U.S. renders forensic opinion on Abu Akleh shooting

As an Independence Day treat, the U.S. State Department on Monday announced its conclusions on the shooting of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin in May 2022.

It was reported earlier this weekend that the Palestinian Authority turned over to the U.S. a bullet the PA has said it recovered from Abu Akleh’s body after her death.  Israeli media said afterward that the bullet was then turned over to Israeli authorities for analysis, with U.S. personnel present throughout the process.

Other reporting contradicted that assertion,

Independence Day 2022

At such a time as this, brevity feels advisable.

I just reread the 4 July post from 2018, and was struck by its continued resonance.  Though I think the Democrats of 2022 have progressed even beyond their more perfect resonance with the Democrats lamented in the 1860 op-ed at the New York Times, this passage from that old piece still rings (nor should we kid ourselves that it’s not a fit for at least some portion of the GOP):

TOC Ready Room 24 June 2022: Flawed court ruling overturned; Escalation in Russia-NATO confrontation; Gates ag-buy pushback

Until the Supreme Court ruled Friday morning on Dobbs v. Jackson, this edition of Ready Room was going to lead with the “Russia-NATO escalation” segment.  But such a momentous ruling, which basically overturned Roe v. Wade, obviously merits comment, however brief.

The Dobbs ruling is good law, unlike Roe (and some other landmark rulings including Obergefell, the same-sex marriage case).  It’s good law because it recognizes that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t confer a “right” to abortion on which states cannot impose limits.

It’s good law because it doesn’t overturn any state laws, like those of New York and California, that are as consistent with the Constitution as any state law that puts limits on the conditions in which abortion is permissible. 

The chain gang (an Alfa-gate tale): From Senator MBNA, to Aon, to Twitter and Musk

Checking in recently with some history of the Alfa-gate series of untoward Russia-hoax events, we unearthed some “degrees of separation” type dots through which the events linked, however innocently, to MBNA, the Delaware banking giant Joe Biden was at one time referred to as “the Senator from [i.e., “from MBNA”],” and other aspects of the Biden family enterprises.

The most pertinent TOC articles are here and here.  That’s where you’ll find background links for most of the assertions of fact below.

The reason for this opening exercise is to set the stage for broader links that reveal a big-picture pattern, one that goes beyond the links highlighted earlier.

This big-picture pattern goes beyond the known outlines of Alfa-gate and its parent -gates, Russiagate and Spygate.  In fact, it reaches all the way to Elon Musk’s bid to buy out Twitter, and for me illuminates the full meaning of “investor activism,” and how it appears to connect in at least some cases to the politics of interventionist government.

Starting with the MBNA thread, a brief summary:

Hunter Biden got a lucrative $100,000-a-year job at MBNA in 1996,

The American Spring will be forward, not back

A tweet caught my eye today, and stirred up a need to write about the American situation and where we ought to be heading.  The tweet promoted a Human Events opinion piece by Jane Coleman, which is well worth the time and easy to commend to your perusal.

"Why were we doing this in school, I wondered?" – @janebcoleman https://t.co/Xp7ocuW4tY…

— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) June 16, 2022

It’s about CRT as it is manifested in America’s schools,