“A stone cold ideologue. He is a wholly owned subsidiary of the gun lobby of the National Rifle Association.” That was California Gov. Gavin Newsom on federal judge Roger Benitez, who recently overturned California’s longstanding ban on “assault weapons.” Second Amendment advocates might find the “ideologue” description puzzling.

As we noted, in 2019 the Cuban-Born Benitez, an appointee of George W. Bush, struck down a California law that banned high-capacity rifle magazines, arguing that it prevented law-abiding citizens from defending themselves against violent criminals. Attorney general Xavier Becerra complained directly to Benitez, who reversed his own ruling. So much for the judge’s contention that “individual liberty and freedom are not outmoded concepts.”

On April 21, investigative reporter Jana Winters broke the news that the United States Postal service was running a “covert operations program” that was monitoring American’s social media. She found that the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) was trawling posts and online activity pertaining to a number of planned protests as part of a “World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy.” 

The subjects of the protest ranged from “everything from lockdown measures to 5G.” This story has to be one of the most alarming new chapters in the growth of America’s surveillance state—a creature, it needs to be pointed out, of both major political parties. The implications for the First Amendment freedoms of all Americans are dire.

After the experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s named aducanumab failed a futility test, its producers Biogen and Eisai lost hope the Food and Drug Administration would ever approve it. Despite promising clinical results through the approval process, the producers abandoned their project in 2019. 

Eight months later, Biogen developed an expanded dataset to reassess aducanumab’s impact on patients taking larger doses. To the producer’s amazement, the data indicated that some patients receiving treatment were able to reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. 

In 2015 Scott County, Indiana made headlines for all the wrong reasons. With a population of fewer than 10,000 people, the county was the center of an HIV outbreak of more than 230 cases. Most of those infected were individuals who engaged in intravenous drug use.

Recognizing the public health emergency, officials acted and implemented a needle exchange program. The program, as the name implies, allows for people who inject drugs to acquire clean syringes and safely dispose of used ones. The logic of such a program is straightforward. When individuals inject drugs without access to clean syringes, they are more likely to reuse them. Needles dull with every use, and can even break off under a person’s skin. Reusing syringes also increases infection risk. When clean supplies aren’t readily available, those who use intravenous drugs are also more likely to share needles. This dramatically increases infection risks—including the risk of contracting HIV or Hepatitis C. Providing clean syringes and a safe means of disposal decreases the likelihood that people will reuse or share needles.

On May 23, Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters he was “not convinced” that COVID-19 developed naturally. The next day, the chief White House medical advisor contended it was “highly likely” that the virus “occurred naturally before spreading from animal to human.” This reversal, one of many from Dr. Fauci, prompted action from the White House. Joe Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” to investigate the origins of COVID-19, including “specific questions for China.” That raised a serious question for Grant Newsham, a former reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific.

“Shouldn’t the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—the crème-de-la-crème of the intelligence community—already know about COVID?” Newsham wondered. “In fact, shouldn’t they have known in late 2019 when the virus first appeared? That is the CIA’s job after all—to know what’s going in China and what Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party leadership are thinking and doing.” So “perhaps the CIA is just not very good at spying.” Angelo Codevilla, a former staffer with the Senate Intelligence Committee, was thinking along the same lines.

In a heart-wrenching story written in 2017, Rachael Kaplan details her lifelong struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Enduring chronic and severe abuse as a child, Rachael strongly considered ending her life and found herself “praying to die.”

She worked with several therapists and numerous multiple treatment methods to improve her condition. Unfortunately, her traumas were so severe that she wasn’t able to address them during therapy without inflicting severe mental hardship directly. In her own words: 

“I was still terrified most of the time. I would have flashbacks leaving me debilitated, having nightmares, dissociated, and self-harming… I had some of the best therapists, but I was so terrified from childhood trauma that my system would not let its guard down enough to let anything from the outside affect it.” 

President Biden released his first budget proposal on Friday, May 28, 2021. Just ahead of the Memorial Day Holiday weekend.

That wasn’t a mistake. The timing is part of a well-established practice by politicians called a Friday news dump. If they know the news is bad for them, they dump it on Friday, when they know the public is not going to pay much attention to it. If they think the news is really bad, they dump it on the Friday before an extended holiday weekend.

In the case of President Biden’s first budget, they must think it’s awful. Since it was already months behind schedule, there was no real urgency to release it now. After all, what difference would it make if they waited until the next Tuesday? But they made sure they released it on the Friday before a three-day holiday weekend.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer isn’t the best at following orders. But then again, neither are the majority of her colleagues in politics. 

After prohibiting Michiganders from traveling between residences they own at the height of the pandemic, Gretchen got some attention for allowing her own husband to travel between their homes. Now, the Democrat is once again under fire for posing for pictures with a score of people who do not belong to her household, all the while MI’s social distancing rules remain in place. Seems like hypocrisy isn’t an issue she’s willing to work on — but is she the only politician suffering from that problem? 

Does $320 billion sound like a lot of money to spend?

If you answer yes, would you agree it is a good idea to have some way of keeping track of how and where you spent that money? All the way down to the penny?

Now, what if that was your job? What would it say about you and your ability to do that job if you either couldn’t or wouldn’t track any of the spending you’ve been hired to oversee?

Widely reported in the financial news, inflation skyrocketed in March–the Consumer Price Index was up 0.8% in just one month. Year over year, the inflation rate from March 2020 to March 2021 was 4.2%. Many people have told me they think those figures are understated from their own shopping experience, but I’m taking all my data for this post from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI).

What can we expect, looking ahead? From March to December of 2020 the CPI was up 1.6%, which means that if the CPI rises 1.6% for the rest of this year, inflation at year-end will be 4.2%. There’s a good chance that inflation for the remainder of the year will be higher than that, in which case even 5% inflation for 2021 would be a conservative estimate.