext to use a dramatically low threshold of risk to continue crushing liberty, the economy, and releasing criminals from prison. The tyrannical governors are essentially saying that in order to end any lockdown and even move towards targeted mitigation, we must test everyone every day before they are allowed to breathe, that there must be almost no cases of COVID-19 around (even if there are few deaths outside nursing homes), and that we must contact-trace and monitor society with a police state even after the virus has already reached tens of millions of people.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced this week that each county must submit a plan to reopen and must also show that its COVID-19 illnesses are less than the historic average of flu cases seen at this time of year.

This is a state that has just 115 deaths, 60% of which have been in senior living homes. Most of the recent deaths have been in nursing homes and similar facilities. Overall, 81% of all deaths were people with serious underlying conditions. We are literally talking about a handful of people outside nursing homes dying in the entire state, which by itself demonstrates that this has a very low fatality rate for most people, yet the governor is focused on the number of overall cases, which is enormous.

So now the goalposts have moved, from flattening the curve of hospitalizations to flattening the total cases and then to bringing them below flu levels.

Many governors are extending the lockdowns despite nearly all the recent deaths occurring in nursing homes. Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey made it clear that the lockdown has no timeline “whether you like it or not.”

This demonstrates moving forward that the threshold for pushing these lockdowns will be remarkably low, with no understanding of or regard for the collateral damage. This will not be once-in-a-millennium phenomenon. Now that this epidemic, several weeks after the peak, is more or less confined to nursing homes and a few other vulnerable populations, it is on par, at this point, with many other epidemics that were barely noticed in the news, much less that caused a national shutdown.

But perhaps the biggest lie of the entire lockdown strategy is the premise that it has helped at all, especially as compared to commonsense mitigation, as opposed to doing nothing. Lockdowns and contact tracing only helped in countries that did it early on before the virus spread far and wide, and even most of the Asian countries didn’t shut down their economies, and some didn’t shut down the schools. Iceland, Israel, and Germany began their efforts very early, and the former two are small and homogenously healthy countries, as are most of the Nordic countries with good results. Plus, Israeli researchers now believe the lockdown was a mistake.

What America and most of the other large European countries did was the worst of all worlds. They did lockdown after the virus had already been spreading rapidly for weeks and even peaked in transmissions. It’s why one comprehensive study found “no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends” in lockdown countries in Europe. “Extrapolating pre-lockdown growth rate trends, we provide estimates of the death toll in the absence of any lockdown policies, and show that these strategies might not have saved any life in western Europe,” wrote the author.

One comprehensive study of Lombardy by Italian researchers of the first 5,830 laboratory-confirmed cases there found that the virus had already peaked in terms of transmissions and reproduction on February 20 – before any lockdown. The cake was already baked.

We are seeing the same thing in New York as Andrew Cuomo is “shocked” that most of the hospitalizations now are from people who already have been staying home. “If you notice, 18% of the people came from nursing homes, less than 1% came from jail or prison, 2% came from the homeless population, 2% from other congregate facilities, but 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us,” Cuomo said yesterday during his daily press conference.

“This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” he added. “We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.”

You discovered reality, Sherlock!

What most of the European countries and America did was take a virus that had already been spreading to some degree for months, and earnestly for weeks, and locked everyone down together. Which is why most studies show family spread is the most common form of transmission.

As Dr. David Katz said during a Senate Homeland Security Committee remote hearing yesterday, “We may have closed the barn door after all of the horses were out.”

The only reason for a lockdown is if you are a poor country with not enough resources to handle the patients at once. While we were never overrun, we could have justified lockdown for a week or two to delay some of the hospitalizations. Other than that, no lives are saved in the long run at this late stage, and so many more are lost from the unfathomable and incalculable collateral damage.

Instead of a lockdown and testing the entire country, the contact tracing, virus testing, and restrictions must all be focused on nursing homes, where more than half the deaths have occurred and most of the new deaths are occurring. The rest of the population needs to follow a stratified risk assessment to determine the best way forward to achieve herd immunity.

It’s not that the governing elites don’t know this. They know exactly what they are doing. As Thomas Jefferson warned, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” Lockdowns are the perfect strategy to permanently change the relationship between the citizen and the government, because they accomplish nothing but perpetuate a need for themselves. As Dr. Katz said at yesterday’s hearing, “The problem with an interdiction strategy that starts and ends with flattening the curve is that it can never stop.” (2:49:35)

And that is exactly what so many in politics want. (For more from the author of “Moving Goalposts: Oregon Governor Now Demanding COVID-19 Cases Drop Below Flu Levels to Reopen” please click HERE)

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Lawsuit Accuses Michigan Governor of Long List of Constitutional Violations

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The Great Lakes Justice Center has filed a lawsuit against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer alleging she violated at least six provisions in the U.S. Constitution. . .

The complaint announced Wednesday challenges her claim that criminal charges can be filed and fines imposed against violators of her orders. The lawsuit was filed in Grand Rapids on behalf of several individuals and churches in the state.

