Daily Digest

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• Iran Is In the WMD Market
• My Favorite Videos of 2021
• Caitlyn For California! [UPDATED]
• Sen. Cornyn’s unpersuasive defense of his badly flawed “civics” legislation,
• The Giuliani corrections: Glenn Greenwald edition

Iran Is In the WMD Market Posted: 04 May 2021 04:32 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) European intelligence agencies report that Iran has been trying to acquire technology needed to facilitate manufacture of nuclear weapons. From the Jerusalem Post: A damning new report authored by the Netherland's General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) asserts that the Islamic Republic of Iran attempted to obtain technology in 2020 for weapons of mass destruction. The Dutch intelligence document, which was published in April, says the security service “investigated networks that tried to obtain the knowledge and materials to develop weapons of mass destruction. Multiple acquisition attempts have been frustrated by the intervention of the services." It isn’t only the mullahs, apparently: According to the Dutch report, “The joint Counter-Proliferation Unit [UCP] of the AIVD and the MIVD [the country's Military Intelligence and Security Service] is investigating how countries try to obtain the knowledge and goods they need to make weapons of mass destruction. Countries such as Syria, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea also tried to acquire such goods and technology in Europe and the Netherlands last year.” As I understand this report, Iran uses front organizations to make technology purchases on its behalf, and the role of the intelligence agencies, at least in part, is to trace corporate connections and block such efforts. Apparently there have been similar reports from other European agencies over the past year: The Jerusalem Post reported last month that the Bavarian state intelligence agency in Germany said: "Proliferation-relevant states like Iran, North Korea, Syria and Pakistan are making efforts to expand their conventional arsenal of weapons through the production or constant modernization of weapons of mass destruction." Also in April, the Post reported that Sweden's Security Service disclosed in its 2020 intelligence report that the Islamic Republic of Iran sought Swedish technology for its nuclear weapons program. According to the Swedish intelligence document, "Iran also conducts industrial espionage, which is mainly targeted against Swedish hi-tech industry and Swedish products, which can be used in nuclear weapons programs. Iran is investing heavy resources in this area and some of the resources are used in Sweden." This seems like relevant information. Maybe these reports have been featured prominently by American news sources, and I missed them. The Post says, optimistically: [T]he findings from the three European intelligence agencies in 2021 contradict Khamenei's statement [that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons] and are likely to fuel a new debate about whether the US should rejoin the heavily criticized 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action…. I doubt that. With a Democratic president in office, the American press has gone on a four-year-long snooze.

My Favorite Videos of 2021 Posted: 04 May 2021 01:36 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) OK, I am in them, so that is not an unbiased assessment. But you may enjoy them anyway. Both were created for American Experiment’s Annual Dinner Gala last Saturday night, featuring Laura Ingraham. The first one is short; it was actually my walk-up video. Be sure to crank the volume up loud: This one is a little more substantial. It recaps some of our achievements of the last few months and features our policy people: If you would like to help save the State of Minnesota, and thereby contribute to saving our country, you can donate here.

Caitlyn For California! [UPDATED] Posted: 04 May 2021 09:52 AM PDT (John Hinderaker) Will Caitlyn Jenner be California’s next governor? The biggest obstacle is probably getting a majority of Californians to vote for recalling Gavin Newsom, who is unpopular but has the weight of the Democratic establishment behind him in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. But if voters are willing to pull the plug on the failed Newsom, Jenner may have a real shot. Yesterday she released this campaign video, which I think sounds the right themes: Caitlyn for California? Why not? STEVE adds: Just wait—all of those “courage” awards Jenner won from the Human Rights Campaign Fund and such are going to be revoked (like Richard Dawkins’ “humanist” award), because she has chosen the wrong party. Whatever else may come of this campaign, it will help make more obvious that the identity politics racket is anchored in leftist ideology, and not in true individuality or personal fulfillment. UPDATED: This didn’t take long. UPDATE 2—to all the commenters who think the Jenner candidacy is “problematic.” Look, if you can’t have sensible government, at least you can have entertaining government! If you proposed this as a script in Hollywood, every studio exec would throw you out the door. “No one would have that much willing suspension of disbelief!”

