“When last reported here, Maryland US District Court Judge Ellen Hollander asked the government’s legal team some very pointed questions during a hearing at the end of October while deferring her decision on the case until mid-December. To refresh your memory…
…Summary and Conclusion. The initial ASN(M&RA) decision at the end of December was to retain MIDN Standage at USNA and in the Navy after remediation. That decision was changed after the staged 6 January Capitol Hill “riot” for obvious political reasons having NOTHING to do with the facts of the case. That the change was an entirely political decision is evinced by the fact that MIDN Standage and his attorney were officially informed of the SECNAV dismissal and separation decision the day after Biden’s inauguration instead of when the memorandum was signed six days before.
The SECNAV memorandum contained these words [emphasis mine]:
[D]espite his previously exemplary record, I concur with your determination that remediation would unlikely be successful.
The Navy has determined that an exemplary 22-year-old midshipman who posted tweets protected by the First Amendment from a Twitter account that did not identify him as a member of the military cannot be remediated but rather must be dismissed from USNA and separated from the Navy. Consider the following comparisons regarding others who were “remediated” and escaped forced separation despite their actions:
Redstate colleague Mike Ford did a great 3-part series on the latest cheating scandal at the US Military Academy (Part III can be foundhere). Twenty-four cadets on the Army football team were remediated in place and allowed to participate in the Army-Navy game and Liberty Bowl after cheating on exams in May 2020. These are violations of the West Point honor code which historically were separation offenses, but Army football apparently triumphed over integrity.
Seven Navy sailors died in the 2017 collision between USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and the container ship ACX Chrystal. The Fitzgerald’s tactical action officer was censured for her failure to perform her duties, and a Navy board of inquiry “found no reason to force Combs from the Navy after 11 years of service.” She had faced criminal charges, including negligent dereliction of duty resulting in death and negligent hazarding of a vessel, but those charges were subsequently dropped.
Among the several hundred naval officers investigated inthe multi-year Fat Leonard bribery and corruption scandal, at least a dozen captains and admirals were found culpable andreceived letters of censure. Only one received a demotion. Some of the other 33+ Navy personnel who were charged also received letters of censure, but no one on active duty was separated from the service.
Thank Heavens that these people didn’t post their political thoughts from anonymous Twitter accounts, or they might have faced separation from the military and substantial “monetary recoupment”! It could not be clearer that the Navy’s Standage decision had everything to do with politics, political ideology, political expediency, viewpoint discrimination, and gross due process violations and nothing to do with the rule of law.“
You should be aware, some years back, the Naval Academy also adopted a “revised” honor code based on the spurious contention “Midshipmen of Color” might not have been brought up in a culture which taught lying, cheating and stealing were wrong, or that a number of tweets by other of Midshipmen containing the “f” and “n” words, as well as a retweet by a female MIDN 2/c of Color stating “peaceful protestors” should “burn Louisville to the ground” in the wake of the Breonna Taylor shooting met with no discipline whatsoever. Navy personnel have been unable to explain how such tweets support the Academy’s core values, the failure to uphold same being a key element in the charges against MIDN 1/c Standage.
Other than most of its physical infrastructure, we’re afraid we no longer recognize our alma mater.
Meanwhile, as NOQ Report details, in an incredible coincidence, California governor Gavin…
H.L. Mencken had it right: “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” As we’ve said many times before, just like gun control, the lockdowns were never about controlling the Wuhan virus, only about controlling us.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, it’s now been a week since 46*’s inauguration, and our sister-in-law Amy reminded us to make note of the following:
1. The national average price for 87 octane unleaded is $2.40/gallon.
2. The unemployment rate, despite the impact of the Wuhan virus, sits at 6.7%.
3. As of the Tuesday close, the DOW is at 30,937.04, off 22.96.
4. The benchmark 30–year fixed mortgage rate is 2.880% with an APR of 3.170%.
5. In the 3rd quarter, America’s GDP grew at an annualized rate of 33.4%.
6. The country hasn’t engaged in any new foreign conflicts for the last for years, and America’s allies are paying a larger share of their defense obligations since we can remember.
7. Four countries in the Middle East…Morocco, Bahrain, the UAE and Sudan…signed peace agreements with Israel, and Saudi Arabia has an unwritten “understanding” with the Jewish state.
8. Iran has been emasculated, China put on notice, Russia a non-issue…outside of its cyber assaults, which not only predate our past President, but can be squarely laid at the feet of our intelligence community.
9. Taxes have been lowered and bureaucratic red tape sharply diminished.
10. In 2019, the United States achieved energy independence for the first times since 1957.
We could go on, but you get the picture. The only question is how long Groper Joe and his kontrollers will take to screw it all up?!?
Since we’re on the subject of those who never gave The Donald Chance #1, writing at the WSJ, Barton Swaim relates the sordid story of…
“…the most salient theme of the past five years was not any challenge to democracy. The great theme of the Trump years, the one historians will note a century from now, was the failure of America’s expert class. The people who were supposed to know what they were talking about, didn’t.
