General
Excellent interview. At the end, Kersey provides information on is the websites and podcasts he is associated with.
barnesreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/Paul_Kersey_BarnesReview.mp3
A snippy article in The New York Times this past weekend — sorry, an unusually snippy article in The New York Times this past weekend — suggested that Trump is using his pardon power to reward those loyal to him and undo what he sees as politically motivated prosecutions. If true, this would make Trump only the 47th president to use his authority this way.
The media’s interest in presidential pardons seems sudden.
Just a few months ago, President Biden granted a blanket clemency to 1,500 criminals in a single day; overruled federal law on capital punishment by rescinding it for 37 of the 40 federal death row prisoners; and nullified federal drug laws by commuting the sentences of 2,500 alleged “nonviolent drug offenders,” in what his White House boasted was “the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history.”
The Times is worried about Trump abusing the presidential pardon? If Trump were selling pardons at a card table at Mar-a-Lago like merch at comic con, it could not compare to the lawlessness of Biden using the pardon power to repeal federal law. With the stroke of a pen, the dementia patient — or whomever was functioning as president — thumbed his nose at the legislative and judicial branches, the U.S. Code, his own law enforcement officers, the federal judiciary, and, most of all, citizens voting in a democracy (that thing that dies in darkness).
For decades, the progressive wish list has had at the top of the lineup: 1) decriminalizing drugs, 2) decriminalizing illegal immigration, 3) decriminalizing crime and 4) abolishing the death penalty. They push their pro-criminal agenda with Alice in Wonderland locutions, like “mass incarceration,” “the school-to-prison pipeline,” “failed drug war,” “black bodies,” “alternatives to incarceration,” “the new Jim Crow,” “nonviolent drug offenses” and “the defendant was just signed by the Los Angeles Lakers.”
But no matter how they try to camouflage it, these are such obviously crackpot ideas, they’ve been adopted only in a few open-air drug markets, like the entire states of California, Oregon and Washington. Unable to convince a majority of Americans not currently wearing ankle monitors that murderers, rapists and other psychopaths should roam free among us, liberals simply defy the law with moratoriums, executive orders, court rulings and, in Biden’s case, across-the-board mass clemencies.
Forget Biden’s issuing preemptive pardons to Anthony Fauci, members of the Jan. 6 committee, the special prosecutors who hounded Trump, his own multiple-convict son, Hunter, and to be safe, “anyone with the last name Biden.” He used the presidential pardon to overturn federal criminal law, just as he used Alejandro Mayorkas to overturn immigration law.
[I rather doubt Mayorkas needed any convincing. In fact, given Biden’s dementia, all the blame should go to Mayorkas.]
The 4,000 criminals granted clemency by Biden were in prison only after undergoing a lengthy, meticulous, painstakingly fair process in the most advanced criminal justice system in the world. So many obstacles are thrown in the way of prosecutors (exclusionary rule, Miranda, double jeopardy, jury nullification, fruit of the poisoned tree, etc.) that it’s a miracle they get any convictions even of obviously guilty people — as long as the defendant’s name isn’t “Trump” and the trial isn’t in New York or D.C.
But after all that, Biden tossed out the hard work of Congress, federal law enforcement and the judiciary, and imposed his own law: The death penalty is abolished, drugs are legal and crime will not be punished.
Out of pure spite against those of us who, oddly enough, would prefer to keep serial killers, rapists, arsonists and drug kingpins in prison, the media enragingly claim that the thousands of criminals Biden sprung were merely guilty of “nonviolent drug offenses.”
They are referring to the crime of record, which is never what the guy actually did, a fact well known to anyone familiar with the law, police procedural shows on TV or the expression “plea bargaining.”
As the Times itself has reported, 97% of federal prosecutions end with a plea bargain. You don’t plea to the worst thing you did. You plea to the bare minimum to spare the state a trial. “Possession” of guns or drugs shows up in a lot of plea deals because 1) almost all criminals have guns or drugs on them; 2) guns and drugs can’t be intimidated out of testifying; and 3) Hunter Biden.
Actual crime: Homicide
Plea bargain: Manufacturing of narcotics
Actual crime: Assault with a deadly weapon
Plea bargain: Distribution of narcotics
Actual crime: Rape
Plea bargain: Possession of narcotics
Even so, only about 0.7% of drug offenders in federal prison have “possession” as the crime of record.
But now, thanks to Biden’s unprecedented abuse of the pardon power, they’re all walking free, able to vote and buy guns. Solely because of these clemencies, thousands of Americans, happily going about their lives today, will, within the next few years, be murdered, raped, assaulted, brain-damaged, robbed, stolen from, set on fire, etc., etc., unexpectedly beating Biden to the grave.
What do you call a leader who does not feel bound by the law, but makes his own law by diktat? Autocr-something? It reminds me of a time, long ago, when a leader came to power in Germany … [Biden = Hitler; that’s a new one.]
But, sure, New York Times, try to make a big issue of Trump contemplating a pardon for reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley.