Sen. Cornyn’s unpersuasive defense of his badly flawed “civics” legislation, Posted: 04 May 2021 08:45 AM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) I find it sad that Sen. John Cornyn, whom I’ve always liked, is sponsoring the Civics Secures Democracy Act. As we have explained, per Stanley Kurtz, this legislation, coupled with the new Biden rule favoring education grants that push Critical Race Theory, is a disaster for America. It will result in the large scale indoctrination of America’s students in the teachings of BLM and others who despise America and its founding. Yesterday, the Civics Alliance convened by the National Association of Scholars issued an open letter to Sen. Cornyn and Rep. Tom Cole, the Republican House sponsor of Civics Secures Democracy. The letter appeals to them to withdraw their co-sponsorship, particularly in light of the new Biden rule. Cornyn has rejected the appeal based on claims he presents here. The Senator maintains that the Civics Secures Democracy Act will actually prevent the Biden administration from forcing Critical Race Theory onto America's schools. However, as Stanley Kurtz shows, Cornyn's response is inaccurate and fails entirely to allay the concerns about his bill expressed by the signatories of the open letter. The Senator makes two arguments. First, he contends that his bill "actually prohibits the Biden administration from establishing federal curriculum, like CRT." Unfortunately, says Stanley, this is both mistaken and misleading: It's true that the bill includes a "rule of construction" stating that "nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the Secretary of Education to prescribe a civics and history curriculum." Notice that this is not a "prohibition." It merely says that nothing in the bill shall be construed to "authorize" the secretary of education to "prescribe" a civics and history curriculum. Stanley points out that the same sort of language was operative when former president Obama pressed Common Core on the states. It did nothing to bloc Common Core. The conditions imposed by Obama on his Race to the Top grants may not have met the legal requirements for "prescribing" a formal "national curriculum," at least as adjudicated at the time. Nonetheless, they were perfectly sufficient to take control of the direction of American education in math and reading. Similarly, well before Biden reaches the current de jure legal definition of prescribing a national curriculum, he can easily impose action civics and Critical Race Theory on the nation via the multibillion-dollar carrots authorized by Cornyn's bill and the national tests that states would be required to administer to their students by that bill. The content of Biden's rule on Critical Race Theory makes that all too clear. (Emphasis added) Cornyn’s second claim is that his bill will actually prevent Biden from imposing the priorities contained in his new rule on Critical Race Theory. That’s because, according to the Senator, the grants authorized by the Civics Secures Democracy Act are "formula grants," as opposed to grants to be disbursed at the discretion of the secretary of education. Thus, says Cornyn, the grants under his bill will be disbursed to various states according to an automatic formula relying on neutral criteria such as their population in relation to other states, thereby preventing the secretary of education from exercising discretion by deploying the pro–1619 Project and pro–Critical Race Theory criteria in Biden's new rule. But Stanley points out that, in fact, the Civics Secures Democracy Act explicitly authorizes the secretary of education to makes grants to the states (and to other entities such as nonprofits, educational institutions, etc.) on a competitive basis. Section 103(a) of the bill states: "The Secretary of Education is authorized to make grants to states, on a competitive basis, to support educational programs in civics and history . . ." (emphasis added). (See the text of the bill, Page 8, Lines 22-23.) It's true that once a particular state has won a grant competition, the amount of its grant will be determined by a formula based on factors such as its population relative to other states. (Page 9, Lines 1-4) But the grants themselves are to be awarded at the discretion of the secretary of education, based on his judgment as to which proposals best fulfill the priority criteria outlined in the bill itself. Thus, the door is open for the Biden administration to favor action civics. In fact, Cornyn’s bill all but invites this: [It] allows the secretary of education to award grants based on his judgment as to which have the greatest potential to "improve knowledge and engagement among students traditionally underserved," or to "close gaps in knowledge and achievement among students of different income levels, racial and ethnic groups, and native languages." (Pages 7, Line 24—Page 8, Line 11) The new Biden rule explicitly favors Critical Race Theory because it takes the position that CRT is the best way to address the needs of traditionally underserved students with diverse racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. In other words, Biden's education secretary does indeed have discretion to decide on which states, nonprofit organizations, higher-education institutions, etc., should win competitions for grants. And the new Biden rule creates guidance that meshes with the priority criteria already in the Civics Secures Democracy Act. The result will be that the Cornyn bill, in practice, will be used by the Biden administration in just the way Obama used Common Core — and with the additional ability to cut off funding to states whose students are not learning the curriculum effectively imposed by the mandated national test. The massive civics grants will serve as politically irresistible carrots that will commit states to forcing ideas such as the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory onto their school districts — even the most conservative districts in deep-dyed red states. (Emphasis added) In sum, Cornyn’s defense of his bill is untenable. It’s scandalous that he’s sponsoring legislation that would hand the keys to the civics education kingdom to BLM and the hard left. JOHN adds: I signed the letter to Congressman Cole and Senator Cornyn on behalf of my organization.

