It is incredible how consistently public officials who are adamant about maintaining mask restrictions are caught violating them. Did she not see what just happened to Stacey Abrams, who just hired a new social media director after her own mask debacle.

You would think these public officials would learn to read the room. They all had to know that the governor was preparing to sign SB 739, banning mask mandates in Virginia schools, the very next morning.

Instead, the school board clung to power until the very last moment, and the Chair, Susan Kass, had a public meltdown and stormed out like a toddler having a temper tantrum because a parent held up a mirror and forced her to face her own hypocrisy.

Speaking about an earlier vote from the same session, the Chairman of the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners, George Dunlap, told WSOC TV at the time, “I am aware that voice vote did not sound the same as other votes previously cast by Commissioner Scarborough. Other commissioners have raised the same concern.” He doubled down with the Charlotte Observer the following Monday, stating that it was obvious that anyone at the meeting “heard a very different voice than what they previously heard from when she did, in fact, vote.”

The county attorney, Tyrone Wade, was asked to look “into whether someone other than Commissioner Ella Scarborough voted on her behalf,” but that investigation was promptly dropped. At the time, local media and her fellow commissioners focused on the inconsequential nature of Scarborough’s vote because “commissioners overwhelmingly approved Diorio’s raise and performance bonus,” but it’s not immediately apparent that Commissioner Scarborough was voting for herself later in the call either.

The waveform on the top is Ella Scarborough voting “yes” for the Eastland Mall redevelopment agreement on August 4, 2021, and the bottom waveform is the voice that voted “yes” on her behalf for the mask mandate.

They don’t look the same, and they don’t sound the same. The second voice has a different cadence and a higher pitch. You can listen for yourself here. The following month, Commissioner Scarborough took a leave of absence, and she has since stepped down.

I don’t blame Ella Scarborough, but her declining health does not give her children, who have consistently refused to answer questions about the assistance they have been providing to their mother, the authority to usurp the will of Mecklenburg County voters and act on her behalf. The county attorney, Tyrone Wade, should step aside for his role in enabling this charade, and new policies should be put in place to ensure that the person casting a vote that could impact the lives of more than a million North Carolinians was actually entrusted with that authority by Mecklenburg County voters.

Residents have a right to know if the mask mandate they are still living under nearly six months later was approved by their county commissioners, or kept in place on the basis of a fraudulent vote.

@DefiantLs, a popular Twitter account that rose to prominence posting screenshots of hypocritical or otherwise ridiculous tweets from Democrats, media, and other prominent, left-wing activists has been inexplicably and unceremoniously dumped from the platform.

The account did nothing other than post contradictory screenshots side by side, highlighting cognitive dissonance like demanding the government unilaterally “cancel student debt,” while also blaming families for not budgeting for record inflation.

Or suddenly pretending you support the Second Amendment when you previously campaigned on banning and seizing firearms.

Or driving a hard line on mask mandates until Republicans swept Virginia’s elections and suddenly the science changed.

@DefiantLs is a great repository of absurdity, which is why they had to be removed from the platform (you can still find them on Instagram, for now). Don’t worry though, if you feel like posting the personal details of everyone who donated to the Canadian Freedom Convoy, explicitly violating Twitter’s hacked materials policy, not only will you not be suspended, you won’t even lose your verified check mark.

The first step is to end the denial. Open your eyes. See what is happening. Don’t allow yourself to be deluded by false nostalgia for a past period of cultural peace that existed only because, at that time, the Left was winning.

Glenn Youngkin should know better that to attempt to engage with Democrats in good faith. The Virginia governor made the mistake of attempting to reach out to a Democrat to commend her on a floor speech at the General Assembly, to find common ground. He mixed up two names, Locke and Lucas, apologized immediately upon learning of the mistake, and Senator Lucas still ran to social media days after their text exchange to smear him as a racist who thinks all black people look alike.

Ralph Northam admitted to dressing in blackface on multiple occasions, and had a picture of a Klansman in his yearbook, and the left stood behind him. Senator Lucas was a campaign surrogate for Joe Biden, who said Latinos were avoiding vaccination because they feared they would be deported, and claimed “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids,” among other remarks.

Senator Lucas doesn’t believe Glenn Youngkin is racist. She waited four days to drop this absurd accusation because she thought she could use it to pressure the administration to leave Democrat political appointees in place. And she was right.