…In the wake of the Jan. 6 siege at the Capitol, members of the expert class are busy congratulating themselves for being right about Mr. Trump all along. He really was the would-be autocrat they always said he was! But the important question was not Mr. Trump’s true nature or innermost designs but whether America’s democratic institutions, especially the courts and Congress, were prepared, if required, to rebuff his designs. Of course they were. If this was an attempted coup, it was a comically inept one. Hardly anyone in Mr. Trump’s own administration, including the vice president, wanted anything to do with it.
Mr. Trump’s character deficiencies were always obvious, even to many of his supporters (ourselves included). Other questions required judiciousness to answer, and about them the expert class had almost nothing useful to say, so fixated were they on the president’s unworthiness.
The most regrettable part of this class failure is that, with rare exceptions, the experts themselves acknowledge no error. Nothing about the Trump years has occasioned soul-searching or self-criticism on their part. But today’s experts will eventually retire and pass from the scene. A newer, fresher generation of pollsters, academics, think-tank scholars and journalists will care more about the truth than they do about aligning with today’s consensus.They will feel no need to disguise their ignorance by signaling hatred of Donald Trump. And they will not fail to note that their most accomplished and revered forerunners were, at crucial moments, idiots.“
And, like our kith and kin who voted not only for 46* and 47*, but Jim Clyburn to boot, educated idiots at that!
Speaking of supposed experts, writing at his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty relates how…
Never in the field of government bureaucracy was so much paid to so little for…
Here’s the juice: Since Dr. Faux Chi assumed his position in 1984, he’s never been called upon to combat a purported pandemic…in other words, actually earn his pay…until now. At which point, he’s taken both sides of every issue so often he makes Kamalaa seem a paragon of single-minded conviction.
Still, as Rebekah Koffler noted at White House Dossier, “Now I understand how Fauci’s sidekick Deborah Birx…
…was able to wear a different Hermès scarf every day to a televised COVID briefing”.
Next, the Journal records yet anotherRepublican Profile in Cowardice, as…
Here’s the question inquiring minds should be asking: Rob, if you’re so tired of the gridlock, why not resign now, and give your successor, who’d be appointed by Republican governor Mike DeWine, the chance to gain nearly two years experience and notoriety prior to the 2022 midterms?
Moving on, the New York Post offers this bit of news, which should have been obvious to anyone following Progressive politics since Woodrow Wilson occupied what is once again the Offal Office:
Sorry, the question isn’t whether Biden can unite the country, it’s whether his handlers and he have any interest in uniting the nation. To which the answer isn’t simply no, but HELL NO!!!
C’mon, man: this is a party which thrives on discord and division. The only harmony which would interest them would be that which is enforced at the point of a gun.
“80% of Republican voters support a Congressional commission to investigate the 2020 election 85of independents.
61% of Democratic voters oppose the establishment of such a commission.
85% of voters who cast their ballots for former President Trump in the 2020 election support establishing the commission, while 65% of those who voted for President Biden voters oppose the idea…”
FYI, this roughly equates to the same percentage of Americans who support or oppose the use of government identification to VOTE: You know, the same form of identification necessary to fly on an airplane…visit a doctor…make a deposit at a bank…buy a gun…drive a car…or purchase alcohol.
“After national outrage in response to tens of thousands of National Guard troops being sent outside to sleep in freezing parking garages, Biden issued a statement begging the troops to be patient while he writes up the order to send them to much warmer climates in Iraq and Syria.
“Listen, ya bunch of dumb pony soldiers,” said Biden to a line of 3,000 soldiers waiting to use the bathroom.“I know you people are much better use to me when you’re fighting some war in the Middle East.Hooah! Am I right?Don’t worry. We’ll get you off to Iraq soon. You won’t be cold anymore, folks.It’s 115 degrees there!”
According to sources, the guardsmen were sent away from the Capitol Building after some politicians complained that they smelled weird and were holding scary-looking guns.
“We were nervous about all those scary-looking men lying around everywhere,” said Senator Cory Booker.“One of them was reading an Ayn Rand book. It was terrifying. Please get these people shipped overseas as soon as possible.”
Biden has assured the waiting National Guard and the country that he will “have these boys shooting tribesmen in the hills of Afghanistan in no time.”
In the meantime, the troops are dealing with the weather, food shortages, and only one bathroom per 5,000 troops.Fortunately, several more bathroom facilities were discovered on the hoods of Congress members’ cars.“
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s two from Balls Cotton…
…one Kamalaa and four Bernie-themed memes from The Penguin…
…these four bits of humor from Rick Page…
…as well as this piece of harsh reality:
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with a must-read edition of…
Not that it matters, but our personal favorites were numbers 3 and 8…though not by much.
Magoo
Video of the Day
This video has flashes of The Donald we just experienced as a nation: a disinclination to deal in facts or figures and a love of superlatives (“We were the most successful flight out this morning”), a refusal to abide by existing norms (attacking Pan Am’s safety record) and his generosity, an aspect of the man the MSM refused to report.
Tales of The Darkside
Michael Knowles highlights how far and fast the Socialists are moving to impose their unconstitutional dictates upon the country. (You can watch Michael’s monologue in its entirety here: https://youtu.be/KvyT7Xx6H20
On the Lighter Side
A scene from the never-aired “Pulp Fiction” episode of Seinfeld.
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