The Giuliani corrections: Glenn Greenwald edition Posted: 04 May 2021 08:16 AM PDT (Scott Johnson) If I may borrow Glenn Reynolds’s formulation, I would like to say that we’ve descended into some sort of bizarre hellworld in which Glenn Greenwald is the voice of reason. In his observations on what he calls “corporate journalism,” he is also the voice of fairness and responsibility. Over the weekend I wrote about the Giuliani corrections served up by the Washington Post, the New York Times and NBC. In his column on the corrections, Glenn Greenwald adds an important count to the indictment: One of the primary plagues of corporate journalism, which I have documented more times than I can count, just reared its ugly head again to deceive millions of people with fake news. When one large news outlet publishes a false story based on whispers from anonymous security state agents with the CIA or FBI, other news outlets quickly purport that they have "independently confirmed" the false story, in order to bolster its credibility (oh, it must be true since other outlets have also confirmed it). This is an obvious scam — they have not "independently confirmed" anything but rather merely acted as servants to the same lying security state agents who planted the original false story — but they do it over and over, creating the deceitful perception that a fake story has been “confirmed" by multiple outlets, thus bolstering its credibility in the public mind. It was the favored tactic for spreading debunked Russiagate frauds and is still used. One of the most vivid examples occurred in December, 2017, when CNN falsely reported what it hyped as “a major bombshell": that Donald Trump, Jr. had advance access to the WikiLeaks archive. Within an hour, NBC News' Ken Dilanian and CBS News both claimed they had "independently confirmed" this fairy tale. When it turned out that it was a complete lie, all based on a false date on an email to Trump Jr., these outlets embarrassingly corrected it hours later and then simply moved on as if it never happened, never explaining how multiple outlets could possibly have all "independently confirmed" the same blatant falsehood. On Thursday night, The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources (of course), claimed that the FBI gave a “defensive briefing" to Rudy Giuliani in 2019, before he traveled to Ukraine, that he was being targeted by a Russian disinformation campaign to hurt Joe Biden’s candidacy, yet he ignored the FBI’s warnings and went anyway. The Post also claimed that the right-wing news outlet OANN was similarly briefed. The claim about Giuliani not only predictably ricocheted all over social media and cable news — where, as usual, it was uncritically treated as Truth — but it was shortly thereafter "independently confirmed" by both NBC News' de facto CIA spokesman Ken Dilanian along with The New York Times. What was the problem with this story? It was totally false. The FBI never briefed Giuliani on any such thing…. Read the whole thing here.

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