The House ended up voting to reject 11 appointees from the board of education, state air pollution control board, state water control board, safety and health codes board and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. The hundreds of other appointees remained in place.

Stop apologizing, and stop believing Democrats care about anything other than their own political power.

Just one day after thoroughly embarrassing herself by promoting photos showing her mask-less at a Georgia school in violation of the restrictions she wants to perpetually extend on school children and subsequently accusing anyone who noticed this hypocrisy of racism, the Stacey Abrams campaign is hiring a new Social Media Platforms Director.

I'm old enough to remember when the New York Times blamed Sarah Palin for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords before sheepishly admitting "no such link was established."

Curiously, WRAL has an entire write-up about a Georgia candidate whose Facebook post with a rifle was "removed for inciting violence," but when you search for "Moe Davis," the top results are all articles about his opponent, Madison Cawthorn.

He has since carved out a niche for himself, siphoning millions in government grants to fund his ideological siege on North Carolina and the nation.

According to Repairers of the Breach Inc's IRS Form 990, in 2017 99.6% of the organization's $2,514,676 in income came from government grants. In 2018, 98.1% of the organization's $2,622,139 in income came from your tax dollars. The 2019 Form 990 was not available at the time of publication.

These funds are used to Get Out the Vote (for Democrats), and lobby for pet Democrat legislation. Repairers of the Breach Inc's "Poor People's Campaign" advocates, among other things, halting deportations, bailing out insolvent municipalities, Medicaid expansion, and massive tax increases.

Title image by DonkeyHotey on Flickr, cc by 2.0.

"N.C. Dems Say GOP Is Exploiting Lawmaker’s Breast Cancer To Push Anti-Abortion Bill" blares Alanna Vagianos' headline.

This asinine caterwauling is what you get when a reporter who knows little to nothing about North Carolina politics fires up the Stenotype and calls a few Democrats.

The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is not an anti-abortion bill. It's not even an abortion bill. It's a bill that says doctors can't leave a child to die of neglect just because Planned Parenthood failed to kill him in the womb. It's a bill that says Kermit Gosnell is an abomination, not an inspiration.

And if it's a "medically and legally unnecessary" fix "for a practice that simply does not exist," it can't also be "an extreme anti-abortion bill." It can't be both an attack on women's rights and a pointless bill that does nothing other than rile up the base.

Vagianos says "it’s medically nearly impossible for infants to be born alive during late-term abortions." She says nearly because she knows it happens. In Florida, where statistics on infants born alive during botched abortions have been collected since the state passed its own version of the act, there were 11 cases in 2017, 6 in 2018, and there have already been 2 cases in 2019.

Senate Bill 359 requires medical providers to give these children the same level of care they would be expected to provide for any other infant.

But if facts aren't on your side, whine about the process instead.

State Reps. Sydney Batch, Ashton Clemmons and Darren Jackson told HuffPost that some of their colleagues across the aisle are trying to force through the “Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” by repeatedly delaying a veto vote override in the state House. ... They say Moore keeps pulling the vote in hopes that enough Democrats will eventually be absent so that GOP members can successfully override Cooper’s veto.

Grow up, buttercup. Even if you're right, Republicans learned this tactic from the Democrats who ruled the legislature with an iron fist for more than a century.

As just one example: scheduling games are exactly how North Carolina got the lottery. The Democrats didn't even have enough support from their own caucus to pass the bill, so they waited until two Republican opponents were out of town, called the legislature back to Raleigh, and used the Lt. Governor to cast a tie-breaker vote.

That bill became law on the basis of a 24-24 vote despite bi-partisan opposition. The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act passed the House 65-46 with bi-partisan support.

But I guess it's simply asking too much to expect a Huffington Post reporter who can't even get the partisan breakdown of the legislature right to know anything about the state's legislative history.

Since the 2018 election, North Carolina Democrats have held a supermajority in the state. Although Republicans hold the majority in the House (65 out of the 120 caucus members), they would need 60 percent of the legislative body, or 72 votes, to override Cooper.

Democrats do not hold a super majority, or even a majority, in either chamber of the North Carolina General Assembly. North Carolina voters sent Republican majorities to both the House and Senate in 2018. Yes, North Carolina "voted for Democrats to have a voice" in the legislature in 2018; they also voted for Republicans to have a bigger voice.