It alleges she has violated the First Amendment’s protections of the free exercise of religion, free expression and association.

The complaint also alleges violation of the due process rights of the plaintiffs and the constitutional requirement for separation of powers.

Finally, she’s accused of violating the constitutional assurance of a republican form of government and the Constitution with her use of the state’s emergency powers provisions. (Read more from “Lawsuit Accuses Michigan Governor of Long List of Constitutional Violations” HERE)

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Supreme Court Eyes Ballot Harvesting Case That Could Affect Election Integrity Across Nation

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With mail-in voting becoming a national issue during the COVID-19 crisis, the Supreme Court could decide to hear a cornerstone election integrity case.

On the line is Arizona’s ban on ballot harvesting. The state prohibits political operatives and activists from having access to large amounts of absentee ballots for the purpose of collecting votes.

Arizona is one of 20 states with a law restricting the practice.

Also on the line is Arizona’s in-precinct voting law, which, as in most states, requires voters to cast an in-person vote at a polling place in their local precinct.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a liberal bench that frequently is overturned by the Supreme Court, in late January struck down Arizona’s 2016 election law in the case of Democratic National Committee v. Hobbs.

“I anticipate that a bunch of states will be interested in joining our case,” Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

“If the 9th Circuit decision stands, it could put in jeopardy all kinds of commonsense voter integrity measures. That means laws preventing voter intimidation, laws preventing multiple voting, and laws protecting the secrecy of the ballot,” Brnovich, a Republican first elected in 2014, said.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez praised the 9th Circuit’s finding that the state’s law violates the federal Voting Rights Act.

“The court’s ruling will restore out-of-precinct voting and ballot collection for the 2020 election after finding that this Republican voter-suppression effort was a discriminatory attack on voters of color, including Native American, Latinx, and African-American communities,” Perez said in a written statement in late January. “As Democrats, our goal is to engage every eligible American voter as an active participant in our democracy by making it easier for people to vote, not harder.”

Ballot harvesting, which allows professional campaign operatives and political activists to have access to absentee ballots and authority to recruit voters, is allowed in 27 states and the District of Columbia.

Two Senate Democrats—Ron Wyden of Oregon and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota—have proposed a bill that would, among other things, allow nationwide ballot harvesting. They are promoting the legislation as a means to allow more voting during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Critics of ballot harvesting say it exposes voters to coercion and intimidation in their own homes, without protections normally present at polling places. There is also a significant record showing that legal vote harvesting leads to illegal fraud and intimidation.

For progressives, ballot harvesting has become a major priority nationally.

“The pandemic has created new opportunities,” Jason Snead, executive director of the watchdog group Honest Elections Project, said during a conference call last week. “The first is ballot harvesting. We saw the Nevada case; they are pushing for legalized ballot harvesting, and they are pushing it in other cases as well. They are advancing significant wins to date.”

In Minnesota, Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, settled a challenge to the state’s ban on ballot harvesting. Under the settlement, candidates in that state will be allowed to help cast ballots, Snead noted.

The Arizona case is significant, he said.

“Fortunately, the state of Arizona is seeking Supreme Court review,” Snead said. “So there is an opportunity there for anyone looking to provide amicus support to file a brief. That is a tremendously important case in terms of protecting our elections against ballot harvesting.”

Brnovich, the Arizona attorney general, contends that the case largely is about the left’s trying to seize control of elections.

“The hard left always tries to advance its agenda,” Brnovich told The Daily Signal. “Tom Steyer and George Soros are pushing their left-wing agendas by trying to control the election process. These elitist billionaires just want to control lives and can do that by controlling elections.”

Brnovich said this is shortsighted ambition for the Democratic Party, considering a North Carolina congressional race in which the Republican candidate nearly stole an election through ballot harvesting.

“We want people to have confidence and faith in the election system,” the attorney general said.

The Arizona Legislature passed legislation in 2016 to restrict ballot harvesting in the state unless the person collecting a ballot is a family member, a person living in the same household, or a caregiver.

Brnovich said the law was based in part on the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform in 2005 chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker.

The Carter-Baker commission recommended that states “prohibit a person from handling absentee ballots other than the voter, an acknowledged family member, the U.S. Postal Service or other legitimate shipper, or election officials.”

The commission found that absentee ballots “remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”

Since the 1970s, Arizona has required voters to vote at a polling place in their precinct.

If the Supreme Court agrees to take the case, it will have a substantial record to review, Brnovich said.

The Democratic National Committee filed suit over the Arizona law in 2016. Arizona won the case in the U.S. District Court in 2018 after a 10-day trial with 33 witnesses.

The DNC appealed, and a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit initially sided with Arizona. However, the DNC appealed to a larger panel of the 9th Circuit, which reversed the ruling Jan. 27.

Arizona then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Brnovich obtained a stay of the 9th Circuit’s decision, leaving Arizona’s laws restricting ballot harvesting and out-of-precinct voting in place while the high court decides whether to hear the matter.