COPYRIGHT 2025 ANN COULTER
In publications like this one, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1840–1900) comes up a lot. Just about everybody knows his maxim, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Or at least some version of it, the wording varies from speaker to speaker. Sometimes the reference is “us” rather than “me”: the 1982 movie “Conan the Barbarian” opens with the title card, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger—Friedrich Nietzsche.” Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy in the 1970s got a lot of attention using this “us” version. A Kelly Clarkson song makes it “you”: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, stronger.” Here’s my take on this dictum, another word for it.
In Nietzsche’s essay published in 1889, Twilight of the Idols, he wrote: “Out of life’s school of war: what does not kill me makes me stronger.” Here, he likens life to being in a war, one that, if survived, has this personally strengthening outcome. I’m not sure if he was just talking about himself in this instance or setting out a fact of life that applies to everybody or just some people. He wrote a lot about a superior brand of human being, the übermensch in German, or overman or superman, so he may have been applying this axiom, yet another term for it, only to people of this higher sort and included himself—or a fictionalized version of himself, in real life Nietzsche wasn’t exactly a dynamo—among their number.
Although it has received little attention, with a different twist, Nietzsche got at this basic notion in an earlier collection of thought fragments entitled Maxims of a Hyperborean: “What does not destroy us—we destroy and it makes us stronger.” Notice in this case we become stronger not by enduring adversity or attack but rather by destroying what would destroy us.
With reference to the maxim as it stands in our time, it seems to me that whether the referent is “me,” “us,” or “you,” they all mean “a person”: that which doesn’t kill a person makes him or her stronger. And that “kill” is not to be taken literally. “Kill” means “devastates,” “personally destroys,” “shatters,” debilitates,” “crushes”—where someone is brought down in a major, lasting way. And notice it isn’t about getting anything accomplished in this circumstance other than you becoming more capable.
Undoubtedly the popularity of this Nietzschean notion stems from the fact that despite its grim imagery—confronting something that could, figuratively anyway, kill you—it’s a positive, hopeful, feel-good idea. If things are really rough, keep the faith, because getting through this ordeal is going to beef you up. In fact, if you are looking to get stronger—tougher, more resilient, less vulnerable, more battle ready—you might even be advised to seek out trouble, or at least not duck it when it shows itself, because it’ll accomplish this good thing if you hang in there.
Amid all this optimism, however, we need to keep in mind that everything is what it is and isn’t anything else. In this case, a maxim is a maxim and real life is real life. Reality is far more complex and one-of-a-kind than any maxim can capture. My experience with reality—actual existence, my own and from what I can discern from observing the lives of other people, both directly and indirectly through reading and film and such—leads me to conclude that what doesn’t kill us indeed does makes us stronger . . . sometimes. And that the times it makes us stronger, it does so in every imaginable way and to every imaginable extent. And that sometimes what doesn’t kill us doesn’t strengthen us at all; rather, it diminishes us, hurts us, injures us, and again, in different ways and degrees. And that sometimes what doesn’t kill us weakens us in some ways and strengthens us in others, and again in every possible combination, although I’ve noticed (if I’m not kidding myself) that the balance usually tips in favor of strengthens.
This last possibility—some combination of weakening and strengthening—seems to me the most likely outcome of survived adversity, and that leads me to a modification of this most famous Nietzsche maxim:
That which doesn’t kill you will leave its scars, but on balance you’ll be stronger than before. But then again, it might not happen that way in your case, so keep your eyes open and use your wits to do whatever is best for you in this particular instance.
Thus, when confronted with something that could kill you, you might be advised to fight like a wildcat, or placate, or work out a deal, or finesse and con, or lay low, or cut and run, or just bear up under whatever it is; it’s a judgment call.
Air chiefs want the gaps filled by those who may have previously been rejected. …
“As we approach VE Day celebrations, it is worth remembering that the RAF never ran out of Spitfires or Hurricanes during the Battle of Britain, but we very nearly ran out of fighter pilots.”
The shortage comes after the RAF’s diversity drive was found to be unlawful to white male would-be recruits.
During the drive, leaked emails showed air chiefs were told to stop choosing “useless white male pilots” in an attempt to improve diversity.
In 2023, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton apologised following an inquiry into the bias.
Sir Richard admitted that the force’s recruitment process had erroneously “fast-tracked” 161 enlisted aviators, who were either women or from ethnic minority backgrounds, into initial training before other candidates between 2020 and 2021.
From an op-ed in The New York Times (surprisingly):
Unfortunately, the D.E.I. policies that followed at Anheuser-Busch were none of the above. In 2021 the company started using online dashboards that gave managers a breakdown of their employee base by demographic characteristics.
Then the company created annual performance targets linked to the company’s environmental, social and governance strategy, of which D.E.I. was one component, for thousands of employees. It was clear to me that if teams didn’t check the right boxes, managers could be punished. Promotions could be withheld. Bonuses could be lost. That year, senior executives, including me, attended weekly meetings to discuss D.E.I. initiatives. These meetings often distracted from more critical business matters, like the fact that the company risked losing employees as the Great Resignation set in. (Anheuser-Busch declined to comment for this article.)