For those familiar with the case--tried nearly six years ago in a Philadelphia courtroom--the material was all too familiar. The screenwriters lifted not just the transcripts of the court proceedings, but the public's reaction.

Each reaction featured in the film was a near verbatim copy of an actual tweet sent during the trial. Only the caption of J.D. Mullane's original photo had any substantive edits. View them for yourself below.

https://twitter.com/jakeslaw/status/314545179405189120

In addition to replicating the RPVB's failure by failing to put a simple voter guide on their own website, the Virginia Beach Democrats also allowed their SSL certificate to expire. Visiting the website from any modern browser results a warning that, "Attackers might be trying to steal your information."

Hopefully, they don't bother to get this fixed over the next week.

If you're this emotionally invested in the destruction of a yard sign, you really need to re-evaluate your priorities.

https://twitter.com/reachhoustonseo/status/1052736328339783682

His sudden outburst reminds me of the scene in Fellowship of the Ring when Bilbo goes ballistic because Frodo won't let him hold the ring one last time.

https://twitter.com/soderstrom/status/1052809354368479232

This guy wasn't the only one out stealing signs, just the most brazen. Ramos has posted other security footage of a couple stealing his Cruz campaign signs in the middle of the night.

https://twitter.com/reachhoustonseo/status/1052760526063882240

According to the Texas Penal Code §28.03, it is a Class C Misdemeanor if any person "intentionally or knowingly damages or destroys the tangible property of the owner" and "the amount of pecuniary loss is less than $100."

This nutcase says he's been living in the neighborhood for 26 years. Hopefully someone recognizes him; he deserves to be prosecuted.

Cam Edwards of NRA TV's Cam and Company does a much better take down of this ridiculous narrative than I could put together, and I'd suggest you go read it. He gives a great summary of the historical background and the Union's many failures before Grant was handed the reigns.

And here are Trump's actual remarks, emphasis added:

It also gave you a general who was incredible. He drank a little bit too much. You know who I’m talking about right? So Robert E. Lee was a great general. And Abraham Lincoln developed a phobia. He couldn’t beat Robert E. Lee.

He was going crazy. I don’t know if you know this story. But Robert E. Lee was winning battle after battle after battle. And Abraham Lincoln came home, he said, 'I can’t beat Robert E. Lee.' And he had all of his generals, they looked great, they were the top of their class at West Point. They were the greatest people. There’s only one problem — they didn’t know how the hell to win. They didn’t know how to fight. They didn’t know how.

And one day, it was looking really bad. And Lincoln just said, 'You,' hardly knew his name. And they said, 'Don’t take him, he’s got a drinking problem.' And Lincoln said, 'I don’t care what problem he has. You guys aren’t winning.'

And his name was Grant. General Grant. And he went in and he knocked the hell out of everyone. And you know the story. They said to Lincoln, 'You can’t use him anymore, he’s an alcoholic.' And Lincoln said, 'I don’t care if he’s an alcoholic, frankly, give me six or seven more just like him.' He started to win. Grant really did — he had a serious problem, a serious drinking problem, but man was he a good general. And he’s finally being recognized as a great general.

But Lincoln had almost developed a phobia, because he was having a hard time with a true great fighter, a great general Robert E. Lee. But Grant figured it out. And Grant is a great general, and Grant came from right here.

But even with all that context, somehow only his mention of Robert E. Lee made the headlines. NBC News led the charge with a selectively edited video that cut out all references to Grant. It would've taken a mere minute of Googling to realize this was a false narrative, but these seven journalists don't care about accuracy or the truth:

• Philip Rucker: White House Bureau Chief at The Washington Post.

https://twitter.com/PhilipRucker/status/1050952076275175425

• Manu Raju: Senior Congressional Correspondent at CNN.

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1050940523832401921

• David Corn: D.C. bureau chief of Mother Jones, MSNBC analyst.

https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/1050936135701082112

• Beatrice-Elizabeth Peterson: Producer and Reporter at ABC.

https://twitter.com/MissBeaE/status/1050935557386358784

• Juan Escalante: Huffington Post Columnist.

https://twitter.com/JuanSaaa/status/1050946175577284609

• Brent Griffiths: Web Producer at Politico.

https://twitter.com/BrentGriffiths/status/1050938340718125056

• Rick Newman: Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance.

https://twitter.com/rickjnewman/status/1050925855042621440

PSA: It's the Pod Bros, so be grateful there's only 1 F-bomb in the audio below.