Arizona’s petition contends that since so many states have similar measures, the case presents an appropriate vehicle to establish a clear rule of law for the country. (For more from the author of “Supreme Court Eyes Ballot Harvesting Case That Could Affect Election Integrity Across Nation” please click HERE)

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Travel From New York City Primary Source for U.S. Coronavirus Infections; At Least 85 Kids Across U.S. Have Developed Rare, Mysterious COVID-19-Linked Illness

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By New York Times. New York City’s coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country.

The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began setting social distancing limits to stop the growth. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast.

The findings are drawn from geneticists’ tracking signature mutations of the virus, travel histories of infected people and models of the outbreak by infectious disease experts. (Read more from “Travel From New York City Primary Source for U.S. Coronavirus Infections” HERE)

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At Least 85 Kids Across U.S. Have Developed Rare, Mysterious COVID-19-Linked Illness

By NBC News. Children with a rare but potentially dangerous complication thought to be linked to the coronavirus have now been identified in at least seven states and the Washington, D.C., area.

Doctors say the increase does not necessarily suggest that the number of such cases has grown. Instead, they say, it is likely the result of increased awareness of the problem, which just this week got an official name: pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome.

NBC News has found at least 85 such cases in children across the U.S. The majority — 64 — are in New York state, which has also recorded the highest number of COVID-19 cases overall.

Other cases include four patients at Boston Children’s Hospital, an estimated five to 10 at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, three at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, three at Nemours Children’s Health System in Delaware, three at Ochsner Medical Center in Louisiana and one at Seattle Children’s Hospital. (Read more from “At Least 85 Kids Across U.S. Have Developed Rare, Mysterious COVID-19-Linked Illness” HERE)

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Nearly 50 Million Americans Just Had Their Credit Card Limits Cut

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About 1 in 4 credit card holders — or almost 50 million Americans — had their credit limits cut or their card accounts closed in the past 30 days, according to a consumer survey by Lending Tree’s Compare Cards website. The reductions particularly affected men between the ages 18 and 38, according to the survey.

Lenders aren’t required to tell customers when their credit limits are lowered, LendingTree analyst Matt Schulz said, adding that many lenders made their moves in the past month to avert losses if cash-strapped consumers struggle to keep up with payments amid surging U.S. unemployment.

The credit curbs happened just when household budgets are particularly strained from coronavirus-related job losses and families are believed to be using their cards more frequently. The Lending Tree survey reports that 42% more cardholders said they used their credit in the last month compared to the same period last year. . .

Total credit card debt is about $1.1 trillion nationwide and has been growing steadily since 2015, Federal Reserve data show. That debt was already crushing many U.S. households before the novel coronavirus struck America, according to CBS News Senior Business Analyst Jill Schlesinger. (Read more from “Nearly 50 Million Americans Just Had Their Credit Card Limits Cut” HERE)

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Woman Accused of Shooting at McDonald’s Workers After They Told Her Dining Room Was Closed

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Oklahoma City police identified a woman accused of firing shots inside a McDonald’s restaurant after being told by employees that the dining room was closed due to coronavirus restrictions.

According to police, officers responded just before 6:30 p.m. Wednesday to a report of a shooting at McDonald’s near Southwest 89th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

According to police, the suspect entered the restaurant and was told by employees the dining area was closed. She was asked to leave but refused, and police said a physical altercation ensued between the suspect and an employee.

Police said the suspect was then forced out of the restaurant by employees. She reentered the restaurant with a handgun and fired about three rounds in the restaurant, according to police.

One employee was hit in the arm, a second was hit with shrapnel in the neck/shoulder area and a third employee was hit with shrapnel in the side, police said. The employee who was involved in the initial physical confrontation suffered a head injury. The cause of this injury in unclear, according to police. (Read more from “Woman Accused of Shooting at McDonald’s Workers After They Told Her Dining Room Was Closed” HERE)

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Schiff Changed Russia Document Release Strategy Because He Was Forced

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Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), had only planned to release partial transcripts from the committee’s Russia investigation, not all of them, a source with knowledge of his efforts told Breitbart News.

But then, when acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell announced he was prepared to release all of the transcripts in full—something Grenell had planned to do on Friday morning if Schiff had not done so—Schiff changed his strategy and agreed to release them all in full.

An intelligence community source told Breitbart News that Schiff was caught attempting to weaponize the information through selective and partial releases, but Grenell’s actions forced his hand and made him release them all in full. In a letter first reported by the Washington Examiner’s Byron York earlier this week, Grenell informed Schiff that the documents were ready for release.

Grenell wrote to Schiff in the May 4 letter:

All of the transcripts, with our required redactions, can be released to the public without any concerns of disclosing classified material. I urge you to honor your previous public statements, and your committee’s unanimous vote on this matter, to release all 53 cleared transcripts to Members of Congress and the American public as soon as possible.

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