Anheuser-Busch was hardly alone. At least 70 big companies — from Airbnb to G.E. — had set public targets for gender diversity hiring. Among the worst examples of efforts to accomplish D.E.I. goals was a diversity training course offered to Coca-Cola employees via a third-party platform that urged workers to “be less white,” which the presentation helpfully defined as being “less oppressive,” “less arrogant” and “less ignorant.” A course in Kentucky reportedly told nurses that “implicit bias kills,” that white privilege is a “covert” form of racism and that nurses may contribute to “modern-day lynchings in the workplace.” …
You can see how performative many companies were in their imposition of D.E.I. policies simply by how quickly they have retreated from those policies. And their demise was well underway before the election. No one wanted to become the next Bud Light.
Kenneth Schmidt argues that Romania’s democracy died on March 9th when the Election Commission barred nationalist Călin Georgescu from the presidential rerun, risking civil war and exposing Europe’s authoritarianism.
One could say that representative government in Romania died yesterday (March 9th), when the Election Commission of that country forbade nationalist Călin Georgescu to participate in the rerun of the presidential election. Mr. Georgescu won the first round of the presidential contest held on November 24th, 2024, quite handily. On December 6th, the Romanian Constitutional Court, citing vague information from intelligence agencies, annulled the election and set a rerun for May 4th, 2025. Georgescu was subsequently detained by law enforcement, told that criminal charges were being filed against him, and then released.
Writing on X, Georgescu said that the election commission’s action “was a direct blow to the heart of democracy worldwide! Europe is now a dictatorship, Romania is under tyranny!” I find it hard to disagree with him. I always thought that Germany would become the first neo-liberal open dictatorship because of the zeal the establishment in that country has for suppressing free speech and the seemingly firm intent of officials there to make Alternative for Germany (AfD), the second largest party in the country, illegal. However, Romania beat them to the punch.
The Romanian political establishment is taking a terrible risk and their move threatens the stability of that country. If Georgescu was some obscure figure representing a small political party with single-digit poll numbers, the story would be relegated to the back of Europe’s great newspapers and the whole affair could be downplayed and covered up. He won the first round before it was annulled by a large margin. A recent public opinion poll had him 18 points above his nearest competitor. The government, by denying such a popular figure his right to run, is courting chaos and disorder, perhaps even civil war. Demonstrators gathered outside the headquarters of the Election Commission. People threw paving stones at the riot police and set some small fires.
If widespread disorder does break out, it is important to note that little Romania has no less than five spy agencies and has a reputation for having more intelligence operatives than even many of the larger European countries. I’m curious how the US government is going to react to these events. Both Vice President Vance and Elon Musk have spoken negatively of the annulment of the first round as an example of un-democratic European practices. President Trump would earn the undying love of a huge sector of the Romanian population if he condemned the action, or better yet, threatened sanctions.
I think the biggest question right now is not whether there will be violence, but the nature and extent of the disorder. I have no doubt that Brussels, NATO and some Western European intelligence agencies have signed on to the government’s actions. It will be interesting to see how governments in Paris, London and Berlin react to these events. Will they side openly with the Romanian government or simply downplay the situation?
TPC’s March Around the World makes a stop in Zagreb with Dr. Tomislav Sunic. What is the present situation in Central Europe? What does this retired Croatian diplomat think of Trump’s two-month blitzkrieg? We cover it all.
https://www.thepoliticalcesspool.org/radio-show-hour-1-2025-03-08/
A secret resistance agreement between 14 states to conduct coordinated lawfare against DOGE and Elon Musk was obtained by the Oversight Project.
DOGE says it has saved approximately $105 billion in a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings,” and other workforce reductions.
The Democrats are angry that DOGE is saving American taxpayers money, so they devised a scheme to stop Elon Musk and his team.
The agreement obtained by the Oversight Project was signed less than a month after DOGE was created.
“The Parties have agreed that they have a common interest in developing legal strategies to challenge the creation and actions of the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) and a common interest in existing or future investigative, regulatory, administrative, and judicial actions or inactions, including but not limited to any administrative or judicial proceedings related to or arising from those legal strategies (“Matters of Common Interest”),” the document stated.
The agreement revealed plans between New Mexico, California, Michigan, Massachusetts and other blue states to develop legal strategies to wage war on DOGE and “the actions by Elon Musk.”
The $105 billion in savings is just the tip of the iceberg.
Via the Oversight Project, as Trump pointed out in the Joint Address to Congress, these states want to keep spending YOUR tax dollars on wasteful programs like:
– $22 billion from HHS to for free housing and cars for illegal aliens;
– $101 million for DEI contracts at the Department of Education;
– $45 million for DEI in Burma;
– $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion for sedentary migrants;
– $8 million for LGBTQI+ promotion in Lesotho;
– $60 million for Indigenous peoples and Afro-Caribbean empowerment in Central America;
– $8 million for making mice transgender;
– $32 million for left-wing propaganda in Moldova;
– $10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique;
– $20 million for Arab “Sesame Street” in the Middle East;
– $59 million for illegal alien hotel rooms in NYC;
– $14 million for social cohesion in Mali;
– $42 million for social and behavioral change in Uganda;
– $14 million for improving public procurement in Serbia; and $47 million for improving learning outcomes in Asia.