Back in the real world, Barack Obama entered office with a 57-41 majority (no, you don't get to pretend Bernie Sanders is an independent) that quickly swelled to a filibuster proof 60 seat majority as contentious races were finally brought to a close.

Far from holding the majority for "only a couple months" as Favreau idiotically claims, Democrats held the Senate for the entirety of Obama's first term in office and half of his second term. They held a filibuster proof majority for not one, not two, but more than six months, a full 184 days of which Congress was in session for 173 days.

Favreau and co-host Dan Pfeiffer can whine about Democrats being out of power now, but they're not even close to the complete and total destitution of the 111th Congress' Republican caucus. For a quarter of the session, Republicans couldn't even slow down, much less stop, any part of Obama's agenda.

It's not the right's fault Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid chose to squander the Democrats' legislative majorities by ramming through unpopular, destructive legislation that ultimately helped knock more than 1000 Democrats out of office nationwide during Obama's tenure.

Here's an excellent, short retrospective produced by the History Channel for last year's anniversary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU-SjV-odDQ

As horrific as the damages were, adversity has a way of bringing people together. We've seen countless stories of Good Samaritans in Houston in the wake of Harvey, from two men with a hovercraft who got permission from Coca-Cola to raid all the water in their Beaumont distribution center for those in need, to the grandparents who called Chick-Fil-A for help and rode out of their living room on jet skis. I'm sure we'll see more of the same in Florida, even if the media would rather hyperventilate about the need for a conversation on climate change.

Batten Down the Hatches, NFL

As the winds battered Flordia, the Washington Post turned its battering ram on the National Football League. It's only week one--Go Panthers!--but WaPo Columnist Jerry Brewer says the "NFL season is making me queasy" because of the league's "blackballing of Colin Kaepernick." "How could this man, who took a knee during the national anthem last season and wore a Castro T-shirt in Miami, possibly remain unemployed?" Hint: it's because he decided to load up more baggage than his talents could carry.

The Second Amendment Advances in Maryland

With everything else that's happening, you could be forgiven for not knowing a major gun rights case is moving forward in Maryland. Stephen Gutowski writes at the Washington Free Beacon:

The case stems from Maryland's law requiring those who want to purchase a handgun to obtain a license before doing so. In order to obtain the license, a Maryland resident is required to obtain training, submit an application to the state police, submit electronic fingerprint records to the state police, pay associated fees, and pass a background check. The same background check is also required when purchasing any firearm in the state, whether from a licensed dealer or in a sale between private individuals.

Personally, I'd like to see someone from Maryland Shall Issue make the argument that gun licensing isn't fundamentally different from a poll tax. It can easily cost more than $200 just to apply for a Maryland Handgun Qualification license. We would never allow poll workers to charge a $200 fee for the privilege of possibly being issued a ballot if the state decides you're qualified to vote.

McCain Prepares His Legacy

And finally, I'm no fan of John McCain's politics, but this moment from his latest CNN interview with Jake Tapper stuck out. Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain responded that he hoped people would say, "he served his country, and not always right, made a lot of mistakes, made a lot of errors, but served his country, and I hope you could add honorably."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc_LiLe-2jg

Click here to get The Morning Slog in your inbox before it's posted online.

Nearly fifty individuals representing dozens of organizations penned an open letter to the media imploring them to stop relying on dangerous propaganda produced by The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), "a discredited, left-wing, political activist organization that seeks to silence its political opponents with a 'hate group' label ... that is not only false and defamatory, but that also endangers the lives of those targeted with it."

According to the letter, the SPLC "evolved from laudable origins battling the Klan in the 1970’s," but became corrupted after realizing the "profitability of defamation." The group has amassed a massive $319,283,961 endowment which includes more than $69 million in offshore investments.

