EARLY EDITION: Five Quick News Stories For Your Water Cooler Chat (Mon. Feb 27)
Today's Stories: Stranded Afghan Evacuees; pistol purchase permits; Lab Leak; Tennessee Drag law; NYT & Migrant children
Today’s Stories: Stranded Afghan Evacuees; pistol purchase permits; Lab Leak; Tennessee Drag law; NYT & Migrant children
1. Hundreds of Afghanistan evacuees still stranded … waiting for Biden Admin approval
The Biden administration was very quick to take credit for the great success of the ‘historic’ airlift evacuation in the final days in the disorderly scramble to make tracks out of Afghanistan. But we never got straight answers on how many of our own people and supporters were left behind among a suddenly-hostile government who would see every one of our aides (and their families) as ‘enemy collaborators’.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
One of our translators, Abdul Wasi Safi, made his own way halfway around the world to America, where his brother lives, and came across the border, only to be apprehended by authorities who were planning to charge him — while so many others stroll across unopposed.
His story is not unique, as protests in Pakistan will remind us. Biden has broken his promise to genuine refugees who have risked something to help American interests while prioritizing … whoever happens to show up at our border.
Hundreds of Afghan refugees facing extreme delays in the approval of U.S. visas protested in Pakistan’s capital on Sunday, as an American program to help relocate at-risk Afghans fleeing Taliban rule stalls.
The U.S. government’s Priority 1 and Priority 2, known as P1 and P2 refugee programs were meant to fast track visas for at-risk Afghans including journalists and rights activists after the Taliban takeover in their homeland. Those eligible must have worked for the U.S. government, a U.S.-based media organization or nongovernmental organization in Afghanistan, and must be referred by the U.S.-based employer.
Applicants have been waiting in Pakistan for more than one and a half years for U.S. officials to process their visa applications. The delay in approving visas and resettlement has left Afghan applicants in a highly vulnerable position as they contend with economic hardship and lack of access to health, education and other services in Pakistan. –AP
2. North Carolina closer to repealing pistol purchase permits
With the House passing House Bill 50, we are one step closer to North Carolinians being able to purchase a pistol without a permit from the local sheriff’s office. But there are at least two remaining hurdles before the legislation passes.
Both House and Senate in North Carolina have passed bills that would revoke the requirements for North Carolinians from needing a permit to purchase a pistol. But what was passed were two separate bills that would require some negotiation between House and Senate.
Further complicating the process is the fact that the Republican House and Senate passed these bills along party lines, while the Governor is a Democrat and has vetoed a similar attempt in the past.
3. Jake Sullivan deflects official findings on Lab Leak Theory
Despite all of the loud protestations by Dr. Fauci and various prominent mouthpieces across government, big tech, and traditional media, the Lab Leak Theory is no longer the province of tin foil hat crackpots.
The public is finally coming around to the official positions of people like Pompeo and Cotton who have been suggesting from the beginning that it was no mere coincidence that ground zero for the plague of 2020 just happened to be walking distance from a high-security bio lab that was experimenting with the very same pathogens that swept the world with death and illness.
Part of the US government has officially affirmed the Lab Leak theory, per the Wall Street Journal:
The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. –WSJ
Not only is China still trying to push stories deflecting responsibility about COVID saying it originated in Fort Derrick Maryland, but China’s staunchest defenders tend to have personal ties to China.
Like Fauci and the World Health Org before him, questions are raised about how impartial Jake Sullivan can be in his defense of China’s reputation from malfeasance or negligence causing the pandemic as he echoes China’s official no-lab-leak position here:
“If we gain any further insight or information, we will share it with Congress, and we will share it with the American people,” Sullivan said on CNN’s State of the Union. “But right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question.” — WashingtonExaminer
Like Biden, Sullivan has past connections to China that would give him cause to view them favorably.
“President Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Senior Adviser on China in Policy Planning Mira Rapp-Hooper served as fellows at Yale’s Paul Tsai China Center, which has taken millions in Chinese Communist Party cash and counts Chinese government and military-linked individuals as fellows and speakers, The National Pulse can reveal.” –National Pulse
4. Tennessee law classifies drag performers as cabaret … prohibits performances around minors
Tennessee’s SB 0003 has passed 7-1 (Senate) and 74-19 (House). It will now proceed to the Governor’s desk to be signed into law. The bill is summarized in the official government website as follows:
This bill creates an offense for a person who engages in an adult cabaret performance on public property or in a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult. The bill defines an “adult cabaret performance” to mean a performance in a location other than an adult cabaret that features topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, or similar entertainers, regardless of whether or not performed for consideration.
A first violation of this offense is a Class A misdemeanor, and a second or subsequent violation of this offense is a Class E felony. –SB 003
It also clarifies language to remove loopholes or distinctions between actual sex acts and simulated ones, or employees versus contractors.
5. Even NYTimes now admits children are exploited for labor under Biden’s border policy
This is the sort of story that distinguishes illegal border crossings from legal ones — because Criminal cartels hold operational control over the Mexican side of the border, they expect their pound of flesh from anyone who tries to come through with their help. These people oversee Mexican cities with the highest per-capita murder rate in the world — they aren’t inconvenienced by things like labor laws or human rights. They WILL get paid, or else.
These workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.–NYT
Quote Citations:
AP; WSJ; WashingtonExaminer ; NationalPulse; SB 0003; NYT