The same media that blamed Sarah Palin for the shooting of former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, has been oddly reluctant to condemn the SPLC. Unlike map put out by SarahPAC, which even the New York Times had to admit--six years too late--had noting to do with Giffords' shooting, the SPLC's "hate map" was used by a domestic terrorist to plan a deadly shooting spree. Floyd Lee Corkins told investigators he targeted the Family Research Center because the SPLC said they were "anti-gay." He had planned to "kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-Fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces" had his assault not been cut short by a heroic security guard.

I'm not saying the SPLC should be censored, but the media should stop pretending its a credible source of information. The FBI dumped the organization as a "trusted resource" back in 2014; it's time the media followed their lead. Or do reporters really believe Ben Carson is a dangerous extremist?

You can read the full letter at the Alabama Political Reporter.

On Wednesday, the Washington Free Beacon published raw audio of the interview provided to them by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a Second Amendment advocacy organization.

As you can see for yourself int the video, the raw audio reveals that Katie Couric engaged in exactly the same sort of deceptive editing that liberal outlets routinely accuse O'Keefe of perpetrating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyKeJioORHE

Given the media hounding O'Keefe has faced over false accusations of deception, how do you expect these same organizations to react now that Couric and her team have been caught red handed? If you said, "they'll ignore it because Couric is pushing gun control," congratulations; you're appropriately cynical.

Media Matters, which currently has 20 pages of articles on O'Keefe, has written nothing about Couric's deception. The only piece I could find about Couric's Under the Gun at the "media watchdog" site blasts NRA News' Cam Edwards for questioning Couric's journalistic integrity. I think they owe him an apology.

At the New York Times, the allegations are downplayed to "site claims" as if no evidence were offered of Couric's deception. The writers are sure to note the news was broken by a "conservative news site" and explain to their audience that the Free Beacon audio only "seemed to differ from the video shown in the documentary" as if Couric's edits weren't obvious.

Rather than call a spade a spade, the Times subjugates itself to the narrative, carrying Under the Gun director Stephanie Soechtig's absurd editing spin virtually unchallenged.

https://twitter.com/soderstrom/status/735831497668763649

If you believe this edit was just unintentional and it's just a coincidence that it made the VCDL members look stumped, I've got a bridge to sell you; give me a call.

https://vine.co/v/eT6p7P5UlrQ

An animated GIF of this vine is available here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aYaXlgK-kQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUyl2Z4ruDc

McCullen: On the issue of bathroom and restroom facilities, public ones, can someone say, "I support transgender issues and the right for a transgender person to select which matches closer with their identity, but I still want segregated bathrooms in terms of male, female bathrooms, because it seems the debate now is becoming over gender neutrality and all bathrooms are bad if they allow only one person, one sex or the other.

Fisher: I, I think that you can. I think that what we have seen and what you've probably seen as well are bathrooms that are for families. There are family bathrooms. There are male; there are female. There are lots of businesses around the state that have had bathrooms that are no gender specificity at all, and what I think has to happen is that people need to realize that transgender people are male or female. It's not that, that should not be an issue for people. What should be the issue is: why are there not protections for every single person in the state, not, and to try to keep from segregating people. This is so reminiscent of pre-civil rights time. I will not begin to compare the suffering, but I will tell you that the transgender community is one community that has a lot of suicide. Lots of calls came in to the trans hotline, the suicide hotline, and they are feeling just as threatened as one might have felt back in the sixties or the fifties before when we had signs above the door that said "whites only" or above the water fountain that said "whites only." This is a similar thing, and it's all fear based.

McCullen: We'll leave it at that. This lawsuit is just getting started on both sides, but the state house bill is there. It's the anti-HB2, and I appreciate you coming on to talk about the issue.

Fisher: Thank you, Kelly.

At no point does McCullen challenge Rep. Fisher, but as David Harsanyi wrote at National Review, "Likening a spat over biologically segregated male and female bathrooms to the genuinely violent, systematic, state-sponsored, and society-wide bigotry that took place in this country for a century is both intellectually and morally corrupt." Session Law 2016-3 not only allows businesses to set any policy they choose, it specifies zero criminal penalties if violated.

Furthermore, NCGS § 130A-118 allows transgender individuals who have undergone sex reassignment surgery to have their birth certificates amended to reflect their gender identity. I don't know of a single Jim Crow law that would have allowed a black North Carolinian to change his race.

https://soundcloud.com/soderstrom/ill-grant-you-that-a-listen-first-conversation-on-guns